In This Time I Kept Me, Marcelina turns inward, creating an
intimate meditation on inner child work and the quiet, ongoing practice
of learning how to remain with oneself.

This lithograph is an edition of 50 and is hand-finished by the artist and features a deckled edge.

The artwork is signed and numbered by the artist.

Printed at Coriander Studios, published by CCA Galleries.

Marcelina describes This Time I Kept Me through an accompanying poem:

"Now the path turns inward.
Back toward the source.

Offerings to the inner child.
Rituals. Shadow work.
Quiet ceremonies of self-care.

Gestures of holding.
Mending.
Forgiving.

A language of healing
that blurs past and present.

Wound / balm.
Grief / tenderness.

One cradling the other
echoing the Pietà.

A holding that is no longer outside the body
but inside it.

If there was once becoming
now there is staying.

Learning how to remain.
With myself.

Not leaving.

Not this time.

Ritual as survival.
Care as cycle.

To nurture.
To release.
To return.
To begin again.

A vow underneath everything.

To the inner child.

A refusal.
Soft, absolute.

This time I kept me.

I think about what it is to be seen.
To be loved.
To be held.

The early search in someone else’s eyes.
Am I here.
Do I matter.
Am I safe.

And then turning it inward.

Again.

A slow learning.
A different kind of mothering.

Inside the body now.

Memories of trying.
Trying to earn love.
Trying to be enough.

And the long undoing of that trying.

Forgiving myself
for the moments I left.

I am here for you.

Not as an answer.
But as a practice.

And still
I forget.
And return.

I keep coming back.
To this.
To me.

Again."