Hi, I’m marilyn!
Changing my relationship with my cycle changed my life.
Now I create tools to help you do the same.
This is my story
I remember being 11 years old and starting my period - laying on the couch in horrible pain. It didn’t get better, and with a diagnosis of endometriosis at 16 I was convinced that being a bleeding woman was about as unlucky as you can get.
The messages around me confirmed this feeling I had. How unlucky that women are the ones to “suffer” through periods. pregnancy, birth, and menopause.
Then, a shift started to happen. In a high school art class I made a series of paintings about my painful periods, and I started to feel like periods were actually kind of … beautiful.
Later I worked for a birth center, and my passion about women’s health expanded to birth and pregnancy too. As my view around female bodies shifted, so did the way I saw myself and how I belonged in the world.
I dove deeper and studied Women & Gender Studies in University. There I learned about the medicalization of women’s bodies, the deeper history around birth and periods, and a vocabulary to express what I believed.
I started to realize, maybe being a woman with a body that ebbs and flows isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s the system we live in that values constant production and turns away from anything that asks for rest.
In fact, being a bleeding, birthing, cyclical woman is earth-shatteringly powerful.
This is constantly affirmed as I spend time in nature & see the pattern of all living things reflected my body. If the moon has phases and the seasons shift and change, then my body that operates off the same clock can’t be bad. In fact, it’s perfect.
I continued to create art, and decided that i was time to share. Studio Marilyn was born! This is a place where we can remember our worth together. Where we build a new system! One where rest, the feminine, cycles, periods, birth, and bodies are not just tolerated, but BLESSED. Celebrated! Loved!
My creations are my prayer to point us in that direction. They are tools to help you rewire your thinking, to heal the wounds and bring yourself into a place of power and healing.
FAQs
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Yes indeed! Send me a message on our “contact” page and I’ll send you more info.
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Yes! I work with one client per month. If you’d like more info on pricing and my availability, click here and fill out the form.
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Right now I’m too busy with other projects for commissioned work, so no. BUT, good news, you can get any of my preexisting work tattooed once you buy a tattoo ticket here. Send me a picture of your tattoos, because I definitely want to see!
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I was super resistant to creating digitally for a long time … I definitely have an affinity for “real” paper. Eventually my husband and a friend surprised me with an iPad and I was sold! I now almost exclusively work with an iPad Pro, Apple pencil, & the procreate app. It’s an awesome tool.
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Absolutely! If you’re a brand looking to collaborate in some way, send me an email on my contact page and we’ll chat. I love hearing cool ideas and making cool stuff together.
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Nope. I have always created art as a more personal creative expression, I never really planned on it being my full time career. I’ve been teaching yoga since 2014, studied Anthropology & Women’s and Gender Studies in University, then worked at a local Birth Center. Now I get to combine all my passions in one place here at Studio Marilyn! Mindfulness, equality, feminism, birth, and art… can’t get much better than that!
