STORIES: Zentangle® helps express feelings without words

In this occasional series on TanglePatterns, readers describe in their own words how Zentangle® has changed their lives. For more accounts in this series, click on the “STORIES” link in the alphabetical listing above.
Visit this post for the stories that inspired this series.

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Virginia CZT Kat van Rooyen recently shared this beautiful and touching story with me and she agreed to share it here with the Zentangle community.

“As a retired psychotherapist, I know the advantage of drawing and allowing the subconscious to express itself. The same can and does happen with Zentangle-type art if it is not planned out or forced in any way. I often pull out a tile if I’m feeling strong emotion (including anxiety) and lose myself into this wonderful meditative activity.

Yesterday [October 13th] was my son’s 24th birthday… The infant son who only lived thirty days and never got to come home from the hospital. I was amazed how my body reacted to the date in spite of not feeling great sorrow.  My body remembered what my mind tried to forget.

I sat down with my trusty pen and pulled out a tile. This was the result.

Image copyright Kat van Rooyen and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I didn’t realize it was heart-shaped with an empty section until I was through. I have two other biological children who are reflected as sections of the heart. There are even more remarkable revelations that I’ll not share here, but how amazing was this tile?! I felt so much better when I was finished… The feelings were expressed without words.”

~ Kat van Rooyen – CZT-20 – Tazewell VA – In the heart of the beautiful Appalachian Mountains

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If you would like to share your own experience for this series, please email me (linda [at] tanglepatterns [dot] com). You can make your story as long as or short as you like and if you wish your personal details to remain private, I will certainly honor that.

By publishing your “testimonials”, I’m hoping it will help spread the word about Zentangle to many others who can REALLY benefit from it. As the Zentangle founders say, “Anything is possible, one stroke at a time.”™

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In case you missed it ...

Zentangle is "not just the latest buzzword for ‘that thing I was already doing years ago in the margins of notebooks’."

So if that's what you've been thinking, you don't know Zentangle yet.

For enlightenment on this subject please read CZT Sandy Hunter's eloquent article On Understanding Zentangle.

.oOo.
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