The Elephant Mask

It starts with an idea.

I published my first book today.

The story was born in a small office in a medical clinic, during my work with a lovely woman who faced significant health challenges. Together, we had made great progress toward many of her goals. One of her medical teams priorities was for her to use her CPAP regularly - she lives with severe obstructive sleep apnea.

But she did not like wearing the CPAP mask. She felt self-conscious, saying she looked “like a dork”, and she feared that the machine might stop in the night and she would suffocate.

In therapy, we began gently addressing her mask anxiety. We practiced holding the mask, describing it, and noticing her thoughts and emotions. Her mask was a full face style with the air hose in front - it looked a bit like an elephant’s trunk. We both wore our masks during sessions and used approaches such as normalization, distraction, and gradual exposure.

Despite these efforts, her comfort level did not improve as much as we had hoped. So, in another creative attempt to foster change, we decided to write a story together - a story about wearing a mask that would become a beautiful adventure instead of a burden.

We included her favorite things; gnomes, fungi, fairies, lilacs and trees. And from that shared imagination, The Elephant Mask was born.

Sometimes healing arrives disguised as a story. The Elephant Mask began as a small act of care between two people in a quiet therapy room - and grew into a tale about courage, tenderness, and coming home to oneself. Through StillWaters Soulworks, I hope to keep creating spaces like this - where imagination opens the heart, and every breath, every word, and every story becomes a step toward wholeness.