Main Purpose
My blogs’ main purpose is to share with you that creating art, in any form or medium, can be used as a tool to help us deal with our emotions, especially depression and grief. The covid pandemic has left so many people without an in-person option for therapy to deal with depression and grief. Plus, some of us just do not want to be in a therapist, psychiatrist, or counselors’ office to begin with. I understand that too. Mental health has always been a taboo subject for many of us. I am among the many who wish to change that. I will stop here and say that at a few points in my lifetime I have sat in that chair with a therapist. It was hard to reach out for help. It was necessary for me though when I was in a deep dark place and needed a little help to see the light again. If you find yourself in that deep dark place please reach out for help. I want to help you believe you can take all that life stuff you experience in a day, in a week, in a year, at work, on the subway, in your dreams, in the waiting room, during your commute, at home with the kids screaming and crying while you just want to pull your hair out, take all that life stuff and allow it to come out in a creative way. I want to help you so that you can allow yourself that option. I have ended up with some very beautiful artwork that way. I hope you will too.
Heart and Soul
I want you to put your heart and soul into any art form and have your life look back at you. I want to help you release the things that we find hard to talk about. I want you to talk through that art form about the things that you feel uneasy about sharing. Even the good things can be hard for us to share at times because we are taught not to toot our own horn, so to speak. We are also taught not to brag, or we may “jinx” it.
Prompts
I call myself an artist of life because life is what prompts me to create. I either want to share or just need to get it out in a safe, loving, gentle way with myself.
How I started
I loved coloring when I was a child. Whether I used crayons, colored pencils, or the small set of watercolors, which always ran out too quickly. Then I started doodling, that took on new life forms when they came out with the pen that had 4-6 different colors and with a click you could switch to red, blue, or green. Doodling is a great way to ease stress. Doodling, we now know is healthy for the brain. That led to writing poems along with sketching.
It was then that I began to write and sketch about my feelings. Oh, they were ugly sometimes. A young lady in the early ‘70’s who was witnessing so many controversial things in her outer world. My inner world was a mess most days.
Choices
Most of those sketches found themselves in the trash. How could I ever let someone see that part of me? That was my choice. Still is. It is also your choice. I realized that I didn’t have to share anything that I didn’t want to. Some of those writings and sketches made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to see how they made others feel. I didn’t understand that a lot of us experience the same emotions through life and that by sharing those emotions we make them less scary, less uncomfortable and that simple act of sharing eases our burden.
At this point it was a release for me. It wasn’t about anyone else. So, I kept creating and kept releasing the feelings life gave me. I am now at a point where I realize what a tremendous gift it is to share my life’s experiences. I hope you give yourself permission to do the same no matter what medium you may choose to use.
Please let me know your thoughts and experience in the comment section below or send me an email. Until next time, take care. Gma Katherine
w. livinglifewithgma.com