The Total Artist #1.9: Using mystery to metabolise pain
The post I almost didn't share
Today is a pivot point - bidding farewell to writing, poetry, and mystery, and welcoming our next month of adventure in the world of photography.
But before we move on to our next topic (coming through in the next day or two), I wanted to take a moment to share my biggest personal realisation about mystery.
Which is around the critical role that mystery plays in helping to process pain.
Last week, I had a bad night. It was one of those moments where my sense of wellbeing suddenly crashed. I could try to explain why this happened, but the truth is I don’t really know for sure. The stress of life, the state of the world, my personal trauma history, and the sequence of difficult events that piled up on that day pushed exactly the right buttons to plunge me into grief/distress/frustration/despair/etc. (The big emotions rarely arrive on their own, do they? They always like to bring each other along for company.)
The biggest trigger for all of this, I think, was that I had tried to push my way into processing feelings that were not ready to step into the light just yet. And then tried to cope with this by problem solving my way out of it.
This, unsurprisingly, did not work.
My emotional resilience is fortunately strong enough that it stretched out like a safety net to catch me. I didn’t get stuck in the darkness - my mood gradually lifted over the following days, although there is still a lingering sense of grey-toned heaviness that seems to match the London weather.
When I’m struggling, my immediate impulse is to get as busy as I can - to do as many things as possible to fix the problem and/or fix myself. If I can repair the broken hinge on the cabinet, and return the form I forgot to submit, and meditate, and eat vegetables, and go for a brisk walk, and email five friends, and finally write a website update - well, surely everything will start to feel better. Right?
I’ve read that bison have learned to walk into a snowstorm, because they know the quickest way to get it over with is to walk straight into it rather than away from it.
I try to convince myself that I am doing the same thing with my emotional processing - bravely forging into the challenging places.
And sometimes that is true.
But more often, I am just trying to rush my healing.
Mystery, above all, requires patience. We have to let it exist outside of life’s natural routines. We have to let it unfold in its own time.
And this is why it can be such a good tool for processing pain.
Yesterday, I had a reflexology session - the last from a block I was given during my cancer treatment. I had been saving it for a moment I really needed it. (And that moment had arrived.)
I was really lucky to be with a practitioner who is skilled at working with cancer patients and has a few tricks up her sleeve. So she also led me on a guided meditation. She told me to breathe in all the good in the universe and its love. And then to breathe out and release back to the universe and release back to love whatever I was feeling.
I didn’t have to know what it was that I was letting go of, I didn’t have to stop and identify it. I could release it back to the universe anyway.
It was such a freeing feeling, it almost brought me to tears.
Tonight, just before I sat down to write this post, a friend reminded me of a concept from a natural voice workshop we had done together: the importance of listening to the silence, not just the music.
I feel that concept is present somehow within this writing.
The video I’m sharing below was recorded last week, following that bad night. When I initially filmed it, I didn’t have time to edit it. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure how to turn it into something that felt digestible - it was long, and rambling, with lots of pauses. So I thought, maybe don’t send this one - just tuck it away for yourself.
But tonight, I thought - what are you so afraid of? Just send it. You don’t know who might need to see it.
Because I’ve noticed that it is usually after I share things that it might be more comfortable to brush under the carpet that I get messages or comments from people saying that they felt seen in their own experience.
I have a gorgeous, artistically rich life that I am immensely grateful for - but it is misleading to pretend that it is all happiness and inspiration. I know so many people who are struggling right now - and it is in these moments when we feel most alone.
This video is a bit rough around the edges. And yet…
Maybe those confusing sentences are just bits of mystery poking through. Maybe those pauses are the silence to listen for. Maybe the looping thoughts and topic jumps are their own form of poetry. And maybe the decision about what it all means isn’t up to me anyway.
In this video…
A messy but honest dive into a difficult day. This touches on…
Sobbing at 2am
How we get stuck and why we can’t reach out
The Harvard English Department lecture that has stuck with me to this day
The emotional pre-requisites for facing our pain
The emotional coping technique that helped me get through cancer treatment with a baby
A failed quest to walk 4o minutes (each way!) for nonexistent guacamole
Final creative challenge for poetry
Try to find as many ways as you can to write about what you are feeling without talking about it directly.
What happens if you write about it while also keeping it hidden?
What new or surprising qualities emerge?
What I wish I had said in this video
In this video, I focus on the importance of letting pain wait until it is ready to emerge. Even though we may need to be gentle or take things slow, being able to engage with these experiences and emotions ultimately helps move us towards wholeness. Our inner thoughts and feelings usually do eventually need to find their way to the surface to be more most free, expressive, and joyful selves. The white box I mention in the video does eventually need to be opened.
Embracing mystery is not the same thing as perpetuating concealement - shoving things down that are trying to rise into the light.
Mystery is respecting that there are forces that we cannot fully understand, and trusting in the existence of a timeline and deeper meaning that goes beyond our field of vision.
Mystery is the thing that allows us to feel safe in the presence of uncertainty.
And that is something I think we all need in these times.
Farewell to writing!
I suspect the seeds planted in this month will continue to emerge in the months to come. But for now, we will release this for the next adventure: photography.
More to come soon on our next creative chapter!
For now,
Alli
Access Support: If you have access needs that I’m not currently meeting, please do drop me a line! (The best email is contact@ac-smith.com.) I’d really like to make this project available to anyone who wants to participate.