A group of students sat silent as Leigh Legler began to read a poem to the class, sharing something they’d rarely said out loud.
“For three years, I’ve been telling myself
I should be relieved that you’re still here.
But our chat still waits for your reply.
Our games remain unplayed.”
Legler wrote the poem about a friend who had a stroke, and the pain they felt of losing their shared memories and conversations.
“You’re here, but I mourn,” Legler read. “I’m left with someone new. Who wears your face, but doesn’t know your stories.”
One by one, other students read their work, digging into personal stories they’d grown accustomed to putting down on the page.
The poetry class, “Unleash the Power of Words,” pushed students each week to explore a different mental health topic, such as grief, depression or isolation.
After students shared their work, instructor Ricardo Ruiz asked students to sit with those complicated feelings if they could.
“It gets at the depths of who we are,” he said.
Art can be a way to access emotions that may be hard to articulate otherwise. Mental health professionals say it can help people delve into subjects that otherwise feel taboo — or that they may not even know how to talk about.
“When we think about talking, we’re in the cerebral, more cognitive part of our brain,” said Eryn Drago, a therapist with Anchor Light Therapy, who incorporates art into sessions with both child and adult clients. “But art can help us tap into this more emotional part of our brain that maybe we’re not accessing as much, or we’ve built up some defenses around it. It can help facilitate a more cohesive sense of healing and empowerment.”
Such moments of deep emotion and self-reflection aren’t uncommon in the poetry class — one of several offered by the Seattle nonprofit Path With Art.
The program, founded in 2008, uses art of all kinds to help people process trauma or upheaval in their lives, from homelessness to mental health challenges. The nonprofit offers free classes to adults who are low-income and affiliated with one of several social service organizations — including veterans services, addiction clinics and low-income housing programs.
The program is not “art therapy,” in which a licensed therapist uses specific art mediums to treat specific conditions. Instead, program staff members describe the services as “therapeutic art,” which more broadly uses art as a tool to help people work through emotional distress.
The courses rotate each quarter and run the gamut of creative expression. The fall term, which starts next month, includes charcoal drawing, improv, podcasting and multiple music courses. One singing class, called “Free Your Voice,” invites students to get to know their inner and outer voices, using vocal improvisation, writing prompts and rhythm, creating songs that are “medicine for the heart and soul.”
Not every class has an explicit focus on mental health or healing.
“I like to teach,” said art instructor Pamm Hanson, who’s been with Path With Art since 2009. “I want my students to learn something in my class. Self portraiture, color theory class, painting from a photo.”
Even so, the classes can help students build other strengths.
“When you’re faced with a blank canvas, you have to take a lot of risks, you can’t self-judge and you have to learn from your mistakes,” Hanson said. “Those are some of the exact skills someone needs when they’re reforming a life. These students are courageous.”
Legler, the poetry student, said they didn’t always realize art could be a way to heal.
A visual artist by training, Legler worked as an illustrator for years. They struggled during the pandemic and were losing commissions.
Legler signed up for a Path With Art class after the program temporarily moved fully online due to COVID-19.
“It was a class for drawing hands, that was it,” Legler said. “I figured, everyone needs help drawing hands.”
But the class ended up unlocking something else for Legler.
“It wasn’t just, ‘here’s how to draw hands,’” Legler said. “It was breathing exercises, it was, this might be the only time you get a break from anxiety today. In that class I ended up drawing like I’ve never drawn before.”
Legler realized that art had always been their profession, but they’d never found the process therapeutic until now.
“There was something about making art from me, for me that was a completely new concept.”
Drago, the therapist, said it’s not uncommon for patients to initially feel stressed when she introduces art into therapy sessions.
“There’s a feeling of, ‘I have to be good at it, or I need to do this a certain way,’” Drago said. “The idea that you can let go of that can be really challenging for people.”
Once they do, she said, it can become a freeing experience.
Orlin Henderson took a class last year after seeing a Path With Art flyer in their therapist’s office. They were homeless, and recently had a leg amputated.
“It was a huge part of my recovery process and healing,” Henderson said. “The body heals faster when the mind can help.”
Henderson is still taking classes every term, trying everything from ceramics to abstract painting to jelly plate printmaking.
“That creativity — not the product itself but the process of creating something. It’s validating,” Henderson said.
Some of the instructors know what it’s like to use art to bring themselves out of a dark place.
Ruiz, the poetry class instructor, said his own experiences led him to realize that poetry could be a healing tool.
The son of migrant farmworkers, Ruiz grew up in Eastern Washington. As a teen, he found himself getting into trouble often and dropped out of high school.
A young father looking to support his family, Ruiz joined the military for seven years, going to Afghanistan twice.
While that time taught him a lot about responsibility, it also left him with PTSD. He had no way to process that anguish, as well as trauma from his youth.
He was spiraling.
“I was at the worst place, mentally, I’d ever been,” Ruiz said. “I had no tools, and though I had my family there as a support system, being raised in a very traditional Mexican family, we didn’t talk about anything going on internally.”
As Ruiz took community college classes, with the hopes of one day becoming an immigration attorney, a professor asked him a question that changed the trajectory of his life — had he ever considered writing poetry to express his emotions?
It worked. Ruiz began reading poets like Ada Limón and Sonia Sanchez. Taking film and theater classes further solidified for him how art can help work through some of the darkest moments of humanity.
Ruiz has become a full-time poet. His recent book, “We Had Our Reasons,” explores life for migrant farmworkers: poems about their journeys and arrivals in the United States, to working in the fields and trying to make ends meet, to the experiences of those who were deported. It won the Washington State Book Award in 2023.
Ruiz’s poetry class is among the classes that most directly deal with unpacking trauma.
He recalled reading a poem by Sylvia Plath, about her mental health struggles, that struck a chord with a student facing similar challenges. In another case, the class read a poem with references to sexual assault in the military. A student in the class started to cry, seeing their own experiences in the piece.
“For me, it’s really trying to find poetry and voices that cover the range of subjects a person may be dealing with,” Ruiz said. “They can read a person who may look like them, talk like them or experience what they’ve gone through.”
For people navigating mental illness, homelessness or recovery — the majority of Path With Art’s students — having a creative outlet can offer a connection to something far more than the art itself.
“It reminds you that you’re human,” Henderson said. “Folks who are disabled are often dismissed by society as less than. If you’re able to create, you can say, ‘Hey, I’m human and I’m doing human things.’ And hopefully other folks will be able to say, ‘Oh yeah.’”
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