Soneff - Art journals & creative healing: restoring the spirit through self-expression

My story of healing is just like my life: a work in progress. What I am confident of, now, is that you can never be confident of what life will bring your way. Like a string of daily surprises, life gives us a glistening bead of unexpected joy one moment and an unusual stone of difficulty the next. But strung together, they represent a rich, disparate, multifaceted, and beautiful life, one that adorns each of us with the spectacular uniqueness and richness of the life weve lived.

I did not aspire to become the mother of a child with Aspergers syndrome, and yet parenting my remarkable son has offered me more delight and pride than I otherwise could have known. I did not seek to walk alongside my husband through painful years of staving off alcoholism and chemical dependence. And yet the courage, restraint, and strength I have witnessed in him have resulted in a profound love, immense admiration, and deep respect that might not have been earned in any other way. I did not desire to see my beloved father die a slow, debilitating death from a series of crippling strokes and devastating brain hemorrhages. Yet watching death steal not one fraction of Dads honor or legacy made me learn how weak death really is. I have imperfect, strained, and even severed relationships. I have sequestered heartaches and sadness. I have had my share of ugly inner warsbattles with perfectionism, self-concept, depression, and anger: traits that were never on my target list. And yes, I have the crazy, chaotic, and unpredictable stresses of everyday life: the deadlines and pressures of my business, mingled with the shopping lists, dirty dishes, piles of laundry, carpool tasks, and school committees familiar to every other working mom.

What have invariably been my companions throughout these sequences of the unexpected, though, have been journals. Sometimes incredibly artful and detailed, other times modestly simple and scrawled, these journals have brought me revelation, calm, solace, and circumspection. A work-in-progress journal is the perfect complement to my work-in-progress life, bringing me continuous, work-in-progress restorative health.

Sharon Soneff

FINDING PEACE IN THE MIDST OF EMOTIONAL TURMOIL may sound a bit like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. But, truly, it is much more available than that.

Peace, calm, and resolve are often found in the sweet, quiet moments garnered for introspective journaling. Simply structuring an environment that fosters real and honest reflection (a private, undisturbed space and time) helps breed tranquility. Furthermore, that tranquility will be compounded by the rhythmic qualities of simply creating. Brushing paint in back-and-forth strokes, dipping a calligraphic pen in an inkwell, punching out shapes, and peeling off stickers all supply a tactile distraction in which the hands are busy and the mind is free. In this precise place of mental liberation, and out of this realm of inaudible expression, a healing balm is concocted from your own artistic well and applied, not just to paper but to your soul. So little is required for this to occurinstruments of expression (pens, colored pencils, paints, markers, or charcoal) and a surface onto which they can be applied (a purchased journal, a sketch pad, cardboard sheets, canvas).

But the greater requisite is the attitude you bring with these materials. You must come with the understanding that:

This is not the time for making masterpieces. All creative expression is safe and beautiful in the space of a healing journal, in which imperfection is desirable. Imperfections add character and tend to be more honest in their impulsivity. Quick work is telling work. Dare to be urgent in your execution, so that you can be revealing and compelling in the process.

Your journaling need not be coherent or complete; it need only be honest. These pieces are not created for an audience, Your journal is a haven for partial thoughts, and even single words that resound with you.

For this to be effective you must make yourself vulnerable.