Today, we’ll celebrate Independence Day using the backdrop of the sky as a canvas, the fireworks thrown against it bearing semblance to the drips from the hands of Jackson Pollock but we’ll forget that here, in America there are still some who are not free.

Don’t be afraid to let your heart beat strong and loud in a room full of silence. Your heart beats for a reason, woman!

Don't be afraid to let your heart beat strong and loud in a room full of silence. Your heart beats for a reason, woman!

It takes as much time to build walls sturdy enough for wallflowers like you and me to lean against as it does for us to bloom.

I'm learning to let go of my shields, to take the armors off (they are too heavy anyways) and march unguarded, if ever the need arises, towards the battlefield in defense of love.

Nothing else has given me a chance to contemplate life the way walking has.

Nothing else has given me the chance to contemplate life the way walking has.

I know my fickle heart still beats because of my mother's heartbeat.

When they gaze in confusionat the broken, odd shaped, colorful shards of glass that we are, let them know that we too belong here, herein this gallery. Masterpieces, we are nothere by accident but have been carefully assembled and put together and are held together in this ceramic panel - our bodies of clay -by good intentions. We too are works of art.

Let your heart race. Let it run wild and free. Let it burst out with sounds of liberty, of gratefulness for being alive at this moment for this moment is all we have.