We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dinah Langsjoen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Dinah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
When it comes to the type of artistic projects I work on, I am grateful to say that almost every one of them has been meaningful to me in ways that make each very unique. That is a blessing, of course, however it sure makes the question of which has been the MOST meaningful difficult to select.
I suppose the most publicly impactful and personally meaningful project I have worked on would be what I have come to call the #BEELIEVE Mural in Mankato, Minnesota.
The BEELIEVE mural spans across a 15x45FT wall located on the Beyond Brink – WECOVERY office building. It started as a community mural that invited locals from Mankato, Minnesota to come and #PaintAwayTheStigma that makes it difficult for individuals trying to find support on their paths to recovery. Beyond Brink’s MISSION is to assist individuals seeking to improve their lives through the process of recovery. They empower individuals who desire to maintain long-term recovery by creating avenues to support how that looks for them. They provide tools, counseling services, housing and other resources to promote whole wellness. They provide understanding, as well as the community for all pathways to recovery!
This mission is incredibly close to my heart. My son’s dad and I had been co-parenting after he and I split up in 2018. Though he and I did not work out in part because of his alcoholism disease, he made so many honorable attempts to reach his sobriety. Some days he was open about his struggles, other days he was completely lost. When he died at the start of the pandemic, May 2020, I had been in the middle of my own Breast Cancer journey. When sorting through belongings with his family at the apartment he lived in, we found his most recent Sobriety Token that showed his current success. Unfortunately, due to the long-term wear and tear on his physical body, his organs would not be strong enough to keep him alive when smaller ailments ganged up on him, regardless of the mental strength he had. His death certificate will always show Chronic Ethanolism as his cause of death. Reduced to just words on the paper.
My heart aches every time I think this, and reminds me that my son will see that death certificate and may internalize his dad as a “Bad Man” based on the stigmas associated with alcoholism. And that’s not true at all. His dad was an amazing man.
He loved our son, his Higher Power, his Reason to do The Steps.
On my social media pages, I vulnerably refer to this mural as A Labor of Love, and it absolutely is. It’s my way to honor those we love and lose, yet also to bring brightness and love and joy to those whose success will inspire others on their journeys. Whose journeys will bring compassion and understanding, especially for our sons and daughters. To have painted this is to bring positivity to an often misunderstood group, for all reasons big and small who have struggled and lost, are struggling on any number of attempts, are rising, or are now celebrating openly their years of success!
I invited my community to help me paint this. Several people put many hours in for their own journey and art therapy, painting symbols, quotes, and wildlife. Others showed up more briefly to commemorate an honoree’s sobriety date. Just as many painted a more somber death date to memorialized a lost loved one, as I did for Steve… There are so many full names displayed, yet also two ambiguous “DAD” labels painted with hearts around them. I merely provided the canvas and guidance, and the community truly rose up to put energy and awareness in, to fuel the conversation, and to spread love!
After I finished the mural, I admit I felt lonely. So much went into this one, so much of my heart and soul… I haven’t been ready to fully walk away from it yet… I felt like it needed more recognition in the way that more people needed their stories to be shared. I posted a link on my Dinah Langsjoen Artwork page asking for people who were following this project from afar to “add a message, a recovery date, a death anniversary, a person to honor/celebrate, etc!” to the mural that I would use to help #PaintAwayTheStigma of any addiction: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Cn5xyUNsG/
I was shocked how fast my inbox filled up. I posted an update on the experience of taking some of those submissions to the wall:
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“Today was one of those perfectly wondrous fall days where you might step on a crispy leaf and just swoon over the smell it makes!
About a month ago I opened up the opportunity online for supporters of the #BEELIEVE mural to submit something in honor of someone, be it with quotes, recovery dates, death dates, etc.
I had 20 within the first two days. They were from locals as well as people who I’ve never met from further away. I was able to add just about half of them in the time I was there.
Messages of hope and love.
Blessings filled with wisdom and humor.
The day their “life began” again.
While I stood there adding them, I was flowing in and out of so many emotions. Tears were not absent. It’s been a weird few weeks, and an even stranger last few days. I’ve questioned myself and had my integrity challenged. Standing here today, alone for the most part other than the energies that surrounded me – it just felt right.
I was able to send a picture to one person who submitted a sobriety date along with some humor for her husband. She loaded him up as well as one of their youngest sons and surprised him by unveiling it in person. She said “There’s a lot going on here” as he scanned the mural looking for what his would be… when he found it, he started to cry. She shared that video of their intimate moment in front of the mural, their son asking twice: “why are you crying?” He responding “it’s special.”
That reaction and their response is everything I wished my son could say to his dad as he struggled in and out of his own sobriety. The thing is? Some of the stories don’t end the way we wish them to. At least not for everyone. It may risk making me cold or hard, maybe even skeptical of the likeliness that someone else can do it… maybe even jealous. Yet for some of the families there IS the little boy who gets to learn WHY this mural is so special. WHY it makes someone cry. WHY we have to #BEELIEVE in recovery.
I’ve been a conduit for creativity before, yet this was different. The power of each story I was trusted to #PaintAwayTheStigma with truly left me feeling so much gratitude. I am humble.
“We recover out loud so others don’t have to die silently.”
Thank you everyone… 🙏”</i>
Dinah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My life has always been characterized like a giant coloring book. When the world gives you black and white, I needed to find a way to make it more than that. My family grew up with a lot stacked against us and others made it hard to succeed beyond their unfair judgment. My traumas and experiences are not more difficult than yours, nor should anyone’s be meant to divide us from opportunity or our future. I believe that as an artist, I have always felt compelled to bridge the gap of feeling isolated by showing how Art may bring people together as well as heal the individual through its creation. I make art for myself, my own healing, and for how I have learned from it. Now I use what I have been through and learned to help someone else in their own healing.
My art comes in the form of whatever inspires or challenges me at the time of my need to overcome. When it was loss of my son’s dad at the start of the pandemic, I was feeling lonely, afraid, and absolutely scared of the monster I may become behind closed doors with the Stay-At-Home Order, while also on hormone therapy drugs for breast cancer treatment. I responded to this fear by literally bringing nature into my home. During the pandemic, I painted over 50 watercolors of backyard birds of the Midwest, as well as Wildflowers. If we couldn’t go out and enjoy nature, I’d have to bring it in.
It was during this time that I also decided it was time to write and Illustrate a children’s book, using only a black ballpoint pen. This book would deal with honoring a lost loved one after they pass, through the eyes of a young boy who learns that even though his father isn’t on earth, he is alive in his heart. The boy learns that Dad will show up in his life every day in seemingly mundane ways. In nature.
What truly sets my art apart from others is that my heart and soul and every energy I can spare goes into each project. As an empath and intuitive artist, there is so much honor and love that my hands are conjuring up from the clients or the experiences I have had, and I am able to use my own experiences to feel trusted by each of them to do the same for their very important and emotional requests.
I want anyone who is potentially thinking of pursuing something with me to know that you will be entering into a relationship with me as the artist. You will likely feel exposed or vulnerable at first, as I truly want to understand why a commission or project is important for you. I may ask you hard questions. I have to understand the gravity of your end goal so that I may bring everything I possibly can to it. There will be days I will be alone in front of a project simply crying because I truly memory or its impact presenting itself to me. My clients always have faith in me, knowing that I will see and hear them until we are all weeping in the end together!
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My goal in all of my work is to explore themes of identity, resilience, and community while also offering my patrons a place to express themselves through me. My journey, marked by the loss of a co-parent to a stigmatized disease in 2020 while navigating my own breast cancer story for the past five years, has profoundly shaped my work. These experiences fuel my commitment to creating art that resonates with the stories of those around me, offering hope and meaning as they walk similar pathways.
Through my work, I strive to create environments that encourage belonging and reflect the resilience of the human spirit, inviting viewers to recognize the power of art in shaping our shared future, and allowing for a greater sense of unity.
In the end, it should never be an end. I want my art to speak for me and the power of living fully. I want the viewer to know that when I have left earth, I did not leave it untouched or without the brush marks of love and joy.
My goal is never the pay, it is more often the PLAY of the journey. Frankly put? Life really can shit on you. What drives me is to realize it shits on everyone. I suppose I merely want to enjoy being able to still dance and paint about it while I can.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The absolute most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me is to inspire others. I don’t mean to inspire them to create, or to try their own art. I truly mean to simply inspire them to look at their life a little differently and to realize that they are not alone in their grief or experiences, and that beautiful things are always attainable. When I have someone reach out to me privately and offer just a snippet of how my art guided them to see differently, or offered a way to heal emotionally because they suddenly didn’t feel as alone, that is what I find is the most sensational thing I can offer. When a project leaves someone in tears, or when someone reaches out to me to tell their story? That’s what it’s all about. When a passerby says how they now detour from their regular commute so they may visit my mural and feel the energy of love instead of monotony? That’s what it’s all for. When an adult says, “Wow, I wish I had this children’s book when I lost my mom?” I know I’m doing something important. Every statement and story lives with me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/dinahsays_art
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dinahlangsjoen
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@Dinahsays_art
Image Credits
All images are mine.