How a 12-Week Art Program Helped Me Find My Way Back to Myself
The Chapter Before the Light
A few years ago, I hit a wall. Not the kind that you can crash through with a weekend long nap or a spontaneous bubble bath—though I tried both. This was deeper. A soul-level tiredness. The kind of burnout that doesn’t just make your body ache, but makes you feel like you’ve gone missing inside your own life.
As a pediatric nurse, I had gotten used to holding it together. Smiling through hard days, absorbing the emotions in the room, moving from crisis to crisis with the kind of quiet strength nurses know too well. But in the process of caring for others, I’d stopped tending to the parts of myself that needed care, too.
I felt flat. Disconnected. Like someone had turned the color down on my world.
And then—quietly, curiously—I said yes to a program I almost that found it’s way into my inbox!
Finding My Way Into CORAL
The CORAL program was a 12-week creative arts therapy study that used art, writing, and reflection as a form of healing. I didn’t expect much, if I’m being honest. Maybe a couple of guided drawings, some meditations, a chance to play with paint.
But week by week, something deeper began to unfold.
Each session gave me permission to create without judgment. Not to be “good” at art, but to be honest. To scribble when I was angry. To journal softness when I needed. To sit in silence and feel what needed to be felt.
It was the first time in a long time that I wasn’t expected to fix, perform, or even explain. I could just be. I could explore the landscape of my emotions through writing—without needing to make sense of it all.
And somewhere in that process, I started remembering who I was before I got so tired.
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Creativity as a Quiet Kind of Medicine
The healing didn’t happen all at once. There wasn’t a single "aha" moment or a breakthrough piece. It was gentler than that. Like moss growing quietly across stone. Like spring waking up underground.
What surprised me most was how much my creativity had to say—not in just words, but in mental images, glimmers, and sensations. Making art through writing helped me listen to myself in a new way. It brought my nervous system out of constant alert and into a space of rest, even when life was still busy and chaotic.
CORAL became more than a program. It became a reintroduction to myself.
Even now, years later, I still feel the ripple effects. I make art slowly, intuitively, sometimes in messy sketchbooks or on the backs of receipts. I don’t always finish things. I don’t always know what I’m making. But I’m making. I’m connecting. I’m glowing again—from the inside out.
The Spark That Lit Blooming Everglow
That season was the quiet beginning of something bigger—something I didn’t know I’d one day want to share.
In the years since, I’ve started building a space to help others experience the kind of soft, creative healing that saved me. Not as a therapist or expert. But as a fellow traveler. A nurse-turned-artist who knows what it feels like to be burned out and longing for more.
This journey, this community, this little glowing corner of the internet—it’s all been seeded by those 12 weeks of tenderness, expression, and quiet reawakening.
And if you’re reading this and you’ve been feeling disconnected, dimmed, or not-quite-yourself lately… I just want you to know: your spark is still in there. Creativity is one way back to it. A gentle, playful, deeply sacred way.
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If any part of this story resonated with you—if you’ve ever felt like you lost your creative light and want to find it again—I'd love to stay in touch.
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No pressure. No perfection. Just an open invitation to begin again.
