ART TO 
AWAKEN

I’ve always been drawn to the act of creating as a direct line to vitality, freedom, and joy. As a child of artists, I spent summers at art camp and afternoons in studio classes.

But as I transitioned into college, the radiant flow of creativity was eclipsed by self-doubt and perfectionism.  I immersed myself in both Western and Eastern psychology pursuing my fascination with the human mind.

Then, at the onset of COVID, everything unraveled. After years of building my inner fortress through meditation, discipline, and healthy living, the walls came tumbling down.

Nightly panic attacks, the traumatic loss of a close friendship, cascading illnesses all collapsed in on me. I tried everything: hypnosis, medication, acupuncture, naturopathy, trauma therapy. My community held me with love, but I remained suspended in anxiety and profound self-doubt.

Miraculously, I stumbled across an online watercolor class. One class turned into dozens as I began to re-member myself through paint.

As I watched watercolor, ink, and pencil intermingle on paper, I felt my frozen self thaw out.  My buried joy leapt to the surface as I delighted in the way colors met and textures interacted.  I could palpably feel the blood return to my veins and my aliveness reawaken.  I was not just a weak, fragile, trauma victim.  I was a creator, an alchemist, someone who transmutes pain into beauty, who weaves wholeness and wonder from the inevitable paradoxes that arise from being fully human.