We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alison (Ali) Perry-Davies a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alison (Ali), thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
From our Mum I learned so much about kindness and limitless possibilities. She was an R.N. and a single mum with five kids and an adventurer. She was kind and wise and had a heart for social justice, long before people spoke of such things.
Mum’s last seventeen years of nursing she worked in mental health. She told me many stories and showed us by example how to treat people and respect people and believe for them when they might have stopped believing for themselves.
One way of that was when patients were getting close to being released they would often reintegrate into society by going home for visits, that wasn’t always possible for all of them as they had no family to go to. Mum sat us down and said “Right now they see themselves as mental patients and if they don’t find a way out of there, that is what they might always be” so Mum talked with us and then invited a few of the female patients, one at a time, to come into our home so that they could spend time with a family. Those women visited us for many years after being released and finding their way in their new lives.
Mum had taught through example about how far down people might go and more importantly how they could rise again.
Never ever give up, not on ourselves or others, there is always hope.
With our Dad, there had been years of relational break down and we found our way back to each other and we had amazing talks and learned how to heal and forgive and love each other and ourselves.
My parents were brave and kind and poured into us a passion for family and community and music and learning.
I am who I am, because of them.
Alison (Ali), before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I have spent decades in the disability community and social services, that is my background. I have worked in group homes and hospitals and day programs. I have been involved in music, I sang in bands for many years and was involved in music therapy and ministry. I have studied different counselling modalities and human resources and social sciences and worked as a disability case manager. These were the places I served prior to a life changing moment, where I was hit by a distracted driver in 2015.
The first few years of life with a brain injury were quite challenging and there continue to be challenges, in the midst of that there has been healing and exploring new ways of being and living and learning.
I started to paint as part of my healing journey. I was unable to return to what I had done prior to the accident as I have about an hour at a time now that I can do something before it becomes too much to process, so I started to explore ways of healing and what life might look like now.
It began I suppose with the painting and I studied and earned a diploma in HICAT (Holistic Integrated Creative Arts Therapy), they allowed me to do modify the program with extra time as I have challenges reading and retaining information. Then I was invited to be a co-author in a book and I did that and then I was a co-author in two more books and then I felt ready to write my own book “The Art of Healing Trauma; Finding Joy Through Creativity, Spirituality and Forgiveness”. Let me tell you, writing a book when it is difficult to read because of my injury was a bit of a trip, but I did it!! And I was so happy that I did.
One of the things that came to me in all of this was that through my healing and writing on challenges and then it was Covid, I just thought, oh man, do we need joy in our lives!! And from that, my podcast “Find Your Joy” came to be. I and my guests share stories of ways of finding joy. Sometimes some of the challenges we have faced, always about joy. Different healing modalities and artists and authors and really anyone with a story about finding joy is welcome to share.
I continued to study and learn while I have been doing this and my HICAT diploma led me to explore more about sound healing. I had been involved in sound and music therapies for many years as a musician and then studying about the physics behind how what I had been involved in was actually working caught my heart in a way I had not expected. There were a few modules in sound healing in my course and then I was offered and advanced course in Sound and Vibrational healing and I pursued that. I needed to take the course twice as my memory and ability to process is rather limited still, limited, but not impossible. And off I went.
I have now opened my own clinic, at almost 65 years of age, I feel renewed and see a whole world of creativity and healing and hope for so many that I had been close to and only now am realising and experiencing for myself and my clients. Clients are sharing their healing experiences with me and I am so honoured to be some small part of that.
Decades of life experience were not lost, I have found a way to build on that and find new ways to work with my new way of being and explore creativity and healing with my clients.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Limiting beliefs.
The what ifs and if onlys that kept me locked in a space that confined me and tried to define me.
Some of those came from well meaning people, doctors, friends, what is likely the best case scenario in any given situation or diagnosis was part of that. There are diagnosis and prognosis and reality checks that need to be addressed, absolutely.
AND
There is human spirit and hope and falling and getting back up.
Long before an injury, I held trauma and fear and anxiety and all manner of limiting beliefs about who I was and what I could or could not achieve. I needed to face those and systematically dismantle those. I am still doing that, daily. Finding ways to forge a new path where necessary or relying on a trail that is tried and true.
We are beings of limitless possibilities!
I believe that to the very core of my being!
I was a person that came from a trauma informed life and had found ways to live a rather successful life and when the accident came along, all that was put into a refiners fire that showed me all the places I thought I had healing, and did to some degree, however when put to the test, there they were limiting beliefs.
I needed to figure out walking without falling and talking without slurring and how to do things for more that a minute at a time, then five minutes, then ten, until finally I could make it to an hour or more at a time. Headaches and vertigo and feeling like it would never change, until it did.
We are capable of so much!
So much more than we can imagine, but imagine we must!
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Listening. Listening to others.
Listening to that small still voice inside.
Listening.
Whether I am with a client in a sound bath, listening to the shifts in the sound of the bowls.
My intuition and where it seems that maybe I might explore next with sound and vibrations.
Listening, always listening.
With my podcast and discovering the stories of my amazing guests and where they have been and
what they have overcome and most especially what brings them joy. Listening, to their stories and listening for
ways to invite them deeper into their own story that they might share it with our listeners.
There is a place in writing, painting, music or as a sound bath and creative arts therapy practitioner where we long for. A place or a space that is important to just listen and wait and let that take us where the music needs to go or the paint brush or the words or the singing bowl, whatever it might be. Listening and waiting and following where “it” goes.
A willingness and longing to listen and wait, brings the beauty and healing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://aliwayart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliwayart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aliwayart/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-perry-davies-5a162921/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aliwayart7385/featured
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@aliwayart