Our guest Heather has always dipped into creative outlets like writing, drawing, and performing and says these activities increase her contentment and ability to cope day-to-day.
As an Emerging Artist, she hosts her first solo exhibit in May 2022. Her show is titled SUSPENDED LOGIC. She is coordinating an event for her presentation that is ‘kink inclusive’ and highlights sexual liberation, pandemic processing, & concepts of isolation and human contact.
We discuss things she wishes she had known about being a professional artist, such as the relentless necessity of self-promotion and pricing commissions and art for sale.
She finds inspiration in local women artists who continue to produce new and exciting work, the physical hardship of Canadian artist Maude Lewis, the homeless, addicts, those struggling, underdogs, victims, survivors, and broken humans.
Heather can relate to struggling. After years of severe and chronic alcoholism, now 18 years sober, Heather knows more about why her life path led to her alcoholism and self-destructive behaviours.
Heather began drinking at the age of 11 and became dependent on it by 16. This behaviour led to losing her place in a political studies program and being charged with careless driving in her twenties.
She lived in a pattern of humiliation and had lost connections with meaningful relationships for many years. She says alcohol had been there to entomb and avoid facing her childhood sexual trauma.
We tend to think of AA or rehab programs when we think of alcoholism and recovery. In Heather’s case, her all-or-nothing way of thinking steered her towards taking recovery into her own hands. She was armed with a makeshift withdrawal kit of drug store items, spent three weeks in her apartment alone, and never looked back.
She shares the story of the unadorned bathroom floor and the self-guided withdrawal experience that turned into the beginning of rescuing herself and reclaiming her life.
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Episode 18 😀
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