Heartache
On creativity and self-care in a turbulent world
Like so many others, I have experienced deep heartache this week.
Also like others, this distress has been manifesting physically for me.
When I logged off work yesterday, I slept for half an hour and awoke feeling more exhausted than I did before my nap. Then, utterly unmotivated and looking for a distraction, I scrolled through Twitter; of course, Twitter was being flooded with alarming new details and heated discourse about the massacre in Texas.
There seemed to be no means of release for the tension coiled inside my body.
Finally I settled on watching a webinar from cartoonist Jessica Abel about productivity for creatives. I filled my emotional support water bottle, curled up with a fuzzy blanket on the blue velvet armchair in my office, and took pages’ worth of notes.
By the end of the webinar, my chest had loosened.
My mind spun with ideas instead of existential dread and outrage.
When Alec returned home from preschool pickup, I had the spiritual and mental capacity to play My Little Pony with the kiddo, running wild and barefoot in the grass, leaping from swings to the slide to the garden box. I found myself newly delighted by her freckles and her imagination.
By stepping back and letting myself breathe for an hour, I had made room for more than just fear.
None of the personal or public upheavals from this week had dissipated; but they wouldn’t have dissipated if I had spent that hour roiling in anxiety either.
The difference was that now my heart brimmed with gratitude as well as grief.
With exhilaration as well as uncertainty.
This is what art can do for us. In unsettling times, it can be a refuge for both the creator and the consumer. We can care for ourselves and for others in continuing to pursue our craft.
We can sow creative seeds quietly, patiently, as we also sit with the shared pain of a turbulent world.