Embody Mental Health

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for the echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly,  I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.                                              byRichard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

The ex-English Major in me wants to deconstruct this sentence from start to finish.  Every word, every comma, every part of it’s structure is dripping with boldness and defiance.  It makes me want to get out of my chair and take action.  What action?  I don’t know but the potency inspires.  Just me? Ok.  So, I can get a little excited and emphatic about words.  That has always been the case.  Since early readings of LM Montgomery’s prose by my mother before I could utter full sentences I have been incited to action by words and brought more alive and bold in my own life by words I have read on a page.  I have dug in with my fingers to the prose and come out invigorated.  Just me again? Maybe.

But there is something about the creative experience, both imbibing it and creating it, that is profound and brings to life our own lives and living worlds to even greater vibrance than before we explored it through the lens of creativity.  Whether painter, scupltor, woodworker, photographer, writer,  or needlepointer there is osmething about the experience of art (creating or absorbing) that makes us be present, be in the now, and explore our own inner landscapes in new ways and to greater depths.  We mine ourselves and our world and up comes something, as Richard Wright states, that is worth saying.  And, as he describes, with every bit we create, every word that we write, even the tiniest reverberation draws us forward to create more and speak louder onto the page or the canvas or film.

Writing has been in my veins ever since I picked up my first pencil.  I had dreams of writing a novel when I was still scribbling on those giant pads with dotted lines in elementary school.  When I went through my traumas in my late teens and suffered for years with PTSD I stopped writing.   My inner landscape had gone numb and I lost myself.  Without the reflection of the word or the will to pick up a pen and speak I had no way to reflect back to myself who I was.  My voice had always been first in paper and then outloud.  When I came crawling out of PTSD years later I had to rediscover me–both in life and on the page.  Who was I? What was my voice? What did I have to say?  My writing life was so imbedded in my “self” and definition of self that I had to rediscover my voice on the page to know what I wanted to say in my life.

I wrote yesterday about empowerment and for me writing has been my voice, my picket sign, my empowerment far more than anything else.  I can write it before I say it.  Whatever “it” is.  Even my own rauma story came out on paper before it ever came off my lips.

What creative experience gets your blood pumping, your energy blazing, your vision of the world more acute and finite?  What creative experience makes your heart sing?  Maybe it is an actual creative art: writing, painting, photography, film, dance, theatre.  Maybe it is just something that brings you fully alive: swimiing, surfing, motorcycle riding, fishing, parenting.

What makes your heart sing?  What do you wish you had in your life to make it more vibrant and alive?   What do you have in your life that brings you that joy and energy for living that you are grateful for?

I thank writing for many things.  I thank my mother for teaching me the love of words.  Words have been my lifeboat.  What is your lifeboat?