Create to Heal: The Science + Spirit of Art as Therapy

I didn’t call it art.

At first, it was just scraps and scribbles.

A journal page filled with words I couldn’t say out loud. A watercolor flower that looked like a bruise. A collage of torn paper and breath held too long.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t planned.

But it made me feel something again.

And that was enough.

Somewhere along the way, we were taught that healing is linear. That we talk it out, fix it, check it off the list, and move on.

But real healing? It’s nonverbal. It’s emotional. It’s often messy, nonlinear, and sacred in ways we can’t explain.

This is where creative expression steps in.

Art therapy is not about being artistic. It’s about using your hands, your senses, your intuition to release what your words can’t hold.

You don’t need to be good at it. You just need to be honest with it.

When you create, you access the right hemisphere of your brain—the part that processes emotions, intuition, and deep memory.

Hands-on creative work helps calm the nervous system by offering a sense of control, ritual, and expression.

Studies show art-making can reduce cortisol levels and help process trauma stored in the body.

But here’s what the research won’t tell you:

There’s something holy that happens when you cut, paste, scribble, or stitch your way through pain. It’s a conversation with your soul. It’s grief made visible. It’s self-trust rebuilt in ink and texture and scraps.

Creative healing looks like tearing paper when you’re angry. Gluing vintage lace onto a journal page as an act of softness. Writing letters you’ll never send. Collaging magazine words until they spell something truer than you expected. Making a mess because no one told you not to this time.

This is why I created the Create to Heal Collection. Not for the healed, but for the ones still in it.

Start with what you already have. A glue stick. Paper scraps. A journal or blank envelope. An old photo or a printout that makes you feel something.

Ask yourself: what wants to be expressed today?

Then let your hands answer.

There’s no wrong way. Only the way that feels like exhale.

Inside the Create to Heal collection, you’ll find guided art therapy workbooks, junk journal ephemera packs, mixed media supplies for sacred mess-making, and prompts and printables to guide your hand when your heart is heavy.

These tools aren’t just pretty—they’re practical soul support. And they were designed by someone who used them to survive.

Browse the collection here: www.west650.com

You were made to create.

Not for approval. Not for perfection. But because your body knows the way—and sometimes, your hands know how to lead.

So go ahead. Make something unpretty and sacred.

Create to heal.

Still here,
Emily