We are many people: Creative art therapy for adults

I grew up in a country far away, a beautiful country of snow capped mountains, rushing streams, lush green pastures, our own world heritage delta, and one of the last great wildernesses in greater Europe for bears and wolves to roam free. So I also grew up in a country where queuing for bread and meat for 24 hours in the winter snows and the relentless heat of summer days was just the way it was, where studying often had to be by candlelight, where the long arms and fingers of the security police re-wrote the personality of my country, possibly forever. I grew up in Romania. But I was lucky, our bloody revolution in 1989 coincided with my university years. To my parents generation I landed on the moon, a country and a system that was unrecognisable to them. I was swept away by this new world, taking for granted that it was my duty to become a part of someone else’s wisdom. Without thinking I left behind my engineering degree and joined the first advertising agency to open its doors, then launched the first colour women’s magazine in Romania for the same US owners, then worked in the HIV/AIDS prevention field in Romania for a Washington, US parent who invited me to mentor even younger and poorer teams than us in Lesotho, Swaziland and Albania. But all of this changed dramatically. My life took on a completely different direction. Art and creativity came into my life.