Can you be your own 'art therapist'?
Creating and pondering life's questions and doubts with the "Hear My Voice" project
Disappearing woman, 2014. Created with Hear My Voice: Doubting
Yes, that is a tongue in check heading for this week’s newsletter, because being an art therapist is a highly skilled profession, I know.
However, there is some truth in the description of ‘art journaling’ as therapy (or ‘scrap therapy’ as many digiscrappers call it).
And the Hear My Voice project is about expressing your thoughts through creating, BUT it can also help to you clarify your own thoughts and feelings in the first place.
Sitting down to create with this month’s edition (Hear My Voice: Doubting) ended up with me realising that for many years I essentially disappeared from our family photo albums. I don’t need to spell it out in detail on the page but I know now why that was - but the process of creating the page above was the first time I had really confronted the fact and just how stark it was. It was in equal parts confronting and empowering.
“Hear My Voice: Doubting collection is part of the Hear My Voice collaborative project with Rachel Jefferies of Pixels and Paint.
This latest collection is full of unique papers and elements, which AnnSofie chose to print out in order to enjoy creating ‘junk journal’ pages. I can imagine that the ‘flow’ and enjoyment of cutting and sticking feels like a meditative therapeutic process in itself ….
Here are some other of my own creations made with the same collection, where I switched between heritage photos that make me think, and others that make me laugh. (Proving that playing with the creative assets in the Hear My Voice collections doesn’t have to be heavy but can just be creative fun!)
And here are some creations by Rachel:
I'm going to have to look closer at this collection. I used to mixed media art journal and stopped doing so because it was bringing up things that I wasn't entirely sure were "true." I thought perhaps I was making it up, looking for angst because that's what I *thought* I needed as a subject for art journaling. Fast-forward 15 years and those feelings were proven to be very true - but I wasn't ready, or in a place, to recognize it yet. Art can be very personally revealing, whether we seek for it or not. But doubt and I are old friends, so I will go take a look!
Beautiful pages Lynn and I adored creating with you again this month! These Collections allow me to think about things deeper and I find myself creating pages that I probably wouldn't have scrapped before, or not in the same context had it not have been for the kit to inspire me ;)