Needles and Threads, Moods and Feelings: A better mental health through art with Dea Jenkins

We sat down with our very own, Dea Jenkins, to find out more about how her time with the Brehm Center helped grow her ability to use art to heal through her company, Ethos of Care.

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Talk to me about your involvement with Fuller and how you came to be a part of the Brehm Center.

It is an understatement to say that my time at Fuller Seminary was formative. It is challenging for me to imagine where I might be at this stage in my life without having attended Fuller. The experience completely expanded my worldview and network, while also shifting the trajectory of my life.

I was a student from 2016-2019, and I left with a Masters in Theology and a Masters in Intercultural Studies, both with an emphasis in Theology & the Arts through the Brehm Center.

I initially chose Fuller because of the Brehm Center after seeing a video featuring Fuller's then president, Dr. Mark Labberton. Dr. Labberton spoke about the power of the arts in spiritual formation, and once I heard that, I was hooked.

Shortly after I started at Fuller, I met the Brehm Center's Director at the time, Makoto Fujimura. Mako invited me to be a Fujimura Fellow, which formed a crucial part of my experience at Fuller. I also met a few other key individuals from the Brehm Center, including Dr. Kutter Callaway, during this time. Over the next several years, I continued to nurture those relationships.

Since then, I have worked with the Brehm Center and Brehm staff in a number of ways, including co-leading the student-led Brehm Collective, curating exhibitions, organizing conferences and events, facilitating small groups, and collaborating on interdisciplinary creative projects.

How about your life as an artist? 

I discovered latent creative gifts relatively late in my journey, in my early twenties. At the time, I was pursuing a career as a professional athlete. Eventually I chose to forgo that career due to a minor injury and shifting personal interests. I entered a period of time during which I was essentially wandering.

After months without direction, a close family member asked a question that radically altered the course of my life. As I was complaining about how unsure I felt about what to do next, my cousin asked, "Dea, what is your purpose?" I still recall feeling as though the axis of the world tilted when she posed that question. I had never thought of my life as having any kind of purpose or intentional design. As I started the journey of seeking an answer to that question, I figured there was only one place where I might find that answer - in prayer with God.

It didn't take long for God to respond to my inquiries about my divine purpose. I followed the hints of budding curiosity, and those instincts led me to attend a school for the arts. During my first year there, I took the mandatory introductory art courses like drawing and color theory. Through the various course assignments I came to realize that I had a natural affinity for creating.

I tell this story often. When I reflect on this period, I feel a lot like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, stepping from black and white into a world full of spectacular color. That is how dazzling it felt to discover the world of art. Suddenly I had creative talents that I had no inkling I possessed. I went from barely comprehending that "artist" was an actual profession to reveling in the joy of art making and building art-centered businesses. Now that the entirety of my professional career stems from art, I still marvel at the power of prayer and the journey of self-discovery.

Tell me about how you became interested in mental health?

The broad idea of "healing" has always been part of my creative expression. Once I learned the basics of art and began to streamline what I wanted to communicate through my work, themes of healing were consistently woven into my creative process. I moved to New York City after receiving my Bachelors in filmmaking, and the first short film I made was about a young girl who was molested while riding the subway one morning. The film was based on a true story I'd heard during my first year in the city. I kept thinking about how traumatized the girl must have felt. However, I was also so relieved that she was willing to tell the adults in her life what happened so that she could get help. So many people - kids, teens, and adults - remain silent after experiencing a traumatic event, and they never receive the care they need or deserve.

On a personal level, I have gone through my own journey with mental and emotional health and overcoming trauma. I entered this journey on a macro level, responding to external pressures and social events, like the rise of Black Lives Matter. During my time in New York before I moved to California to attend Fuller, I started asking questions around broad social themes like collective and social healing and racialized-trauma. Living in New York was a crucial experience for me as I began to unravel and eventually reshape what it means to be a Black woman living in the United States during this era.

Any form of healing cracks the door open to other areas that require attention. As I started to unpack questions around inherent worth and identity, God gently nudged me to also tend to other areas of my life that I had never had the courage to address, like childhood trauma. Though I was terrified to acknowledge old, trauma-inducing experiences, the impact they were having on my adult life was catastrophic to my relationships, my mental wellbeing, and even my physical health.

Attempting to navigate that level of healing on my own felt unfeasible, and I knew I needed support. At the time, I didn't feel comfortable attempting to navigate the process of finding a therapist. As a fulltime student, fellow, and artist I simply didn't have the bandwidth to venture into that unknown territory. However, when I discovered that Fuller had a team of chaplains available to offer spiritual direction sessions, I felt the Spirit's encouragement to lean into the offering despite my hesitations. I could not be more grateful that I made that initial decision to sit with a chaplain. Having access to Fuller's incredibly gifted chaplains was one of the most beautiful and life-saving gifts I received as a Fuller student.

Simultaneously, I was also uncovering more creative gifts. Up until my time at Fuller, I had primarily focused on collaborative artforms like filmmaking and live productions (e.g. dance theater). However, under the tutelage of my mentor at the time, Makoto Fujimura, I began to explore other art forms like painting. This opened up a world of possibilities, offering a broader creative vocabulary that granted me room to express the sweeping changes I was experiencing thanks to my spiritual direction sessions. In between sessions, I painted, made collages, and wrote. All of these creative forms gave me room to explore my radically shifting emotions and thoughts.

I discovered that healing work requires a great deal of emotional energy and courage. I still recall some of the earlier spiritual directions sessions during which it was so difficult to even speak about some of the memories that had haunted me since childhood.*** I'd had an adult-level of skill in blocking out those early traumatic times, and just because I now had the safety and space to process them didn't mean that it was easy for me to do so. Acting as a gentle and safe buffer, art created room for me to process without having to speak until I was ready to verbalize what I was experiencing. I could get the feeling of something out of me without needing to look at it too directly until I was ready to do so.

On the other hand, creative freeform exploration has always been a source of pure joy and delight for me. Sometimes I simply want to create just for the sheer fun of it. I want to see what this color of yarn looks like against that color of paint. I want to be mesmerized by how the light interacts with them both. Something I love most about art is its capacity to hold space for both play and emotional support. There are moments when I simply want to play and others when I need to allow heavy feelings to filter out of my body and into a form that can hold them. Art possesses the latitude to do both.

***It is important to note that there are key differences between the types of services offered by various healthcare and wellness professionals. Psychiatrists, therapists, chaplains, spiritual directors, counselors, and wellness coaches all offer different types of care. However, rather than becoming overwhelmed by the vast array of options, I encourage people to simply start with the resources they have available to them. Wellness professionals should guide each person to the specific type of help needed, even if they cannot provide it themselves. Also, I would encourage each person to trust that God provides the right kind of support, even through unexpected sources!

What is Ethos of Care, and how does it integrate art/mental health/faith? What makes your method different from how others do this integration?

Ethos of Care (EOC) is a business that offers crafting kits designed to support mental and emotional wellness. An example of one of EOC's first offerings is our "Color Moods: Needlepoint" kit. This kit can help crafters relieve stress, lower anxiety, cultivate a sense of calm and play, and become more articulate when expressing moods and emotions. The accompanying workbook guides crafters in selecting yarn colors based on their daily emotions and helps them process mood sources. As the project unfolds, the needlepoint canvas becomes a visual emotional diary. Across the span of several days, crafters can see how their moods shift and expand through color while also cultivating the language to express those feelings.

EOC’s kits and workshops are for craft enthusiasts as well as for art-beginners looking for ways to broaden their wellness journeys. The kits can complement what someone may already be doing as they seek wholeness (like attending talk-therapy sessions). I intimately know the benefits of having many tools in the toolbox, and incorporating artmaking into a wellness practice is a great way to expand the capacity for healing.

Our kits are fun, well-designed, and thoroughly supported by research. We aren't after quick-fixes. Our current offerings require intention, time and input. These are for spaces you can return to time and again as your journey unfolds. Our current culture is filled with a constant demand and an expectation for immediacy, but healing does not adhere to these rhythms. We heal in fits and starts, in syncopated rhythms. Our wellness journeys are layered and complex, and time is required to gather and tend to all of life's pieces.

To take this one step further, we invite crafters to join periodic live workshops and events to experience the benefits of making within a guided community. There is no such thing as solo healing, nor does wellness develop in a vacuum. Joining one of our Making Circles or live craft workshops can provide the emotional support and community that many need in order to truly experience wholeness. Plus, it is also just plain fun to create alongside others!

What can a focus on art/mental health/faith do for young people’s lives (late Millennial, Gen Z, Alpha)?

Studies show that younger generations are experiencing more anxiety and stress than older adults. A great example is Betterhelp's 2025 insightful report titled "The State of Stigma". It details how even though mental health is becoming more common in everyday consideration and conversation, some people still feel hesitant when contemplating whether to seek therapy. For many people, there is still a stigma around needing mental health support. The great thing about today's younger generations is that the topic is becoming more commonplace. For these generations, the issue is less about whether it is socially okay to seek help, and more about having access to providers and resources they feel comfortable with and can reasonably afford. Unfortunately, healthcare in any aspect in the United States is often complex and not often considered affordable.

With the rising interest in wellness overall, we are seeing more unique offerings that can help to support people's wellness journeys. I see younger generations being very open to new ideas in this area. Many are turning to coaches, fitness programs, and even social media to round out their wellness experiences. I also see an eagerness to return to what we might consider older principles and practices. This is where I feel spirituality can make a great impact in the swiftly shifting landscape of the Church at large. We are spiritual creatures, regardless of our religious affiliations, and people are looking for ways to meet their spiritual needs. Coupling spiritual perspectives with wellness support (when requested) is a great way to help people pursue a holistic form of care.

As part of the cultivation of holistic care, people at any age can experience the therapeutic benefits of artmaking and crafting. You don't need to be a professional artist or to be "good at art" to reap the benefits of an afternoon of crafting. Artmaking and crafting can meet a wide range of mental health needs, including helping to decrease stress and anxiety, increase focus, and offer a sense of connection and belonging when making in a group setting, just to name a few:

"Creating arts and crafting positively predicts subjective wellbeing" on frontiers.in.org

"The Therapeutic Benefits of DIY Crafting" on diversitech-global.com

"The Benefits of Needlepoint" on stitchbystitchneedlepoint.com

How can others get involved with Ethos of Care, or use art at home to help with trauma?

Current and new kits will be available on our website, www.ethosofcare.co. We are also planning to offer more workshops and live events, so following us on Instagram at @ethosofcare and signing up for our newsletter (which people can access through our website) are good ways to stay up-to-date on new kit releases and upcoming events.

I also want to encourage artists and healers (wellness coaches, therapists, etc.) interested in collaborating on kits, workshops, and events to reach out. We will have a more formalized way to receive collaboration requests and craft-kit submissions soon, but for now, people can reach me via email at dea@deastudios.com.