The Feeling Fish

This week in my Art of Friendship virtual class, I guided the kids through an exercise where they imagined an aquarium inside their bellies. Inside the aquarium were fish swimming around, and each fish represented a feeling. Some of the feeling fish belonged to them, and some belonged to other people. When they discovered a feeling fish that wasn’t theirs, they could gently scoop it out and return it to the person it belonged to.

We first explored this through a guided meditation, and then the kids expressed their aquariums and feeling fish through drawing.

One student’s drawing truly blew me away.

He is 10 years old, homeschooled, and doesn’t have a lot of social exposure. He is incredibly special — deeply kind, thoughtful, and often reserved during the sharing portions of class. But he is always genuine, and he has surprised me many times with his unique depth and humor.

What I wasn’t expecting was the emotional rawness and complexity that emerged in his drawing.

He is clearly grappling with some very big feelings, and he expressed them with such freedom, honesty, and dynamism that it felt beyond his years. The artistic skill itself was also strikingly advanced, and it became clear to me that art could truly shape the course of this child’s life.

The page is where he feels safe enough to express what is real. It’s where his inner world becomes visible.

Over my many years of making art with children, I’ve found that every child possesses an innate creativity. But then there are some children who need art — children with such rich and expansive inner worlds that creativity becomes more than an activity. It becomes a language. A way to process emotions, experiences, confusion, imagination, and truth when words alone cannot hold it all.

Supporting a child in recognizing that they have a gift — and helping them understand that creativity can be a place where they process, heal, grow, shine, and build confidence — is one of the greatest honors of my life.

Art saves lives.

And getting to witness and nurture a child’s creative expression is one of the most magical and rewarding experiences I know.