With Dr Carla van Laar AThR
Feature image credit Carla van Laar
In this article, I invite you to reflect on your journey of self care, and create a “big picture” of you in your life, surrounded by the things that support your health and wellbeing.
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Creative Integration – The Big Picture
In the final chapter of my Doctorate, I wrote:
By sharing our stories through art, we weave our stories together, creating ways of knowing that connect us through a web of meaning. The web of meaning is like our shared story world. When we weave our stories together into a web of meaning our shared stories become a world that we can co-create and live within. We can affirm and validate our ways of knowing, our values and life experiences. This is connecting, empowering and life enhancing.
(van Laar 2020)
The Big Picture
This is an exercise that I do with people who I work with as a way for them to reflect on their lives, and for me to get to know them a bit more.
Here, I offer this process to you as a way for you to reflect on your journey of self care, and the people, animals, places, interests, communities and other things that support your health and wellbeing in the big picture of your life.
What you will need:
A large piece of paper, a board or a canvas, or a blank page in your self care journal.
Drawing materials such as markers, pastels and pencils
Painting materials such as acrylic, water colours, ink or oil paint, and brushes
Collage materials such as found images and words from magazines, post cards and old calendars
Found items such as fallen leaves, wool, twine, threads, and other bits and pieces.
The process:
Once you are set up in a space where you can focus on your art making, I invite you to take three deep breaths and simply settle in to the here and now.
Have a look at the art materials around you and notice what you are attracted to, or drawn to working with today.
On your page, pare, canvas or board, I invite you add something, or make a mark to represent yourself. You might draw yourself, or choose an image or object for yourself, or simply make a mark using a colour and shape that resonate for you.
Next, I would like to invite you to add something to the page to represent the people in your life who you are close to, and who make you feel good. These might be family, friends, colleagues and also people who have passed on but with whom you still feel a bond.
You can also add in animals in your life who you love.
Then, I would like to invite you to add in something that relates to any places that you love, where you feel happy and safe.
Next, add in something for your hobbies and interests, the things that you enjoy doing and that give you satisfaction and pleasure.
Now, take a look at your “Big Picture” and add in anything else that you would like to see in there.
Use lines, wool, thread or something else to show the connections between you and all these supportive aspects of your life.
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Questions for reflective journaling
Place your “Big Picture” somewhere where you can stand back and look at it from a distance.
- What do you see?
- What stands out for you – what do you notice?
- How does it feel to see the big picture of your life in this way?
- Does this process open up any new possibilities for you in your life? What are they?
- You are now invited to congratulate yourself for coming this far, and make a commitment to continuing your journey of ongoing self care. What are the most important things for you to remind yourself?
- Write yourself a letter in your journal to acknowledge all that you have achieved through your journey of self care, and remind your future self of what you have learned about what supports your health and wellbeing.
- Now, honour your wonderful commitment in undertaking this journey, congratulate yourself, and decide how you would like to celebrate!
Thank you for embarking on this journey of creative self care. It has been my privilege to journey with you in spirit. I trust there have been parts that are valuable for you.
Live well, enjoy your life.
Lots of love
From Carla.
References
van Laar, C. Seeing Her Stories. Carlavanlaar.com, Brunswick, Australia.
Dr Carla van Laar
Artist | Art Therapist
Master of Creative Arts Therapy
Doctor of Therapeutic Arts Practice
Registered Supervisor and Professional Member ANZACATA
Carla van Laar is a painter and therapeutic arts practitioner from Australia. Born in Brisbane, Carla is first generation Australian on her Dutch grandparents side, and 7th generation through her maternal bloodline who were mostly English and came to Australia in the early colonisation of the 1800s. Carla currently lives and works in Victoria, residing between Wurrundjeri country in Melbourne, and Boon Wurrung country in Inverloch, paying deep respects to the First Peoples of the Kulin Nations whose land was never ceded and will always be Aboriginal land. Identifying as a cisgender woman, Carla is passionately disinterested in socially constructed identities that disempower anyone. Carla has over 25 years’ experience working with people and the arts for health and well-being in community organisations, justice, health and education contexts.
Carla’s first book “Bereaved Mother’s Heart” was published in 2007 and broke social taboos about maternal grief. From 2008-18 she established and ran an independent art therapy studio and gallery in Melbourne. Her Doctoral research “Seeing Her Stories” continues the mission to make women’s stories visible, through art.
Carla has lectured and supervised Art Therapy students at RMIT, MIECAT and currently the IKON Institute. She is a practicing artist and in 2018 received an Artist Fellowship at RMIT’s creative research lab, “Creative Agency”. She insists on being part of a creative revolution in which art re-embodies lived experience, brings us to our senses, makes us aware of the interconnectedness of all life and is an agent of social change.
Carla’s new book “Seeing her stories” presents her research into making unseen stories visible through art, and is available to read for free online here or purchase a hard copy of the full colour hard cover coffee table book here.
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