Where Life Meets Art: Channeling Grief, Addiction, and Trauma into Beautiful Expressions

Powerful emotions and experiences such as grief, loss, and addiction can be extremely challenging to sit with and process. Which is why it's so important to have a means of channeling these feelings. Adriana Marchione has made it her life's work to help people use the expressive arts as a way to work through and beyond the hardships of life. On this episode, Adriana shares her personal story of loss and addiction and how she found her way through the darkness and into the brilliant light of expressive arts in the form of dance, photography and film making. Having both struggled with addiction and gone through recovery, we have an in depth discussion of the experience of reclaiming yourself after hitting bottom with a thud and learning to live life without all the numbing agents to avoid feeling. Adriana shares about her remarkable career in the arts and as an expressive arts therapist and her journey into the daunting world of film making. Her story is inspiring, exciting, and endearing for all of us who have faced loss and learned to live and thrive again. Adriana Marchione, MA, REAT, RSMT has been involved in the arts for over thirty years as a filmmaker, dancer, photographer and is internationally recognized in her work as a movement-based expressive arts therapist and educator. Since 2002, Adriana has taught at the renowned Tamalpa Institute, WHEAT Institute in Canada and founded her own wellness center in San Francisco. She has presented her creative healing approach, with a focus on addiction, eating disorders, trauma and grief, at festivals, conferences, and treatment centers including South by Southwest, Studio le théâtre du Corps in Paris, Ohlhoff Recovery Program and La Ventana Eating Disorder Program. Adriana created When the Fall Comes in 2013, a performance project that culminated in a short film based on her own life story encountering intimate grief and loss. When the Fall Comes was translated into French and Korean and streamed in universities across America and Canada through Kanopy. She recently directed The Creative High, a feature documentary film featuring artist stories of addiction and recovery. Adriana has been in recovery from alcoholism for 28 years and was awarded Artist of the Year by ‘In Recovery’ magazine in 2016. Learn more about Adriana, her work, and check out her films here!https://www.facebook.com/artcureslifearthttps://www.instagram.com/adrianamarchione/https://twitter.com/Marchione68https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriana-marchione-13419914/[email protected] www.adrianamarchione.comFilm Websites:www.whenthefallcomes.comwww.thecreativehigh.comTo buy a ticket for the premiere of The Creative High at SF IndieFest , Sunday, February 6th: https://thecreativehigh.com/screenings/To Rent When the Fall Comes on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/whenthefallcomes/