Resilience Captured in Brushstrokes

Amy Moglia Heuerman's paintings celebrate the beauty of change.

Amy Moglia Heuerman in her haven of girl power.

Walking past an art studio in Naples, Florida, I was stopped in my tracks by a painting in the window: A stick-figure girl, simple yet full of movement. There was something about her—something joyful, confident, unburdened. She reminded me of the girl I once was and the woman I’ve become.

Drawn in, I stepped inside.

The artist behind the work is Amy Moglia Heuerman, whose story made me love her work even more.

She didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she was 60. After a divorce, she moved to Naples, and on a whim, enrolled in an oil painting class in 2018. She spent six weeks learning to paint seascapes—beautiful, safe, predictable. And she was afraid to do anything else.

Then COVID happened. So she started painting people. It made her feel less isolated, more connected to the new surroundings she inhabited.

As she grew as an artist, her world expanded. She sold her paintings for anywhere from $650 to $23,000. She took risks, experimenting with canvases and even a garden hose to create texture. A teacher’s advice—"It’s just paint and a canvas!"—freed her. She stopped hesitating. She let go. She met her husband. Her friendships deepened. She opened a studio, then moved into a bigger light-filled space.

And then one day, the girl appeared.

At first, the girl was an accident—just a figure emerging from the paint. But Amy leaned in, cutting her out from the background like a paper doll.

Then she made another. And another.

"I never thought they would sell," she told me. "Now I can’t make them fast enough."

What is it about The Girls?

"They’re my inner five-year-old," she says. "They make me feel like I can still be naive but safe. Like I’m free. I’m okay. I can still dance."

Her words stayed with me. Maybe because they were so close to my own experience of transition—not from seascapes to figures, but from newspaper reporter to pro bodybuilder.

For most of my life, my strength was in my words. I built a career telling other people’s stories. My power came from my intellect, analysis, and communication—and that felt natural. It felt safe. But stepping onto a bodybuilding stage for the fourth time as I enter my 50s, under blinding lights, flexing muscles? That takes an entirely different kind of strength.

Because strength isn’t just about power. It’s about transformation. It’s about standing in the uncomfortable space between who you were and who you are becoming. It’s about letting yourself evolve, not knowing exactly what comes next, and trusting that you are strong enough to handle it.

Amy’s paintings—unpretentious and colorful—spoke to me because they aren’t just about movement—but about trust. About the joy that can come from stepping into something new, from embracing the unknown instead of fearing it.

Her transition—from divorcee to artist, from seascapes to The Girls—was palpable in her work. And that’s why it struck me, there on the sidewalk. Because I know that journey. I know what it feels like to take that leap.

Dancing girl

Strength isn’t just about what we can lift, whether it’s weights in the gym or the burdens of our past. It’s about what we can release. The fear. The self-doubt. The idea that it’s too late, or that we have to draw inside the lines.

Amy found freedom in her paintings. I found freedom in the gym. We both found freedom in stepping into something new, something bigger than what we’d imagined for ourselves.

Her message—the message in The Girls—is simple but profound:

Look inside. Be yourself. Who you are is enough.

Dance.