The idea for ART+WRITE+HEAL© Workshops came to me while moving through the stages of grief after the death of my husband Kenny. He suffered a massive heart attack and cardiac arrest in his sleep. He ended up on life support in the ICU after all his organs failed and there was no way he could recover from it. Our family had to make the horrific decision to unplug the machines as Kenny would not have wanted to live that way, and we didn’t want that for him either. We were all at his side as he drew his last breath, and I held my hand on his chest, feeling the very last beats of his heart.
The grief we experienced over his unexpected death had trauma packed on top of it from the circumstances of everything that happened. Our children, grandson, and myself all worked through it the best we could. Seeing a therapist wasn’t something I wanted to do so I chose instead to go inward to work through it on my own in order to heal myself. And that’s exactly what I did. The only way out is through. I went straight into my storm of grief and worked my way through out to the other side.
Since I was a young girl I’ve used writing as a way to work through things. It’s a very cathartic process for me. After Kenny died, I immediately poured myself into writing about all the emotional pain and grief I was experiencing. Every time I sat down to write, the words just bled right out of me. I have often told people that the grief and trauma from Kenny’s death felt like crawling through broken glass. I published all my writing on my blog at http://www.lisasaxton.com in hopes that other people could be helped by reading what I had written.
The writing I was publishing on my website led to me writing a chapter for the best selling collaborative book The Ancestors Within: Recognize And Embrace The Gifts Of Your Origins. My chapter is called “The Cathartic Process of Writing: Healing The Metaphysical Root Cause of Pain” and it’s about how writing can help you heal. All pain and disease in our body has a metaphysical root cause. You may have fallen and broken your shoulder but the metaphysical root cause of it is that you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. Your shoulders are literally crying out in pain- “I’m carrying all these problems on me and it’s excruciatingly painful!”
I experienced my own physical pain the month after Kenny died when I ended up in urgent care one night with a painful kidney stone. I was so deep in my pain and grief since Kenny died that I had barely been eating or drinking any water. I was very dehydrated, and this was likely the physical reason for the kidney stone. When I got home that night, I looked up the metaphysical root cause of kidney stones and read that it’s from holding onto unresolved grief. I cried because it could not have been more accurate.
We need to express our emotions and not hold them in. Pushing those emotions down will manifest in pain and disease and we don’t want that. I use writing to express myself, but I also use art in various forms to accomplish that as well. I decided to create a piece of art that represented what my grief and trauma from Kenny’s death looked like to me. I named this piece of art “35 & 1/2 hours” because that’s how long it was from the time I woke up from his cardiac arrest to the time he died. I wrote about what the grief and trauma felt like and with the piece of art I created a visual representation of what it looked like to me.
ART+WRITE+HEAL© Workshops offers a variety of different workshops to choose from. They range from shorter 1 hour and up workshops to the original 3 hour more intensive painting and writing workshop that ART+WRITE+HEAL Workshops was created for. The 3 hour workshop is for adults 18 and up while other workshops suitable for children are available as well. Click the Available Workshops tab to explore all of the workshop offerings.
ART+WRITE+HEAL Workshops was born from Kenny’s death, and because he died, many who are suffering from emotional pain and grief will have the opportunity to work through it in a creative manner. In a way, these workshops are his legacy. Kenny wouldn’t want us to stay in a perpetual state of grief over losing him. He’d want us to go forward and live our lives to the fullest which is what we strive for every day. We love you and we miss you, Kenny…..every single second of every single day.
XOXOXO ~ Lisa, Kaitlin, Gage, Emory & Harlan 💗