Art is Medicine
(Trigger Warning: some of the stories in this post deal with trauma. All of them focus on overcoming.)
In July 2024, Athena asked artists, staff members, supporters and fans to share personal moments of #HealingthroughtheArts.
These are moments when the arts empower mental, physical or spiritual healing in a person’s life. Our intention was to celebrate the arts as well as our Athena community and to highlight some of the special reasons why we are all here, doing the good work. We were deeply moved by both: the surprisingly high number of shares that came in and how intimately everyone revealed themselves in their transformative art encounters. A big thank you to all contributors!
Also listen to our “Healing with Hamlet” podcast and visit the “Healing with Hamlet Interview” to follow along with the podcast.
If you haven’t shared your story of healing yet, you are still welcome to do so with the help of our Healing through the Arts Survey.
Healing through the Arts original artwork: Kim Krueger
All images in this blog post courtesy of the respective author. AI was used in the creation of two images for shares that came without photo.
It was beyond challenging keeping two little ones home, away from the life they once knew and enjoyed. Oh, how we took for granted a day at the museum, a dive into a ball pit, slide rides at the park! Between navigating online kindergarten for my son and endlessly searching for sensory activities for my pre-k aged daughter, I realized I had something in my back pocket. Something valuable.
I had a theatre degree.
My kids and I had drama classes where we made up our own scripts, performed in our own puppet shows, choreographed our own dances, designed our own costumes, composed our own music. Our world was completely shut down, but we made our world a stage. It not only got us through all the fear and uncertainty, it gave us purpose and pride knowing that all we needed to get through the days was our imagination, our creativity, the arts, and each other … okay, and also snacks. Lots of snacks.”
“My husband at 39 years old was diagnosed with cancer in January of 2013.
Treatments were not successful and he was sent home on hospice in June. I was invited to a reflective art night and we drew pictures meditating on milestones and roadblocks in life. I took a canvas that my mother had primed for a painting and started drawing and talking with Steve as he was in bed. I wrote words and our experiences into the canvas as he talked with me, sometimes all through the night.
Steve passed in July and I continue to make art that reflects the joy he brought to me and the relationship we had. I just started a piece that uses many of the medical papers that I kept for far too long, and though I don’t grieve painfully daily, I live with the grief of his loss every day. The creation of something beautiful is an essential part of letting the pain of grief diminish.
Green was Steve’s favorite color and represents life, and the rainbow represents the promise that he passed on into God’s loving arms.”
– Ami Hall Patra from Littleton, Colorado
While in this meditative state, my mind fills with ideas about what I would like to say: The positive effect of waste awareness through thousands of roses made from recycled materials? A collaboration with nature to showcase its beauty through iridescent beetle boxes and beetle jewelry? Continue working on yesterday’s failure as part of today’s invention?
Making art isn’t just vehemently slathering paint on a canvas, it is also quietly visualizing the psyche and listening to your internal dialogue to later unleash artistic expression. After an idea and its message (of what I would like to say) returns again and again during my art yoga, I begin creating it within a week.”
– Teresa Castaneda from Denver, Colorado
“Words have always been my mistress, my escape, my rescue.
At first, reading fiction provided windows into new worlds far from my childhood disconnect and trauma. Then I was obsessed with lyrics written on album inserts by singer-songwriters. I began collecting my favorite lines and keeping a journal of them. On days when my young heart crumbled, I’d reread those lines until the warm breath of inspiration dried my tears. Then I found Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Stephen Sondheim, Maya Angelou, and Dan Fogelberg as my first gateway poets. My collection of brilliant lines multiplied.
Soon I was rearranging the lines to make found poems of my own. Inspired by Carole King’s Tapestry album, I began writing songs. A new journal was started of lines and I became a poet – a secret poet who never showed anyone my words. In the lockdown of 2020, my childhood secrecy ended, and I submitted poems into the world. Why not? I thought. Four years later, several individual poems have been published by various journals, and my first chapbook was recently accepted.
Reading poetry has been a daily habit since I was 10 years old. I write one for every 300-500 I read. The writing comes when I need healing. I write to express or understand strong feelings. Even when the poems are shiny shit (as one coach called my early efforts), the healing happens. I save the better ones and crumple the others, honor the truths within them all, and go back to reading.”
– Pamela Nocerino from Erie, Colorado
“I teach a Mindfulness and Arts class and I was working with a woman who is a breast cancer survivor for about a year using this combination. She was working to transform a tendency to worry about the future and being unable to settle in the present moment. She particularly loved the slow stitching or stitch meditations that we did. She told me the process had helped ground her in the present moment and she was able to release long held fears about her cancer returning.”
– Elizabeth Stanbro from Colorado Springs, Colorado
Elizabeth’s Mindfulness and Arts class incorporates Drawing or Mark-Making meditation and various Fiber Arts processes like weaving, stitching and wrapping. All the processes involve repetitive, rhythmic motions that anchor the participants in the present moment like traditional meditation would, using breath. She incorporates thematic meditations that enhance mindfulness in daily life. Feel free to get in touch and book a class at: [email protected]
“When I first started drawing, it was difficult to create an image that was representative of my imagination. Though I enjoyed coloring as a young child, it was in high school that I decided to pursue art. Art became a form of meditation for me. But that’s not the story I want to share here.
Back in 2015, I stumbled upon the incredible impact of Music Therapy while working at a nursing home. Initially, I used those sessions to catch up on paperwork, with the therapist keeping the door closed. Curiosity got the best of me, so I finally asked to sit in on a class. What I witnessed was truly moving: non-verbal patients found their voices, and those in wheelchairs danced with such joy. The music brought everyone together, turning individual contributions into a beautiful, unified song.
Inspired by what I saw, I began incorporating more music into our activities—like weekly happy hours, special events, and Sunday hymns. During the tough times of COVID-19, music became essential for connecting with isolated patients. But the most powerful moment for me was singing “Ol’ Rugged Cross” to a patient in their final hours. It wasn’t just therapy anymore; music became a way to comfort and connection during a very personal and emotional time.
This journey with Music Therapy opened doors to exploring other non-traditional forms of arts, like crafting and even cooking. Each one showed me how arts can truly heal and strengthen resilience among those we care for.
These experiences have shaped my belief in the profound ability of the arts to heal, connect, and inspire—a belief that continues to guide my path both professionally and personally.”
– Jasmine Schwarz from Windsor, Colorado
“In 2003, I was cast in a production of “The Trip to Bountiful”. At that same time in my life, my husband and I were also in the process of trying to adopt a baby girl.
We were still in the rehearsal process, when I received a phone call with the life shattering news that the adoption had failed and my plan for raising this baby girl as my daughter was not going to happen. My emotions told me to crawl into bed and weep and never face the real world again. My sense of loyalty and commitment told me, “The show must go on.” I continued to go to rehearsals and performances. I won’t downplay the role that my loving and supportive husband, family, church, and close friends played in my emotional support and healing, but being in that show gave me reason to get up, get out, and do something meaningful that fed my soul.
The amazing full circle of this story happened nearly six months later when I was once again reprising the same production of The Trip to Bountiful for the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition Festival. It was during this time in my life that my husband and I received a phone call with the best news that the baby boy we were adopting had been born, and that we could go meet him and bring him home from the hospital. We got our son. Then, I went on stage and performed the show for the CCTC Festival. When the Festival was over, I was awarded the Best Actress Award.
A baby son and a best actress award in the span of one-week. Theatre is definitely therapy, and theatre heals. This has been true for me in my life.”
– Lisa Kraai from Littleton, Colorado
Follow Lisa on Instagram at @dramama2019
“About a year and a half after giving birth to our first child, I started an art series to work through my experience with post-partum depression.
Then I found out–surprise!–I was expecting our second child. I was terrified of repeating those dark days, and my art took on an urgency. That series developed into the deepest, rawest, most vulnerable works I’ve ever made. I’d been in therapy to work through it, but creating those visuals to communicate the feelings was my impetus for healing.
After exhibiting that series (a week after giving birth to our second child) I put them away, thinking it might hurt to look at them again, but every time I see them I feel empowered and strong for making it through those dark, dark days.”
– Sarah Tenney from Denver, Colorado
Follow Sarah on Instagram at @SarahTenneyArt
My oncologist spoke to the audience after the play and he cried. He told me I got it all right. He framed a poster, and it hangs in his office now. It also was done at the Valdez theatre conference where everybody cried. I beat the cancer and I give a lot of the credit to having the grit to face it and write about it.”
– Laura Pfizenmayer from Gulf Shores, Alabama
My characters became more complex and, as they began working through their own series of unique struggles and issues, I found myself doing the same. Art gave me the confidence to face struggles that I had previously found myself running from. It created a safe space for me to do some introspective thinking and helped me find a community of friends and mentors that nurtured me as I grew up. Even now, as an adult who mostly has their shit together, art still acts as an escape from reality for me.”
“My moment to share? This moment. Right now. Being asked to describe a moment where art has made a healing, or otherwise large impact on me allows me to go back through my memories. My core belief about art and why I am an artist is because I believe art saves lives. My entire journey with my art practice has been profound, there are so many moments that have shaped and shifted me and my life …”
– D Garrett from Denver, Colorado
Discover her art on Instagram at @dzworx
As I have grown, specifically after going to therapy for the first time in 2018 or 2019, I have realized that I do not need to be depressed or manic to create art. It has shifted from something I do because I need it, to something I do because I want it. This shift has significantly impacted the type of art I create, as I no longer fear picking up a new medium with the potential of failure. I no longer feel the need to create art that shows my emotions, I can now create art around the things that I love and my goals in life.”
– Leone the Artist from Longmont, CO
Discover her art on Instagram @LEONEtheartist
Meaning, since starting out as an Athena staff member, I’ve become aware of the clashing opinions about gender diversity. About what genuine inclusion looks like and whether the causes of assigned-at-birth women can align with those of the trans and nonbinary communities – or not. (Spoiler: at Athena they always do!) I’ve seen fear and hatred online, attacks from various camps on each other along gender philosophy lines. My head’s been exploding.
And so. I decided to stop talking about “underrepresented genders” and to listen to them instead. At the Athena-booked Tuesday Summer Social Concert with Uncle Meg. Something happened between the cool grass, Uncle Meg’s irresistible voice and the presence of co-workers and listeners in all their diversity. I relaxed. And remembered that THAT is the only place in our bodies and minds where we find our answers.
We all did Polaroid selfies for Uncle Meg. My colleagues shared their gender journeys and optimism with me. The hollyhocks popped. Tomorrow is another day to heal the gender divides. Let’s do so by listening more.”
– Marion Kleinschmidt from Wheat Ridge, Colorado
By writing about tough experiences you bear witness to yourself. Even if nobody was there to watch what happened, you affirm that younger version of yourself: I saw that, I was there with you. It was hard. In my writing and directing practices, I began exploring themes of consent and sexual violence – because I never felt represented in existing stories of this kind. I have had to, in a cool and transgressive way, identify publicly as a survivor of sexual violence, because I am one. Every time I put those words down, there’s the possibility that even one person could come up and say: “Wow, I saw my story in your story, and I feel affirmed that my story actually happened.”
The young artists I work with, often of marginalized identities, tend to say: I don’t see my type in movies and plays. So, it must mean that I don’t belong. But that’s exactly why you have to keep making work, because you’re NOT the only one who’s like you. It’s time to stop letting the dominant narratives dictate how we feel about ourselves and start taking up space as the weirdos and beautiful warriors of tomorrow.”
– Olivia Buntaine from Denver, Colorado
Olivia Buntaine | Website
Project Nongenue
Listen to the extended “Healing with Hamelt” podcast version of this story and visit the “Healing with Hamlet Interview” to follow along with the podcast.