Robin’s Path to Recovery

My Path, My Recovery
Robin M. Gilliam
Mixed media

Artist Robin Gilliam (L) and Create for Recovery coordinator Kate Joyce

On February 6, 2017, Robin celebrated 26 years in recovery. Robin is from Maryland where she spent most of her life, except for a couple years in New York City where her addiction almost killed her.

In 1986, Robin returned home to Maryland after almost dying from a crack cocaine overdose, dropping out of an Art Therapy Masters program at NYU, and surviving a first marriage strangled with verbal and emotional violence that ended in rape. While she never touched crack cocaine again, she did continue to smoke pot to escape from the guilt, shame, and anger that gripped her.

In 1991, after being sick and tired of being sick and tired, she walked into 12 step rooms. In the rooms, she not only learned how to use the 12 steps to navigate her life and manage her addiction, she was also reunited with creating art that helped her to heal.

In 2014 she published her first novel, Gift of Desperation, which is inspired by over 20 years of her and her second husband’s recovery and is woven around her collection of artwork. In 2015 Robin broke her own anonymity and launched Recovery Art Studio to tell her story to inspire and teach others how to use the healing power of art and the spiritual principles of the 12 steps to build strong recovery.

She believes that recovery is more than just not using. Strong recovery is about learning to manage our disease of addiction/alcoholism by recognizing personal triggers. It’s about healing from past traumas and discovering and stepping into our dreams to use our God-given talents to help and serve others. Robin’s dream of becoming an art therapist looks different today. Instead, as the founder and owner of Recovery Art Studio, she is able to share her recovery through her art, blogging, and workshops to inspire and help others learn to use the healing power of art to build strong recovery.

Creating is a way for Robin to express feelings that would otherwise get bottled up inside. In My Path, My Recovery, she explores how life and recovery are always a journey. She began with a road map as the first layer, which represents her journey. She also focused on nesting and finding and making a home. There are sheets of music mixed in—she played instruments when she was younger, and her dad loves to play, so this recalls good memories. There are pictures of crooked paths and gates, and antique lace, that represent the twists and turns of life and the choices we must make. She finds the color peach to be very calming. But she also used red and scattered it around the piece to remind her that anger, which is always nearby for trauma survivors, is no longer needed as a normal reaction to triggers. 

Today, Robin is dealing not only with managing her disease of addiction, but also becoming a caretaker after just learning that her husband has head/neck cancer and has an intensive radiation treatment plan ahead. With this new journey she knows that she needs to continue to create for strong recovery.

Robin M. Gilliam

www.recoveryartstudio.com