Part of the Healing Process

I have finished From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak Out About Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues and while I do not plan to be an art educator, I feel like their stories are applicable to anyone who finds themselves in a teaching role.

I posted a quote a few entries back from the anthology, but I would like to add some more.

This is from Ed Check's essay "The Pleasures of Adolescence":

"What I lost for so many years because of public humiliation and cultural and self imposed homophobia and misogyny, I am slowly recapturing through my art and writing. I use memory and imagination to explore the simultaneous pains and pleasures of growing up gay in a straight world" (Check, 155).

I found this to be a really encouraging thought. In one of the previous essays, Ed discussed his school and college experience as a gay man and it's hard to read at times. So to hear him say that he is not bitter or angry about his past, but rejoices in it is amazing. I liked that he was "recapturing" his past and experiences with his writing and art, because that sounds empowering. I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between empowerment and powerful. I feel like our society tends to use "powerful" more often than empowerment, but I think there should be a distinction.
To me, empowerment is good. It is working with yourself or others to realize and teach rights to happiness, life, love, and freedom. To me, being powerful is the opposite. Powerful is imposing on someone's right to love, happiness, life, and freedom.
Art empowers Ed. Through art, he empowers himself.