Why I do what I do
I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago. It felt like I didn't know I needed
glasses until 35 and now I am seeing everything for the first time for what it actually
looks like undistorted. I saw why I kept hitting a wall every few years, why everything
felt so hard, how tightly wound I was constantly contorting myself to fit in boxes
handed to me by others. How I was conditioned to always trust outside of myself over my
instinct because my natural instinct is "naturally wrong."
Getting the diagnosis when I was already in deep burnout, made me reflect on the life I
had built which looked splendid on paper but was hollowing me out from the inside. I
started the slow, uncomfortable work of challenging my conditioning and reconnecting
with my body. I realized I had spent most of my life tuning her out until she had to
scream, constantly overriding my instinct because it was inconvenient, or too much, or
didn't translate well into the language the room was speaking.
So I started listening again. And when I did, I got the itch to paint.
When I painted for the first time only a few years ago and created my first abstract
piece, something inside me unlocked, something familiar and new at the same time. The
same feeling I had known as a child with writing, a simultaneous pouring out and
filling up. A physical release and a deep-seated satisfaction.
A portal had opened inside me and I haven't stopped since.
Painting became a reclamation of
instinct, of trust, of a self I had spent a lifetime managing into smallness. Breaking
the rules of what good art should be, of productivity and goals, and choosing to let my
body speak what it wants to say.
Alongside those discoveries and inventions, I started to understand something larger.
Creativity is not a talent some people have and others don't. It is a human need. It
has been a need since our ancestors painted on cave walls. It is how we tell the
story about our individual and universal human experience.
The particular kind of relief I felt when I painted, the permission of being in a
process with no right answer, the state of being, not becoming. I started noticing that
is where the magic happens.
And it is available to each one of us.
I completed my Therapeutic Arts Practitioner Certification because I want other women
running on fumes to experience what I experienced, a homecoming through creating art. I
got trained to hold this space ethically and in an informed way. But my biggest
qualification is my journey on this path and what makes me the best person to hold this
space for other women. I'm still on it and here as a companion and guide.
That is what Art & Living is. A philosophy to live in your truest expression, a safe
room to practice choosing process over product, and a community which is the village
every woman needs.
For the woman who is constantly holding everything, afraid that something will fall if
she's not holding it all — you were not meant to run on fumes. Come, sit with me
and let's tend to your cup.
Work with me
