How a TV Series is Breaking My Heart Wide Open (and healing it at the same time)
Even the Queen of Grief has a hard time being sad sometimes.
I’ve been binging the series This is Us for the past many weeks.
I know, I know. I’m late to the party.
I remember when This is Us was new on our radar in 2016, but at the time I didn’t own a TV or have access to the show.
A few months ago, Mary and I were looking for a new one to distract us from the horror that is reality, I mean rising fascism, in our country. We landed on This Is Us, which she’d seen when it was fresh but was open to watching again.
And so we dove in.
One night, in the middle of one episode, jumping back and forth between characters, stories, timelines, and events, I turned to Mary with tears in my eyes and said, "You know this show is just about grief. The whole thing...grief. It's the griefiest show I've ever seen."
I think This is Us is also possibly the best show I’ve ever watched. The characters are so well drawn. The stories are woven and followed with so much integrity. They don't seem to shy away from any of the hard conversations we need to have in life and relationship. And technically...the young characters are seamless with the old, both in mannerisms but also in looks. (That part is truly amazing to me!)
I’m so engrossed with the stories that I have This Is Us dreams! My mind chews on their predicaments, their grief, night and day. They’re MY family, is how it feels sometimes. I want to tell everyone to watch it. Friend, if you haven’t watched it, WATCH IT. (It’s on Hulu, and no, I don’t get any kickback for telling you that.)
But what I really wanted to tell you was that last night I was just so sad that I wanted to turn it off.
I was overwhelmed. I was jittery.
I got up to get a glass of water. I stood by the fire and looked the other way. I cleaned up some papers on the dining room table.
I was so worried for one of the characters–that it was going to get sadder and sadder and harder and harder for him–that I couldn't stand it. I couldn’t sit still.
I could feel my heart breaking into a million pieces.
Noticing that I wanted to escape my anxiety and sadness, I took a breath.
Noticing that I was filled with emotions and the discomfort of the emotions, I stepped outside myself and said:
You can handle it. It's just sadness. You can be sad. It may get really really sad, but that's ok, it's just sadness.
It doesn’t escape me that, of course, I'm the Queen of Grief but sadness can still be overwhelming to my nervous system.
Susie, last weekend was just too sad. The violence at Brown University, Bondi Beach in Sydney, and the loss of Rob and Michele Reiner have broken my heart into a million pieces.
The level of pain and brutality is too too much.
And that's on top of the continuous ongoing cruelty in Gaza, Ukraine, and in our Congress and on our streets with ICE…it’s just so much.
But haven’t I been saying that for months? Years? Decades?
Friend, how do we hold the weight of all the sadness?
Our nervous systems are overwhelmed.
What do we do with it?
Make some art, Friend.
Use color and texture and imagery. Write words with big, fat paint pens. Rip paper. Cut paper. Throw paint at paper.
Don't forget to breathe. But also, don't forget that the discomfort is with the feeling. The discomfort comes from forgetting that you are feeling the feeling, you aren't the feeling itself.
Breathe. Paint. Breathe. Scribble. Breathe. Stitch.
No-rules creativity is the way (for me, at least) to RELEASE what I’m holding.
And it’s the way for anyone who finds their way to me and my work. So I know it’s not just for me!
You can watch this video of me working on an art journal page that helped me calm my nervous system by clicking the image below. It’s called One Breath/Stitch at a time. And yes, I actually stitched on the page to help me get grounded in the moment. (Click the full screen icon to get a better view.)
