Tree of Life: Art-Based Therapy Activity

• Large paper (11 x 17 inches or flip-chart sheets), or letter paper for a shorter session
• Markers, colored pencils, crayons, or oil pastels
• Optional collage supplies: magazines, scissors, a glue stick, and sticky notes cut into leaf and fruit shapes
• Masking tape or open wall space if a group will hang its trees together as a forest
• Optional: a blank certificate or card for the closing step

Introduce the tree as a picture of the client's life, then guide one part at a time, adding words or small drawings to each part as you go.

1. 1
   Ask the client to draw a large tree with roots, ground, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. Any kind of tree works.
2. 2
   Roots (where I come from): the village, town, or country; family history and family name; the people who taught them the most; a favorite place at home; a song, dance, or dish they treasure.
3. 3
   Ground (my life now): where they live and the things they choose to do on an ordinary day.
4. 4
   Trunk (my skills): abilities and ways of caring for others, including skills you have noticed in session. Ask who they learned each skill from. Precious memories can go here too.
5. 5
   Branches (my hopes): hopes, dreams, and wishes for where life is heading. Ask how long each hope has been alive and what has kept it going.
6. 6
   Leaves (important people): people who matter, whether living or no longer alive. Some clients add a pet, a mentor, or someone they have never met in person.
7. 7
   Fruits (gifts received): kindness, care, or love that others have given them. Ask why the person gave it and what they appreciated about the client.
8. 8
   Share the tree. The client tells its story out loud, and in a group the trees go up side by side as a forest.
9. 9
   When the storms come: only after the tree is finished, talk first about dangers that trees face, then about storms in people's lives. Make clear that people are never to blame for the storms that hit them, and ask what people do when storms arrive and after they pass (Ncube, 2006).
10. 10
    Close by naming back the skills, hopes, and people the client described. You can write these on a certificate or card for the client to keep, as Ncube (2006) did.

• During: Who taught you that? When did you first notice you could do it?
• During: If grief comes up at the leaves: What was special about this person? What good times did you share? Would they like the way you remember them? (Ncube, 2006)
• After: Looking at the whole tree, what stands out to you?
• After: Which branch would you most like to grow, and what on your trunk could help it grow?
• After (storms): What do you already do when a storm hits? Who helps you hold on?
• After: Who would you like to show this tree to?

• Kids: Pre-draw the outline and keep each part to a word or a small picture. Talk about storms in general terms, as Ncube (2006) did with a children's bereavement group, so no child has to tell their own story.
• Teens: Let them choose the tree, whether palm, pine, or the oak outside their school. Symbols or initials can stand in for anything they want to keep private.
• Adults: Fits work on cultural identity, migration, grief, and family history.
• Groups: Hang the trees as a forest and talk about what the trees share and how they shelter one another. Groups have used this format with refugee children and parents in schools (Hughes, 2014).

• Trauma: Roots and leaves can touch adoption, displacement, estrangement, or relatives who caused harm. Offer choices: roots can be places, communities, values, or anyone who helped raise the client. Never require a family tree.
• Flooding and grounding: In the earlier version, children often became distressed talking about problems and lost loved ones, and counselors were unsure how to respond to intense grief, which is why the safe story now comes first (Ncube, 2006). If a client floods, pause and ground in the room: feet flat on the floor, then name five things they can see, or use the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise. Then return to the skills written on the trunk.
• When to stop: Stop when the client asks to. If the storms conversation turns into a detailed account of abuse or a new disclosure, set the tree aside, follow your safety and reporting duties, and return to the drawing another day.
• No diagnostic interpretation: Small roots, missing fruit, bare branches, or the type of tree carry no fixed meaning. Each part means what the client says it means.

A 15-year-old who moved to the United States two years ago draws a mango tree. On the roots she writes her grandmother's town, a lullaby, and the smell of her aunt's kitchen, and on the ground she puts school, soccer practice, and translating for her parents at appointments. The clinician points out that translating takes real skill and asks who taught her to be so patient with adults; she writes "patience, from my grandmother" on the trunk. Her leaves include a coach and a cousin she has not seen since the move. In the storms conversation she names classmates who mock her accent, then lists what she already does: texting her cousin, practicing penalty kicks after school, and telling her coach.