What Color Heals Grief?

Ever connect colors to feelings? If you’re a regular reader on my blog, you’ll know that yes, color and feelings go hand in hand. What about getting really specific with feelings such as grief? Does grief have color? If so, what does it look like?

I recently designed a deck of cards called Color Cures Oracle Cards: Healing With Color, and they do just that - heal by using color. These cards are designed to help you self heal by using color sequences to heal emotions. What’s unique about this deck is that on the front is an emotion and on the back, a color sequence to help heal it.

I thought long and hard about how I was going to implement this card both front and back. The front design came with ease as I could capture the feeling of grief with these colors, shapes, and composition.

Here I have dark, dreary colors with trees that once grew life, but now its roots are withered and lifeless. Sharp edges and shadows of days gone by are in the background.

There is an indigo blue that holds a glimmer of light, but it’s still way out of reach. If you look closely, on one of the trees on the right, there is an Angel perched on top of the tree. This symbolizes those who have passed on, both our family, friends, and even our pets.

If you note the colors, you’ll see that they are dark and drab. Although separately, these colors are nice, together, they look off and a bit depressing.

The trees have stopped growing and show their sharp edges where they’ve been cut. On the light healing side of this, no matter how much you cut a tree down, if you leave the trunk, it will always grow back. This is hope.

The background color of black is heavy and weighs us down, but we have the choice to push that color off and be uplifted.

Even the grass it’s still barely green, but there is still living there. Like life itself, if not taken care of, it will wither but once given TLC, it grows back.

Here I designed the back of the GRIEF card. By looking at the colors, it’s uplifting and beautiful, and this alone should feel lighter.

The roses symbolize love, and even the pink represents the heart. It takes time for the heart to heal but by focusing on these shades of pink, believe it or not, and you will feel the difference over time.

There is no timeframe to heal from grief, but there are ways to help get through it. Like everything I write in this blog, I am a strong believer that color holds way more power than we realize.

Try this; look at the GRIEF card and all its colors. How do you feel? Write it down. Now look at the backside of the card and note how you feel when you look at these roses. There should be a difference in how you feel even if it’s subtle.

When it comes to grief, take your time to heal but find that which brings you joy and start simple with color.