Art and Healing

In my post Finding My Thing, I stated that art journaling was not for me. Never say never. I now realize that is because I didn’t have anything to art journal about. Turns out now I do.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about having to take myself seriously in terms of my health. A head to toe dose of hives — which I still have — brought me up short, forcing me to take a serious look at my relationship to my body.

For the most part, I have been able to have a nonexistent relationship with my body. I have remained trim and fit with very little effort. Nothing breaks, I have very little aches and pains, and I don’t have a single perimenopause symptom even though I am 52 years old. When my body does rebel with a huge rosacea flare up, I slap on some foundation and pretend there is nothing wrong.

Now I think that taking my body for granted is just as harmful as having a hate relationship with my body. I have let things go too far, and now my body is screaming at me to pay attention.

So, the other day I hauled out my art book and created a mixed media painting to connect to my body. I treated the exercise as a ritual and immersed myself in the process, connecting to the hearts and flowers and the woman. Then I brought in the journal aspect and did something I never do in my paintings. I added words.

Celebrate and honor me inside and out

Surprisingly this did indeed have a healing effect. And yes, I can hear all you avid art journalists snorting and going “Well d’uh!”

I have another art journal exercise in mind I am going to work on. Again, a combination of words and art. I will post it when I am finished.

Given the mess my body is in frantically trying to process a build up of histamine, I clearly need a whole big bag of healing tools. Art journaling being one of them.

Gracefully yours,

~ Eliza

Materials I used on this art journal page available through my Amazon account:

Taking myself seriously

Tomorrow, May 24, I turn 52 years old. I am going into my birthday covered head to toe in hives. Happy birthday to me … NOT!

Happy Birthday to me

This is not a creativity or art post, but I did promise myself to be faithful to keeping a blog … so this is me, blogging … while ignoring the itchiness on various parts of my body. The Benadryl I am taking every two hours on the dot is having no effect, and I am feeling pretty damn sorry for myself.

Or, at least I was, until I realized that the hives are actually an amazing birthday gift. No, don’t worry, the welts have not invaded my brain. They really are a gift.

I shall explain.

I have rosacea. I have had it for over twenty-five years. Lately, it has gotten worse, worse than its usual bad rashy red lumpy and bumpy state. So much worse that after eight years of being together, my Hubby finally said something and insisted I go to a dermatologist. I resisted.

And therein lies the problem. I resist what I know needs to happen. I need to be disciplined in what I eat. I eat properly, Hubby being a chef, but much of what he prepares is on the rosacea no-no list. I eat whatever I like, and convince myself that I am good to go with a little foundation on my face.

I explain justify my lack of discipline by telling myself that the rosacea does not impact my life, so I can live with ignore it. Pretty damn foolish of me, since rosacea is an autoimmune disease, which means if my outside is inflamed then my insides are raging with inflammation.

Hives I cannot ignore. They are ugly, they hurt, they itch and they massively impact my life. One HUGE impact being I cannot have my hot tub which is where I do my daily mediation. This is completely unacceptable to me!

I did some extensive research (gotta love Google) and have self-diagnosed myself as histamine intolerant. Did you know that unusually strong teeth is one of the symptoms? Who knew! That and I are rarely get colds and sniffles. Of course, there are many other symptoms and I have a great majority of them.

I have purchased the book The Low Histamine Lifestyle 101 by Yasmina Ykelenstam. I am reading it tonight and will start on my low histamine journey tomorrow.

The gift I talked about? The gift is I must now take myself seriously … which is fascinating, because a week ago in meditation a voice said to me loudly and clearly “You have to take yourself seriously”. I had no idea what that meant. Now I do.

Okay, I lied at the beginning of this post. I will add in some art. I have to, art is my life. I did this fun little Scribble Critters painting today to keep myself from wallowing in self pity.

Gracefully yours,

~ Eliza

Resources I used for my Scribble Critters available through my Amazon affiliate account: