Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Her mother, my grandmother, died at age 36 from cervical cancer.

She had eight children who were split up as children.

They couldn't stay together.

They were kind of orphaned.

And then my mother also worked in law enforcement and saw some really ugly sides of humanity.

And so I think she was worried.

And also I was this kind of creative, weird, awkward.

She used to, I found out later after she died, she would tell people that I was her flower child.

Right.

She would say, oh, my flower child is doing this or that.

And so I wasn't going to fit the maybe, I don't know, standard manual for parents.

I was just really out there.

I think my mother also, if I look at her now as a young woman with four children and her body is in failure in this way, the anger she must have had, the frustration, the sorrow, the depression.

I can hold all of these things now and all of these things can be true at the same time.

So I think some of the ways that my mother and I, when we clashed, are ultimately reflected in how much she loved me and wanted to see me be whoever I could be.

But I had to do it on my own terms.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, I just knew when I was a young child that was fully formed in me.

I'm an artist.