EP.33 - How To Use Art as a Tool for Healing and Self-Awareness with Sharon Abdullah
SHOW NOTES:
Art isn't just about pretty pictures or decorations. It's about feelings, emotions, and a whole world of self-expression. It's the ultimate connection between you and your deepest self. It's raw, it's real, and it's transformative.
Sharon Abdullah is an artist who lives and breathes this truth every day. She is a vibrant and multifaceted artist who embraces the power of art, not just as a form of self-expression, but also as a tool for processing feelings and healing. Sharon's experiences have shown her that art provides an incredible way to navigate through life's challenges and emotions.
In the world of art, Sharon emphasises that there's no one-size-fits-all approach. Your style might look different from others, and that's perfectly fine. It's your unique journey, your story told in colours and shapes.
Join me and Sharon as we dive into how art can truly shape and heal your life, stir up your emotions, and ignite a creative revolution in your world.
Here are the key takeaways from this episode:
02:50 - Sharon shares the story of how and why she started scrapbooking
08:34 - Don’t lose sight of what makes us unique as humans
11:25 - Embrace imperfection and don’t afraid to get creative with your art
14:38 - Sharon talks about Meraki Studio and what it does
17:36 - The value of bringing artistic practices into our everyday lives
19:50 - Art journaling is an expression of self-awareness
25:50 - Each person is different, and that’s perfectly okay
26:40 - Sharon talks about Angsanacare, that provides art and music therapy to paediatric patients
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Sharon Abdullah, the creative force behind Sharon Abdullah/Meraki Studio, is a passionate advocate for helping others and making a positive impact on the world. Through her journey, she discovered her purpose in inspiring and empowering people through art and music therapy. Sharon expresses herself through painting, using it as a powerful form of self-expression, and encourages others to explore their creativity and share their stories.
After leaving her investment banker job, Sharon co-founded Angsanacare, a charity organisation dedicated to facilitating art sessions for sick children in hospitals. Combining her love for painting and teaching, she conducts group sessions and individual private art sessions in her studio. Sharon's expertise spans a wide range of artistic techniques, from mixed media painting to sculpting and arts and crafts.
Learn more about Meraki Studio on their Instagram page @merakistudiomalaysia and Angsanacare on their website angsanacare.org.my.
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About Me:
I help you lead with fearless authenticity by smashing the self-imposed heteronormative stereotypes that keep you playing small through emotional healing inner child and inherited intergenerational trauma. Create a purposeful life of your unique design by disrupting societal norms and expectations of who you should be. Explore mindfulness, fearless curiosity and loving kindness through the lens of Human Design to thrive as the person you are born to be.
Learn more about my coaching method and join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community at melissaindot.com.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Sharon: First rule is to embrace imperfection. Just remember, this is your creativity. This is your art. There is no right or wrong. You will find your style and whatever style that is is yours. Who's to say that it's perfect. It has to be perfect. No way. Right.
[00:00:26] Melissa: Hey there. Welcome to the Fearlessly Curious Podcast, your safe space. Listen, lean in and learn the diversity of human experiences through the lens of fearless curiosity. When we learn more about each other, we also learn more about ourselves. How? Because when we listen to each other's curiosities and experiences, we relate to that which is in common, and that which sets us apart, gives us something to reflect on. We learn through and with each other. I'm grateful to you, the global community, for your curious questions. The Fearlessly Curious Podcast cannot exist without you.
[00:01:14] Melissa: Today, the theme is leadership, and I'm very excited because I have a guest today and her name is Sharon, but I'm gonna let Sharon introduce herself cuz she'll do a much better job than me. She's a great friend and she has a magnitude of experience as a woman in leadership and different areas of life, whether we're talking about career or we're talking about being in partnership or whether we're talking about motherhood. And so over to you Sharon. Tell our listeners a little bit about who you are.
[00:01:51] Sharon: Hello, I'm Sharon. I have four kids. I paint and I have four kids.
[00:01:57] Melissa: She paints and she has four kids, and she has four kids and she paints. Yes. Just to be clear. So before you became a parent, Sharon, what did your life look like?
[00:02:08] I became a parent when I was really young. Yeah, I was 22, so I was in uni party. party.
[00:02:15] Melissa: Party. Yeah. Okay. And I'm curious, did you have a career at any point? In parallel to being a parent or just before becoming a parent, or just after becoming a parent?
[00:02:27] Sharon: After I became a parent, I was a banker, so I was in the finance industry for a while, uh, until I had my second daughter, and then I decided it was taking too much of my time away from the family life, and I quit. As soon as I quit, I discovered my hobby, which was scrapbooking at the time and that turned to painting.
[00:02:50] Melissa: Okay. Scrapbooking. I'm very curious about this cuz I'm visualizing an adult scrapbooking, but when I think about scrapbooking, it's something that I relate to, something I would've done at school for play. And I'd love for you to share a little bit about the benefits of scrapbooking as an adult.
[00:03:10] Sharon: I think it's more like a mom thing, right? Naturally, after you had babies and children and you wanna safe, keep family photos, memories, family trips, you know, that sort of, and write about how you, what you went through, or after having a child. You write about all the emotions, how that made you feel, you know, that sort of thing. So, uh, scrapbooking, right? You're keeping all the good memories on top of writing about it.
[00:03:40] Melissa: Mm-hmm. Do you ever look back at those scrapbooks? No. You don't?
[00:03:45] Sharon: I mean, I have them on my family coffee tables and things. I don't personally because I don't know why. Maybe because I've made them and I've stared at them for so long, but my kids enjoy going through it. Okay. Our family yearly thing. Our family trips. Yeah. How much they've grown, what they used to like.
[00:04:03] Melissa: Mm-hmm. So they can chart their growth, they can chart their journey of their lives through these scrapbooks that their mother has committed a lot of time and effort and love towards.
[00:04:13] Melissa: Yeah. Do you think that it's something that those of us who are not parents yet, or maybe choose never to be parents, that this is an activity that is beneficial for everyone as a way of documenting life's journey and then being able to spend the, some time sort of looking back because I dunno about you, but I find I'm so on the chase and I'm not even doing it consciously.
[00:04:37] Melissa: It's just like we're so busy, right? You've got stuff to do that I very rarely spend the time to sit back and kind of reflect. And there was an episode, I did an episode about how important self-reflection is, and that's all well and good, but actually to have something tangible like a scrapbook must be incredibly powerful. Would you recommend this to everybody or cuz you said it's a mom thing.
[00:04:56] Sharon: Yeah, I said it's a mom thing because it was to me at that point. But no, it's not only for a mom to document your child's life, but a lot of people do them documenting their own life, even without children in. It's like what we do on Instagram now.
[00:05:14] Sharon: It's kind of like you wanna look back and remember what you've done, what your experiences was, and how you felt, and the pictures that goes along with it. So scrapbooking is different though, as you would like. Posting on social media because you spend time. I don't know about you, but I like to read a book, like book, literally book in my hand, so I'm a feel and touch kind of person.
[00:05:42] Sharon: I like to get my hands dirty, get messy, actually do the thing. Literally. So scrap booking is very therapeutic in a way where you need to put the papers together, you need to glue, you need to be creative. You know where things you need to look and sit and feel.
[00:05:58] Melissa: Mm. I love that. And I do feel there's a sense that now with technology, not just us as the adults, I say nobody can see me, but in inverted commas, the adults, but the child part within us and what more the children of today are losing out because of technology, we lose out on that sensory experience of really using our hands and also experiencing seeing life multi-dimensionally cuz we're looking at screens all the time.
[00:06:26] Melissa: And of course, yes, we have virtual reality and we have great graphics. But nettling, nothing could possibly replace the dimensions that we can experience when we see real colors, real things, real nature with natural light. And then pick up on the senses of that experience through a sense of smell, through the touch.
[00:06:52] Melissa: So when the wind is blowing and being fully present in our bodies. And I'm thinking now about scrapbooking and how, as you've mentioned, using our hands is so important. Using our, the digits of our fingers. Just like when we take our feet out of our shoes and walk bare foot, it's igniting and activating our senses, our physical senses, and that's reminding us in many ways that we are alive. We're not just running on this program and that we can connect with life itself.
[00:07:24] Sharon: I agree with that. Um, and then I try to experiment on my children and I'm like, Hey, how about if we do this? Like get our hands dirty.
[00:07:32] Sharon: Get the old fashioned old fashioned inverted com way where you literally get into it and none of the digital stuff and things. Maybe we are from back then and we understood things the way it was, but children nowadays, they're so modernized and so everything is digital and things I must say like NFTs and things like that, they blow my mind, right Digitally when you see something light up and move and so digitalized, it's amazing.
[00:08:04] Sharon: It does capture me, right? So maybe they're in different times. This is their way of expressing this is their way of, I know. Taking things in as well and understanding whatever the message is.
[00:08:18] Melissa: Sure. And I think it's important, you know, that's the evolution. And it's important for the older generation to to show an interest, be curious, to discover more about how the technology and evolution of art is evolving, what it is becoming.
[00:08:34] Melissa: But I also feel that it's important for us not to lose sight of the very thing that makes us unique, the very thing that sets us above AI and technology, which is our senses, which is these human aspects of us that we can't possibly tune or rather program AI to do. But I wanna just bring this conversation back to you and I actually, because we're talking about scrapbooking, we're talking about art, using art as an outlet of expression and really a way to record memories as well, and to get us into our bodies into a more creative state.
[00:09:12] Melissa: And there's one thing that life definitely does is it gets us into. A pattern, a pattern of behavior, and it's very easy to get comfortable in this pattern of behavior and work on autopilot. And it's because of you. I got reintroduced to art and I was taking you back quite a few years now, and I remember, and I know this is gonna make you smile the first time I got into your studio, and I'm gonna invite you to share with everybody a little bit about Meraki.
[00:09:37] Melissa: But for now we'll just share the story. Sharon invited me to a studio and she put a canvas on the wall and I had all, you know, like every color under the sun of paint that I could imagine and every shape and size of brush to use. And she's like, go ahead, let's paint. And we were doing a bit of an experiment together because I curated a playlist and I wanted a paint to the playlist and I had prompts, et cetera.
[00:09:57] Melissa: And I remember turning to her and saying, what do I do? And she's like, paint. Here, choose your colors. So I went and I chose some colors and from the paint, what do you call those things? Tube paint tubes, that's the word. Right? And I was like, okay, I've got the colors, now what do I do? And she's like, I remember I'm gonna let you tell the rest of the story.
[00:10:19] Sharon: Now you're like, what do I do? I'm like, open it, squeeze it out, and then pick up the brush and paint. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was your nerves. Maybe the canvas was too big. I don't know.
[00:10:33] Melissa: And that's it. I had just become so accustomed to being told what to do. That's one thing. Being told what to do because we do live in an age where we're fed information.
[00:10:45] Melissa: You know, just like Instagram and Facebook and all the other social media platforms, all we need to do is switch it on and immediately we're just, it's just infinite amount of information that we're being fed. So that was one thing right there. I was put outside my comfort zone and suddenly it was like, I've forgotten what to do.
[00:11:03] Melissa: The most basic things right, because the brain in that sense had been dulled. The second thing is perfectionism. Not wanting to do it wrong because I'm curious, what is your thoughts around the conditioning of the mindset and art and what is perfect art and what is the right way to draw or paint?
[00:11:25] Sharon: Okay, so I work a lot with children and I love working with children because they remind me to just be in the moment, just do it.
[00:11:36] Sharon: There is no right or wrong. It will eventually work out any way. Right. So as grown ups, we tend to forget that after, like just growing up, university, working parent, whatever, you tend to be expected to have. More responsibilities expected to grow up, expected to be an adult, right? So you lose all the fun, all the carefree, all the imperfection.
[00:12:12] Sharon: When I started the scrapbook business, I always tell my clients, I'm like, okay, you wanna scrapbook with me? But first rule is embrace imperfection. Just remember, this is your creativity. This is your art. There is no right or wrong. You will find your style and whatever style that is is yours. Who's to say that it's perfect. It has to be perfect. No way. Right? You said it. So yeah, we lose that as we grow up.
[00:12:45] Melissa: So would you recommend that as a lifestyle practice, almost like a mental health and emotional wellbeing? And I'm have to go there because that's what I'm passionate about. If there's one thing that we could include in our lifestyle is a practice, whether it's daily or weekly or monthly.
[00:13:03] Melissa: Where we get to just be artistic, like really connect with that artistic side of us because, because it's so important, it's a way for us to break free or really surrender this belief, the condition that we have about what perfection needs to look and feel like. Is that something you would recommend for people?
[00:13:22] Sharon: Absolutely. Just do whatever it is. That is creative to you, not necessarily in art, like with you in music, if it feels right, it often is right. Mm. You're just gonna own it. Wait, that just sounded like you. You just gotta own it. Once you own it, you are confident about it, you believe in it, it's gonna happen, right?
[00:13:46] Melissa: Yeah, for sure. And that, that experience I had with you sort of opened a portal of a different aspect of creativity for me. And it really connects with my value of play, right? At the end of the day, what we're adults, what is an adult? Anyway, we're all just trying to figure out life still, because the truth is, I always say this, the minute you think you know it all, You know nothing.
[00:14:11] Melissa: And how on earth did we let life get so serious? Whether you are a CEO or a founder, a teacher, a doctor, a brain surgeon, a parent, right? Wouldn't life be just so much more fun if we infused a little bit more curiosity and curiosity into the moment to discover more about ourselves? Just like when I had that session with you, I just discovered how I thought I was so creative and so free.
[00:14:38] Melissa: But that was so confronting that experience, and I had you to guide me through it. And for those of you listening and if you are curious to learn more about tapping into that artistic side of yourself because everybody is an artist, then I definitely invite you to. Look for Sharon on Instagram. And can you tell everybody a little bit about Meraki?
[00:14:57] Sharon: Meraki is a studio. I go to paint myself once in a while. I do put my paintings up. I do try to get a gallery there. I do run classes as well for grownups and children groups and private sessions here in Malaysia.
[00:15:15] Melissa: Amazing. And what about online?
[00:15:17] Sharon: I do have something online. Well, I did have something online during the pandemic. Funny how you said that because somebody just texted me last night going, let's go back online. We did art journaling online, which was quite fun, and that's like a live session in a group set up.
[00:15:35] Melissa: Ooh, art journaling. I need to know more about this because I was an avid journaler and there are definitely proven benefits from journaling. It's a very good way to brain dump to get out of the overthinking mind. It's great for a releasing stress. And to be honest, I kind of dropped off the journaling wagon for nearly a year now, actually. So I'm really curious to know a bit more about art journaling. Can you share with our listeners what art journaling is?
[00:16:02] Sharon: Okay, so I've done art journaling for like forever, ever since I started. Well, Even from the scrap booking days, you know, you tie your picture to a little story, mainly because you don't wanna lose that memory. And then it moved to me painting on big canvases and I always go back to my little book, sometimes not too little to probably try new things to explore and while you're trying the new things and exploring with all the different mediums, you want to put it in note form as to how you got to a particular texture or outcome. So art journaling to me is there's one that bit there and there's also bit where it's like a visual diary. where you go and paint what you think is, or at the time you, you want to remember, or a good memory or something you saw, I don't know, on Facebook or a magazine or newspaper. And you want to repeat that and see how arty you can get things going and how you can add to it to make it super exciting. So art journaling can be so much, it can be also where you write about your dreams. You write about your fears or anything. It's a diary, right for you only. The art element in it is to make it super colorful and vibrant and Yeah.
[00:17:36] Melissa: Okay. Right. It's an alternative way for you to allow your thoughts and the way that you perceive your world to come out to be expressed. Right. And I'm trying to think now about how, how important it is actually for us to bring practices, artistic practices like this into our lives. Not just on a personal perspective, but in fact, I'd love to see this in the business world more, and maybe for some listeners you're like, might be thinking, yeah, right. That's never gonna happen. Well, the truth is, if you believe something is never gonna happen, then you are limiting yourself.
[00:18:10] Melissa: It's not gonna happen. Yes. It's not gonna happen. But it's not about whether, I think it's good, it's more about how this can open the doorway for people to tap into what their unique vision of life and what their unique view of life can is and how they can bring that into the workspace. So what I mean is that, you know, we're all conditioned pretty much quite similar cuz we all go into a school system and we're all living in the system of life and the world.
[00:18:39] Melissa: But through art, At least from my experience, you give yourself permission to detach from this system, detach from a very fixed way of thinking, and go into this huge adventure and the awareness that you build from it, your affinity for color, the freedom that you find with just holding a paintbrush or holding a pen or playing with color, exploring textures.
[00:19:04] Melissa: It's very curious for me how that experience of being free in an artistic environment can affect my system so that when I go back to a work environment, when I'm faced with a problem, I fired up new things in my brain, right? And how I'm gonna employ what I fired up. Those new neurons that I've been fired up, how I can apply it in the workplace.
[00:19:27] Melissa: I don't know if I'm doing a great job of explaining it because. It makes sense to me in my mind how when I detach from my daily life and I do something artistic and creative and free, and I get to be fearlessly authentic, and I get to be curious in every moment to see where's this color gonna take me? Where's this stroke gonna take me?
[00:19:45] Sharon: Oh, wow, you're a very good student, I must say, because I was your art teacher.
[00:19:49] Melissa: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You are.
[00:19:50] Sharon: Um, that's exactly what it is in art journaling, and I just had a workshop yesterday and I was trying to explain to them it is self-awareness. You learn so much from working in your books because you make mistakes and you learn how to be okay with it, and you learn to try and fix it.
[00:20:14] Sharon: So there's so much in there. Say from just that. Mm-hmm you've made a mistake, and then you'll be okay with it and then you fix it if you have no outlet to do that. How will you learn how to approach that problem? Right. Problem. Mm-hmm. So it is a self-awareness, self-improvement. There's so much in there. Everybody needs an outlet, I think, no matter what it is.
[00:20:40] Melissa: Mm-hmm. And you could use art to help process your emotions as well. Right? You could literally draw, like if you're angry.
[00:20:46] Sharon: If you're angry, your art is gonna come out angry. If you are lovey dovey, your art is gonna come out. Lovey dovey. But again, everybody have their own style, so my lovey dovey might not look lovey dovey to you, but yeah, it's how you express.
[00:21:03] Sharon: Like I'm not very good with words, so I like to paint. I put all my emotions in my painting. And it's usually at that point in my life, what I'm going through, I put in. So people always say to me, Hmm, well not, not people always, but people have said, your style's very different and it's evolving all the time.
[00:21:26] Sharon: Shouldn't you be an artist that has only one style? I mean, if you notice. Any famous artist, they have the one style and they just do the same thing. Not exactly the same, but different ways expressed, but same style. So I'm like, you know, maybe I'm a Gemini, maybe. I don't know. I like to try new things and try new colors.
[00:21:51] Sharon: I like to challenge myself, and I might be going through a different point in my life. That I'm expressing through all these different emotions, right? Yes. I'm just letting it out at the time. So it's all different, I would say, at every point in time. Yes. In my life. So yeah.
[00:22:08] Melissa: I think you are right there as well, that even though on the outside someone might see it being different in your art during different stages of your life, but if it was somebody who really followed you, they would be able to see your style, that fearless, authentic thread. You said that? Mm-hmm.
[00:22:25] Sharon: Because you are the second person I told this to, and the first person said, actually, I don't see any difference in your art. Like it's all very you. Like that's interesting.
[00:22:35] Melissa: I definitely see that. And for those of you here listening who are really big on art, you know, and you've go to exhibitions, if you've been to any of the big exhibitions of the famous artists. So let's talk about Vincent Van Gogh. If you trace their journeys or Monet or Matisse, you definitely see an evolution of their art from the very early days until their final days.
[00:22:59] Melissa: There is a huge curve of growth and change. Very, very diverse styles actually. But also a very, very, oh, a powerful, overriding style. We can't run away from that. It's just like trying to say like my voice, let's talk about my voice for a moment, because music being my modality when I listen to my singing voice when I was 23 to my speaking and singing voice, now it's completely different.
[00:23:27] Melissa: But there's a nuance there that is still Melissa, and that's gonna be our fearless, authentic print throughout our lives, whether it's music, whether it's singing, whether it's art, and in the different expressions of art. And that's why it's so important for us to break out of the system of homogenization where.
[00:23:45] Melissa: We're all about being the same and all about trying to fit in and trying to be perfect at being a certain way because we're not meant to fit in in this world. Are we, Sharon? We were just talking about being misfits, and I think Sharon was a little bit upset that I, I called her one only because she knows it's true.
[00:24:05] Sharon: I know, of course. I know it's true. I mean, there's only just one of us, right? And we're all different. In so many ways with so different, I mean, I have to agree with you. There's not one of us only. I can do that piece. Only I can have painted it that way nobody else can. Even if I tried to repeat it, it won't look the same. It's that point in time, in that moment. Right. Set of mind attitude, emotion.
[00:24:36] Melissa: Totally, and we see it because if you go for an art class or an art workshop and you have the proverbial sort of still life workshop, right? So you have a people sitting in a circle, maybe around a nude person or you know, a still life setup.
[00:24:50] Melissa: So everybody's looking at it. The same thing, and everybody's painting the same thing in inverted commerce. But with nine people there you'll see nine different pieces of art, and that's very telling about the way each of us see the world. So when we have conflicts, I'm gonna just move this conversation, how important it is that art helps us not only see life, our own unique perspective of life, but when we're in group, it helps us appreciate.
[00:25:18] Melissa: How different we all are and perhaps become more compassionate when we're communicating with each other, because Sharon and I are gonna draw the same apple, but I tell you what's gonna look very different. And so when I look at that, I can say to myself, perhaps I'm gonna spend a little bit more time explaining something to her, or more importantly, spend more time listening to her because the way she saw that Apple is different to how I saw it. So when we're having this conversation now about life, I know she's gonna see it differently and what can I learn from her? What are your thoughts about that, Sharon?
[00:25:50] Sharon: I think that's so true. I enjoy being around people and doing art together or yoga and that sort. You learn so much, right? In a community. Everybody's different. Everybody has their different point of view, and the more you are in a group of people and learning together and whatever, and doing something together, it could be a yoga class. You tend to know that's their way, that's their way of seeing things and you tend to learn it is okay being different or how they see things might not be the same way you see things. Right. That opens up my mind.
[00:26:27] Melissa: Absolutely. So just to round up this episode today, I definitely would love for you to touch on how we first got connected. Tell us a little bit about Angsanacare.
[00:26:40] Sharon: Oh yeah, what I should have said, also, I do run a charity organization, a music therapy for the underprivileged in a local hospital. It's very passionate to me and to Ria. Ria Thomas is the chairperson of Sana. We both co-founded Angsanacare. Do check us out on sana care.org. We raise money and we pay for our therapists in there to go into the hospital to give therapy, music therapy and play therapy to the caregivers, to the patients. Usually they're pediatric wards. Yeah, it's just. Amazing. The work that our therapists do.
[00:27:27] Melissa: Yeah. Art's. So healing, isn't it?
[00:27:28] Sharon: Art is so healing. So healing. And we all need it. They need it. They didn't know they need it until they tried it. It's so heartwarming to see. Did you say heartwarming heart. Heart heartwarming.
[00:27:46] Melissa: Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for spending your time with me today to share your passion of art and the way that you bring it forth into the world. And of course, having been my art teacher and introduce art to me, and now I'm able to share and grow through my art and offer that to other people with my music.
[00:28:04] Melissa: It's been such an honor to have you here. And I'm so glad that you also sharing with everybody your passion project, the NGO that is Angsanacare. So do make sure you go and check out anana. Is it angsanacare.org? Org? Yes. And look for Meraki Studio Malaysia on Instagram and get in contact when you are ready to be fearlessly Curious about how art can change your life, not just on a personal level, but also change the culture of your team culture of your business. It's so important for us to really tap into that creative side of ourselves because without showing up with fearless authenticity, really allowing for yourself and your team members to show up in their uniqueness, we lose out on great wisdom. That's all from me this week. Until the next episode, stay fearlessly curious.
[00:29:01] Melissa: If you want more, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode every Friday. And please leave a review if you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to send me your curious questions and experiences as inspiration for future episodes. Your anonymity will be respected. If that's what you prefer. For more guidance and support, join my emotional healing, mindfulness and music community over at melissaindot.com. See you next week.
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