Michael (Rod) Rodriguez (00:35):
"Today we're gonna, we're gonna paint a mask." And I was like, "Paint? How, how in the heck could that help me?"

Glema Gordon (00:41):
I've tried a lot of stuff. It was not resonating. He said, "Well how about art therapy?" I said, "Okay, I'm willing to try anything."

Michael Schneider (00:50):
The first day of treatment was upstairs in this area, and all I see is bongo drums, some weird instruments that were hanging on the walls, and she looked at me and said, "What do you wanna do?" I had no idea.

Heather Spooner (01:10):
They're really looking to express their experiences in a new way, and sometimes they've been in other therapy programs for quite some time, and just feel like they're stuck. They're not quite able to get there by putting words to what they're trying to talk about, or they're not able to express their experiences that way. And so, for many people, being able to put something into an image is completely fresh and different.

Michael Schneider (01:34):
Music and art and, and writing was a safe place. It was a place that I could be in myself, in a safe place, an environment.

Christopher Stowe (01:45):
Art therapy is something that I really kinda shied away from, because it's so intimate, it's so, uh, it's so real. Uh, at least it was for me. So it opened up a lot in me. It actually, it saved my life, it kinda saved my marriage. It got me back on a road to recovery and, and that's where we are now.

Music (02:02):
I'm light as a feather

(02:02):
I'm bright as the Oregon breeze

(02:02):
My black shroud

(02:02):
Frightened by my feelings

(02:02):
I only wanna be a relief

Merrilee Jorn (02:06):
There may be something said like, "I haven't been able to share this with anyone. You know, this is the first time that I've, that I've said this to anyone." And it's this picture that made this come out.

Michael (Rod) Rodriguez (02:17):
This provided me a nonjudgmental way to express a message to myself without the constraints of, of the written word or anything, you know? And then it was in that moment, you know, the aha moment where I realized the beauty of art.

Christopher Stowe (02:37):
So I think that the understanding w- for military folks, trying to find success in an artistic platform, where they end up, I think, having this new creative process they didn't have before. The military doesn't necessarily all the time lend itself to individuality or creativity. It tends to be more, um, "You're a square peg, you need to be in a square hole, 'cause that's, that's what we need you to be at the time." But that ends up, I think, probably stymieing a person's individuality or their individual creative process. Where, I think, the arts end up really opening that up for people.

Glema Gordon (03:14):
Making my quilt, I had so many emotions. I thought about my trauma, the combat trauma, and through the combat trauma how anxiety, depression, and all these feelings came to me. So I showed it to my mentor. I drew it out, sketched it out, and the name of my quilt is, "Behind the Mask." So she knew that I really wasn't myself, and if I could put on a mask, I could make it through everything.

Heather Spooner (03:58):
Again, to put it into an image, a poem, even when you're describing your own experience, oftentimes happens on a level that everyone can see themselves in. And it doesn't have to be the same kind of pain, it doesn't have to be the same kind of experience, but they can see themselves in it. And that's what we're seeing in the work from these veterans and service members, perhaps in part because the themes they're dealing with are so powerful.

Michael Schneider (04:25):
My therapist was able to introduce me to that, and really show me where I was able to heal by utilizing music, was able to heal by utilizing the arts. I was able to see it, feel it, and I knew it made me better.

Merrilee Jorn (04:41):
I've actually had several people tell me, "It took me six months or a year or more to tell my therapist about that, and you got it out of me in one hour. How did that happen?"