Healing Through Art - With Jake Dunn

Healing Through Art - With Jake Dunn

When I was seventeen years old, my brother died of a drug overdose.

I wish I could say I was a rock for my family, but I wasn’t. I was the closest person to my brother, so it seemed like everyone in my family wanted to be with me. Or maybe they were just worried about me.

But me? I just wanted to be alone.

I didn’t know how to process my grief, so I chose to hang out with his friends. I chose to smoke tons of weed, drink way too much, and generally go down a dark hole with drugs.

I didn’t know who I was anymore.

That’s the funny thing about life: we want to think we’re in control, but ultimately, what do we do in situations like these?

I vacillated between blaming myself, blaming our circumstances, blaming him, blaming anything that I could. I even theorized that he didn’t overdose, that someone did it to him, and tried to investigate this fictional scenario.

I wanted—no, I needed—something to blame.

I continued this way for years. Over time, the pain faded, but every now and then, it’d come roaring back.

Then, a little over five years ago, I took the Mastery Program, and in the voice section, I was confronting my deepest pain. At first, I thought it was that I was powerless to do anything about my brother’s death. But then I realized it was that I felt like I was powerful to save him before he died, and I didn’t.

I know this thinking is wrong, but I didn’t even realize I thought it until I did the digging. I wasn’t able to heal until I knew where the wound truly was.

We can’t become the best version of ourselves, or have the impact we are meant to have as artists, with open wounds. It’s like trying to fill a cup with holes in the bottom. It doesn’t work.

Maybe your cup will never be fully whole again, but that's okay. There’s this beautiful Japanese practice that I’m sure you’ve heard of called kintsugi, where you repair broken pottery with gold, emphasizing the beauty of imperfections. I think that’s what staring your greatest pain in the face is all about: knowing where you need to apply the gold so that you can heal and be a shining light for others who also feel broken.

This is the role of the artist. We face our pain and transform it so we can bring hope and light to others. We stop blaming the past and start hoping for the future. We go through the cold, gray, dark night of the soul and still dare to open our hearts and fill the world with color.

Stop and ask yourself, “Is there some pain I’m running from?” Choose to face it instead. There is freedom—and groundbreaking, soul-stirring art—on the other side.

Hear from another INSPIRING artist Ellenor Birch, Mastery Program graduate.