Through Creating We Heal

For many months I’ve been thinking that when I figure this out I can write about it. Then I will be able to share my insights and realizations. Once I’m healed I will create. But we don’t need to be healed to create, or have insights. 

It is not after healing that we create. It is through creating we heal. 

Seems obvious put that way. But all too often I find myself intentionally not creating because I don’t know where it will lead.  Creating in the midst of struggle often helps us make sense of the scattered pieces, or at least orders them.Creating in the midst of heartbreak can help us grieve. 

Creating in the midst can help us understand.

We don’t always find the answers on our own. And we don’t always find them through our creations, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile. 

In fact, I was reading a post by singer/poet Mary Lambert  in which she discusses one of my current favorite poems Body Love (check out this poem, seriously).   About the poem she writes:

“I binge ate, cut myself, slept with whoever validated me, and drank to oblivion. I made a vow at 21, when I wrote the final edit of the poem, “Body Love”  that my self-destructive behavior would end with the birth of this writing.”

Up until I read this I assumed it would have been the other way around. After she had healed from past pain, was healthy and able to fully accept herself that only then she would be able to write this poem. 

We can heal through art, whether we create it or see it. Art can heal. I don’t know that we ever entirely heal from anything. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to try. To create to find ourselves and the lessons we may not have been able to realize without the help of our own characters.

Who teaches characters anyway? Do we as authors teach them their lessons, or do they teach us?

I often compliment poetry, music, and other art because it feels so raw and vulnerable. But I am often unwilling to create when I am feeling those same things. I don’t want to show the cracks in the façade I wear.  Maybe I need to allow myself to find peace, epiphany or even beauty through the mess.

Beauty comes from pain, but the pain needn’t be over to see the pain. 

We are all broken. I will probably never stop being broken. That should be more motivation to create, be raw and authentic, not less.

“We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction”

 Yellowbird by Andrea Gibson

Fictional Friends

Let me start off by saying that I am a fiction lover. I am book lover in general but fiction will always hold a special place my heart, and time (I read a lot).  This bias does color the way I see the world and my interactions with others, as it should.

The other day I was out in public and overheard a mother say to her eight-year-old son

“He can’t be your friend.  He is a fictional character. He is funny and makes you laugh on tv, he is NOT your friend.”

The kid was CRUSHED. With one careless comment his mom took away his friend.  I almost went up to the kid and told him to make friends with as many fictional characters as possible. Some of my best friends and people I have learned the most from are fictional characters.  

Let’s be clear. I understand that a fictional friend is not the same as a real friend. You can’t physically invite Mrs. Weasley, or whoever it maybe, for a sleepover.  But that doesn’t mean she can’t comfort you, or that you can’t laugh with her, or most importantly learn with and from her. 

I also understand that maybe this particular depth didn't have an incredible amount a depth. But the world is much too hard to take away laughter and a fun-filled friendship from anyone. Let him enjoy the world while it is still simple and filled with laughter.

We should be encouraging children to read and expand their imaginations through fictional characters, not dismissing them. Fictional characters and stories teach us about others, ourselves and more that we never would have learned otherwise. 

When we count out the ability to make friends with fictional characters, we are counting out our own capacity for empathy. To understand the perspective of another. Without this kind of powerful empathy our world becomes a colorless binary – what is me and what is not. What a bland and narrow-minded world to allow a child, yourself, or anyone to live in. There are so many perspectives and lessons in life, many of which are nearly impossible to experience without the help of another, fictitious or not. 

Please if you do anything encourage these relationships. Let the little boy (and yourself) be friends with as many fictional characters as possible.

There is always so much more to the world than our philosophies could even dream of.

Searching for Real Atonement

We all search for atonement. Maybe not all the time. But you do something you swore you wouldn’t. Something that you didn’t even realize you did until it was too late. And shame sets in. There is no way to make it right. No way to take back what was said or done. The reaction is our desire for atonement. Our desire to make it right. Our desire to forget. Everyone’s search is not the same some hide, dispel reality through movies and books, write, run. Some blog. We donate to charity. We do something that hurts us in order to somehow atone for what was done to feel the pain like we inflicted.

And for a little while it seems to work. We can forget reality, what was done. We have made up for our own mistakes. We can make our problems disappear or at least make up for them.

But the relief is fleeting.

This type of atonement is not real. It is the fiction that we momentarily have to believe in order to continue.

I don’t know that everyone experiences this. I have never asked. But I have to believe that this is something we all experience, search for and fight. I know I do. I cannot believe it is just me. Something about it seems to be too…human, for it to be something only I search for.

We cannot make our own atonement. Yet we keep running to these things, trying new options and combinations. At the end of it reality always comes back. We must still live and deal with what was done.

We are filled with the potential for good and evil. Solzhenitsyn thought that the dividing line of good and evil was not us and them, but through the center of all of us. Humanity is fallible, but it is what we do with our fallibility that defines us.

At some point we have to stop running. We have to face our faults and each other. Life is not about covering our shame with pills. We need to stop believing that a perfect façade means a perfect life, and that that kind of perfection is desirable. Until we are willing to be honest with each other we will not find earthly atonement.

It is only through brokenness that we can find real atonement. Not the kind that comes from ourselves.  There cannot be forgiveness where it is not asked.

Maybe if we began to offer real forgiveness to each other. Maybe if we began to offer real acceptance with dignity. Then maybe would we not only find something closer to wholeness on earth, but begin to really believe the offer of Divine atonement in way that radically changes life.

… and to think we still claim the greatness of our society and culture.

Truth of Kindness

First off, I want to say I’m all for honesty. I think there are too many situations we have created where truth has not been spoken. Ultimate love takes truth. Love is often speaking truth where no one else will. However, I think too many of us in my generation have jumped on the honesty bandwagon and forgotten the beauty of kindness. Being honest is not mutually exclusive to being kind.

In fact, the best honesty is spoken with kindness, love allows no other way.

I don’t often advocate for sugar-coating tough truths, that often makes them even more difficult to handle. And this is not me pushing for a sugar-coated world. It is me saying we need to consider the dignity of others in our speech and action.

Many people are striving to be so ‘real’ with others that they forget that everyone has feelings that must be accounted for. This is not to baby a person, but when giving an opinion that may be harsh there are kind and cruel ways to do. Let us not continue to confuse honesty and cruelty.

We need honesty. There is often so little of it in our conversations and culture. Our need for honesty does not justify us treating others as if their thoughts and needs did not matter.

We are taught kindness in kindergarten, and like many of the other seemingly simple kindergarten lessons it is for a reason. Kindness is important. However, kindness to those we do not like can be an agonizing task. A worthwhile task, but a difficult one. We are often remembered by our choices in terms of kindness. Emma Woodhouse has undergone condemnation for generations because of her one major unkind act.

Even if you do not particularly like or love a person or their actions that does not excuse unkindness. We are all human beings innately deserving of dignity and decency. Believing anything else allows for atrocities of cruelest degree. There is enough wrong with our world that we do not need to add our own pettiness to it. Leave the manipulations and cruelty to middle school girls. And let our words be filled with truth in kindness.

Let us speak truth in all we say. But also allow all we say to reflect our love.

Overcoming Pride for the Beauty of Real Love

Okay so we all know that pride is bad. I mean it is in nearly every piece of decent literature and something you have likely been told since you could walk. It is important knowledge, I’m not going to knock that or try to disagree with Milton, Spenser etc. (I mean seriously what would the point be of disagreeing with them, automatic incorrect.) But it is deeper than that. 

Pride keeps us from being able to love each other. We allow our pride to become more important than the beautiful and desperate person sitting in front of us. We have disagreements with friends and family that take a toll on our pride and then lose them and the opportunity to love. All for what? The ability to say that we might have been right?

Don’t get me wrong, we need to be able to speak truth and have honest conversations.  But we should never allow our pride to overrule our love. That is tragedy. The fact that we don’t even realize that is the reality more often than is one of the tragedies that marks humankind.

It does not end have to end there though. Tragedy is always a choice and in this life we can choose our own endings. And the solution is real love.

Real love has very little to do with the feelings that we usually associate with love. This kind of love is not feeling swoony when you are near your crush. Or what the movies show. There is not anything inherently wrong with these feelings of affection. But do not mistake them for love.  

Real love is wanting the other person’s best interest, even if it hurts you. Real love is when you do something that you would rather not do, because you know it will make the person you love happy and make their life better. Real love is rarely demonstrated in times when life is easy. Love comes through in tough times, the desire to stick by someone no matter what happens. This is not necessarily romantic love, but love for anyone.

This kind of love is hard. It takes work to really love a person. You have to deal with the messiness of life. Love does not allow relationships to stay at a surface level. It is much easier and prideful to not love this way, but without it life is not worth it.

It is this kind of love that becomes impossible with our blinding pride. To not love this way is a kind of pride. It tells others that they are disposable. People are never disposable. People are not meant to exist in the isolation created by pride. Pride keeps us from truly connecting with others. We need to stop being so concerned about not being perfect and more concerned with the well-being of others.  

 Life is messy for all of us.

When we would rather save face than be honest and vulnerable – we lose. This is no ordinary loss, it is a type of loss more tragic than we usually encounter in other circumstances. Not only do we hurt ourselves by this kind of choice, we hurt everyone around us. We disengage from the ability to truly love others.  People lose the love they so desperately want and need from you and in turn you also lose out on those relationships. A vicious and painful cycle.

Life is not about appearances. We place so much emphasis and pride on what people may or may not think of us that we allow our value to become surface level, rather than search for depth. There is so much more in this life that is more valuable than outward appearances. Move on.

Be willing to be wrong. Accept that someone else may not view life as you do. It is only through this kind of connection that we can truly understand each other.

“It's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work.”  - Morgan Freeman in Seven