Weathering Creative Transitions

Unreasonable cold paid us a visit for a few weeks. It was so cold I swear I could see the bitterness in the air. Relentless, sharp-edged wind aided and abetted the snap. The cold causes my shoulders to scrunch upward in a futile attempt to keep my ears, neck and the rest of me warm but only succeeds in providing my massage therapist more knots to knead. 

Then one day a welcomed reprieve arrived with morning temps above freezing. Looking outside during breakfast that happy day I realized the Tufted Titmouse birds that visit our heated birdbath had lost weight – seemingly overnight. Yet the rhododendron leaves had plumped up again. I had one of those self-gratifying moments of brilliance realizing that the birds and rhododendrons react in opposites to the same effect. During the frigid cold the rhode’s elongated, magnolia-like foliage looked sad, shriveled and folded in on itself, much like my scrunched shoulders in the bitter weather. The Titmouse and other birds had feathers fluffed and puffed. Both of them in their own different way, coping and thriving despite the natural roll-a-coaster dips and rises in temperature. Nature’s inherent creative solutions to changing stimulus.

So it is with my creativity, prone to shrivel or fluff dependent on my internal weather. As an artist and bonafide creative type, it’s sometimes hard to cut slack for myself when my creative disposition is dispossessed, when new ideas stay cloaked under the cold of snow. There are books aplenty offering a myriad of ways to supposedly ward off creative loss and urge it to come out and play. Even so, my creativity sometimes prefers sitting in the backseat instead of the driver’s seat.

The back half of last year particularly compounded my creative dry spell. Two women close to me died. My dear sister-in-law, Jackie, after decades of prolonged coping with ovarian cancer, and my precious, close friend Sue who was diagnosed, withered and gone within eight months from the same cancer. My thoughts, actions, hopes and fears were laser focused on them. On being present and available during their elapsing time left in the game. On hanging on to the thinning strands of hope for miraculous outcomes. On grappling with how much I’d lose when their time ran out. On how empty my heart would be. My life altered. Their deaths ripped out a sizable chunk of my heart. My creativity was shriveled even more. 

It’s been six and five months, respectively, since Jackie and Sue died within a month of each other. Two doors slammed shut, never to be reopened. In her book “The Right to Write”, Julia Cameron addresses closed doors. “It is a spiritual maxim that God never closes one door without opening another. It is a spiritual joke that while this may be true, the hallway in-between is murder.” I’ve been lingering in that hallway of transition along with others, I imagine, affected by Jackie and Sue’s loss.

I own a stack of creative help books that I’ve read and reread, each professing how to keep your creative juices flowing. I’ve done some of the exercises and been inspired by much of the guidance – for a while at least. The reading was mostly thought provoking and rang sound. “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert, “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg, “Steal Like An Artist” by Austin Kleon, “The Muse is In” by Jill Badonsky to name a few.

Despite all the guidance on creativity I’ve consumed, over time I’ve come to be gentle with myself for not being a faithful follower of all the suggestions in those books. I’ve come to know we’re all made up of different stuff and respond in different and often dissimilar ways to life events, much like the birds and rhododendrons response to the cold. What works for one isn’t necessarily the right Rx for all.

I also know, for sure, that the constant about weather, as about life, is change. I’m beginning to sense my leaves plumping up, my feathers hugging neater about my body, my shoulders dropping, relaxing. My internal weather is warming again and there’s a thin sliver of light being cast through the door ahead. I can see that it’s growing wider.   

Posted by carol@mylifewithcreativity.com & filed under Musings. This post has 8 comments.