Dolls are ancient healers.

This is the story of Lily, a 17-year-old teenager who came to see me because her mom thought she needed to create a new story for herself. Lily was recovering from a tumultuous dive into addiction. She had been an in-patient at a local recovery centre for six weeks, where she had learnt a lot about the reasons for her addiction. This knowledge was liberating, but she needed to re-story herself. The addiction narrative was no longer a fit.

As Lily entered my studio, she looked vulnerable, yet expressed her curiosity about narrative arts therapy, hoping it would help her to find steady ground, and help her heal the profound sense of sadness and dislocation she felt.

After our introductory session, I suggested to Lily that she tried doll-making as a way into expressing her new self. It was an invitation to craft tangible representations of herself during her healing journey. She tentatively embraced the idea.

In the early sessions, Lily's fingers hesitated over the clay I offered her. The raw material mirrored the malleability of her own emerging post-addiction narrative, waiting for her to shape it and direct its form.

The first doll Lily created bore the scars of addiction – fragments of brokenness held together by delicate threads of hope in the form of colourful string she wove around her small , disjointed clay figure. The act of shaping the clay became a silent dialogue with the fragmentation she herself had experienced. The making of the dolls was both cathartic and challenging, much like a mirror reflecting her journey to recover herself. She documented the different dolls on her phone.

As Lily progressed, she experimented with colours and textures. Her dolls evolved, each telling a chapter of her recovery story. Strong girl, angry girl, compassionate girl…she felt all of those at once. She added details to her dolls, with fabric, beads, colour paint and marks that she felt expressed a truthful part of Lily.

One particular doll held profound personal significance to her. Lily crafted her with a small pair of clay hands reaching skyward. She explained it as a visual metaphor for her aspiration to break free from the memories of addiction. She craved a new self-story. The hands, imperfect and beautifully flawed, represented the journey toward a new sense of herself. It was a declaration that recovery was not a straight path, but a series of steps, each bringing her closer to wholeness.

The doll-making sessions extended beyond the dolls. I introduced journaling exercises, encouraging Lily to articulate her thoughts and feelings. The written narratives flowed seamlessly alongside the dolls she had made, forming a cohesive story of Lily's recovery journey. Words became bridges, connecting the visual expressions to the depths of her emotions.

Through the amalgamation of clay, textiles and storytelling, Lily found her new voice. The dolls became silent companions, witnesses to her triumphs and setbacks. In their presence, she continued to confront the shadows of addiction creatively.

As weeks turned into months, Lily's dolls became emissaries of hope. They adorned the studio shelves, a testament to the transformative power of the arts. In a culminating session, Lily posed with her creations – a visual timeline of hope. We took a photo for her journal.

I acknowledged the profound metamorphosis in her story as told though the dolls, and remarked, "Your dolls tell a story of struggle and rebirth, of you reclaiming your new narrative." She loved that thought and wrote it in her journal.

When Lily completed her course, she took her dolls home. I asked her to consider the dolls as a silent testimony to the transformative journey of a teenager who, through the arts and a healthy dose of self-compassion, had nurtured her inner being and found her way back to herself during our sessions.

My friends, I am still making dolls!

With love

Marlene

P.S. Did you know that doll making is an ancient healing technology in cultures across the globe? Russian dolls, for example, also known as Matryoshka dolls, have a rich history rooted in Russian folk art. Inspired by Japanese nesting dolls, it is a set of wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, symbolizing the concept of nested generations and the continuity of life, embracing the maternal and nurturing aspect of our being.