Creative Healing Archives - Therapist for Sensitive and Gifted

My Recent Adventure: Making a Soul-Shirt from a Cast-off Jacket

For eons, people have marked significant life passages, prepared for goal achievement, invited desired changes to show up in their lives through making things which represented the intangible, hidden, archetypal aspects of the coming event. We still do. We celebrate graduations, weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, even birthdays and other events. Often this includes special clothes to wear as part of the specialness of the celebration. In ancient times, not-so-wonderful changes such as deaths and

Sharon Barnes July 9, 2018

My Scrap Angel: Life Lessons Learned While Quilting

Have you ever started a creative project that went so badly you trashed it? I have–more times than I’d like to admit. I had heard that mistakes can be our finest learning experiences, but I’d not relished that idea until I reclaimed one of my discarded pieces, and unexpectedly discovered how to reclaim my life, too. An hourglass quilt block I had made from scraps contained too many mistakes to use, so I pitched it.

Sharon Barnes May 30, 2018

5 Intuitive, Creative Steps to Heal from Life’s Hurts

An Intuitive, Creative Approach to Healing from Life’s Hurts Or, How to E-E-E-K-K Your Way Through Adversity to Destinations of Delight When tough times hit and our life’s path seems to disappear in the fog; when we are faced with illness, loss, financial reversals or other adversity, it can be easy to feel like we have lost our moorings. We may struggle to keep our feet under us, or to change the metaphor, to keep

Sharon Barnes January 12, 2018

Compost is Nature’s Original Recycling Project

In Processing Complex Emotions, Nature’s Original Recycling Project Shows Us the Path to Healing: Composting in our gardens transforms organic material like grass clippings, food garbage and tree leaves into fertilizer. Transforming manure into fertilizer is nature’s original recycling project. Complex emotions need composting. First, we gather them together and pile them up in one place, like we do with compost or manure. Then, we mix them up, expose them to the air, sunshine, rain and

Sharon Barnes September 28, 2012

Curing – Strengthening – Healing

Curing is the work of experts, but strengthening the life in one another is the work of human beings. …Sometimes the deepest healing comes from the natural fit between two wounded people’s lives. Rachel Naomi Remen

Sharon Barnes September 27, 2012

Life Lessons Learned While Quilting

If it has to be done, make it fun. Look everywhere and see all there is to see, even if no one else sees it. See life through the eyes of an artist Look for life’s colors, shapes, textures, and shades of light and dark. Don’t shut down when you face problems; open up to ALL of life’s experiences. Learn the same thing as often as necessary until you know it by heart. Multi-task without

Sharon Barnes September 14, 2012

Creative and Contemplative Handwork Is a Deep Practice

Creative and Contemplative Handwork is a deep creative, spiritual, emotional and emotional practice. The process of making something which tangibly demonstrates our inner state and represents our inner process reaches deep within us, taps into and brings out emotion and experience that cannot be found or expressed otherwise. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture that the Self creates is worth a hundred thousand words. We create something for which we have

Sharon Barnes September 7, 2012

LifeStick

When we make things with our hands that represent our inner process, the practice of making them helps us grasp that lasting healing, growth and change don’t happen in an instant. They take time, creativity and action, the same as crafting our symbolic objects does. ScrapLady Sharon

Sharon Barnes July 27, 2012

How to Transform as You Come Back From Adversity

Hannah, a doll made from a stray sock, is quite a helpless creature. Hannah sometimes has days with her face in the dirt, like a caterpillar. When she can’t take any more of life’s dirt, she creates a cocoon for herself, Where she can heal, rejuvenate and recreate herself. But eventually the cocoon becomes a prison, and she finds a way to break out. As she emerges, she discovers that while cocooning, she

Sharon Barnes July 20, 2012

My Recent Adventure: Making a Soul-Shirt from a Cast-off Jacket

My Scrap Angel: Life Lessons Learned While Quilting

5 Intuitive, Creative Steps to Heal from Life’s Hurts

Compost is Nature’s Original Recycling Project

Curing – Strengthening – Healing

Life Lessons Learned While Quilting

Creative and Contemplative Handwork Is a Deep Practice

LifeStick

How to Transform as You Come Back From Adversity

Abandon the Urge to Simplify Everything

Mistakes – Antidote to Perfectionism

Nine Lessons I Learned on Road to First Grade

Love’s Labor; my SoulShirt™ Process and Surprise Effects – Part 3 of 3