On Healing through Creating
My experience with healing has been an ever-evolving, eternal commitment to radical love and acceptance, first of myself and then of my community and the world around me. We each have our own story and sacred truth that compels us to seek healing. Whether we have lived experience with trauma, grief, mental illness, addiction, or simply existing in an oppressive world (we all do), our stories are interconnected and our healing happens in community, as a collective.
We begin healing when we realize we’re all going through it. When we learn to hold space for our darker emotions—the anger, pain, insecurity, shame, guilt, depression—and when we honor and embrace all parts of ourselves. We begin healing when we learn to listen to the sensations in our bodies and trust these messages as our innate intuition. When we learn to release trauma and survival instincts that no longer serve us and let go of ways of being that are self-destructive and harmful to others.
Healing asks us to be in deeper relationship with our bodies and find safety and sovereignty within. To slow down and reconnect with the natural flow of the world. To unlock the wisdom and compassion that is needed to show up for ourselves and each other. And to stay embodied and vulnerable in an otherwise disheartening world that demands we follow our egos rather than our hearts.
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I am still learning how to share this winding and eternal journey of healing I have been on to understand my depression, my anxiety, and who I am underneath it all.
It has been an ever-evolving commitment to learning, unlearning, learning again, and reconnecting with my body and the silly and imaginative spirit of my inner child. To digging up the weeds of my psyche and exploring more intimately my roots, my ways of being, and how and why I show up in this world as I do.
I’m always working on accepting all the parts of me, especially the dark and destructive: the self-hatred, unworthiness, guilt, and shame. Feeling unsafe to show up as my authentic self. The anger, the rage. Feeling unable to speak or find the words, a wound of expression that has kept me silent, stuck, and screaming inside.
Dissociation from my body and craving to escape. An absence of boundaries and always putting others first at my own expense. Numbing and destroying myself and my body with addictions to chaos, substances, and conditional love. And hurting others, too.
What has saved me in my darkest moments is my community 🫶🏼 and small practices of self love, which continue to nourish and ground me to this day. I’m still learning to forgive and to love myself unconditionally. I try to make small commitments each and every day to take care of myself so that I can transform the darkness into something more compassionate and radiant.
Creating is one way I do this. It’s a portal for reconnecting with all of little Ray’s constant creations. Creating helps me to access my curiosity and playfulness and to release all the doubt and judgement I’ve learned navigating through this world. It allows me to hold all parts of myself with tenderness and an open heart.
Using my hands—whether to paint, write, collect, or curate—helps me get out of my head and into my body and the present moment. To me, creating is an act of self love and of infinite gratitude for the chance to share my offerings with you.