Art from Emotional Scars

According to ArtTherapy.org, art therapy employs an approach to therapy using art-making and creative process. It can help a person express themselves when words just aren’t enough. I have used my own creativity as art therapy for years as I struggled emotionally through my teenage years, and it’s a practice I am finding I still employ when I need to.

Oh to be a dramatic teenager again.

This piece is called “Heart’s Band-Aid,” and started off as a pencil sketch. I scanned it in and colored it digitally, adding song lyrics for a background. The story behind it? I had tried calling my boyfriend one night, who immediately hung up on me and then turned his phone off. Fearing the worst, I got in my car and drove to the farm where we lived together (he had unsuspiciously told me I should stay that night at my mom’s) and ended up walking in on him with another woman. He was the second boyfriend in a row to cheat on me, and his was the final nail in my trust/insecurity issue coffin (which wouldn’t be dismantled until five years later.) It was a messy enough breakup, and as I did so often during my teenage years, I made art about it to help express myself when I didn’t feel confident to put my anguish into coherent words.

The title is just deafening silence.

I have drawn pregnant women a number of times before, and doodled little comics about being pregnant, but have only made one real art piece about my own pregnancy before – the one above. It was left untitled, as the words couldn’t be spoken at the time, but I had to express myself somehow. It was drawn and colored with permanent markers on paper. Once it was finished, I framed it and then hid it away behind other things on my art table (it’s still hidden there today.) Here’s the story behind it:

When I was 19 weeks pregnant with my second daughter, I was diagnosed with placenta previa. That means that the placenta was positioned over my cervix, blocking baby's exit. My doctor told me if I started bleeding from the placenta, there was a possibility of me bleeding to death before I could make it to the hospital here in town - and if I was rushed to the hospital, they didn't have a large enough blood supply to save me. I needed to be taken care of in Omaha, an hour and a half away.

Not one week later, I had a bleed and spent four days in the hospital. My mom and stepdad came to visit for a few hours, and Jon brought me a book to read, otherwise I was all alone with my tiny baby. I had a team of nine doctors, all specializing in high-risk pregnancy. They would come in and check on me with their students, do ultrasounds, give me steroid shots, and tell me the odds of baby’s survival if they had to deliver then to save my life (it was less than 10% at the time, but got a little better each day.) Every so often, Alex would move and bump around in my belly, reminding me that she was still there and just needed more time. I had a second bleed there at the hospital, and they told me if I had a third I would be hospitalized until I gave birth.

Every single time I went to the bathroom for months, I braced myself for more blood. Every morning I woke up, I wondered if I would die that day. I had weekly ultrasounds in Denison, and monthly ultrasounds in Omaha. At the 31 week ultrasound I told Jon to just stay in the waiting room with Emma, since there wouldn’t be anything new to report. When the tech was finished, she got the doctor, who had to check for himself in a second ultrasound. The placenta had moved up and out of the way, and I was no longer in danger!

It's been over three years now since Alex was born full term in a textbook, complication free delivery (besides having a velamentous cord attachment that was worthy of clinical study post-delivery) that didn't require surgery of any sort. The only thing I felt, for her first 24 hours, was the tremendous relief that it was over, and that we were safe.

I still break down when I talk about it, particularly when I say out loud that I think my husband was afraid of losing his wife. They are hard words to type, even harder to say out loud. And maybe it will always be hard. That's alright, because sometimes life leaves scars.

“Goodbye” made from watercolor and acrylic paint on watercolor paper, with plastic gems, white ink, and permanent markers

It was Christmas Eve morning, 2021. I was driving about an hour away from home to visit my surrogate grandpa (he was my best-friend-since-8th-grade’s grandpa and growing up we spent a lot of time on his farm) in hospice care for the last time. Later that same day, my parents were coming to visit for the holiday. I hadn’t seen my dad in over four years. It was shaping up to be one hell of a day. I had spent the two days prior in a daze, distraught that I wouldn’t get to say goodbye again (when my stepdad died the previous summer I wasn’t able to visit due to the pandemic, and all that was coming back.) I started screaming profanities as loud as I could to get rid of some of the tension (I was alone in the car, FYI) and after I was done screaming, the image of this piece popped into my head.

My best friend was there with her husband. She’s always been more stoic with her emotions, I on the other hand cried when I watched the Paw Patrol movie with my 4yo. I openly sobbed the whole time I was at the hospital. I was able to have a brief conversation with Grandpa Dean. He told me I didn’t have to cry. I told him that my parents were coming to visit that day, and that I hadn’t seen my dad in four years. Grandpa told me to have fun and that he would see me later. He passed away a few days later.

And just as I have done for over 20 years, I poured myself into a piece of art. I drew my car-scream, as well as the pained daze. I added in the gemstones and glitter to signify the happy holiday going on around me during my grief. And once I was done, the weight of grief was no longer crushing me.

Not all of my artwork is so emotionally charged, sometimes they are just happy little toasters frolicking in a meadow. But my art will always be an outlet for me; the act of creating a form of therapy and expression when simple words just aren’t enough.