Let Art Be Your Medicine
Creativity Heals
Lost then found in a lump of clay.
Once an Artist, always an artist?
I’ve always considered myself an artist, as far back as I can remember considering myself anything. The declaration “I am an artist” has passed my lips innumerable times over the decades–even before I’d existed a decade. However my relationship to art, creating, and being an artist is a bit more complicated. I went to art college, in part because it was the only thing I ever enjoyed doing in school, and in part because I didn’t have any other options. At 17, I didn't realize how many choices I’d have to make beyond “I’m an artist” - what kind of artist, what do you make, who do you make it for, are you any good at it? Can you feed yourself with that job? It was mind boggling, I had a hard time choosing. I squandered time and education for a stretch. It wasn’t a particularly hard life per se - but it was hard on me, I felt pretty shitty about myself for not being able to figure it all out.
making a living & raising a family
Eventually, I did make a living being “A Creative” - which I assure you in my case, was certainly not “An Artist”. But I was able to feed myself, I made a decent living as an art director and UI designer for a spell. I even enjoyed the job, I loved the people I worked with, and the intellectual challenges of UI design. I got married about 6 years into my career and worked for another 4 years. I never imagined I’d have kids, let alone stay home with them. Guess what I did? I had kids and I stayed home with them! As a parent I spent long stretches of time not creating art, which made me, for the first time question if I was indeed an artist. I did make several attempts to make creative businesses happen, I didn’t have my heart in it, though. Looking back at the period of time that I was parenting and longing to make an art business happen, I understand why I was never able to make it happen.
Art as Escape
For One, I was a mum who, despite all the love in my home growing up had some unhealed wounds from childhood. Most of my wounds were from school, but there were other things I didn’t understand until much later in life that I carried with me. These unhealed wounds made parenting sensitive kids difficult for this sensitive mama. In particular when my son started kindergarten and found it difficult because he was not ready and because his teacher was having a bad year. That’s when my inner child, the one whose 2nd grade teacher told her she was stupid and yelled at her often, settled in for about 9 years with me. She took over my frontal lobe. It wasn’t good.
The other thing I realize now is that I was using creativity to escape from; parenting, partnering and being 3,000 miles away from my parents and siblings. It’s easy now to see that my use of creativity for much of my life was as a tool for numbing. This works out marvelously for some people, but for me, it was a way to dissociate from reality. Maybe not in a clinical way–just a little dissociation-ish. Don’t get me wrong, I was there for my kids, I tried harder than I even realized I could. I just didn’t have the skills or knowledge to figure shit out the first five or six or seven times.
An Inward Journey Through Art
Well, time passed and things got more difficult, because my frontal lobe was still being managed by a wounded 7 year old with learning disabilities who was being triggered left and right by the children she was supposed to be parenting. And that difficulty brought me further away from creating. Which brought me further away from my core self. At some point between 2015 and 2016 the proverbial shit hit the fan within our family and I came a bit undone. We all came a bit undone. But that’s good news! It was exactly what we all needed.
When I came back together it was by way of hiking, friendship, and art. It was a simple recipe and exactly what was called for. I pared down my friends to a core few who I felt safe with. I hiked in the woods with my dog for hours every day. And, of course, art was an essential part of putting myself–and my family–back together again. I no longer had the urge to escape my life through my art, but I did long to create. I brought all of my pain, curiosity, love, compassion, loss, failure, heartache, and joy into my work and I began to accept all of it. I understand now that I created to integrate what I was learning. I created to allow myself to feel without falling off a cliff of despair. Eventually the feelings became more bearable and then beautiful and I created to express joy, love, and a sense of wonder.
