This story is very personal and close to my heart. It’s about grief, illness and loss, but also about how creativity became my way back to myself.
In 2023, my life changed drastically. In the months leading up to summer, my 5-year relationship ended and I moved back in with my parents. I was heartbroken and lost. I had to rethink my future and find a way to heal.
Those four months back at home with my parents, spending every day with them, playing music, watching Sopranos, eating delicious foods and going on our daily walks: just letting them take care of me and embracing creativity with me, is now one of the most precious times in my life.
In that same year at the end of September, when I was about to move into my new tiny home, my dad's legs stopped working overnight. He had been coping with backpain for all of his adult life already and the last couple of weeks it was showing up in a different place. But we figured it was just his 'normal' injury. It was now clear it was not. After an intense night he got taken into the hospital to go to the emergency post the next day.
Then my mom called me and I already knew my life was about to change in a way I wasn't sure I could handle. It turned out my dad had tumors in his back, pressing onto his spinal cord. It would take another two months of spending everyday in the hospital to figure out that next to this spinal cord injury, he also would have Kahler disease (bone marrow and blood cancer).
We are now two years later and still riding that same rollercoaster, going in and out of treatment, taking it day by day. Grateful for the time we still have together.
Creating Through Grief: How Art Helped Me Heal
Grief has a strange way of softening and sharpening life all at once. It slows you down, blurs your focus and makes everything painfully clear. The same small things that can set you off one day, won't even be important enough the other day. When my dad got sick and in the months that followed, I couldn’t quite put into words what was happening inside me. Everything I felt seemed too big, too raw and too fragile to explain. Daily routines were absurd to me. What do you mean we still have to eat dinner tonight and I'm now looking at tomato soups for my mom and me to eat after that first day in the hospital? What do you mean we need to do laundry?
So instead of trying to talk about it, I turned to the one thing that has always helped me find my way back to myself: painting.
When Words Fall Short: Finding Solace in Art
During that time, my sketchbook became a quiet place to land. I didn’t open it to make something beautiful, I opened it to breathe and to release. Some days I only made a few marks, other days I painted over everything I had done before. There was something incredibly freeing in that. I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone, not even to myself. I could just let the paint say what I couldn’t.
My sketchbook didn't ask me how I was holding up, how my dad was doing, how my brother was feeling and how my mom could find the strength to keep it all together. My paints didn't look at me as I was a sick puppy in need of help. My brushes didn't tell me 'call me if you need anything', they just stroked my paint and held my hands.
Grief has its own rhythm and I found that creativity somehow moves in the same unpredictable way. Both ask you to surrender control and just be where you are. Both need acceptance, courage and openness.
How Grief Changed My Creative Process
Before everything happened, I'm not sure I thought of myself as a real artist. I didn't go to art school and maybe these paintings I was making in my studio still felt like more of a hobby. To compensate that, I think I tried to think about my work: colors were thought out, compositions considered. But grief stripped that away completely. I started painting based on what I was feeling and I looked less to the real world. Probably because the actual world wasn't a very nice place for me to be in. Painting wasn’t about the results anymore, it just became about showing up. Something I now say often in my workshops 'all you needed to do today is show up and you did'.
My sketchbook turned into something between a diary and a mirror. I could see what I was feeling without having to name it. It was my emotional release, but also helped me understand what I was actually feeling. Some pages still carry that quiet heaviness. Others have the first signs of light and hope returning.
Art as a Space to Feel Without Explaining
The beautiful thing about painting through grief is that it gives you permission to feel without needing to explain it. You can pour something out on the page and not have to understand it right away. There’s a deep relief in that kind of expression, it's freedom is one of the truest gifts to yourself.
It’s not about skill, or outcome, or even art in the traditional sense. It’s simply about allowing. I realized that so many of my paintings from that time were more like emotional landscapes, changing day by day and helping me stay where I was and not jump months ahead out of fear.
It is because of these painting sessions that I could still do my daily necessities: go to work, take care of myself, join my boxing lessons and just try to not let go of that possibility to feel joy again. Even though I wasn't feeling anything close to it yet.
I remember hearing Nick Cave talk about the loss of his two sons, how after such loss and such grief, you can even feel more joy later on. I fully understand that now and have held those words so close to my heart. I noticed emotions were unlocked that I didn't have access to before. The deeper you feel sadness, the bigger your feeling of joy can be if you work through it. Like in painting, contrasts and complementary colours enhance each other.
Processing Grief Through Intuitive Painting
Looking back, I can see that those pieces are some of the most honest things I’ve ever made. They’re imperfect, raw, sometimes unfinished and that’s exactly what makes them beautiful to me now. I wasn’t trying to make sense of anything; I was just trying to stay connected to myself and not lose myself into destructive emotions like anger, resentment, guilt, sadness and hopelessness.
I think that’s what creativity in hard times really is: a reminder that you’re still here, still feeling, still creating, even when life feels broken open and you are going through your days like an open nerve.
Healing Through Small Acts of Creation With Art Therapy
Healing doesn't happen in one big breakthrough. It happens in tiny, quiet ways. A few brushstrokes in the evening after work. Mixing colors that feel soft to look at. Sitting down with a cup of decaf and a half-finished page. There was no pressure for me to make it good, only to make it. And that still goes for today.
If you’re moving through grief, I truly believe small creative acts can help you find solid ground again. You don’t need hours in a studio or expensive materials. You just need a quiet moment for yourself to make, to feel and to release. Art can hold what words can’t. In that time I had a studio I could go to, but I didn't have the energy to actually do it. Honestly? All my work from that time has been made either at my small kitchen table or while laying on my couch surrounded by my art supplies, in a messy house, while watching really bad reality TV. But, I still showed up, I still created something almost daily. Something I'm so proud of myself for doing, I didn't give up on myself.
Letting Light Back In
Somewhere along the way, without even noticing it, I started introducing more color. Accepting that I wanted more colour around me and that the beige era was not made for me. I brought in more energy in my work. More life. The grief was still there, it still is everyday, but it no longer took up all the space. Through painting, I learned that healing doesn’t mean erasing what hurts. It doesn't mean 'cover it all up' and hide it under a new layer. It means learning to carry it differently. Layer it and make it part of the work.
Whatever you’re feeling, wherever you are in your own process, I hope you can find something creative that helps you breathe again. It doesn’t have to be painting. It just has to be something that is for you and for you only. It has saved me again and again, it might do the same for you.
