CONNECT
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Want to share your personal stories related to art therapy? Email submissions to healingcanvas@gmail.com and we will display your stories here. Please notify us if you would like to remain anonymous. We want to create a community for people to connect with one another and share how creative healing has benefited them.
When Words Will Not Do - Using Art as a Tool and Voice
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By Jackie Schuld
My mother died last year from Ovarian Cancer. For six years, she fought against a “terminal” diagnosis. I still cannot find the correct configuration of words to capture the impact she had on my life, the pain of watching her die, and the emptiness of not having her in my life.
And so I do art.
Throughout my life I’ve turned to painting to express my emotions.Sometimes, I am unsure of why I am feeling the way I do and painting enables me to better understand myself. Other times, I know exactly why I am upset, but find myself incapable of properly verbalizing my feelings. Painting captures the intense emotions I feel.
My mother, who always encouraged me to be a loving and generous person, was the first person who encouraged me to use my artistic skills for a purpose outside of myself.
Although she was creative, she didn’t think she had the artistic skills to execute her ideas.
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Her ideas were always ways to encourage and uplift others - funny cartoons, giant posters, personalized birthday cards, and more. I made them all as presents for her friends.
I realized the joy of making others laugh through my pictures and began to make cartoon books for my family members. Each book was a humorous story that related to the events in our family.
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I made a parody for my Air Force father entitled, “Air Force for Dummies.” When he left to serve overseas, I made a another humorous cartoon book entitled, “Dad’s Guidebook to Iraq.”
In an effort to sway my sister toward my vegetarian ways, I even made a cartoon book called, “Dunkel the Vegetarian Dino.”
When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I focused on the humorous aspects of those difficult times and made cartoon books for her such as, “Chemo Sucks,” “Post-Opp 101,” and “5 Ain’t Enough for Me: A Realistic Guide to the Stages of Grief.”
My mother died last year. I miss her laughter more than anything in the world.
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It was this very longing for her laughter that led me to become a full-time artist. Following her death, I started a website with my humorous illustrations. An author saw my illustrations and asked me to illustrate her book.
That project showed me I could actually survive as an artist. One project led to another to another and to another. I then decided to do what my mother asked me to do so many times - create something to uplift and encourage others.
I wrote, illustrated, and published a book for grieving adults, called “Grief is a Mess.”Like all my previous projects, it helped me to process what I was experiencing, focus on the funnier side of a difficult subject, and find the joy of creating something to help others and bring laughter.
Mariposa: A creative interpretation of my recovery from an eating disorder
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I’m twenty four years old. I’m happy, healthy and I love life. I have lots of interests, but in particular I am fascinated by the concept of art therapy. Art was a central part of my recovery from an eating disorder, and has enabled me to better understand myself. I want to tell you a little more about how it has helped me.
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Only a year ago my life was very different indeed. It was a cold, dark and scary place, an existence that revolved around exercise, starvation, binging and vomiting. I was deeply unhappy, and the only means of expression I seemed able or willing to utilise, was self destruction. I wanted to die, and I very nearly did.
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I was suffering from an eating disorder, and when I ended up hospital, at a dangerously low weight and with a heart rate to match, I struggled to comprehend what was happening. Why was I doing this? Why was I so intent on destroying myself? A coherent explanation evaded me, and so in desperation I proceeded to draw, write, paint and take photos. I made collages and cards. I used art to explore my thoughts and feelings, to keep a journal of the journey upon which I had embarked. Recovery is a complicated business, and sometimes images, objects and abstract verse were the only way I could make sense of what was going on inside my head.
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In the grip of my disorder, I drew and painted emaciated human figures. Idols to which I aspired. Expressions of what I wanted to be, how I wanted to look, and the internal suffering that I wanted to use my outer body to convey. Later on, in recovery, I used art to interpret my complex and often seemingly incomprehensible feelings, and towards the end of my journey, I used it to reflect on where I had come from, and what I had become.
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Publishing a book was never the outcome I anticipated. I wanted to keep a record for myself, and an explanation for my friends and family. As I shared my work more widely, I found that it helped people understand me and the disorder. It reassured other sufferers that they were not alone. The process of compiling my artistic representations was therapeutic in itself, and the resulting book has become a lasting part of my recovery.
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The book is called Mariposa. It is a scrapbook of all the different methods I used to express and understand myself throughout the recovery process. My account is strikingly honest and I leave no stone unturned. By presenting my message creatively through a combination of art and writing, I hope to reach out to more people than the eating disorder literature currently informs. Ultimately, however, I want to give hope to others, that recovery is possible, and life is worth living. In publicly displaying my artistic interpretations, I want share my escape from the monster that nearly consumed me, and show that eating disorders can be beaten. Mine is a positive story; an explanation of how a shy, negative and depressed girl, terrified of growing up, blossoms into a confident, positive and colourful young woman who realises that there is more to life than she had ever imagined before.
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