From Pain to Purpose

While I briefly experienced a visionary state at the age of 30, my thirties were focused on working through my shadow self through expressive art and writing. After my crisis-induced spiritual awakening, my human default of depression felt unbearable. I created many journal pages during that time, visually drawing myself clawing my way up out of a dark hole.

After ten years of expressive shadow work, I started to share my creative experiences of emotional healing with others. In my 40s, I went back to school. I spent my nights and weekends earning my designation in counselling psychology while working full-time in Canada’s largest government-funded art therapy studio for Canadian veterans.

Working in the art studio with a vibrant team of artists and art therapists for ten years was an inspiring process of creative cross-pollination. It took me far beyond my scope of practice to see how much different ways of art-making can help people feel calmer, more precise, more original, and alive. Over the past twenty years, through my community art workshops, online teachings, art studio, and non-profit work, I have facilitated expressive art and writing processes for individuals ranging in age from 2 to 100.

The Healing Power of Spontaneous Creativity

Spontaneous art and writing practices have certainly enlightened my life. Creating spontaneously provides a "symbolic emotional release." As a spontaneous painting teacher, Susan Bello explains, "Through the living symbol, the Unconscious gradually reveals messages from a higher consciousness. Symbols are representations of our greatest selves in seed form. They hold our potential."

I am now a full-time psychotherapist and online educator supporting women to heal the core wounds that cause depression through self-expression. I am unabashed in my enthusiasm for the power of spontaneous self-expression to heal emotional pain, illuminate mental darkness, reveal higher possibilities, and bring out the originality of what we are.

When we are honest and deeply accountable, we can love what feels dark and denied inside. When we express and honour the hard stuff, we clear and transform. Spontaneous creative expression takes us far beyond the heavy psychological patterning we can feel ourselves stuck in, opening us up to the soul's originality buried beneath our human heartbreaks, losses, and traumas.