Healing Through the Creation of Art.

Art has so many healing properties. The wonderful thing about art is no matter where you stand in the process you have a chance to be changed and healed.

The process of creating art can be just as healing as experiencing it, if not more so. Whether you are writing a poem that only your eyes will see, or if you are creating a play that will be seen by hundreds, creating art gives you the opportunity to grow from a place that may have seemed stagnant in your life. I have created many things that have helped me move on from different obstacles in my life.

When I was a child I grew to love music because my father had it playing in the house at all times. On a daily basis and sometimes all day on the weekends we would listen to Luther Vandross. I began to link Luther’s voice and his songs to the feeling I had when I with my parents and everything was right in the world. Years late when my parents divorced I went to that very same Luther Vandross music to find that security that I had lost in the divorce. Because of the power of the art that Luther created I was able to find that security right there in his music. When everything else was chaotic there was peace in the fact that Luther was going to keep making music. When the untimely death of Luther Vandross occurred I felt like someone swiped my crutch and I fell… hard.

I could not hear a Luther Vandross song without crying. I was mourning the death of something and someone I considered to be like a security blanket in my life and I believe I was also mourning the death of my parent’s marriage all over again. I only needed to hear a song and those feelings were brought right back.

One evening I was wondering how I would ever enjoy Luther’s music again. I wondered if that feeling of security that I had when I listened to his music would ever return. I picked up a pen and a pad of paper and I just wrote down how I felt. I said everything that I needed to say. When I read it back it became a poem titled “I miss Luther Vandross”. I felt like I purged everything and once that last word was written it felt like something had been lifted. You know the way you feel when your fever finally breaks, or the moment that headache goes away? That sort of light feeling you have inside, that is what is how I felt when that poem was completed. It is now my favorite piece of work.

I have not shared that piece with very many people. I have guarded it almost as if I was guarding a very tender part of me. I don’t believe that I needed to share it in order for it to do what it was meant to do. I needed to write that poem to heal a very broken part of me, and that is just what it did. Every time I read it I can feel how much I have been healed.

If there is something that you feel like you need to purge, if there is something that you just need to get out, there are many ways you can do it. You can write a poem, a journal entry, a blog, you can even video or tape record yourself. You do not need to share it with one other soul on the planet or you can post it on your Myspace page or You Tube. It is up to you how you get you feelings out. It is when you leave those feelings out there that the healing process truly begins. If you do not feel like you are an “artist”, know you do not have to be to create something beautiful. You just may find that there is in fact an artist that lives inside of you. Take small steps and begin your healing today.
More on this subject to come.

Peace and Blessings,Rashida