Healing Journeys & Becoming Art Therapist

Five years ago, I experienced a severe and debilitating concussion which took me two and a half years to recover from. I’ve come a long, long way since then, and want to honour and acknowledge my transformative wellness journey.

I’ll start with… it’s really rather a miracle I’m here.

I’m nestled in the mountains of British Columbia, undertaking a rigorous, two year program to become an art therapist. Again, I find myself tucked into a home in the woods on the outskirts of town, surrounded first by gardens, then thick forest. Again, I find myself in grad school. Except this time, the forest is in the mountains on the other side of Turtle Island, and this time, grad school is weaving together my most favourite things: art, mythology and metaphor, land based healing, cultural identity, dreamwork, and the transformative power of collaborative processes.

Learnings and Leadings

Last time in grad school, I was learning about public administration….how government and governance works, how to develop policy, and how to lead public consultations to feed into this process. This led me into an incredible 10 year career where I worked for Indigenous communities and advocacy bodies, then for a provincial government where I worked with Indigenous communities. I designed and led community level consultations, explorations of free, prior and informed consent, and fed into government wide policy and best practices for consultation and engagement. Most of this work centred around land based decision making and the exercise of Indigenous peoples’ Inherent, Aboriginal and Treaty rights. What an absolute blessing, challenge and thrill to be involved with and trusted to facilitate such work.

A little over two years ago on the Grand Adventure across the UK and Ireland, I learned that earth based art therapy exists. I saw the power it holds to lead people into a safe place of connection, awareness and transformation - internally, with others, and the land around them. What a revelation! Something that comes so naturally in my personal practice and way of being was a “thing,” and that it could be learned and shared. I gushed profusely about the discovery in an earlier blog here.

​And so, a year ago I wrapped up my work, my things, and my life as I knew it.

Becoming Art Therapist

Along the Crow's nest highway I travelled, westward across the Turtle's Back (North America) into the mountains, to train in becoming an earth based art therapist.​ This past year I've explored how group based, holistic, earth centered art therapy could be woven with my passion for working with diverse stakeholders attempting to make decisions regarding the land.

This last year, leading group after group, attending class after class, and having creative experiences after creatives experiences, it's been perpetually reaffirmed that I am ready and in the right place.

I’m nestled into a small community of big hearted, empathetic, uniquely powerful and gifted men and women who want to do what they can to help in this world. We dance and paint and draw and write and hike in these mountains. We’re asked to bring our full, authentic selves as we train to become art therapists, and nothing less. We’re utterly immersed in the experience of the transformative and revealing power of art therapy. We play. We get annoyed and frustrated. We get scared. We cry. We laugh. We have revelations. We have shifts. We have hope and delight beamed in. We are graced with gifts of self-reflective insight and opportunities for transformation, and learning how to bring this to others.

This training is nothing short of gruelling. It demands engagement from every ounce of our being. And I love it.

Five years ago under the lethargic fog of a slowly dissipating concussion, I questioned whether I could ever work at my full capacity again or go for a decent hike.

Now, from the help and encouragement of countless individuals and relentless faith in my capacity for healing, I brim with joy and gratitude that I am living and learning and gallivanting in these mist covered mountains, on the path to living my best life.