Healing is a Form of Creation

Sheila L. James is the mother of two sons — one born to her, one who arrived when he was six and was, from the first day, the best part of the package. She never needed to be his only mother to be his mother. She is also the grandmother of her oldest grandson. All three of them are gone. She will tell you she is still their mother and still his grandmother, and that this has not changed and never will. Everything she has written since begins there. She went looking for something that would help, and found shelves full of books about the stages of grief — charts, timelines, phases to move through — and almost nothing that simply sat down beside her and asked how she was doing today. So she wrote it. In the years since, she has learned what the books do not tell you. That grief empties a room. That people mean well and then go quiet. That the world expects you back at your desk long before you are back in your body. And that healing is a form of creation — it is made, not waited for, and it arrives one page at a time. The Art of Healing Collection is five journals for women in the middle of it. It is her attempt to hand another woman what no one could hand her. By day, Sheila trains the adults who work with young people. She has learned that no one shows up fully for a child while quietly falling apart alone. She lives in coastal South Carolina with her family, where she writes, scrapbooks, and walks the beach most mornings.