Art Can Save Us All

"Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope. Only art can take the holler of a returning soldier and turn it into a shared expression, a deep collective experience. Music, like all art, gives pain and our most wrenching emotions voice, language and form, so it can be recognized and shared. The magic of all art is the ability to both capture our pain, and deliver us from it at the same time."

I don't know about you, but this quote from Brene Brown's latest work, titled 'Braving The Wilderness', sent chills up my arms and down my back as I read it.

For the most part, I could be thought of as an extrovert. I generally draw my energy from interacting and connecting with others. Although, I feel like that is starting to shift as I become older. But, there has always been this quiet side of me. As long as I can remember, when I am able to be alone and focus on creating, I am MOST connected with myself.

When I am painting, sketching, writing, or listening to music and singing, I lose track of time. When that time comes to an end, I always walk away feeling rejuvenated. Like I am whole again. I feel like I have come from a place of compassion, understanding, and awareness of myself. I belong to myself again.

I have realized in looking back on my life that I started to turn inward and spend time with myself when I felt like I had nowhere else to go. When I felt misunderstood growing up, judged unfairly, when I was accused of things or told things about myself that I knew deep down not to be true, I learned to retreat to my creative outlets.

That is where I have always been able to express myself without the fear of whatever may come from speaking my truth. This is where I can think in peace, and my connection to myself is clear. In the experience of that strong connection, something else grew within me. Faith.

I began to learn that quieting my mind, allowing uninterrupted thought and focus, and connecting with my heart through my creative expression could hold my faith, and my spirit, in tact. It not only helped me cope with the verbal and psychological abuse I was subject to as a child, but it also allowed me a space where I could honor myself. Where I could belong to myself.

There has always been a theme to my art that I never noticed until recently. When I am creating anything I want, with no one else's input, motives or direction involved, I tend to create pieces that have a sense of power and grace. No matter what the subject is. What has consistently come through in my work has not just come out of left field. It is a part of how I feel in my heart. It is the essence of my soul on canvas.

It is this need to express ourselves and to connect that makes us human.

In my opinion, the word power, can be directly connected to faith. My strong sense of faith has always felt powerful to me. Even if I am feeling weak in the moment, I know deep down no matter what, I am going to be ok. Whatever life throws at me, even if I get bruised and scratched up, I will always be able to get back on my feet and move forward. My faith is always on my side.

Grace is equally important to me. It is that tender, more gentle side of faith. Having grace in my heart has allowed me to at least try to understand the people in my life who have hurt me, to have compassion for others who are even more broken than me, and to forgive.

You see, if I wasn't allowed the space to be creative during my childhood, I would not have been able to get quiet, to feel, to think, to understand, to connect with myself and to express.

I wouldn't be able to sit here today and write this piece, in hopes that by sharing how I believe I grew into my wilderness as a creative person, that you will be able to take some inspiration away to go brave your own wilderness.

Being an artist has given me the ability to understand not only myself, but to understand myself as I experience the world around me. It has now given me the ability to share those experiences with you.

It is through art that humanity can communicate and connect to each other. Through whatever differences, in so many different ways, art holds us together. Brene states boldly, with utmost confidence that "art can save us"...

She's not wrong.