Two years ago, 50-year-old Connie McCool couldn’t get around without a wheelchair. She slept most of her days away. Plagued by chronic pain from arthritis and major depression, she tried to take her own life.
Today, the single mother of three grown children runs an arts and craft group and has completed more than three dozen works of art. She’s an artist, a mentor, a friend and a natural leader.
Her work, along with other art therapy clients, will be on display and for sale at the Pathways ACCESS Center’s open house April 15.
“I feel so good about myself when I am doing my art work,” McCool said. “It’s given me a sense of purpose. It makes me want to get up in the morning, knowing that people are relying on me, counting on me. My friends are here.”
“Here” is the Pathways ACCESS Center, a consumer-driven community center for clients of Pikes Peak Behavioral Health Group. In addition to art therapy, the center provides a safe place for clients to utilize career development services, train for job placement, seek support from peers and work toward self-sufficiency.
Guided by program manager and art therapist Kim Le Nguyen, McCool found empowerment and healing in her paint brush. Through the canvass, McCool unlocked trauma from the past and found a filter for both her emotional and physical pain.
“I can’t take meds,” McCool said. “I’m on the grin-and-bare-it plan. But I can just delve into the art and it helps me forget about the pain.”
Nguyen said McCool went from someone who isolated herself from others to a leader at the center.
“Sometimes people associate mental illness with crazy ideas; treat it as a negative,” Nguyen said. “But (the clients) are full of creativity and an abundance of beauty. With the right direction, they can flourish.”
One of McCool’s pieces illustrates this point: painted in the backdrop are the names of famous artists and authors who suffered from mental illness.
A McCool original currently on display at the center is 30 years in the making. The painting is based on a Heart song called “These Dreams,” which speaks of a faceless prince in the woods. McCool said she always wanted a prince to come and save her.
“I’ve lived so much of my life in a fantasy world,” McCool said. “I’ve discovered the prince isn’t coming. I’m the only one that come to the rescue and take me away.”