My favorite moments during my days at the Heidelberg Clinic are when I go down to the lobby with my mom and sit at a little table by the window with my sketchbook. She talks to me about what's on her mind and I sketch and listen occasionally adding my advise or opinion. I'm not a very good painter and I always struggled in art class. However, I always considered it one of my strong interests and passions and over the years I've developed a very therapeutic relationship with it. During stressful times in college and challenging times with my health in the past I've used music and visual art as a strong outlet. It always puts me in a very specific mental place that is a combination of utter mindfulness and trance. I am 100% present, but not in the here and now that I was before. The context is different. My thoughts become transparent and my surroundings become irrelevant. So it was no surprise that my friends immediately purchased a sketchbook and coloring pencils for me when they came to visit and now I spend a little bit every day in a reality that is very much related to the present and yet holds a different existence for me. Cancer is not a definitive heavy state of being during those moments - it becomes art. I can paint it, I can give it colors and forms and I can change my relationship to it entirely. My tumor isn't a mysterious cell group trying to take over my body, but a flower that has died and I can tear from its roots. Chemo isn't a poison flowing through my veins killing good and evil equally, but a vine growing through my body spreading fruit and new life. I can change the dialogue with my disease entirely in those moments which is why creating art has become so important for my mental wellbeing. It's a constant positive reinforcement that I can actually see and control. Control might be the key word to pinpoint my dedication to this habit. In art I am the creator and I control the fate of the painting and how it's supposed to make me feel, which is exactly what I crave when facing cancer; to take back some form of control. If I can create a space (even if it's only a creative space) in which I can change the context of my cancer and reinforce a positive relationship with my body, then I am actively battling my condition and sending myself consistent messages of self-healing.
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AuthorI'm carla. My friends think I'm a superhuman and will change the world and right now I'm battling lung cancer and I'm trying to keep you all updated. (Friends are currently writing this - carla really is a superhuman) Archives
March 2017
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