Art Journaling and Grief: Saving It for the Page

“You’ve got to let it go,” were the words of my therapist this week, said much more gently than the words convey. She was talking about the past, much in the same way as my weekly sessions. 

A recent page from my art journal, where the words don't disappear, they just find a new place to live.

I’ve been in therapy since 2022, and grief is still present after all this work. It's like a well of negative emotions, and I'm clearing that well of the negativity (shame, grief, emotional pain), through my art journaling practice.

For the past month or so, I have been slipping into old destructive coping mechanisms that I wrote about in my book. Being honest, I felt quite broken during this time, like a rock bottom, feeling stuck and unable to move forward. 

My art journal practice is adapted from the Artist's Way. Instead of journaling three pages a day in the morning, I now save it for my art journal and paint over my words. But journaling like that kept me stuck. What was once a healthy way to heal just kept picking at the wound. Painting is different. It doesn't use words. The brush, in a sense, is my pen.

Being honest with you, thoughts and feelings of the past were so intense this week, that I couldn’t handle it any more. I left work six hours early because it was too much. That's when I had the idea: instead of being consumed by negative emotions, I could make a container for myself, and hold it for my next painting session. It’s not denying the feelings, but saying, this isn’t the time to process the grief, the negative emotion, let’s save it for the art journal to process. 

This idea of the journal as a container is only a week old. The thing with emotions, it doesn't always make logical sense. It's like the heart is a child, that needs to be gently directed and guided. Right now, it's important to remain steady, but when you go to the art journal, you can let it all out, you don't have to perform, you can sit with yourself, and feel the pain, and let it out of your heart and onto the page.