What Creating Taught Me About Healing

Healing is often framed as something linear—something that moves forward in a predictable pattern, like a wound that scars over and fades. But healing, as I’ve learned through creating, is anything but linear. It is chaotic, messy, and raw. It is quiet one day and deafening the next. And perhaps most importantly, it is deeply personal.

For me, creating has always been a space where I can feel whatever I need to feel, say whatever I need to say, and process things in whatever way feels most natural. In a world that often struggles to hold space for complicated emotions—especially when those emotions are tied to chronic illness and disability—art has given me a way to make sense of what feels unspeakable.

Untangling the Overwhelm: Writing as a First Outlet

The first time I found this freedom was through poetry. I was fourteen, struggling with overwhelming thoughts that felt too tangled to say out loud, yet somehow, they fit on the page. The act of writing became a way to translate what was swirling in my head into something structured, something I could hold. My words didn’t have to be perfect; they just had to exist.

When my health began to decline, writing took on an even deeper role. I found myself filling pages with words to God—frustrations, questions, pleas for answers. I wasn’t looking for a response; I was looking for release. There was something cathartic about writing down the things I was afraid to say out loud. Creating in this way didn’t erase my struggles, but it helped me live alongside them. It gave me permission to acknowledge my pain without letting it define me.

Drawing Through Recovery: Learning to See Pain Differently

Later, during a surgery recovery in 2020, I found another creative outlet that would shift my perspective on healing: drawing. Stuck in bed for weeks, I had little else to do but sit with my body—something that, at the time, felt more like a prison than a home. Taking inspiration from Frida Kahlo, who used her own bed-bound recovery to create, I decided to teach myself how to draw.

Armed with a first-generation iPad Mini I had won in a photography contest as a young teen, I started exploring digital art. The hours I spent learning techniques, sketching, and experimenting weren’t just a distraction from my physical pain—they were a way to process it. Each stroke, each color, each shape was an expression of something deeper than I could put into words.

Through drawing, I realized that healing wasn’t just about enduring pain; it was about transforming it. I couldn’t change what had happened to my body, but I could reshape how I interacted with it. Creating gave me back a sense of control in a situation where I otherwise felt powerless.

Collaging: A Language Without Words

In more recent years, collaging has become another powerful tool in my creative healing process. When words feel too exhausting to find, collage gives me a way to express myself without needing them. There is something deeply symbolic about taking scattered, fragmented images and arranging them into something whole—something meaningful. It mirrors what healing often feels like: piecing together broken parts, making sense of what once felt disjointed.

Collaging has also been one of the most honest ways for me to visually articulate what it feels like to live inside my body. Chronic illness can be hard to explain, but through layers of images, textures, and colors, I can show the world how I see and experience it. It’s a way of saying, “This is my reality” without having to over-explain.

Healing Through Expression

If creating has taught me anything about healing, it’s that I don’t have to make sense of everything all at once. Healing isn’t about erasing pain; it’s about finding ways to hold it, to process it, to exist alongside it in a way that feels bearable.

Through poetry, I found words when I needed them. Through drawing, I learned to see pain through a different lens. Through collaging, I found a way to express what I couldn’t explain. Each form of art has given me a different piece of myself back.

And that, I think, is what healing really is—it’s not about returning to who we were before pain, but about creating a space where we can exist as we are, in all our complexity. It’s about making room for every version of ourselves, past and present, and giving those versions a voice.

For me, that voice has always lived in art.