Two days ago was my Aunt Michèle’s death anniversary. She left us in January 1995, I was 9 years old but remember it like it was yesterday. What I was doing when the telephone rang, the tone of my Mom’s voice talking to my grandma. The disbelief and crying. The hurt, not understanding why. Like it was yesterday, the pain and the gap in my heart are still here.
Her death is a huge part of what shaped the woman I am today, at 31 years old. I believe that the biggest challenges and heartbreaks are what makes us us. It sucks, oh my gosh yes it does suck to learn and grow from what puts us into billions of pieces. I write to her, I talk to her. Still.
When I was younger, my outlet was writing. Journals, personal blog (well, it was not called like that at the time, but I created an online private place just for my writing, with access given to selected friends only).
Art is a savior, it is a way to release the internal pressure before it bursts out, creating a mess of everything.
Art makes it easier to live with. It does not erase anything, it does not make me forget. Nor does it make it less hurtful. But it helps mend it.
No dwelling into “what if…” scenari is not easy. Not living in the past either.
One of my personal mission in this lifetime is to transform pain, to be an alchemist of it. No matter the medium (may it be art, may it be cooking, may it be whatever form it wants to take).
This is partly why I never given up making art, because I simply can’t.
We all have this power within us, it sounds cliché but I know it is a truth. We have to dig, yes, but it is right here.
(PS: I even have an ongoing painting I titled “anger management” for all these moments I could kill someone or call it quit 😉 One of the best idea I had last year…
PS²: I still dream of becoming an art-therapist)
How will you transform your own pain ?