Art & Healing: The Goldfinch Foundation

Tribute to Owen Willers on Instagram @artbeatnashville.

I posted on Friday that I was going to do a 7 PM tribute today. I quickly realized that there was a great chance no one would send me images, because how many of us are left with beautiful art by a loved one who is gone? I am guessing, considering I have 2,000 followers, not many.

But I am actually happy, because this meant I got to focus my entire tribute on a Nashville non-profit called The Goldfinch Foundation. And so, here is how I got to know Liz Willers, the heart and powerhouse behind this organization.

Last fall, my friend reached out to me about a mother who, over the summer, lost her 18-year-old son unexpectedly. Her son was a prolific artist who spent his life connecting creativity to emotion. Art is what he loved most, and his mother wanted his art to live on as a bridge of hope for others navigating their own mental health struggles. The phone call was to see how my connection to local artists might be helpful to the cause she had taken up at lightning-bolt speed since losing her son.

The mother, Liz, and I quickly became friends. She loves to move, so our first get-together was a hike, and she set both a physical and mental fast pace. Physically, it was harder for me, but mentally it was easy to keep up because I am a lover of ideas, and she had many. I also understood her energy around grief, because when I lost my late husband, I started writing, and I only took breaks when I had to take care of the absolute essentials of life. It was that “nothing can stop me”mode, and I knew it well.

It is like trying to beat the clock. You race to remember, defying gravity and inertia for what naturally fades with time, to shape and mold loss while it is still there in all of its dimensionality in the early days of grief. For me, I had no idea that I was setting the stage for my best survival—finding my way to sustenance when the world kept going on around me, and I had no idea how to be in it again.

And some take it a step further. We have all seen it and hoped we too could be that person who takes what we can only imagine will be the end of us and, out of it, creates something meaningful: beginnings that heal and hope that reaches beyond ourselves. And that is exactly what Liz Willers is doing.

I see something else in what Liz is doing. She opens her home every week to Owen’s friends who serve as teen ambassadors for The GFF. She plans activities, brings in speakers, and creates space for honest conversations. She gives these teenagers and others beyond Owen’s circle a chance to see that grief does not have to be scary or shameful. It is not meant to be carried alone or hidden within the walls of our homes. When grief is shared in community, it becomes transformative.

The Goldfinch Foundation carries forward Owen’s spirit and shows that creativity can be a bridge between what we lose and what we continue to build in love. It is an honor to know Liz and to see how her vision continues to grow to great heights.

And if you need one more reason to follow them, they have great merchandise and will soon be adding beautiful ornaments that are perfect for the holidays!