Working through discouragement – from darkness back into light

This past week, I have been mired in discouragement.

It’s not uncommon for this time of year. The holidays are over and the dull days of winter are settling in.

It hit me hard this time – right after the excitement of the labyrinth at New Year’s Eve. Add to the seasonal blues a few pieces of bad news, some dreams that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, an argument or two, some money stress, and a little rejection I hadn’t anticipated, and I was stuck in the middle of a serious case of the doldrums.

There was a big ugly cloud hanging over my head and I wasn’t pleasant to be with. It’s not completely gone yet, but it’s getting better.

A silver lining to that black cloud turned out to be the mandala practice I’ve committed to for 2012. Despite my lack of energy or enthusiasm, I was committed to making a mandala every day. When I made that commitment, only a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t anticipate how much I’d need it so soon. It turned out to be my saving grace.

Yesterday, in the middle of one of my darkest moments, when I was questioning my worth because of the rejection I was taking way too seriously, I snuck away from my family, put my head on my desk and cried.

After the tears dried up, I picked up my mandala journal. And then I did something I’ve never done before – I made a mandala completely void of colour. If you’ve seen my other mandalas, you know that colour is important part of me, so this felt like a significant departure – and yet it was one of the best things I could have done.

I made a lament mandala. Lament is one of those old words that we should reclaim in our vocabulary. According to dictionary.com, a lament is “a formal expression of sorrow or mourning, especially in verse or song: an elegy or dirge”. Laments feel too depressing to celebrate or honour, and so we mostly ignore them or hide them in our own private journals. Unlike the writers of the Old Testament, we rarely publish our laments for the world to see. Our discouragement is kept in the closet.

And yet, because I know that many of you suffer from the same kind of discouragement that attacks me now and then (we’re all wonderful flawed humans), I’m going to share my lament mandala. I love the process and I love the result. I think it’s a powerful tool for anyone who needs to find a path through their discouragement.

I started with the word LAMENT in the centre, grey on grey, and then drew a winding path, representing my journey through discouragement, loss, sadness, pain, etc.

After my lament mandala was complete, something significant happened. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with it as a piece of art, but more than that, I fell in love with the big ball of humanity that is my discouragement, my sadness, and my rejection. I felt like a mother, nurturing her own child through the dark places.

And then I wanted to make another mandala. It felt like an unfinished process. My lament child was urging me to birth something else.

I opened another page and drew a circle. Inside the circle, I started writing my thoughts in random colours all over the page. At first, the things that were coming out were quite dark. “Why so much pain?” “Why so many road blocks?” “How do I deal with rejection?” and “Do I need to find a job again?”

But then, almost like magic, the words started shifting. The mandala-making was shifting my mood. I started to write more hopeful things, starting with the things I need, like “I need a miracle, Sophia”, and then moving on to a recognition of the importance of what I’m doing, “my work is important” and “I need to keep doing this work” and “I want to teach creative people.”

When it felt like there were enough words, I picked up the pencil crayon that felt the best at the moment. Surprisingly, it was orange – bright, cheery, hopeful orange. And in the centre, a glowing circle of yellow.

While I finished it, my observer-self showed up, looking on as if from above, witnessing myself doing my creative practice, recognizing the shift, and knowing how incredibly important it is and how much I need to continue to share it.

Like I said in my last post, THIS is important – this doodling, this mandala-making, this creative practice. THIS is my gift to share with the world. This isn’t just something I’m doing for fun – it changes people. It changes communities. It changes paradigms. It helps people enter the chaos, disappointment and lament, follow the paths where they lead us, and eventually emerge into new light.

This is too important not to share.

And so I will do my best to share it, starting with my upcoming workshop, Creative Discovery. (This one is an in-person class in Winnipeg, but I’ll create future online versions.)

If you want to learn more about mandala-making, laments, and other forms of creative practice, let me know in the comments. I want to hear what you need. I want to know how I can serve you in this work. I want to offer things that will help people work through whatever they need to work through.

Because THIS is my “original medicine” (in the words of Gail Larsen).

If you want to join me in this journey, please sign up for my newsletter (on the right side of the screen) to stay informed about future offerings.

 

Creative grief

mementos left at a common grave for stillborn babies

I have become an intimate friend of grief.

As a young child, watching my grandfather die on the front lawn, I first came to know grief as the jagged, breathless song on my grandmother’s lips.

I have carried death in my womb and laboured with great sobs of agony while I birthed a child named Matthew and his siamese twin named Grief.

I have raced frantically across the prairies, a newly fatherless daughter, holding fresh grief like a dagger in my chest.

In the ditch where a storm washed away the blood of my father, I have fallen to my knees and cried out to a distant God who came to me only as Grief incarnate.

I have worn grief as my garment to three funerals in as many months – father, grandmother, uncle.

I have thrown rocks at grief when it threatened to suffocate me both times my beloved’s life hung on the thread he’d attempted to sever.

Grief has come to me as anger, as agony, as fear, as guilt, as a tender companion, as the milk in my unsuckled breasts, as colours on a canvas, as a poem, and as a collection of story threads in my overflowing basket. Grief is both wildly unpredictable and comfortably reliable. Grief pokes its head into my life when I least expect it or when it’s the most inconvenient and then goes into hiding when I’m sure it will be present.

Grief is not one emotion or one experience but many, many emotions, experiences, thoughts, waves, daggers, and physical manifestations.

Grief has been my enemy, my compass, my friend, my lover, my teacher, my poem, my muse, my dance partner, my task-master, and my spiritual director.

Grief is also my paintbrush, my pen, and my musical accompaniment. I have painted my grief, danced my grief, walked with my grief, made mandalas of my grief, painted grief on my body, photographed my grief, made collages out of the things that brought grief to my life, and found almost every creative way possible to metabolize and give shape and form to my grief. Grief is always near at hand when I am most honest in whatever art form I engage in.

Grief does not give us easy journeys. Grief throws rocks in our paths and takes away all the guideposts and maps. It refuses to show up in well-ordered stages along a straight path. Instead, it welcomes us to a tumultuous, chaotic dance.

Without a roadmap for our grief, sometimes the best thing we can reach for is a trusted guide… someone who understands the dance of grief and knows that no two dance partners are the same. Someone who will help us find the practices that will best strengthen and encourage us along our own unique paths.

This past year, I have had many conversations about grief with my trusted friend, Cath Duncan. She is a student of grief, in the best possible way. She understands it on a deep cellular level and has walked the path of it as a true and honest pilgrim. She has studied it like a grief archeologist and scholar, determined to find meaning in what she unearths.

The same can be said about Kara Jones, whose creative work around grief is both breath-taking and challenging.

Together, Kara and Cath have developed a beautiful new program called Creative Grief Coaching Certification, where people in helping professions can learn more about how to support people in grief. I believe in this program wholeheartedly and am thrilled to be one of the guest lecturers who will help participants learn more about how to equip people with creative processes to engage with along the grief journey.

Cath and Kara understand the complexity and nuances of grief. They also understand the importance of seeing grief as a creative process that will transform us if we invite it in. I believe they are just the right people to be offering this beautiful gift to the world.

If you want to learn more about grief, and you believe you have a gift for serving as a creative grief coach, please check it out.

Jump, and I’ll break your fall

(a poem inspired by this news story)

You, in the second story window,
look not to the concrete beneath you,
look not to the fire behind you,
look not to the impossibility around you.
 
Jump, and I’ll break your fall.
 
Your past is burning,
and the next step will cause you pain, but
you must choose, this moment, to live.
 
Jump, and I’ll break your fall.
 
Look to my eyes for courage.
Look to my body for softening.
Look to my arms for kindness.
 
Jump, and I’ll break your fall.
 
Commit to this moment
and my body will commit with you.
Commit to your future
and I won’t let you start alone.
Commit to this choice
and I’ll absorb some of your pain.
 
Jump, and I’ll break your fall.

Eleven years

Tonight we’ll take our children to the graveyard, we’ll talk about what might have been, perhaps shed a tear or two, and then we’ll go out for ice cream to celebrate a life that changed us.

It’s what we do every year on this day. Every year for eleven years.

Today is the eleventh anniversary of the day my son died.

I woke up that morning, eleven years ago, to find out that his heart had stopped during the night. Hours later, he was born. Lifeless. Still. But so very real.

Today is the day that changed my definition of motherhood. Today is the day that I birthed pain and lived to tell the story. Today is the day my breasts filled with the milk of anticipation only to dry out days later when there was no-one to suckle them.

Today is the day I shook my fist at God, and yet turned in the same direction when I needed comfort.

Eleven years in, pain has become my companion, my friend. It doesn’t stab me with raw and brittle edges like it once did. Instead it curls up in a smooth and familiar ball inside my chest, tightening my throat now and then, but mostly gently reminding me that I am alive, that I am well, and that I have a story to share with other wanderers along this path.

Pain is my teacher, guiding me along the path, deepening my experiences and enriching my relationships.

Pain is my gift. It helps me paint the world with richer colours and more honest shapes. It helps me write with truth and courage.

Pain is my story. It frames the world for me and urges me to enjoy the depths of beauty and joy within the frame.

I am forever grateful for the gift that is my son, Matthew. Never let it be said that he did not live a full life.

Turning pain into music: More reflections on our 100 km. walk

kidney march finish line

just a few steps away from the finish line

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the camp? You can just skip the rest of the kilometres for the day, rest up, stay off your blisters for awhile, and start fresh tomorrow.”

We heard that often along the 100 km. walk. Well-meaning organizers, volunteers, and medics wanted to help us avoid some of the pain we were experiencing. They wanted to give us short-cuts, assuring us there was no shame in missing a few kilometres.

Every offer only set our resolve deeper, though. It even made us reluctant to visit the medics when the blisters got particularly ugly. We weren’t there to do 87 km – we were there to do 100.

Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were toes on our feet that were hardly recognizable as toes anymore. Yes, there were moments when there didn’t seem to be a single muscle in our body that was exempt from the overwhelming ache.

But we were there to complete the journey. We were there to test the limits of our endurance. We were there to be present in every painful step.

We live in a culture that likes shortcuts, especially when it comes to pain. We try to rush through grief, thinking that we’ll be better off if we can just put a bandaid on it and get back to real life. We over-medicate, thinking a dulling of the pain will help us feel “normal”. We short-circuit the birthing process (both literal and figurative), with unnecessary c-sections and inductions. We over-consume, thinking that shopping therapy will dull the ache of loneliness or heartbreak. We clamour over quick fixes and fill our lives with cheap throw-away solutions to our problems.

We prefer ten easy steps to one thousand painful ones.

But it’s the thousand painful steps that will change us. It takes those thousand painful steps for us to grow into what we’re meant to be at the end of the journey.

In ten easy steps, we can build little more than a house of cards, not the rich, beautiful temple we are meant to become. A strong wind blows away the house of cards, but the temple withstands the storm.

A fascinating thing happened at the end of our three day journey. We three women, walking together every step of the way, always within about 100 steps of each other, all began to menstruate before the end of the day. In just three days, our cycles aligned (though I wasn’t expecting mine for another week and a half and I’m not sure about the others). Interestingly enough, the next day was the full moon.

I’ve lived with enough roommates, daughters, and sisters to know that it is not unusual for women living in community to end up with cycles that are in sync. I’ve never seen it happen in such a short time, though. Three days of sharing an intense, painful experience, and our bodies were in tune with each other.

Extrapolate that story forward, and you have three women, living in community, whose bodies are preparing to go through the pain and glory of childbirth together. It’s a beautiful, poignant story. Expose three women’s bodies to shared pain and they find a way to support each other that goes much deeper than words.

Women, we are amazing vessels. We birth children and carry each other’s pain. Every month, we shed blood – our little painful sacrifice for the beauty we bear within us.

As an added element to this story, it was pain and childbirth that brought these three women together in the first place. Cath’s loss of Juggernaut led her to a place where walking helped her live through the pain. Christina’s deep compassion for her story and sharing of her pain made her want to support Cath on the journey. My own story of the loss of Matthew bonded me to Cath and made me want to be with her for the journey as well. It was pain that bonded us, pain that we journeyed through together, and pain that caused our bodies to align themselves with each other so that we could most fully support each other.

Our bodies carry wisdom that our minds know nothing about.

Our bodies understand the value of pain.

Without the pain, we don’t have the beauty. Without the blood, we don’t have the birth. Without the sacrifice, we don’t have the growth. Without the sharing of agony, we don’t have community.

We can’t shortcut through the pain. It’s not serving any of us. Shortcutting through our own pain makes us careless of other people’s pain. It makes us careless of the pain we cause Mother Earth.

Mark Nepo talks about pain as the tool that carves the holes in our bodies to make us the instruments through which breath blows and beautiful music is made. When we are present in the pain – when we don’t try to take shortcuts through it – our holes are seasoned and polished and the music comes out sweet and rich.

Imagine an orchestra playing on half-finished instruments, with holes that had never been polished and strings that had never been pulled tight. The music would be dull, lifeless, and out of tune.

Pain begets beauty. 

Pain shines the edges of the holes through which God breathes.

The next step may be painful, but it must be taken nonetheless.

I only hope that your next painful step will be taken in community and that you will be supported in your pain.

And when the pain subsides and you can stand up straight again, let God breath through you and make your music beautiful.

“In stories and in life, pain is our friend. It’s an unwelcome friend, but a friend nonetheless. The good news is if we make friends with our pain, it won’t stay long and it will leave us with a gift. But if we avoid pain, it will chase us down until we finally accept the gift it has to offer.” – Donald Miller

******

Note: Full disclosure – I did take a few painkillers along the way, so I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of martyr. AND I do not want to stand in judgement of anyone who accepted a ride – we each must choose our own thresholds for pain and our own values and reasons for completing a particular journey. There is no shame in being supported through the roughest parts of your journey.

Another note: Cath has created a beautiful offering to help you walk through your pain, called Remembering for Good. She is letting her pain be turned into music.

Pin It on Pinterest