How Art Helped Me Heal My Hatred

Hatred is often labeled as this horrible thing. Destructive. Diabolical even. Disconnected from life.

I'm by no way fully healed by it, but lately I've been navigating a new profound layer of self hatred that I forgot years ago, that had started my journey inward. The curiosities of… why do I feel so bad? Even after having everything that I want?

I remember specifically looking in the mirror one day after a 60 hour work week. After binge eating Indian food. On my way to purge, wondering, why am I hating myself so much right now?

I believe it was a quote from Oprah no less that motivated me to realizing, why hate myself until I'm older, and just love who I am right now?

It helped, and catapulted me forward, but I was never given the answers as to why that hatred was there. Who had given it to me. Who I had believed, that allowed it to exist.

The more I read the Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté, the more I am reminded about the compassion we all need, in realizing how much of the self hatred we all have globally doesn't belong to us, and stems from a toxic world. Filled with rigid structures, not to serve us, but to serve a hungry ghost that is never fed.

All, offered as sacrificed to this ghost, until you start asking the questions… why?

So … how did art help me with this?

When I didn't have words.
Art gave me a space to place them.
The puzzle pieces hidden behind words, that made no sense.
It gave me a place to obliterate everything, that I was attempting to obliterate within myself, without causing harm onto others.

One of the foul stenches of Neo Tantra and New Shamanism has been the following. As long as you get it out, you're healing.

I want to counter that and say, not only are we responsible for what we have taken in, it is also our responsibility to transform it.

Art, gives you a place to transform all the things, that aren't conscious yet. The things that are still hidden in the shadows, that need time to mature a bit more, before they make it to the surface of your consciousness to finally ask the question of origin. The source of where it came from.

Not just love, but all those uncomfortable feelings too. The ones we run away from, because they have been painted, literally painted as ugly.

And all of us, have believed it to be so.

For me, Art gave me a place to be with my hatred, without having to have labeled it as hatred. And when the Tsunami did finally arrive at the surface. Through the relationship with somatic, it wasn't as catastrophic as it would have been.

The compassion given to others, showed up in my art process.

I can list all the ways I've hated myself in the past, and that's not really the point of this.

What is the point, is whatever had caught the hatred, isn't worth letting go of, but is worth rehabilitating within oneself.

Art, being an artist, gives you a place to rehabilitate your soul.

Love you.