Two Medicines, One Heart: A Letter from an Artist to Her Daughter, Who Is Pure Art
By
Jeane Satie
November 5, 2025
Aisha, your name doesn’t mean “Alive” by accident.
And you didn’t wrench the scissors from Dr. João’s hand by chance.
I write this letter from Beirut, while you walk your path in medicine, far away.
And I realize: each in our own way, we are learning to practice the same art —
the art of healing.
Parallel Medicines
My clinic is the studio.
My patients are memories, absences, longings that need shape and color so they don’t vanish.
My prescription?
Brushes that translate love into images.
Paints that turn loneliness into bridges between us.
You study to learn how to fight for life — pulling people from death’s grip.
I learn, stroke by stroke, to fight for life with brushes — pulling beauty from chaos, hope from destruction.
Your medicine heals bodies.
Mine heals souls.
And deep down, we’re both part of the same struggle:
against death, against forgetting, against the dimming of lights.
Learning to Fly When the Ground Gives Way
Each Bird of Beirut I paint is a piece of me learning to fly —
just as you flew to follow your dream.
This series was born after the 2020 explosion, when I realized:
we Lebanese (and I, a Brazilian who chose this ground) must learn to fly —
even when there’s no solid earth beneath our feet.
Each Godiva I create carries another medicine:
the reminder that our strength has always lived above the shoulders —
in the lifted head, in the gaze that confronts.
Women who show their face — not just their body.
Women in vibrant colors who refuse to be objects.
Women who exist beyond what the world expects of them.
Like you, Aisha.
The Beauty in Imperfection
From my Japanese grandparents, I inherited wabi-sabi:
beauty lives in imperfection, in transience, in incompleteness.
My works carry this.
They are not perfect. They are alive.
They breathe. They bleed. They fly.
Just like us.
A Final Note
Keep wrenching scissors from the hands of fate, my Life.
Meanwhile, I paint our empty nests with the colors of hope —
and of the pride I feel, watching you soar.
With love and fresh paint,
Mama
Explore mais da série:
→ Pássaros de Beirute: a arte de voar sem chãoLoja
→ Godivas: mulheres que mostram a caraLoja
