Healing Through Art

We all have dreams. Some dreams come true and some dreams break and cannot come true. That is the way of life. We pick up the pieces and move on as best we can. Sometimes that’s relatively easy and sometimes it feels impossible. I had a dream of having children with the most caring man I have ever met, my husband. Sadly, that is one of the many dreams that will not come to fruition.

Today’s blog post is about the shattering of that dream and how I used the art of a self-portrait to come to terms with my body’s betrayal.

A Hopeful Future

My husband and I had been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby for over 7 years. About a month after we were married we decided to stop all forms of birth control and grow our family. I was almost 33 at the time and already had a 7 year old, so we really didn’t think there would be much difficulty. Time passed by and nothing happened. At my yearly checkups, I always brought up that I was not on birth control, but nothing was ever mentioned about the old biological clock nor about seeing a specialist.

Towards the end of 2020, I went in for my yearly checkup and saw a new doctor. She ended up referring me to an OB-GYN, as I was approaching 40 and it shouldn’t be taking this long to get pregnant. The OB-GYN threw out some possible options, and because of my age, felt we should get started right away. First, we had to start with a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to see if my fallopian tubes were open and we would go from there depending on the test results.

The Shattered Dream

The HSG showed that my left tube is blocked, which not only made the typically mildly uncomfortable procedure quite painful but also essentially dashed our dreams of getting pregnant and having a baby. With a blocked tube, that would mean we would have to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to increase the chances of getting pregnant.

Because I was approaching 40, for IVF to be successful, it would most likely take several rounds. IVF is very expensive, and even though our insurance covers some infertility treatment costs, with the likelihood of needing multiple rounds and no guarantee of success at the end of it all, we decided against the financial and highly emotional toll it would cost.

I am thankful we have our daughter, who is now 16, and such a wonderful person. Sometimes I feel guilty for being sad about not being able to have more when there are others out there who are unable to even have one child, but I realize that it’s okay to feel sad about our situation and the loss.

The Healing Process

Anyway, now to the stuff you actually came to my blog for. Art!

I wanted to create something that would help me process all of my emotions and come to terms with this. It started with sketching my idea onto a sticky note before solidifying everything into photographs. This way I would have a plan as I photographed the different parts and gathered materials.

I knew I wanted to be photographed in a typical maternity portrait pose, where the expecting mother’s hands are cradling her belly full of life. I wanted a hole in my belly filled with brambles, dead branches, or something similar — something to signify lifelessness. It took a while, but I finally found a round “cage” made from branches and wire that I thought would be perfect.

I wanted to be vulnerable and raw, but not fully nude, so I bound my breasts with a bandage wrap and wore nude-colored panties. I then covered myself in clay to add grit and dirtiness to show the journey’s been rough, but also new things are born from clay, so a new me was going to come out of this process and journey.

Lastly, I added a black veil to symbolize the mourning of the things that will never be.

Putting it Together

I painted the inside of a cardboard box black and hung the branch ball by some clear line and set it up on a table and another box so it would be about belly height. This way I could easily put it “in” my belly in the portrait I was making. I posed myself in front of my hand-painted canvas backdrop and tried several different variations of the pose I wanted with the veil in different positions so I would have lots of options to choose from.

Once I had the photos taken, I did some magic in Photoshop to put it all together and make it look like there was an actual hole in my stomach, and voila!

Final Thoughts

Creating this piece has really helped me be okay with how things are. There are still times when I am sad about not being able to create a larger family, but I am at peace with it now.

If you have any shattered dreams that you need help working through and coming to terms with, I would love to help you heal through art, too.