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Dear Colleagues,
While we often work with adolescent and emerging adult clients who are struggling with significant mental health challenges, some of these same individuals are blessed with the gift of being able to capture and express their emotions through the arts. As therapists, we learn the theory, the application, and the psychotherapeutic skills necessary to guide people to the path of emotional regulation and a life worth living, but we often have not experienced these feelings from the interior landscape that our clients do. This new series, "Voices From The Heart" is our invitation to former clients to share some of their most powerful expressions of what it feels like to walk in their shoes. We all know the feeling of being impacted by a work of art that needs no elaboration. Welcome to "Voices From The Heart."
The criteria for publication of works in this series is as follows:
The Oceans Love is Everlasting, 8.5 by 11 mixed media paper in sketchbook done in gouache, colored pencil, washi tape and nail art stickers.
This illustration came about as most of my ideas do. Spontaneously, while listening to music late at night with the perfect level of emotional whiplash involved that makes me repeat the song over and over till I get the idea down just as it was in my head. This drawing was based on To Love A Boy by Maya Hawke. It was late one night my freshman year of college around the end of the year i had found the song after shuffling through songs on Spotify. My freshman year was extremely difficult so I poured that into my work, this has always been my way to process and deal with all these emotions cause my freshman year was like being in a slapstick cartoon from the 50s. Something new was hitting me everyday with a level of god like comedic timing and with an equa dose of stinging tragedy.
It was April. January 1st I had broken up with my ex of a year and 7 months, then had a friend die in late Feburary right before spring break, dealing with stress that was causing health scares that evolved into new terrifying problems, and the cherry on top I was in a really terrible situationship with one of my childhood best friends. This piece is about the latter. This came after i finally straight up asked if we were doing anything at all, he had said no we weren’t. This both made me feel relief and guilt but also longing. But not for him. No. For someone close to me to understand me and care for me. Not in the way a friend or family member would. That is what I wanted from him but he coudn’t tell me no and he couldnt do that for me. So there was a major disconnect. But from complex emotions comes art so hey thanks to him I guess!
To Love a Boy hit me at the right time. Exactly how i had felt in lyric and sound. There’s a truth to it, growing up on the island and spending my summers in and around the Long Island Sound i miss the sea when I am away from it. I always notice the lack of seagulls or the lack of that salt smell in the breeze that goes through the trees. Its as though i go stir crazy for it. Like loosing a piece of myself. Maya Hawke captures the feelings of the oceans steady, persistent and unchanging nature. The lyric speak of fears of not being adequate after being in a relationship and feeling like you are incapable of loving anyone properly or being properly loved. For me it feels like I love too much or in a way that is unbridled, brutally honest, vulnerable, and deep. Like a small child who is innocent and ready to run into any new thing with open arms though I've been hurt time and time again. I say I love you a lot but i mean it every time. I had seen this post that said something around the lines of “Dont be afraid to tell those you care about that you love them cause that might be the last words you had ever said to them.” I want my friends and family to know i love them through word or otherwise, cause there been people where i have no idea to this day if they cared in that way. Anyhow I wanted that perpetual feeling of comfort from something natural yet yearning for a human to hold, encompass and comfort me in the same way the ocean does. I also purposefully made it night cause that serene connection of the moon and ocean are super comforting to me thus why its night in the painting. Night is as encompassing to me as the ocean and just as vast and mysterious yet they comfort me more then other people.
