THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of the butterfly. I watched a video the other day of a sped up transformation process, where a caterpillar is simply wandering along the way, and then like lighting, bolts into a vertical post and its outer shell splits, slides off like a snake skin, turns into a chrysalis, and then dies to itself to become something entirely different. 

I can’t help but think I’m going through the same process. 

At the end of Covid, I reluctantly moved back home. I accepted it was where God was sending me so I didn’t fight it, but I didn’t want it either. It too was a lighting strike moment where I was sent into the environment from which I came to die to myself over three years. Today, is yet another phase where I find myself ‘eating’ my past projects in order to turn into something else. 

**

I began the concept for Sugar Coated in 2018. I’d been in the thick of activism and I was in a rather desperate place to try and wake up the world to the chaos that I was seeing festering right underneath the veneer of American life. I felt a burning desire to lure unsuspecting people into an brightly colored exhibit that was bittersweet and hilarious… using humor as the perfect way to get people to swallow truths they didn’t HAVE to pay attention to- mainly the demise our or agriculture, the injustice against certain groups and the monsters leading our nation. 

Fast forward to today, the final months of 2024, I have held onto Sugar Coated as my showcase concept. It’s strong, admittedly, but I have changed so much that I see bitterness in myself when I look at each thumbnail sketch. 

I finished “Caramel Apeel” last night, a beautiful piece about Apeel, Bill Gate’s novel yet ridiculous and harmful attempt at saving grocery stores money by extending the shelf life of fresh produce by coating it in gelatinous cancer causing goo made from seed oils. I then immediately started on “Crookie Monster”: Puppeteering our Earth chip. It’s funny and cute and may be my favorite from the painted concepts, yet I’m becoming unamused by the snakiness of it all. If anything, I feel like people are exhausted with the social and political conundrums of our time, and simply want beauty. Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. 

As I let the cookie monster blue dissipate from my brush into the water, I picked up a small canvas and decided to paint- just to paint. I used the left over shades of blue slowly drying on my palette and the cookie colored bronze and tawny. I painted a face. Nothing special per se, just a face. Doodling I’d almost call it. Easy. Fast. Natural. 

I set it on my desk leaning against the wall, right next to an unfinished Crookie Monster. For the rest of the night, I sat there listening to astrology and having an undeniable feeling that the face is more interesting. The loose brush strokes and the way the complimentary colors blended in certain places and then became their own colors again in different places. It was… INTERESTING. Not because of some clever cerebral commentary, it was just… interesting. 

This is the moment I had to sleep on last night as I contemplated absorbing the Sugar Coated concept into myself, to reembrace my natural talent and become what God designed me. Not a commentator of the world, but a contributor to the world. Not in an attempt to be special, but in a genuine desire to express what comes most naturally. 

This is an intriguing process considering the events of the last week; My Trew Love facebook and all affiliated friends, social groups, and ad accounts got hacked and deleted. Last month I traveled to LA for a wedding only to discover that I have become broadly more conservative over the last three years and felt a distinct lack of resonance with my friends in California anymore. That was compounded exponentially when I told them I was voting red.

It’s been an undeniable realization that since I moved home, I am now someone different. I feel like I’m shedding all aspects of my Los Angeles self which is confusing and liberating all at the same time. 

There’s power in being able to walk away from things, yet there’s a melancholy in me that knows that Sugar Coated in its glorious entirety may never come to life at all. 

Yesterday my daily Step said “I do not need to be special to be unique”. In one subtle but fell swoop, like gears shifting into place, I began seeing that many of the Sugar Coated pieces were laughing at another’s world view and from some angle, could be seen as laughing at their pain. 

“Trew Love”.. does poking fun of other’s confusion and detriment even fit my brand anymore? Quietly, God spoke “No” and another wave of grief settled in as I further detached from my former identity. 

I can’t help but wonder still where I’m going. I was so certain at one point. So sure of myself. Maybe that’s exactly the issue. Maybe I was becoming too sure. Too rigid in my understanding of my path. 

Like the caterpiller however, I find myself itching to release what doesn’t fit me anymore. Like an old torn jacket that was once my favorite, now has to be left for the birds. 

Today, even as the raindrops hit my window and the clouds cover the sun, I feel like a new day has dawned. I’d written now over a year ago about how I’d meet the canvas with no concept to interfere with what comes out, and yet it is only now that I’m ready to do so. 

The full moon in Taurus this Friday promises that we should expect the unexpected, and this is certainly that.

It may in fact be that Trew Love, as an identity, was just yet another stepping stone to knowing my true self. She of infinite expressions, also known as Adrienne. 

With Love and Truth, 

Trew Love

Also Known as Adrienne

BALENCIAGA

I’ve always been on the perilous quest for fame. It’s called to me even before I understood what it was. The desire to be loud, different…Special. Even as a child, I knew I was “different”. I never quite fit in with anyone. I think differently than most of the people around me… deeper, philosophical, inquisitive. 

Two days ago I wrote about the hacking of my Trew Love facebook, which at the moment felt like the internet overlords were smashing my sand castle. It broke my heart. I cried, I whaled, and something old and stuck broke free through my chest and heart as I did. 

What is the point of all of this? Do I even rebuild? I asked myself. Why do I even try anymore? An ominous cloud of apathy rolled over my conscience.

In my frustration and despair, I drove to pick up my nephew about 40 minutes away, crying out to God via Kid Rock. “Only God Knows Why”!

That night, I came home to my boyfriend Nick, who in his own despair about his pending jail sentence, sat with me and said the words that I didn’t know I needed to hear. 

Initially, I resisted his wisdom. I have a daily spiritual practice that I’m devoted to even more-so than my brand. And he, without such practice, still began to offer his words; “I think when you get over yourself, you’ll experience a whole new reality.”

Am I not over myself?? I thought. Have I not been surrendering daily for the last six years? When, for fucks sake, is enough healing enough healing?? Anger built in the pit of my stomach. In my mind, I’ve been devoted to God diligently, and I AM over myself, right?? I’m kind and patient with people, I give when God asks me to- often at the expense of myself. Is that not enough??

This message, coming from him- a severe alcoholic- felt like hypocrisy. As the resistance began to subside, I began to surrender and listen. What I didn’t realize at the time, is that those words would be the catalyst for the awakening I had this morning. 

I flipped the page open to my daily step for today. Step 243: I do not need to be special to give. 

This is my sixth year following these steps, so this isn’t the first time I’ve come across this message, yet this morning, it hit different. Like the key it was offering finally met the right door. 

After the crash of my Trew Love page that I made in Los Angeles in 2018, I was in a fresh place to receive the lesson that was now being reiterated both by the practice I’m devoted to, and the man I love most.

“The attempt to be special underlies all human ambition, and all human ambition that is not born of Knowledge (God), is born of the attempt to offset the grave disappointment and anxiety of separation”. 

I opened instagram, and there stood a man on a stage in prisons, preaching and singing to the people who too have found themselves caught in the egoic loops of self destruction, only not on the quest for fame. I saw them moved by the Spirit. I felt the message myself, and I knew that I too have more to let go of. 

I saw them sing and dance together for God, liberated by the message as they raised their hands to the sky. 

That’s when it hit me. In my cry of despair singing Kid Rock in my top-down convertible, I felt freed as the notes unleashed themselves through my voice. 

This is what I need to be doing. Music. And not just any music. I need to sing to and for God. 

Not for fame, not for recognition, not to be special. I need to sing because it unleashes me too. 

**

Yesterday, as I sat in melancholy about my internet conundrum, I pulled a track I made a year ago for a collection that never came to fruition. It was for a micro-collection/ music walk-through called “Yours Trewly”. A journey to share my back story through music and correlating paintings. One of these songs is called “Balenciaga” - a tribute to when I started realizing how dark Hollywood is, and that maybe God saved me by pushing me out of LA and back home to Kansas City. 

I made six tracks for this collection about a year ago in exchange for two paintings, and they’ve been waiting in my files for the moment I knew what to do with them. In my typical over-the-top fashion, I envisioned a music video in full studio, costumes, rotten tomatoes and the whole nine yards. Yet yesterday, I just wanted to work on something that was not painting. 

I compiled a series of images from the internet painting the picture of the demonic worship in Hollywood, the symbology, messaging, and correlation with child trafficking, an issue near and dear to my heart. 

The series of images painted a much clearer picture of what the song is about, and I found myself deeply satisfied with the absence of my face at all. 

Let the music speak for itself, I thought. Easier, simpler, and not ME focused… What a novel idea. 

The truth is, much of my journey as an artist has been an attempt to be a ‘better’ version of myself. And that can only come as a result of feeling like my self is not enough. Not good enough. Not polished enough. Not rich enough. Not known enough.

Even after years of spiritual work, therapy, ayahuasca journeys and more, my ego still leads me to self-aggrandizing ideas that serve my pompous idea to demonstrate my wit and intelligence. 

Maybe just maybe… that’s what changed this morning. Maybe, just maybe… I’m finally getting over myself. 

My Step continued: “You are freed this day from attempting to make yourself special, for in this way you will find the true relief that you have sought in all your previous endeavors.”

Relief indeed. 

So as of today, all of my work will evolve to serve God, and finally…so will I.

The void still lingers as this foundational reconstruction of my Self continues, yet for the first time in my life, I trust it is a foundation that will withstand the test of time and the storms that will inevitably form in the future. 

If security exists in the world, it only exists within. And maybe…surely… this is the right place to begin again. 

Trew Love

Also Known as Adrienne

SUNSET TOWER

I’m finding it hard to focus as my head is still spinning from the news this morning. Nothing that you’d find across any newspaper or headline however, yet somehow it feels just as devastating. 

This morning, just one day after I launched my first ad for Trew Love, after four months of building a new website, and eight months of building click funnels, my accounts were all hacked and used for some ad coming from China and hence flagged for removal. 

Everything I’d built, including my personal Trew Love facebook page. All the posts, all the photos, all my ad accounts, disappeared in a matter of hours. 

The crazy thing is, this is the SECOND time this has happened as I’ve just about launched a brand. 

The first time this happened was after I’d acquired 10,000 followers on MySpace back in 2006. Back then 10,000 followers was a big deal, especially in Kansas City. 

I operated under the alias of “Lady Aries”, a blonde pink and black haired glam-punk makeup artist. I’d just gotten a job at MAC, and I loved setting up photoshoots with local photographers with different concepts to practice the more creative expression of makeup. I loved modeling too, and the photographers were eager for non-corporate shoots. I was at what felt like the high of my life. I got my side piece tattoo and I was being recognized by name out in public. My first taste of fame. It was then that I took the photo that then got sold around the world, one of which was picked up by an artist that turned into the largest glitter sequin portrait in the world that somehow made it to the Ripleys Believe it or not museum at Hollywood and Highland- one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles. (I didn’t learn about this till I moved to LA 4 years later however)

I was having fun and making money doing what I loved, and going to underground rave parties on the weekend. I was having the time of my life! 

And then… 

One afternoon… 

I log into Myspace at work (of course) only to see that EVERYTHING was gone. All my floating skull html codes, my photos, my writing that I’d poured my soul into… 

GONE. 

HACKED. 

ALL FUCKING GONE. 

I was still able to get into the account, at which point I saw another person making actions within the account. I sent myself a message to see if the person hacking me would hear my plead to stop. 

I said Why are you doing this?? Please stop! Why are you doing this? 

He said… 

“Because I can”. 

My heart broke. Everything I’d created. Gone. 

What I learned through this, is that social media following can be stolen, and years of work can be obliterated by someone with vindictive intention. 

The scar this left, was and IS undeniable. 

A great deal as to why I’m not further in exposure online at this point, November 2024, with 13.4K followers who were for the most part, purchased. I bought them at a time where I wanted to regain the social recognition that seemed so necessary for getting contracts, but was still yet too burned to put myself out there to do it authentically. 

This only made me feel like more of a fraud of course, which was the first insult thrown at me by a vicious liberal who didn’t like a truth I was sharing. Thankfully I’ve come to accept my reasoning for doing it, and maybe this time around, it’s just another cycle of the same story, back for new and fresh lessons. 

Back to this morning. I wake up to see that my ad account for Patron Portal for artists- which I’ve been building over the last year- was hacked. Through there, they posted an ad that got flagged for review, denied, then my account, including my Trew Love account, and my Trew Love ad account, were wiped clean off the face of the internet. 

GONE. All of it. All the posts. All the videos, the artwork, and the first ad that I’d just got done filming last week. 

All. Of. It. Gone. 

Again. 

At this point, a deep, heavy depression washes over me. A sadness that felt like a death. Like a death within myself. Once again, I’m at ground zero. Zero followers, zero dollars. Where the fuck do I go from here? 

To that question I don’t yet know. Do I rebrand? Do I rebuild? Or do I allow this to be a sign from God to change directions entirely. 

It was only this morning as well, as I recently got back to my Sugar Coated painted collection (as I have a show in January) only to have a looming narrative haunting the back corner of my mind, whispering  “No one’s wants these”. 

Is this a sign to start fresh there too? Is everything I built in LA, including my entire social network attached to the Trew Love name- falling off of me? 

I couldn’t help but think about all the times someone tried to tell me California was going to fall off the coast of the country. Maybe it’s just a midwest joke, or maybe they were on to something, just not in the ways they thought. 

And maybe… Maybe I’m just “being dramatic”. Making a big to-do about nothing. But I gotta tell ya.. 

This feels like betrayal. And abandonment. And Loss. And I don’t know what’s more painful than that. 

That being said, I acknowledge this tower moment as a sign I must have been headed up the wrong ant hill… my empire of sand. 

I think too about the destiny of social media generally as the cancelled community grows ever more the majority, and whether soon this will be such a common experience that we all give in like the Chinese youth and declare “Bai Lan”; Let it rot. 

These moments as I consider whether I want to rebuild again, I can’t help but ask myself why. Why all of this? Why even try? 

And maybe that’s just where God wants me. On my knees in total surrender to the Void and all that comes with it. The confusion, the lack of faith, the burnout, and the inevitable burnout from the cycle of it all. 

Where this leads, I don’t know, I ponder as I drive back from my sister’s house and on the radio plays “Only God Knows Why”

Top down and the music loud enough to drown the defeat, I let the sorrow take me back to the blank page I left all those years ago. 

And maybe that’s where I begin again. 

Trew Love

Also Known As Adrienne