Notes From Practice

A record of the labor meant to disappear.

Dear reader,

The other day I glanced at my desk and took note of what had gathered there: journals, sketches, lists. These records feel worth sharing. They’re small visual moments and make up a large part of my practice.

Keeping lists, logs, studies, and notes is what anchors me. It’s what makes the work possible during impossible times. As a single mother, much of my spiritual practice now moves through domestic labor, through planning meals, tending bodies, keeping track, returning to what needs care. The colors, the errands, the reminders, the marks made quickly in between is where the work lives for me.

I didn’t include my scrapbooks, photo, dream, or daily journals. Those remain more private. What you see here are the visible traces of a practice that understands spirituality as something enacted through daily labor, attention, and responsibility.

I return to simple structures when the world feels dense. I make these when I need steadiness. When I want to feel the weight of color, the pleasure of pattern, to organize my intuition, my thoughts, to ground, to let harmony emerge without force. To stay tethered to earth.

Patriarchy relies on women being too busy, too tired, or too erased to keep record of their lives. To keep choosing what they love. Choosing to notice, to document, to remember our work, our care, our injustices, and our unseen labor is an act of devotion. This record is a celebration of life as it is tended and sustained, and a refusal of systems that have long depended on women’s work remaining invisible.

Love,

Vanja

---

If you feel moved by my work, the most direct way to support me is by purchasing my art or becoming a paid subscriber.