I realize I quite possibly spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about things most people probably discard and never revisit. I am not one to dwell on sadness or tragedy, but some stuff refuses to leave my heart and soul.

I created the above scene from one of my own photographs, an archival image of my mother and by using some truly wacky trickery available through OpenAI. It’s an imagining of what it might have looked like when Solveig Andersson (aka Ina Anders), left the train station in the tiny rural town of Mellerud in Sweden sometime in the early 1950s and began her adventurous journey to England and eventually the United States.

The above image’s anachronistic (or geographic) inaccuracies are irrelevant to me. I simply felt a need to visualize this scene as a way of gaining a better understanding of Solveig Andersson as a young and incredibly courageous woman.

But why? 

Because that is the version of my mother I would have liked to have known and be loved by. It is the version that allows me to feel less animosity and more pride in being her son. It’s visual therapy, if you will.