Participant Artist Stories

Gary Nelson

I am a singer, songwriter, and poet. I haven’t been able to access that for a long time due to health recovery issues. Due to a spinal surgery, I had to re-learn how to walk and get off my medication. And you guys came at the right time. I wanted to sing again, and there was Path with Art. 

I had my counselor at Seattle Housing Authority sign me up for a class, the Sound and Song class with Stewart Zobel, which was a collaborative songwriting class. The experience was wonderful. It was totally different collaborating with so many people. 

Going through the pandemic and isolation, the joy of just being able to let it out - to belt it out in community was good for my overall well-being, my mental status. Everyone was there just to express themselves and to be themselves. What we accomplished together, not just made me proud, but want more of it in my life. Having a community and creative outlet for me is spiritually uplifting. 

Lynn Armede DeBeal

Multi-disciplinary artist, Lynn Armede DeBeal had always embraced life. Her career started as a specialized glass welder in the semiconductor industry, continued on as an adolescent substance abuse counselor, and ended in finance. Overcoming abuse as a child, Lynn A lived a full, productive life on into adulthood. At the age of 5, Lynn A started to play the violin. Her mom had promised her that she would get her a violin if she mastered the piano. Picking up a guitar at 16, music was a big part of Lynn A’s personal identity. It fed her soul. Having experienced physical abuse at the hands of family members when she was a child and having seen domestic violence as a teen, Lynn A’s music and art provided the opportunity to heal and survive.

Her career took her to many places, including speaking against violence against women at University of California, Berkeley. However, all of that was stopped short when Lynn A, exposed to asbestos and quartz dust years earlier as a glass welder, was diagnosed with two debilitating lung diseases. While she survived the open lung surgery, she was left with having to be on a supplemental oxygen tank, which she would have to use every hour of every day for the rest of her life. After surgery, Lynn A’s landlord evicted her because he thought it was too dangerous to have an oxygen tank in the house. During this incredibly unstable period during which she lived with lung disease and the loss of lung capacity, the loss of her job, the loss of a place to live, and having gone through her savings, Lynn A relocated from Seattle to California to assist her mom.

Lynn A’s recovery from surgery was difficult and the chances of her survival became unclear. Her family, believing that she was going to die, took everything - clearing out her storage, taking her antiques, and even her work clothing. This betrayal led to a mental breakdown followed by severe depression. As Lynn A describes it, “I cried for three years.” In a wheelchair, permanently on oxygen, and diagnosed with severe depression, Lynn A spent several years rarely leaving her apartment. Until her PTSD counselor at Harborview and the Arts Counselor at Providence Elder Care suggested Path with Art.

Lynn A’s first class at Path with Art, titled Red Lineage and taught by Natasha Marin, was an experience that woke her up from her pain. “I began to meet people and be part of something joyful.” This last winter, Lynn A performed with other Path with Art students as well as members of the Seattle Symphony on the stage at Benaroya Hall. “It was profound - a complete catharsis. For years, after losing my 30-year music career, I wasn’t even able to listen to the radio - it just reminded me of my loss. But Path with Art gave me back my music. Path with art gave me back confidence. As a 6-foot-tall African/Native American woman, I was used to being a presence. Then I became invisible, reduced to a broken-down woman in a wheelchair on oxygen. Path with Art has not just given me back my creativity and hope for the future, but myself. That’s why I put a Path with Art donate button on my Facebook page. You have given me back my life.”  

Tyler Marcil

Tyler Marcil grew up in a town nestled between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The oldest of five siblings in a working-class family, they lived within a colorful community of church-going gossips and neighborly get-togethers.

Tyler knew he was different from the age of 6, when he developed a crush on a married man in his community and shamelessly carried out flirtatious prank phone calls. In this same year, he was accosted – classmates violently acted out their dominance and anger over his differences, especially his preference for feminine playthings and the cadence of his speech.

He grew up picking out outfits for his mother to wear to work, and doing her hair and makeup. He moved to LA, where he danced ballet, jazz, and hip-hop. He worked as a hair stylist and makeup artist, and he dreamed of becoming an actor, but he gave up that dream in the 1990s when he was diagnosed with HIV.

Tyler didn’t start writing until much later, when an idea for an elaborate story came to him – he wrote this story on and off for years with a dear friend, but after their falling out, he became deeply depressed. He sought help at Seattle Counseling Services, and his therapist recommended Path with Art. He soon began attending Teaching Artist Scott Driscoll’s writing class. At first, he had terrible writer’s block – he couldn’t respond to the prompt, got stressed out, and doubted himself and his abilities. He emailed Scott after the first writing session, saying he didn’t want to take up space in the class if he couldn’t write anything. But Scott reassured Tyler, encouraging him to listen to his own voice, to hear the power and beauty of his own words, and to continue. From that day forward, he was an hour early every Wednesday for class.

“This must be what God was doing – all these things that happened to me have happened to a lot of other people. And some other people can’t deal with it, they take their own lives, they don’t know how to seek help. But I deal with it. If I didn’t, then no one would get to read my stories… I hope my stories can help other people.” 

Tyler had all these stories stored up inside of him around his trauma – about his physical and sexual abuse, becoming infected and living with HIV, living in poverty, and walking through life facing both overt and subtle acts of racism, even in the most ‘progressive’ places.When speaking to family members now, they ask if he’s moved past the things that have happened to him, if he’s gotten over his depression. He says the question should really be, “Are you still consumed by this?”  Tyler’s answer is both yes and no. He still has his bad days, but things are becoming less consuming than they used to be.

Brenda

Brenda started playing piano at age three, and music and storytelling have been her companions ever since. She became a musician and performer, and wanted to help people through music therapy, but her aspirations were set aside when she began grappling with her mental health and fell into illness, unemployment, and homelessness. In a bout of paranoia, she left her home, left everything she knew, and was living on the street. She was hospitalized. She managed to get back into an apartment, but recovery soon became her career.

“It wasn’t until I lost my flute on the street that I realized how sick I was. It was the most precious item in my life. I was out of touch with my family. I felt like I had lost everything. That’s when I started to grasp the reality of my own illness.”

In her recovery, Brenda has worked to overcome both the stigma and the negativity that accompany mental illness. What helped her the most was her desire to reach out – to get outside of herself and connect to others – which led to her creation of Peering Forward, a quarterly publication she now writes and edits through Harborview Mental Health and Addictions Clinic for her peers in recovery from mental illness.

Being in community with others continues to be an essential part of her recovery. As a participant in Path with Art’s Collaborative Songwriting class, Brenda regained her passion for playing the flute. She and her classmates worked together on the song “Mosaic Inside Me,” which they performed last month at Spring Voices. She didn’t know her classmates well, but felt profoundly connected to them through the music. She knew they all had things in common, and didn’t feel afraid to hide her mental health issues.