The healing power of creativity (part 1)

Saturday evening I sat around a fire at my daughter's nursery and sang a song for peace. Jack Durtnall taught us the song, a traditional peace blessing that had only that week been given a melody by his friend. A forest school instructor, she was inspired when a group of children spontaneously recited the poem as they planted four white pines as a gesture of peace.

I was surprised at the flood of emotions singing the song brought up in me. I wept. I thought I was the only one. I wasn't. After singing it through a few times he invited us to record it so we could remember the song:

It's got me thinking about the healing power of creativity.

In the face of so much suffering creativity can feel...pointless. But I think there's actually a lot that

I’ve come up with 6 ways that creativity can support us when we’re suffering. (I'll cover 3 today and 3 next week.)

1. Creativity can help us feel our feelings.?We’re pretty emotionally stunted as a society. Most of us have very little space where we have permission and support to feel uncomfortable feelings. But feelings are meant to give us important information about what matters to us, inspire action, and then flow out of us. Like water, when the natural flow is obstructed, stagnation becomes a breeding ground for dis-ease. I often advise coaching clients who are trying to connect with their emotions to "let art do its job". Let it make you feel something. If I need a good cry I know watching Little Women (1994) or Sense and Sensibility (1995) will do the trick. While experiencing the creations of others can be incredibly moving, we take the healing power of creativity to the next level when we engage in expressing ourselves creatively.

“Darling, you feel heavy because you are too full of the truth. Open your mouth more. Let the truth exist somewhere other than inside your body.” ~Della Hicks-Wilson

Sama’ Abdulhadi, a techno DJ, said in a BBC documentary, “The only way that Palestinians are still gonna survive is that they let out all the anger. Otherwise they’re gonna go crazy.” That insight emerged from her own experience. In another interview, she said, “Techno saved me, because I was an angry person…It became this healthy ritual for me that, whenever I was angry, I just danced to techno, because it let it all out.”

For Rafeef Ziadah, spoken word is her creative outlet of choice:

What's an emotion you may have been suppressing? How might you express it creatively?

2. Creativity can be a source of comfort. Creativity can also be calming. Research shows that being around beauty can lower cortisol and alleviate stress. Engaging in the arts can lower anxiety. They can also help distract us from pain. When I need comfort sometimes I listen to Bob Dylan's Shelter From the Storm or the Wailin' Jennys Light of a Clear Blue Morning and I feel better in a matter of minutes. When a friend was experiencing chronic pain in her prolonged recovery from a tragic accident it was Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes that helped her make it through.

Comedy is a powerful creative outlet that can bring lightness to suffering in a very healing way. Suad Amiry, an architect-turned-writer-by-accident, has a hilarious TEDx Talk (if you're short on time, start from 10min in) where she talks about her comic memoir of surviving 42 days of military lockdown...with her mother in law. Amer Zahr, "on a mission to heal through humor", founded the annual Palestine Comedy Festival. He said, "Laughter is therapy. We need to show the world that Palestinians love to laugh, we love life, we love art." Other Palestinian comedians like, Aron Kader and Mo Amer manage to make a whole range of tragic realities somehow seem hilarious.

Again, while we can turn to the creativity of others for comfort, we can equally engage in creative activities with the intention of seeking comfort. Many people find solace in cooking, baking, knitting, sewing, weaving, woodworking, pottery, photography, dancing, drawing, and painting. Even something as simple as doodling can help alleviate anxiety.

What's one comforting creative activity that you could try (again)?

3. Creativity can be a form of nonviolent resistance. Creative expression can be a means to highlight suffering that might otherwise go unnoticed. Picasso put a spotlight on the atrocities perpetrated by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War when they bombed Guernica in 1937.

Protest songs can galvanize a movement like Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, inspire positive change like Mavin Gaye's What's Going On, or immortalize an event like U2's Bloody Sunday.

Almost 70 years later, Banksy made protest art on the segregation wall in Palestine. While Banksy was creating the piece, “The Israeli security forces did shoot in the air threateningly and there were quite a few guns pointed at him.” However, Banksy questioned, “How illegal is it to vandalize a wall if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice?”

For Dareen Tatour it's not with a can of spray paint but a pen and paper that she engages in nonviolent resistance, to shine a light on the suffering of her people, "to be a voice for those who have no voice." In an interview she reflected, "Writing political and resistance poetry in Palestine is tantamount to documenting what is happening to us because of the occupation." As punishment for her poetry, the Israelis sentenced her to spend more than two years in prison and under house arrest.

Banksy famously said:

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

What's a cause that you care about? What's a creative way you could highlight the suffering or make fun of the absurdity of the situation?

Check out these funny protest signs for inspiration (I particularly appreciated #1, #6, #13 and #30).