The Vicarious Healer
Medium: Watercolor, Image Size: 16”h x 12”w, 2020.
This painting is a depiction of compassion. In this artwork I am both the cancer patient and the compassionate healer-the Rainbow Dragon. The dragon is my all-empowered warrior – my symbol of healing, loving, and protecting. I, the dragon, have caught myself on my descent into the cancer abyss, and I hold myself in an intense, loving embrace while I carry my other weary self-back to the world of light.
As a dragon, I have come to help to dissolve the darkest experiences – to recall and put to rest those terrifying moments, the moments that were so profound they petrified me, and when they did so, I not only planted tiny seeds of cancer within my most vulnerable cells, but I also transformed my DNA into retaining memories of those moments. While I embrace myself, I soothe away the overwhelming loneliness, and despair of those fearful moments and keep reminding myself that, “I’m here with you, and all will be okay”. I, the dragon, am there to give me courage, hope, and love and help me through the brutality and unfairness of life, but I am also there to unravel those fears that are so embedded in me that they perpetually attract me to despair and unlucky circumstances. I am there to undo the darkness, and the growing of my cancers that I have planted so that I can heal.
As a dragon, I am there to love me, but I am also there to teach me to be a dragon, and to be a dragon is to be all color and radiance, all harmonics and song, all compassion and love, all hope and sacredness, and to be one and whole again.
The Rainbow Dragon is a warrior of compassion and love, and where there is love, there is healing. Though this painting was created as me being the dragon, it also symbolizes my husband. As a vicarious healer he has kept me from falling again and again, and he has absorbed my pain and suffered because of it. I would not have lived these many years without him. We all need vicarious healers, so whether a dragon is us, our loved ones, or our healers, the dragon entangles us with their compassion so that we can heal.
Note: Image Watermark of Copyright and/or Website are NOT on the Original.