That may be one way to sum up the effects of artist Luna Jaffe’s visual journaling classes. Visual journaling is a process Jaffe, a Multnomah resident, developed during an emotionally stormy time in her life when, as a newly divorced 38-year-old woman, she found she wanted to have a baby.

Now she is writing a book, Conceiving a Life, which chronicles the tumultuous process of trying to get pregnant in words, photographs and images from her daily visual journal.

Jaffe began her career as a self-taught fiber artist. For 12 years she created hand painted silk and wool garments that sold for up to $2000 from San Francisco and Madison Avenue galleries.

But Jaffe had other interests as well, and returned to school to earn a Master’s degree in psychology. She joined a psychotherapeutic practice for two years, but soon realized it wasn’t a good match for, "an artistic extrovert," Jaffe says.

A painful divorce forced her to make wholesale changes in her life and her art. "I went from a 3300 square-foot house to a 400 square-foot studio apartment," Jaffe says. "I needed it that small. I needed nothing to do, no yard to take care of."

At the same time she went from painting on large canvases or yards of fabric to working on four by six-inch cards. "I needed to get really small in my art," she says. "There was so much going on emotionally that I needed it to be contained."

From another Portland artist, Susan Banyas, Jaffe learned to make "image cards." Banyas taught a class called "Soul Stories," in which students shared stories they had written and then the group created cards with singular images they had gleaned from the stories. "She taught us to look for the one little thing that really stood out," Says Jaffe. "Was it the sleet? The red shoe? The diamond wristwatch? The tears and sadness? Take that one thing and draw it. The writer ended up with 20 or 30 cards reflecting their story," she says. Receiving the cards was, "an amazing feeling of being seen."

With her life and emotions in disarray, Jaffe decided she needed to make image cards for herself. "I needed to see myself and reflect what was going on," Jaffe recalls. So every night she gave herself ten minutes and a four-by-six card.

"For me the challenge was getting started and being regular about it," Jaffe says, "but it was really hard to tell myself, ‘gee, you just don’t have 10 minutes today.’" Jaffe followed the visual journaling practice for the year she was trying to conceive a child – each night recording a quintessential image from the day in paint, drawing media or collage. The process allowed her to see her emotions and make connections that she might have otherwise missed.

Her son was born three years ago, when she was 40 years old, and while the chaos of a new baby pulled her away from making daily cards, she has since returned to visual journaling on a regular basis.

Teaching visual journaling has provided Jaffe a way to combine her interests in art and psychology. "I wanted to teach creative process work but have the foundation to know how to handle deeper emotional issues."

"Thinking visually means you’re going to find a different level of understanding. It’s stunning what happens to people when they trust themselves enough to just let it happen," she says.

"The thing I love about visual journaling is that it requires no previous art experience," she says. "It’s about coming from a place of curiosity more than anything. It’s not going to work for someone who doesn’t want to know something about who they are." Jaffe introduces her students to various art media and techniques in the class.

Jaffe also emphasizes that it is important to commit to the journaling process even when "you don’t feel like it," she says. "If you only use it when you feel like it, you only see the parts of yourself that are depressed or happy – which ever one it is that you tend to be comfortable expressing. You’re only getting one slice."

A lot of Jaffe’s students already keep a written journal, but the visual journal elicits different ideas. "There’s so much you can learn about yourself by seeing what you choose in terms of colors or shapes or forms," says Jaffe. The unconscious is always there. The unconscious has more hands than we do."

This article first appeared in Southwest Connection, September 2002.