"Putting Therapy in My Own Hands": Cottage Industry Employment and the Healing Potential of Collaborative Making.

The integration of art therapy in medicine is expanding as are calls to strengthen its evidence base of clinical outcomes. In this essay, we elevate the voices of non-clinically based artists who work in community and home settings. Although we do not discount the value of art therapy, we add nuance and complexity to clinical and society narratives about art and health by bringing into focus experiential intent and outcome as well as context to explore the meaning-making capacity of the arts. We argue: (1) aesthetic experiences can foster self-expression, relational development, and employment beyond medically identified goals and treatment plans; and, (2) Equating community-based art programming with art therapy oversimplifies our understanding of art and health and does a disservice to both.

Color-Blind Bootstraps: Advancing an Intersectional Framework for Fostering Recovery.

12-step programs and other similar public-access drug and alcohol recovery programs focus on the key issue of substance misuse. These programs, however, often ignore systemic inequities, individual identity markers, and related health factors like co-occurring morbidities. In this essay, I reflect on my own experiences to examine the complex entanglement of bootstrap mentalities and redemption narratives. These narratives coalesce to ignore, deny, and hide systemic disparities in a process of color-blind addictions recovery. I argue for an intersectional understanding of substance misuse recovery that considers multiple historically marginalized identities. I invite readers to join me in reimagining the possibilities for inclusive recovery communities that move beyond an individual's choices and address the systemic adversities that often lead individuals toward paths of addiction.