Therapy Supermarket

About the Book

Therapy Supermarket is a self-guided, creative arts workbook:

PART I: Touches on various media, beginning with cartooning, using the alphabet to make a list of different types of therapies we've tried. Whatever comes to mind, then drawing your own version of the subjects (either cartoons, abstract, or whatever goes through your mind), then looking at each drawing and writing a commentary to go with the picture. One by one, moving along to the next cartoon or drawing at your own pace.

PART II: Writing poems as therapy, cruising through the alphabet again, listing names of those who have helped us along the way, expressing gratitude to each one you choose to thank in your own unique style and version.

PART III: Creative directions explores the ongoing process of creativity in our daily lives with various projects, with instructions, such as the Wisdom Calendar, painting Styrofoam ice chests, murals, postcards, and making hand puppets, tetrahedron kites. The last section, “Responses, Communication and Feedback,” includes a few letters from various readers.

About the Author

JANE McNEEL KELLER grew up on Texas ranches, sharing spacious countryside with her extended family in a community of Maverick clan in a world where there was no need for words such as “organic” or “natural,” because everything was that way to begin with.

Jane’s father built the family home by hand out of field stones. Her mother, an artist, kept art materials available for the children to experiment with on their own, without suggestion.

Jane started drawing pictures on the stone walls in the living room when she was a toddler, and, instead of being scolded, she was praised by her mother. The murals were done in the same spirit as her ancestors’ cave paintings. All she needed was a chalk rock and any wall or sidewalk. It was a primitive and naive life — the perfect setting for creative expression.

Now a grandmother, Jane cherishes this role and realizes how much her own grandmothers influenced her life. One granny operated an apartment house (B&B) downtown, where Jane and her sisters spent Saturday nights listening to police calls on the short wave radio and waiting for the “Loreli” cocktail lounge across the street to be raided. Police cars would reel around the corner, sirens fracturing the silence, while grandchildren joined Granny peeking through the Venetian blinds, waiting to see who was being picked up in the paddy wagon.

The other granny read National Geographic and Chinese fairy tales to the girls and painted pictures of Buddha flanked by peacocks onto huge screens.

With these ecumenical beginnings, Jane pursued philosophical, psychological, and spiritual directions, combined with artistic expression, throughout her lifetime.

Married in 1952, the honeymoon was spent on 9,500-foot high Martin Mountain Lookout Tower in Challis National Forest, Idaho. There were no modern conveniences — just a wood stove, an ax for chopping firewood, and 365 window panels to wash (the perfect spiritual and reflective retreat).

After seven years of marriage and with two children, Katie and Jim, Jane was divorced and, while teaching art and working in art therapy with various institutions, finished her degree in art and philosophy at the University of the Incarnate Word, followed by graduate studies in counseling and guidance.

Jane has traveled all over the world, particularly enjoying remote places such as Svalbard, Norway, Scotland’s Inverewe, the Okneys, Tonga, Green Island (Great Barrier Reef, Australia), and Dominica, W.I.

It is Jane’s hope that this book brings a breath of fresh air to every reader, easing the ordinary suffering, extending compassion and love, and inspiring a light heart.