The magic of SoulCollage®

Making a SoulCollage® Card Deck Reveals and Deepens My Life’s Story

An evocative and beautiful record of my heart’s healing journey

I’ve always been artistic.

Drawing, painting, sculpting. Making stuff energizes and relaxes me especially when easy and not too messy.

Like collage.

Recovery got me into collage when our fellowship started making vision boards for the new year every Jan 1st. I didn’t wait a whole year to do more, I kept going. At first on large poster boards. Then I started making greeting cards for friends and journal covers for myself.

A workmate showed me her Voyager Tarot Deck. Every card was a collage! I ordered one right away. Instead of reading, I studied them, imagining making a deck-like pack of my own collages, I never did, but the idea simmered on a back burner.

Then one day I happened to google collage.

What came up at the top of the list was soulcollage.com,

I clicked over and read:

Your SoulCollage® Deck is the Story of You! Create a unique deck of colorful, collaged SoulCollage® cards with deep personal meaning. Consult your cards, discover your inner wisdom and find answers to life’s questions. Anyone can enjoy this fun, powerful and satisfying method.

My own personal deck! Like the Voyager Tarot, only way more personally meaningful, being created by and about me.

I had to do this. Now!

I ordered supplies and got started.

So what exactly is SoulCollage®?

SoulCollage® is the brain and heart child of visionary art and psychotherapist, Seena B. Frost. She’s a Jungian art and psychotherapist with a Master of Divinity from Yale. The process of making collages to reveal and heal ourselves evolved out of her art therapy practice, infused with inspiration from Jean Houston.

It’s called SoulCollage® for a reason.

Our soul speaks in the language of images. That’s why we don’t look for preselected images. We let our soul, our Inner Child, or our heart browse and select. Without trying to control the outcome.

Once we’ve gathered images, we play with them. Seeing which ones want to go together. Giving our logical left brain a time-out helps.

I match images by color, not subject. Visual music to me.

Once grouped, we arrange and glue the images onto a firm surface. SoulCollage® recommends 5 X 8-inch matt boards, but that’s your choice. For a deck, it helps if they’re the same size and thickness. Let the images reveal how they want to be arranged. Listening is a huge part of this process.

Once we make our cards, like Tarot, we read them.

After we clear the workspace and shift our energy. Maybe take a break, drink some water or tea. Any ritual that signals to ourselves it’s time to go deep. The way lighting a candle, shifting the light, or ringing a singing bowl does.

Reading is a question-and-answer process.

The first question is who are you? We read one card at a time, gazing at it while we respond. The answer begins I am the one who… and we fill in the rest as if we were our cards–cause we are–speaking back to us.

We also ask Do you have a message for me?

We relax, keeping a light focus on the soul card. We listen inwardly, writing down whatever comes. Meanings may come right away or over time. Sometimes while walking or in the shower, more is revealed.

The message may not make sense. Just sit with it and let the meaning grow inside you. Don’t fight it, play with it.

My cards track the story of my life.

I love doing this, often making three to six cards at a time. I also joined a monthly group, which enriched the experience even more.

Once I had several cards, I would spread them out just to absorb their energy and remind myself of their messages. I noticed they started telling the story of my life. Especially my heart and soul’s inner journey. My evolution! And what a vivid way to track it.

When I gaze back over my cards, I have a timeline of my life starting in 2006.

Every card tells a story.

Some are deeply personal. A naked woman in the fetal position against a grey background dripping red evokes my experiences of being sexually abused.

A woman’s face with a man’s hand clamped over her mouth reminds me of times it wasn’t safe to speak up. Ditto with an image of an octopus hiding in a broken glass.

I have cards that honor people in my life, both personal like my sister, my mom, and my former husband. But also people I never met. Several soul cards honor Frida Khalo, a huge artistic inspiration. I’ve got cards with Michelle and Barack Obama, Alvin Ailey, Morgan Freeman, and Lady Gaga. —

After reflecting on David’s prompt, specific themes popped out, marking my evolution from one phase of my life to the next — a vivid way to track it.

Those themes include addiction, healing through recovery, and my spiritual journey.

There are so many ways to depict addition.

It took being in recovery to be able to make soul cards dealing with it. But once I started, they wanted and needed to be made and heard.

My most evocative one shows a sad-faced woman starting at herself staring back at herself from inside a full bottle. It looks like alcohol, but that’s not my issue. When I read the card, it said, I am the one who’s trapped in addiction with no easy way out. The message it had for me was, there is a way out. It involves deep, hard work. But you can and will do the deep, hard work.

I headed that message.

As I recovered, healing showed up as a theme

Given my history of sex and love addiction and infidelity, it meant a lot to me when I could make a card showing my then-husband as happy. I had a picture of him grinning which I placed on a card and surrounded him with glowing lights.

This was not as much about him, as about healing from my shame at hurting him. If I felt I’d hurt him so bad he could never smile again, I would be stuck in shame for the rest of my life. Making amends with him shifted that energy and I made that card to honor the shift.

After that my cards were brighter and full of light and color.

And Spirit.

My Spiritual Source card shows ripples of energy pattern waves fanning out from a central Hubble image of a vast galaxy. Amazing how I could squeeze the Cosmos into such a small space. We don’t usually read Source cards. We just let them fill us with their Higher Powered energy.

Lately, my cards reflect my main squeeze, writing. I’m playing with ways images and words cross-fertilize each other. Poems inspire cards and cards inspire poems, for instance. I’m looking forward to the more I know will be revealed.

If you’re intrigued, go to soulcollage.com for more information. And check out Seena’s book, SoulCollage Evolving. There’s a whole lot more to it than what fits in one post. Enjoy!

Deep gratitude goes to David Perlmutter and Yana Bostongirl for this deliciously artful prompt!

For more on SoulCollage® and how it can enhance our writing:

Marilyn Flower’s the author of Creative Blogging: Ninja Writers Guide to Character Development and Bucket Listers, Get Your Brave On. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times. Follow her Sacred Foolishness and Stay in touch!