You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

                    —Rumi

Shadow and Light
Images of Change and Transformation for Women in Recovery: The Story Behind the Drawings

By Cat Saunders

   In May 1983, I had just begun a Master's degree program at Antioch University in Seattle. One night I went to dinner with a woman I'd met in class. While we waited for dinner to arrive, she took out an 8-1/2" X 5" black sketch book and a bunch of colored "Marvy Marker" felt-tipped pens.

Then she said, "I don't know what you're going to do while we wait, but I'm going to draw."

Since I didn't have anything else to do, I shared her Marvy Markers and started drawing on the only paper I had--a napkin. The next afternoon, I bought my own 8-1/2" X 5" black sketch book and Marvy Markers, and I began drawing with them every day.

Four years, 32 volumes, and 1300-plus drawings later, I completed that series of daily drawings. When I started them, I had the thought "I can't draw," despite the fact that I'd been a graphic artist for many years.

That thought persisted even as I continued to draw each day, because my drawings seemed so primitive. It took me a long time to understand that their primitive style was exactly what it needed to be.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

During those four years of daily drawings, I ended a 15-year voyage through anorexia, which had also included several years of bulimia as well as diagnosed manic-depression, now called bipolar disorder (I went off lithium in 1984 under medical supervision).

Also during that period, a five-year marriage ended in divorce; I did concurrent individual, group, and family therapy while taking family of origin and family systems classes at Antioch University; and I completed a Master's Degree in Psychology. Toward the end of those four years, I had a short, abusive marriage that brought my second divorce and many lessons in the "shadow" side of life.

Those years were definitely a wild ride, and my daily drawings helped me express and integrate my experiences. I discovered firsthand that the old adage--a picture is worth a thousand words--is absolutely true. Even now, two decades later, I can look at an image and know in an instant what was happening. Words can't hold a candle to that!

Over time, I've shown these drawings to friends, clients, students, colleagues, and mentors. People have been very moved by them, and many have encouraged me to make them available to others. I've been reluctant to do this because they're so personal.

However, I've come to realize that the images tap into the collective unconscious in mysterious ways that go beyond my personal story. If these drawings can help others heal and transcend physical or emotional trauma and pain, then it's worth the sacrifice of my personal privacy to share them.

Beginning in 2003, I spent a year reviewing all 1300 drawings multiple times to select the ones that seem most universally accessible. Eventually, I narrowed the field to 100 images and then sought the input of 50 people from all walks of life to help select the final 64 images for publication.

This group of 64 drawings I call "Shadow and Light: Images of Change and Transformation for Women in Recovery."

Giving the Images Away

My original plan was to publish the "Shadow and Light" images in a deck format. However, standard publishers are generally more interested in profit than healing (which is certainly understandable from a business standpoint). Even if a publisher agreed to take on the project, it would probably take a few years for them to produce and market the deck.

The independent publishing route wasn't a viable option for me, either. I've been down that road before--with Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook (published in June 2000)--and I don't have the physical stamina or the financial resources to do it again.

After a decade of writing and rewriting, the production of Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook took more than five years and cost $40,000 (this was before the days of high quality, inexpensive, print-on-demand publishing). The publication process nearly cost me my health, and its huge expense--twice as much as anticipated--eventually required me to undergo a business bankruptcy in 2002.

Although the lessons I learned from that process were invaluable, I promised myself I would find a gentler and more humane way to publish the deck of images.

The thing is, I realized long ago that I want to publish these drawings in the spirit of service, not profit--as a "give-back" for the grace that allowed me to survive and transcend the pain of my own difficult past. Therefore, I decided to launch their voyage into the world by making them available for free on the Internet. As of April 2006, the images are now available on this Web site to anyone and everyone, all over the world.

Of course, the images feel different when viewed on a computer screen compared to seeing them on cards you can touch and hold in your hands. But here again, technology can provide you with a real deck of "Shadow and Light" images. How? You have my permission to download and print hard copies of any or all of the images for your own personal use, as long as my copyright is always printed with each image.

Because this project is about service instead of profit, you even have my blessing to print a limited number of images for other people in your life, whether they want to use the images personally or in professional settings. Please see "How to Use These Images" for more detailed copyright guidelines regarding personal, professional, or publication reproduction of the images.

What Makes This Deck Different?

As you know, there are numerous decks of images available in the marketplace today. While many of these decks focus on transformation, very few provide graphic representations of the emotional or physical pain that seeks to be transformed.

Instead, many decks of images emphasize the end result after transformation, with the idea that if you simply focus on what you want, everything else will just magically fall away.

While that perspective has its merits, it also has serious liabilities. When "shadow" images are not included along with images of transcendence, it can contribute to feelings of isolation and shame for those who feel "lost in the darkness."

When people feel ashamed, afraid, or alone in their pain, they are more likely to deny it, suppress it, or turn it against themselves or others. Needless to say, these responses are more likely to exacerbate the pain, instead of helping it heal.

As noted author and child advocate Alice Miller has observed, people can more easily survive and transcend trauma if they have a compassionate witness.

In a similar way, these drawings can serve as a kind of "compassionate witness" in drawing form. That is, the images are offered as an expression of--and a mirror to--the many faces of the human soul.

I believe that the "seeds" of every human feeling and experience reside within each person's heart. I also believe that one of my jobs as a psychotherapist is to help people become more aware and accepting of these seeds of humanity in their own hearts and in the hearts of others.

Thus, denial or suppression of any aspect of the psyche is not my goal. Awareness, acceptance, and responsible use of all aspects of the psyche is my goal.

Truthful Expression Overcomes Denial and Control

Anyone who is interested in denying or disowning their passions or any part of their humanity will probably not appreciate or even understand the value of my deck of images. Such people may ridicule the drawings or try to attack me for making them public.

That is the nature of truthful expression--it frightens those who rely on denial to keep themselves or others under control.

On the flip side of denial, there is great power in the act of responsible truth-telling through feeling, expressing, and sharing about the experience of physical or emotional pain. This can be doubly powerful when it's done in the presence of a compassionate witness, as mentioned above.

Graphic images of both pain and transcendence can support this process by stimulating feelings and by inspiring people to externalize their emotions and their experiences through drawing or some other creative modality.

Externalizing feelings helps people take one step back from them, which in turn puts them in the position of simply having the feelings instead of being overwhelmed by them. In other words, the act of drawing (or otherwise creatively expressing) a feeling or experience puts a degree of distance between the person and whatever is being drawn.

This is invaluable in the healing process, because the distance provides "psychic space" and allows a vantage point of perspective. This, in turn, fosters a greater sense of safety and empowerment to deal with the intensity of the experience.

The Power of Storytelling Through Images

There is yet another way the "Shadow and Light" drawings can support people. The images provide a vehicle through which people can tell their own stories by telling stories about the drawings. Let me illustrate.

When I worked at Mental Health North in Seattle following my graduation from Antioch in 1984, I did a creative writing class for the patients there, all of whom carried the label "seriously emotionally disturbed adult." Personally, I think it would have been more compassionate and more accurate to call them "seriously emotionally wounded," but that's another story.

The creative writing class turned out to be a big hit. One of the things I did regularly with clients was something I call "Picture Storytelling." I write about this technique in Dr. Cat's Helping Handbook in a chapter by the same name.

To do Picture Storytelling with the group, I brought a collection of a few hundred magazine photos I had selected because they seemed evocative in some way. There were photos of animals and people, landscapes and starry nights, abstract art, and anything else that piqued my interest.

During class, I spread these photos on a big table and invited everyone to choose one and write a story about it. When they were done, anyone who wanted to share was invited to read their story to the group. No criticism or negative feedback was allowed. People listened attentively and everyone was respectful.

What I noticed was that people not only loved the opportunity to hear and tell stories; they also inevitably revealed their own personal story by writing a story about whatever photograph they chose.

This was particularly wonderful because most of the people didn't seem to realize this was happening, or at least, no one ever drew attention to the way a story reflected its writer's own life. In this way, everyone's confidentiality and emotional safety were assured.

For the group, the photo exercise was simply "story time" and that was that. Whether or not the storyteller--or the listeners--realized the personal metaphors inherent in their stories, I could see that healing was happening either way.

For instance, there was one person in the class who was so profoundly wounded psychologically that he never spoke. Yet when it came time for Picture Storytelling, this man would read his story with great animation, talking freely about a "random" photograph, as though there was nothing unusual about the fact that he was talking at all.

Who Can Benefit From These Images

In the same way I offered photographic images to that class, I invite you to experiment with the "Shadow and Light" images. You can use them to evoke emotion, stimulate storytelling, and perhaps even inspire you to draw or otherwise creatively express your own experiences.

The drawings may be particularly supportive of women, since I'm a woman and have therefore drawn my experiences in female forms. Even so, many men have confided to me that the images touch them in deep ways as well. Our common humanity transcends gender.

In addition to providing support for personal healing work, I hope these images can also assist helping professionals to more deeply understand and appreciate some of the inner and outer experiences associated with physical and emotional wounding and trauma, addiction and abuse, extreme states of consciousness, and the edge between life and death.

The images could be a helpful healing tool for psychologists, counselors, and ministers working in the context of individual, group, or family therapy settings. In addition, the drawings could help professionals work with people in hospitals and trauma recovery units, psychiatric inpatient settings, suicide prevention programs, hospice, domestic violence situations, eating disorder treatment facilities, and addiction recovery programs.

Finally, the drawings could be used to help people heal from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), whether it stems from childhood or other domestic abuse, war, or natural disasters.

How You Can Nurture This Service Project

If you resonate with these images and want to help them become more available to others, here are some ideas about what might help:

  --A written testimonial about what the images mean to you and how you are using them personally or professionally.

  --A personal endorsement for use on the deck's future box cover, insert booklet, and/or related PR materials.

  --Connections to friends or colleagues in the helping professions who might like to experiment with a deck in their chosen field of practice.

  --Suggestions about people or organizations who might like to provide a link from their Web site to the "Images for Women" section of my Web site.

  --Networking with generous individuals, companies, foundations, or philanthropists who understand the value of this service project and might consider providing grants for its expansion.

   For example, "micro-grants" of $500 would fund the production of limited runs of "mock-up" decks for free distribution to helping professionals for immediate use with clients.

   More substantial grants would be saved toward set-up costs for large-scale professional reproduction of the decks, which in turn will enable broader giveaway programs to interested individuals, groups, and organizations.

Please feel free to contact me anytime about the project. Any tips, suggestions, or constructive ideas are welcome--no matter how wild or wacky they might seem!

Thank you kindly for your interest in this project. May the images be a blessing for you and many others!

Cat
June 10, 2007