My Healing Art Story, Part 1:

Fall 2022

I have gone back and forth about sharing this part of my story, mostly because it is personal and still very much real and happening in a lot of areas of my life. But I also know how isolating it can feel when your body suddenly stops cooperating with the life you were building. Many of us have had a moment where everything we relied on quietly collapses underneath us.

One day you are functioning, or at least pretending to. The next, you are not. And from that point forward, your life splits into a very clear before and after.

For me, that shift began in the summer of 2022. Before that, I had spent my entire adult life moving at a pace my body was never designed to sustain. I was a classic high achiever, INTJ, Enneagram One, the person who took responsibility for everything and everyone, the one who could always be counted on to push through. On the outside, it looked like success. Money, promotions, travel. All an escape. On the inside, it was high functioning anxiety, ADHD, depression, and exhaustion disguised as dedication.

I spent over a decade in a demanding marketing leadership role. I loved my team deeply, and there were parts of that job that shaped me in important ways.

But it was also an environment that pushed me far beyond my limits, physically, mentally, emotionally, and even morally.

I did not understand that at the time. I just thought everything I felt was normal, the bone deep fatigue, the nausea, the migraines, the fog, the way I constantly needed naps just to get through the day. The pushing through panic attacks in an employee review… I thought I was the problem. I thought I was not strong enough, organized enough, disciplined enough. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I did not realize that my body had been waving a red flag for years.

When Everything Hit At Once

When I look back now, I can see how everything converged at once. We had just taken a big trip to the UK, a trip I genuinely enjoyed, even though walking had become harder and I found myself slowing down more than I wanted to admit. Upon my return, I got COVID for the first time. Then came a foot surgery. Then came complications. Then came a rapid decline that did not make sense to anyone, including my doctors.

The last week I had energy - June 2022, right before getting COVID

What started as stomach discomfort quickly turned into nonstop nausea, gnawing abdominal pain, memory loss, confusion, weakness, heart palpitations, and running to the bathroom ten or more times a day.

I could not shower without feeling faint. I could not wash my hair. Some days I could barely stand. I found myself sitting alone in our house for hours at a time while my husband was at work, trying to understand how everything in my life had changed so quickly.

One time my hair was so knotted from the illness and depression that I had to get help to untangle it. Those photos are being saved for my tell-all book one day ;)

The loneliness was its own kind of ache. People who I expected to check in did not. People who said they cared seemed to disappear. A few close friends and family members were there in small but meaningful ways, but many of the people I assumed would show up simply did not.

Even now, years later, some still have not asked how I am or what really happened. That absence leaves a mark.

Around the same time, I got a phone call that one of my closest friends had died unexpectedly in his 30s. It was the kind of news that knocks the wind out of you. I was grieving my health, my identity, the loss of stability, and now him too. Over three years later and I still can’t believe he’s gone.

Realizing I Could Not Go Back

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had to acknowledge a truth I had been avoiding. I could not go back to the life I was living. I could not go back to the pace, the pressure, or the role that had once defined me.

Yet here I was, feeling trapped by golden handcuffs, the promise of lots of money, and the fact that we were building our “forever” house in a random town to be closer to my job… it was terrifying. I felt trapped. I felt the world on my shoulders. I had never not worked since I started at age 14 at K-Mart.

Leaving my job was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.

My entire identity had been built on achievement, leadership, productivity, and being the person who always figured it out. Suddenly I had none of those things, and no manual for what came next.

I also did not have answers about my health. For months I was shuffled between doctors, misdiagnosed, dismissed, and left to manage my symptoms alone. When I was finally diagnosed with celiac disease - just the start of a ton of issues - it explained why the food I had been eating was making me sicker by the day. But even then, healing did not come quickly. There’s still more chronic illness and health drama to come later on.

When My Therapist Suggested Something Unexpected

During one therapy session, after listing everything that had crumbled, my career, my health, my sense of direction, my friend, the life I thought I was building, my therapist asked if I had ever tried making simple art or if I’ve read “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.

Not art with a class, a goal, or an outcome. A tool to help me relieve stress and make sense of my new world.

But I wasn’t an artist! I succccckkkkk at drawing.

I literally thought the only people who could make art had to have some kind of unique talent. That makes me so sad knowing what I know now! Now I own an art studio. WHAT?! Lol.

At my kitchen table with my first-ever art haul in Fall 2022.

Though to be honest, I did not take it seriously at first. I had not painted since middle school. I did not even own supplies. I used to buy them and never use them. Then I’d donate them. Rinse and repeat.

The First Brushstroke

I had my supplies at my kitchen table in Fall of 2022. I joined an online sketchbook class. I had zero idea what I was doing. But I created… and created..and created. That weekend I tried it all - painting, collage, ink, sketching.

Something one of the hosts said stuck with me forever and kept my art practice going:”

“It’s okay to not like what you create. I usually only like 1 thing out of 10-20 things I create, it’s about the process.”

Wait… what? A professional artist is saying this? You can make stuff you don’t like, and it’s okay?! This helped my perfectionist and people pleasing mindset SO much! It’s like a light switch went off and I felt creatively free. I didn’t need to know how to draw realistically or recreate something amazingly. I could just create and be me and enjoy it.

I started to notice as time went on that more and more something inside me shifted. Not dramatically but through a tiny little light bulb moment when I put my brush down and realized, painting is helping me!!

My shoulders lowered. My breath deepened. My mind quieted for a moment. After months of feeling trapped inside a body and brain that were constantly overwhelmed, that single moment gave me a sense of presence and joy and purpose I had not felt in years… if ever.

Some of my very early art - it was so relaxing and soothing, but taming my inner critic was a process

It was not beautiful. It was not skillful. It was not even art in the way people usually mean it, ha!! But in that moment, none of that mattered. What mattered was that for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I existed in my body without fighting it. Maybe my life wasn’t over in my 30s…

That one brushstroke became the first crack of light in a very dark season that continues even now in 2025.

Returning To The Page Again And Again

Over the next few weeks and months, I kept returning to the page, sometimes sitting upright at the kitchen table, sometimes propped up on the couch, sometimes painting quietly in bed on days I could barely move.

I did not know how to paint. I did not understand color theory or technique. I did not have a style.

All I had was this small, reliable sense of release every time I picked up a brush.

Painting slowed my thoughts. It softened my perfectionism. It lowered my heart rate, literally, according to my Oura ring. It gave me something to reach for on days when everything else felt too heavy.

Understanding Why It Helped

Eventually I became curious. Why was this helping? I started reading, studying, and learning about expressive arts, mindful art, and the growing field of arts in health. I completed courses, programs, certifications, and deep dives into the science behind creative healing.

And the more I learned, the more I realized how powerful the creative process is, especially for people navigating chronic illness, burnout, grief, trauma, or major life transitions.

At some point, the desire to understand turned into a desire to share.

An example of of a painting workshop very early on in my art facilitation career

I led a small group through The Artist’s Way, and the experience of creating together, witnessing one another, supporting one another, felt like real magic. That community connection sparked the idea for something bigger.

And that something bigger eventually became Inner Peace Art Studio.

Not because I had a five year plan.
Not because I always dreamed of running a studio.
Not because I suddenly discovered artistic talent.

It began simply because art helped me feel human again, and I wanted other people, especially women living with illness, to know that relief like this is possible.

If You Are At Your Own Turning Point

This is only the beginning of my story. Over the next few weeks, I am sharing the rest: the messy middle, the deeper parts of my healing journey, the unexpected new diagnosis I am navigating now, and the real changes I have experienced from painting consistently over the last three years.

Recording videos for the Healing Art Starter Kit in 2025.

If you are in a season where you feel like you are falling apart, or stuck between who you were and who you are becoming, you are not alone. Sometimes the smallest, simplest acts, one brushstroke, one mark, one quiet moment of creativity, are the first step toward something softer and more stable.

Part 2 is coming soon.

And if you would like a gentle place to begin, you can download our free Healing Art Starter Kit.

The kit is designed to help you ease into creating your own healing art practice, including looking at art supplies in a different perspective and designing your own healing art to-go bag.

Do you have a healing art story? I invite you to share with us in the comments <3

Katie