Making Friends with Our Sadness
"We have to make friends with our sadness. We have to hold our losses close, and carry them like beloved children. Only when we accept these terrible pains do we realize that the path across is the one that takes us through."
~ Rene Denfeld
I am struggling, as I imagine you are too, these days with holding all that is happening in the world. I am struggling with being informed and at the same time, making my way through each day...and especially each night. Insomnia plagues me.
There is so much pain and violence, so much heartbreak and loss. I try to stay informed and at the same time a snippet of a terrible headline will flash across my mind and haunt the darkness of night, causing my heart to race.
Tonight I finally gave in and got up. In the dark I went into the living room, closed the door to the bedroom. I gathered my art supplies, my watercolors, a glass of water and a couple paper towels, my watercolor paper pad. And my phone and earbuds. I turned on the light and began to paint.
Mary and I are in Kauai for a vacation to celebrate our birthdays (mine is today, hers is tomorrow). And I brought my travel art supplies kit because I love to paint and art journal always, even on the road.
I didn't know I'd need it to calm my heart at 3am. In fact, I didn't know I'd need it a couple days ago to calm my heart at 3pm.
But here I am in "paradise" trying to square the fact that across the world the Middle East is in the midst of a horrendous war, a situation that has no easy outcome and already has cost too many innocent lives with more to come.
The truth is our planet's current list of violences against humanity is longer than my arm.
And the other truth is that this particular situation touches a place in my soul that is very deep.
My political opinion is one thing. My Jewish heart is another. And my artist's soul is another as well. And of course, all are linked.
Living with grief, teaching about grief, and holding space for grief has taught me that when we are mourning it is so hard to hold both the light and dark, the fact that we are suffering a terrible loss and yet the sun continues to rise each day. That we are overwhelmed with sorrow and yet there is still joy to be found in the world.
There is a horrific war starting in Israel/Palestine and dolphins are splashing in the turquoise waters of Kauai.
And so I paint at 3am. And write. And listen — on repeat — to this song by Joey Weisenberg, one of my favorite contemporary Jewish musicians. (Hence the phone and earbuds...)
Music — Jewish music especially — and art are my prayers and at a time like this it feels like all I can do is pray. All I can do is use my creativity to calm my racing heart, to staunch the tears -- or help them flow.
In her book, Bittersweet, Susan Cain says that we can:
"view creativity through the lens of bittersweetness — of grappling simultaneously with darkness and light. It's not that pain equals art. It's that creativity has the power to look pain in the eye, and to decide to turn it into something better."
And so I make art. I drip colors onto the page. I allow my heart to choose black and blood red and mix them with splashes of green and deep teal that remind me of the ocean here. I move with the longings of my heart and the flow of watercolors on paper. I release and I transform. And in that I move through the moment. And make friends with my sadness.
If you're feeling called to it, I invite you to sit with your feelings today. Invite them in. Get out your art supplies, turn on sad music, and make friends with your sadness.
