One of Them Is Not Like the Others

This afternoon at the Callanish cancer retreat, I had a one-on-one session with the creative arts clinical counsellor. She began by saying we could take the meeting in different directions, depending on what I preferred.

I asked if she could help me express my feelings instead of my thoughts. I told her I’m an analytical overthinker — as my psychedelic therapist once said, “feel more and think less.” During that session, I even had to increase the psilocybin dose just to let go, because I’m too cerebral.

She spent the next half hour reassuring me that it’s better to stay true to myself than to force emotions or imitate the way others express theirs.

I apologized for turning an art therapy session into counselling and asked if I could still create something. She smiled and said, “Of course — you can come anytime the room is open and work on it.” I chose yarn as my medium, though I admitted I didn’t know how to knit. She suggested using transparent glue to attach the threads to paper.

My piece, shown below, represents the eight other group members as straight, coloured threads. My own thread is white and set diagonally — different, but “cut from the same cloth.”

As the Sesame Street song says: “We all sing the same song.”
She also chuckled at my attempts at humor, so I figured we were on the same page.