Handing Dogma Over to Questioning

Dogma wraps us safely in our stories of certainty. But it restricts us from the critical reflections we need - and are responsible for - to evolve ourselves and our interactions with the world.

When we sculpt a story that we’ve assigned ourselves, and held onto so tightly, out into the visual we create the opportunity to interact with it as its own living, breathing, complex organism, rather than an abstract set of concepts locked up away from sight.

As we face it, fiddle with it, speak to it, taste it, we allow for a dialogue that is open for meaningful deconstruction and construction. 

We hand dogma over to questioning.

Not only can this unraveling profoundly destabilise the story’s grip and credibility, but it invites possibility into what could be released and nurtured in its place.

What dogmatic story of yours needs handing over to questioning?

It Hurts to Be Present

‘It hurts to be present.’ - Marie Howe

Here's the thing..

The self-inquiry process is not always a pretty one.
Questioning our stories is a weighty task. It is no 'happy pill' and nor should we always burden the process, and ourselves, with that expectation.

Not everything we create and communicate will be beautiful, because not everything we experience is beautiful. If anything, I find the art therapy process to be expansive in how it acknowledges our complexities, our nuances, our gaps, our multitudes, and how it holds space for those parts of us to breathe.

With expansiveness and growth, however, comes a grinding of edges and an unsettling of our ideas of who we think we are.
It can happen in the gentle whispers of willow charcoal against the paper, it can happen in the kneading of clay, it can happen in the wide shoulder swings of splashing ink, it can happen in your breathing to endure, it can happen after you've left the room.

The therapeutic process won't dissolve your struggles and challenges. But my hope is that it helps bring language to the mess, the tough, the hurt and the falling apart.

At times, to simply utter our truth can be the start to healing.

The Task of the Writer

‘The task of the writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.’
- Anton Chekhov

As a practitioner, daughter, sister, friend and colleague, this is something I strive for.

So many times we are convinced we know the shape of the issue we’re facing, armed and ready to start chipping away at it.

We need that person who is willing to sit with us and question the layers of our older voices and convictions that have mutated this experience into something else - Something it isn’t.

Until we can learn to question ourselves.