“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.” Naomi Shihab Nye
When the body is run down and tired, we turn to supplements, vitamins, nourishing food and rest to bolster the body, to restore vitality. This is fresh in my mind as I have just come out on the other side of a difficult season of colds, coughs and runny noses. Through weeks of coughing I turned to warm tea, honey, and soothing soups to help my body get through it.
As well as being run down physically, my heart too has been weary and tired. It's been difficult to find enthusiasm for much but the basics of day to day living - and then I sat down to paint with my children. We spread paper out on the floor, pulled out all the brushes and with no plan or destination, just painted together. There was laughter (and some arguing over the paint brushes) and lots of creativity. The energy in the house shifted, just enough to ease my heartache a bit.
Just as the body needs extra care and nourishment at times, so does our heart and soul. When life feels competely upside down the only things that have really helped my overwhelm have been creative practices (and no it is not a perfect cure for the broken heart, but it certainly helps).
Creativity is so much more than a luxury - it is an absolutely needed balm to soothe the aches of life. It is dancing that gets me through so many difficult days. It is cooking something from scratch that keeps me grounded in the moment. It is listening to music that allows me to deeply feel what I cannot express in words - and then let it go. It is painting or writing that allows me to witness my own life, in all its highs and lows, and to marvel at all that is still good and beautiful.
We live in a rapidly changing and sometimes incredibly compex world. There is an almost constant juxtaposition of sorrow and joy, anger and contentment. There is complex duality in the every day, and sometimes the whole of it can be too much to carry, too much to even face!
Making art, creating, makes it easier to hold the complexity of life with grace. It doesn’t make life easy, but it makes life endurable.
Just like vitamins boost our bodies ability to deal with a cold, art boosts our souls capacity to hold the wholeness of life.
When we make art about or for our life, we are better able to integrate and let go of whatever we no longer need. We get to nourish the heart by witnessing our own happiness, our own pain.
And then this is where the magic really happens - in this process of creatively owning and expressing our one wild and precious life we can discover (and rediscover over and over) that life is actually a love story. Everything is a love story. Snow falling on icy streets. Candlelight flickering at night. Little fingers gripping tightly to toys. Sleeping babies breathing quietly next to you. Roses blooming in the summer, purple lilac flowers waving in the wind. Smiling at the cashier in the grocery store. Laughing in the drive through. A strangers hand holding the door open. A whistling kettle and moonlight glinting in the window.
Everything is a love story - the entire universe smoothing your forehead while you sleep, the stars shouting their delight in your existence.
When you make art, of any kind, you begin to see these glimmers of love more often. The simplest things will catch you by surprise and take your breath away. And these loving glimmers become food for your heart and soul, keeping you nourished at times when you need extra support.
Making art, writing poetry, dancing in the living room, all these things help you bear witness to your own life, your own heart, your own joys and struggles. Creativity becomes vitamins for the soul and carries you through the overwhelm, allowing you to fill your metaphorical pockets with glimmers of love that will sustain you through difficult times.
Make art about it.
Make art about it.
Make art for it.
Make art for your heart.
If you are local to my area and would like to learn more about my personal practice of art as soul food, I am presenting a workshop at a retreat in March. The Nourished Woman Retreat - you can learn more about the event and buy tickets here.
Beautiful and true. My wifi isn't working well, and if it were, I would send you Audre Lorde's amazing essay "Poetry is Not a Luxury". If you're not familiar with it, consider it essential, immediately important reading.
Isn’t it wild how the universe chooses to speak to stubborn people (referring to myself here 😉)? Thank you for this beautiful essay- it spoke to and answered some questions I’ve been pondering in my heart. Here’s to being open to the love story that wants to be told.