An illustrated story written and drawn during my MA in Art Therapy at NYU — about love, memory, and the people who stay with us long after they are gone.
Never Left follows a young girl named Merad as she moves through the quiet rhythms of family life — bubbles in the garden, evenings at home — and the slow shape of loss. The book was developed for an Art Therapy with Children course (NYU, Spring 2022) as a tool clinicians can read with young clients learning to hold grief, separation, and the lasting presence of those they love.
The story below is presented page by page. A full PDF is available to download.
I created this children's book during the second semester of my master's program, when we were asked to choose a theme for a picture book. I chose grief and bereavement.
At that time, I think I was quietly trying to create a closure for myself. My father passed away when I was nine years old, and this book became a gentle way for me to return to that part of my childhood — not only through sadness, but also through dreams, memories, colors, and love.
The following contains a few hidden secrets inside the book ㊙️
The name Merad is a small rearrangement of the word dream. Dreams appear throughout the story in different forms: butterflies, bubbles, colors, and quiet little details waiting to be found.
The butterfly comes from Zhuangzi's butterfly dream, but it also comes from one of my own memories. On the morning after my father passed away, a butterfly followed me on my way to school. I was too young to fully understand death, but that butterfly stayed in my memory. It felt like a message, a goodbye, or maybe a small visit from him in another form.
There are 12 butterflies hidden in the book — a little secret connected to my birthday, September 12. The butterfly, Merad's rabbit, and the teacher in the classroom also share the same color, quietly tying together dreams, comfort, and guidance.
Many details in the book come from my childhood with my father. The second page echoes an old family photo. The beach and shells come from the times he took me to the sea to look for shells. The yellow and black family uniform is also placed inside the story as a small act of remembrance.
One of my favorite memories appears in the garden scene. When I was little, my father was watering the flowers and accidentally splashed water on me. Then he said, "Stephy, you are too beautiful — I thought you were a flower." I remember feeling so happy when he said that. Only after growing up did I realize how gentle and high-EQ that moment was — he turned an accident into something I could remember as love.
Near the end of the book, the second-to-last page offers a soft suggestion for being with emotions after losing someone we love. The final page leaves readers with this sentence:
"Death is an illusion, life is a dream, and you are the creator of your own imagination." — L. J. Vanier
Although this is a children's book on the surface, I think it also speaks to adults. The protagonist, the bubbles, and the butterflies are all part of the same dream language. Maybe the protagonist is dreaming all along. Maybe life itself is a dream — and when we die, we wake up and realize that everything we loved, feared, lost, and became was part of a story we were living with our whole heart.
Perhaps death is not simply an ending. Perhaps it is another kind of waking.
I hope this book can be read slowly.
I hope people can find different meanings in it at different ages.
And I hope, somewhere inside the pages, someone will feel seen.
Return to the gallery, or get in touch about commissions, collaborations, or further reading.