Amy Baxter

It is much more permissible just to say, you know, to really...

lean into how you're feeling or letting people know.

And then there are cultures that are very stoic and male and female feel pain differently.

So it's interesting to me that cartooning or that expressions could be so

symmetric amongst different cultures when one of the most basic self-protection techniques we have is actually represented in very different ways in different cultures.

Nor do people with visual impairments.

My son doesn't – has a visual impairment, and so he has often a resting superiority face or a resting –

I mean, it doesn't, you know, many things will come across his face that he doesn't hide.

It is also getting back to the genetic hardwiring ideas, this concept that if you make yourself smile, even holding a pencil in between, yeah, that it becomes so ingrained and such a repetitive thing that you will feel happier.

You'll feel...

more joyful.

And so I wonder if we also negatively reinforce ourselves and don't frown because it does make us feel worse.

Oh, that's interesting.

I don't know.

When you're drawing something that is about your own family or about something that's really personal to you and grief, how does that change how you approach drawing it?

Did coning it down make it easier to handle?

It's interesting that that's really one of the best ways that people who get through pain and don't have pain later in life is because they learn how to only focus on one thing, that meditation teaches you how to not pay attention to extraneous things.

And so to be able to just focus on hands or just focus on a rock or a breath is partially allowing you to let go of all the pain externally.

And it's both physical as well as mental pain.

If you're in one place that you can control, that filter is healing and liberating and safety.