Healing Gift Ideas For Yourself

Healing gift ideas are for the transformational moments in our lives: a sudden desire for change, a need to share an epiphany, an urge to say the unsaid or the unspoken. Ultimately, they are healing photo gifts for yourself, someone else, or both.  Examples of a healing gift idea for yourself might be:

  • a sympathy or memorial gift of condolence from family or friends
  • a legacy gift of remembrance for someone you held dear
  • a commemoration or acknowledgement for a milestone, or

The digital photo collages I create with and for you can e-envision your past with a happier outcome, or they can visualize a hope-filled future. In B/W or color, the Healing Dreamscape I create from your personal photos, memories and epiphanies allows you to travel to a wishful reality that fills you with joy … a place where you can nurse your soul privately or open dialogue publicly. As an antidote to feeling less than whole, this therapeutic piece of healing art reconfigures your constellation of memories and stories in a positive, active way. With a little humor and irony, symbolism and surrealism, these fine art photo collages give you permission to enjoy a boundless number of happier endings in the past and the future. Demonizing and humanizing pieces of your world becomes part of the healing process.

Healing Gift Ideas For Someone Else

Healing gift ideas for someone else almost always mean creating a healing work of art  they would never dare treat themselves to.  In the instance of loss or regrets, my Healing Dreamscape photo collages can help a family member or dear friend immortalize a life lost suddenly, or over an extended period.

Some examples of a Healing Dreamscape you’d give to someone else might be:  

  • a portrait of the departed they can “talk to”
  • a visualization of the next baby step in their life so they can reinvent themselves

If you plan to commission a Healing Dreamscape as a surprise gift for someone else and feel  my direct access to this person would invade their privacy, I will ask that my questions be passed along. I do this because humor and irony and the notion of play and truth-telling play such a huge role in how the viewer embraces and ultimately acts upon their Healing Dreamscape. So all of these things are innocently embedded into my questions.  Once your friend or family member understands my process through those questions, in nearly all instances they usually become open to talking with me directly.

For people with addictive behaviors (such as the work I do for The Healing Memory Project with eating disorder patients), the “positive self-belief stories” I come up with can be tiny enough to fit inside a wallet! In many cases, that’s all my clients need – just a mental picture that reminds them  of the positive lessons taken  from therapy so they can move themselves one baby step forward and reinvent themselves.

  • a creative intervention to help them negotiate recovery and prevent relapse
  • a healing gift to a friend, celebrating the hard work they did inside/ outside therapy

A Healing Gift for Both of You

As I create digital artwork, it is so easy to share the healing.  Think of all the situations where you give a Healing Dreamscape but really would like one for yourself as well. For example:

  • a memory “refresh” to replace negative images with positive ones  (such as mental pictures of an unpleasant death or extended illness) that you can place on the cover of a memorial book
  • a peacemaking or reconciliation gift (for estranged family members) which you can accompany with a personal letter

My Promise

Healing Dreamscapes are not simply photos stitched together by a special effects software program. Nor are they art effects. Each Healing Dreamscape is designed for one person; one couple or one family by a prescriptive artist. It’s a thoughtful environment conjured up to look like nothing you’ve ever dreamed of; a place where you didn’t even know you longed to be.

Engaging me as the artist who will create healing artwork for you or someone else may be a brand new experience for you.  But regardless of your goal – healing artwork, sympathy gift – it’s unbelievable what happens when fine art standards and the therapeutic goal are given equal weight.