Francesca Cerami

As a child I loved to draw, get my hands dirty, invent stories, play with the waves, with the stones, bury myself in the sand and look for faces in the bark of the trees. I was fascinated by the patient activity of the beetle: I remember looking at it with interest and admiration, for its ability to “turn poop into gold,” as an expert alchemist does. I loved all the creative activities that kept me anchored to my safe place, to that inner space, the “house” where to Be, happy.

As I grew up, my need to express myself with Art also grew.

I had in my mind a world where every woman,  child,  man, is free to paint the life he/she wants, with the colours of the Soul.

I followed signs that occasionally pushed me indifferent directions, connected with a red thread. After the Academy of Fine Arts I completed a Master in International Cooperation. While working on a project in Namibia, I felt the call of Art, loud and clear: I began to propose creative and expressive activities to the children. We created wonderful stories and characters: a containers of Emotions, projections, fears. Children: an amazing love.

While working on social inclusion projects, I became an Art Therapist (four-year postgraduate training), and started a personal path with a Jungian approach: I needed help and I have found it in the expressive psychotherapy; my breathing. Meanwhile, I continued to work as a therapist with fragile children and adolescents, adults with psychosocial disabilities, women asylum seekers and their children, with hospitalized children and adults and in Social Art projects.

Art, images, creativity, sensations, stories that emerged, clouds that unravelled, dragons, whales, storm skies, skies and stars, were the experiences that were part of both the analysis and my artistic work, always closely related.

The sensations in the body were generating confusion and fear for losing myself, for not feeling my personal borders.

Through the body I was experiencing the world: I cultivated this sensibility through physical expression, theatre, yoga, meditation and swimming. I completed the Yoga and Thai Massage Therapist training.

I understood that these practices could go together with ArtTherapy: an integration that generates processes of resilience. I know it because I felt it in my skin, in my bones and in my soul. Because when traumas manifest in the body, the sufferings become visible.

 Now I can continue to grow and accompany “the Other” to transform the shadow into light, with presence, care and perseverance, just as the beetle did.