This painting is a very personal one.  The title is taken from another piece by Mary Oliver, in Upstream

It starts with her saying, “In the beginning, I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” These lines resonate deep in my heart as I left my childhood home and emigrated to the other side of the world when I was still very young, before I even really knew what `i wanted to become.  She then goes on to describe a river moving “Somewhere among strangers, / Coming to them / As only a river can– / Touching every life it meets– / That endlessly kind, that enduring”

I felt an acute sense of self-awareness, as an immigrant, that I too was – in many ways – somewhere among strangers. But trying my best to be part of my new community, touching the lives of people I meet. The pink pebbles – some submerged, others not – I chose in a way to represent the abundance of strangers who have become friends along the way.