Norma Lee has an MA in communication disorders. She went through a struggled period in the late 1990’s and emerged from that with the aid of transpersonal psychotherapy. Over a decade later, Lee wrote and published her salving work: Transitions in Healing. A Journey.
Published by Balboa Books, Transitions in Healing has reaped praise from several in the psychotherapy field. 52 archetypal images; vignetted stations of a pilgrimage, are accompanied by themed writings. Lee, a self-taught artist, created her images with pastel and colored pencil. With no formal art training, the images are rendered analgesic in a primordial homily. The employed, rudimentary aesthetics aptly serve this Edenic quest.
Lee begins with The Abyss. John of the Cross’s Dark Beacon constitutes the void, emerging from it. The Child and The Knowing reflect Psalmic womb through Debussian filter.
A gossamer Genesis departed, the experience of traveling commences. Lee’s depiction of the experience does not succumb to the conceit of astutely defined passage. Rather, hers is a course of senses.
Nostalgia threatens to overtake this course, encompassed within the discharge of pathos, transformative butterflies, and the symbology of a utopian rose. Yet, by balancing celestial guardians with corporeal sentinels and pragmatic mortality, Lee reveals these as merely inevitable, primordial movements within the existential terminals.
The matronly Proverb is grasped. The holistic reach does not preclude the venerable, liturgical reflection. Here, Lee employs vibrant, crucially polarizing transitions. The Jobian Leviathan, the pearl, and the chalice are egalitarian balm found in the Utopian pursuit.
Alfred Eaker 