I didn’t realize until recently that my tattoos tell one continuous story. To me they were just always little marks that I had dreamed about since I was a child. It didn’t matter to me that my family was very anti-tattoo. I could see the art and weight each strike of ink carried. And I knew that I was going to at least have seven of them. Each tattoo meaning something specific. Each one chosen with intention.
I got my first one at eighteen — impulsive, maybe, but also the most honest thing I had ever
done. It was the tattoo I knew I wanted the most. Over the years, more followed. Each one felt separate at the time: a checklist item here, a symbol there, words pressed into skin because I needed them close. But when I look at them together now, I see something I didn’t plan. I see a map of the person I was fighting to become. All before I even was old enough to put all of that together.
In Perpetuum et Unum Diem — ribcage
Forever and one day. I was eighteen when I got this, and somehow I already knew. We carry things with us. The grief, the love, the versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown but haven’t quite let go of. That John Locke may have had a point about us being a sum of our memories.
This Latin phrase lives on my ribcage — close to my lungs, close to my breath — because the things that matter don’t leave us. They just change shape. Learning to carry them gently is its own kind of strength. Learning to live with them is how you end up fulfilled.
Second Star to the Right — behind my ear
Peter Pan. A movie that on its own I am actually not a huge lover of. However, it had one symbol so prominently perfect that I thought I must have it — in my own style. Behind my ear, small enough to be a secret, meaningful enough to be permanent.
This one is a promise I made to myself: to never let the world fully harden me. To hold onto wonder, play and childish imagination. To protect the part of me that still believes in magic, still finds joy in small things, still remembers the dragon on her childhood bedroom wall and wanted to fly.
The world will try to take that from you. Growing up is often just a slow, polite way of being told your softness and wonder is inconvenient. This tattoo is my refusal to submit to a reality where we forget to giggle.
Semicolon — wrist
You already know what this one means. A semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but didn’t. The author chose to continue. I chose to continue. That’s all I’ll say about that — and it’s everything. Because I want to remind everyone that no matter how hard things are one thing will always remain true — change. It’s the most real guarantee we can have.
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Jewish Star with Buddhist Ties — ankle
I have never fit neatly into one box. When I was a kid I didn’t fit in well with the Jewish community around me. When I was older I didn’t fit in with other communities well because I was Jewish. It felt like écartèlement. This tattoo is my peace with the idea that fitting into one neat box was never really supposed to be the goal in the first place. The goal was always just finding your own moral character.
My Jewish roots run deep — the culture, the history, the sense of belonging to something ancient and resilient. And Buddhism found me when I needed a framework for the interior life: impermanence, compassion, the practice of presence. These two things coexist in me. This tattoo says: you are allowed to hold more than one truth at a time. Complexity is not contradiction. It’s just being whole.
Milton Quote — arm
“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” — John
Milton, Paradise Lost
This one is the one people ask about most. And the answer is simple: I put it on my arm because I needed to be able to see it. I have been through my own hell. I pulled myself out of it — slowly, imperfectly, with a lot of help and a lot of stubbornness. And there are so many times when I feel like I am literally back in the swamp.
So when it came time for me to finally get the John Milton tattoo I always wanted I switched lanes. I didn’t go for the romance and poetry. I went for the visual reminder I can always see for myself. The way is long. The way is hard. But there is light at the end, and you are already moving toward it.
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