“I dunno; I guess so.” It was the best Sara could do with her Carson In Home Therapist. Sara’s mom had found her an In Home Therapist who was trained in Art Therapy because everyone who knew Sara knew that she drew all the time. Sara drew in class when she wasn’t doing her work. She drew in the movie theatre if the movie didn’t capture her imagination, or if it did. She carried a sketch pad wherever she went. She drew in the hospital when she was so overcome with depression that she felt like she wanted to die.
Still, it was the fifth session, and nothing seemed to be happening. Sara liked this therapist well enough, but she just didn’t think all of this talking was going to help. Sara wasn’t rude or defiant ; she just didn’t know why things felt so bad or why she was failing high school. What her In Home Therapist said sounded reasonable, but Sara just couldn’t connect with any of it. And today’s session was going really badly. Usually Sara could respond with a drawing to any topic. Today her hands were as stuck as her words.
“I dunno; I guess so,” she replied when her therapist asked her if she’d be willing to try something new.
“I’ve been watching your hands as you play with your markers. Let’s try this. Don’t look at the paper. What if your marker could draw in the air? What if it could make music as you moved it and no one could hear it but you? Can you take a minute and ask your hands if they have an Air Song picture they need to draw?”
“Sure,” said Sara uncertainly.
After a long pause, Sara lifted two hands together, her right hand atop the left. She moved them in a slow, deliberate wave up and away from her. She repeated this motion so tenderly that her therapist caught her breath and didn’t exhale until Sara lay both hands down softly.
“Like that?” asked Sara nervously.
“I saw this,” said her therapist, who repeated the gesture with her own gentleness. “I wanted to do it with you the moment you did it. How about you draw that? Here—lie your hands down and I will draw around them—an outline of your hands like that—and then you can draw within the outline of your own hands.”
Sara and her In Home Therapist met again the following week as planned. “Did you notice the Air Song picture that you brought home any time this week?” her therapist asked.
“I dunno; I guess so….I kept looking at it and remembering that feeling. And the music of it. Every time I wanted to cut. Did I tell you I was cutting? Every time those feelings came over me, like I just had to cut, I went over to my picture and looked at it. And I didn’t need to cut. Was that right?”
Sara had never spoken about her self-cutting, the way she cut her arms to manage her feelings.
“It sounds like it was just right for you.”
“Can we do more today?”
“Yes,” said her Carson therapist. “Let’s fill the room with your Air Music Movement Drawings.”
By JAC Patrissi