How did I get here?

I am sitting in a staff meeting somewhere in 2016-2017 at the group counseling practice that I am a mental health therapist at. There is an awkward marketing conversation happening as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is beginning to make a difference in the world of getting found. Most everyone in the room has no idea what this is, me included. The leader of our discussion is asking each of us to write something to be shared on our website to increase traffic, interests, perspectives, specialty knowledge.  We are asked to give a short blurb and a longer 500-ish word paragraph.  These are things we never covered in grad school that’s for sure.

Right now, I am sure you are thinking you somehow landed in the wrong place, why is this lady talking about counseling instead of Art? I know, what happened next was just as much of a surprise to me as it was to the counselors I was surrounded by at that staff meeting.  When I sat down to write I had about 25 years of experience as a therapist, I could have chosen over a dozen topics.  But what came out, that very first tidbit, was the following quote.  “True beauty, not the high gloss, high fashion, air brushed kind, but true beauty has a way about it. It stills, it restores, I think it even redeems. Think of this, your beautiful spouse tucking her hair absent mindedly behind her ear, or a father’s gentle way with his sleeping child, and the silent swirls of a peaceful blooming rose. True beauty has a way of almost making me hold my breath or lose it. And I seek it for its nourishment, hungrily.” Yep, those were the words this therapist wrote on a therapy website.  Have you ever done something and then observed yourself with curiosity and pondered on yourself and what that thing may mean. This was one of those curious moments for me, a chance to listen to my inner voice and follow a thread.

You see, I was in a difficult season then.  Late in December 2015, my brother who was just 41 at the time, had a sudden health crisis and died after just a few days in the hospital after falling into a coma.  Losing a sibling is different than losing a parent or other relative. And watching someone be removed from life support and die is not for the faint of heart.  The heaviest of those details are for another day, but it was in this time, deep in grief, waking and sleeping in hospital chairs, that I found myself staring out a window at a frozen winter sunrise that I decided to take one picture each day, one moment of looking away from what was broken and painful, and take a picture of something beautiful. That began a journey with me and beauty as a therapeutic pause.  I did this for at least the next two years as my sweet sister-in-law followed my brother 13 months later, both gone too soon left much sorrow and scaring on my heart.  They left my 21-year-old nephew, who was lost at best in this season, unprepared to grow up so very fast in those months, and me trying to navigate some form of parenting withou taking someone’s place. It seemed everything, everywhere was heavy and hard.  I had only known one other time in my life when things were so hard.  When I was in college, I faced a season with lots of personal struggles and the things that made a difference for me were nature and my art classes. (I found out later I was only a few credits shy of an art minor during that time.)

So, I embarked once again on a path of looking away.  I have been creative my whole life, drawing cartoons as a child, drawing clothing designs as a teen, I have painted in oil and acrylic, and done black and white photography that had me crawling through waist deep snow in a Midwest winter just to get the right angle on a fencepost in snowdrifts. I draw and doodle in every training I have ever been in.  I have crafted enough wooden hearts to sell, made firecrackers out of cuts of wood and designed a home that is warm and welcoming even if it is small.  “Looking away” is how I have thought about balance in my professional life for decades.  I sometimes guest lecture as a therapist in college classes and one thing I am often asked is how did I do this hard job and not burn out? The short answer is balance, but the longer answer is a well-crafted habit of looking away, taking perspective and in my personal faith journey, trusting that God is in control and I am not.  That allows me to look away, but then I also must have something to look toward.  Increasingly that became some kind of artistic practice.

After an incredible season of grief and loss, I felt like I was coming up for air and had been thinking about this idea of looking away, finally having some energy to do something about it.  I toyed with writing a book, but as much as I like to write, it isn’t my first choice.  I was scrolling one night waiting for it to cool down in the house after sunset, and I stumbled across an ad for a watercolor class for $19. I agreed so quickly that I later questioned whether my online purchase was secure.  I have always admired watercolor, it has this dreamy, diffused quality to it that makes me think of fairytales and Narnia, where another place is just hidden out of reach, but I had never really done anything myself in watercolor. It didn’t take me more than a couple lessons and I was hooked, the way the color moved and flowed led me straight into my right brain.  I found myself losing time, burning dinners and forgetting my coffee cup in the microwave because I was painting, and after years of grief it felt like having held your breath underwater just a little longer than you should have and coming up to gulps of sweet air.

At 51, this began a significant shift in how I thought about my future.  I reasoned that if I committed to this practice now, by the time I retired, (think 10,000 hours) I may be good enough to sell some art in retirement. But as I spent time, skill came faster than I expected.  I was making cards for friends and family to rave reviews. I set goals like painting every weekend. I began exploring the world of fine art pigments and falling in love with the magic of watercolor. It blends and bleeds and takes on a life of its own. Many artists don’t like that, it is hard to control watercolor, one almost needs to follow it rather than control it. One of my favorite online artists that I follow, Kristy Rice, says you must surrender to it. And what a surrender it is,maybe even a sacred act.  Somewhere in that surrender I began to think of myself as an artist more than a creative. I had always said I was creative but didn’t say artist because no art form had ever held my attention for a very long time.  But this was different, I could paint for days and often daydream about what to paint next.  My day job has shifted to running on autopilot after all these years. My new focus is painting.

So, I started an Instagram page and last year I got brave and build a business platform that I could begin to grow and maybe make back a little of what I was spending on art supplies for this hobby of mine. I began posting paintings online, showing some of my ideas and last summer, 2025 I made a simple painting of some snapdragons that I got at the farmer’s market and decided to give it to the woman who ran the flower stall. What good is making beautiful things if you can’t give some of it away?  She was so excited she said she would sell cards if I had any. Meanwhile, I am posting and in general just enjoying myself, not thinking too much about this as a business when friends began demanding to buy things from me and one friend’s mom (now my biggest fan, I think) actually commissioned a piece based on a floral painting of California poppies in the grass under a moody sky that I did.

This is named “Oh the Orange!” after the way people responded when they first saw it.

At about the same time, an artist I had been following since a local show in 2024 reached out and invited me to be in the show that I had seen her in. I had followed her and she followed back of course, and she had been watching my art develop. I was to be the “emerging artist” on the panel. I was gobbsmaked! Not only was this a show, but there was an artist panel on the opening night with all the participating artists talking about how Art and Place impact our neighborhoods. I couldn’t believe it, I was only two years into this practice, and I was in a show?!!  I didn’t sell anything that night, but my heart was so full of joy I felt giddy like a schoolgirl. I was so intrigued that I applied to a second show locally here in Colorado and had three paintings in the show and two of them sold! So, I guess now I am not waiting for retirement.  I paint whenever I can, currently I am doing a daily painting challenge in a small sketchbook most of it isn’t great, but I am a big believer in making bad art to make good art.  I’ll write more about that in the future, I am sure.

But that my friends is how this therapist became an artist one warm night in August.  I hope you’ll come along for the ride and join me in the most fun looking away.