Since about May, something has opened up in me, and while I’ve experienced a great deal of growth and reconnection to my body and experience, it has also been accompanied by anxious thoughts and spirals that have not been my norm. I’m doing my best to cope, validate, and feel through the fear, but I also tend to analyze how I’m feeling instead of actually…feeling.
Something that I’m finding, however, is that listening to music while walking or laying on the floor and reading stories as well as writing my own seems to help me form my inner experience into something that makes sense. Making meaning, for me, tends to take away the edge of anxiety.
Throughout human history, we sat in circles around a fire to tell stories. Some told of myths, some told of experience, but all of it held a truth that the sharer thought important to pass on to others. While we may not be sitting around a campfire every night, we are still in that circle when we give and receive stories through whatever mediums most align with who we are.
When Declan was born, where did I go for advice? Mommy blogs and expertly written books on secure attachment and brain development. When I left my marriage, what did I do? I went on Substack to find newsletters from others who went through the same thing. Now that I am experiencing pretty significant shifts in my personal and spiritual growth, what do I crave? The voices of other women who have also walked through the dark forest of their own becoming.
Analyzing my anxiety, the new sensations in my body, and the spiritual opening that is happening really seems to send me further into inner chaos. Instead of turning it into a powerful catalyst for change, I’m afraid that I don’t have what I need to overcome this. Instead of being able to lean into the process and trust that I’ll find my way, I’m telling myself that I’ll stay lost until I get this “right.” Instead of holding and making space for the new feelings that are coming into my awareness, I’m trying to run away from them.
But when I listen to a great podcast, hear a song that touches a deep part of me, find a book that really resonates, or share my story in this newsletter, something different happens. I find courage knowing that I’m not the only person who’s experienced what I’m going through, and it’s possible to come out on the other side stronger, kinder, and more connected. It offers a mirror through which I can see myself reflected and perhaps offer compassion to a part of me that I didn’t know needed to be witnessed. It also connects me more deeply with my own humanity and that of others.
I wonder if art really is one of the ways that we experience co-regulation. What if great art, the kind that’s truly honest about the joys and aches of being human, has the power to rewrite our own stories and infuse them with the safety to be authentic? I’ve long understood that being vulnerable with others offers a sort of permission slip for them to be vulnerable as well, and putting out the type of art that’s deeply moving is vulnerable as hell because, love it or hate it, it makes you feel something. As the creator of art, you can’t control how others receive it—once it’s out in the world, you kind of have to let go of your expectations of what people will think.
Sure, some people won’t like to see your full authenticity, and they’ll either quietly leave or spout hateful opinions disguised as subjective truth. I’m starting to believe that sometimes we reflect back to them things that they aren’t willing to look at, let alone accept. But it’s kind of magical what happens when folks tell you how much what you’ve created means to them, whether it’s one person or a thousand. I’m learning that those people, they are my people.
Recently, a subscriber and friend said they love receiving my newsletters because it feels like something they are able to take in without feeling obligated to respond to; Jason has responded a few times, saying that what I wrote helped him give language to things he’s also been experiencing in our separation; one person even told me that they feel the need to run a bath with candles and bubbles before opening my newsletter.
This is solidarity. This is community. This is what happens when I show up with my full self, TRULY not knowing how anyone will receive what I’m offering. It is both a release of what isn’t truly me and a reclaiming of the parts I had to hide for so long, letting others know it’s safe to do the same. This is the legacy I hope to offer my children, my friends’ children, and the children I have yet to meet—to delight in their art and their stories, and allow them to hold on to the very parts of themselves that the world so often asks them to give up in order to be ‘good.’
Our stories don’t need to resonate with everyone; that’s simply not possible. But we contain medicine for this aching world that cannot be shared when we are shrinking ourselves to fit in. If loneliness is an epidemic that’s worse for your health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day1, I daresay we ought to lean into fostering true belonging in the circles we find ourselves.
The thing is, we’re all kind of wandering on our paths through life, and sometimes we get a little lost. Perhaps sharing art is like planting guideposts to offer light to your fellow travelers: at best, it offers a way forward; at the very least, it provides company in the dark as we wait for daybreak.
I wonder when your art has offered light to someone else, whether you were aware of it or not.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.