Hello! Before I start I want to highlight that I believe and know that EVERYONE is creative. We all have a powerful intuition within to connect too our own creativity and healing power. ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE!!!! If I can do it – I know that everyone else can to! Creativity is everywhere and we as human beings have been given that right to think, be and do creatively. Maybe, like me, as a child I was told and not encouraged to create. For years I forgot, the fun I had dancing, drawing and dressing my dolls up. I only remembered the negative messages and the pain of needing to do things right. It took a little willingness to try again, but after a while and once I dismantled, I ignore and overcame the negative messages, Oh how I remembered. Today it gives me great joy to play and spread paint across a canvas and connect to things that I want to paint. It gives me great joy to create little sculptures in the park out of stones being piled on top one another. It gives me great joy in creating little ceremonies for others and myself and also giving space in lessons for my students to create. To overcome perfectionism and to delve into the creative process is beyond a fathom of a doubt, life giving. It helps with everything in my life and I also get great joy in helping and support others to do the same.
Helen Segal, 'Bleeding inside'.
Here is my story from the view of Childlessness and the Arts!
(There is a larger story around my childless out of circumstance, but I start at 43 when I started to try to conceive with my partner, who I met at 41)
My journey around my fertility was very much a creative one, so it made perfect sense for me to continue on that path once IVF failed and the decision to not go down the adoption root was made. I had been an Art and Textile Teacher for 10+ years and been very much developing / healing internally through therapy and the 12 step programs, for some time.
When I look back at my work, which was mainly Photography and Textile Art based, the themes were very much external, about my desires of being a mother and experiencing intimacy. At home I had been practicing Intuitive Painting since 2011, which I absolutely loved and gave me the foundation of connecting creatively to my internal world and intuition. Though this work, I believed was not valued in the outside world, and I very much protected it from criticism and judgement.
In 2014 I made a decision to move further into the Therapeutic Arts world combining both my love of the Arts, teaching and internal healing and growth. I was very excited. I remember, even before starting the course, one morning before work sitting at my desk, in emotional pain, taking out a new sketchbook, a set of dyes (like watercolours but more intense) and a brush and without thinking, chose a brush and the colour intuitively and created this in 5mins.
I was blown away. It represented everything I had been feeling. ‘Bleeding inside’. I was deeply hurting and this was the first time that I could express it clearly. I then retrieved my journal from where it lay and wrote a couple of pages. I walked away from my desk and was able to stand up, go into work feeling heard, understood and listened too, and with some form of hope. There seemed a boundary around my grief and the world.
That was the beginning.
Since then I have done many many small and quick paintings to connect to how I have been feeling, which have helped build a healing bridge to my internal world. Helping me acknowledge and allow the vast array of emotions, which laid within during my grieving process from both childless out of circumstance and everything else that personally came up during that time. Sadness, rage, anger, hurt, pain, depression, envy, jealously, fear, disconnection - abandonment to name some, it was a way to communicate gently, lovingly and kindly what was really going on inside of me.
Today I don’t believe I am grief free, but I feel freer and so much more healed. I have a sense of honour and value in myself around my childlessness out of circumstance. I can stand up and be counted as part of a group of women and I truly believe that it is our job to give ourselves value on a daily basis. The Arts and the work I have done, honouring my internal landscape and feelings and the groups I have belonged to, have given me this. I truly don’t believe we can do this journey on our own. It has not been easy, but who said life would be always easy. I feel honoured and proud to be able to share my story and my work with you all. I hope you give the healing arts a try and please don’t hesitate to contact me for any help and support. Thank you for reading.
Lots of love to you all
Helen x