When Stevie and I first started The Heartbreak Artists we never would have believed that so many people would connect to our mission of using art as a Mental Health tool. What started out as two old friends sharing their journeys of growth and creative frustration over the years has now become a network of artists helping themselves and the public heal through creativity.
I've always been just a little too emotional. A little too melodramatic. I remember most of my childhood and early adulthood being one dramatic experience after another. Not knowing where to put all my feelings. Not knowing where they were coming from. Not knowing if I would ever be "normal". It didn't help that I didn't grow up the way the rest of my friends did. I have been constantly surrounded by artist and creatives since the moment I opened my eyes. Of my immediate family, all 5 of us have been in the Arts at one point or another. And while this made for a very entertaining and culturally rich adolescence, it absolutely set my intense vulnerability apart from my peers. At least, that's is until I went to LACHSA.
The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts is a performing arts school that I attended my Sophomore through Senior year. There I met children who shared my passions, my vulnerabilities, and even my upbringing. That's where I met Stevie.
As another Sophomore First Year she and I bonded over our close hometowns, being the older ones in the group, and our desire to dissect the complex emotions we were experiencing during our time there.
Now, 15 years later, we're still doing the same dance with our psyches and souls, and continuing to use art to do it. And when the both of us think about our most creative times, they have sprung from the same place they did over 15 years ago : Heartbreak. Stevie and I have bonded over first times, long lost loves, the ones that got away, and the ones who hurt us more than any others. We've shared our hopes, dreams and fears with each other about the ones we've loved, and the ones we couldn't have. We've talked about how grateful we are that we've gone through the experience, and we've shared how those experiences have helped us create some of our best work.
That is what Heartbreak is to us : an opportunity to sit in front of our own reflections, through the tears, and find a way to continue to love ourselves and become better people and artists because of the pain.
It is an awakening.
There can be no love without Heartbreak. There can be no thrill without risk. And if you're brave enough to join us, we promise that on this journey of healing through art, you'll find your awakening too.
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