Like most people who want their ink to mean something, I sat with my first tattoo idea for a couple of years before breathing a word of it to any artist. I wanted it to be deeply personal — a single design that held everything: my husband, my son, my faith, a nod to autism inclusion (a cause woven into my heart), and the identity I was born into. No small ask.
The nudge I needed came from an unlikely place. During a design thinking workshop, our coach threw out a warm-up challenge: design a tattoo you've always wanted. I took it seriously. Way too seriously. But that scrappy concept sketch was the thing that finally pushed me off the fence and into an artist's studio.
A friend whose ink I'd been quietly admiring for months pointed me to his artist — Rupert, a former Disney graphic designer who had traded his stylus for a tattoo machine. His Instagram was a gallery of originals; no two pieces looked alike. That mattered.
I drove to his studio one Saturday afternoon, concept design already shared ahead of time. While I waited, I watched him finish a sleeve for another client — dreamcatchers, florals, bees, butterflies, the works. My heart sank a little. Please don't let that be his default mode.
When she left and I climbed into the chair, Rupert didn't reach for his iPad straight away. He just... talked to me. Asked questions. Listened. Then, almost as an aside, he glanced up and said, "Don't worry — I'm not making hearts and flowers for you." He'd clocked my concern before I'd even voiced it.
That conversation was the whole point, he explained. He needed to know who I was before he could design anything worth putting on my skin permanently. What emerged on his iPad was sharper, sleeker, and more considered than anything I'd imagined — my concept sketch looked like a doodle by comparison.
Eight years on, it still looks exactly as it did the day I got it. Clean lines. Full meaning. Completely mine.