Healing Through Art

Everyone talks about self care like it’s easy to do... however sometimes self care is taking a deeper look inside yourself, facing the good, bad and the ugly in order to heal enough for basic self care to even work. 

When you have a trauma in your life of any kind, you need to accept that it changes you as a person to a certain degree, your perspective of the world around you and aspects of yourself. One of my traumas is infertility and the treatments that went along with it and for me, giving this trauma a voice for other people to know they aren’t alone in their own infertility has been a light, but it wasn’t reaching deep enough within myself to be able to start to heal.  

Healing is a process... you question your choices along the way... the what if’s are endless... I still feel the sting with pregnancy announcements and have a hard time being around woman who are pregnant no matter how close they are to me for some reason it’s harder to lock away... I can hold babies now and it not feel like my heart is going to ache so hard it will break from my chest.... small steps... we have the odd baby item still from when we first adopted my son that is too hard to give away, it’s like letting go...my goal is to get there, it just takes time and work. 

When we adopted it kids... it was a process but it threw me into something so I didn’t have to think about what had happened, how it truly affected me and as we settled into this new special needs world and our new normal the unresolved past has a way of reminding you it still hasn’t been dealt with. 

I started painting for fun at first, an easy way to satisfy my creative side during nap time. As I started playing around with figurative art on canvas it felt different and then one day I looked up at the image and I felt it... the girl looking back at me was me. It’s weird having my inner thoughts and feelings staring you in the face literally, a representation of the good, bad and the ugly finally coming out in a way I wasn’t expecting. I found a way to work through things that worked for me finally. 

When I work on a piece now I am fully aware of what I feel in the moment. I have promised myself that I will let myself feel what I need to when I paint... sometimes I work fast and feel the joy the piece gives me and admittedly sometimes there are tears and it takes longer to get the figure on the canvas but it’s part of the process. The harder pieces I hold onto a little tighter letting them finished image stay on my easel for a few days until I’m ready to let her go into the world. The deeper I go into my own self the more I let go and the more I realize what I want and don’t want in my life to make me happier. 

The Woman Series has pushed me artistically further than I ever could have imagined. My hope for this series is that other woman see something in themselves within these pieces allowing them the freedom to explore their own mental, emotional and sexual being through art. 

Art has a way of healing the soul, you just need to be open to the possibility.