Don’t Push Me explores the early thresholds where care, containment, and control blur. A single red line interrupting the composition serves as both visual boundary and emotional trace. It marks a moment not of violence, but of subtle override: where agency is felt slipping away, even if language for it has not yet formed.

Positioned early in the Feet to Foundation chapter, this work helps establish the central tension: how the body, before it can speak, begins collecting experiences of power, resistance, and restraint.

The image leans into minimalism, using color, negative space, and gestural subtlety to evoke a sense of both vulnerability and quiet defiance.

Don’t Push Me invites the viewer to reflect on how early impressions shape the body’s relationship to authority, especially in environments meant to nurture.

There are moments when care becomes corrupted, when something meant to protect ends up wounding instead. Don’t Push Me stands in that moment of betrayal, where the soul registers not comfort, but coercion.

In the Garden, the serpent twisted what was good. His words cloaked rebellion in the appearance of wisdom, leading Eve not into freedom, but into fracture. It was not the fruit itself that destroyed, it was the distortion of care, the push masked as insight.

And yet, even after that fall, God didn’t force His way back in. He clothed them. He sought them. His presence remained gentle, even when they had stepped into pain.

“The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” Psalm 9:9

Reflection Question:
Where have you felt the sting of something that was supposed to be good? And how might God be inviting you to trust in His voice, the one that doesn’t distort but heals?