Working with Anniversaries, Markers, and Milestones
How to hold space for the bittersweet combo of grief, gratitude, and growth
Hello beautiful readers,
This month’s theme is one of my favorites. I’ve found that anniversaries, markers, and milestones bring about the duality and spectrum that exists in life. They’re powerhouses of our deepest joy, love, and gratitude while also agitating the energy our unresolved pain, loss and grief that’s asking for our attention.
However, I’ve seen and experienced that these kinds of events can be difficult to process. It’s not uncommon for people (myself included) to feel like they’re stuck in rumination or emotions that have no where to go.
How do we find resolution? This is why I love art therapy. It can help you step into your story so that you can step out of a pattern of feeling like you’re hitting a dead end.
Art therapy is an excellent vessel. It’s capacity for expressing what’s difficult to put into words enables you to access the potential for healing and growth that words alone often fail to capture. In my live workshops, I describe the acronym I created, called E.S.P., to describe it’s efficacy. If you can’t attend the live workshop, I will provide the recording in April’s newsletter.
Art therapy is a practice of reverence for what wants to be seen and heard. It lets you be tender with the parts that are trying to protect you from pain. Through this process, you find meaning and feel the delicious release of the energy that your body, mind, and spirit was retaining for you until you were ready to step into the work.
There’s some important distinctions between these 3 that I’ve found helpful personally and professionally. I find that differentiation is helpful in being kind to the nuances that want to be understood. Here’s how I see them:
Anniversaries are the important dates or seasons in which critical life moments have occurred, like birthdays, graduations, and markers of saying yes to partnership, like marriage. These moments may bring disruptive change, like the death of a loved one, diagnosis of a serious illness, break up, and other experiences of loss.
Markers are the ways in which you measure how you’re doing, reflecting a snapshot of the moment. These can bring you hope and joy, like seeing your strength grow because of committed action. Markers can cause you to feel afraid, like experiencing physical pain that suggests that something is wrong. In my case, that means coping with the fear of cancer recurrence.
Milestones are similar to markers, but they come with a sense of achievement and usually an element of measuring time. For example, turning 18 in the US means that you’re recognized as an adult. As a triple negative breast cancer survivor, when I hit the 5 year mark of being in remission, I felt tremendous relief because this milestone meant that I’d surpassed the highest risk of recurrence.
Your guidebook for this month has suggestions for how you can hold space the anniversaries, markers, and milestones in your life. On March 28th, we’ll have a live workshop to explore this theme together as a community.
This theme feels very resonant and personal for me as we enter into March. I’m turning 50 and for many reasons I feel so vibrant. This is a wonderful anniversary and marker to hold space for.
March is also the 9 year milestone of maintaining “no evidence of disease”. As someone who’s positive for a genetic mutation on the BRCA2 gene, I’m aware that my cancer risk will always be elevated. So I do my best to revel in the fact that every year I get is an honor and a blessing.
Yet, the bittersweetness is also here. My mom’s breast cancer came back with a vengeance just weeks after she turned 50 (and had just completed a 6 month thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail). Her cancer had metastasized to her bones, liver, and lungs. Five days after turning 51, she died. I was only 26.
For many years now I’ve wondered what it would be like to turn 50. I feel very healthy, so I’m not afraid of cancer, per se. But I am definitely in touch with the privilege of health and the strong possibility that I will surpass the final milestone my mom achieved. I sense that this will be emotional and liberating at the same time.
What brings me the most relief is this deep sense of trust that we can be there for ourselves and one another through the practice of art therapy. I hope that you can join me on the 28th!
Warmly,
Stephanie
PS. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about this guidebook. It’s such a blessing to create them. May they serve you well.
What I’m listening to right now…
When I’m writing and arting
This section was reserved for excerpts from my book, but I felt called to change it (for now).
In the workshops, I often like to highlight how music can support your creative process and expression. So I thought that it would be fun to share what playlists I’m currently using for art making and meditation.
I would love to hear what you’re listening to as well! Feel free to share the link to your playlist in the comments below.
Relaxing Drumming Meditation Music 2024
Your Art Therapy Guidebook…
(P.S. you don’t have to be an artist to do this!)
Before doing this exercise, set yourself up for doing some art and writing. Any kind of art medium will work- so chose something you have on hand or treat yourself to a few supplies. Here’s my basic list for starting an art journal.
Click here to open the March Guidebook. And don’t forget to check out the related events below!
If you feel inspired to share this guidebook with others, they can receive their own copy when they subscribe to the newsletter. It’s my gift to you all, a perk for my subscribers that I hope will feel like a warm thank you from me to you!
I’d love to hear from you about how this prompt went for you. Feel free to ask questions and share in the comments below or email me directly!
Behind-The-Scenes Look at the Publishing Process
Thanks to a dear friend’s email, I’ve signed up for a Writer’s Boot Camp workshop with Hay House, one of the publishers who I believe would be an excellent fit for my art therapy for breast cancer book.
This workshop with Hay House has me feeling sparkly inside, because it comes with the opportunity to pitch my book and submit a book proposal to their editors. A minimum of three winners will be selected, the top prize being an publishing contract with Hay House!
This excites me because without this opportunity, the only way I can get my work in front of the editing staff of Hay House is to have a literary agent. While this is one of my goals, agents want to represent nonfiction authors who have strong platforms. The strength of your platform is evaluated by your reach, aka the size of your email subscriber list, social media followers, and person contacts in your network who can help you reach your audience.
As you might imagine, this is tough to build when you’re a first time author. So I want to say a big thank you for being part of making my dream a reality. This book is straight from my heart and it’s how I want to serve the greater good.
This bootcamp is also helping me feel excited about revamping my book proposal- a massive document that contains a lot of research plus sample chapters. It feels so much juicier to have my top publisher in mind as I revise, PLUS I’m doing so with their direct guidance through this workshop. Such a blessing.
Upcoming Workshops-
3/7/2024~ In partnership with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation, Art Therapy for TNBC Month. This is a free workshop for anyone who’s been diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer, whether you’re in active treatment or finished. It’s a 90 minute workshop that starts @ 6:30pm EST. We’ll be focusing on anniversaries, markers, and milestones. Please share this opportunity with anyone you know who’s been diagnosed with this form of breast cancer.
3/28/2024~ Our Subscriber’s Perks Free Art Workshop, Art Therapy for Women: Anniversaries, Markers, & Milestones, from 6-7:30pm EST. We’ll work together with the guidebook for this months theme. Whether you’re exploring your gratitude, your grief, or a combo of the two- this workshop is designed to help you experience the power of art to process your anniversaries, markers, and milestones.
This particular workshop is for newsletter subscribers only. So if you have someone that you’d like to invite, please do! All that I ask is that they become a subscriber.
XO,
Stephanie