Soul Portraits: Turning Grief Into Creative Resilience

*** A note before you listen: This conversation includes candid reflection on past pain and trauma. *** 

Devorah Brinckerhoff walked away from gallery walls to build something entirely her own: Soul Portraits, art made from the personal materials of a life. In this candid conversation about creative resilience, grief, and vulnerability, she shares how working with letters, photos, and journals became her path to healing and a thriving creative practice that centers her authentic story, not commercial expectations. A conversation for creatives navigating their own departure from "the way things are supposed to be."

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Speaking of Phenomenal is created and produced by Amy Boyle. Podcast artwork by Amanda Eich. "Woman" by Tiffany Villarreal, used with permission. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review and share the podcast, and stay tuned for more inspiring conversations. Support the show with on Patreon.

Transcript

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The Journey to Authenticity

0:00

The first rip just felt like, calling back a part of myself. It, felt like taking charge, taking the reins of my life. It's such a relief, it's like breaking glass. She's a painter. For years, she showed her work in galleries, sold it, was represented, and then walked away from it all. What she's built instead, she calls Soul portraits, pieces made from personal materials of a life, letters, photos, journals, legal documents, the things a person can't put down. But to understand what that means, You'll have to understand what she built them out of./ That's the hardest question, and I have never thought of myself as phenomenal. And yet when I reflect on the path that I've walked, I think what is phenomenal, what sort of gives me chills today, is becoming more and more myself. And I feel that when we do that, that is phenomenal. And it's a challenge, right? Phenomenal doesn't mean easy. It doesn't mean fantastic. It doesn't mean better than. It just means brave. It means that to show up as who we really are authentically is a phenomenal way to live./ My name is Devorah Brinckerhoff, and I am an artist and transformational guide helping people move through the after effects of trauma. I have a trauma background, it was fully repressed, and so it ran my life for the first 30 years. And then artwork and creativity really helped me unfold and find my way back to myself, my true authentic self. So one of the really powerful processes that I stumbled across in my own journey was something that I now call Soul Portraits. And the process invites people to work with the personal materials of their life, letters, photos, journals, recipes, legal documents, screenshots of texts, emails that reflect our lived experience. And it's a way to let those moments, reflect how we became who we are today, so that we can decide what's working for us and we wanna pull forward into who we're stepping into or what isn't serving us and what we're ready to dismantle and let go of. The work really allows you to witness yourself, acknowledge what's happened in your life and have some agency around how you wanna move forward. It's one of the deepest experiences that I've had moving trauma

Creating Soul Portraits

3:03

Our thinking mind is our head, and I want people to move into their body and really move stuck energy without collapsing into the emotions that, that can sometimes be really overwhelming. Creativity acts as that buffer and a guide to our intuition and our higher self, that allows us to really know our own answers. I have very small cohorts where we work together, and we start out learning simple creative art techniques. It's really not about the product. It's about the process and that reconnecting and rebuilding self-trust. People can do that one-on-one with me. They can, purchase a an online course and do it themselves, workshop. they can also commission me to make one for them. It's always incredibly powerful when someone provides ashes of a loved one. The piece becomes a living memorial of the relationship of that person and tells their story really from beginning to end. It, creates a very personal piece of artwork that can be put on an altar. It can be the central piece in a living room. It can also be very small and intimate and just for whomever had commissioned the piece. She left the galleries in 2019. What she left for, that's a longer story. I started doing open studios back in 2015. I was still with galleries, and I probably wouldn't have left the galleries if it hadn't been for open studios. I didn't know I was capable of, of meeting the public in that way. That was so intense over, three-day weekend of really long days. There wasn't time to, really stop, right? And, I, forgot to eat. I was just constantly with people and having these really great conversations. And so, yes, I was physically tired, but I was very energized. So I knew that was something I should follow. And I very spontaneously, just in less than a 24-hour period, without really even thinking about it, I'm like, "I just don't belong in galleries anymore." I left the galleries in 2019. I just walked in and said, "I'm, I'm here to collect all my work, and I love you, and I'm going in a different direction."/ People could just come in, and they could sit down, and they could talk with each other. They could flip through the paintings. We could have conversations. And then, it would just move. And I realized during that time that there was so much to say, that during an art opening at a gallery, you're being introduced to people, you're talking for maybe 10 minutes or less, five minutes,

Leaving the Gallery World

6:00

they have a question about a painting, and then they're on their way. And I get moved around the room. And so My ability to drop in and have the kind of depth that I was experiencing during an open studio versus during a gallery opening, it was just a very different experience. The more I saw that, the more I was like, "This is such a powerful way to, connect with that humanness soul portraits evolved for me out of a time in my life that was really, dark. I got pregnant for the first time, at 32, and I was overjoyed to be pregnant, but very immediately I panicked, and I felt like my world was falling apart, and I didn't know why. And I did not wanna be pregnant, but I... It was like a runaway train, and I really wanted a baby, but I did not wanna be pregnant. So I didn't know what was happening, and there was a lot of confusion. And it began a 10-year sort of unfolding of discovering that I had a sexual abuse history, and all the pieces that had been very difficult in my life up to date fell into place. But because of the nature of sexual abuse, there's a lot of guilt and shame and secrecy that goes along with it, and I did not wanna talk about it. I didn't know how to talk about it. On the one hand, I was relieved to have an answer for the prior 32 years of my life and all the mistakes I made, not as an excuse, but as a reason. So, failed relationships, eating disorders, horrible jobs, like, all of these things that sexual abuse was dictating, but I didn't know it. And so I was very uncomfortable with how I was living. And to have a reason for that was helpful. So then I had a daughter who was wonderful, and I thought everything was fabulous. And it, gets really tricky here because, she started showing signs of sexual abuse, and I shut it down. When she was born, I did not let my husband hold her. I didn't let really anyone hold her. She was in my sight 24/7. When my son came along and he started showing signs of sexual abuse, I was like: "Okay, I gotta get these kids into therapy," and I started to go to therapy. And when it all came out, I received a letter of excommunication from my family because they did not want to accept that I had been sexually abused, and it was too threatening to them. And I also was sued by them for grandparent rights. Now, the irony is, that I never withheld my children from either my parents or my husband's parents. My parents lived across the country, and my husband's parents lived around the block. But I did withhold my children going over to my husband's family because the person who was harming them lived there. And so I said, "If that person is there, the kids can't come over. If he's not there, they can come over." That was it. That was my one and only boundary. But because of the nature of sexual abuse, and I believe that it had happened to, to somebody in my husband's family, and then that just rippled

Unpacking Trauma and Healing

9:50

down, and it was a secret. Like it was, it was absolutely unacknowledged and, they didn't want to deal with it. So when that happened, I was devastated. I went from having this huge, beautiful, extended family to the five of us in a matter of 24 hours. I walked around feeling like somebody had punched me in the stomach and I never caught my breath for years. And, I finally took all of those materials, those legal documents, the letters, lovely letters, right? Letters with so much care, and then letters with so much hate. And I ripped them all up and I glued them down on a canvas, and five hours felt like five minutes. And I reached this ember of strength and this, this fire of love, self-love that was inside of me. And I felt lighter, and this sense of empowerment and the possibility that I was in charge of my own belief system and that I was in charge of how I thought about myself, and that I needed to be my own best friend./ The messages that we get in culture and maybe family is be nice, be kind. And yet when we, disallow the, darker emotions or feel like we have to be happy all the time, we really fracture our wholeness. We need our shadow in order to know the light, We need to know what disempowerment feels like in order to know empowerment. Everything is tethered together, and when we say, "Well, I only wanna be positive," or I, "Or I'm not going to have an ego," like, it's, to me, not only is that totally unrealistic, it, disallows wholeness. And somewhere in the middle of that, she started sitting with other people in their grief, and she noticed something/ The workshops that I do are... vulnerable, people are bringing in their heart. And, I start a workshop. I usually do them in like a pop-up fire station, so it's kind of funky. I go in ahead of time. I might bring in music and Christmas lights just so there's some sparkle. I set up tables with chairs that have space around them so people feel that they have privacy to work on their own piece. Typically, they don't know each other coming in, and we'll start a workshop. I'll read a a poem that I love about meeting yourself and sort of taking yourself off the shelf and sitting down to tea with who you really are underneath all your lived experience. Like when we drop into who we are now, we're the bridge between who we have been and who we're becoming. And so it's really holding all of those pieces of ourselves, but focusing in on the now and knowing that's where your power is. We start a workshop where everyone introduces themself. They do not need to talk about what they've brought or what they're working on, because that's really for each individual person. At the end of a workshop, if they wanna share their story and what happened for them internally during a workshop, we have a closing ceremony where that is welcome but not required. So the in-between time, they work on the materials that they have brought to the workshop. The broad, overview of the things that people collect and bring. Wedding dresses, military uniforms, paperwork. One person, had all these screenshots of their partner having an affair she knew about it, but had never really confronted all of the evidence of what he had been doing behind her back. And it, all unfolded in real time, and she could no longer deny what was going on. And she actually had planned to make her soul portrait about a change of career, but at the last minute, came to her and she followed it, and it was a really powerful piece that she then went home and, like, kicked him out of the house and changed her, whole life based on the soul portrait. I love working with veterans and they all come together contribute a piece of their, experience. They'll, provide a, scrap of paper or one person added their dog tags into a portrait that is a, collection of what it feels like to be in that community where everyone has had their own version of a similar, experience./ I was in San Francisco in April of 2026 for a three-day, art fair. The fair was open 10 AM until 10:30 at night, where hundreds of people came through my room and contributed to a soul portrait over that three-day weekend. I had scraps of paper, or they could pull something out of their wallet or their bag or create something in the moment to collect what I call a community soul portrait, where each person who, participated was, offering me part of their story, was offering the portrait part of their heart and who they were. People would pull out like, a, little tea tag from the tea that they were holding, or they would literally pour coffee on a piece of paper, let it dry, and write over it. They would leave a card from another artist and maybe say a few words about who they are. I had prompts for people that didn't know what to say, like, "What's something that you really love about yourself?" Or, "What's something that you've never told anyone?" I had a box that people could put in anonymous notes or thoughts or feelings, and there was one gentleman who just kept coming back, and he kept looking at it over the weekend. He was working at the fair, and he was really intrigued by what I was doing. And he could see there was a kid that came in who had lost a best friend, and so wrote a little bit about his friend and, you know, RIP and, and wrote the name and then, left, And I got the feedback, like it felt so good to say a name that other people were like, "Why aren't you over this death yet?" And so to have room to allow whatever emotion has come up for you that maybe other people don't wanna hear anymore or accept and have a place, a safe place to put it down. And as that portrait kept getting layers and layers of people leaving a part of themselves, he came back and was like, "I really wanna say something, but I'm scared to do it. I'm scared that you'll hate me. I'm scared that you'll, think I'm horrible and disgusting." And I, just said to him, "Y- whatever you have to say, first of all, you can do it anonymously, and second of all, I have heard everything. And when we hide our deepest shame, when we hide the harm that we have caused others, it, will come out sideways and harm will continue. And I'm inviting you to be as brave as you have ever been and say the thing that you're afraid to say so that I can witness it and you can let it go, that you can know that you're still love underneath whatever it is you feel like you can't forgive yourself for." And he left, right? He didn't do it then. But he came back and he looked at me, he looked me in the eye, and he said, "You promise?" And I said, "I promise." And he spent probably... Makes me teary. He spent the next 15 minutes writing his story about what he felt was so unforgivable and who he had hurt and how he carried it with him and the regret and the weight of it that he felt. And he looked at me again after he finished, and he put it in the anonymous box, and there, there was several other pieces of paper in there. When I read what he wrote, and I read every single thing that people wrote because I wanted to hold it with, love And, with love and compassion and acceptance and offer him what he couldn't give himself I was so... Really, I was so in awe of his courage./ Every conversation, right? Every time when you can sink in and really invite people to be who they are, we just, we live in a world that has so much surface

The Power of Creativity

20:22

connecting, and I hope that after he left that day, he felt lighter./ She's been doing this for years now with people in grief, in recovery, in the middle of things they can't name, and somewhere along the way, she started understanding what she was actually doing/ I always know that because I've caused my own harm, that, we never mean to. We're, in so much pain ourselves, and that when we don't allow for that pain to have a place to come out, it comes out sideways and just causes more harm./ I really had no idea the power of creativity. Creativity, became something so much more than decorative. It became a way to discover the truth of who we are as human beings walking along our path. And I'm here to help guide people how to translate what their creative line or what their soul portrait is telling them about them, because our inner self has all the answers. And to me, creativity is the tool to reach those, answers that are specifically made by us, for us. And I, don't care about skill, we care about process. And so we're moving quickly enough that our mind can't keep up, because our intuition moves so much more quickly than our rational thinking. And so things show up that we don't expect, and that's where the gold is. It's in the mess. It's in the not knowing. We're all creative. We are born creative. So creativity is a broad, term, and we all think of it differently. Creativity and play are really synonymous to me, and I lose track of time and space when I'm in a creative flow. But I had no idea that creativity was actually doing so much more for me than I ever could've imagined. Even if I was drawing and painting as a little kid and loving it, like just having so much fun doing that, the feedback that I got about the work that I did was it wasn't pretty. It was, in fact, quite ugly. It did not win awards, and I never cared, right? Because I was, tapping into something greater than me, and I had no idea. I just liked how I felt./ Because I really believe that we have more similarity than we do differences. We all wanna feel loved. We all wanna feel understood. We all wanna show up as who we really are. We want to be aligned, our inner self with our outer self. And when there is an opportunity to come together and create artwork together and tell a story together, we have a really tangible experience of similarity, of shared possibility. And, we can get to know each other, at a deeper level and start communicating, especially about things... I really love inviting communication that is typically, not allowed, and, to make it safe and to start talking about things, because that's how we move the energy. North Star, how I would love to see soul portraits evolve would be to have, uh, community soul portraits and individual soul portraits come together to tell other people's stories. So to have, like a moving museum show that has soul portraits all about sexual abuse and soul portraits all about betrayal of, in a marriage and soul portraits

Building Community Through Art

24:15

all about, suicide or combat, so that they're organized by theme and that some of the people who created their own soul portrait are there to stand by their soul portrait and have a chance to tell their story if they want to, while we create a community soul portrait at the same time that continues the theme and moves along. Just like I did in San Francisco, who can respond to the work that's there and add a piece of their story to it, so that we're really building a, community and adding layers that pull us all together as human beings, That's how we ultimately step into our power, is by speaking our truth. And if people really feel like they can't speak, like I did not feel like I could speak because I was gonna get into trouble, they can let the artwork speak for them. The soul portrait, the materials honor the past. They represent the past. And when people walk through the process with me, they represent their past. They write, they connect with the materials, and they write about what they think those materials mean right now in the present moment, so that the writing becomes, an anchor for who they are in this moment, and it captures that nowness. And then I invite people to paint over the top as a way to really invite who they're becoming, who they're stepping into, the vision of where they want to be, so they can call their present self into the future with, intention and, agency and power. So that it contains all three, and that we're always the bridge, and we're always walking towards our, higher self. Before I let you go, I wanna go back to something you said right at the start. The phenomenal doesn't mean easy or better than, it just means brave. To show up as who we really are authentically. You did that today. That ember of strength, that fire of love you found in the wreckage of your own family. You've been handing pieces of it to strangers ever since Thank you for being brave enough to let us watch you do it We need our shadow in order to know the light, and we need to know what it feels like... everything is tethered together. Thank you, Devorah, for your dedication to guiding others with such care. You are, without a doubt, phenomenal. I'm so glad you're here. If you haven't already, a like, a follow, or a five-star review helps others find our community, and it means the world to me. Until next time, I'm Amy Boyle, and this is the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast.