Officially it has been a little over a year since Hurricane Harvey impacted my family. It has honestly been a long year with insurance, schools, growing up, growing older, staying focused, and self-care. Unfortunately on the list of life ingredients self-care has been one of my last items. My avoidance of self-care is not intentional but an unfortunate truth.
Self-care is incredibly important, and I am easily swayed to do something else besides taking care of myself. The combination of starting graduate school and being displaced by Hurricane Harvey all in the same week was never something I planned. However, I continue to look at the situation as a learning opportunity rather than a barrier to success in both my degree and my creative life.
What I have learned most is that I love research. I am presently working on my clinical masters of social work and have found creativity to be thriving throughout this journey. Art therapy, play therapy, creative writing, and even research have creativity pouring from its veins. There is creativity in how I work with clients, how I speak to someone else’s truth and autonomy, and how I can be an agent of change.
My YouTube videos have always been a lot of fun to create and share. My original intent was to share what I create with my kids. My intention has never changed, and I plan to do more videos but with a slight modification. I want to share what I have learned about self-reflection and purpose when creating art. The importance of art has less to do with the “how” and more to do with the “why” I am creating art. This new direction is my self-care plan.
I encourage everyone to reflect on what they genuinely love to do and find a way to make that an essential part of your day. Find what makes the heart happy and when fear wells up, look into the eyes of the beast and create something that fear has no choice but to take pause and smile.
The image above is a look into my watercolor journal. I play a lot with color and love to see how colors will work together much like music works together. There is so much you can do with watercolor!
