Painting Your Wounds Away

I started painting as a hobby. I didn't think it would ever go anywhere or did I realize at the time the impact it would have on my life.

Painting for me, became my form of healing. The part I enjoy the most is getting lost in the moment where time almost stands still. I become lost in the paint.

I turn on my favorite music usually some seventies vibe. I get my space ready and I become entranced with the process.

The traumas in my life were hard. I felt disconnected and lost from my own life. I couldn't work any longer and I felt like a burden on my family friends. This made me sink into a depression that was suffocating my spirit.

I mentioned before how holding that paint brush resonated with me and I became transfixed. What I didnt mention was what it was like before I discovered the healing that art provided.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1983 at the age of 12. It was a hard journey grappling with this disease. I never could maintain control and continually developed serious complications. Hoping that the next finger stick would be normal only to be discouraged time and time again. I felt defeated and each high blood sugar robbed me of my quality of life. Countless hospital stays throughout my life left me feeling helpless and a overwhelming sense of failure.

As diabetes swallowed up my life a piece at time I became more withdrawn and depressed. The complications started and escalated in rapid succession.

The final straw was when I was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2010. I underwent a lifesaving transplant in 2012. This was devastating at first but as time went on I became more determined to reclaim my life back. I lost myself and let diabetes run my life for far too long. I had to pull myself out of this darkness.

That's when I discovered my art and my passion. I was so focused on trying to stay alive I wasn't living. When I grasped that brush for the first time I changed my path.

I paint everyday, it's my meditation, medication, and salvation.

Painting saved me from myself! Like a newly formed rose I bloomed when I discovered what I could become. Like that rose I may drop a few petals and fall to the ground, but I keep growing and a new bloom forms bigger than the first and growth emerges!