Dolls & Art Therapy

I have been making dolls with clients for a number of years. What I started to notice that dolls symbolize several things for clients; which all are related to a need to be nurtured. People who have not had nurturing as a client, or were abandoned or removed from their home; tend to gravitate toward creating dolls as a way to care for themselves. The process of the creation of a doll is taking great care in sewing fabric together to form a doll; design the clothing, hair, facial features; each doll takes on its unique own life and identity. Dolls take us back to a time when we were innocent and believed in the "life" in our dolls. We could "play dolls" for hours and imagine any possible situation that our dolls could be in. We would roleplay out problems, challenges and ideas in a safe manner.