Journal

It's only a couple of days before school will start again. I've been researching a lot about my topic, but I'm actually still between two topics. I still have to choose which topic I really want to do. The first topic is the art therapy for women with breast cancer and the other one is creating a restaurant concept to help my family business. I actually really want to do the art therapy one but I'm afraid my parents won't let me go deep into people's lives especially those with psychological problems like those women who are suffering breast cancer. I'm not interested in creating the restaurant concept. I talked to my mom about what's best for me to do and she said I should create a novel/story book. With full illustrations, since she saw a book I made for Bahasa Indonesia class last year and she was impressed by both my story and my illustration. I personally don't want to do that because it doesn't excite me and I'm scared I won't give my best when I get bored with the project. My friends told me I should do a project that has something to do with food/cooking. They suggested I make a recipe book. I'm not very interested in that though, since I'll have to cook all year and I've been cooking for quite sometime so I'm pretty sure it'll bore me.

I’ve done a lot of research on the art therapy topic. I know two communities of women suffering from breast cancer and I have the contact information of one of them. I know how the art therapy will work on these women but first I have to get to know them and know how they’re coping with this. To be honest, I’m still very scared to email/call the person because the moment I contact them meaning, I’m starting this project for real. But I’m still unsure whether I will do this project. During my research I found out that art therapy doesn’t only work for women suffering from breast cancer. It can also help autistic people, sexually abused victims, the mentally ill, PTSD sufferer, and all other types of cancer.

From my research I can see that having to go through breast cancer is something very devastating for women. We will lose confidence, will start to fear pain and dying, and feel lonely or isolated. Those are only three things out of many that will happen to a woman when diagnosed with breast cancer, psychologically. They might also experience fears of economic changes, social changes, and dependence. Economic changes have a big possibility of happening due to all the therapies and medication that will cost so much. The people these women socialize with might also need to change because if they keep on being with the healthy women who isn’t aware of their friend’s cancer, it might damage the sufferer’s emotional functioning even more. Art therapy had been proven successful to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, improve self-esteem, and, increase communication. It has only been done in other countries except Indonesia though. Maybe it has been applied here but the community that I’m planning to work with has not heard of it. In conclusion, these women really needs help and as of right now I am very interested in doing this for my personal project. At least my project will be beneficial even if only to one-five people. I don’t think creating a restaurant concept will be beneficial to anybody else but my family and me.

Information taken from this website: http://www.arttherapyblog.com/cancer/art-therapy-helps-breast-cancer-patients/