Art & Healing
Feeling our way through life with the support of Art we love.
I’m saying this on repeat these days… Art helps us feel, and feeling helps us heal. I just can’t stop seeing it in my life.
The other day I listened to some of the happenings of the day, ya know, the current events and political unfoldings. I listened and thought of a really old tape being played. I know the script. The us/them. The pointing fingers. The playing on people’s emotions. And I wasn’t buying it. So I turned it off.
But I was angry. Angry at the weaponization, demonization, and polarization. And angry at the way those in power jerk us around by our feelings for their own gain and power plays. I had to turn on Florence + The Machine’s album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful and dance until the energy moved through me. This is my favorite album as of late. It helps me move, helps me feel, and helps me understand myself more.
Lines like, “I am teaching myself how to be free,” and “Some things you let go in order to live,” and “Never knew I was a dancer till Delilah showed me how.”
Somehow this happens to me in life. The art that’s meant to find me does.
I attended an art show with a friend a few years back and ran smack dab into the above piece, by artist Heather Ormsbee. I was drawn to it. I was somewhat captivated. I wasn’t sure why. I kept returning to it, until I read the title of the piece - “Worth her weight.” It hit me like a sucker-punch… the ways I still held shame in my body, the ways I always compare myself to people, the ways that I don’t fully love and accept all of myself, including my tummy. Enough! I bought the piece and have worked with it in a variety of ways as I’ve read Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body Is Not An Apology and her accompanying workbook.
The piece continued to work it’s magic.
I went to get it framed. I walked into the frame shop and a woman was at the counter being helped by two women on Staff. One of the Staff peeled off to come help me. As I unveiled the piece she gasped and said "Oh my god!" Then she called the other two over saying "Ladies, come here, this is the opposite of what we were just talking about." They proceeded to tell me that they were just discussing women's bodies as represented (or mis-represeneted as the case may be) by male artists. They had been framing a piece for someone else that had a naked woman in it that they felt was very cartoonish and just not representative of most women... very barbie like. They all so appreciated the piece and one of them said, "Now that's a piece created by a woman for a woman." These women were super empowered by this image. Just as I was. In fact everyone I've shared it with has felt this way. Someone recently said, "Holy shit. That is medicine."
I love this. I love how Art acts as a mirror. How it reflects back to us what we need to see or feel about ourselves. If we listen, if we tune it, it has so much to offer us. About how to hold the most tender and vulnerable parts of ourselves with love.
I recently had the opportunity to discuss some of this with a dear friend on the podcast A Women’s Voice with Rose Chastain. In the episode we talked about freeing our innate wisdom and finding our unique voice. I have access to this by paying attention to what strikes me, to what moves me, to what I keep returning to again and again. Like the drawing above, or the Florence + The Machine lyric “Is this how it is? Is this how it’s always been? To exist in the face of suffering and death and somehow still keep singing?”
I urge us all to keep singing friends. Even as the world around us and our worlds are becoming increasingly chaotic. Let’s keep dancing. Let’s keep singing. Let’s keep tracking what we value. Let’s keep using our voices to advocate for what we care about.
It’s the greatest thing that gives me hope. People finding their authentic voice.
At Compassionate Listening we talk a lot about each voice being a part of the whole. We talk about having a willingness to listen. We talk about strengthening the pathways back to our hearts.
I pray that our hearts guide us to the art that helps us heal, so that we can play our part in the unfolding and evolution of our world.