Unblocking the artist heart

Yemaya (artist Tania Pomales)

Today I want to talk about pain... the kind of pain you feel when you have lost a beloved soul in your life.  I want to talk about how that intersects with the life of an artist, and I want to talk about what happens when that grief becomes a blockage to your creative process. 

I awoke at about 10am this morning; quite late for me recently as I have been getting up between 5am and 8am every morning to create time for meditation and exercise.  This morning I woke up with a soul so heavy I felt like physically walking was a struggle.  I actually felt kind of drunk without even drinking, or as my mom used to say, "you look like you are asking one foot permission to move the other."  My mom.  I miss her so much, and I realized that the heaviness I was feeling was that grief, that longing to be able to sit down and talk to her or hug her.  Today, it was screaming out of my chest, begging to be heard, to be held, to be seen.  Burning like a hot coal painfully scorching the flesh of the hand holding it.  This was my hot coal today.  At some point I had to be able to let it go, or it would continue to hurt, and who wants to feel that all day? Certainly not me; I have work to do. 

So what do you do when you feel this way but you really have, despite the feelings of sadness, the desire to create? What if it isn't even grief? What if it's just depression (something I have dealt with for over 20 years)? What do you do? How do you find the courage?  How do you find the ability to unbind your soul so that it can flow gracefully through the rivers of creation? 

I have some suggestions. 

When I feel this way, I tell myself first and foremost that it is ok.  It is ok to feel these emotions.  You are, after all, a human being, and emotions are part of the human condition.  Denying yourself the permission to feel is denying your very soul the ability to express what it feels.  Never do that.  It is counterproductive to your ability to cultivate peace, love, and healing in your life.  

After I have acknowledged I am feeling this way, I go about my daily things: brush teeth, shower, coffee, breakfast, meditation.  It is important, at least for me, to have some kind of routine to start my day.  This does a very important transformation for me: I am telling myself that I am being productive in some capacity by at least meeting some basic needs of personal care.  This might be ALL that you do in a day, and if it is, that is also ok.  Give yourself the rest you need, but try to remember that tomorrow is another day to try again and that you are an amazing spirit capable of extraordinary things... and that you are WORTHY of all that is good.  I know that sounds a little odd, but trust me, it helps.  It helps plant a seed for self awareness, growth, and the idea that you can do anything you want to do in life because you deserve to be happy.  We live in a society that discourages this kind of thinking.  I encourage you to profoundly disagree with this societal notion and make the life you want for yourself on your terms.  

If you have not already, attempt wholeheartedly to create and maintain a meditative practice in your life.  Designate a space in your home as a place for quiet contemplation.  Try to sit quietly for at least 10 minutes a day.  Go within.  As you attempt to do this, your mind will fill with endless chatter.  Acknowledge these thoughts, but let them pass.  Do not dwell.  Do not steep your soul in worry.  Do not catastrophize.  Acknowledge.  Witness quietly the sounds around you.  Over time, you will learn to be able to quiet your thoughts, and this time of silence will become something you look forward to.  Since establishing and maintaining a meditative practice in my life, my creativity has gone up, and my ability to navigate the peaks and valleys of life has gotten more resilient.  There is a universe within you connected to the universe around you.  Learn to love it... and learn to listen to it with compassion. 

Now, you find yourself in your studio ready to create, wanting to create, but you feel as if you are facing a massive wall with no way to get around it.  This wall... this wall is your canvas.  It is your block of clay or marble.  It is your pen and paper.  It is your wood and chisel.  It is not your enemy.  How do you befriend the wall?  You create.  "But how?" you ask.  "I am feeling so uninspired," you proclaim.  Every time I feel creatively blocked, the only way to unblock myself is to create more.  It doesn't matter if it is art I consider to be garbage on any other day when I feel immensely inspired.  It doesn't matter if it is technically correct or incorrect.  I just draw.  I put lines on the paper.  I often do this with pen when I am feeling blocked.  The idea that I cannot erase means there are no mistakes, only journey.  There are no accidents, only finding of oneself.  Art is a very personal journey to me.  I am not my art, but I find myself within my art.  My creative block always coincides with some kind of personal trauma or problem that I need to resolve, and my inability to resolve it permeates into all levels of my being, including art, my favorite thing in the world.  And so to confront that blockage is also to confront myself.  I keep a sketchbook specifically for this practice of unblocking.  It is my playground to do whatever I want.  There are no limits, no parameters, no idea, only flow.  Eventually the damn breaks. It can only withstand so much pressure, you see. 

During one of my mother's last hospital stays in 2018, I packed a bag of art supplies and stayed there for a week with her.  I was horrified.  I was depressed.  I knew she was going to die soon... maybe not this visit, but soon.  She had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which is an interstitial lung disease with no known cause or cure.  I remember when I packed my bag I said to myself, "This is a waste of time. You know you won't make anything."  But I packed the bag anyway.  I ended up drawing by her bedside as she slept.  I had felt so blocked for several days already because I felt so hopeless.  I knew I had to confront this or it was going to consume me in such a way that I didn't even dare think of the outcome.  My pain was my creative block.  It was a valley.  You cannot have peaks without valleys in life, and this was my valley at the time.  It is imperative to understand that life isn't a pair of rose colored glasses where everything is seen through pink and gleeful eyes.  That isn't how it works.  The sooner you understand that, the more peaceful you will become.  I promise.  And you will learn to navigate. 

Another thing that may be of immense help is to work with a medium you don't normally use.  This is a mind/concentration challenge.  When my mother died, I began painting in watercolors.  It was a very challenging medium, but the challenge is where the healing took place for me.  As I focused my mind on learning this new medium, I cultivated within me a greater sense of patience and appreciation.  The water did what it wanted on the paper, and I learned to respect that.  I even said, "Do as you wish" to the painting (Yes, I DO talk to my art. As long as it doesn't answer back, we're good.).  This respect taught me that I am not- I cannot possibly be- in control of everything.  That is an impossibility in this universe.  I learned to let go, and as I let go, I also let go of sadness, of pain, of the idea that I would never be able to overcome this pain of not having my mother by my side anymore.  I grew as a person.  I wholeheartedly recommend trying new art mediums when life gets dark.  You will learn that you have an immense amount of fortitude within you by doing this.  

I will leave you with these profound words by Sufi poet Rumi:

Don't Go Back To Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

~ Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

From Essential Rumi