Put it in Paper

06/05/2026

My dear friends, can I get a like, comment, repost, or share so I can spread the word and this reaches more artists? ✨

When my son Aedan Pio was 4, he was diagnosed with a rare incurable cancer on his brainstem called Clival Chordoma. Over the next several years, he endured surgeries, scans, chemo, and more hospital visits than any child should ever have to experience.

But cancer was never my son's whole story.

Because Pio was an artist and he loved Jupiter, heavenly bodies, Lego, mythology, Minecraft, and creating worlds from his imagination. He left behind hundreds of drawings, paintings, pixel art pieces, and creative projects that continue to tell his story today and this exhibition was inspired by a child like him by a parent like me.

Joy in the Dark is an art exhibit featuring artwork by children and young adults impacted by cancer, as well as siblings, lovegivers, and support persons whose lives have been forever changed by the experience.

We are looking for artwork that shares the highs, the lows, and everything in between. The moments of joy, hope, humor, fear, grief, resilience, and love that often exist side by side.

📅 Submission Deadline: June 15, 2026

🖼 Exhibition Dates: September 1-30, 2026

📍 Simsbury Public Library, Connecticut, USA

🌎 All selected artwork will also be featured in an online gallery

🎨 Original artwork in any medium is welcome

🔗 Submit here: linktr.ee/foxandorca

“To live in the art we leave behind is not to die.”
— Aedan Pio, forever 13

Thank you Whitney & Willa for this opportunity to have some light in this journey. ✨

05/29/2026

Apparently, making friendship bracelets for first graders is my current form of stress management. Not sure if B's classmates need this many bracelets, but here we are... 🫶🏻✨

05/22/2026

Here's a random Friday writing, enjoy. 🙂‍↔️

On the songs that carry us back to people, places, and versions of ourselves we survived.

05/18/2026

My first time to play again! 🧸
Come join me revive my inner child! 🫶🏻✨🌈❤️‍🩹

05/09/2026

TW: child loss, cancer, grief, Mother’s Day

I put it in paper because sometimes grief refuses to stay soft. For Mother’s Day, I wrote about my third one without my son Aedan Pio, survival mode, rage, motherhood after child loss, and the kind of love that does not end just because a life did.

This one is for the mothers whose grief does not always look graceful. For the mothers who are still mothering through memory. For the mothers carrying love and rage in the same body. Happy Mother’s Day. However this day finds you, may you be held gently.

Apparently, survival mode had an 11-year lease and my nervous system would like to speak to the management please?

05/07/2026

Mother’s Day is coming up and I think my body is remembering more than my brain is. Lately there’s this internal scream inside me going:

“EXCUSE ME??? THIS IS SO UNFAIR???”

And the wild part is… I never really got to scream or punch something when my son was diagnosed with an incurable cancer in 2015.

I went straight into *sprinkles glitter* survival mode ✨ medical terms ✨ caregiver olympics ✨ functioning human with a clipboard ready to take notes of what to do✨

You know that thing where your nervous system just quietly signs a long-term lease inside “handle it first, cry later”? Yeahhhh. That. Lo and behold, 11 years after its telling me lease is up bb girl.

It's almost my second Mother’s Day without my firstborn and suddenly my soul wants to throw a chair at the universe.

But responsibly you know becayae my blood pressure said: "girrrl don’t even think about it.”

So instead of deadlifting my agony of being a mom with a dead son, I scrub floors now.

Nothing says “processed grief” like aggressively cleaning the nooks and crannies of a house built in 1920 while listening to Maneskin's The Loneliest and pretending you’re in a cinematic breakup montage with life itself.

And honestly? Sometimes I want people to understand that grief isn’t always soft poetry and candlelight.

Sometimes grief is:
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE WORLD JUST KEPT GOING???”

Anyway. Happy almost Mother’s Day to the moms carrying love and rage in the same body.

That combination is heavy as hell.

Lagay Mo Sa Papel,
Jesrora

03/07/2026

I am still learning the landscape of this new place I call home but I am grateful for the people walking it with me... welcome to the Golden State. 💛

🏡 The Crafter's Cottage - our home for this week
🌼 Hi ith me, a Pisces baby
🎨 Crop top by
⛅️ Muni-muni
🌊 Bodega Bay
👯‍♀️ Bermuda Buttercups and friendships
🥂 Day One of Cheers
👏🏻 Sonoma Coast
🌅 Sunset in Napa

03/05/2026

First birthday in the U.S., I am celebrating under a Sonoma sky with friends who flew all the way from Houston.

New country, new chapter, same heart full of gratitude. ✨🫶🏻

Lunar New Year, birthday wishes, and a glass raised to the life still unfolding.🥂

03/02/2026

This is where I live now.
I still say it like I’m trying it on for size. 😏

02/21/2026

Heyyy mga ka-papel... I'm studying end-of-life care right now and this week’s lessons brought me back to 's final days with new understanding. I wanted to share that here. 🫶🏻

Though my last reel was about migration. So everything still feels different lately and sharing pieces of my story helps me stay grounded while I build this new chapter.

If this speaks to you, I’m glad you’re here. 🥰