Key Points
- Expressive-arts coach Minette Riordan says midlife emotions are rich, layered, and best understood through color. Her Emotional Landscape Practice uses a 10-minute art journaling exercise to translate feelings into shapes and hues.
- The process—part mindfulness, part creative healing—invites women to explore joy, loss, and renewal without judgment. By turning emotions into visual form, participants often discover clarity and calm that words alone can’t reach.
- Experts in art therapy agree: intuitive, color-based practices help reduce stress and reconnect people with their inner wisdom. This accessible exercise needs only paper, color, and curiosity to begin.
Have you ever noticed how your emotions have color?
Some days shimmer golden with joy and clarity. Others hum in quiet shades of blue or green. And some days are a wild, beautiful storm of every hue at once — alive, layered, and unpredictable.
As women in midlife, we hold the full spectrum of emotion. Joy and loss often intertwine. One moment we feel radiant and grounded; the next, restless or uncertain. This is the gift of the midlife journey — its depth and vividness invite us to know ourselves more fully.
Inside the Sisterhood of Wisdom & Wonder, we’ve been exploring what I call our Emotional Landscapes — a form of expressive arts for emotional healing that helps us see our inner world in color. You don’t need to be an artist; you only need curiosity and a willingness to play.
When you express your emotions through color and form, something inside you softens. The page becomes a mirror. You realize that your feelings aren’t problems to fix — they’re energies to honor.
The following process is one of my most favorite expressive arts activities for reconnecting to my emotions, which can be pretty challenging for me after a lifetime of learning to numb, avoid or pretend I'm fine.
This exercise is deceptively simple and I encourage you to trust the process - you may need to paint through several pages to get to the truth of how you are feeling.
The 10-Minute Emotional Landscape Practice
This simple, creative mindfulness exercise uses color to connect you with your inner wisdom.
You’ll need:
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A blank page or watercolor paper
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Colored pencils, crayons, or paint
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10 minutes of quiet
1. Begin with a breath
Close your eyes and ask, “What color is my day?”
Let the first color that arises guide you.
2. Let color move
Start filling the page freely — broad strokes, scribbles, or flowing lines. Follow how the emotion feels, not how it looks.
3. Add layers
Notice when a new color wants to enter. Allow it. Let your emotions blend and transform on the page.
4. Reflect
Step back and ask:
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What emotions did I meet today?
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Where did I feel lightness or resistance?
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What color do I crave more of in my life right now?
This practice of art journaling for self-discovery turns abstract emotion into something visible, kind, and full of meaning.
Why Expressive Arts Heals
Color bypasses logic and speaks directly to intuition. Each brushstroke or mark becomes a dialogue between your conscious self and your deeper knowing.
Practices like intuitive painting and emotional color mapping gently release what’s been held inside. They remind us that healing doesn’t always require words — sometimes it just needs movement, color, and presence.
For midlife women seeking renewal and purpose, expressive arts offer a path back to wholeness: one color, one feeling, one honest mark at a time.
Try It Today
Take ten minutes to ask yourself: What color am I feeling right now?
Let your heart choose the colors. Let your hands translate what words cannot.
When you finish, pause to notice: how do you feel now?
If this practice speaks to you, I’d love to see what you create.
Share your Emotional Landscape in the comments below.
With love,
Minette
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