Happy New Year! Here is a casual conversation about art and The Healing Doll Way class.  If you are asked password is HDWay25

I will be talking about The Healing Doll Way on Zoom 

Sunday, December 29, 2025 at 1:00 pm central time
​2:00 pm Eastern time
Hope you'll join me

Here's the link
Topic: 2025 Healing Doll Way Discussion
Time: Dec 29, 2024 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

It will be recorded.



Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6857879391?pwd=9QwUVbDKPwQTltbxcas0l4ShpKKbg2.1&omn=83370504672

Meeting ID: 685 787 9391
Passcode: Dolls

I am excited to announce the 2025 The Healing Way Classes featuring some updates and additions!

The Healing Doll Way 2025
This will be a seven-month journey, running from January 12 through July 31, with a break in August. The class includes weekly support in the form of Open Studios. Throughout the year, there may be additional offerings to support this wonderful community as we move through 2025.  I require that you fill out a Pre-class Interview before you register, even if you have taken the class before. Details here.

How to Make Your Own Healing Dolls is a Foundational Self Study class (recordings) required before The Healing Doll Way if you haven't made art dolls before. In this class series, you'll acquire a diverse set of skills and techniques that you can draw upon as you delve deeper into the inner work of making art dolls in The Healing Doll Way. The focus is on mastering techniques and understanding the language of healing art dolls, enhancing your creative journey.  You can sign up for the How to Make class and The Healing Doll Way at the same time. If you do, the fee for the How to Make ($195) is deducted from the Healing Doll Way. Click here for details.

Please do not hesitate to email me is you are serious about doing the work and the cost is a challenge.

September 1st, I will offer a four-month-long class called Healing Fields: Story Mapping. This class is a creative process that incorporates the dolls and art you have created in previous sessions. Your dolls will become the characters who play and interact within your Story Map.
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Prerequisite:
To enroll Healing Fields, you must have completed The Healing Doll Way and created at least one doll for each archetype covered in that class.

More details to come. Email if you are interested and I will put you on the list. [email protected]

​​It has been 36 years since I began my journey with dollmaking and healing. I started this work while working as a graphic artist, at the age of 40, married with two small children. On January 2nd, I will turn 76, and my commitment to this work has only deepened over the years. Here’s a quick review.

In 1989, I created a set of feeling dolls/puppets called Numbfull and The Fulls (now known as Kobe Feeling Dolls). For many years, I manufactured and sold these characters to social workers and therapists. My intention was for these dolls to represent feelings that lived inside the body, offering a way to externalize and explore emotions—“Let’s take the feeling out of our body and look at it, touch it, think about it.”

In 2006, I launched an online class called the Healing Doll Project, teaching the process through Yahoo Groups. The first class had 10 students, and I later renamed it Medicine Dolls. I started a blog in 2008 to share my work (https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/797653385511920810?pli=1) and continued teaching both online and in-person at retreats and creativity centers.

During the 1990s, I began working in local high school libraries, managing, and supervising computer centers. It was the perfect environment for researching my idea of drafting a book about dollmaking and healing. By 1995, I decided to pursue a degree in psychology. I began with an associate’s degree at a local community college and completed my bachelor’s degree in 2001 at the age of 50.
Around the age of 54, during menopause, I began experiencing panic attacks at the high school. These episodes kept me from working for a time, but they also became an opportunity to view my experiences through the lens of my work. I sought meaning in this “healing crisis” and found that the dolls I created during that time deepened my understanding of their transformative power. These dolls became metaphors for healing, containers for emotions, and keepers of powerful, transformative stories. I continued working in computer labs until 2013, when my life fully opened up to this work.

In 2000, I wrote a college research paper that became the foundation for my healing doll curriculum and eventually my book. My professor wrote on the paper, “This will be a book someday.” Initially, I called the book The Transformative Power of Healing Dolls, but the name The Healing Doll Way came to me while driving. In 2018, I published the book, which went on to win two Indie Book Awards and is now in its second edition.

Over the years, the healing doll process and classes evolved through many iterations. More than 1,000 women, both in person and online, participated in creating art dolls, contributing their stories and photos to the Healing Doll Way process. The classes incorporated the book as a guide and workbook, along with ZOOM video conferences, coaching calls, finely tuned visualizations, intuitive self-connecting art-making activities, and ever-evolving practices in self-discovery, awareness, intuition, expressive art healing, and transformation.

The Healing Doll Way class became a year-long online program based on the principles in the book, The Healing Doll Way: A Guided Process Creating Art Dolls for Self-Discovery, Awareness & Transformation. It was an intuitive and creative process in which I served as a guide, coach, and mentor. Using the book as a foundation, the class offered a structured yet transformational path. Spanning 48 weeks, it included education, inspiration, coaching, group engagement, art, and dollmaking, supporting participants as they moved through the stages of Discovery, Self-Awareness, and Transformation.

Why Make Healing Dolls?
Dollmaking allows you to change how you see yourself. You can communicate with yourself through a doll you’ve made. By using the imagery of dollmaking—“thoughts and feelings in concrete visual form”—you can focus your energy on evolving new ways of being and doing. These dolls become symbols of emotions, sensations, struggles, or celebrations. A self-made doll honors something sacred, either within or outside yourself.
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Dollmaking differs from any other art form. It allows you to hold a part of yourself in your hands in the form of a three-dimensional figurative piece of art. You will see yourself in the doll; she will represent an aspect of the human condition and your personal stories. The doll you create will bear witness to your life, embody your worth, and reflect your feelings and transformative journey.
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I am excited to announce the next round of Healing Way Classes in 2025, featuring some updates and additions!
The Healing Doll Way 2025This will now be a seven-month journey, running from January 12 through July 31, with a break in August. Throughout the year, there may be additional offerings to support this wonderful community as we move through 2025.

Starting in September, I will offer a four-month-long class called Healing Fields Story Mapping. This class is a creative process that incorporates the dolls and art you have created in previous sessions. Your dolls will become the characters who play and interact within your Story Map.
​
Prerequisite:
To enroll, you must have completed The Healing Doll Way and created at least one doll for each archetype covered in that class.

More details to come. Email if you are interested and I will put you on the list [email protected]

As of July 1, I have completed my six-month sabbatical, which began on January 1, 2024. During the months of July and August, I have been preparing to teach my “How to Make Your Own Healing Dolls” classes. This preparation is intentional. I have observed that students who enroll in the yearlong Healing Doll Way process without prior knowledge, practice, and skills in crafting art dolls often become frustrated and fail to complete their dolls. Additionally, if they are unfamiliar with the specialized language of healing dolls used in the class, they face challenges and obstacles. Therefore, the How to Make Your Own Healing Dolls class is designed to equip newcomers with the necessary skills and understanding.

Click below for details. Email me with questions [email protected]
How to Make Own Healing Dolls class starts Sunday, September 1st.

In the Healing Doll Way process, each art and healing doll embodies a unique energy, guiding the maker through a journey of self-discovery, awareness and transformation. As each doll takes shape, it becomes a container of the maker’s energy and a talisman symbolizing a healing intention. The process evolves, intensifies, and unfolds in various ways as the maker continues creating dolls throughout their journey.
 
I plan to offer The Healing Doll Way process in 2025. If you are interested, I recommend taking the How to Make Your Own Healing Dolls class first. You must have a copy of my book, The Healing Doll Way, which you should read and engage with by completing some, if not all, of the Creative Actions. If you don't have a copy you can purchase from me.
 
To be added to the waiting list for the 2025 Healing Doll Way, please email me at [email protected]. If you have previously expressed interest and sent your Pre-class Interview form, please email me again to confirm your continued interest.

STUDENTS COMMENTS
Something I learned about myself:
I can unfreeze the creative part of myself even when there are few signs of life (thank you, thank you, thank you!), but also that it is critical to acknowledge the importance of creativity and the creative healing potential in my life and to learn how to honor that part of me, which is such a big part of me.
Eileen

I would like to say that this was a wonderful experience. The people involved were so open to sharing. It was great to not feel all alone in the world, even though many experiences were different from mine. The connection, I think, may have been greater for those who knew each other prior to this, but nonetheless a connection was made for me as well. Barb was a great moderator and supporter throughout the process, and I for one am very glad she did this project.

The part I like best: Making the dolls and reading other's posts. Well, to be truthful, I liked the whole project. It had a flow, a certain order, that one can't BE without the other. Like life.