About Heather

My Mission or Purpose

Email me at Heather@HeatherBurnell.com

Video Transcription:

Hello, I'm Heather Burnell. I want to take a few moments to share with you what my mission is. And a mission is not a mission statement or an artist statement. It's much more similar to what is my purpose in life.

And I believe that my mission or my purpose is to help other people to grow their souls and of course to grow my own soul. And the problem with this is when I'm in a difficult place, it's hard for me to remember that those difficult times exist for me to learn from and to grow my soul.

I came to this mission or purpose by recollecting some of the most painful and most joyful times of my life. I want to share a few of those with you right now.

The most painful time of my life was around the birth of my second son.

I found out that I was pregnant with twins and it ended up being an extremely complicated pregnancy. I had to be part of a clinical trial to get surgery on the twins, and we thought that that was a success.

About two weeks after that surgery, I was getting a checkup, and the doctor was very cold. He looked at the ultrasound and he said, one of the babies doesn't have a heartbeat. And that was by far the most excruciatingly painful moment of my life.

I just remember sobbing and sobbing uncontrollably.

But around that same birth experience was also the most joyful time of my life. My son that did survive was born three months premature. He weighed two pounds, six ounces, and they told us he would have everything wrong with him, but now he's a 21-year-old at Chapel Hill who's a straight A student and a phenomenal musician and athlete.

So, he didn't have anything wrong with him, but he did spend 76 days in the NICU growing. And on that 76th day, when I buckled him into his little car seat and was in the roundabout where you pick people up at the hospital, I was literally jumping up and down with joy and happiness. The security guard was laughing too, and I was just so thrilled to be bringing my baby home finally.

Well, sadly it wasn't long after that, that my husband and I separated and between the birth trauma and the separation, I was in a very dark place. And one of the ways I got out of that place was by flooding myself with positivity.

And that has led me to create positive artwork. And my hope is that by doing that I can help people remember who are in a dark place when they look at one of my paintings that there is joy waiting for them out there on the other side.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for perusing my website.