Uhh… Hi there. It’s been much longer than my “prescribed” 4 days. Sorry about that, but I am writing today, Boxing Day on the East Coast of Canada, with good news and renewed energy. I am amazed but it seems to be working… I am writing and reading and feeling a bit better, due in no small part to the 4 day ‘writing to heal’ challenge suggested by Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin.
It didn’t happen like I predicted. Day 1 Hubby took the boys out for a walk and I sat down to write, careful to follow Dr. Pennebaker’s instructions: 20 minutes, quiet, no disruptions, write about your deepest emotions. It was hard, at first, to access how I felt about my health struggles, harder than I expected. I sat for a few minutes without typing anything and of course, berating myself for having nothing to write. “Come on, you’ve only got 18, no 17, no 16 minutes left to write.” It occurred to me that those thoughts were not inspirational or helpful even and so eventually I just decided to start writing. This was the opening idea:
“Part of my struggle is that I’ve never really been sick. Oh sure, I’ve had colds, the flu, Norwalk swept through our family once when it was just the hubby and our first son, but I’ve never has any chronic illness. I’ve had a healthy back story. Until my 2nd pregnancy.”
Well, once I connected with what I was feeling, it was like a dam had broken and I couldn’t stop. Twenty minutes went by in what seemed like a deep breath and as I exhaled, I re-read what had poured out of me. I discovered a profoundly clear thought:
“But there were tears. I sat in the car, on my way home from the doctor’s office, a life-changing prescription in my hands, and cried because my body had never let me down before. Even now thinking of myself in that way causes stinging, salty tears to brim in my eyes. I feel let down… by nothing less than my own self.”
This idea summarized my whole emotional approach to being unwell. I saw it as my own fault and felt that there had to be a way that I could fix my health. In fact, in an appointment with a naturopathic Doctor I asked how did I do this to myself… My own locus of control is deeply internal and far too focused on finding my own fault in this issue… I was shocked when she responded that pregnancy and environmental toxins could cause my ‘unwellness’ just as often as poor treatment of oneself. I felt relief that it was possible that I hadn’t entirely done this to myself.
And that was only Day 1! I sat down to journal on Day 2 and found myself brimming with an idea for a short story, due in part to a dream I’d had and an inspiring podcast I had been listening to. I decided to use the 20 minutes to see where the short story would go… It’s still going. I started and can’t stop. I am stealing 5, 10, 15 minutes here and there to continue the first draft. And the biggest surprise is that I haven’t written a short story in years… Most of my writing has focused on poetry, scripts and more recently, this blog. I was again shocked! Here is a brief excerpt:
“Two babies had left her hips and stomach decorated in pale stripes the color of inner onion skins. There was a roundness in her lower belly that had not been there before and a slight sag at the sides of her hips. But Mac insisted that he didn’t care about the 13 pounds of baby weight that stubbornly remained, although she felt she would be more convinced of that if he had thrown her on the bed passionately, immediately after saying so. He complained of being so tired and she was too; working full time and raising two kids was exhausting, but still, she craved sex, longed for it, imagined illicit trysts in her head while doing the dishes or folding laundry.”
Sexy huh? That’s just the tip of the iceberg – I sincerely never knew I had it in me but something from Elizabeth Gilbert’s podcast ‘Magic Lessons‘ resonated within me. She told one artist to think of her writing as a lover, to have an affair with inspiration, to steal away for secret moments, to have a sexy, dirty, nasty, wicked creative life. As a result Day 3 and 4 were taken up with more development of the short story and some poetry. I considered the blog but was swept away by the short story and how I was emancipating myself as I wrote it.
And here I am, I returned to ‘iamsomeonesmother’ and more than ever before that title suits me. I am someone’s mother but I am also a wife, a daughter, a sister, a teacher and equally important, a creator, a writer, an artist. Taking, no making time to write over the past few weeks has improved how I feel overall. Additionally, taking some supplements and making a few diet changes seems to be calming down some of the joint inflammation as well. But I realize that it was a combination of pain – the physical ache of busy hands and feet that simply don’t have time to stop and the emotional ache that comes from the burden of an unused talent (another idea from Elizabeth Gilbert’s podcast – she is sharing ideas and strategies that are restructuring my creative identity!).
So, yes, the Pen IS Mightier than the Pill. I have moved past some of the blocks I was having artistically because I stopped to write about my health and happiness, both of which are intimately intertwined with my creative needs.
iamsomeonesmother 