Customers Put Their Dreams On Paper At Burbank Library Vision Board Party

In the center of the vision board that Bernadette Woodson was working on, she pasted the phrase “Live your best life,” a feeling she looks forward to achieving this year.

Last July, Woodson was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and left Burbank for treatment in Ohio to be closer to his family. Earlier last month, just six weeks after returning to California, she was told she had colon cancer.

Woodson had surgery three weeks ago and will begin chemotherapy soon. However, she is determined to put her illnesses behind her this year.

“I’m doing it again,” she said. “I just want to live again [my life] again.”

Woodson and 23 others – armed with glue sticks, scissors and dozens of magazines – gathered in a room in the Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Library on Saturday for a do-it-yourself vision board party.

“My goal was just to bring people together,” said librarian Jen Ullrich, who organized the event.

Vision boards are visual representations of one’s hopes, goals, or resolutions meant to serve as a kind of subliminal encouragement.

The idea, said Ullrich, is to place the board where it can be seen and focused on every day, in the hope that the goals will “somehow seep” and start to feel. exploitable.

Editions of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Better Homes and Gardens, Vanity Fair, and Travel + Leisure filled the tables as attendees – mostly women – flipped through them for inspiration, cutting out photos, artwork or pictures. quotes that matched their vision and placing them on their board.

Burbank resident Elizabeth Ayiku designed her painting primarily as a map of the Los Angeles area to encourage herself to see more of the city she calls home.

“No matter where I live, I never do anything fun. I just work and come home, ”she said. “Whenever my friends come to visit me, I never know what to show them.”

It’s something she hopes to change by encouraging herself to explore more of Southern California, including a trip to Disneyland, which she’s never been to.

“It’s a really good way to focus,” said JoAnn Lowrie, who was invited to the workshop by her friend Lori Bender.

Lowrie and Bender were joined by several other women from a dating group dubbed “Girlfriends of Burbank”.

On Lowrie’s board were quotes such as “Reclaim your confidence” and “It’s OK not to be perfect.” She cut out a photo of a butterfly to represent recent changes in life.

“I really want to focus more on my career [and] be healthy, ”she said.

Lowrie works as an assistant director for movies and TV shows – with credits including “Cold Case”, “Veep” and “Transparent” – and said that for a while she wanted to move into the director’s chair, but has kept this goal to herself.

“This year I’m telling people I want to do it,” Lowrie said.

Ullrich said his goal for the program is to bring people together and think about what they want for themselves, and his expectations have been exceeded.

“The tables were all separate before, and then they slowly started to come together,” Ullrich said.

Many of the panels featured images to encourage more travel, exercise and fun time, including Bernadette Woodson’s creation, which featured a bicycle and the bright yellow phrase “Play like a girl!” “

Woodson said she hadn’t been able to ride the bike she bought herself recently. However, after her double battle with cancer puts her life “on hold,” she wants to focus on getting back to the heart of the matter.

“I feel so good about my well-being,” she said. “I’m going to play like a girl again.”

After hearing Bernadette Woodson’s story, teammate Mary Nurrenbern said her attitude was inspiring and “puts things in perspective”.

“You never know when you’re going to sit next to someone what they might be going through,” she said.

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Ryan Fonseca, ryan.fonseca@latimes.com

Twitter: @RyFons