We’re All an EVER Evolving Story and it’s Fantastic

Stepping away from the screen.

Hand drawing coloring pages to teach simple words in Spanish.

Tools I’m using:
Col-Erase blue line pencils
Black liner permanent pen
LePen brush pen
Cardstock paper

Hi there,

My name is Yanuary Irasema Navarro. Yea, it was always a mouthful to say as a kid, so I’m regularly also known as Yani or Yan. Both are good with me. I was born in a remote village in the middle of literal nowhere amidst the mountains in Honduras, Central America. There wasn’t much to do there except climb trees, explore nature, and get lost in my imagination. For this reason, I believe I’m most happy when I’m surrounded by lush trees, flowers, rain, silence, and losing track of time drawing and making art. I wasn’t born into riches of any sort but I was blessed with an optimist heart. No matter how many times life knocks me down, somehow, there’s a tiny spark inside me that lifts me back up. A tiny voice that whispers to me, “just get up. That’s it.” God is great that way. We’re all given some strange little seed only we get to carry. What’s your special seed? Do you have an uncanny way of comforting someone that’s hurting? Do you brighten the world with your light-heartedness? Are you musical, soothing with melodious poetry? Are you a tireless truth seeker motivating us to do better and be better?

About a year ago, I noticed my little spark dimming rapidly. Some may call that depression. I call it having a spiritual tank running on fumes. In the business of living life I was not making enough time to replenish myself convincing myself that if I slowed down all my hard work would fall apart. I decided to try to slow down anyway because I’m a mom and whatever I go through trickles downstream to my little one. One of the major things I did was walk away from consistent use of social media, and consistently giving away all of my emotional energy. That was almost a year ago. I’m still navigating the consequences of living in a way that renders my work largely invisible except to a small group of people.

I’m not here today to convince you or sway you to live in any particular way. You do you boo. I’m here to share what my creative practice has been like lately and what life has been like as a hopelessly-romantic artist in this world we’re all sharing.

Here’s the thing. I don’t feel the same pressure I used to. Miraculously, my life has shifted in the direction I always wanted but with less effort. My finances are healthier, I’m on my way to owning my first home, and I feel a clear direction for my work towards art that helps educate as it entertains. I’ve been blessed with friendships that reach out to me to check-in when I feel low and make dates for gatherings. Real community uplifts and coregulates through challenging times. I’ve been revelling in snuggling a tiny tot as we watch her favorite movie for the 100th time. I used to be filled with anxiety a year ago at moments like this, a part of me always worried I wasn’t doing enough to take care of things. Anxiety is after all a hyper-focus on the future, instead of the present.

I’m finding that things have a way of taking care of themselves if we just slow down and make the space. It’s never too late to turn the page in our unique story and throw in a plot twist. What has your soul been whispering to you about?

My spirit has been whispering to me about creating ways to help teach Spanish. English is my second language, and one of the ways I learned to speak and write English was through illustrated workbooks. I keep working to figure out my own way of illustrating that can also help to teach basic Spanish. It feels like life is bringing me full circle. From a scared 4th grader who didn’t speak a word of English to a confident English speaker with a bilingual daughter.

Here’s a one-page writing exercise I illustrated this week. The key to a project is to break it down to small actionable steps. Ideally, I would like for all the coloring pages to live inside a full book. For now, as a busy mom all I can handle is to illustrate one-page at a time. And that’s the perfect amount of progress!

Hey there, thank you so much for reading all of this! Please subscribe to my private newsletter below for more updates and stories:

All writing was written by Yanuary Navarro, no AI was used, please forgive strange sentence structure and misspelled words lol :)