Life Map Timeline: Art-Based Therapy Activity

• Long paper: a length of butcher paper, two or three sheets taped end to end, or 11 x 17 paper turned sideways
• A pencil for the first draft, then markers, colored pencils, or pastels
• Sticky notes for events the client may want to move, cover, or add later
• Optional: magazine images, stickers, or photos the client brings from home
• A ruler for clients who like a straight baseline

Agree on the time span before anyone draws; a map of the last five years can do as much work as a whole life.

1. 1
   Choose a form: a road, a river, a train line, a mountain trail, or a plain line. Mark the starting point and put "today" about two thirds of the way across, leaving room for the future.
2. 2
   Draw a baseline for ordinary days. Events above it felt good; events below it felt hard. The farther from the line, the more it mattered.
3. 3
   Place five to ten events in pencil, each with a word, a symbol, or a small drawing. Any event can be a blank marker or a private symbol that the client never has to explain.
4. 4
   Mark turning points, the places where the road bent or the river split, in a different color.
5. 5
   Add helpers along the way: people, places, pets, beliefs, or skills that got the client through the low stretches.
6. 6
   Extend the map past today with two or three hoped-for chapters in dotted lines, and one small next step.
7. 7
   Give the map a title and, if the client likes, names for its chapters.
8. 8
   Step back and look at the whole map together before talking about any single event.

• During: Which events want to go on the map first?
• During: You can put a symbol here and decide later how much to say about it.
• During: How far above or below the line does this one belong?
• After: Looking at the whole map, what do you notice?
• After: What got you from this low point back up? Who was with you?
• After: Which turning points did you choose, and which ones happened to you?
• After: If this map were a book, what would the chapters be called? What would you name the next one?
• After: Which skill from an earlier stretch of road could help with the next one?

• Kids: Shorten the span to one school year or "since I started school." Weather symbols (sun, rain, rainbow) work well for feelings, and a caregiver can help with dates.
• Teens: Try a video game map with levels and checkpoints, or a playlist with one song title per stretch. If the map goes home, private symbols keep events off a parent's radar.
• Adults: Useful at transitions such as retirement, divorce, a new diagnosis, or the end of treatment. With older adults, the map can open life review conversations about meaning and unfinished business. A written companion such as Authoring Your Personal Narrative can follow in a later session.
• Groups: Members draw their own maps and share one high point and one turning point. A team, family, or unit can also draw a shared timeline of its own history, close to the collective timelines of narrative practice (Denborough, 2008).

• Trauma: Plotting a life can bring back memories the client did not plan to visit, including ones they have never spoken about. Let the client choose the span, skip stretches, and use placeholders. Never ask for details of a traumatic event to finish the map.
• Flooding and grounding: Watch for changes in breathing, going quiet, or losing the thread of the conversation. Pause and ground in the room first: feet flat on the floor, then name five things they can see, or use the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise. Once settled, shift attention to a high point or a helper on the map, or try a calm place exercise.
• When to stop: Stop when the client asks to, and cover or fold the paper. If a new disclosure of abuse or current danger comes up, set the map aside and follow your safety and reporting duties. Decide together where the map will be kept, since it may hold private history.
• No diagnostic interpretation: A steep dip, a crowded or empty stretch, or where the line ends carries no fixed meaning. Ask the client what they see in their own map.

A man in his late fifties, laid off after twenty-six years at the same plant, draws his life as a two-lane road. The deepest dip sits at age 19, marked only with a small black square he says he will explain another time, and the clinician leaves it there. Above the line he places his daughter's birth, a fishing trip with his brother, and getting sober at 41, which he circles as a turning point. The layoff lands just below today, shallower than he expected once it sits next to the others. Asked what carried him out of the earlier dips, he writes "stubborn" and "my brother" along the shoulder of the road. For the future he draws a dotted stretch labeled "teach welding at the community college" and agrees to call the program office before the next session.