Diane, remembering her daughter Josie

Diane S: Artist Statement



The Butterfly

I always thought that my daughter Josie would beat her addiction to heroin, never thinking that she would become another statistic…We became quite close while she was serving time at Framingham women’s prison– sending letters to each other – in some ways I had got my daughter back: She was clean, talking about staying clean and going back to school to become a substance abuse counselor – she jokingly told me she was an “expert in that field”.

One of her last letters she sent me contained a quote about a butterfly that she liked:

“Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a great deal of darkness yet become something beautiful…”

In my backyard is a rusty broken solar butterfly ornament that I have – it hasn’t worked in ages, but a good friend of mine had given it to me, so I still kept it in my garden…

The night that my daughter died – the broken butterfly ornament lit up and glowed a soft green –Josie’s “darkness” from addiction was gone – the beautiful butterfly was now free….