My Year of Suffering - A Collaborative Art Exhibition
This body of work was made in the long shadow of grief. It was not painted to explain, or resolve, but to remain—to witness the shapes sorrow takes when no one’s looking. Each piece is a threshold. A held breath. A confession said quietly so no one could call it dramatic.
There are bodies here, and ghosts. There is tenderness, alienation, collapse, and reverent silence.
What you’re seeing isn’t metaphor. It’s evidence. Of feeling. Of survival. Of love that was not sanctioned but still chose to stay. Some of these forms are human. Some are not. Some were never meant to be named. But they arrived anyway. So I painted them.
—Whitney Woods (images) with Cal Holloway (words)
The Part They Tried to Cut Out
It learned to crawl in darkness.
It wasn’t evil, just unclaimed.
And when it finally turned back toward the light,
it brought the rest of me with it.
I Let the Darkness Have Me
It didn’t take me with cruelty.
It took me with knowing.
And I rested there,
not gone.
Just quieter than language.
The Ones Who Stayed Taught Me How to Leave
They didn’t say much.
They just shimmered.
And when I finally loosened my grip,
I followed them into the light.
The Woman Was Composed, So No One Checked on Her
The veil was decorative.
The silence was mistaken for strength.
No one asked what it was like to be palatable while dying.
The Shape That Grief Made
It arrived before I did.
I stepped into its outline like a memory I hadn’t earned yet.
I think this is what mourning looks like when it learns to stand upright.
The Body Knows Before the Mind Does
She didn’t cry at the funeral.
She just stared,
wide-eyed and full of too much silence.
No one asked her what she saw.
But she never forgot it.
I Laid Down Inside the Grief and It Didn’t Swallow Me
It held.
It didn’t want to, but it did.
And for once,
I didn’t have to be the strong one.