Art heals.

Just after I turned 30, the pain started. The physical pain that had manifested from years of stuffing it down, from numbing out, from trying to be enough. All the trauma of a life, expressing in desperation through unexplainable pain. I started down a road to healing, though it didn’t come in the form I expected — from the doctors and the scans and the bloodwork and the tests. That only led to scratching heads and shrugs, as I was passed off to one specialist after another.

In the midst of all of this, I was completely out of commission. God knocked me on my rear and said, “We’re going to start from scratch now.” All my old routines and habits and systems were demolished. All my work, finished. I dove into prayer and journaling and painting, unable to do anything else for months. And as my words hit the page, and as the paint hit the canvas, I began to heal. Old, deep, dark wounds poured onto the piece before me. As I painted it out of me, I realized it was no longer inside of me. Just like that. Gone. Purged. Tears flowed as freely as the colors — and once I was good and wrecked, with each stroke, I felt myself coming back together. Hope and renewed faith and life reborn. All of it, playing out in the painting. Layer upon layer, it told the story — first of my wrecking, my undoing, and then of my transformation.

Here’s the thing. Art heals. It doesn’t care who you are or what you do. It doesn’t care if you think you’re creative, or whether you can even draw a stick figure. It just cares that you show up. That you trust. And it will heal you.