Day 6: How Creativity Saved My Psyche & Reconnected me with my Heart
VISUALIZE workshops are 3 hour virtual retreat workshops where I teach people to use visualization exercises, stream of consciousness writing and drawing to get clarity, buildthe life that they want and step into it.
To share how visualization has helped me become the person that I am today, I did a 6 day countdown to my VISUALIZE workshop where each day, I shared a story of how and what I visualized and how it came to fruition. This is the sixth story about how I overcame a traumatic event that was keeping me living in terror.
This is a story very near and dear to my heart that for a long time I couldn’t tell because I felt like it wasn’t mine to tell. When I was a kid, my mom was shot by an ex-boyfriend. She landed up in a medically induced coma. My mom was in hospital for a long time and I ended up living with my dad for a while. What was weird is that I didn’t cry about the incident for a really long time - I was in denial. The result of this denial is that I ended up having chronic nightmares for almost ten years! I didn’t tell my family at all. I would ask my family prying questions to find out whether any of them had nightmares, but I never shared my own. I didn’t really think that having nightmares was something to overcome. I started to think that if nightmares is what sleep is about, then I never wanted to go to sleep again. I felt like I was literally in hell. My body and brain weren’t able to relax and recuperate when I fell asleep. From 12 years old until I was 20, I had horrible nightmares to the point of not being able to move, out of fear that this thing in my dreams would kill me. This fearful thing in my dreams became a huge part of my reality. One day I told my boyfriend at the time about the dreams. I shared that I legitimately couldn’t be the victim of my own mind anymore. I felt like I needed to see somebody or be medicated to solve this horror and save me – if anything out there could. The answer was that there was something that could save me and that there was nothing wrong with me. The problem was that I couldn’t find ‘the thing’ that I needed to find. I tried therapy, religion, X, Y & Z to try and help with this. Finally, I realized that art might be ‘the thing’! I stepped into this idea that art is going to help me and that I needed to dedicate more time towards creating art. I started to ask questions during visualization about what I need to do? I figured out that I needed to get to art school in Philly. I almost didn’t go to Philly, instead, I almost ended up being a tattoo artist which is kind of crazy considering I don't have a single tattoo.
Art was the thing that saved me. Eight years of chronic nightmares started to subside as I got deeper into my creative practice. I started bringing my creative practice into the way I visualized – letting my visualization inform my art and vice versa. It was powerful! I followed my heart because my mind was telling me that there is something wrong with me. My mind was telling me that I am destined to have nightmares for the rest of my life and that I should just avoid sleep. My heart was saying no and guiding me towards making more art because the art is going to show my soul. As I got to realize that the good in my body, in my soul and in the world was so much greater than the negativity and terror, the nightmares became less intense and slowly dissipated. I discovered creativity, which saved my psyche & mind from insanity. In the art making process I started to get more in touch with specific themes and materials that I needed to work with to represent the beauty and positive energy within me. Now I don’t really have nightmares at all with the exception of when I stretch myself thin, am stressed out and/or disconnected with myself.
This story is the reason that I do what I do. I work with women who are struggling to overcome anything - whether you’re in a crappy job, trying to get out of a bad relationship or needing to heal from a traumatic event. It’s all about being happy and reconnecting with yourself to be the best that you can be. If I can overcome something chronic, that I believed was part of me, than you can overcome anything! I hope that my stories have helped you realize that if you are unhappy right now, you are not this story and that you can step into your heart and become the person you’ve always dreamed of becoming. Stepping into your heart definitely requires support – I have a health & business coach myself...and I went to art school to get even more support in stepping into my highest self! Listening to your heart can help you find the solutions that you need. I guarantee that each and every person holds the solutions to their specific dilemmas. If you hate your job or want to lose weight, you know what you need to do, you just need to find the support and inspiration to get you to do it. Losing 30 pounds isn’t going to be ‘the thing’ that motivates you to get your butt on the treadmill. Picking up a hotty on the street because you got a hot bod, now that’s motivation!
Sharing our vulnerabilities is also important in the process of reconnecting to your heart. We often walk around keeping it all inside and living in a robotic world. Encouraging a culture of sharing our vulnerabilities could help us in solving our problems and healing wounds deep down inside of us.
Thank-you for following my stories over the past while and letting me share them.
Click HERE to start following from the beginning.
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