The Deep Song of Rage

Day 13 of 21 days sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma with Art published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam.

During radiation treatment and the surgeries, I was in high vigilance, survival mode.

What I was not expecting was the anger and rage that arose after the intensive medical procedures. I could no longer recognise who I had become. It took years of therapy, writing, drawing, tears, frustration, meditation, prayer, planting trees and letting go… to untangle and dissolve the intense feelings around the experience, as well as any anger I had suppressed earlier in my life. I had to befriend it all.

I ended up buying a punching bag and gloves and hung them in my room. It was really helpful to punch the bag until I was exhausted (and as I was already depleted… this activity rarely lasted for longer than a minute).

I made it through. Nothing to prove to anyone.

Day 12 of 21 days sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma with Art published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam.

I made it through. That part is over. I can feel it in my body. I will never be the same and although the scars are there - life feels so much light and richer. Nothing to prove to anyone.

Breathe

Breathe

Day 11 of 21 days sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma with Art published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam.

Sometimes this is all we need. To focus on the breath. Come back to the breath. Ultimately, this breath of the Life Force is all we have.

During my recovery process I created many drawings around the act of the breathing/ the breath.

They say I am cured - why do I feel so unsafe?

They say I am cured. Why do I feel so unsafe?

Day 10 of 21 days sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma with Art published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam.

This was a strange place to be in. When I created this drawing, I had been given the “all clear” from the medical world. I was cancer free. And when my loved ones, friends and family heard this, everyone gave a huge sigh of relief and got on with their lives. Nathalie is no longer in danger.

It is true, I was no longer in danger but I was far from healed. Being cured and healed are two vastly different worlds.

I still struggled with everything and most of all, I did not feel safe within my body. At night I could not fall asleep because I was fearful that the radiation machine was going to click on (I could not separate the past experience of not feeling safe to my present day where I actually was safe). I also wondered, how long was I going to be “clear” for? Was the cancer going to return next year? The experience felt heavy and very lonely. It was really hard to talk to anyone about this. One friend who had been through cancer, understood. My therapist listened too and week by week, focused on bringing me back to my body through somatic experiencing. I prayed every day. I cried every day. Being alive felt overwhelming.

I am not alone: understanding trauma for the first time

The skin feels numb. The surface between the world and my inner broiling cannot express anything.

Day 9 or 21 - sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma.

I remember sitting in a taxi in traffic. As I looked through the window, and saw people walking on the footpath, I was so aware that there was a world out there that I was not able to be a part of. My emotions were boiling inside. My skin felt numb. I could not express myself. My body was stuck in very unfamiliar territory.

To feel completely separate from the world is not an unusual experience but since I was a child, one thing I did feel pretty consistently was the oneness with my world. But that was no longer the case.

In the following days after this moment in the taxi, a friend suggested I read Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger. This is where I began to learn about the process of trauma. The words I read, spoke to me. This is the first time that I understoo

d the radiation is a traumatic event and I am still stuck (frozen) in that energy.

Here is the drawing after I have read the first few pages of WAKING THE TIGER:

Text from above image:

In trauma, the mind becomes profoundly altered.

For example in a car crash, a person is protected initially from emotional reaction and even from a clear memory or sense that it really happened.

THIS speaks to ME.

These remarkable mechanisms allow us to navigate through those critical periods hopefully waiting for a safe time and place for these ALTERED states TO “WEAR OFF”

YES YES

The altered state was my experience of radiation

I feel I am beginning to understand the trauma inside of me. I am not alone in the experience.

All I need is a cooked meal and my feet massaged

People keep asking me is there anything I need or want? All I need is a cooked meal and my feet massaged.

Day 8 of 21 days: sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma.

This drawing is from 2009 when I had completed treatment, was cured of cancer and was extremely weak, depressed and in shock.

I spent the day lying on my sofa resting, drawing, praying or watching movies.

Loved ones around me were at a loss. At this stage, there really wasn’t much anyone could do for me. I know this happens for many people recovering from a huge medical intervention or accident where the body needs rest. My answer needed to be a very practical one and both answers were acts of nurturing: a cooked meal and my feet massaged (to help me get back into my body).

Let me be

Let me be

Day 7 of 21 days sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma with Art published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam.

When I drew during the first seven years of recovering from radiation, it was to prove to me that I was alive. Each drawing was a witness that I was still in the land of the living. I never imagined that I would make a book, but over the years, seeing the amount of drawings I had made, it seemed obvious to a handful of friends that there was something there to share.

The obstacle in creating a book was that, for over a decade I could not look at most of the drawings. There was too much pain in them. I would feel overwhelmed. Many drawings of the book hold a very strong energy of a particular (very difficult) moment or emotion lived. So, the sketch pads were placed in boxes, the boxes were piled upon eachother, until I had enough distance to return back to those moments lived within my body.

There are a handful of drawings from the first 7 years, where I can feel an inner sigh of relief and this is one of them. There is no residue of trauma here.

In the process of recovery from intensive radiation treatment/ surgically induced menopause, depression, PTSD… there were many people who had the best of intentions: how I should be… what I should be… had I tried x, y z? These best-of-intentions felt overwhelming and that something was wrong with me. Why, after years, was I still unwell, still struggling with everything when I had been cured of cancer within the first months of my diagnosis?

It is a curious place to be. But how could anyone understand how brutal the treatment had been and how I had been stripped away of everything that made me, me? Stripped away of my vital force, my desire to live, my inner strength, my joy, my sexual being... My body had been internally burnt around the clock for 7 days and nights and it was taking time to recover.

What I longed for was space to just be.

The message of this drawing, Let me be reminds me, there is nothing to do, no one to be. It appears as a message to myself that it is OK to relax and just be me. I am enough.

Looking back at the time, I thought I had been stripped away of desire for life. However, I see in this drawing that I did have a desire: for those around me to let me be.

It took time, however, I did heal. I did return to life and I became whole again.

Meditation: How does it feel to sit and simply be, you? No expectation of any result. Simply be… you.

Reminder to Self : it takes time to heal

It’s been knocked out of me: my courage, the fearlessness, the joy, that strength I have so depended on.

Day 6 of 21 days of sharing images from my book I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

When the experience of radiation treatment and multiple surgeries brought me to my knees, I could no longer recognise myself: the courage, the fearlessness, the joy, the strength I had so depended on to carry me in life, had simply been knocked out of my being. It took years for me to return to myself. In retrospect, I did have courage as I did stay with life (I did not throw myself under a bus which I had considered an option). And interestingly, at a time I felt far away from life, in this image, I drew the shape of the egg

The act of drawing as my witness: I am Alive

Text: The act of drawing, of creating is my witness to knowing I AM ALIVE. I am here. I exist. I did not die. I am here. I am here. Je suis là.

Day 4 of 21 Days sharing my drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma Through Art, published by Schilt Publishing.

A drawing of rejoice. I can still feel the sweetness of being in touch with the life force when I drew this.

Being brought to my knees

Now I know how it feels for a person to give up.

DAY 5 of 21 DAYS sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

Until the experience of radiation treatment, I had a huge desire to life and a surprising capacity to manifest my goals in the material world. I would have a vision of something I wanted to achieve and would work relentlessly until it came into being.

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This was also my way of survival: I had trained myself to ignore my own needs since I was a child. As a result, I had no idea how to give myself space to listen to my own needs: I filled up my life with action. This was also how I was able to quieten the chaos within my own being and keep the residue of trauma silenced.

Treatment brought me to my knees, I could no longer recognise myself: I had lost my desire for life. I lost the strength in my body. I had finally understood what it felt like to want to give up. I had to learn what it meant to take care of my own needs. This felt like a foreign language. And it took me years to retrieve all the internal pieces and become whole again.

Meditation: What makes you feel whole?

Emotional healing is slow and more complex than physical healing

The emotional healing slow and more complex than physical healing

DAY 3 of 21 days of sharing images from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art

Art accompanied me through radiation, depression, PTSD, surgically induced menopause and the long road back to myself.

If you’ve ever wondered how creativity can be medicine for the soul, this book is for you.

The Importance of NOW

I can only think of NOW

Day 2 of 21 days sharing an image a day from my book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art, published by Schilt in Amsterdam.

As I recovered from intensive radiation treatment, multiple surgeries and surgically induced menopause, when everything felt so overwhelming, I would come back to the essence. These were 2 things: the NOW moment and my breath. To focus my mind completely on the NOW, brought me relief that I so needed.

Meditation: How present can you be right now?

Asking Nature to Heal Me

Tonight I asked for the support of every leaf, ever tree, every blade of grass, every insect.

Over the next month, I am sharing drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE - Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma Through Art. This drawing was a plea to Mother Nature to support me in my healing.

Today is day 1 of 21 days.

As a child, I remember the awe I would feel when I observed the natural world reflected within a dew drop on a leaf. This was a profound experience of interconnectedness, an understanding I had always felt intuitively, growing up. When I was with Nature, I felt the presence of the Divine in everything.

As a teenager, when I learnt that the Australian Aboriginal culture saw the earth as Mother, it completely resonated with me. Then, when I went to do my post grad studies in Kyoto, Japan I would often skip classes and cycle to the temples where a particular festival was taking place. Here, I saw the exquisite worship of Nature through Shinto and Zen Buddhist ritual. My intuitive experience of Nature as sacred was reflected in these rituals. Although culturally, it was a very foreign land, my soul understood deeply. Although it looked nothing like home, my soul felt at home in a land which worshipped nature.

In 2005, I found another “home” in South India, a place where Narayani, Mother Nature is worshipped. From the rooftop of the guest house, I could also see the Kailash Giri Hills, a sacred mountain range where sages (also known as Siddhars) have meditated and prayed for centuries. I would gaze at the Kailash Giri Hills and I knew I had arrived to my spiritual home.

Fast forward 5 years, I was in the process of my recovery of radiation treatment, surgically induced menopause, depression and PTSD. I was now living in the very same guest house and had installed a hammock on its rooftop where I could see the sacred Kailash Giri hills.

One afternoon, I was feeling particularly down and I prayed to Narayani / Mother Nature, asking for support. I was very specific in my request as I wanted support from every aspect of Nature around me: I asked every leaf, every tree, every blade of grass to support my recovery. I soaked up the sensation of Narayani / Mother Nature holding me and bringing life to this body that was feeling so heavy and stuck in trauma and depression. Later that night, I got out my pastels and created the above drawing.

Facing my Fear & How I Learned to Ask for Support.

It’s All Going. Orange = Surgery

This month, I am offering readers the stories behind some of the drawings from my recently published book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

As my tumour had reduced I was exempt from six months of chemo (talk about a miracle… that story is for another day). The final part of my treatment included a radical hysterectomy. The surgery took place a month after I had completed brachytherapy radiation (being radiated internally, every hour for 24 hours a day over 7 days).

I had been completely knocked down by the radiation. I could no longer recognise myself. I had been a spiritual warrior of Oneness for the seven days and nights of radiation. It had been a profound spiritual experience. But after radiation, I had to return back to my body: a body where the entire pelvic area had burnt internally. A body that was devastated. A mind that had shut down from the pressure of the experience.

Radiation had drained me of my life force. I had never, ever felt this weak. My brain had slowed down completely: I could barely string thoughts together. I could remember faces but could no longer connect the names to the face of my friends. Getting to the toilet was a momentous effort: then I would have to wait for the pee to pass, it felt like pissing razorblades each time. What has happened to me?

The night before (surgery and drawing my fear)

I visited the gynecologist to prepare for the hysterectomy. She asked if I had saved my eggs? I had not. Why?

“Your entire reproductive system was destroyed during radiation.”

What??? This hadn’t been explained to me.

“You have gone through surgically induced menopause”

What???

I had been so struck by so much already, it was too much to process any more information. It had never occurred to me that I could lose my eggs during this process.

I had already had three surgeries in the last month on top of the radiation. That was it. I did not want any more interventions. A friend knew of my fear of general aneasthetics, of being cut open and stitched back, so he recommended a book Prepare for surgery : Heal Faster by Peggy Huddleston. I followed its recommendations religiously.

Hysterectomy 4 May - drawing the fear of going through surgery

I was already constantly chanting Om Namo Narayani, my mantra to Mother Nature in my mind. It was my internal anchor that connected me to Mother Earth. Peggy Huddleston’s book encouraged me to meditate, to prepare my subconscious to feel safe and feel supported, so, I spoke to my surgeon - to understand that I was truly in good hands. I messaged my friends who were spiritually connected and asked them to pray for me during the lead up to the surgery. I also gave them the time I was to go into surgery, so they would be mindful to be with me during it and coming out of it. The night before surgery, friends came over and we did a small fire ritual, called a puja (which I had learnt in India) to feel the support of my community and the universe.

It was definitely not protocol in France as surgeons have a very scientific way of looking at the world, but I asked my surgeon to do something he had never done before. I said to him, “When I go under anesthetic, please tell me you are going to take good care of me. And when you have finished the operation, please tell me that it has gone OK and that I will heal fast.” By this time, my surgeon was used to me asking weird and unusual questions, so he kindly agreed.

The moments before I went under, I remembered all those who were thinking of me, praying for me. I was supported.

After the hysterectomy, I woke up with a bloated belly which had been stapled back together. I had been cut across the lower part of my stomach from one pelvic bone to the other. The pain was excruciating. I had a morphine drip which I could administer and I maxed out my dose on the first day. I shared a room with a woman who had received a mastectomy. We looked into each other’s eyes. We didn’t need to say a thing. We both knew that we had traveled to deep and painful places.

When my surgeon came to see me for the post surgery visit, he told me that he had spoken to me before and after the surgery. I was amazed that he had done this and remembered to tell me. I felt like a pioneer within the french medical system by creating a more meaningful connection between the the doctor and the patient.

It’s Over - The End of a Death Sentence & Depression

This month I am sharing the stories behind the drawings from my book, I AM ALIVE which is available in USA, Europe, UK and for pre-order in Australia.

This is one of my favourite drawings, because of its simplicity and the sense of liberation I felt when I placed the light blue all over the page.

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After cancer treatment, the protocol at the Institut Marie Curie was to have 6 monthly check ups for the first two years. And then annual check ups for years, 3,4 and 5, in case of any recurrence. With each check up looming, I would be engulfed with the capacious fear of, “Has the cancer come back?”.

The difficulties of the first three years of checkups were compounded with having to deal with PTSD, depression and the hormonal nightmare of surgically induced menopause. At the time, I would half joke that if I had a gun, I would shoot myself out of my misery. As each year went on, the symptoms reduced but ask anyone who knew me at the time: I was angry for having to go through such fatigue and pain. I was finally dealing with the pandora’s box of emotions, which I had suppressed for years…

What I did not know at the time is that trauma awakens trauma which has been suppressed. My experience of radiation awakened earlier traumas I had not dealt with. This came out as rage within me. It kept rising and rising. Rage and sadness. I bought a punching bag and gloves which I hung in my room, to help move the rage out of my body. My nervous system was so deregulated that the smallest hiccup in daily life could set me off into a mess of low-coping response and tears.

I was living in rural South India in the temple of my spiritual teacher. I knew it was the right place to heal but I was in grief of having had to give up ‘my life’ in Paris… and my work as a photographer/ film maker. I yearned for for all I had lost: my vitality, my health, my joy, my strength, my courage, my ease of navigating life, my sexual being, my sense of humour... I was worn out. Everything. Absolutely everything felt hard. Each day was a struggle. And I didn’t know if I was ever going to get better.

Why was Paris so important to me? My mother left the family in Australia and returned to France when I was 13 years old. It was a devastating experience and I visited her every Christmas vacation. In 1991, at the age of 22, I had studied 2 years in Japan and completed my Masters in Japanese at Sydney University. I had been so focused on proving to myself (to prove to others) that I could do this. I then spent the following year teaching Japanese and with my friend Maria, co-translated the book that became, Tao Shiatsu. We signed off the book in Japan and with the money from the translation, I moved to Paris. I was tired of all the study I had done. I wanted something totally different. I had so wanted to live in Paris, because I yearned to live in the same country as my mother. There was a desire to catch up on the years I had missed with her as a teenager.

I worked as a tour guide for Japanese and taught English and Japanese. I fell in love with Géraud who lived in Montmartre. The work was a means to an end so that I could stay in Paris. I rented a studio in rue Simon Dereure on the top of the hill of Montmartre. It overlooked a park and if you leaned out to the left, there was a stunning view of the Sacred Coeur. I loved Paris but I longed for my creative soul to be expressed… but had no idea how to make the leap. Then 18 months later, I met James who shook my soul (not in a kind way). He was my catalyst and probed me, asking what was I doing with my life? I didn’t know. I was unhappy with my relationship. I felt lost. I had left my job and was freelancing and was just making ends meet. I needed to get out of this survival mode. I found a job setting up a french company office in Sydney… this would be a place to work out my next step.

In Sydney, I worked really hard. I was a creative being in the corporate world. I felt like my wings had been clipped. I could not open the windows on the 18th floor of the building. I prayed a lot during that year for guidance and direction for my next step in life. At night, I would dream of the cobblestones of Montmartre. They were calling me back, “Reviens, Reviens…”. I would wake up in the morning, with such yearning to return to Paris.

I had a list of potential creative things I could do in Paris which would better suit my soul. This list included exhibition design, shiatsu healer, documentary film maker, but I didn’t have a plan. I kept praying and meditating on this list, how could I be creative AND earn a living so that I could stay in Paris? Then after eight months in the corporate world, at daybreak, I was woken by this very loud voice, in my left ear, “Documentary film!”. There was my answer.

I had saved up my money and a few months later, I returned to the cobblestones of montmartre. I greeted them every day with joy. I moved back in to my old studio at rue Simon Dereure, and started knocking on doors asking documentary film producers for work. I ended up working on the first BBC/ ARTE coproduction as a production assistant on a film on Albert Camus. This was the beginning of my learning.

Paris was very generous with me. At the same time of working in documentary film, I developed my documentary photography and the creative being I had been yearning to become, flourished. I always had enough. I appreciated the anonymity of Paris. I fell in love with the city and the life it offered me.

The dread of stepping into that building of so much suffering.

But when I got radiated at the Institut Marie Curie, the love affair with the city ended abruptly. It now represented a place of torture. And I wanted nothing to do with any memory of my torture.

Each visit back to Paris, back to the Institut Marie Curie would have me spiralling. I hated it all. I hated the hospital, as I was aware of how much suffering was in the building. I would feel such dread and fear but always be charming with the staff. It was a cover. I could not separate the experience of the past from the present.

Then by year four, I had learnt to regulate my nervous system, and with this, came more ease of activities in life. I would still crash regularly but my bandwidth could deal with more. I still hated going through the process of returning to Paris, to the hospital but I could see that I could cope a little better.

At the five-year check up, if the results were “clear of cancer”, I would no longer be in the danger zone of the cancer returning, I would not have to return for any more check ups. This was a huge milestone.

The results? I was clear.

What happened next? I was taken completely by surprise. The feeling of a low, heavy ceiling lifted from above me. The sensation was so palpable. I could breathe differently. At that very moment, I understood that, for the previous five years, I had had this invisible death sentence looming above my head. And now, it had gone. I felt my depression lift, my body relax. I was receiving permission to move forward in life. The worst of it is over.

It’s over.

LOVE POEM TO RADIATION (the love poem that took 15 years to write)

Drawing 1 of LOVE POEM to RADIATION 2025

Last December of 2024, as I was writing the introduction to my book of drawings, I AM ALIVE - Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art, I found that I finally had enough distance to revisit the experience that had been my worst nightmare: 8 days and nights of brachytherapy radiation. The radiation had devastated me, but it had also saved my life.

I wanted to reflect on this complex relationship to the treatment. The machine had simultaneously hurt me but also cured me by completing burning out the deadly tumour that was in my cervix. I wanted to imagine a return back to the night before treatment, to that moment where I found myself alone, in my room with the radiation machine. But this time, it would be different. I would bring with it, the wisdom I had accumulated in my own healing and the experience of my own recovery. The most important aspect of this exercise, is that, this time, I was going to feel safe.

In 2009, the evening before I commenced radiation, I was filled with horror. I did not know how to contain the experience of knowing that I was going to be burnt alive, around the clock. To help me process this fear, I began a monologue with my soul, wanting to see the entire experience as that of oneness. I wanted to see the radiation machine, the radiation, my tumor, the window, the tree outside my window, every nurse or doctor who came into my room as one. All was interconnected. All was one. This was my way of coping.

As I burned in radiation, the experience was extremely painful and my body felt trapped. I maintained the interconnected experience through constant prayer but I also felt rage as the machine burned me each hour.

Here is the love poem. I imagine writing it as I sit next to the radiation machine, the night before treatment in my little room of the Institut Marie Curie in Paris which had one small window overlooking a tree… while holding the insight, the experience of healing that I hold within me after, 15 years of healing and life.

Drawing 2 of LOVE POEM TO RADIATION 2025

To my persecutor, the silent unwelcome guest, the radiation machine.

You are my greatest terror and nightmare.

Yet I have no choice but to befriend you as your radiation burning will heal me.

For the duration of the treatment, I will take you on as a spiritual being. I will see you as Divine.

It will feel like you are torturing me, every hour, 24 hours a day.

I shall not sleep.

I shall not eat.

You will burn me alive.

I will feel the insides of my body cook.

My mother will tell my brother that when she visits me, my room smells of burnt flesh.

Then when the week is over, your radiation/burning will devastate me completely.

I will lose my mind, my peace, my vitality and my joy.

It will take me years to recover.

However, ultimately, you will save my life.

You will burn away this deadly tumor.

And you will also burn my entire pelvis area and the organs within.

It is because of you that I will have an extension of this life.

For a year after your radiation, I will not be able to fall asleep peacefully.

In the dark of the night, my body will feel that you are there, beside me.

My body will wait for that dreaded « click».

The click that begins the internal burning.

It will take five years for the sense of a looming death sentence over me, to lift.

Seven years later, I will see a drawing of Sita sitting on a pyre, being burnt alive and I will confidently say that I know that very experience.

For the next 14 years, every time I return to Paris, (a city I once so loved ) will be in dread and fear because the city will be the reminder of my place of torture with you.

Yet in this room, the night before radiation begins. It is ever so quiet. Just you and I. A vigil for us both, before the reckoning.

I will need to see you as the Divine, I will need to see this all playing out as the Divine otherwise I simply won’t get through this.

I will want to run

I will be pinned down

There will be no escape

This is it.

You will be my torturer, my grace, my saviour.

We will be one. We are Divine.

I will come out of this alive.

This is my process of surrender

Final drawing of LOVE POEM TO RADIATION 2025

Devastation and how I Learnt to Feel more Connected to Humanity

Breathe in the fear

The experience of devastation is not only related to having a life threatening illness. Devastation can happen in any form and every one of us, one day, will (very likely) be hit by it. When that blow came for me, my world stopped. I remember how rapidly, my question of, How could this be happening to me?, slid, lightspeed into, Oh ###k, this is happening to me.

The floor disappearing beneath me.

The sensation of free-falling without the parachute. (I am scared of heights)

This is happening to me.

I journeyed through the myriad of doctor appointments and choices, and shared waiting rooms with other people with similar life threatening illnesses. Then, I began treatment. The waiting rooms of the Institut Marie Curie in Paris were filled with the most unsuspecting people. The chic elderly woman in a silk hermes scarf who held tightly to her leather clutch while sitting with her helper, the African woman in her 50s with her colourful cobalt blue headwrap, the man in his well fitted suit and yellow tie, probably in his 40s. The young mother wearing a wool cap to hide her lost hair accompanied by her exhausted husband. The manual labourer with his rough hands and thick fingers. The middle aged women, tightly groomed, possibly an executive from the corporate world. Nobody, I realised was spared. As my hospital visits continued, I shifted from my own self pity into being fascinated to know that this is not only my suffering. This is happening to thousands of people around the world at this very moment.

I spent hours in the waiting rooms of Institut Marie Curie in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Sometimes I would find myself, breathing in the fear of my own experience and breathing in the fear of every person in the waiting room with me. Breathing it all in. Connecting to a part of humanity’s suffering. And then, I would breathe out love, sending love to myself and those with me in the waiting room, to those in the hospital floors above me and those around the world.

It sounds counter intuitive to want to do this. I often wished to be “rid” of pain, of the difficult experience of treatment. I wanted ease and comfort. However when I was in the thick of the fear, the suffering - there was no ease nor comfort. I wanted it to end but before that happened, I needed to go through it. And, I discovered, it is better to go through something with others than alone.

The surprising thing is that the sense of inter-connectedness from this experience, meant that I felt a lot less lonely in my own suffering (which felt insurmountable at times) and felt a profound connection with humanity and our commonality of suffering. This sense of connection gave me courage to keep going.

Drawing as a Vital Act

When I was putting the book together a friend asked me, “Why did you draw so much?” as she saw piles of over 100 Sennelier drawing pads stacked one on top of eachother in my studio in South India.

The thing is, that I never planned to draw. I was a photographer before this all happened and I had an affinity with the medium of photography. The camera was an extension of myself and I had this connection with people that was extremely natural, and you could see this in each portrait I took.

Photography requires movement. I knew that from a bed, the possibilities of photographing were going to be very limited and as a part of my treatment I was going to be stuck in bed, isolated in a radiation room, undergoing treatment for 20 minutes every hour/ 24 hours a day / 7 days, I knew I needed an alternative to channel my creativity.

Part of my preparation for radiation treatment at Institut Marie Curie in Paris was a visit to an art store where I bought white Italian clay, acrylic paints, pencils, drawing pads, fimo and sennelier oil pastels. I packed these into my bag for my 7 day hospital stay. I also added a small camera, some movies, 2 books, crochet hooks and wool and my notebook.

The night before I was in the radiation room alone waiting for my 5am wake up call to take me into surgery to insert the radiation rod inside me. Terror rose. I picked up the oil pastels for the first time and drew the sensations of terror inside my body directly onto the page.

When radiation began, it felt like bullets shooting up my vagina. I began to burn internally. The experience was horrific and I knew I could not move because that would move the radiation rod which was inserted in me. Nothing could console me. No book, no movie, the written word, crocheting… nothing. I was alone with the radiation machine.

I reached out for the oil pastels and began to place colour on the page, and just as I had done the previous night, tuned in directly to each emotion I was experiencing. And then I would get another colour, and tune in again. And this way, I kept laying colours on top of eachother, kept feeling into each emotion. And then I started to scratch on the layers and other colours appeared. Each drawing was my lifeline. A vital act. Each drawing was also an anchor for me to remain connected to myself and to not lose my mind.

Printing I AM ALIVE

I thought it was going to be an easy enough process. I was wrong.

The last few months putting the book together had been grueling. In retrospect, I should have got on a plane and finished the book with the designer and publisher in person. There is such value in working face to face. Another mistake learnt.

On May 5, earlier this year, I arrived in Stuttgart, Germany to print my latest book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

I had attended the printing of my catalogue, Love it and Leave it - Australia’s Creative Diaspora. We had printed in Singapore. It was black and white and a very smooth process. My imagination never went to the space that it could be a vastly different experience/

So what was the difference between the prints?

Very simply: the personal…

Love it and Leave was about other people’s stories.

I am Alive is my story.

Every drawing in the book has an aspect of my soul imprinted into it. There are the drawings from when I am being burnt alive. The drawing from when I am fighting for my life. The drawing from when I want it all to end. The drawing of not coping. There are drawings of trauma, depression, grief in all their colours. I lived them. Each of them is a part of me.

To see these images each with a fragment of my soul be spat out of the printing press at such a high speed was dizzying and overwhelming. The emotions of this triggered the sensations of going through cancer treatment again… How could I explain this to anyone around me? I couldn’t find the vocabulary. And printing this book was a professional setting: I needed to stay cool and centred. The machines were dedicated to bringing my book into reality that day. Tomorrow was reserved for another book. This was not the day to fall apart. All I wanted to do was hide and cry. At one part of the day I found myself in the toilet, gathering my sense of being. I wished so deeply that I was not going through this alone. I knew I really needed someone by my side… but how could I have known I was going to be triggered like this? I thought I was over the trauma of my treatment. That was 16 years ago… How could I be reacting this much? I reminded myself of how much I had worked to recover.

Breathe deeply. Come back to my body.

I got through the day and went to the main station to get a train to Frankfurt. I was early and sat on the platform. My head in my hands. I was enraged with how the day had gone. I should have been more careful, I should have foreseen to accompany me today, someone to help me through this. I was done. I called a friend, “I never ever want to see that book again. I want it all to be thrown away. This was not worth it. **** it.”

A month later, when the first book arrived, I felt no joy. I was still overcome by the experience that had happened in Stuttgart. This is a sign for that things are not OK and that I still need to pay attention to what is going on.

Time plays such an important part of healing. Time and focused attention on the issue - which is what I did. I took care of the parts of me that hadn’t felt safe, that were overwhelmed by time in the printing, that confused the printing with me being in radiation. Separated. Brought back together. Whole.

And now, two months later, I have come to befriend the book. I am ready to share it with others and let it reveal its journey to me.

Printing of I AM ALIVE in Stuttgart, Germany

Offset printing - I was being shown how each colour is measured.

I AM ALIVE : Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art

My new book, I AM ALIVE - Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art is coming out this Autumn and I want to share behind the scenes of making the book (which took a whopping 16 years)… yes, you read correctly 16 years.

The book was described as, “An unflinching and luminous account of illness, faith, resilience, and the transformative role of art in finding one’s way back to life.”

The story begins in 2009. This is the first chapter to give you an idea of how the story kicks off:

—————————————————

The doctor clicks her pen, looks down at the worn carpet where her feet

follow the swivel of the chair. She doesn’t look me in the eye. “You have

Stage 3 cervical cancer.”

Then she tells me in a matter-of-fact manner, “We do not know yet if the

cancer has spread to your lymph nodes. If it has, the survival rate is low.”

I can no longer feel the chair beneath me.

What else is she saying?

A roaring silence fills me.

I am free-falling through the sky. No parachute. Nothing to hold onto.

Is this it? I am 39 years old.

—————————————————

The book is primarily drawings that I began in hospital, the night before brachytherapy (radiation for cervical cancer) and I continued to draw over the following 7 years as I navigated through the depths of depression, physical healing from very intensive radiation and the tricky pathways or recovering from PTSD. Until I slowly, every so slowly returned to life. Drawing was an urgent lifeline, my witness that I still existed in this world.

By the time I had forged my way through the seven year journey of returning to life, my drawings had changed profoundly. Drawing became an opportunity to spend quiet time with myself (which I really appreciated). These times gave me access to listen to what my soul wanted to draw, to express.

The reader essentially gets to see this arc of 14 years of drawings within 184 pages, along with a text that gives context to the drawings.

Below, is the book cover which is a self portrait of me during brachytherapy radiation. It may look like a very simple drawing. However, the experience of radiation was so traumatising that it took me 3.5 years before I could draw this image of my experience.

So now is the time to share this work… so I will be posting more! Stay tuned!