Read

September/October 2007 Alternative Health
How Illness Sparks Creativity

by Cheryl R. Long

Cheryl R. Long

In late 2002, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and breast cancer.

On that day, the momentum of my life came to a halt. The unrelenting stress of my 18-year career in corporate sales disappeared, never to return. What did I want to do for the rest of my life? Never mind how long that life might be - one year, 10 years or 50 more years. I only wanted to do what ultimately mattered the most to me and I had to get it right. I really didn't have to think about it a whole lot because I knew.

When I was 12 years old, I understood that I was an artist. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to be a painter. That was the problem though - I did not choose to accept it. I married a serviceman during the Vietnam War era. I had a daughter, and eight years later I divorced and became a single parent. I did the right thing - I took the best job I could get and it was not as an artist.

Fast forward to age 56. Art was something I planned to do when I retired. Like almost everyone else, I considered creativity to be optional, something to reward myself when it was convenient. In other words, rarely. I was stressed to the max and stingy with time to do art. Making art was always in the future.

So what happens when you are not sure if you have a future?

By the time the effects of the anesthesia wore off after my return from the hospital, I was painting. My ability to be reasonable hit a solid wall. The creative 12-year-old within had run out of patience. She was going to have her way, or else.

One painting stands out as representing this entire process. It is a self-portrait called Magical Healing. I rarely paint people and it is not representative of my subject matter. However, Magical Healing captures my frame of mind during the earliest days after surgery. In the painting, I portray myself surrounded by my world. I grow roses and they arch over my head. I raise doves and one perches on my shoulder reminding me to choose life. The bracelets from the hospital are still on my wrist, as is the portal on the top of my hand. I hold a plate of fruit, exquisitely arranged - my first food at home after surgery presented to me by my husband.

On my lap is a healing quilt, hand stitched by my sister. Around my neck is a shamanic bone necklace - a gift from another sister and brother-in-law. My mother, also a breast cancer survivor, made the pillows that support me. Over my head, my uterus and ovaries fly away - I released them in the form of a butterfly. I am saying goodbye to my youth.

A golden aura surrounds my body referring to my lifelong spiritual practice of attunement. Attunement is a form of energy healing that I offer to other people and in this painting, to myself.

Magical Healing was integral to my healing and my decision to dedicate the rest of my life to art. Which is to say, to dedicate the rest of my life to life itself. I am now a four and a half year cancer survivor. I am healthier now than at any other time of my life and my prognosis is excellent. True to my lifetime promise to myself, I am a professional artist.

Cheryl R. Long is represented by Earthworks in Kent, Wash. She accepts commissions to create healing paintings for people who are ill or in crisis. Contact her at www.CherylRLong.com, cherylrlong@earthlink.net or 253-854-5114.