Guest Blogger Dr. Jamie Marich is a force to be reckoned with who is infusing creativity and joy into therapy. She is a talented gift to the world as a teacher, healer and business woman. I thank her for sharing a portion of her Creative Wellness story.

The journey of coming home to source is a journey of coming home to myself. I have a tattoo on my left arm that reads: vis medicatrix naturae. Often translated from Latin as “the healing power of nature,” it more specifically means the healing power of the natural state. I made the choice to inscribe this piece on my body as a permanent reminder in 2016. It’s taken more than half my life in therapy and engaging in other healing and spiritual practice to be able to embrace this motto as my life’s creed. I never want to lose sight of it again.

The creative wellspring that enlivens the whole universe lives within me. For too many years, I lived by pursuing this source in a romantic relationship, material success, or all of the accolades in the world. I am not alone in this delusion. Between societal programming, family messaging, and the miseducation about the truth of ourselves and our existence that results from unhealed traumatic experiences, we are all bound to get lost along the way. The more fully I can accept that God/Divine Mother/Source (pick a concept that works for you) exists in the temple of my heart and refrain from seeking them everywhere else, happiness overflows from my heart and soul. Moreover, the evidence of healing in my own life, specifically in how I can respond instead of react to situations, abounds. Stress can still feel present, although it melts away much faster. I know that even when I feel fragmented and broken, I am whole, connected to the same source that empowers every being and every element in the universe.

My brother once joked that “it takes a village to heal my sister,” and I’ve always delighted in this observation. I first entered professional therapy at the age of nineteen. Although I could have used it much sooner, reflection has shown me just how much the expressive arts—dance, music, theater/speech, and creative writing—helped me to survive a childhood where I didn’t emotionally feel very safe. I had the good fortune of being introduced to an addiction recovery fellowship while I worked in Bosnia-Hercegovina as a civilian humanitarian aid worker and English teacher from 2000-2003. Janet Leff, my first sponsor and mentor, helped me to understand the impact of unhealed trauma on human behavior, both in the students that I taught who had just survived a major war, and in myself. After this initial healing journey with Janet, I returned to the United States to begin a graduate degree in counseling at her suggestion. She once inscribed in a recovery book for me, “Jamie, God doesn’t choose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen.” Her faith in me gave me the faith that I needed in myself.

From the beginning of my journey as a clinician in training, I was bound to exist outside of the conventional “box.” Although I absorbed what I needed to in my traditional clinical education, from my first internship I was empowered to use my knowledge in expressive practices with the young people I first served. I saw how much working with expression gave them glimmers of joy, even on the most sterile, medical model of a locked unit that personally made me shudder inside. Some of my difficulties with seeing the way the system treated young people led me to deepen therapy on my own traumatic and dissociative responses as a woman in recovery trying to find her footing as a professional. I am grateful for the recommendation a professor gave me to see my first EMDR therapist, Janet Thornton, in Boardman, OH. My referring professor simply told me, “She does all the weird stuff,” and I was sold!

Janet set me on the path of healing with the powerfully integrated approach of EMDR therapy, which eventually led me to deepen my Eastern meditation practices and pursuit of other holistic arts related to bodywork and energy. I eventually found my way to a Kripalu yoga class in my area and begin to feel my body and soul open up to deeper transformation immediately. Through all of this, I continued pursuing my interests as a creative—writing and performing songs, continuing to write poetry and eventually professional books in my field that offered new twists on learning. After studying conscious dance practices for myself, in 2012, I created a practice and a community of facilitators called Dancing Mindfulness, a vibrant expressive arts practice that helps us to teach the attitudes and elements of mindfulness in a dynamic, embodied way. When I look at how my own healing journey and training path has evolved over these last two decades, it’s fair to say that when a practice helps me, I yearn to learn as much about it as I can and to share whatever I am able to with my clients, students, and members of my community.

Janet Leff, the first of two Janets to change my life by her commitment to share her healing knowledge with others, once shared with me that when a flower stops growing, it begins to wilt. If proper nourishment isn’t given immediately, the flower will die. I’ve taken this recovery wisdom seriously and I’ve dedicated myself to stay on the path of growing and learning as a student. Even though I now lead so many others in my field as a trainer of EMDR therapists, expressive arts therapists, and as a teacher of healing practices like yoga, Dancing Mindfulness, martial arts-based self-defense and reiki, I am a student first. I am a pilgrim on the path of love, a description often used by Swami Kripalu. Although he left the body when I was still a child, Kripalu’s teachings have lived on in the heart and soul of his writing and in my mentors whom he inspired. Just as my teachers have held the light to help me find my way out of darkness, I hope I can repay their loving gestures forward every time I share a part of myself and my knowledge with others.

To connect with Jamie:

www.jamiemarich.com
www.dancingmindfulness.com
www.instituteforcreativemindfulness.com
www.traumamadesimple.com