Cheryl Metivier
Shari La Shae daily defies the odds and turns her mental health challenges into successes. A humble, deeply intuitive young woman whose wisdom belies her mere 29 years, La Shae is a self-taught abstract artist and photographer who has battled depression and bipolar disorder since her teenage years.
She comes from a small family, having just one older sibling. And because she is very close to her family, she did not hesitate to alert her parents when she recognised that she was beginning to experience the early signs of adverse mental health.
[caption id="attachment_1094777" align="alignnone" width="668"] Shari La Shae on opening night of her solo exhibit, Big Feelings, at the ARC Co-Create Hub in Tunapuna. -[/caption]
"I was a good student and I enjoyed studying and kept my grades up, so it was confusing when I began experiencing difficulty in keeping up. So much so that I began to frequently absent myself from school," she told WMN.
The sense of being constantly overwhelmed consumed her, and she said that she even recalled having suicidal thoughts. After doing her own online research via "Dr Google," she was satisfied that her symptoms warranted a deeper intervention, and she reached out to her parents. That conversation was perhaps the watershed moment for her, and she is thankful that they were sufficiently enlightened, and that they were open to helping her to find the support she needed. Unfortunately, this was not the case for everyone in her circle.
"I had friends and relatives who would have preferred that I keep my diagnosis a secret. Others admonished me to ‘pray about it,’ because they were of the view that this 'invisible’ disease was not real."
La Shae has been very deliberate in how she has navigated her mental health since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She said after confiding in her parents and seeking out professional help, she was able to identify that practising her art has had a calming effect on her. She pointed out that it is not a new hobby, since she has always had an affinity for it. In the early part of her practice, her preference was for portraits and sketches; but post-diagnosis, she found herself drawn to the abstract genre; and basically navigated herself in a new direction, teaching herself all the fundamentals of this new style and embracing it fully.
"The more involved I became; the more benefits I saw myself deriving from this activity."
[caption id="attachment_1094797" align="alignnone" width="684"] Shari La Shae is a self-taught abstract artist and photographer who has battled depression and bipolar disorder since her teenage years. -[/caption]
She has also ventured into art therapy, having connected with a therapist whose speciality is art. Their sessions began just before the start of the covid19 pandemic in 2020. When the country was in lockdown, the weekly sessions continued online, and she describes them as "really amazing."
"These sessions took the form of conversations to address my concerns and issues, after which the art
