Raggedcoyote - DOG DAYS

“Stardust” by Marta Sokołowska

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞

post/artist

"that time of the month" "monthly visitor" "feminine hygiene products" GRRAH!!! SHUT UP SHUT UP!!! PERIOD!! MENSTRUATION!!!! TAMPONS!!! PADS!! MENOPAUSE!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope isn't ethereal, soft, and gentle. It's not naive or blind and it's not a passive state.

Hope has dirt behind its nails and blood all over its face, as all seems lost - but it's still getting up for another go, if only to protect just one more person.

Hope works its fingers to the bone to make the slightest difference. You may fall for its easygoing masks but it's hilt is heavy and to wield it is one hell of a workout.

Hope exists despite suffering. It knows the oppressive darkness intimately; yet stubborn as a mule, that's where it sees stars shine the brightest.

Hope doesn't wear rose-colored glasses. It can only envision a better tomorrow because it knows exactly how fucked up the today is; without ignoring problems of the present, it simply prefers to look towards the future.

Hope can be afraid but it doesn't cower; facing its fears head-on, it claws its way out of any pit life dug for it.

Hope can be stained, dirtied by the world around it. There can be no glory or recognition found within it - and still it doesn't cease bending over backwards in the name of its ideals.

Hope sees potential where there's good intentions. Whether someone has been a victim or a perpetrator, it wishes to support a path to change and breaking free from past cycles; because the option of growth proves that nothing has to stay horrible.

Above all, hope is a daily choice, made against all odds - to keep living, toiling, trying. It's often mundane, it takes small steps; and yes, it really does take time.

Hope smiles in the face of hardship and sees past the temporary. It's seeks to be constructive rather than destroy; its paths may not be the smoothest but it trusts they lead towards a bright-lit aim.

Hope is complicated. And yet, don't we kind of need it?

Dogs in art: Attic red-figure cup with a dog scratching its ear inside the tondo

5th century BC

by the Euergides Painter.

@unpretty

"The Forest"

An illustration I painted and turned into an animated gif. This was very tedious but I like how it turned out.

(by alex_rivap)

The Yellow Warbler or Summer Yellow-bird.

Illustration by Robert Bruce Horsfall from ‘Bird Biographies’ by Alice Ball. Published 1923 by Dodd, Mead & Company.

.American Museum of Natural History Library

Biodiversity Heritage Library. archive.org