This will be my entry for @foxyspirit's #tattoocontest! I found out about this from @freedompoint and though it was a neat idea! Here is the original contest: (https://steemit.com/tattoocontest/@foxyspirit/tattoo-contest)

I have several tattoos, 3 large pieces, and 4 smaller pieces on my body. Tattoos have always been an expression of chapters in my life. Each one represents a person or time in my life that shaped me to the person I am today.

Wolf Sleeve

The small gray wolf in the middle was my first tattoo I got back in 1998. I had the rest added about 3 years later, completing the halfsleeve. I got this tattoo to represent my chosed family, whom, throughout my entire young life, were the only family I had. It reminds me every day that chosen family is just as important as those we are bonded to by blood.

Life Mural Sleeve

This tattoo, like most of my Wolf Sleeve as well, was done all in one session (about 8 hours). Each picture and object in this collage represents a person whom has shaped my life in a very major way. This arm will have more added as the years go by, as a testament that we are not who we are by our own actions alone, but by the actions of those around us. The last part, on the top, is a line from a Puscifer song named "Momma Sed". It reads, "like a kidney stone, this too shall pass. "

Recovery Tattoo

This tattoo is a cross between the symbols for the 12 step groups of NA and AA. I was a part of them in my younger life, but their program was not for me, and even though I no longer am a part of that community, I will always remember my struggles with Drugs and Alcohol, and how those inanimate objects no longer have sway over my life.

Star

This star was the first logo idea for the band I played with in the early to mid 2000s. That was probably the best time I had in my life, and will always hold music close to my heart.

Forearm memorial tattoo

This tattoo is my most recent, and my most treasured. It is a piece dedicated to the strongest woman I know. My mother. She was taken from us by a stroke nearly 3 years ago. The Yellow Roses and Bluebonnet flowers are a symbol of our home in Texas, where she was raised. The words "Soldier, Mother, Hero" were chosen by me because, she was, those 3 things, in that order. She was an army woman and stayed an army woman til the day she died. The portrait at the bottom is of my mother's profile placed in the helmet of the Pallas Athena, which was the symbol of the Women's Army Corps, of which she served. Along side it, a semicolon. That is for me, for her, and everyone else I know who hasn't ended their sentence early, and that mental illness effects all of us.

I have many many more I will be adding, and as time and money allows I will be happy to share them! I am so glad I found this contest and thanks for letting me share! Have a great day Stemmians!!