Grief Flags

I may have made up the title, "Grief Flags" just now. In reality, these are called "Prayer Flags" if you're sorta religious and "Peace Flags" if you are not. My flags are not about prayer or peace, but about loss, so I'm renaming them.

The original Tibetan concept of these things is that you hang the flags out at a certain time of the year (I think February, but I'm not really sure) and they blow around and fall apart for a year or so. The flags have prayers written on them and as they fall apart the words are released into the air where the gods can hear them. If you want to know more about Prayer Flags go here. It makes a lot of sense to apply this to writing to someone lost.

I made some of these to my mom, which is probably a really sacrilegious thing to do, but since I am sorta sacrilegious anyway, it worked out well. For my process, I did pay attention to the color symbolism and order, making something about the writing or design apply to space, wind, fire, water, earth, but otherwise was pretty liberal in how I made and used these.

I felt it was important to sew these a little, since my mom was a quilter, but also important that they be able to shred in the breeze, so there are no knots or hems. I used fabric paint and markers and transferred photographs in places. Everything was done by hand, so this project took awhile.

Fire Flag
This is a picture of my mom in high school.
The music is hand drawn and a copy of Friedrich Kuhlau's Sonatina in C, Op. 20 No.1
My mom used to play this.

(This is not my mom! But, the music sounds like this.)

Through doing this I felt like I was honoring my mother, but also realized two important things that were good for my grief process. The first was that I didn't have any unfinished business with my mother. Everything I wanted to write on these, were things we had already discussed before she died. Secondly, I became aware that even though my mother's death was unfair on many levels: most people don't lose parents at my age and the cause of her death was not supposed to happen and therefore extremely torturous for everyone, I wouldn't have traded my experiences of daughterhood for anyone else's. This helped me move into a place of greater acceptance. It is really difficult not to accept even the worst of circumstances when you realize you don't want to live in another person's shoes.

On a technical note. These flags are holding up AMAZING! There was some discolored dripping from the rain, but not a lot. Very little fading. And they're not falling apart all that much either.

Last Flag and a moment of awareness for me.

Boundaries of the Job & Crying in Class

Yesterday I had an experience that brought up an important question for me. Is there a limit to our therapist role? When we leave a place of employment for the day, do we go back to being Mr. or Ms. Could-Be-Anyone?

Here's what happened... I was on a train going to class and at one of the stops, a duffel bag flew into the train and crashed against the wall, followed by a man who fell over it and sobbing, banged his head against the walls and punched at the seats. Once the doors closed and we were all locked in there with him, moving at train-speed underground, he stood and said, "Please! Why won't anybody help me. My mother just died. I want to go home. I am going crazy. Please someone help me. I just need to get out of here," and continued by sobbing to god and begging for the reversal of time and return of his mother etc. with his arms waving all around. I don't know if what he said was true or this was a desperate attempt at sympathy for drug money, but true or false, this man was in a state of crisis. I didn't really care what he said. Everyone tried to look away. Passengers near him scootched to further locations and froze.

I didn't scootch and wanted to catch his eye and motion that he could sit with me. I don't know what I intended to say or do, but I felt like I needed to talk to him. His eyes were wild and weeping and although he pleaded to us, he didn't seem to see anyone. So, I stood up and walked over. Even standing right in front of him, it was as if he looked through me while he screamed for anyone to do anything to help him. I felt like a ghost, powerless and invisible. I touched his arm and asked what he needed and he told me a ticket for the commuter train. All I had was one dollar, but I gave it to him. He told me I was the only person who talked to him that day and went back to begging to the god who stole his mother. At the next stop soon after, he got off just like he got on, tossing his bag and then falling on top of it in tears.

I had an intense desire to follow him, but I didn't. I felt like I needed to do something. A person in that state shouldn't be standing near regularly oncoming trains for one thing. I felt like I had a duty to do crisis intervention right there all by my rookie self... Hello Messiah Complex.

While he was on the train, I felt perfectly calm, although unsure what to do in this public, fast-moving place. Once he left I was triggered to my own feelings when I lost my mom and worried that he was about to commit suicide. I felt like puking and bursting into tears all at once. So, I watched my "happy place" music videos and tried to use distraction skills I teach other people in order to keep myself together.

I made it to class, pregnant with sick and sad emotions, but keeping it contained, walked in and burst into tears in front of everyone. Totally not my coolest moment, but an important lesson in vicarious trauma and causing me to question if therapists have a duty to play therapist all the time. It also reminded me I carry my own shit closer to the surface than I would like.

On a happier note. This is my favorite distraction skill happy place video.

I have used "video therapy" as a crisis intervention with adolescents who were not acting unlike this man on the train. Sometimes with teens, "Have you seen the new Black Eyed Peas video? It has robots!" is a phrase that works... not a line I would have tried on train guy, but if you work with kids who have violent tantrums over minor frustrations, an IPod with videos is a great thing to keep in your pocket. It helped me not have a train tantrum this time.

BRAINS!!!!

ATC for Awkward Love Swap
Watercolor
February 2011

I've had brains on my brains lately. Oddly, this is due to figuring out how and where I will pick up CEUs for my RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher). I am attempting to make these CEUs count for more than just teaching yoga and apply to something that can also be used in therapy... perhaps, so to that end, I just purchased tickets to a workshop in New York on meditation and neurobiology. I also did some internet searching and found this useful site: Yoga Spirit. It provides lectures for download (some free) that count for CEUs. Again, I purchased some that will be useful for multiple purposes: The Power of Language in Relationships, Yoga for Depression, and Meditation, The Doorway to Who You Are. I love it when yoga stuff and therapy stuff overlap and it happens. All. The. Time.

However, my question to myself lately has been, "Self, is this yoga stuff good for marketing your little personage for a job or does it make you sound a little fruit loops?" Let's be honest, in certain circles, art therapy is already a little crunchy, so putting yoga on top of that may be a flying leap overboard on a resume to some places. Maybe. I don't know. But that's a little off topic. This post is about BRAINS!

So now that I am going to this thing in New York, which isn't cheap and requires some traveling and hoteling, I feel like I want to go into this with questions deeper than, "huh?" I need to beef up my brain on brains (and Jack Kornfield) so I have some self assigned reading and rereading before the end of April. I won't bore you with the details (feel free to bore yourself in the additions to the blog bibliography).

I will leave you with my advice for brain anatomy for the artistically-minded: The Anatomy of the Human Brain Coloring Book. Learn by coloring. It's still tough to memorize, but way funner than flashcards.

Page from my coloring book

Paper Charm Experiment Numero Uno

I would have liked to post a complete tested and approved project for my weekend thus far, but those darn responsibilities, readings and paper writings are really putting a cramp in my art-making lately.

I'll get into the details of what led to this and how I imagine it could be used once I have figured it out myself. In the meantime, here's my experiment of the day: the paper charm.

The supplies are: mounting board (and cutting tools), tiny image, eyelets (and supplies for inserting eyelets), rings, glue and outdoor enamel.

Here's what I did...

I started with a 1/2 inch photo and cut a 3/4 inch square of black mounting board. I glued the photo on the board. Since this was a test, the photo was a little printout from home. If this were not a test, I would get a real photo so it would hold up better when coated in enamel (ink bleeds when wet).

I punched a hole in one corner and coated the whole thing front and back in enamel. If I was being serious, I would have coated it in 3-5 coats of enamel, following the recommended drying time on the bottle, so it would be more waterproof. I inserted the eyelet and put the ring in the eyelet.

Viola!

Test complete and it was successful enough to work on what's really on my mind.

To be continued...

Meditation "Cigar" Box

Box Lid
Wood Burning and Watercolor

Last summer a somewhat local yoga studio was offering a 40 day yoga workshop based on Baron Baptiste's 40 Days to Personal Revolution. It involved daily yoga practice at the studio and weekly meetings and trainings with fellow yogis and yoginis. The theory behind the 40 days part is that it takes 40 days to create a new habit, so if one were to practice yoga and meditation for 40 days, a new healthy habit has been created. I wanted to attend this workshop, because I had been a poor yogini for months.

The problem was the yoga studio was only somewhat local, which meant driving 45 minutes to an hour or more (traffic depending) each way for 40 days in a row. If part of being a yogini is environmental consciousness, as I like to believe it is, then that was pretty counterproductive to yoganess. So, instead I invited a friend and a couple of pre-adolescent and adolescent local people to do 40 days of meditation and yoga on our own and meet once a week at my house.

In an attempt to keep the younger members into it, we made boxes and tools for our practice. The boxes were made from wooden cigar boxes and included mala beads, journal (the program includes reflective questions), candle, origami crane and polished stone. We made each of these things, candle excluded, although it would have been easy to do as well. No cigars were smoked in the obtaining of this box! These boxes are available through your local Michaels.

 The Open Box with Supplies

We used a wood burning kit to heat transfer photocopies from design and/or mandala coloring books onto the wood and then burned in outlines. I used watercolor pencils to color in designs and then painted the remainder of the box with stain and finished the whole thing with enamel. The kids were able to use all of these techniques as well.

Inside Bottom of Box

Inside Top of Box

Since being in grad school, I have continued to be a rather crappy yogini (notice the judgment?), but this is a habit I need to continue to try to redevelop. Hence, I just pulled this box out again today, hoping for some motivation.

In other blog news, I think the blog may go down to a post a week for awhile so I can focus on my final semester. We'll see.

Memorial Garden

I stole this image from the interwebs.

 

This is the story of my own art therapy process at it's most real.

When I was around 12, I saw some made-for-television, women-in-peril movie about a deadbeat mom changing her ways or a journey through foster care or adoption or something. I remember almost nothing about it, but one line stuck with me way back then. It was, "Mother means God in the mouth of a child." That line came back to me after my mom died, because I felt like my soul had been removed and bashed against a wall a thousand times. When my mother died she took the whole world with her. My God was gone. That was how enormous grief felt.

I didn't know what to do with the grief. Some people visit the graveside of lost loved ones, but my brother and mother's graves were thousands of miles away and hundreds of miles from each other. Taking flowers and talking to the grass and sky at their places of rest wasn't possible. Instead of visiting their grave/mausoleum I paced a lot. I probably paced enough to reach those thousands of miles on foot. I paced around nature. I wandered cemeteries. I walked cities and my own neighborhood. When my brother died I sprinted myself a stress fracture. When my mother died I walked a hole in my foot, but no matter how far I walked or ran, there was no location to hold my grief with me. There was no church for my lost god.

During the course of my own grief therapy, my therapist said something like, "You're going to be an art therapist, you should do some art about this." And I said something like, "Everything I do is about this." And she said something like, "No really make something about this, just about this, not that self-soothing stuff." Okay, so that's not quite how the conversation went, but you get the gist.

So, I made a lot of things "about this" which I will get to overtime, but the first was the space.

I am no gardener. Digging is fun. Planting is cool. That's as far as I want to go. Watering, weeding, debugging... I don't even know what else... that stuff sucks. However, I decided to create a place to hang out with grief and I thought a tree would be nice. I could handle a tree. Digging, planting and mostly ignoring (aside from some pretty simple sapling needs) was within my range of commitment. I decided on a pink dogwood tree, because my mom requested pink flowers for her funeral. I selected the area of my backyard outside my kitchen window so I would see it daily.

This is how my yard looked when I started!!!

In my defense, it looks better than the dirt, broken asphalt and chain link backyard I had on moving day, but still bad. I know.

An interesting thing happened when I planted that tree (and this is a metaphor I try to keep in mind whenever I am starting anything new that sounds overwhelming), I thought this is a nice little tree, it deserves something more, so I planted some bulbs around the base to come up in the spring.

When those started coming up, I thought these are pretty flowers around a pretty tree, they should have a better space, so I did some mulching and got some rocks (remembering my poor gardening skills) and then I enclosed the rocks and the mulch with a little fence. I thought there should be a place to sit and be with this tree, so I got a bench. The view wasn't right, so I mulched along the fence and planted stuff. The daffodils, tulips, crocuses and whatever other bulbs I planted went out of season, so I planted other flowers for the summer and I watered them. I started working my way along the other fence. I planted a rose bush. And I made a bunch of art to go with all of this. I watered things! I pulled weeds! I processed stuff. My dad died. I gave him a space in my memorial garden with my mom and brother. My girlfriend added some of her own processing about her cat and best friend who died a year after my mom.

At the beginning of last summer, the space looked like this...

The grass was still a major work in progress. The tree and flowers were much tinier than they were at the end of the summer. I'm still no gardener or landscaper, but the point is it's progress. More importantly, I don't have to wander with my grief anymore and I feel like I can honor lost ones through honoring this space.

Other grief work sprouted from this and I'll get to that eventually.

As I was searching for a pink dogwood image to steal from the internet, I found this site on creating a memorial garden. Notice the image of the pink dogwood while you're there. I almost stole that one for the top of this post.

Slacking

I feel like it is time for a more meaningful post, but I have been fighting a cold all weekend and I just don't have it in me, so we're going bloglight again today.

In addition to whining and feeling like utter crap, I donated a sock monkey to an 8th grade Unitarian Universalist fundraiser. Although on the simpler side of things I do with socks, he was a success and won by a little boy who appeared to be about five. His mom brought him over and introduced him after he won so he could tell me how much he liked the monkey and tell me his new friend would be well cared for. I've never met the owner of something I made (outside of gifts of course), so that was kinda cool.

Later other parents expressed their children were heartbroken, so some orders may come from this fundraiser. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, it's nice to be appreciated and have people willing to pay for things I make, but on the other, getting paid for orders on creativity isn't as much fun perhaps. Sometimes I think I would rather just give things away than get paid for them. I wonder if getting paid to be an art therapist will sometimes feel a little bit the same way. Is helping as rewarding when one gets a paycheck or something cool that becomes just a job?

And because I feel like a slacker, I leave you with this humorous cartoon to help make your visit worthwhile.