ailishashannonart

Growing with Severed Roots🌿

In 2023 I created this artwork as part of a 5 piece commission for . Depicting the experience of young people who are forced to seek asylum and a new life away from their home, culture and family.

3 years later, this drawing seems to depict where we are today as a people, divorced from what what we thought we could count on, our roots, looking for ways to grow a new way of life from dislocation.

The question is what will be grow?

This illustration depicts severed roots, and yet new growth being found through community and co-creation.

If you would like to donate to please do, they bring light, story and vision to young people who deserve it most.

What would you like to grow more of?

2025 - You Were A Lot 🫠🤍

If I thought having a plan meant knowing what to expect, then 2025 taught me otherwise.

I started this year knowing a few big things were coming:
1. An extended stay in Ireland to see if we want to move there (answer still pending)
2. Turning the big 40
3. Getting married

All good things. But life, as it tends to do, had its own agenda. Not so much derailing my plans, more hijacking everything in between with sharp turns, lessons, and some pretty unwelcome surprises.

Here’s what actually went down:
1. I started the year swamped with work and exhausted. I hosted my first podcast but hardly had the space to register it. I was too tired. From work, motherhood, chronic health issues, medication changes, and trying to be everything at once

2. I lost it, full burn-out style. Overwhelmed, confused.

3. We went to Ireland. It was both healing and confusing. Rest and comfort paired with big questions about where to live.

4. Back home, I hit the 2025 freelance job market, it was dead. This turned into a long, not entirely voluntary (but probably much needed) sabbatical summer.

5. Then things shifted. The market picked up and I landed two genuinely lovely jobs.

6. We got married. And I pulled off my first wedding production 💪🏼 A day with everyone we love was in one place, for the very first time. A moment where real luck and real love showed up for us.

7. And somewhere in all of this, I realised something else. I’ve spent my 20s and 30s striving and surviving. Proving myself, pushing, healing, dealing with loss of almost my entire family and chronic illness. It’s time for something different.

Now, I’ve decided that this next decade is about peace, pleasure, love, and creation.

Panic and fight-or-flight will probably still visit from time to time, like a friend you’ve outgrown and are slightly bored of, but my core no longer needs to be shaped by proving, striving, or pushing. It’s enough.

I get to do so many cool things, I want to allow myself to enjoy them. I want to love my friends and little family fully for as long as I can, no shame, just being there.

Can you relate? 👇🏼