Julia Kurtley always knew she was at risk for breast cancer. Still, it was a shock to her when she actually received the diagnosis last December at the age of 57.
“I always wondered if this would happen, considering my mother had breast cancer and my sister and my first cousin also had breast cancer,” said Curtley, a lifelong Brooklyn resident of Crown Heights .
“I’ve always had mammograms, and I just knew how serious it was for me to stay on top of my screening. But to be honest, I thought I would be able to avoid it. I just never imagined this would happen to me and it was quite devastating.
When faced with such dire news, many people need something to take their mind off their fears. Fortunately, Julia didn’t have to look for such a way out. She already had one — art.
Kurtley has taught art in the New York school system for 15 years, she said. So when she got her diagnosis, she knew exactly where to turn.
“I’ve seen it help a lot of students from first grade through 12th grade,” Kirtley said.
“I already knew the transformative power of art, but now I just had to channel it through myself.”
Going through her treatment, which lasted from January to March 2022, she said she often found herself carrying her art journal along with a few crayons or colored pencils to take her mind off everything while sitting in waiting rooms and listen your name be called.
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“It was the thing that made me feel the most joy, it calmed my mind, I don’t think about anything but color and creation.”
She is not the only one who has noticed the effect of art on her during treatment. Kurtley said her doctors noticed, too. That’s why, now that she’s out of treatment, both Kurtley and her doctors think it might be helpful to introduce the concept to other patients.
“My doctors were really receptive to the idea of, ‘Hey, what if we introduce this to other patients?'” she said.
“And I guess they recognized that my morals were good and I just shared with them what I was using and that was my art.”
Kurtley is now cancer free, seven months and counting. But she said she was already using art to try to help people, even before her cancer diagnosis: She facilitated workshops during the pandemic, and last summer Kurtley began organizing a series of art therapy sessions for other cancer patients. breast cancer at New York Presbyterian Hospital.
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