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A painting I did of late my dad's fiance skinny dipping near the Tetons 

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Another defining culture for me is art. My mom loves the arts and got me participating in them by the time I was a toddler.
Some of my favorite things to do are to see live jazz shows, see movies, look at visual art like paintings and photography, and read books. Some creative things I like to do are oil painting, singing, crocheting, and writing.

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Spending time outside makes me feel more connected to our earth. Even though we live in the time of climate change, I'm grateful that we are always near nature in our country, at least.

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My dog Ziva collecting wood for her dam. 

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Having been raised with dogs as pets throughout my whole life, I can't picture living too long without one. Dogs can be so fun and sweet and it's a cool experience to be able to connect with an animal in the way you can by having a pet.

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bell hooks, feminist activist and author. 

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Being a feminist has been second nature for me as a woman. From early on, I noticed that boys and men around me were being treated with much more respect than the girls and women. I saw that being female meant that you were less than, irrational, overly-emotional, a home maker, a mother, and a wife.
As I got older, I began to learn and recognize why this was. The mistreatment and prejudices of women doesn't stem from actions or behaviors of women, it instead stems from the conditioning of men to distance their own identities from that of a woman, so much so that men have long been encouraged to believe that women are inferior and even a man's property.
In my life, I hope to stay aware of the limits I put on myself from my own conditioning as a woman, and to uplift the women around me.

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One of the cultures most important to me is spirituality. My lifeblood is seeing the beauty in things and paying attention to all of the types of energies we can experience.
I'm inspired by the patterns and mimicry in nature, like how river veins take the same shapes as trees, the veins under our skin, and the veins in leaves.
The way that tree and fungal networks work in a similar way to our neural networks, how sources of/vessels for life take a round shape (life cycles, the shapes of stars, planets and moons, molecules, flowers, eyes, nipples, ovum)

As well as the irony of opposites.. how we receive light through the dark holes in our eyes, how black holes in the universe consume light, how life gives way to death and death gives way to life in so many ways, and how opposite attraction via polarity keeps things together, living and moving.