Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘words’

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?

“Just Before Sunrise Over the Port of Tampa” by ShootsNikon on flickr

 

Around two years of age in a child’s life is a fascinating time developmentally and otherwise.  A child is learning the world one step at a time and one word at a time.  They are understanding balance and gravity from the inside out and beginning to discover language and the capacity for their mouths to dictate how they interact with the world. 

 

I worked in daycare for about 3 years with 2 year olds and I saw that experience every day: it was a priviledge to watch the little explorers expedition through life with fresh eyes.  I spent  a lot of time reminding these novice linguists to, as I put it to them, “Use your words.”  A  seemingly simple yet often vastly difficult and complex request which I definitely did not fully understand the intricacies of at the time.

 

All of my endeavors in the mind/body sphere of healing come from a place of understanding that words are often not enough to express emotion, at times words are not even possible when experiencing emotionality.  Today was one of those days where I felt that literally, palpably, and painfully in my own experience.  Having spent the  last five days moving to Florida from New Jersey, which included a north to south coastal drive with two dogs and my sister (my husband followed about half a day behind with U-Haul and his father as copilot) and unloading and arranging a household and a lifetime of things, I just concluded this five day whirlwind by dropping my husband off at the airport in the pre-dawn hours of this morning.

 

The sky was dimly lit by deep vibrant blues with smoky gray clouds jutting out of the horizon and the rain poured in spurts from one mile to the next.  My husband drove to the airport and I took in my first pre-sun morning in the Sunshine State as I held tight to his hand, not certain of when we would see each other again.  I found myself fumbling for words to crystallize or explicate our last moments before parting but found none.  The simple phrase, “Use your words,” came to mind which made me scoff at my younger self who requested this task of fledgling vocalist toddlers like it was just the natural path of communication.  I found myself exploring this phrase and dissecting it.  In that moment a breath, a silent moment, a touch of two hands clasped together with intention surpassed any word in any verbal language. 

 

Sometimes using your words is an unnecessary, even a superfluous action, that distracts from more intense connection; a moment spent in silence with hands intertwined and breath imbibing the last moments together. 

 

See how nature–trees, flowers, grass–grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Mother Teresa

“i wanna hold your hand” by batega on flickr