By Asta Au
Introduction
In times of uncertainty, grief, or personal struggle, healing can feel like an abstract or far-off goal. Sometimes it feels impossible or like a dream. While therapy, support systems, and rest are critical, there’s another deeply human resource that often gets overlooked: the arts. Whether through painting, writing, dancing, singing, or simply creating something with our hands, the act of making art is profoundly healing, something that has been with us since time immemorial.
Art isn’t just a tool for processing pain. It’s a way to rediscover joy, reclaim our voice, and reconnect with ourselves and the world around us.
Finding Joy Through Creating
My journey to healing began with colouring books. I remember picking up a colouring book randomly one day and coloured. I coloured for hours and hours without knowing how much time had passed. I hadn’t been able to do something with so much focus in years. I hadn’t been able to quiet my mind of all the self-critical thoughts until I picked up the colouring book. I began dabbling in the art as ways to help me express my sorrow, grief and fear. I wrote poems, painted and composed music. I transformed my emotions into art and let it out instead of bottling inside. The journey was slow and arduous, but I finally did it. I found laughter and relief. I found comfort and peace. I found joy through creating.
There is something undeniably powerful when making art. The feelings artmaking elicits from us can be profound sadness, awe, anger and tenderness. There’s a joyfulness about making art. The feeling of being immersed in color, rhythm, texture, or sound can be playful, liberating, and grounding. In the world of creativity and imagination, anything is possible. There is not right or wrong in this space. Only the creator and the creation; the artist and the art; you and yourself.
When we create, we step out of survival mode and into the present moment. There’s a kind of magic in allowing ourselves to make something that’s not for approval or perfection, but just because it feels good. Just because it makes us feel. In a world that often prioritizes productivity over presence, art is a quiet rebellion. It’s a reminder that joy is a form of resistance.
Art Helps Us Stay Connected
I don’t think I ever saw art as a form of connection until I witnessed it in action. This is a story going back to my student days where I was hesitant to share my poems and my artwork. It felt too vulnerable and raw. I didn’t want to come out of my protective shell. But my instructor told me that art and co-creating art is how we build connection. So, I took the leap and shared my art. I shared my dark moments and my anxieties. I shared my hopelessness and fear. I shared my beginnings of finding hope and joy. I shared my myself using the arts. And through this, I found my vulnerabilities being held warmly and gently. I found others who were moved by my art and understood me through my art. My classmates responded to my artwork with their own and created something out of my art. Through this, I experienced what it was like to be deeply connected to myself and deeply connected to others.
In an increasingly fragmented and fast-paced world, many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from each other, and from the earth. The arts offer a powerful antidote to loneliness and isolation. They help us remain rooted in our bodies, our imaginations, and our emotions. Through dance, we return to our breath and movement. Through writing, we uncover stories buried beneath everyday noise. Through music, we feel emotions that are hard to name. Through visual art, we give shape to what we’re holding inside. Through sharing this art, with ourselves and others, we build and form communities.
Art is how we remember who we are. It’s how we speak when words fail. It’s how we stay tethered to the full spectrum of being human, all the joy, grief, rage, hope, and love within us.
Creativity as a Compass Through Modern Challenges
I think about how art, creativity and imagination has always been a form of resistance: a tool for social and political change. From the earliest cave paintings to street art, from the earliest melodies to contemporary songs, artists have used their work to express their views about society around them. I too am moved and inspired to create in times of social unrest. I write poems in response to the world around me because it provides a space to channel my anger, fear and helplessness. I draw and paint as acts of resistance to the horrors I see filling my screens. I make art because it helps me process and move through uncertainty and pain. It helps keep me grounded without being overwhelmed. It helps me make sense of the world and find meaning and a path to move towards.
We are living in a time marked by overwhelming global challenges: climate anxiety, systemic injustice, social unrest, war and violence, disconnection, and the lingering effects of collective and intergenerational trauma. In these times, it’s easy to feel powerless or numb.
But art reminds us that we are not passive observers of the world. We are makers and creators. Creativity gives us a way to respond, to imagine, to process, and to act. Protest songs, community murals, climate poetry, documentary films, zines, and storytelling circles are all ways that people make meaning in the face of adversity. Comedy, humour and playfulness are all ways that people show resilience, and the world is not so broken that all joy has been lost.
The arts don’t erase pain, but they help us move through it. They give us space to mourn, to celebrate, to resist, and to dream.
Healing Isn’t Always Linear—But It Can Be Creative
Recently, I found an old poem I wrote six or seven years ago. It was about healing and the hope that, one day, I would be able to say, “I’m okay” and actually mean it. I stared at this poem for a long time and couldn’t help but smile. It was a rather complicated smile, filled with love and heartache for who I was seven years ago. I wrote a response to this poem that was about current me. It was about how my healing journey was not easy, took a lot of time and patience, but I can now say, “I’m okay” and actually mean it. Some days I don’t think I am, and it would be easy to go back into despair. My artwork helped remind me that healing isn’t linear, but that’s okay.
The path to healing isn’t straight or smooth. Just like a drawing a self portrait without looking at the paper, it has loops and circles, pauses and begins again. Art meets us wherever we are. It doesn’t demand that we be okay. It only asks that we show up and begin, whenever we are ready. It holds us with a mark, a word, a movement, or a sound.
As my instructor once said, art that moves us is beautiful. You don’t need to be a “real artist” to benefit from creativity. There’s no right way to engage. Whether it’s writing in a journal, dancing alone in your room, singing softly in the shower, or finger painting on recycled paper, it matters. The act of creating is what heals and that’s beautiful.
Final Reflections
At its heart, healing is about returning to ourselves. Art makes that return possible. It allows a container to hold our most vulnerable emotions and a vehicle for expression. It offers us not just a way to cope, but a way to thrive. Within the arts, we create a space where we can feel deeply, express freely, connect authentically. It reminds us that we are still alive, still present, still resisting and still here.
So, create. Not because you have to, but because you can. Because in making art, you are also making space for joy, truth, and transformation.
