Art for Healing

Since I last posted, I've written a book about grief doodling and become a doodle artist. My work was exhibited, I teach doodle art workshops, and the local art center gift shop is selling my work. Life is filled with surprises!

I think it's okay to share the title with you because Mayo Clinic Hospice is using material from my book, Grief Doodling: Bringing Back Your Smiles. My daughter made a slide presentation about techniques and prompts from the book for Mayo Hospice chapters to use. I also wrote new doodling prompts for Mayo. The book has won several awards and experts say Grief Doodling is for bereaved people of all ages.

I think it's okay to share the title with you because Mayo Clinic Hospice is using material from my book, Grief Doodling: Bringing Back Your Smiles. My daughter made a slide presentation about techniques and prompts from the book for Mayo Hospice chapters to use. I also wrote new doodling prompts for Mayo. The book has won several awards and experts say Grief Doodling is for bereaved people of all ages.

When I entered the facility in Rochester I was immediately eased by the arts Mayo deemed so important for us in our healing processes. Bravo!!! < 3 This made a difficult diagnosis, something I could walk with and learn through. Mayo's art, both fine and musical lightened my heart and lifted my soul. I have never met kinder, more in solidarity volunteers, any where. I am forever grateful to the Neurologists who helped me understand my life at 64. Today, five years down the road I can say that arts make ALL THE DIFFERENCE! I love the Mayo Clinic!

@paulalina I feel the same way. Art is very healing. I am an artist and used my own art as part of my healing as I went through spine surgery at Mayo. We like the same things. I like to kayak and hike, but 3 years ago, I broke my ankle, so I am a bit limited in how much I can do before the ankle complains. I also love horses and own one that I ride. I have been working on paintings and entering shows and when that all clicks, it feels great. What kind of art do you do?

@harriethodgson1 Wow! I'm so glad you opened this discussion as I've wanted to talk about how important art is for healing and I loved seeing all the art at Mayo. It's kind of like an art museum with some doctor's offices and labs attached and lots more art in the hospitals. I realized that within my own personal experience, I had a lot of resources to help me as a patient. I took my own advice and I used art and music as my therapy to help get past my fears and embrace the surgical treatment that I needed. I am an artist and I was loosing the ability to hold my arms up and control them, and I had worked so hard in my life to achieve that ability. I had long held fears about going through painful tests and surgery, and I was faced with a choice. If my fear made my choices for me, I would have become disabled in a lot of ways, and I would not be able to continue to paint at the level I expected of myself. I also have a biology degree and had worked in research before changing careers to fine art, so I understood medical research that I read, and I understood why I needed spine surgery. When I came to Mayo, I brought one of my own paintings with me to comfort me and give me a place to mentally escape if necessary. I hung it on the wall and looked at it during the nerve tests. I brought it with me when I met my neurosurgeon because I wanted him to understand why getting his help was so important to me. I had already been turned down by 5 surgeons before Mayo because my case was a bit unusual. I brought my camera and asked my surgeon if I could do sketches of him. I told him I needed to like him and this was my way to connect through my art. He liked my art and gladly posed for my camera. I sent him images of my drawings of him. Another painting accompanied me on my surgery day. It was of a trail I had hiked along a creek in Rocky Mountain National Park and I knew it intimately because I had been there and had painted it. Not only did I learn to defeat my biggest fear, but I came through with flying colors. During my recovery, what I wanted to do the most was to paint a portrait of my surgeon, and at one of my follow up appointments, he posed for my camera again and he had a lot of fun doing that. When I came back at my one year follow up, I had a watercolor portrait of him that I painted as a gift. I had to do some rehab to get back my stamina for the physicality of painting. During all of this, music helped me reduce stress and lower my blood pressure. I was measuring it before and after listening to music with deep breathing, and I could drop it significantly. Music also gave my mind a place to go when I was worried. The night before surgery, I was doing my best to loose myself in that painting and the music in my headphones, and in the morning when I met my surgical team I was calm and ready and doing just fine. Coming to Mayo exceeded my expectations and changed my life, and I brought my own creativity as my guide.

I'm so glad you mentioned music, as I wasn't sure if it could be included in this particular discussion.

Music functions in so many ways. It can be like an amazing sonic world to escape into and just not think about anything.

Yet if, like me, you listen to it analytically, thinking intensely about it, it can be equally amazing! Music is invisible and intangible and occurs only in time.... Yet it feels like an object, or a place - as if it existed in space. And so full of details and nuances.

How can something so powerful and expressive yet so mysterious not be therapeutic?!