Goodbye, Baja. Me voy, y me duele. I am leaving, and it hurts.
Title: Between Departure and Return: The Material Weight of Becoming
Artist Statement
This photograph holds a quiet moment between departures. The open suitcase sits on the bed, overfilled and only partially closed, revealing the lived reality of constant movement. Books, journals, clothing, conference materials, and personal items spill outward. What appears at first glance to be simple travel preparation begins to feel more like an inventory of a life in motion. Packing becomes reflective work. I find myself asking what is essential, what supports my thinking, and what emotional weight I continue to carry from place to place.
I had only just arrived home and was already preparing to leave again. The suitcase became a temporary resting place where solitude, scholarship, advocacy, and embodiment intersected. Its bright orange shell, stretched and resistant to closing, felt symbolic of the inner tension of living between spaces. Between rest and responsibility. Between reflection and action. Between the need for solitude and the call to remain engaged with others.
There is no attempt in this image to tidy the moment or create order. The disorder feels honest. Intellectual life and emotional life rarely fold neatly into compartments. They expand, they press outward, and they reveal the fullness of what we carry forward as we continue moving through the world.
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, February 2026
I understood that I was never broken.
You met me gently, and then you undid me. Slowly, the way the sea works on stone. Each morning, you loosened something I had been holding too tightly. Each night, you gave me dreams I had yet to know I was ready to have.
I cried here in ways I had forgotten how to cry. Beyond the sharp, panicked kind, but the kind that comes when the body finally believes it is safe. Tears warmed my eyes and spilled without apology. A release. Un permiso. A permission I had yet to recognise I was awaiting.
I dreamed deeply in Baja. Dreams filled with water and doorways and people I had long ceased thinking about. Dreams where I was walking without hurry. Dreams where I was simply present without explaining. I would wake with my heart open and think, ah… esto es. This is it. This is what it feels like when the nervous system exhales.
There were moments of sudden clarity, pequeños relámpagos de verdad. Standing at the sink with morning light on the tiles. Walking the shoreline and realising I was no longer scanning for danger. Lying down in the afternoon and discovering that rest carried no punishment. Ah-ha moments that arrived quietly rather than shouting, but settled quietly into my bones.
I realised here that I have spent years surviving what I was never meant to endure. That exhaustion exists beyond personal failure. That my body has been keeping score even when my mind tried to move on. Entendí que no estaba rota. I understood that I was never broken. Only tired. Only braced. Only waiting for warmth long enough to soften.
Baja, you gave me that warmth. You gave me days without urgency and nights that felt held. You taught me that solitude can be chosen, inhabited, even loved. That I can sit with myself without flinching. That I can listen inward and trust what I hear.
I am leaving you now, but I am anything but empty-handed. I carry the dreams. I carry the tears. I carry the quiet knowing that arrived when I finally stopped running. Llevo el mar en el pecho. I carry the sea in my chest.
Gracias por sostenerme. Gracias por devolverme a mí misma. Thank you for holding me while I remembered how to stay.
Adiós, Baja. No te dejo atrás. I take you with me.
I carry the sea in my chest.
Title: Ascending What Cannot Be Rushed
Artist Statement
This photograph was taken during a morning walk when the path revealed itself as a gradual climb rather than an open horizon. The stone steps were uneven and worn, asking for care with every step. I was unable to move quickly, and there was little room for distraction. Each placement of my foot required attention. As I moved upward, I felt something similar happening within me. The climb felt like endurance rather than achievement. It felt like endurance.
Stairs are often used as symbols of progress, but this moment felt quieter than that. The stones were rough beneath my feet, and the incline asked for patience rather than momentum. Growth, in this space, felt slow and intentional. The walls on either side created a narrow passage that held me in the experience. There was guidance in that containment, a sense of being gently directed forward.
I came to experience the climb as a conversation between my body and the land. Effort became a way of listening. The photograph holds something beyond arrival. Instead, it holds the steady work of continuing upward, even when the destination remains out of sight.
Photo Credit: Amy Tucker, January 2026
I left to find quiet.
I returned with myself.
In Baja, aloneness arrived first.
It was unfamiliar, and at times it was heavy.
But place matters.
The sea, the light, the daily repetition of shoreline and breath
created the conditions for something else to emerge.
Aloneness softened into solitude.
Solitude became alonetude:
a practiced way of being with myself,
chosen rather than endured,
held by place and carried beyond it.
What began as absence became presence.
What was imposed became intentional.
This is a beginning held within what looks like an ending.
It is a way of living I will continue to practise.
Translation note. Spanish language passages were generated using Google Translate and subsequently reviewed and refined by the author. Any remaining infelicities reflect the limits of machine translation rather than intent.