Amy has always walked onto the sand as if she belonged there long before she arrived. That day was no different. She laid down without hesitation, turning her face toward the sun, letting it find her the way it always does. Around her, people talked, moved, and lived inside their own small worlds, but Amy existed inside her own quiet certainty. She wasn’t performing or trying to be seen. She simply was. I watched her settle into that small space of warmth, her body relaxed, her mind free, as if the sun had been waiting for her all along.

I titled this painting Amy’s Beach because that moment belonged to her completely. Not because she owned the sand or the ocean, but because she owned herself. She has no fear of taking up space, no doubt that she deserves to be there. There is something deeply beautiful about that kind of confidence—the kind that doesn’t need permission. As her mother, I saw more than just a girl laying in the sun. I saw someone who knows her worth, someone who trusts herself fully, someone who understands that the light touching her skin is not something she has to earn. It is already hers.