I was finger painting with my grandma, the cold paint swirling under my fingers as if the color was seeping out of my body onto the paper. We weren’t finger painting because she was a good grandma. We were finger painting because Alzheimer’s had slowly stolen a lifetime of her creative skill. I was in my early teens and watched her slowly forget how to knit, and crochet, and then, how to follow the words on the pages of her beloved books.
I also watched as my mom introduced movement, and music, and creative play to bring joy and meaning to the life of my grandma. Those moments taught me that suffering can be accompanied with joy.
7 years later, I was in Australia, lying on the floor, sobbing, next to a piece of paper as big as me. I was attending a Christian training school that incorporated healing art, and as part of our coursework we had to explore different expressive modalities. While others found their breakthrough in the woodworking, reflective walking in nature, or at the music station, I was profoundly moved by the “messy room” violently finger painting with white and pink paint as I crouched on the floor.
While much of my experience with art therapy has been focused on the visual arts, it was during the pandemic I began to discover the terrifying and intoxicating world of movement. As someone who has experienced both complex and simple trauma, I have spent my life making myself smaller, stilling my breathing, becoming invisible. I was completing a Grad class at Dallas International, Art and Trauma Healing, and sensed it was time for me to move. Instead of picking up paintbrush or pencil like I normally defaulted to, each time we were assigned an activity I chose movement. Dancing privately in my room, stomping and flailing my arms through the woods, and then slowly, using movement in the group activities. It was a new layer of healing that hit me totally unawares and something I’ve taken with me as I co-facilitate healing art groups today.
My healing journey, my personal suffering, and the suffering I have witnessed in others, is integral to my desire to share healing art with others. Henri Nouwen writes beautifully about the wounded healer and said, “As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.” This is central to me. I believe art is healing because it is intensely, and inherently spiritual. It can both anchor and push us to grow, because Christ anchors us while calling us into a deeper more full experience of who we are meant to be.
For years, I thought that deeper experience meant becoming an art therapist. As I look back at my life, I see healing art has been there all along. It has been a recurring gift that has brought me hope when I felt completely surrounded by darkness. And now, it’s something I can share with others, not as a therapist, but as an artist who believes healing is possible.