Forewarned is Forearmed

When I was in college, I caught a house guest reading my diary; from that point on, until I started blogging about five years ago, the only form of journaling I did was to draw in some sketch books. I even dated some of the entries!

In the late 80s, I was in college, and decided I needed to see a therapist. I'd just - quite suddenly - remembered something that happened to me when I was a kid, and it explained a lot about many of the issues I'd had growing up and was still having, especially when it came to friendship and other relationships.

I picked out a practice from the phone book, and lucked out when I was assigned to Jo. She was a children's therapist, as was a later therapist I had, but I wasn't so far out of childhood that it wasn't effective, and I didn't mind. It's probably no surprise that art therapy was something she utilized. I dabbled with paints for awhile, just trying to express some feelings, and eventually started keeping sketch books. (The books are thin because I ripped out and destroyed all the truly awful stuff (= most of it).)

I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and share some of them. I'm no artist (really!), but some of the sketches can be linked to other things, so I'm working up a couple simple collages. I just wanted to prepare you.