Christina McKelvy: 0:13

Welcome to Apology. I'm your host, christina McKelvie. Today we speak with Bridget from Expressive Arts Work. I enjoyed this conversation. This is where we explore the role that art has in health and how allowing space to express ourselves can impact her own healing in a positive way. Bridget also shares how she came to choose to be an Expressive Arts Therapist and what is next for her on her journey. We also explore the impact social justice has within healing and how we can be advocates for change. As healers, stay tuned. Healing and resilience.

Christina McKelvy: 1:03

I'm your host, christina McKelvie. Today we have Bridget with Expressive Arts. Welcome, bridget. How are you doing, hi?

Bridget : 1:10

Great, how are you?

Christina McKelvy: 1:12

I'm good, thank you. And I said, expressive Arts Is Expressive Arts work, did I?

Bridget : 1:17

miss speak. Yeah, you can add Expressive Arts work. That's the website, yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 1:23

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about you know your work through, you know through art and you know it sounds like. You know you were or you are a therapist, but you use art as one of the mediums you know. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Bridget : 1:37

Absolutely. So that is correct. I have two different businesses which we like to keep separate as therapists, because the therapy stays over in the therapy lane and the coaching or the Expressive Arts facilitation is a totally different type of work, a little bit more short term, often in workshop format, and the way I came into it is I will just shout out Natalie Rogers, who was Carl Rogers daughter. She's an amazing Expressive Arts psychotherapist who created the program I did for two years to get certified, which was called Person Centered Expressive Arts, and anyone can do it.

Bridget : 2:21

You can be a nurse, a coach or a anyone and so what we would do is really utilize all modalities of art to create healing and look at ourselves and go deeper into that unconscious layer that often can't be expressed via words or cognitive therapy. So I came from a dance background, so that was part of what really drew me in my master's degree at Santa Clara University. I loved all of my professors so much and there wasn't anyone offering a creative modality, so that really felt lacking at that time for me. I couldn't do it right out of that master's degree because you know you have to kind of get those hours and get licensed. But once I, oh yes.

Bridget : 3:10

I remember those times yeah yeah, and so at the time my partner, I was like, hey, I want to do this program, and it was like, not right now, Like let's, like we need to focus one thing at a time. So it was actually perfect timing and, yeah, it's really changed my life, honestly, integrating the arts and there's a spirituality element for me as well mindfulness, meditation, movement. It's just it's so vast what you can do when you drop into that kind of healing.

Christina McKelvy: 3:40

So, and you know from the therapy framework. You know I am familiar with Carl Rogers person centered therapy, meaning the client where they're at. And I'm curious you know how Natalie Rogers was able to do two great person centered artwork or art therapy.

Bridget : 3:58

Yeah, it's really, it's really really a vital distinction. So one thing is, I don't put the words simply art and therapy together because, shout out to all my amazing art therapist friends and colleagues that is the whole entire master's done through the lens of art.

Bridget : 4:17

So I did a program. It was 450 hours, but we don't call ourselves art therapists because that's a whole. There is a certification to become an expressive arts psychotherapist but I haven't done that. So just a little, just clarifying, because I don't want folks to be like well, you know, and I understand it deeply, so my work is really about creating the environment for the art to illuminate what's happening for us. So I might simply ask a question of what's here today, and we may have a notebook often. I'm really specific now about the kind of very heavy duty watercolor based notebook I love to use, because I love to go across the middle of the notebook, because we know how healing crossing our midline is with a lot of different type of psychotherapy, psychotherapies.

Bridget : 5:14

So these are, yeah, utilizing writing, utilizing paint, we're crossing over that midline. It can be very restorative and there is just so much opportunity to get out of our head, to really meet ourselves right where we are. So I don't often say, how about we draw a dragon and a mountain in a stream? I will say what's coming up for you. Would you like to scribble? Can you invite some circles? What feels comfortable?

Bridget : 5:46

I always seem to have a heart somewhere in my expressive arts pages, like in my art journal page. It's just like such that pattern of allowing that shape to come out of. I just keep saying yes. I just keep saying yes to whatever's happening. So that's how, natalie that's a long answer to how Natalie took what her dad did and then offered to us through deep meditation. She called it the creative connection.

Bridget : 6:13

So you started with some meditation or movement. You sometimes moved into visual art. She often had instruments in the room, which I was so lucky to have a lot of the instruments she collected from around the world and then we would share, you know, like you would in a support group or a group psychotherapy session though it's again, it's not therapy in that context, but it was incredibly healing to then share the work and very vital we would not say anything evaluative about what we saw. So if you were doing a piece of work, maybe I saw a thing that looked like a tree, but I might say, why don't you tell me about it? What do you notice? What was that like for you? What was that process like for you? So it's very in the moment and it's not evaluative, it's like very just noticing. I see the green. Do you want to speak about your art? If you don't want to, that's okay.

Christina McKelvy: 7:14

Very present, very mindful. Yeah, yeah, exactly, it sounds like she integrated a lot of mindfulness, being present and acceptance, you know, into expression.

Bridget : 7:29

Well, she was raised by Carl Rogers, so, and you know, you drop it there and you're like, okay, when's the thing going to come out? Where she's like my dad, because I've read almost all of her books and no, it was really what we see, it was very. He was authentically him. I mean that doesn't mean that I'm sure there were times he got frustrated or they had conflict, but authentic, positive regard, a real sense of knowing that we come to this life whole and we're not. We're not trying to get at a thing or fix ourselves or change ourselves, we're really coming back home, to ourselves is what I hear in both Natalie and Carl's work and offering Coming back into ourselves.

Christina McKelvy: 8:20

Tell me a little bit more about what that means.

Bridget : 8:23

I mean, for me it's about not continuing to seek answers outside of ourselves, and I think psychotherapy especially in these times when we see so much chaos in the world, it's really difficult to think about for me personally what, like where my clients are going to go to get this healing I'm doing air quotes, you know. I think we have to just really learn to return to the present moment inside of ourselves and trust that we can get to a safe enough place inside of ourselves and learn and grow there, versus grasping for the next. It's coming to my mind, but God forbid diet and or fad and or. You know I'm decidedly anti diet, and so I just feel as though there's so much in wellness culture, as we all know, or I feel frustrated by it, where we're seeking this goal, and I have always been pretty resistant to that, and so this fits really well. The humanistic psychotherapy model has always been really my home and the way I feel.

Bridget : 9:40

So I think as soon as I met Natalie I got to meet her ages ago at a workshop and I just I knew I was going to do the work because she embodied that sense of person centered awareness.

Christina McKelvy: 9:56

You mentioned a bit ago about wellness culture and as I was doing my research I saw a article where you were recombined on white wellness culture. Yeah, sure, totally. And or white woman wellness culture.

Bridget : 10:11

You know and like what that looks like and yeah, I mean, we know white women on a whole are really at the potential for change because we have held a lot of potential to affect the folks in our family. So when I think of white wellness culture, I think about what we're co-opting. You know, even you and I both as healers here- like what where did this, where did this come from?

Bridget : 10:45

You know it came from collectivistic cultures. We know as a civilization, as a humanity, as humans, we we live for yons, for for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, I assume, doing healing work which came from indigenous folks, came from a culture that is not white culture, and so I've been in a deep dive. I wouldn't say it started exactly the summer of 2020 when George Floyd was murdered, but it deepened. In that moment I realized I had to really put my feet on the ground and focus my attention on undoing whiteness as much as I could, day to day, and it's a never ending journey for all of us. We all are affected by that culture. So so I mean essentially, what I mean is immediacy. I mean fix it culture, I mean the way whiteness shows up in everything we do in capitalism and racialized capitalism. So, yeah, we could talk the whole rest of the time about that, but, in short, that's what I mean.

Christina McKelvy: 11:58

It's very true, because I see, you know, when I think of white wellness culture, I also think of white centric, euro centric psychotherapy. And I was like that's very much like the blank slate model, brood, things like that, and as we unpack the appropriation that we've probably taken on as therapists unintentionally or intentionally, some of us and how we can show up and be present for our clients in a culturally appropriate way, there's just, there is so much on learning and, like I said, we could take up the whole, the whole time, but I'm curious how that could play into expressive arts work, since you know it is that connection, Absolutely what I mean.

Bridget : 12:43

One of the primary ways that I've been having the opportunity to get the expressives of arts into the world is with my colleague, Ashne Butler, and she's a coach from Portland Oregon and we offer a class or a workshop called Moving Beyond the Fear of Making a Racialized Mistake, and so the way the expressive arts show up in that class specifically is to help folks regulate with four white folks and and also explore what's happening for them via image, via shape, color line. It's primarily. We almost always utilize art journal type format, but we do, we've music through, and then Ashne is trained in theater the oppressed and I have a theater background as well, so we do shapes, meaning we make movements in the zoom boxes. This is all run on zoom and then we allow so maybe we're utilizing a quote I'll paraphrase from Resma Menacum that white culture is the dominant culture inside of all of us, and it I'm really, really paraphrasing here but to to talk about whiteness and embody it and then use shape and color in line to represent what's happening inside of ourselves, then to go into a small group and look at it and then to come back out in the larger group and notice the shifts, notice the struggle.

Bridget : 14:11

So that's the thread of expressive arts through that workshop and there's a lot of mindfulness and breathing and compassion practice. So that's that's one of the ways that it feels as though that has been the most successful way I've been able to bring expressive arts into the world and I feel I feel pretty excited about continuing that work. I mean very excited. So did that answer your question? I mean I think there's another subtle layer. I'll just say something I'm still learning about is where there is appropriation inside these practices.

Bridget : 14:47

So I'm aware that is something Natalie wouldn't have exactly had an analysis about, potentially how these eurotric ways get into psychotherapy and into the coaching world, and I mean she was a PhD psychologist but we weren't, we weren't putting the language around that as much back when she was alive. I mean I'm sure there were folks that were doing it. I'm not saying that's not what wasn't happening, but I I'm still getting at how to separate that.

Christina McKelvy: 15:22

It's still a lot of unlearning or kind of unpacking. You know a lot of the different approaches. I'm sure Completely you got it Okay. Well, it sounds. It sounds amazing. It sounds very like I understand that is separate from psychotherapy. You know the express of arts. I work with children and I do use a lot of art therapy in my practice and teach parents also to just be present and with the child as they're drawing or even playing, and instead of saying, oh, look at that tree, it's like, oh, I'm curious about what you did here. Or you know just that language because it helps that connection, that's right.

Bridget : 16:02

That's right, yeah, because you know, as a therapist with young children, that when they say I've drawn a tree, but I've actually drawn, I don't know, it could be a bush, or it could be a lollipop Like you don't, you don't really know what's in my mind, and so to assume is really a shut.

Bridget : 16:21

It's shutting me down and boxing me in and making me think you need to know, which, of course, we want to know. You know it's not wrong. Our brains are wired this way for very good reason, and to undo that, I think, can be incredibly powerful. Like you, it brings some slowness, you know, in this culture, where we're so go, go, go, and I love that. I love to know that you do that with parents and kids. That's exciting, yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 16:47

And I have to remind myself to like oh yeah, of course, especially when someone draws something.

Bridget : 16:55

I was in with a session with a client and they, you know, they represented this thing. They drew a thing which I like to say oh you, you're really. That looks a lot like what it looks like in the real world. I can see that you took a lot of time to have that be represented in the way you and I see it. It is phenomenal when an artist can do things like this, and for those of us myself who can't represent, I think it's really lovely when somebody meets us and just says tell me about that green splotch there, what's happening in that space?

Christina McKelvy: 17:32

So we don't get in this evaluative place and, as like with ourselves, sometimes, it's really good not to do that too, not to evaluate.

Bridget : 17:43

Well, and the metaphor is always there, right, like I've had a client for many, many years who's an expressive arts client. Now I transitioned her from long-time therapy client to expressive arts because she's doing great, you know, and she loves art, and she's like I didn't even look it up on the internet anymore.

Bridget : 18:01

I'm like, exactly, you know, it's like this huge celebration that she can just sort of draw off from the world and from her own heart and experience in mind, and make that connection and allow the mess, allow it to go wrong, so to speak. Right, yeah, and also, in some ways I love to play around. I mean, one invitation I do give is like permanent marker in watercolor, because I really I mean it is a pretty Buddhist idea, but it's like what is?

Bridget : 18:32

it permanence. And then there are these things that we cannot change, Like there's so little we have control over. So the permanent mark may be representing the things we don't have control over and the watercolor allowing that shift and that ease and that noticing like it can go over that permanent ink and you'll still see that permanent ink, but you can kind of shift it and you can kind of shift the whole landscape or the way you greet it and meet it with a water-based product versus a permanent piece of line, yeah, line.

Christina McKelvy: 19:04

The symbolism in the art can translate over to life very easily, exactly, yeah, I hope so. That's what I feel. How has it personally impacted you?

Bridget : 19:16

So enormous lady. I think you and I briefly chatted and you'll see it on my website and certainly on my Instagram. I was married to a lovely man who I co-parent with and I won't go into a ton of that, but we were in couples therapy. We're trying to make it work. We had a great parent partnership, but I knew something wasn't clicking and I went into this session it was 2018 in April saying to myself I really wanna figure out what's happening with my body, sexuality, my desire it's gone. Is it just parenthood, like my kids, nine, come on. I wasn't talking very nicely to myself. I was single, focused. I mean, that's what I mean? I was like this is gonna happen now. And so I had a huge breakthrough just in a peer-to-peer session and I realized that I had been queer my whole life. I mean, at that time it's funny I was like, oh my God, I'm gay. And then I was like I'm a lesbian and now I identify as queer. I don't dislike any of those other labels, but queer feels realign politically and sexuality-wise.

Bridget : 20:36

So I made some big, big choices and luckily, amazingly, my family has come along. My kid really never batted an eye. They were just like. That totally makes sense. If you like to date women, then that you know I get it. The marriage has to end and that's very understanding.

Bridget : 20:56

Yeah, he at the time he is a kid in the queer spaces, where he's a trans kid, and I think he just knew himself and saw himself in me, and my husband, as I lovingly call him, was raised by two women for a period of time, so you know there was a lot of queerness.

Bridget : 21:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, not everybody was like super on board the nanosecond. It happened, of course, at the time. So that's how it changed me. I am very clear to say like, obviously that is a pretty profound and significant life change. I don't know what. It's not that I'm saying that's gonna happen for everybody. So, yeah, I guess that's obvious. I don't know. I just like to sort of add that, yeah, it can shift subtle things as well, just having an art practice. We know, for instance, Julia Cameron, who's been doing work and I'm rereading the artist way that book she wrote.

Christina McKelvy: 22:06

You're the second person to tell me to read or not to. You didn't tell me to read it, but you have mentioned it, like in the last week you got it. You got to pick it up, I guess. So.

Bridget : 22:16

It's a phenomenal body of work and it's all about reading each morning with the morning pages and really getting those words and thoughts out on the page. And I had done it gosh close to 30 years ago for the first time and now I'm doing it again and I'm seeing all the connections. It makes so much sense to me that the expressive arts were so they came very easily to me, I'll say, to be able to do that daily art practice, which Natalie Rogers really was pretty also committed to. That's the thing. That's the thing you need to do is the daily art practice. So I feel as though that's the thing I'm constantly saying to all my clients.

Bridget : 22:55

You know, as we all do, like journal and it's like well, what does that mean? And I realize we don't often say what that means. Julia Cameron is like dump every thought on that page. It doesn't matter how insignificant, how much you judge it, how much you're afraid of it, just put it out there. You know Nobody's going to come read that. And if you're nervous about that, I offer this practice that of course I didn't make up where you obscure your journal. So you turn the page, you write over your own writing, you turn again, you write over your own writing. I have images at my website about it, because some people really are afraid to have their words be seen, and I get that you could paint over them. Of course, you could rip the page out and tear it up.

Christina McKelvy: 23:38

Yeah, it's still there, but it's not. It keeps up. It's a sense of safety by doing something like that, yeah, that confidentiality even, and sometimes for ourselves.

Bridget : 23:50

I mean, sometimes I get a little bit tired of reading my to-do list, which in the recent years has really shifted. I've been able to really commit to daily practices that enliven me and but for decades I swear I wrote it every six months like journal more meditate, more, move your body, more. I was like OK. So I feel as though maybe it's something about middle age, so to speak. It's kind of allowed me that space to have those practices be really pretty vital.

Christina McKelvy: 24:21

And the to-do list to journal more, meditate, more. It's almost evaluative in a way. There's that judgment. Oh, I didn't get to it today.

Bridget : 24:30

Exactly, which is so counter to the practice, really yeah, but sounds like.

Christina McKelvy: 24:39

So you said 2018 was when you came out as queer. 2019? 2018? 18, yes, and then you mentioned 2020 was when you were trying to like was when you were re-evaluating your whiteness and during the George Floyd, and so it sounds like there was like a lot of shift that was happening for you the last few years.

Bridget : 25:00

For sure, I think I'm not alone in that. Obviously, I guess what I would. I mean and others. I didn't make this up, obviously, but the uprising of 2020, which we know has been coming.

Bridget : 25:12

I think there's so much possibility in the healing world, and I even have stopped using the word well.

Bridget : 25:26

This is going to sound a little maybe far out, but I'm really trying to bring in ease sort of moments of ease, because there are so many people who are not well and will never be well and who even we have 2020 and then we have the pandemic, an experience of grief and loss that I think, collectively we've not really looked at.

Bridget : 25:51

So, indeed, over the last three years, I've had a huge privilege to be able to slow down and really evaluate what I want to be doing with my life, and a big part of that that is out there on all of my websites, particularly the expressive art side, has to do with liberatory type practices and mutual aid and really sitting in collective with folks who come from all various backgrounds for sure, including global majority folks or Black, indigenous people of color and really centering those voices and really seeing where I do fit in this work. And I mean there's been some deep questioning around whether or not I want to stay doing this work, but for now, I'm here and I'm really committed to doing it with a lens of awareness and pretty consistently bringing that in even in my therapy work as well, not to direct folks to that anti-oppressive, anti-racist lens, but that's where I sit. So if you don't have some experience or curiosity or interest in that work, then we probably aren't going to be a fit long term.

Christina McKelvy: 27:06

Yeah, and that's. I think you can't, I don't think you can separate therapy or healing from social justice Like you have to. It's intertwined, exactly, exactly.

Bridget : 27:21

Yeah, I mean exactly. One of my teachers, who I've just really benefited so much from, says you know, love and justice are not too so without one we can't have the other. And if loving ourselves isn't healing, then I don't know what is. So it totally makes sense to me. I couldn't agree more. It's fun to unpack things like this with somebody who's really aware.

Bridget : 27:46

I think it's it's been. I don't know, I can't speak for all therapists, but it's been curious to me and sort of who's been on this journey with me and who I'm not as in touch with anymore. I guess I'm not trying to say I don't know where everyone is, we can't know everybody's hearts and everybody's work, but it's really I'm really excited to know more about your commitment to these, these practices and this way of seeing things.

Christina McKelvy: 28:14

I feel like it's a daily practice. I, you know, I grew up in Hawaii and that was an experience in of itself because you know, economically and politically, you know how this is what we call white people were the majority, but in everyday life we were the minority and there's just like you know how, how I navigated that and I just I feel really grateful for being, you know, around a diverse group of individuals. You know, I went to public school and you know the indigenous practices. You know there's like a revival happening in Hawaii now, which is great, and I live in Arizona, which is similar, you know, with Hopi in the Navajo and Gabapai tribes, just like that indigenous practice revival that is needed because we're on their land.

Bridget : 29:12

Absolutely, that's right.

Christina McKelvy: 29:13

That's right, yeah, and for sure, and that's kind of where you know that's so I've had that foundation. But at the same time, you know, I grew up in a very evangelical white Christian, you know family with like subsets, with like that Midwest Southern, just there was a lot more, there's a lot more to it, and so as I'm on this journey similar, you know, there's things I'm learning about myself and so it's just very interesting, and so I love connecting with others as well, and so I think there's just like this awakening happening. Yes, yes, yes.

Christina McKelvy: 29:49

In the world, and so that's right.

Bridget : 29:54

Yeah, so rich, so many yeah.

Christina McKelvy: 30:00

I shared a lot.

Bridget : 30:03

Because I mean this is, this is how we get to know each other, right, and you're not doing it. Yeah, I mean interviewer, interview. You know it's like we need more circles. Especially that background of growing up in Hawaii must have really influenced you. And I love those lands and I've made at least I haven't had the funds to go, but I have made that tentative at least for me, having not grown up there, to not go back right now because I have been really watching the yeah, the potential. I mean I wish that the US would give folks, the Hawaiians, back their land. Right, I mean that's not anyway, that's that might be far afield, but I mean I know there's many, many folks and I'm sure you know people directly and personally who may feel that way as well. But it's not mine, not mine to say but I'm going to, I'm going to steer clear of going back for this instant anyway, yeah, I'm curious to see what happens, you know with, you know in the future, you know with this more awareness.

Christina McKelvy: 31:15

You know if you're able to share, maybe with your personal life or some of your clients or other colleagues, how working through art has increased that awareness and maybe sense of change. I know you shared a little bit, you know, about your journey in 2018, but there's more.

Bridget : 31:34

Well, yeah, it doesn't end. You know, I think when I'm coming out, I thought, oh, I've unlocked everything, everything's in place. This is it, this, this was the thing you know, and I'm going to find out. There's never one thing. Nope, that's layered. Yeah, there's never a sort of kind of answer. You know, I don't think that. Yeah, I've studied Buddhism a lot and it's like, yeah, I'm going to definitely go around quite quite a few more times, I believe.

Bridget : 32:07

So you know it's, it's like really that, like ground liberation, is what I'm committed to. Another thing that happened. I haven't said this anywhere completely publicly, but I'm starting to think more and more into it because it feels like a real something that's going to be a practice, I think, for as long as I need it to be. But I stopped drinking alcohol a year ago and I think it must be connected on some level. You know, it was always in the back of my mind and I think the expressive arts. If you're moving, you're meditating.

Bridget : 32:39

I consider swimming I swim in the San Francisco Bay to be a commitment to my overall health and moving my body. There have been ways that I can't exactly point them to the expressive arts, but there's something about committing to, putting myself in front of that page and seeing what comes back. That makes the path more clear and it's like what a lot of well meaning health medical professionals will say. You know they don't say it in this way, but I would say move your body, nourish yourself with foods you love. Also, I like to throw in, don't resist or cut off things, like I had a corn dog yesterday and I have to tell you I hadn't missed that. Wait for a minute.

Bridget : 33:30

So it's allowing you evaluate yourself Exactly. It's just to be flexible and look at what works for me, what doesn't work, and I can put that down and I'm for sure have. I have some neuro spicy ADHD type of a situation going on and I think I guess I think the arts and doing these expressive practices have allowed me to embrace that part of me versus feel that it's weird or too much or too like to just too silly or eccentric. So I worry I'm making it sound like a panacea, but, trust me, I have my day, I have I have days of not wanting to engage and, you know, just stay in bed, but they're pretty few and far between.

Christina McKelvy: 34:25

And those are okay too. It sounds like expressive arts has allowed you and your clients to come to this place of acceptance being present, being in the moment, not being evaluative, like you mentioned, and just being, which, yes, it's very much a mindful perspective, which is a lot of truth, and, to you know, I lean that way as well and, you know, just sounds like the expressive arts has really enabled that to happen for you, and I definitely see that connection with person centered Carl Rogers, why his daughter, natalie, went that way as well, just like saying yes, yeah yeah, some big yeses, the more creativity we can infuse into the world.

Bridget : 35:15

What would that look like? Well, I'll tell you I won't get into all the names, but this, this blog I'm gonna write this week, really tracks a lot. As you're speaking and kind of continuing to call in Carl and Natalie I'm thinking about all the queer collective folks I know now and I was speaking to this artist and she was saying she envisioned, she is visioning creative circles just sprouting up everywhere and sort of becoming a mutual. This is my language, but I see sort of a mutuality between us, like how you and I met. I saw you post reached out. You know you're in Arizona, I'm in California, you grew up in Hawaii, I grew up in Tennessee. Who do we know they could like on Instagram, you know wherever, I don't care email, phone like text, like let's create care networks, let's create artist networks, and then I think those become care networks.

Bridget : 36:10

So I dream big, I believe in it, I've seen it, I've seen it work. I mean it happens, it's, it's out there, it's already been there and I think primarily white culture and and sometimes that evangelical culture unfortunately can really folks or the Christian, that stronghold of like this is the place we get the care. Well, when those of us who are queer and don't feel safe in those spaces and or are very pushed out of those spaces, don't have a place to gather, we have to create it. Nobody's creating that for us. So you know, that's, that's really. That's really what I hope to create with expressive arts work. In the beginning I pretty much said I didn't actually want to take money for it unless I needed it, because I'm very committed to mutual aid and offsetting close to 10 percent of my annual income to folks who are bodies of culture or and marginalized folks in need, essentially in direct funding. So I I know I'm ending on a big manifesto of sorts, but it's, it's, that's, that's how I see it.

Bridget : 37:22

I see lots of interwoven, interconnected folks doing art and then sharing resources.

Christina McKelvy: 37:31

You said those care networks, mm. Hmm, yeah, it's that sense of community which has been a theme in almost every podcast I recorded. Yeah, every podcast I recorded almost. There's been that theme underlying theme sometimes and sometimes it's not underlying, it's just right there of having that sense of community and belonging.

Bridget : 37:56

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that, unfortunately, where we've gotten to, there is a lot of divisiveness and and we know we have to get back to that collective care or that community care in order to heal. The individual work is important. I think there's nothing wrong with sitting in therapy with an individual therapist or a healer or coach etc. But if you aren't walking out of that Zoom room or door and then also engaging in community, even if it's one person or two people, I always say to my clients if they're feeling lonely, like who's that one that feels the least difficult to reach out to? Maybe you haven't talked to them in six months or six years, but you can send a text. You can start small and just see who's out there. So, yay, I couldn't agree more. I'm glad to hear that that is what you're seeing, which doesn't surprise me, based on everything you're sharing as well.

Christina McKelvy: 38:56

Yeah, no, it's. I maintain a blog about self care and I'm all about self care. I do talks and trainings on self care. I've been on podcast about self care. However, I'm in this process of really stressing that self care is not necessarily individual, kind of like what you're saying. You know it is collective. You have to have. It is political as well, you know, and have those be able to have those resources and that support in that community in order to be able to have the time to take care of yourself. And so, yeah, it's, it's in the consciousness, I believe.

Bridget : 39:28

I think so, for sure. I see, with how resources are, so the perception of them being limited. It's so clear and our Earth is telling us we have to slow down and we have to maybe really think about staying local. And I love, I love everything you're saying. I think it's. It is so such that catchphrase self care. But then how are we sharing what we're doing and also perhaps having accountability partners, like I've been going through?

Bridget : 39:57

a pretty intense period of grief the last several weeks. And you know my folks are reaching out, my people are reaching out to me and it it's so vital. Like I don't, you know, we aren't made to be in these little silo nuclear family houses, like it's just not how we were for the most of our existence on this little tiny dot.

Christina McKelvy: 40:26

We weren't doing it that way right, so it feels simplistic and sometimes I still have this little like well, but it's like no no, that's true.

Bridget : 40:34

You know, we used to live in like bands of 100 folks, so like, let's figure out who those people are and and hold on.

Christina McKelvy: 40:43

Our networks. Yes, I think that's a sign that we are running close to time. I like to. I like to eat some lunch. Yes, I like to close every podcast with one question, and that is what brings you hope.

Bridget : 41:03

Okay, this is gonna be cheesy. I don't think you knew this, but it's my middle name, quite literally.

Christina McKelvy: 41:09

You mean your middle name is hope. Yeah, bridget.

Bridget : 41:12

Hope for trans. Yeah. So when I was um yeah, I don't know why I'm sharing this, but when I was first becoming a therapist, I worked on the crisis hotline and I named myself hope. So if, for some reason, anybody out there is listening and they got a hope on a crisis hotline, I just think what brings me hope is connecting like this. I mean, I've had chills a couple of times a day. I know you and I will be in touch. Yeah, community selective bring me hope, and the fact that we can really commit to that and not take our eye off of that goal, that brings me a lot of hope that we're all still doing this kind of connecting and community building.

Christina McKelvy: 42:01

Yeah, community connection, and you mentioned earlier that creative connection.

Bridget : 42:11

For sure. I think everybody's an artist. I really believe that. So even my folks who aren't doing art right now, they know. You know. I'll probably be asking in the next couple of sessions, like why don't we just do a scribble? You know it's. We all have that capacity. So never tell yourself you're not an artist, because I really believe we all are.

Christina McKelvy: 42:33

And where can individuals find you?

Bridget : 42:37

Yeah, they can look at my website, which is expressive arts dot work. So it's a little funny ending situation there. I saw that back in the day when I created the website in 2017. I was like, oh fun, it's actually about job opportunity type things, which is hilarious. I'm like maybe that's a sign one day I'll like be gathering lots of artists to put their work there, which I would, I would love. And then it's the same Instagram expressive underscore arts underscore work. But just go to the website. I think you'll find all the places.

Christina McKelvy: 43:18

Well, you know, I really appreciate you being here. I also enjoyed our conversation. You know like, again, I am very humanistic person centered and it's just amazing to see the connections you know of. You know art, therapy and expressive arts and you know the what type of healing that can do for somebody.

Bridget : 43:43

Yeah, I think it does. It does really connect to your point about sharing how we care for ourselves. We could say we can do that every day at home on our own. In addition to seeking out that facilitator, coach, healer and therapist however, whomever you seek out you also have to do a little each day. That's my, that's my hope for people that they commit to themselves just a little bit more day after day, because it's it's not a one and done kind of situation.

Christina McKelvy: 44:15

Yeah Well, bridget, thank you so much for being here and you know I look forward to seeing what you're doing in the future, what you build and continue. I'm going to continue to read your sub stack newsletter as well.

Bridget : 44:33

Right, sub stack. I forgot to shout that out. Thanks for thanks for highlighting that. Of course I am really enjoying. I am really enjoying sub stack as a platform. It's pretty fun.

Christina McKelvy: 44:44

Stay tuned for more information about how to support the podcast and we'll be right back, thank you.