Someone Lived In This House

‘Someone lived in this house before me.’


To be able to recognise our voice from the voices of others that have lodged in our bodies. 
To unbraid/untangle our knowing from those we inherited from generations passed. 
Means to be able to sit with these voices and learnings long enough to tell the difference - what is mine and what isn't?

Much of our shame, our interpretations, our prejudices, our sadness and our anger are lessons carried through uninterrupted cycles of behaviours and responses - from our mothers, our fathers, our ancestors, our communities and the systems we live in.

What are we dragging along? 
What are we passing on? 
What needs to be uncovered?
What needs to be unlearned?
What can we do without?

What needs to be felt and known, for this house to become your home?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Art Therapy?

An invitation to yourself.
An acknowledgment and embracing of complexity.
A creative, physical, sensorial engagement into experience.
A curious, challenging and strengthening exploration into your narratives.
A making of space to feel.
An opportunity for unlearning.


What are the benefits of Art Therapy?

Increases our awareness to current perspectives of who we are.
Provides opportunities to generate new perspectives of who we can become.
Allows for emotional release, relaxation, strengthening, soothing and regulation.
Helps make sense of our feelings and physical responses to an experience.
Offers opportunities to engage with our experiences through language, imagery, texture and bodily senses.
Acknowledges the nuances of our being, beyond the contours of what is visible, into the interiors of what is felt and noticed.

Fore more on the benefits of Art Therapy, click here.
 

What does an Art Therapist do?

Create space where we both feel safe to explore, share and question.
Bring you back to this moment we’re in.
Facilitate your curiosity into your experience.
Be your companion as you make, explore, get stuck, slow down, stop and move on.
Witness your choices, and your physical and emotional responses – known and unknown to you.
Offer observations and responses to what emerges.
Collaborate with you in realizing alternative ways of being.
 

What happens in an Art Therapy session?

Co-creating meaningful, strengthening, healing space.
Questioning stories we tell ourselves.
Experimenting with creative expression.
At times I will suggest material for you. At times you will decide.
Tuning into our physical senses.
Noticing how emotions inhabit our bodies.


Why would I use Art Therapy?

To slow down and inhabit this very moment you’re in.
To notice things about how you move through the world beyond your rehearsed story of it.
To make space for whatever needs to surface and be acknowledged.
To deepen and develop a multi-dimensional understanding of an experience or behavior that might not be formulated adequately through the spoken word.
To strengthen what is already well and health within you.
To become curious in how you physically, mentally and emotionally experience things through the tools of your body.
To experiment and explore different ways of being you might not yet be able to embody.
To ask better questions of yourself­, your experience and of others.
To generate new ways of being in an experience, with others and with yourself.
 

Do I need to be good at art?

No.
In my practice, all art expression is valuable. The point is to become mindful and observant of your internal processes during the making, not to produce finished pieces.
There is meaning in the making.


What happens to the artworks?

The options are discussed with you. The artworks can be:
Stored with me.
Kept with you - if you feel it safe to do so.
Discarded if you desire - although my preference is to keep them for reflection!
Worked on the next time we meet.
Archived and shared with other practitioners or clients - with your permission.


Who is Art Therapy for?

Anyone wanting to:
Utilise past experiences to generate new forms of self-expression.
Unpack difficult experiences through safe and controlled art forms.
Restore and strengthen their emotional resilience.
Create new pathways and patterns to integrate into their day to day living.
Change and improve how they relate to self and others.
Resolve conflicts, solve problems and formulate new perceptions.
Welcoming people of all races, genders, sexualities, faiths, abilities and classes.

A Muslim Client & A White Therapist

I was a Muslim client seeing a white therapist.

Being a practitioner who is a person of colour from a minority background in a majority white field, creating and offering therapeutic spaces to people of colour is an intention I'm mindful of.

At different stages of my life, I knew to seek the help and expertise of those in the mental health field. But - none of them looked like me or came from a similar cultural, spiritual, social or political understanding.

My experiences with these psychologists weren't necessarily negative, but the experiential divide between us - how differently we both moved through the world- meant they weren't always well-fitting or at ease. The anxiety I had from fear of judgement meant I needed to work through more layers on top of the actual issues that needed addressing. Plus, switching psychologists was energy consuming and costly.

I didn't want to self-censor because I worried I'd be affirming some racist stereotype of my cultural background.
I didn't want to have to explain that my family viewed things differently but that it didn't make them inferior or 'less than'.
I didn't want the burden of regurgitating defences against my religious upbringing because I needed to be some good-vibes ambassador to the faith and to the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world.
I didn't want to have to prove that I had a right to a complex, multi-dimensional, individual way of being that is easily granted to any white person who sits here.

And neither should you.

Finding a therapist you can connect with can be hard to find. And this isn't to say you will only feel comfortable with a therapist who shares your background - because heck that too can come with it's own set of pressures. But if you can, find someone who you can have a good and dignified experience with regardless. Someone willing to do the work towards creating that 'safe' space by questioning and educating themselves - on their own time. As a practitioner, I'm hoping to be that too.

Women on the Forefront

Women are at the forefront of some of the most important exchanges for the sake of our communities.


These are women called upon for damage control every time the media releases an inflammatory piece on racialised communities.
Women who undertake intellectual and emotional labour - for FREE - to educate students, professionals, authorities and ministers.
Women who shoulder the responsibilities of nurturing the youth in hostile sociopolitical environments; creating spaces, teaching at community schools and organising camps.
Women who go back home to care for families and friends.

My question is this:

Where is the place of women’s wellness and wellbeing in community work?


What are the avenues where women can restore themselves and attend to their wellbeing without the guilt of ‘selfishness’ - before going back out there and burning out again and again?

A Creative Bone in My Body

‘I don’t have a creative bone in my body…’


We worry about presenting a ‘finished product’ of anything we do, including ourselves. Moving along, we realize (hopefully) the significance of process – the actual doing. A finished artwork can hold volumes about an experience we want to represent. But the process of making is equally – if not more - revealing of our internal structures.

How are we choosing the materials we’re making with?
Are we hesitant or are we impulsive with our decisions?
What reactions do we have towards our work along the way?
What happens to our emotional state from when we first started to when we finished?

There is meaning in the making.

The Role of Rebellion

Imagination plays a significant role in the therapeutic process.

To construct a different way of being means to break away from what may be a corrosive present while daring to move into an expansive vision of our future selves and lives.

It's a process that needs rebellion to be nurtured within us.


A push back against the stories we tell ourselves - sometimes the voices of others - that stifle the transformations we need and are capable of. The therapeutic relationship formed over time creates space for this imagination to breathe.

Your preferred way of being has a chance to be practiced, adjusted, supported and strengthened before you bring it into relationships outside the therapy room.

A Different Approach

Things reveal themselves differently when you approach them differently.


The process of art-making encourages you to expand your experience of an event beyond a single form of expression and provide a richer understanding of it.

In an Art Therapy session, what you once defined as ‘good versus bad’ with words, might reveal itself as deeply interconnected with braided threads of wool.

A simple art-based activity not only enhances your understanding of an experience, but also shapes what your next step could look like.

Hunting for What is Still Not There

This is no easy pursuit
Hunting for what is still not there
Each time rebuilding
On barren land
Ground up
At times
Confident and sturdy
At times
Frail and discouraged
Repeated motions
The pieces keep tumbling apart
Working my way through a hopeful language
“I’ll know better next time”

Working sculpturally was one of the surprises Art Therapy offered me


In my previous work as a graphic artist my work tended to mostly be 2-dimensional with interactive elements with the viewer. But in the therapeutic context, I always needed more depth. More complexity. More spatial texture. More inside pulling out, outside dropping in.

Sculpture was a language I needed to explore my experience.

This piece was exploring my physical and mental experience of saying ‘No’ in the context of an unhealthy relationship. I had no direction starting out. I went through piles of photographs and texts ripped out from old books. Texts on ‘Hunting’ and images of trees and land stood out for me.
From there I began building and layering. A physical building up for the sake of mentally and emotionally breaking things down.

The sculpture collapsed many times during the process. It spoke to my actual experience of resistance. It was fragile, unsure and unfamiliar.

The falling apart matters just as importantly as the putting together, you see..

All the Materials

There's a reason I offer as much variety of art materials as I can.

‘Emotional granularity' is a term I came across a few years ago that has been with me since.
It is the ability to describe your emotional state with precision. Or rather 'granular' precision. A skill that enables you to have a finer grasp of your experience, and in turn opens up a clearer set of choices and tools you can adopt to move through and move on.

Rather than lumping our emotions into one word that rids our experience of its depth and intricacy, we'd be able to dissect and discern what this experience is creating within us and as such have a deeper sense of what we need to counter, or hold, or act upon.
Our choices of action when we're feeling vaguely 'angry' will be different than if we were feeling 'ashamed', 'disempowered' or 'afraid'.

Offering a range of art materials aligns with wanting to assist my clients in finding what closely resembles and reflects their emotional state, potentially reaching that sense of accuracy.

Through the materials, we try to meet our experience as close as we can.


And many times, we're surprised.

Is it rough?
Tangled. Abrasive. Smooth. Malleable. Hard. Soft. Resistant. Ticklish. Flowing. Unyielding. Heavy. Still. Restraining. Messy. Bright. Fragile. Opaque. Seeping. Wet. Sharp. Loose. Rigid. Residual. Dull. Tight. Reflective. Uncontrollable. Soothing. Leaking. Suffocating. Transparent. Encompassing.

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.

Revealing the Internalised

What happens to you when you don’t want to let anyone down?
What happens, when you try to hold it all together?
What happens, when you can’t say ‘No’?

So much about how we internalise certain experiences reveals itself in the process of making. Even more so than the finished product itself.

What choice of material do we go with? What do we leave out?
What physical process do we engage?
Do we shove in? Do we rip apart?
What kind of energy are you feeding into your artwork?
Is the object light? Or does it get heavier as you go?

‘The wire altering its shape to allow room for what’s forced in.
Pieces contorted to fit in.
Parts protruding out.
Testing limits.
The more I pushed in, the more I forgot what were in the inner layers.’

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.

Receiving Touch

To find and to receive touch as a form of nourishment against the mindlessness, the carelessness and the neglect we impose on our body is no ordinary find.

I neglected my body. I ignored my body. I was careless with my body.
I tried to fit it into the narrowness that I was made to believe about myself. The contours of my body altered as it was caving in. I held so much within me, yet my body was hollow.

I always had what it took to offer my body to others - in service, in love, in work, in presence. But I didn't have it in me to offer it what it needed. 'I can't nourish you at this moment' was a dialog that lasted for months.

And yet, something in me knew I needed to seek touch. A kind other than what I was allowing it. Something to trigger the senses back into connection. Something to remind me, to confront myself, to make me fall back into this being as a whole, and not as severed parts.

A vigorous massage.
A bloodied piercing - even pain can feel glorious to a numbed-out body.
A friend quietly finding possibility within the wounds through henna.

Your whole body is voice. Find someone who can find that voice in the moments you can't.

Re-introducing Ourselves

‘The most memorable part was seeing a deeper side to my friends.’
- Group participant K.


I've been facilitating groups in varying contexts for close to 8 years now. It has always been a teacher to me to listen better, ask more, see wider, and look closely.

There is room for POSSIBILITY - hearing how others cope with the issues you might be facing.
There is room for NUANCE - addressing the complexities and contradictions in each of us.
There is room for IMAGINATION - as you rework your behaviours before taking it into the world.
There is room to LEARN from others - as there is room to contribute to their learning.
There is room to RECEIVE support - from those witnessing your journey to becoming closer to who you want to be.

In an atmosphere built towards safety, kindness and non-judgement, it also made clear to me the second-chances deep group work offers us in re-introducing ourselves to our own worlds and those in it. Strangers and loved ones alike.

The Penis-to-Coral Mechanism

Art making can reveal our plainest habits in the most unanticipated of ways.


A participant was working with clay, wringing it into a form softer than the chunk I provided, only to find it moulding into a cylindrical shape. 'It reminded me of a penis!’ she said with surprise, ‘So I tore it into smaller pieces and rebuilt it into what now looks like a coral.'

Now, I doubt this means her pattern is to contemplate cutting actual penises into smaller pieces. Hmm, perhaps I should've asked.. 🙄

BUT after sharing her process and a few laughs with the group, I asked if it meant something to her that as soon she sensed the discomfort - that came about after the object was interpreted as 'penis' - she deconstructed and reshaped the entire thing.

What triggered the discomfort? What does 'penis' represent? What if we just called it 'cylinder shape'? Is 'coral' a better option? Is it even about Penis vs Coral or is it about something else, like the social aspect of presenting a penis shaped object to a group you haven't met before?

Either way, either choice - to stay with or to transform the moment - was rich with meaning and carried importance to what she needed in that instant.

The ending artwork is hardly the only point where information lives. The WHOLE process - the interpretations we project, the choices made, the physical and emotional qualities held in each moment, the environment you’re in. THAT is where we get a snapshot of how you are in certain moments.

Everything I noticed was only a slice of my experiencing this participant. But to me, the Penis to Coral strategy- I’m gonna call it that for a while - represented something we all do: Quickly changing a moment/situation into a more bearable one before studying it fully. It applies to moments beyond the clay, in relationships, in work, in self-talk and so on.

And heck, don't we all use that strategy one way or another.