"You are going to be okay. You are...despite the way the world has failed to protect the tenderness that you are, despite the way it has clawed at the light within, despite the pain, despite the ache, despite all that has conspired to weigh down the soul of you - you are still here...Something deep inside of you kept going...something deep inside of you always will. Trust in that." - Bianca Sparacino

"You have to die a few times before you can really live." - Charles Bukowski

"Try to find the beauty in each breakdown...Connect, connect, connect - with every ounce of who you are, with every inch of your patchwork heart...Please, just connect - because beautiful things are vanishing...Do not let your heart become one of them." - Bianca Sparacino

"She has one hell of a dark soul, but damn, it's so full of light." - Melody Lee

"And now, born from the ashes she is a warrior in blooded black."

"In a world of emojis, she is calligraphy." - j. iron word

"the energy that she has is rare. at times it causes her to feel misunderstood. she's always thinking on a higher level. for her, she does not care about those shallow conversations that seem to be the norm... she is deep. she needs connections that reflect that. so until the vibes are deep, she will just stay reserved.." - Sylvester McNutt

"Sometimes you have to just go away and save yourself." - Sylvester McNutt

Some days she's dark; some days she's light. No matter what, she's always true; she's always her - that you can trust. Her soul is dark with shimmers light, her heart black stained with crimson tears, her mind shattered but always sense. She holds madness in one hand and peace in the other, each as much a part of her as her smile, or tears, or eyes that look through your soul. She can hide with the best of them, assumptions and impressions all the world once knew of her, until she chose to share herself, and in her vulnerability let slip too much, the truth behind the mask now seen: The love behind the distance, empathy behind the cold, pain behind the indifference, an aching beyond the loneliness that she rarely sets free. There is a soul unlike any other, an oxymoron complete, for she is as she is not, a complexity few will - if ever - understand. Both woman and girl, enlightened though innocent and anything but, a soul forever young even as it has lived lifetimes; a Gemini is she, but so much more than can ever be explained by words. She just simply is and will always be. Me.

Words: © Rosie Chee

Photographer: Tony Mitchell

"We've all got both light and dark inside us." - J.K. Rowling

""I am just me" she said and he knew that she was right, she was in fact just her. A her was more rare than one in 1 billion, more rare than once in a lifetime. She was a once in the history of humanity type of soul." - j. iron word

"Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them." - Candace Bushnell

"Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain..." - Bob Dylan

"Everybody deserves somebody who makes them look forward to tomorrow"

I love you. Seems the easiest thing for us to say. It is everything else. Everything that comes after that is hard. That seems to get stuck. Caught in the silence after. I love you. Is not the hardest thing for us to say. Not any more. Not to each other. It is everything else. Everything we silently wish for. The dreams we hold in our heart that we barely let ourselves dare hope for. Those are the hardest things. Those are the words that get caught. Maybe we think that if we dare utter them it will curse this love that we have. This love that once even we could not admit. To each other. Though everyone else who knew us already knew. That we loved. Why is it that the things we want the most are the hardest of all to say out loud? Why do we stop our lips from uttering what we show each other with in things other than words? Do we wish for it so much? Are we so scared to lose what has become the most precious to us? How can that be? Because once even the love we share we dared not even allow ourselves to have as a dream. But it happened. Yes it did. It exists as much as we do. As alive as we are. Growing as much as we do. Becoming only stronger with every day that we let it live. I love you. When did they stop becoming the hardest words to say?

Words: © 2019 Rosie Chee

Photographer (Raw Image): Tony Mitchell

"We are riding the pendulum of some massive density waves that are moving us through layers and layers of duality.. Welcome to Gemini season... Fluctuating moods, up and down, back and forth. One day fine, then wildly not... We get to see the extremes so that we can remember where our center is, it's all a swirl of truth and information in there, but our PEACE is the center of our storm.. This is going to be one hell of a month as we move toward the Solstice... Take a deep breath and regroup, in every minute if you have to...we are walking through some thin slips between dimensions...another big wave prompting you to open your heart...get out of your linear brain where you are making yourself nuts with OVERTHINKING, and get into your heart and reassure yourself who the fuck you are."

Photographer: Charles Alexander
Bodypaint by: PhilValy

Wrote so did m.a. plutus, “there’s a little bit of heaven and a little bit of hell in her. she’s like a glass of champagne with a shot of whiskey.” Heaven and hell undoubtedly coexist within her earthly vessel, but one begs to differ that she is more mere splash of champagne in a straight up double [or more] shot of whiskey. And while that smile may hint at heaven, the hell in her glows just as bright as former’s light.

Four years have passed since this shoot of gold. Each year it could be said, a ‘season’, now come full circle with each one lived. The first spring let’s say, with the beginning of her ‘heaven’ coming to awaken, new truths birthing within, to carry her forward. Then summer, autumn, winter, who can really say which year was which, for there was a winter, time of darkness great, and into hiding to it her soul went, but when time came to emerge...Though ‘Winter Queen’ her soul sings of summer, of waves upon sands gold beneath sunlight, the hint of woods and salt on the wind whispering by, coconut and sea invoking senses in a way like she, but not memory, stands before, life itself, and real.

‘Gemini season’ today begins. As then shot in nought but gold was she, so shall this be one that glimmers and glows with sparkle and promise of all that has changed in her and will be. And for those brave enough to withstand the sharp punch of whiskey, able to see past the superficial assumptions made of her, the sweetness of the champagne that touches after will be revealed.

Words: © 2019 Rosie Chee

Sometimes God doesn’t change the situation because He’s trying to change your heart.” This really hits home, especially with everything that’s happened in the last quarter. I have to remind myself that “everything for a reason”, even when I am on my knees crying “WHY?! Why could You possibly want me HERE? For what purpose?” I don’t pretend to understand everything God does and why. Sometimes what He asks or wants us to do begs the question “WHY?!” but living on faith means we do trusting that HE knows what He’s doing.

The heart is a strange creature. Mine has almost always been hidden. It’s been locked up tight and guarded, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle surrounded by thorns, so no one gets in [and nothing gets out]. But He slowly started changing me in recent years and I let the determined “creep” their way inside. I let the “spell be broken” and the walls start crumbling down, the thorns gradually disappearing. Even as I kept a guard on watch, for still entry was to be granted only a rare few, albeit the world being able to “see” the tower and that there was a glimmer of light [not always cold] radiating from it.

But the day came when there was great desruction in the tower and the light did not glow as bright. There came a dawn of frost and a sheen of ice layered over the black. The storm passed, but not completely, and the harsh winds and vicious frost cause the ice to linger, even as the tiny flicker of fire inside the tower kept a small portion of it melted. The tower withstood the weather, retreating back away from the world despite remaining in the open, no longer as solitary as it had once been, seeing other towers in the distance, but realizing how isolated it had made itself and that only the truly determined would fight the elements and try to understand the terrain to make their way even to the base of the cliff that it rested upon.

It’s the little things that start adding up. It’s the glimmers of understanding that flicker in and out of view. It’s the moments of clarity amidst the fog that keeps one’s heart going, determined to make it through the storm, even if it doesn’t truly understand WHY. It’s finally realizing that sometimes God ALLOWS the storm and He KEEPS it in place until something INSIDE us changes, until WE start to change, until our HEART begins the transformation. It might take a day, a week, a month, a year, or longer, but He WILL take the time it needs to make the change. He WILL keep the winds blowing, the frost shivering, until that tiny flicker of fire is “fed” and allowed to light and heat more than a single room, shining light from the tower out into the world despite all that is going on around it.

Words: © Rosie Chee

"...don't close your heart...from the possibility and please don't stop believing. hope is a beautiful thing...you're beautiful..." - r.m. drake