My friend and fellow poet has been working on acute anxiety and trauma recovery by painting colorful watercolor birds and boldly posting her work on Facebook. The images intrigued me because, in my experience, watercolor is not an easy medium. It does not forgive. There are no do-overs. So how did this help anxiety?
For Cheri, however, that’s exactly the point. I asked her to explain her process and how it led to her book Moving Toward Calm.
A bird a day
I started painting little watercolor birds as a way to help me with my intense anxiety and Complex PTSD. The idea was to paint one every day, and let it reflect my mood back to me—it could show me how I was feeling when maybe I couldn’t see it so well. It was also just a quiet moment of focus and creativity, and a direct way of addressing my issues with perfectionism, which can really cause me anxiety spikes when it’s acting up.
Fighting perfectionism
Watercolors have a mind of their own. The paint flows and moves around and you can’t control it. I use wild colors, because I love them and I let the birds be bright and colorful, and sometimes even silly. I’d never done watercolor painting or much painting of any kind before, and, being dedicated to my own healing, I was so willing to work this anti-perfectionism for myself that I began sharing them on Facebook every day no matter if I thought they looked good or not. I committed to a bird a day for ninety days. With each one, I posted a little message. The messages are things I, myself, need to hear.
“Everybody gets their feathers ruffled once in a while. It’s okay, things will settle down soon.”
“Find your spot in the sun and spend as much time in it as possible.”
“Singing a happy song is one of the sweetest ways to love yourself.”
“Love all of who you are.”
“Be unapologetically you.”
“I think this is called Resting What the Hell Was That? face.”
Social media responses to the birds were incredibly touching. People started commenting about how they looked forward to them every morning, or how the message was just the one they needed to hear that day, or that every day it gave them a moment of joy and even laughter.
Some commented about how my birds and messages helped with their own anxiety because they knew I struggled with it, too.
The (bird)seed of a journal
So, I started to think about how I could spread some of the comfort and healing that painting the birds has offered to me, and that’s when I came upon the idea of the guided journal.
As part of my healing journey, I’ve used several guided journals but many of them included prompts that were too advanced, or too emotionally big for someone who was working on the kind of healing that I was. I needed small doses, small moments of connection until I could graduate to bigger ones.
Each prompt offers one of my watercolor birds, or one of my small collage pieces (also part of my non-perfectionism quest), a small, gentle prompt, lined pages for writing, and a blank page for artwork. In the back of the book, are also “Doodle Pages,” and some of my birds with the colors removed that can be colored in, as coloring was the very first kind of art therapy I tried when I was in early recovery. It is designed so that it can be worked in the order of the pages, or so that a person can flip through to an image that speaks to them in the moment.
Understanding trauma and anxiety
With anxiety, you just never know how you are going to feel on any given day.
I had no idea just how sick anxiety could make a person, and no idea how sick I really was until I literally collapsed. It took five days in the hospital for dehydration, malnutrition and exhaustion, among other things, before I emerged, found a trauma therapist, the proper diagnosis (Complex PTSD, Religious Trauma Syndrome, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder) the proper medications and a new dedication to discovering the best way to deal with these chronic conditions.
So, now it is my mission, at sixty (my second act as I keep calling it) to take this journal and this message of awareness and healing out into the world! I couldn’t be more excited about it, either!
Mental/Emotional/Nervous System health is under-addressed, and often wrongly addressed within our medical system and many others. There’s so much about it that is misunderstood, and the treatments that most practitioners have on offer are badly in need of updating.
I have been trying to write about my experiences and what I’ve learned ever since I got well enough to write again, but none of it felt right until I came upon the idea for this journal.
Creating as a way to heal
I am working on a book of personal essays and poetry that address the traumas that lead to my conditions, but what I wanted—no, needed—to do first was offer a hand to others who were suffering under the radar of everyone around them. To say, “I see you. I know what you are going through. Your feelings are valid. YOU are valid and loved, and you are not alone.”
While Moving Toward Calm is definitely good for those dealing with anxiety, it is also an uplifting book for everyone, so that even if anxiety is not your issue, you can take some time to be present, respond to the prompt or just write or create in response to the colorful birds and collages. It’s preventative in that way—in that we all need to take the time to get quiet and shut out the constant demands of our lives to focus on our own health, happiness and self-love.
If we love ourselves first, we have love to carry out into the world. And wouldn’t that make pretty much everything just a little better?
About Cheri
Cheri Caddick holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College and was a writing instructor at Macomb College for more than seven years. She has facilitated writing workshops with the Arts in the Spirit Program at Oakwood Hospital, and as a Writer in Residence with the Inside Out Literary Arts Project conducting writing workshops in Detroit Public Schools. She has four chapbooks of poetry and has been published in literary journals and anthologies. Her book of poems, Wolf Maiden Moon, A Tale in Thirteen Poems was released from Pudding House Press in 2010. Her first novel, Leaving Walloon, a drama, and her second novel, a romantic comedy entitled Falling Down Girl and the first sequel, Falling Down Girlfriend are available in digital and print on Amazon (under Cheri L. R. Taylor). Cheri’s latest offering, Moving Toward Calm, A Gentle Guided Journal for Anxious People and Others, a spiral bound journal is available on Lulu.
Cheri is the recipient of a 2007 RARE Foundation Everyday Heroes Award for her work in dedication to the healing potential of expressive writing in community settings, and was awarded a 2009 Ragdale Foundation Artist’s Residency. Cheri is passionate about bringing awareness to the hidden sufferers of anxiety disorders and the healing magic of art and writing. She is available for speaking engagements and workshops. Contact Cheri at info@CheriCaddick.com
Truly. I was dumbfounded that Cheri was using watercolors to help woth anxiety, but now it makes sense to me. You have to let go. Thanks for reading, Patti!
What a lovely book and creative idea.
Truly. I was dumbfounded that Cheri was using watercolors to help woth anxiety, but now it makes sense to me. You have to let go. Thanks for reading, Patti!