This week’s catalyst
is: What’s your most prized possession?


Here’s my text:

When I read this catalyst, the first thing that came to my mind were my
diaries. From nine to nineteen I wrote diaries every day. And I mean
every single day. I was the girl who never shared her secrets with
anyone but the dairies. I took them everywhere with me and all my
friends joked about reading them. But nothing deterred me. I never
shared my secrets and I loved having my diaries, knowing they never
betrayed me or shared my secrets with anyone.

After a while, I just stopped. I am not sure what did it but I didn’t
have the need or the will to write anymore. Maybe I finally started to
trust people or maybe I realized I like to share, I’m not sure. But I
haven’t successfully kept a diary since my Freshman year in college and
I don’t really miss it anymore. But I still cherish my diaries from
those years. The memories of the girl I was. The girl with the diaries.

This week’s catalyst
is on a decision you made that ended up changing the direction of your life.

While this is not my favorite piece of art, I find it very intriguing
that all the big events of my life trace back to the moment I decided to
leave Turkey and move to the United States to attend college at Carnegie
Mellon. On a personal level, that’s where I met my boyfriend, whom I
then married and had a child with. On a professional note, CMU got me my
Wall Street job which I then quit to do Teach For America and finally
Google. It all started with that one decision to go to college in the
United States. A decision I will forever cherish.

This catalyst
was an easy one for me: * What’s a negative behavior or habit you have
overcome?

*
Journaling Reads:

Caffeine Free Diet Coke. 12 a day every day. i never drank alcohol. i
never smoked. but diet coke was my vice. my one vice. until david. yet
another present from my boy. (karen’s note: i quit diet coke when we
decided to get pregnant and haven’t had one in 4 years.)

This was for Sunday’s creative therapy
catalyst on one talent you wish you had.


I’ve always, always wished I were more creative. More artistically
capable. I’ve tried so many forms of art. I’ve drawn. I’ve written
novels. I’ve done photography. I’ve done jewelry making. I’ve done metal
arts. Scrapbooking. Painting. I love the idea of being creative and
artistically talented. It’s something that I crave and wish for daily.

Journaling Reads:
She always thought art could give her wings. And open windows to her
dreams. She craved the talent to create.

This is for creative therapy catalyst
twenty-four: What inspires you?

A few months ago, I took this class where we talked about who we are as
a whole and what we’d like to stand for in the world. We created three
to four areas of things that we stood for. My four were: peace, family,
changing the world, and creativity. These are the areas that inspire me.
I want to feel a strong sense of peace every day. I want to leave the
world better than I found it. I want to have strongly bonded and
supportive family. And I want to foster creativity within myself and
others.



For this week’s catalyst, I took a photo for each area and printed them
together. I then sewed between the photographs to create pockets and
inside each pocked I tucked two sets of journaling. One was a list of
things that inspire me around that category and the other was a list of
things I aspire to do in each area. Whenever I have to make a choice
about how to spend my time or how to decide around a commitment, I look
at this page and see if it fits within one of my squares. This makes
sure that the life I live is aligned with my priorities.

This is for creative
therapy – catalyst twenty-two – what’s your biggest
accomplishment?

I went through a long thought process for this week’s catalyst. I even
created several pieces of art. Like several others, I was going to make
it about my son, but, like Becky already mentioned, I don’t think of him
as my accomplishment. He is so amazing and special all by himself. I was
then going to make it about coming to the United States. Moving here was
the beginning of a series of achievements for me and I consider it to be
the achievement that allowed all others. But the more I thought the more
I knew that wasn’t the right one either. So I finally opened my computer
and let my thoughts come together as they always seem to when I’m
typing. I think the journaling says the rest. More thoughts on the art
itself in the technique section below.

Journaling Reads:
I have accomplished a lot in my life. I got in to the college of my
dreams. At seventeen, I moved from Turkey to the United States. I
graduated from college in four years with an undergraduate and a masters
degree. I worked at a very selective Wall street firm and I got to
become a Vice President pretty quickly. I got accepted to a very
selective Nonprofit program. I married the man of my dreams. I quit
everything and started all over again in California. I started my own
photography business. I had an amazing baby who is now an amazing boy. I
became an American citizen. I got a job with Google and I’ve been
consistently doing well at my job. Just to list a few.

These were all goals I’d set for myself at some point or another. I am
good at achieving goals. I always have been. I work hard. I put my mind
to it and I get it. And then I quickly forget all about it and set the
next goal. the next challenge, the next mountain to climb. While I am
very proud of all my achievements and I do take many of them for granted
now. I look back upon them and think they were easy. They must have
been. I was able to accomplish them, wasn’t I?

Then I look at my achievements and they are all things I do. I am good
at work. I work hard. But I am not so good at creative. My very
organized, very structured mind doesn’t do so well with the
unstructured, big picture oriented art world. I’ve always craved being
more artistic. I’ve always wished I had that magical gene that made you
creative. The one that meant I could draw. I could see things and
imagine things the way other creative people did.

Alas, it appears I wasn’t waiting in that line when they were handing
out the genes.

So when I look back upon my life, especially the one I am leading now, I
am most proud of this place. Creative therapy. It’s something I created
to tell myself that I can be creative too. That creativity is not always
about drawing perfectly. It’s not about being the best designer. The
most talented artist.

I can create art too. I can even use it to grow. To learn. To reflect.
To dream.

This was my way of making myself create every week. It is my way of not
letting myself give up (like I did for writing). Letting the
conversations in my head go. Allowing myself to experiment. Giving
myself a space to create. Recurringly. Holding myself responsible.
Putting myself out there.

Sharing my art scares me. I never think I am good enough. I always think
people will laugh at me. People will say “who does she think she is to
be displaying her art?” It scares me more than any of my work
commitments ever did. It scares me more than having a baby did. It’s too
raw. It comes from the place of ultimate uncertainty and it’s exposing
something deep down that I normally prefer to leave in the dark.

So I am most proud of creative therapy. Proud that I have the guts to do
this week after week. That I have kept this commitment to myself. That I
have created this space for me and for others. I am proud that it exists.

I am proud that I wasn’t too scared to make it happen. I am still
scared. Every week.

But I am proud.

Technique Highlight:
I meant for this piece to feel raw. I used a sheet of old paper, put
gesso all over it and stamped it with pink paint. Pink for color of
skin. Since the journaling was really really long and personal and about
being scared, I made it a tiny font and printed it on a sheet of music
that I had also gessoed over. I stamped “ME” on the journaled paper to
emphasize the theme of “for me.” I added a few pink pieces to make sure
the little piece of paper didn’t get lost on top of the big one of the
same color. I put some butterflies to symbolize freedom and a photo of
me laughing for happiness. I stamped my title and sprayed some water
over it to give the sense of tears. It’s not nearly as beautiful as I
wish it were and it didn’t even come close to what I had in my head but
none the less, this is what came out.