Art as a Container for Medicine: Holding Complexity Without Simplifying Pain

Due to the nature of this podcast, please know the content may be difficult to hear and can be triggering to those listening. Please take all necessary precautions and care while listening to this podcast.

In this episode of Many Pathways of Healing, we are joined by Spotlight Artist Moira Villiard, whose work embodies visual storytelling as collective witness. Together, we explore art not as the medicine itself, but as the container that allows healing to unfold. Moving beyond the idea that cure is the only healing story, we reflect on how creativity creates space to hold grief, trauma, and complexity without rushing resolution. Art does not erase pain. It offers structure, distance, and safety while natural healing processes take their time. Through community storytelling, workshops, and lived experience, we discuss how creativity helps us sit with sorrow while still making room for connection, meaning, and even joy. Art is not the cure. It is the space where healing becomes possible.

Presenter Bio: Through public art collaborations across Minnesota, Moira Villiard (pronounced "Miri") is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art to uplift underrepresented narratives, explore the nuance of society’s historical community intersections, and promote community healing spaces. She is proficient in a variety of artistic genres but considers her primary medium to be space and people's interactions with it; murals, digital animation and projection work, illustration, community-engaged events, and visual art exhibitions constitute her primary outputs. Moira works full-time as a freelance consultant, designer, speaker, and is a lead coordinator behind the Chief Buffalo Memorial Murals in Duluth, MN. She also is a COMPAS Teaching Artist.

Moira grew up on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Cloquet, MN, and is a Fond du Lac direct descendant of mixed settler Ojibwe and Lenape heritage. In 2023 she was selected as a McKnight Community Engaged Artist Fellow and is a 2024-2026 Bush Fellow. As a community organizer and arts educator, she concentrates her efforts around issues of access and justice. Her overall work seeks to bridge gaps in community memory and recognition.

This project was supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-23-GK-03969-INDI awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women or the International Association of Forensic Nurses. 

Transcript

Speaker 1

Hello, and welcome to today's episode. This podcast is brought to you by the National Tribal Clearinghouse on Sexual Assault, NCSA. Visit supportingourcircle.org to learn more. Through a partnership between the International Association of Forensic Nurses, IAFN, and the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition, MUSAC, NCSA offers technical assistance, training, and education on issues related to sexual assault and abuse against American Indian and Alaska Native populations. NCSA addresses cultural and traditional needs of American Indian and Alaska Native victims and survivors, while strengthening training to improve the response to sexual violence within these communities. The NICSA project is supported by Grant Number 15JOVW23GK03969INDI, awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Justice. Today's guest is Miri Villiard. Miri is a visual artist working across painting and fine art, community-engaged public art, graphic design and illustration, as well as frame-by-frame animation. Her work weaves together experience, research, and social context, offering art not as a decoration, but as a method of holding complexity without simplifying pain. This episode is Art as a container for medicine, holding complexity without simplifying pain. In this episode, we explore art not as the medicine itself, but as the container that allows healing to unfold. Moving beyond the idea that cure is the only healing story, we reflect on how creativity creates space to hold grief, trauma, and complexity without rushing resolution. Art does not erase pain. It offers structure, distance, and safety, while natural healing processes take their time.

Speaker 2

Quanaya Gunalchéesh hawa, My name is Christina Love, and I am your host today. Today, we're going to talk about art as a container for medicine, holding the complexity without simplifying the pain. And those words are from our guest who's joining us today. Today's episode is really, it's a continuation of our healing series. And throughout the series, we're talking about the way that harm shows up, and we're talking about the ways that people respond to that harm, and most importantly, how we heal from that. So I'd love to introduce our guest today. I'll have her jump in and talk about who she is and her connection to this topic. Please welcome Miri.

Speaker 3

Boozoo. This is Miri Villiard. Yeah, I'm a visual artist from Minnesota. I grew up on the Fond du Lac Reservation from Cloquet, Minnesota, and then lived for a bit in Duluth, Minnesota. And now I'm based in the Twin Cities. I do a lot of different artwork. I do painting and kind of social justice oriented art exhibits. I do a lot of community art workshops and then a bit of public art and illustration. I'm super excited to be here. And yeah, my connection to the topic is, I guess, wide-ranging. I think art was something that early on was a tool that I found was really helpful in navigating my own struggles earlier in life with kind of a stressful childhood. I worked for a few years at the American Indian Community Housing Organization in Duluth as their cultural program coordinator. And it was, that was actually my first real job, job and outside of school. And it was kind of there that I got to explore different ways of bringing art as a healing practice to people. in my community. I worked at their domestic violence shelter as an advocate and also doing some arts programming there and then also curated a lot of their shows. So that was a very influential space early in my artistic life. So.

Speaker 2

I have loved diving into some of the different work that you've done and your connection to this. And I think it's so wonderful that we were able to get Miri, because if you check out her work, and I want to make sure that we include some of those links. And so I'll ask you to give that in just a second, Miri. But first I want to ask about how you think about art from before and then your process of working with art and how you think about it today. how that's changed over time?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think, for me early on, people often ask like, how long have you been making art? And I feel like, it's been my whole life. I think we all start out as artists and we all start out as individuals who have this natural, potential to create. And, a lot of people will say that kind of gets pushed out of us a little bit as we get older and we start navigating more institutions, things like that. And I feel like in my life, I guess, becoming a full-time artist, I feel like I never lost that sense of like childhood curiosity that comes with being an artist and that comes with just like creativity in general. And as I get deeper into this part of my life navigating with art, I feel like I don't know. I question the word art as a whole even. So I talk a lot to people about how I don't even believe as art and art as a concept or as this concept that we're given as an English word. A lot of different communities around the world, particularly indigenous communities, don't even have a word for art. I think instead it's more of like this holistic process of bringing things that don't necessarily exist in our physical realm or in realms that we can sense, whether it's sound or smell or touch or all those different senses. I think artists and human beings have a gift of bringing things into this reality. And so that's kind of more of what I look at art as. I do a lot of work too with supporting different artists and applying for grants and applying for different opportunities. And I hear a lot of people say that, they're hesitant to claim the title of artist. And I think that's tied to that Western conception of artists or art as being this like this professional thing that isn't accessible and isn't natural to everybody. And so I guess as I start talking about art as a practice, I like to center people in just like this idea that art is just a way of doing, whether you're somebody who like builds a fire or speaks really well or who can conceptualize a building or make a blueprint for something. There's lots of different ways to be an artist and it's not just limited to painting or the typical fine art definitions that we're taught in school.

Speaker 2

I love that. For our listeners, I want you to be able to go check out Miri's art. It's www.artbymiri.com and her webpage is incredible. And through that, you can do a deep dive into some of her work. But I want to capture something that you just said. And I think that it's a really important concept for really the core of the series. And a big part of the core of this series is making healing accessible to folks, you know, or pathways, you know, to healing, whether that's the way that we think about ourself, I would say for myself, it wasn't that I, my whole healing process could be summed up as not something that I had to do, but more of like the realization that I was whole the entire time in different processes that I've had to undo any thoughts of like brokenness or needing anything. other than myself or my community, and then having different pathways that have connected me back to self or to my identity, to my story or to my community. So I want to go back to that, like, reframing that more as an accessible approach for folks. And and I feel like that that's something that the that, you know, through the through the concept of thinking about people as artists or being able to do art without it, without it being sold or without it being seen is so profound. Can you talk a little more about that?

Speaker 3

Yeah. I can share. So I have a project called Waiting for Beds that's been a really interesting, I guess, exploration of some of the, I guess, the culmination of work that I've been trying to do as an artist and artist, a community organizer. So Waiting for Beds is a art exhibit installation that brings together kind of visual art in like the traditional sense. It's paintings by myself and another artist, Carla Hamilton. But it and it's also these different digitized posters that I've designed that kind of contain like stories and data connected to people's time waiting for a bed during a crisis. And we kind of define that broadly as, you know, anytime you're in a crisis, whether it's domestic violence or facing homelessness or mental health or across the board, you know, in America, we have these systems where when you're in a crisis, you call a hotline and occasionally there's just not space for people. And so The show looks at what happens when you're told you have to wait for a bed. And that was something that, you know, I've navigated both as a caretaker in my family and also, you know, having worked at the domestic violence shelter, having to tell people that we didn't have space for them at that particular moment in time. And so the show has really become this sort of like container for people's, for these experiences. And so another component of it is this aspect of community being able to submit objects or artwork connected to their time waiting for a bed. Because we found that like sometimes even, you know, objects can tell a story about someone's trauma or about something that's happened to someone in the past. And through that show, I've just been playing around with just like how process wise, art allows us to sort of like, almost like put our, I don't know how to word it precisely, but like, it allows us to put the trauma in a place that we can almost like, step back from and maybe view it more objectively. So I found through like my own painting process, you know, the pieces that I've done for the show are related to, again, just childhood trauma that I've been finally able to sort of navigate and understand better as an adult. And I'll create these very specific scenes from my childhood that I remember. And then through the medium of, you know, painting it, it's the literal scene, but then I'll start, you know, I've started adding, like, ribbons and other mixed media materials to sort of, like, add a different layer of action in that creative process, using, like, a different part of my brain where I'm doing this repetitive motion that sort of grounds me in my body and, like, allows me to exit some of these painful memories, like, literally through the ribbons that are coming out of the pieces. And then, you know, when the piece is done, I can kind of step back and be like, I spent, you know, look at it as this culmination of time, of sitting with my grief or whatever emotion is tied to that memory, just like sitting with it and not judging it and, you know, feeling it fully, but also being able to exit it. And I think we've talked in the past about like the book My Grandmother's Hands about, you know, trauma and, you know, the disruption that trauma can be on the body and bodily processes. And being able to heal starts with being able to sort of complete these processes. And so long story short, with that sort of process, myself and Carla really wanted to share that with other people too. And offer this space for people to experience that and also to put these memories and these emotions into a physical form and then step back from it. And in the process, also know that they're contributing to helping other people maybe understand this issue at hand with what happens when people have to wait for a bed, because unless it happens to you, nobody really knows that this is, you know, how the United States system works for a variety of social issues. So that's kind of an example, I guess, of how that process looks.

Speaker 2

I love that. Well, and I think that that's such an important part is that you have the ability to be able to assign meaning to your experience and that it being such a really important part of healing, to be able to name things or having a place to put it. So by assigning an object, you know, your experience, then you are, in that sense, an artist as well. And I love that idea of reclaiming that, of reclaiming the process too. Well, and this is such a great project. It was so fun doing a deeper dive into it. It's just waitingforbeds.com if you want to check it out. There's so many dimensions of it that are really, really incredible. But the other part of that is the community awareness and education. So allowing art to serve as both a way for people to name the pain and the confusion and all of the emotions that come into the uncertainty of not knowing what's coming. And it is huge. I mean, a lot of people would think that if you are struggling with addiction, that you could get into treatment if only they wanted it, if only they wanted to get help, when the reality is that help is really, really hard. And the people who need help the most are least likely to be able to get that. So the more on the margins you are, the more you're struggling with disability or addiction or illness or mental health or domestic violence, the more severe the violence is, the harder it is to be able to access those things. And so waiting for beds is so perfect for that. But just talking about the, yeah, the awareness and the education or the multi-dimensions of art, could you speak a little bit more to that as well?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, you kind of touched on part of the inspiration too for the exhibit itself for me was just like this sense, in my own grief of navigating these systems that like I had reached a point where I felt like I couldn't do, there wasn't anything I could immediately do. And there's a sense of like helplessness, I think that we all feel when we reach that point where it's like, you know, you try everything to fix a situation, to, you know, to get help and then, you're just met with that sinking feeling when you hear waiting for a bed or, you know, the denial of support. And so the show really was born from that for myself and Carla too, of we couldn't do anything else but make art. You know, at the end of the day, like art is this thing that even if you don't have like nice supplies, right, you can find a pen and you can find a surface of some kind and create something or you can, channel that sense of not having into almost like this alchemy, I guess, of creating something from nothing, right? And in that way, I feel like that process also opens up like this agency that can be kind of healing or the sense of agency where, we get stuck feeling like there's nothing and then suddenly we're able to create something, even if it's small, even if it doesn't change the entire system. Or, if it doesn't lead to a completely new policy, at least we're able to put it, put, the experience somewhere and channel it into creative energy. And so I think, that touches, I guess, on sort of like the inspiration in my own body to this topic. And in terms of the educational component of it, we were really intentional about including kind of like the raw data piece of it in these posters that are throughout the exhibit and pairing that with just very informal surveys that we put out into the community where people could submit their stories. I think on our website, people can still submit like a form. And then there's different options for how people actually want to see that story used. So if they're, you know, if they consent to having that be a part of an artwork or if they want it to be anonymous or, you know, we give people a lot of choices for how to engage in that. And then we have been trying to just like put it in spaces that aren't even necessarily like traditionally art spaces. So we've had a lot of partnerships with galleries, of course, but We're also working to hopefully get into other areas, which I guess I can't share exactly where it's going yet. But there's been some movement to get it more in front of actual like policymakers and people who are working more behind the scenes. And yeah, we'll also do, you know, paid opportunities for people to share their stories on panels. and just involve people with different life experiences connected to this topic so we can get those different sides of the situation. Because I think also, we had a panel in Duluth that focused more on recovery and, people's experiences of, what worked and what didn't when they made it through these challenging times in their lives. And when we traveled to a different community, which was Grand Rapids, we did a partnership with, is it the, well, NAMI, N-A-M-I, I can't remember what their acronym stands for. But in that one, we had actual like caretakers and people who were in the system, you know, people who are impacted by having to tell people to wait for beds. You know, people get into these social service spaces and want help initially, right? Like they care. enough to do this for their livelihood. And it can be really traumatizing for workers, too, who are working in those fields. And, you know, when they don't have the resources to give someone to help them. So we try to look at it from all different angles and include lots of different voices and perspectives. And in the future, in the next year or so, we're hoping to revamp it to be more, to add another layer to the show where we maybe have people submit artwork or stories connected to visualizing what a world without waiting for a bed would look like. Because we get asked a lot at shows, OK, we know about this topic now. What do we do about it? And so we want to kind of lean more into that question in the next year or so.

Speaker 2

Oh, I love that. Well, I was inspired by it. I'm like, we could do this in Alaska. We could do this in every city. because it's a problem that's everywhere. There's so many beautiful things that you said. One of them was how the people who are denying those beds and how that impacts them. And the other thing I thought about is how degrading it is to have to ask. We know that it's so hard for people to ask for help. So there's a couple of concepts that I wanna come back and revisit, but that is one of them being that false dichotomy of us and them, that oftentimes the people who need those services need all the same things that people who are providing those services need. So I wanna come back to that. But the other part that I really wanna explore, this is this concept where you were talking about recovery. And one of the things that I'm a person in long-term recovery, my gosh, my birthday's coming up. It's going to be 13 years that I'm free from IV heroin use and methamphetamine and alcohol and benzos and like a lot of people in recovery, anything and everything. But something that I have found in recovery is that It's been very important for me to learn what it was that I was getting from the substances and find alternatives within my life. And so, and so this concept, like I said, that you are somebody who really enjoyed uppers, you know, whether that then kickboxing or judo or hiking or solo traveling would be something that you would really enjoy. And if you're somebody that enjoyed downers, benzos or alcohol or opioids, then it's looking at what it is that you were getting from that. Was it, you know, a loss of time? Was it a numbing or was it comfort or euphoria? You know, things that are that are missing in the life, then then art could be something that you would really enjoy, as well as writing and processing. And so looking at some of those things. So I wanted to talk a little bit about why that stands up and some of the science and then for you to talk about some of your process. So for the listeners, when we talk about each of these different modalities and the title too, I think is another thing that I want to pin because those are those words came from Miri, but that there is incredible science around the use of art from your right and left brain hemisphere, this integration, and then bringing up onboard the limbic system. So there's processes of engaging that activates the amygdala, which calms the stress responses and the prefrontal cortex activates. So this is like your decision making, your impulse. And so when we look at like some of the earlier stages of addiction, this is where this part of the brain we see lighting up and bringing back some of your identity processing. So having this like creative reflection engagement, there's a beautiful like neurochemistry and bilateral like simulation, just to give like some of like the some of the medical terminology for what we're talking about was so Mira, I've heard you say a couple of times that this has been profoundly important to your own process. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think the And it kind of, I guess, ties back to the title of this too, as like art as a container for medicine or art as like I picture like a basket, right? Art isn't the thing that is necessarily, it's not curing my grief necessarily, but it's giving me all these different tools, all these different medicines within the actual practice of art, whether it's as you were saying, you kind of have to find what it is within the creative process that's actually contributing to your healing or your experience or what you're seeking. Some people, you know, if you're in a state of like, I don't know, they go a withdrawal state, right? Sometimes time is all that needs to be really like time is a big part of that process of healing. And so sometimes art can give us like time to just like process and be with that grief. Sometimes it can be the distraction, right? It can be the thing that, takes our mind off of obsessive thinking. Sometimes it can be the opposite. It can be the thing that like helps you sort of confront, confront a trauma or a memory. And I think that's kind of where I lean into it a little bit is using art as a space for me to kind of safely go where the darker corners of my brain might lead me. But knowing that I always have like this exit door, if you think of just like, I don't know, like trauma responses too, of like being able to see the door when you're choosing where to sit in a room, art is kind of like the room. And you know, where the doorway is, you know where the exit is, but you're still kind of in that room. But it can also be a process that brings a lot of joy and like, you know, calming. It can be a space where you actually find your voice or find a way to communicate things that maybe are more difficult to speak on. I think that's why I struggle with like defining art as kind of like just painting or just this activity that's limited to artistic mediums, because I think if we think of art as a process itself and as like a verb, there's all these other things that you can glean from it. And it'll be different for everybody too, like I said, for me, it's, I kind of, when I'm making my favorite art or the work that means the most to me, it's typically in the dark. darker space. And so sometimes for me, like going into, I don't know, I'll have friends who are artists who will invite me to do like art nights and, you know, painting together. And for them, maybe the art is where they get their joy. But for me, I don't, I don't like to make my art in those spaces because it typically is, it's my coping mechanism for a heavier time. And so, yeah, I think everybody finds a different a different way to utilize it. And that's also what makes it sort of accessible. But you kind of have to steer the experience, right? It's, and kind of, there's elements of decisions and like what you sort of want to get into it and what you want to, I guess, lean into, because you can get all of these experiences from an art making process or a creative process too. Yeah, and I always like when I'm doing, so I'll do a lot of workshops and such in the community. I really like facilitating those art processes and helping people find what it is they get out of it. There's some activities I'll do where, you know, I'll intentionally, I'll have some things like with more instructions and structures because maybe someone needs that way of navigating a process versus someone who might need more freedom to explore. And I've noticed sometimes people will get like, I don't know, even if you get anxious in the creative process, right? Like some people get a lot of anxiety because they get all of these like mental, the voices in their head will tell them, right? Like you're not good enough or you need to do this a certain way or they get stressed when they're given the freedom to have choice to make creative decisions. And even for those folks, I would always recommend like thinking about, pushing through that process, because at the end of the day, art is that safe space where you can practice moving through these like nervous system reactions, like these deep level reactions that are happening in your body. And at the end of the day, it's just a canvas or it's just a, you know, a pile of clay. It can't hurt you. can always start over. You can always, you know, exercise choice in what you're going to do with what you create. I think there's just so many different ways to experience creativity when you start to get into it. So.

Speaker 2

Oh, my gosh, there's so many, so many beautiful like nuggets. But to reframe like what you're talking about with the with the title, like this idea that Art isn't the medicine that cures. It is the regulated space where the nervous system can safely process integrate and like reorganize experience over time. And allow in that, you know, just, just the grief like allowing grief to coexist with creativity is so powerful. And in the neuroscience terms, art supports the integration, because I think some of the heaviest things that we have, especially as indigenous people, are traumas that we don't have names for, or maybe that weren't even in this generation. And so this is a formality, one of my favorite types of moving through trauma and helping process it and release it. never require us to to to say what what it was that happened to us, which I think is is a profound way of thinking about this being more as like a harm to the body than a mental health issue or or something. And but within human terms, it helps us sit with what hurts without being swallowed by it. This I this other idea that you, I think, is so poetic. And I've thought about how at different times, I go back to the very last time that I was in detox and I remember like styling the clothes that they gave me, and finding joy in that. How early on when I was still very, very much in poverty, I didn't have a lot, but I discovered tea and I really loved the process of it. And this idea of like being intentional and living. Like I love the idea of art as like a way of living rather than it just being like this thing that you produce, but like this way of being in relationship with the world. And if you're bringing that intentionality into what you're doing, it could be the, you know, that you have grief that you want to process or joy that you want to create or connection that you're finding or I, this is why I love writing this because it will, it can reach to the places of my subconscious to release things that I didn't even know needed to be released. And so it's a way of of trusting the body. I find that creativity where I move from my brain, you know, down into my heart or my body, and I let my creativity, this other part of my brain lead. And that actually allows the the the noise of some of, you know, the trauma to to quiet down.

Speaker 3

Right. Yeah. I mean, it makes me think, too, of like, I don't know, I sometimes think the creative process, when you get into that zone, whatever that zone looks like, to me, it sometimes just feels like time traveling. Like you're just kind of, you're in this moment and now you've like teleported into the future and you're healed in some way or you feel different in your body after that, after the process of creating something. So it's interesting.

Speaker 2

Oh, I feel like, well, and anything that allows us to become more aware of what we're feeling is, When I'm working with people that say, I've gone through all these things and now I'm ready, the very first thing that we start with is just, what are you feeling in your body? Where are you feeling it? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you thirsty? And then we go on to the expressive parts. What is it that, is there a part of you that's five or 10 or 15 that wants to play outside or that wants to create something or that wants to, clean up something or not clean up something, you know, like more of that, just listening to yourself and what it is that that you might be needing in that moment.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 2

The other thing that I think that you that you did beautifully was you gave people permission for it to not be perfect. I heard this thing recently that was so profound. It's so simple. But somebody said, I would be a vegan if if it weren't for bacon. And somebody said, well, then be a vegan with bacon. And that reminded me so much of why harm reduction is so important, because forever, the standard of recovery was abstinence only. And we said, there's actually, there's another path. And I think this translates to domestic violence and our healing pathway so well. So it's like, I can't go to the gym because I'm not going to give 100%. That's OK. Give 10%. I even if you're not able to do all the dishes, you're able to do some. But I think it's it also gives us mentally a pathway to address like the oppression of perfectionism. And that I think is so needed and maybe why some people are so intimidated about creating something or doing something that they've never done before. Because learning something new, it can be uncomfortable. It allows you to address a bit of the ego that says, we don't know, and that's the best part.

Speaker 3

Right. Yeah, it's very much, you know, building off of that idea of like practicing too and practicing in a safe space, right? So when you're, you know, art, I feel like for me, all of my art is just practice, right? It's not, there's some pieces that, you know, I've created 10 years ago that I've revisited and like added more to and I've discovered more meaning or a new technique to add to it, which is inclusive, I guess, of, some of the pieces that I have in the Waiting for Bed show itself were paintings I did as a teenager in a very different time in my life, you know, living in poverty out on the res with not a great home life. And, you know, I used to, I was just finding my voice back then. And they're pieces that, you know, technically today, you know, wouldn't be something that I would necessarily have in my exhibition practice, but I never threw them away because they were, they were like my first, my first babies, you know, my first little, my first little projects. And so I found a way for, with the Waiting for Bed show too, to like revisit those pieces and be like, how could I have a conversation with my younger self? how could I like reinterpret what this painting meant? I had like a landscape painting I did, which I'm not a landscape painter at all. But when I was first starting out, you know, you start with kind of like those more mainstream, I guess, topics or subjects to paint. And so I was like, I'll paint this street I grew up on. And going back and reinterpreting that painting into, what did it mean to grow up in a hoarding home on that street? And what were the energies? What were the dreams I had about that roadway? And how could I bring those to life on the canvas? And so maybe in another 10 to 15 to 20, maybe 30 years from now, I'll take that painting and add to it with anything that I've learned about the context of this present moment in my life. But I always encourage people to with art, like you get to decide when it's done. And even if it doesn't feel done, I've exhibited work that is not done by my standards. But I know I can always go back and do something with it. And I know even if it's incompletion, that there's still a story or there's still something to be gleaned from it. does not have to be a finished piece for someone to see a part of your story or to see significance within it. And I think that's also true. Just, you know, I guess it's a metaphor for life also, right? Like, we don't have to be complete to have value. We're all just works in progress that are continuously shifting and changing and all of that. So.

Speaker 2

Oh, man, we don't have to be complete to have value. Do you? I mean, when I, like, really felt that in my body, I wept, like wept, like, Cried, cried, cried. But like the moment that I realized, oh, my gosh, even just saying it again, I could feel it in my whole body. That I had just as much value today as a person with social capital or things that I could hold on to to say this is whether you're in my recovery or my children or my home or the joy that I have. I'm just as much value today as I did when I was dying in those flop houses. Such a profound thing. The other thing that you said, another artist told me this. It was at one of those. I still have it. I went to, we did it at a healing gathering and we had an artist come in and she had a painting that was, you know, pre-chosen and then taught us how to paint it. And I hung that up and I still feel like a little bit of embarrassment. Like people was like, oh, your daughter made that when she was young. And I'm like, nope, I made that in my 30s. But don't throw out your babies. Like this is a thing that you created. And what's so funny is that I'm actually going to be meeting up with a lot of the women that made that. We're doing another gathering next week. But every single one of us, it was our first time engaging with art. I mean, since we were in school, probably elementary, maybe middle school. And we all hung it up in our house and felt such pride for it, like what it represented. So I love that too, giving people permission to like honor what it is without it being, you know, that it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be done to hold value. That's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Gosh, there's so many, so many things I, I, we could definitely talk all day. You have so much like nuggets of, of beautiful, beautiful wisdom. I want to come back and invite our listeners. Because many of them are working in the fields. We have our forensic nurses. We have our tribal advocates. The majority of people who tune into this podcast are working in the field of sexual violence. So oftentimes when we think about these pathways, this isn't just for the people we're providing services to, but also for the listener. Can you introduce them or give them some ideas of ways that they can engage with this and make it real for them?

Speaker 3

Yeah. I mean, there's so there's something interesting and this might be a deviation, but I just thought of it a few years. Well, I guess it's been like 10 years now. Time is doing weird things the last decade or so. I remember I was at a conference where I think there were folks from the Zuni Pueblo community. They did a study on arts in their community. And they found basically that, like, every home within the Native community had either an artist living in it or a person who, like, was related to an artist. And I remember that that study was so interesting to me because I felt like you could replicate that on probably, like, in most tribal communities, I think, we have this connection to creativity, whether it's beadwork or it's, painting or creating regalia or things like that. And also like this inherent, I guess, inclination to adapt, right? Because even if we think of beadwork as a practice, the beads that we use today look very different than what would have been used in pre-contact times. And yet we still like adapted designs and adapted our styles and things like that. All that is to say, I think connecting with the artists in your community, like we have them. We have people who are creating and who may not even call themselves an artist. I think connecting with those folks and building community and starting just informal groups to gather and create together without judgment, I think is a great starting point. For myself, a lot of the stuff that I like to do in community is just like have some food and just have some supplies or materials out and just start there with building space. Yeah, I think that's a starting point in my mind for how to connect with like the actual practice, if people are interested in building community around these ideas. But then just for like individuals themselves, right? Like, again, you don't need much to be a creative to create you. You can start by writing. You can start by just like playing around without judgment with materials, or even like those doodles, right, that like everybody does when they're on the phone can be a practice. I think just, yeah, exploring is a good starting point for folks.

Speaker 2

Ooh, I love that. Well, so for a listener, just to give some like reflective questions, I would ask you to think about Where in your life are you already practicing art without calling it that?

Speaker 3

Yes, yes. You worded that much better than I did.

Speaker 2

No, no, no. Because you have-- I mean, you hold this concept. It's in your bones. I mean, you've said it so many times in so many, so many different ways. And what creative practices have helped you to survive something difficult? When I think back to, there was a time in my life that required me to wear a lot of makeup and more than anything, I loved that process. There were so many things in my life during that time that were not in my control, but I could control what I wore, and I could control how it looked on my body, and I could control my makeup. And I've seen people starting to compliment people on that, that even that is a skill set, that the way that you walk and the way that you present yourself and the, you know, and I think about it like in my, I think about my native jewelry as my, my art for the day, I'm very careful about like what earrings I'm going to wear and what silver I'm putting on and that like expression. But also when I think back to, I mean, just in your storytelling, I was thinking back, I also grew up in a house of hoarders and I was thinking, gosh, and what a reflection that is, you know, for what's happening on the inside and how that's reflected on the outside during different times of my life, then I've struggled with that too. So many of us have, I'm like, we don't need 10,000 bags. boxes, but we also don't want to let it go either. But I remember, yeah, I painted my room with sunshines, like during one of the hardest parts of my life, like just that expression of self. And then I want to ask listeners, too, if there's if there's a form of expression you've been quietly drawn to, but you haven't given yourself permission to try, and what would it look like for you to create without needing to be good at it? And can you allow grief and creativity to exist at the same time? And those are we've we've in each of the podcasts, we've tried to include some some reflection pieces for people to really think about. And then for this one, really, if you know, if we continue to think about how art helps us tell the truth without exploiting the pain, which I just love the title and and Miri says, said it and we in one of our prep sessions and it was just it was perfect. And so I want to if there's if there's anything else that you know, any other invitation or anything else that you'd like to say to folks, I'd love to give you that moment. And yeah, and also for people to know where to find you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I will say, I mean, some of the other things we've talked about today reminded me of I feel like artistic and creative creative practice is so deeply indigenous ways of being. I think even in our languages, you know, some a word that came to mind in talking about like just imperfection was well in Ojibwemowin we have a word nikanaganaa, which I don't know how I don't actually know the etymology of like how it breaks down, but I say it sometimes after prayers. And the way it was explained to me at a ceremony once was just like, this is the word we say that like, after we've done all of our prayers, you know, we might have forgot people, you know, we're not perfect. And so nakanagana is like this word that people will say to like encapsulate for all the people we've forgotten or all the people that, you know, we just didn't think of in that specific moment, but we still want to extend a prayer to them. And I think about how much of our teachings to focus on, you know, I don't know, we have a term you'll hear elders say here too around like we're pitiful, but not in like this tragic way. We're just pitiful because we're imperfect, but we're trying and we're all like children trying to just grow and learn in these bodies. But I guess I'll, you know, end my thoughts with just pointing to the fact that a lot of, I think, maybe some of our stresses and dealing with trauma and our unhealthy kind of perspectives towards it. stem a lot from colonial thought and kind of like Western models of, viewing these things. I think of how we have even just like the Western perception of treatment and diagnosis and disease as like, disease is something that you have to cure, right? There's a book called, We Know How This Ends, Living While Dying, and it's by, I think, a couple of Minnesota authors. Bruce Kramer and Kathy Werzer. And it was a book I read like 10 years ago, where there's a line from it that says, a cure is the only healing story, at least under like Western medicine, right? Like we don't get to hear the stories of people who don't get cured, but who like live and manage and start new lives post disease. And I think that applies to like trauma and grief too, right? Like, I think we're always trying, we always think that we have to get rid of grief in order to feel anything else, or we always have to like cure or heal the trauma and make it go away. But as a lot of us find, like it's not always possible to make those feelings or thoughts or memories go away. And the reality is you just have to, there are ways to experience other emotions in addition to grief and in addition to trauma. And I think the magic, the magic of art and creativity and creative practices is just like, that is the container for you to sort of safely move through time and safely sort of explore being present with grief and trauma. And like I mentioned earlier, like enter and exit, right? and to just be with it instead of trying to get rid of it or cure it or fix it, right? And when we're able to let go in that way, I think it allows us to heal. And again, healing is not the same as curing, right? But healing is still like the goal at the end of the day, I think, so.

Speaker 2

Oh, I really love that. Yeah, I think about like Black joy and Native joy and how I, there have been times of absolute grief where I have never laughed harder. Those things.

Speaker 3

Yes. If you talk with me and Carla about the Waiting for Bed show, like we, it was also like a process of a lot of darkness with, but like, joy in like having conversations and laughing too about like the absurdity of some of the things that happened to all of us, right?

Speaker 2

Yeah, and there's something really powerful about not looking away, like I think many people are feel or what I've experienced or what I have heard people say is that there's this fear that, you know, if I look at what's really hurting me, then I'm going to drown in it. or, you know, if I really understood the pain that other people were, that it would be too much. And that has never been my experience. It's been the denial of it that has really hurt me. It has been the looking away that was a worse, like, it's the dull ache that hurts so much worse than actually like looking at direct on and allowing it, and it's never been, too much. And there's something beautiful about that. Well, thank you so, so, so, so much. I have loved every minute of this. Thank you so much for all of the prep. And I really hope that people go to your website and they check out the waiting for beds. It's really powerful. I would love to have you come back and I know that we will definitely hear from you again. So thank you, thank you, thank you. For folks that are listening, you may be already practicing art in your meals, in the songs, and in your stories, and the way that you tell them, or the way that you braid your hair, and the way that you're planting your food, or moving your body. I love that Mary talked about prayer, like even as a type of art, or with pen and paper, that it that it's not extra. And the study that that you mentioned, Miri, is so beautiful, like that it's that it's human. So if you're carrying something that you feel is tender or not resolved or complex, that you don't have to solve it before you begin to live with it or to live again and or to live alongside it or to allow it to breathe alongside of you. And that art is not the cure. Miri said that many, many times it is the room where healing becomes possible. So Thank you so much for being here with you. May you find the space and the permission and maybe even the beauty and whatever it is that you create next. And we hope you have a wonderful day and we'll see you again soon. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Christina and Miri, for all of the great information. Thank you for listening to Art as a Container for Medicine, Holding Complexity Without Simplifying Pain. This podcast was made possible by funding by the Office on Violence Against Women. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in the podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, the Office on Violence Against Women, or the International Association of Forensic Nurses. If you would like to connect with an advocate after listening to this episode, please call 800-656-HOPE. That's 800-656-4673 to be rooted to an advocate in your area 24/7 or go to rain.org for more information or live chat.