Close up — the Emotions Chart

A map of the sky in between.

Twenty-five birds on one sheet of paper, each one holding a way of feeling. It is the piece everything else here grew out of — and until now, the site has described it in nine words.

We keep reaching for the same three words.

Stressed. Overwhelmed. Anxious.

They are useful words, and they are not very many, and most days they are doing the work of about forty others.

So the sheet asks its question first, in her handwriting, before it offers a single answer.

But there's a whole sky of feelings in between.

It began as a quiet conversation with my daughter at a little library about how we reach for the same three tired words. So I painted her a map of the sky in between.

Twenty-five of them, ruled into cells like a field guide, because that is what it is — not a chart of what is wrong with you, but a page you can point at.

This one is marked self love. She is round and pink and wearing a flower, and she has a heart drawn on her side in a single stroke that does not quite close.

Every feeling here got a bird rather than a label, and this is why. A word on its own is something to measure yourself against. A slightly wonky bird wearing a flower is something to be.

Four along the same row: resilient. A small grey cloud, and underneath it a bird who is unmistakably having a bad time of it — soaked, bedraggled, still on the branch.

It is the least flattering bird on the sheet, and it is the one most people stop at. Resilience painted as coping beautifully would have been a lie. This is what it actually looks like.

a whole sky of feelings in between

Her signature is in the bottom right, small, in pencil.

The chart is available as a print. But it started as one sheet painted for one child at one library table, and that is the version worth knowing about.