<p>What happens when you stop running from your past and start <em>ripping it up </em>literally?</p><p>In a powerful conversation on <em>LOA Today</em>, host Walt and co-host Anne Marie sat down with artist and soul-portrait guide Devorah to explore how creativity can become a lifeline out of shame, trauma, and self-hatred.</p><p>From the outside, Devorah “looked” successful. She went to art school, showed in galleries, and was known as a professional artist. Inside, she felt like she was “never enough.”</p><p>As she told Walt, she had grown up deeply dyslexic, struggled in school, and carried a childhood certainty that she was simply “bad” and somehow “going to hell” despite not growing up in a religious household. That early inner verdict fueled years of painful choices that seemed to “prove” her own worthlessness.</p><p>One of the most haunting moments she shared was sitting in freezing Prague, wearing summer clothes, contemplating simply leaning back and letting nature take her life. “Something in me said, ‘No. Get up,’” she recalled. That tiny inner “no” became a turning point.</p><p>Walt asked what it was like the first time she truly looked under the hood of her own story. Devorah admitted she was terrified of what she’d find: “I was so scared of what I would find looking under the hood, and what I found was love.”</p><p>Unable at first to put her truth into spoken words, she found a different way: <strong>soul portraits</strong>. She began writing out her stories - letters, memories, confessions then <em>ripping them up</em> and collaging the pieces onto canvas. She layered writing over the fragments, then painted over the writing. In doing so, she deconstructed her old identity and rebuilt a new one in art form.</p><p>Walt recognized it immediately: “You found a way to artistically journal.”</p><p>That’s exactly what it is. Soul portraits are visual journals that live halfway between art and ritual. You don’t need to be “an artist.” As Devorah told Anne Marie, if you can smear glue and rip paper, you’re qualified.</p><p>The power is not in making something pretty. The power is in getting what’s stuck in your body <em>out </em>onto the canvas, where you can finally see it, witness it, and relate to it differently.</p><p>The conversation went even deeper when Devorah shared the compounded heartbreak of discovering her children had been sexually abused, losing her extended family support system in the fallout, then watching her husband later develop debilitating seizures.</p><p>Anne Marie’s “mama bear” response came through strongly as she reflected on just how much Devorah had to navigate at once.</p><p>Still, Devorah refuses to stay in victimhood. She challenges the belief that we are our worst moments: “I had no idea that under all of those layers was just peace and acceptance, and more than anything, self-forgiveness.”</p><p>Today, she teaches others to do the same through a digital course, group work, and one-on-one guidance using their own letters, photos, and memories as raw material.</p><p>Her core question to anyone listening is piercing and simple: <strong>Are you willing to look beneath the hood?</strong></p><p>Because once you start, she says, you may discover you’re not the monster your inner critic told you you were. You might just find a small, stubborn ember of love that has survived everything and is ready to light the way forward.</p><p>LOA Today Episode Page: <a href="https://www.loatoday.net/devorah-brinckerhoff">https://www.loatoday.net/devorah-brinckerhoff</a></p><p>Devorah Brinckerhoff&#39;s Website: <a href="https://www.soulportrait.art/">https://www.soulportrait.art/</a></p><p>Follow the LOA Today podcast:  <a href="https://www.loatoday.net/follow">https://www.loatoday.net/follow</a></p><p>#manifesting<br>#vibration<br>#podcast<br>#Q&amp;A<br>#waltthiessen<br>#annemarieyoung<br>#YourDailyDoseOfHappy</p><p>#SoulPortraits #HealingThroughArt #CreativeRecovery #TraumaHealing #SelfForgiveness #EmotionalHealing #ArtTherapyInspired #InnerChildWork #PersonalGrowth #SelfLoveJourney #FromTraumaToPower</p>