My spiritual journey started when I was student at DePaul University. I was in my journey to find who I am, I was looking for answers that I was concerned for many years. My life was not easy, I was once divorced, I wasn’t happy with my marriage, I was changing job after job, I couldn’t sleep at night to think and asked myself: Who I am and why I am here, what I have to do to change my life and find peace, happiness and fulfillment? There were no answers, until I sign up for Art therapy class, that are part of my De Paul University psychology degree. My teacher, she wasn’t like a regular teacher, she was our mentor, mother, counselor; her name is
Joan Cantwell, RN, MA, CJEA, she works in the field of therapeutic arts and wellness, also as a teacher at De Paul Univerity. She opened a new doors for me. I learned by practicing what I studied. One evening, in the beginning of the semester, she invited an artist, a story teller, then she led us how to write our own story- good and bad, cheerful and tragic. This is a day; I will remember all lifelong. I have to leave the class before it ended, because I was in tears, I wrote a short story, but I couldn’t express and share it with others because it touched my heart, it brought me back home, when I was 18.
Joan Cantwell sent me back home and said: go home and write a long letter to your mother, express yourself, you need to relief this enormous energy now…. I went home by 9 pm and wrote in my journal more than 25 pages letter to my mother. It was my awakening moment, it was a night to remember, it was the first time in my life when I was able to understand my feelings, desire, my restrictions, my action and my misery, I was able to get in touch with my heart. Since then, I found out who I am and why my life was upside down. I promised myself, from this moment, to follow my heart desire and to have my own policy, because if I have no such, I have to follow other people plans, and this was not what I wanted, since my upbringing was directed toward following family traditions and decisions.
This was the first semester with Joan Cantwell; then I took two more semesters, as I discovered my new freedom, I found who I am, but I was looking for more similar experiences and I wanted to heal completely my soul and to understand my feelings and emotions, why they color my decision, what makes me thick, how to let go and to relief my pressure, as my feelings were turbulent, they brought me up, then down, my entire body was exhausted, I wanted to discover how to find peace and calm in every day and to enjoy life, instead of being emotional. Here, I found a big secret that I want to share with everyone, because I want all of you to be happy and smiling and able to enjoy your life, free of diseases that comes from unhealed soul and chaotic emotions.
Changing our attitude toward life is not enough, we have to recognize our emotions in order to heal them. We all have difficult time, we are human being and have feelings. Expressing them is the key! Getting in contact with them is the answer we are looking for. Every day, we hear that someone have heart attack or stroke. Why? Because we did not learn how to express ourselves. Altering from emotional to intellectual state of mind can really work as a magic.