Latest / Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation / Episode #38-Sharon Strouse

Transcript

Episode #38-Sharon Strouse · Turning Grief into Growth: The Journey of Transformation

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this episode of Turn Grief into Growth, The Journey of Transformation.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a podcast that's hosted by Greg Jacobs and Don Lipstein.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Don.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Man, you're not gonna believe this.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is what is it, July 23rd, uh, when we're recording this.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know it'll drop at a later date, uh, but it's 56 degrees in Kentucky uh right now.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh I woke up, I had my fan in my window last night, and I was like, I'm in Michigan.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is Michigan weather, but uh it's beautiful.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: 56 degrees.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: How is that even possible?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had this huge storm front come through and it blew out all the god-awful humidity that was just wrenching.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I kept seeing it on the forecast, and I just kept waiting and anticipating for it, thinking, you know, they get the weather wrong so much, maybe this will happen, uh, or maybe it won't.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it did.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It happened, and uh man, I've got all the windows open in the house and airing it out, and it's beautiful out.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today, Don?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing well.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's 84 degrees here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um it it has not gotten out of the 80s, uh, probably for the past month.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's just been floating between 80 and 89.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's great.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm loving life.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a hundred heat index, I think, in a few days here.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going back up.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Don, we've got a special guest with us today, Sharon Strauss.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're excited about.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go ahead and kind of turn it over to you to introduce her to us.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm I'm grateful to have this opportunity to introduce Sharon.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: She is an author, she wrote a book called Uh Artful Grief, uh, and she's also an art therapist and has been for many, many years.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: I had the good fortune to meet her at a CAPS tragedy assistance program for survivors uh event, and she was uh facilitating a workshop uh that um uh I I think she called it an open studio, but uh but she just welcomed people in at any time during the during the uh conference.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I walked in uh thinking I was just gonna look and see, walk around and look and see.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um and she invited me to sit down, and I said, No, that's okay, I'm just gonna walk around.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so as I'm walking around, she's putting magazines and uh scissors and um pens and everything in this one empty seat.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I was uh she said, honey, just take a seat and you can you know, listen, you don't have to do anything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was very reluctant.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: She was very persistent, and I'm grateful for that because um one of the things that uh she did for me, and and I want to paraphrase Maya Angelo, um uh a quote from Maya Angelo uh people won't remember what you said, they won't remember what you did, uh, but they will remember how you made them feel.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And Sharon at that moment made me feel very safe and understood, and it uh helped me to really dig deep into my grief.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that whole experience, I sat down and made a collage.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it was uh one of the most healing experiences of my grief journey, honestly, and I will always remember that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um so uh I just want to say uh I'm grateful that that turned into uh what we now what I consider us to be very good friends, somebody that um I look to for uh guidance from time to time.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and I know that she is um she's got this huge heart.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome, Sharon.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Don, thank you so much, and Greg, thank you too for you know inviting me to share this time with you, this space, and really to share my story.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's true that Don and I met at TAPS on the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, where I was facilitating as an art therapist and a bereaved um mom, um, uh, an open art studio where it's different than a workshop, you know, a straight-out art making workshop.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was art therapy with that intention, um, but a studio space that was open for the entire time of the conference.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, people could come and go from nine o'clock in the morning until five.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And many times we had people in there for the entire time creating and making and exploring in a creative way their loss, their their trauma, their feelings.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So just to back up a little bit, how did how did I get there, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: How did that happen?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so my dad I lost my daughter Kristen to suicide in 2001.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: She was 17.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she was beautiful and talented and funny.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she was an artist.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, just to feel into my daughter as the artist and mom as the art therapist and what I now offer others.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she was a freshman at Parsons School of Design when she died.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, had been taking art lessons since she was five, you know, very, very into her art making.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um she died in October, October 11th of 2001, which was one month after 9-11, actually, in New York City.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And she was actually considered by the Red Cross a casualty of 9-11.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so many people took their own lives in New York just because of the energy of the trauma of the Twin Towers falling and what it felt like in the city.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that definitely contributed to her death.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I believe she was misdiagnosed um bipolar illness.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: She was being treated for depression, and that none of that fit.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really a sudden onset of um her mental illness that began in January of her senior year, and she died in October.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it was quite traumatic, um, rather unexpected.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I gravitated towards traditional therapy in that first year, and um did a lot of talk therapy.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And in December of the following year, she had been gone a year.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I remember having this just hopeless, helpless experience um, standing in my kitchen and turning out the lights and saying, Oh my God, help me.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and this little voice inside my head said, Well, why don't you make a collage?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like so random.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that voice was probably Kristen's.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is, I actually went and did that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I got some paper, I there were magazines sitting on the counter, I got a glue stick, got some scissors, and I stood in the kitchen and I made this collage on a piece of poster board that was like 15 by 20, so it was pretty big.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I finished it that night and I looked at it and I was like, oh my gosh, there it is.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I could feel myself breathe.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: I could and I slept for the first time in a year.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, yes.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was an art therapist, right?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: But you only really learn through your own experience, and so that opened the door to creating for me, in which I poured myself and the trauma onto paper for years, exploring she fell um from the 15th story of her dorm.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: That is a very traumatic image that needed to be worked with, and that's not anything that one feels comfortable talking about, and everything else that goes with it.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the beauty of art therapy, especially collage, and this is something that I do offer um in the studio and with most newly bereaved, because I'm sure Don, you remember because I said this to you, everybody can open a magazine, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody can open a magazine and have some kind of response to an image, whether it's positive or whether it's negative.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And most often it's the negative response to an image that's calling you there.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the work is.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um I did that for years because that that is the only thing that made sense.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: As as bereaved dads, you realize the outer world doesn't make sense, your inner world doesn't make sense.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you can explore the narrative, the lost narrative in collage making, but you can also explore the question of who who am I?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I now?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sharon, there's uh there's so much so many things you've you've said that I just feel like dropping the mic and saying, okay, that's it.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's so powerful.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it is art making is very powerful.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would you say to people?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, my dad was an artist.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I always said I didn't get that gene.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, I'm an author, so I think that in some ways I very much did get that gene.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just put it down on paper when I type.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we were talking offline before we hit record.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And for those on YouTube, uh, right above my head is a paint by numbers of, you know, basically two Adirondack chairs on a lake up in Michigan with a sand dun in the background.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: I painted that paint by numbers the first year uh David died.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably one of the most therapeutic things.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um people could mock it and say, Oh, it's a paint by numbers, uh, which is way harder than it appears, by the way.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was so therapeutic to me.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, who am I to pick this thing up at Hobby Lobby and paint this?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an artist.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you you had mentioned that you did a lot of talk therapy, definitely space for that, definitely encouraging that, peer groups, everything.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what would you say to people that say, Well, I'm not an artist, I don't, you know, I've never dabbled in that before.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, most people that come into the media like Don, like Don, you know, he tried to dance around it, and you know, you just kind of the room was filled with people that were sitting at the tables and talking and creating.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And as I said, everybody could open a magazine, and that's that's the point.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You do not have to be an artist, you simply have to be willing and curious and present, and that's it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the invitation, as Don said, it was a safe place, a safe environment, and you can feel it when you walked in.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: That people were uh diving deep into their trauma narrative, exploring themselves.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there was a sense of being held and seen that was palpable in the studio, and that's happened, that happens when people come together and create.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But to your point about painting with numbers, there has been a lot of research.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is the same thing as adults who use coloring books, um, that your nervous system begins to settle.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a place where you focus, you come into your body, you're in the present.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and there's a lot, your your your heart rate drops.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's great for people who are anxious uh to help them to to come into a um a healing, quieter space.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there's enormous benefit to that.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: The difference is between doing a painting by numbers and collage is that collage opens the door to the unconscious.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever is wanting to come through you, like what are the elements that I dealt with in terms of Kristen falling?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: What did that feel like?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't have to be organized necessarily, it's just whatever comes out as a clause.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in essence, you're dealing with what's fragmented, your fragmented self, your fragmented story.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens over time, and I really encourage those who I work with to do this outside of the therapy room or outside of the studio room, that you receive enormous benefit for doing it as a practice.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you begin to see over time that there is change.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: The narrative begins to change, as Ted Reneerson reminds us in his model of restorative retelling.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: If we work in the trauma narrative of what happened, over time you may see that you actually place yourself into the narrative so that you're not a witness but a participant in the story.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: That changes everything.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know any of that kind of theory when I was creating.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I did it intuitively, and that's the power of it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm also when I'm working with people, I'm not saying, oh, Don, come on in, let's go right to the event.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: What was that all about?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and if I may, I I want to share my experience because I think it talks to uh it speaks to what you are referring to.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I sat down, there were magazines in front of me, scissors, glue.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I start just cutting things out of the magazine.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea why.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: I was just like there was something about that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, let me cut this out.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm cutting it out.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Then I decide I'm gonna start gluing things onto the paper and or onto the poster board.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh I'm doing that, and then I see other things, and before I know it, I have the whole thing full without having any clue what I'm doing.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay and Sharon says, tell me about this, and I'm looking at it, and the story starts to come into my body, into my head, into my heart.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like, oh my god, like I created this, and without really knowing what I was doing, but I had there was a story behind it, and and I could read and understand that story, right?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Which was incredible, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Incredible.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And as we know, you know, early on, the story is fragmented, it has no language, severe trauma has no language.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's why art making and image making is powerful.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: It comes up out of your body, the story and narrative that you're holding on a cellular level is released, and you begin over time to be able to organize it.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um early trauma survivors often have um images that are very disorganized and fragmented, and over time, if they stick with it, they see a certain level of organization so that maybe they have a hundred images, uh, you know, small little images and words all put together, and three years later, they may create a collage that has three images in it that's highly organized and makes sense.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's really interesting to me because um my I had two sons um or have two sons.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: My my son David passed away December 23rd, 2020, as all of you know, that listen to this podcast uh in an auto accent.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then my other son, uh Nathan, is getting ready to turn 26 uh next month.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he uh lives with us, lives down in a separate apartment in the basin, but he had painted this picture um of two spiders on a flower, and he's got all his art stuff there, and it was just something that you know he did last week and and texted out to the family on the group chat, and I was like, oh, very cool painting.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's neat, you know, and just went on.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think until listening to this, he deals a lot with anxiety um and uh has really been working through that and doing really well.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I don't think until listening to this, I realized, man, that's therapy for him.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a paint by numbers, it was just something that this is his way of expressing.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's done a lot of that through the years, a lot of different little paintings.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, uh, when he's really anxious, he's milling around in my garage.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what are you doing?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I'm trying to find some wood, I need to build something.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's his creative way.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and paint is very fluid, you know.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: How different is paint from paper?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Really fluid.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, so if I was looking at that painting with him, I'd say, tell me about it.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, interesting that they're what two little bugs.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd also be looking at the color, tell me about the color palette.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like, you know, are those bugs on, you know, a spider web, you know, tell me about the web, you know, we're seeing a close-up.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: All of that has meaning, you know.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how so I'd I I keep going on with that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting too over the years of creating collages.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I did separate collages, but then I started creating into books that are called altered books, where you use an old book and you create into the pages, and that served me for a long time as a container for the work.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then I also have explored doll making and you know, creating into uh little boxes or um healing sticks.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And about two years ago I went to Australia and came back, and I don't know why, but I was compelled to begin painting and I'd never painted before.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of that was a resistance to painting because Kristen was a painter.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like, who am I to pick up one of her paint brushes and use her paint?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do I dare?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was kind of uh a trip that became initiation and opened a door for me.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have been painting, and there's something very wonderful about just the property of paint, its looseness, its lack of control, unless you're painting by numbers.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing abstract painting and finding that I love the abstractness of it as a counterpoint to the reality of what you find in paper and magazines.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like two opposite ends of a spectrum.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk, let's just drill down on that a little bit.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So when you look at life, there's chaos in life.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not all tidy, it's not all orderly.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was texting my brother-in-law this morning, and um his house burned down last year, and he's in a rental house.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he was having his wife is a school teacher, and they're getting ready to, you know, she's getting ready to go back to school, and then you know, their house was rebuilt.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now they have to pack everything up in the rental house, and they have to go out.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, I I wish life was full of order, but there's order and chaos amongst you know the sunshine and the storms.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so with the abstract aspect of what you're talking about with the collage, it's really a matter of just let it come out, let it flow, let it you know show up.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I one of my things that I say are there are no collage police coming.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm sorry also to tell you that your pieces probably are not going to museums.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, uh, it is this is a very honest visual of.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: My internal life.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um part of my studio setup was bringing my own original artwork early and middle and later.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: So people introduce them to this to this um studio setting.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: They only needed to look at the images and go, oh got it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Look at she went right there, down, down, down into the depths of it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing left unsaid and um or explored.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Her body, blood, you know, all of it was right there.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: All things that are very difficult to talk about.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Making the images allowed me to talk about it and allowed me to write the book.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting that I worked in in the realm of image making that released me and allowed me over time to go to the other places.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and I I I'm I'm it I'm loving painting in the abstract because I feel like I'm working in the energetic field of the narrative, whatever the narrative may be.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: The narrative isn't 25 years later, isn't Kristen.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's in the complexity of life that continues to live itself.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I have this amazing tool to explore that, and I have an amazing tool to explore my happiness.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not only darkness, you know, when we have a uh a loss, certainly at the beginning it is, but over time you're exploring the fullness and the richness of your life.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know the this art stuff uh brings to mind uh when I was five years old, um and I think this is part of my part of the reason why I'm um uh I feel like I'm not an artist, but uh I was five years old and I was uh making uh uh puzzles for my siblings for Christmas.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I had drawn some things and and then cut this on cardboard.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I cut the cardboard out, and uh and I was uh I I thought doing something very creative.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: My father comes by and and he sees what I'm doing, and uh he says, What are you doing?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I'm making gifts for you know my siblings.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: And he says, he goes, Come with me, and he takes me to the store and he hands me some money and he says, You can buy your your siblings uh some gifts.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that shut you down.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: It shut me down.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: It shut me down.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: And explains what's wrong with you, Dawn.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now I explain it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: But but you know, it's um like I love the thought.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: First, my my uh brother and sister uh are extremely artistic.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're like super uh my brother can do a um a painting of uh somebody like uh somebody's head um in an hour, like he he and he captures it like really quick.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, how in the world?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh but uh it's something that I want to continue to explore and your that uh time that I spent in the studio was like it was just absolutely um mind shifting for me, and because art can be many different forms that I never even thought about.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I'm a cook, I love to cook, and that's art that's an art form, it definitely is photography, yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so you know, um I I it comes out in me, but I want to explore painting.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um me too.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's been uh it's been something that I want to try and this this conversation might get me to do that.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to be in the not knowing, you know, and you have to be willing to just push the paint around and explore there.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm not at 75.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I don't know if I can become a representational artist and you know paint anything that looks like anything.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just like, I'm not even gonna go there.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I I've loved the world of abstract painting and how it relates to my life.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what am I saying when I pick out two or three colors and I pour that paint onto the canvas and I look at it and I'm looking at how it relates to each other, how the colors blend, and and then part of the process that I'm doing and exploring is that's the background narrative, whatever it may be.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I allow that, but then I say to myself, I intentionally want to bring light into that narrative.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is that about?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I do that with stencils, with light, with um overlays, with dotting, with circles and patterns?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so with the intention of bringing light into the narrative, that changes, and of course, that is connected theoretically to some of the models within the field of grief and bereavement.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, if you've already created a canvas that is happy and you intentionally add even more light to that, we're talking about energetic fields that that becomes even more highly illuminated.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I I have to say, in those places of painting, um, there's a level of joy and happiness that is um very awe.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's I'm I feel like I'm awestruck.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sharon?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of healing, right?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's drill down on that just a little bit, if that's okay.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna go to a place that's uncomfortable.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't think that I'm gonna make you uncomfortable.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: This might be a little uncomfortable for our listeners.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Don and I are very careful with um, we've used the word triggers, activation of emotions, things like this.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you had you had made a quote.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: You said it's not all darkness, quote unquote.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's about exploring fullness and richness of life.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you had also said, and and this is where I'm gonna kind of go down a little bit of a rabbit hole because I think this is important for our listeners to hear.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You had said that Kristen had jumped from her 15th story warm room.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you had also said sometimes your painting going down and sometimes there's blood.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I uh my son died in a mangled car accident.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's weird because there's so many people out there just don't understand the fact it triggers or activation of emotions.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Every once in a while, I'll get a bystander.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Friend of mine I'm friends with on Facebook will be driving by an accident scene.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh man, there was a fatality, and they take a picture of it and they post it on Facebook.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking, hey, moron, you do you think their you know family wants to see this before or period?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it just really triggers me.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So in order to get to that last quote you said about exploring fullness and richness of life, and then before that you said it's not all about darkness, you almost have to deal with the darkness first, don't you?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: As far as, you know, this is a trigger, this is an activation, this is what I like to call roadblock.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to sometimes park the car, get out, move the roadblock in order to go through it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to us a little bit about that, kind of in sequence or in in order to get to the vibrance and the joy and the healing you were talking about.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: So early, yeah, no, it makes total sense.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, early on, it it was totally about the trauma and it was about her fall, and all that I held in my imagination around that.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so many of my collages dealt with my imagined what was her body like, um, imagining her falling, and I my sense was I had the same experience falling with her.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Those are feeling states, and they're very um, I'm able to talk about it here, but I didn't really have much language for her for that, but I could explore that in collages, lots of the images are upside down.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other other thing in terms of right, yeah, so repeated images upside down.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm exploring that.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the process would be I see I see an image in a magazine, I have a memory or a sensation, I'm cutting that out, I'm deciding to put it upside down.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: All of that is moving through me at the same time.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then I'm I'm in some kind of creative parallel experience of it's right lane, right brain, left brain.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I going to place that on the collage?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it should go here.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is now balanced.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, let me have this color moving into this color.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you see your brain is going back and forth?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like an EMDR kind of thing.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you're not totally in the narrative, but I explored that for years until I didn't have, until it didn't present itself as something to be explored.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that happens when you're working in artwork is you can approach something that is very difficult in a symbolic way.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I began to consider the idea of the condition of her body.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, blood would be involved there.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't able to go deep into that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had to give myself some distance, and I put a lot of red flowers in the work as I began to then approach the notion of that in a gentle way that I could be with it until I saw um some ads that were nail polish.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at those and I was like, yeah, that really works well and could cut that out and let it be more blood-like, so that I wasn't like overlaying it, making it nice.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then over time, I didn't need to look at that or see that, it became flowers again.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then over time, I don't need red in my in my images at all.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes something else, maybe white flowers, maybe no flowers.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: It it changes over time, but creating gives you a mechanism to be with the horror of it.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: With without coming to the page and saying, Oh, today I'm gonna work with on this edge.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, you just show up at the table with the magazines and the scissors and the glue and have the intention, I'm going to open myself to healing.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then the universe seems to give you whatever's really needed.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: You sit there and you open the magazine and you begin to look, and it it shows you, and you tear it out and you begin to put it down and you organize it and you look at it and go, Oh, oh, okay, that's where I am today.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it it does change over time.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it does, because I've done it more than once.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, does that make sense?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Look, look, look, you you seem to have a question.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a question, I'm just very intense, intense.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's very intense, and it really is very difficult to describe.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is these are feeling states, and to be able to sit down and actually create without a thought whatever is in the field that wants to be healed around your son's accident.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and the triggers and traumas that come come to you around that.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I think it's a a real good, I don't know if it's a metaphor, but um, you know, we grief, we turn it's dark, it's very dark, and we turn it into light as we grow through our grief, right?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So um you're uh I think what you're describing is that that turning grief into growth.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: That um, you know, it it changes.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a great name of a podcast, Don.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: We ought to we gotta think about that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's the name of my second book.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Artful growth.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in the midst of writing that.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, all right.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, and it takes Don, it takes time, as we know.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're years into it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would say five years is is so new, still so new compared to 25 years.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can remember thinking five years, you know, yes, yeah.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize you don't know what you don't know that looking back to five years and feeling so much has happened.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, oh, at 10 years, you know, like you've done it, you know, it's great.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: 15, there's something different, and 20 and 25, there's still something different.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it it doesn't go away, it changes.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's and and Sharon, with with that, I mean, you've you've given us so much.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is uh a really great episode to um just contemplate and think about.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I I'm definitely gonna explore my art artistic abilities.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: But could you uh just what could you leave our listeners with?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: A nugget of wisdom that you you know that you can leave with them.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think what you were saying is that it changes over time.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to embrace the foreverness of the journey, the deep weaving of this thread of our loved ones into the tapestry of our lives, that you know, Kristen is part of my narrative, but she's not the whole narrative.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she has not overtaken my life, but be has really become a co-creator in my life.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so um you know, be be willing and curious and open.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's I love that.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Co-creator because Josh definitely he's part of my life, and and he helps me to create, you know, whatever it is that I'm creating.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, it's it's so important to continue that bond with our loved ones.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh I I'll uh I'll close with this.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you were talking, you you said you look like you had a question on your face.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just more processing everything.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's such powerful stuff.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was thinking about yesterday.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I took my daughter Hannah to their port.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, she went to Peru for a week on a mission trip.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was fine uh up until we were putting her bag in the car.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, come on, let's go.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're late, let's go.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and my wife is like, you're you're kind of on edge.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: You need to, you know, you're being very aggressive.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you're scared, you know, and I'm like, scared, I'm not scared.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And last night I took a step back and I realized, man, I still am dealing with the aspect of losing another child and you know, her flying all the way to Peru.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I would just say that our trauma is not just on the loss of our loved one.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is all encompassing that we deal with day in and day out with every other interaction in life that we have, and we have to learn how to cope with that, how to process.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, whether it's painting, whether it's doing collages, photography, Don, like you said, cooking, find an outlet.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I I do feel like that is absolutely part of the healing process.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Darren, thank you so much.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a treat and a privilege.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you have been a huge asset to our listeners and to Don and I, especially personally.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Darren.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: We hope turning grief into growth spoke to your heart and becomes a part of your own journey of healing and transformation.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you know someone who could use a little hope, please share this episode with them.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to follow, like, or subscribe on your favorite platform so you don't miss what's coming next.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don and I can't wait to share more conversations to help you keep turning your grief into growth.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.