THE RED MYCELIUM

AI Rendering/Mixed Media
2025
Edition of 10

A story of protection, transformation, and deep listening.

…كان يا مكان في قديم الزمان

…a woman who had never known what it felt like to have someone truly at her back. She moved through the world with an open front body, but an exposed back body, untouched and unguarded.

One night, in the quiet space between intimacy and fear, she felt a hand on her back. A tender caress, that should have been safe. It looked safe. But deep inside her, something tensed. Her kidneys popped a warning, her adrenals screamed with fear, and in that moment, just beyond the edge of consciousness, she saw vivid red tree, burning bright against a mountainous background. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced, it was strong, commanding, and unmissable.

At first, she thought it was a sign of danger, something big standing between her and the unknown. But as she continued to listen with her body, something shifted. The tree began to breathe, and its form wavered, and softened. It did not rise in singular defiance, instead it spread outward, wide, and downward, deep into the unseen world beneath her. The red tree became a ginkgo leaf-shape, woven from vast, visible networks of mycelium; a living web that is ancient and wise, connecting her to everything under the surface. It was no longer just a symbol of strength but of interconnectedness, an ecosystem quietly working beneath awareness of breaking down the old to make way for the new. For repair.

And as she stood within this vision, her heart asked: was the hand on her back a warning? Was this a signal of danger, or was it something else? The red mycelium didn’t scream “run” or command her to “retreat”, it was more quiet and felt like an invitation to witness. Perhaps it was not about the hand at all. It was about the stories her body still carried, the places within her that had never known how to relax into being held.

She realized then that the fear was not about the present moment. It was the echo of everything that came before it. The touch had not caused the discomfort, nor was it the source of her unease, it illuminated what was already there. The hand wasn’t the solution either, but it presented her with the doorway.

If there was a warning here, it was not against the hand. It was against silence, against bypassing and pushing past what her body was asking her to see. The red mycelium did not arise to tell her to “leave”, it arose to teach her how to “stay”, not in the arms of another, but with herself. To not just survive the sensation, but to let it speak and to trust that her body was not trying to frighten her, but rather to guide her.

And as the vision started to dissolve away she realized that protection is not always a fortress. Sometimes, it’s a slow and quiet unfolding across a stretch of time.

She had spent a decade believing safety meant armor, walls, impenetrable strength. But this vision, this living red mycelium, was telling her otherwise. Protection could be fluid and adaptive. It could be about filtering through rather than blocking, metabolizing rather than resisting. Just like mycelium does, she was learning to break down old fears and transform them into something nourishing, something that could sustain her.

This was a vision of a ginkgo-shaped tree.

It was her body learning to listen. Shifting from living in survival and into more trust. It was the networks of her own resilience waking up. And just as mycelium turns decay into new life, she realized that her past was not a thing to be buried or erased, but meant to be transformed, composted into wisdom, and integrated into connection.

She is no longer alone, the red mycelium has her back. And this time, she can feel it.

Artist’s Note:
This piece is a reflection on the body’s hidden intelligence and on how we carry the memory of what we have never received. It’s a story of how healing does not always arrive as we expect it to, it might surprise us. The image of the red mycelium emerged in a moment of deep somatic truth revealing that protection is not only about boundaries, but about connection and trust in the unseen forces that hold us, and that trust is what allows us to transform.