Disciplined, driven, unrelenting
I’ve been reading a book by Jim Collins called What to Make of a Life. Over ten years, he and his team researched hundreds of people to see how they managed the challenges and moments of truth in life by harnessing what he calls “their encodings.” Those are people’s special innate talents held within and waiting for us to discover them. When used in the right moments and circumstances, those encodings propel us to fulfill our destinies and lead rich, satisfying lives.
He writes the book using the stories of matched pairs of individuals from all walks of life. For each particular life path, he showed how each member of the pair got started, found their way professionally and personally, then confronted a “cliff” — a moment of big change. Using their unique encodings, he showed how even very similar people can navigate transitions in very different ways.
It’s a great book and one I find very uplifting. It is heartening to read how even the likes of John Glenn, Carlos Santana, Admiral Grace Hopper, or Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant can struggle, be enmeshed in a fog of “what next,” even choose poorly, then dig deep within to find their way.
I just finished reading the chapter about writers Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuchman. Morrison, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote stories about the young black girls that did not seem to exist in any books she had read. So she wrote for herself, to create the stories she wanted to read. Barbara Tuchman was passionate about history and making non-fiction as rich a read as any good novel. Very different women, very different writing. But they were similar in one way.
Both were absolutely passionate about writing. They could not “NOT write. “As Morrison put it, “If all the publishers had disappeared in one night, I would have written anyway.”
And both used the word “compulsion” to describe what drove them to write. It wasn’t self-discipline enforced from outside themselves, but an inner compulsion to keep going for the sheer love and desire to see how their next sentence, paragraph, and story would turn out.
I resonated with these two women because that is exactly the word I would use to describe my attitude toward writing this book — compulsion. I MUST write it. I WANT to write it. I NEED to write it, to follow the story’s lead, to learn what wisdom it will reveal along the way. And I NEED to share it with whoever is supposed to find my story.
So I get up, write, research, and plan every day. And every day I channel a driven energy from somewhere within me. And that energy is always there.
Until lately.
Beyond weary to the bone
I am going to shift gears for a moment, from art in trauma healing to one other very important aspect of art for me — “self-care.” Maybe better to say, “self-preservation.”
These last few weeks have been very difficult to write. Reliving the pain of those EMDR sessions from 2018 and forward has just felt HEAVY. Intense sorrow. Grief sitting right in my throat. Sadness. Abandonment. And yes, rage. Still rage. My ever-present companion even as its form shifts. But the bottom line, for the last few weeks, it’s been intense emotional pain.
It doesn’t mean I stop writing – I REFUSE to quit. This process is taking me on a journey, a painful one, but a necessary one. A journey to more peace.
Every time I write another post and complete another aspect of my life story, I feel… “satisfied.” Relieved. A sensation of completion in progress as yet another piece of the broken picture is put back into place. Each post brings me that much closer to “whole.”
But it’s not easy. There are some days I can barely face this. I wake up tired. And so many times these days, I just feel quiet and want to cry. Such a swell of emotions right at the surface.
Also, for the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a strange sensation in my head… it felt “full,” almost “congested.” But not like a cold or sinus problems. And it ached…but not like a regular headache. Instead, my brain felt tired, swollen, and fog-shrouded. It was a familiar sensation, too, but at that moment, I just couldn’t put my finger on where I’d felt it before.
I cut back on some of my exercise, thinking I was overdoing it. And to be sure I was okay, I went for bloodwork, a heart test, and to see my doctor. But all the numbers and pictures looked good. Very good, in fact. So, at least on paper, I am well.
That left “emotional.” Could this intense level of weariness be purely emotional?
At first, I shrugged off the idea, but in looking back, I realized it was a stupid question. Of course, it was emotional. And not to minimize it either with the word “purely,” as if that wasn’t a good enough reason.
At the same time, I remembered that those strange head feelings were the same intense feelings of brain fog and aching that I experienced after my long, intense rounds of EMDR. Excavating trauma and buried emotions through long hours of laser-focused processing always left my brain feeling like it had been lifting weights in the gym and could no longer go on.
But I hadn’t done any EMDR since January. So, what was up?
All I knew was that I couldn’t stop writing. Wouldn’t stop. I am driven by the same intense power that drove Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuchman. I know down to the deepest place in my soul that I will go on and finish this. But…how to deal with the crushing weariness?
And then, yesterday happened.
“I work. You Write”
“Why would you choose to take on an extra writing project when you are already exhausted by this?”
My husband stared at me with concern. The question was posed gently. But he was worried.
I was eating breakfast and had mentioned to him that I was considering looking to see if there was a way to sell some of my posts to a magazine as a way of bringing in some extra income. He works so hard at his contract job, and we are both “of an age.” I worry about him, and so I thought maybe some freelance submissions of some of these posts might help.
“Do you feel you are at the point in this where you have completed what you have set out to do?… And have the answers you want?”
“No.”
He gently probed further. “If you stopped writing this book completely, right now…would you be satisfied?”
That one wasn’t even an option in my mind. “Absolutely not.”
Finally, he voiced his deepest concern. “I see how tired you are. I would suggest that you are already working at capacity….over-capacity. I don’t think you have any extra resources left to divert to a side project.”
In that moment, he had nailed what I had been feeling inside. Simply exhausted. I wasn’t sure myself if I had any extra energy. But at the same time, that had been the story of my whole life. So many times I had been tired, but something needed doing. Work to keep a roof over our heads, take care of our son, and repair our marriage. NOT showing up wasn’t an option. And I was strong…Str-r-r-o-n-g like bull, as those old Slovak women in my neighborhood would say. So I just dug deeper and pulled from my energy reserves to bull through whatever.
But I’m not 45 or 55 or 65 anymore. The days of just pushing me past capacity are over. So while I would never stop writing this book, I agreed that trying to do extra projects would be ill-advised.
He looked at me with total earnestness. “What you are writing and doing is too important to get side-tracked.“ It could alter the way you write this book. And what you discover. And not in a good way.”
I nodded at him. “It’s the long-distance walk, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
I so love him. His wisdom. His support for me and what I am trying to do. He was right. I absolutely needed to stay focused on writing, transforming, and reclaiming myself through this book.
“It is just where we are right now,” he said. “I do the contract work. You write.”
What can I say about a man who gives so wholeheartedly to support my efforts?
Round two
I think that sometimes, when the Universe wants to be sure you get the message, it sends multiple messengers.
After our breakfast conversation, I met a friend for coffee.
“So how are you?” The concern on my friend’s face was evident as she looked me in the eye.
I didn’t bother to try for “fake cheery.” I just admitted I was so very tired.
With deep compassion, she said that I had to be so drained, given the heaviness of what I had been writing. Why WOULDN’T I be tired?
In the past, I would have reached for bravado and just bulled through the fatigue with a “Well, it’s to be expected, but really I’m fine.”
The truth was, I wasn’t…and maybe it’s past time to start listening to my body and embrace its truth versus forcing it to keep pushing.
Yesterday’s visit with the therapist
Round three, and the final messenger, was my trauma therapist during our afternoon appointment.
“How are you?”
I quietly, but immediately, responded, “Tired. I hurt. I’m heartbroken.”
Everything came tumbling out. My total exhaustion. The intense sadness. My head fog, which strangely felt like EMDR even though we hadn’t done any for months.
She immediately stopped me and said that the sensation in my head would, of course, be just like the EMDR after-effects because I was essentially doing the same kind of intense brain and emotion processing through my writing.
As always, I send her excerpts of what I write so she can know where things are at and how I am doing emotionally. Having read them right before we met, she pointed out just how intense those posts were. How much pain and emotion was being relived NOW, in the moment, as I wrote them.
“You are doing the same intense mental work – organizing, feeling, trying to understand… It’s exhausting work.”
Then she asked, “What are you doing for self-care? Have you done any painting… not the trauma ones, but the ones to relax with?”
And in that moment I realized just how totally heads-down I’d been on writing, so driven that I wasn’t taking time to rest. I SO wanted to see what the next sentence, paragraph, or ending of my writing would tell me that I didn’t want to stop to rest.
“I just NEED to write….I WANT to write. It helps.”
She nodded in understanding, then shared a story from her Yoga training, as she is a very experienced, certified teacher.
“When I was doing my ‘Restorative Yoga’ training, they had to lie down and just do some simple moves. I thought to myself, this isn’t Yoga. But the instructor insisted, so I did them. Wow. What a discovery to see just how a few small resting moves could restore your energy. By taking a small break, it gave my body enough rest so then I could go back to what I was doing, re-energized.”
I shared that while I “cognitively understood” this, I was afraid. All those years in that house, I was trapped. Paralyzed. When I finally pulled myself together enough to get out, I was determined NEVER to be trapped or paralyzed like that again.
I am afraid to rest. Because for me, to slow down and take a break…even a momentary pause from my forward movement, means I will stop, and be stuck yet again. To me, rest means to grind to a halt, permanently, and be trapped again, like I was in the past. So I NEVER like to stop and rest.
“I am driven to do this,” I said to her.
“You? Driven?” She faked surprise, and we both started laughing. After all, given all the years of working together, my telling her I was driven was like telling her the sky was blue.
She looked at me with compassion and asked, “What would it look like to you to just “ease” yourself into a “pause? And what is the chance you won’t resume?”
Then she immediately answered her rhetorical question: “I’d say there is zero chance of you quitting….A pause is not stuck or stopping. It’s like that Restorative Yoga lesson. Just lie there, move gently. It is still yoga. And after, you feel good… better… rested.”
I nodded in agreement. Being gentle and loving to myself was still a very new lesson.
“So again, what can you do to “ease” the work, rest for a short bit, then resume, restored?”
The chemistry of artful calm
It was interesting that all of these messengers came at the same time, and right on the heels of the facts was reading about how art heals “physically,” not just emotionally.
There is a book by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross that is absolutely wonderful: Your Brain on Art – How the Arts Transform Us.
While they and other researchers speak to the volumes of studies about how art can heal the emotions, in this book, Magsamen and Ross also speak to the PHYSICAL healing:
“The arts…trigger the release of neurochemicals, hormones, and endorphins that offer you an emotional release…you are biologically changed.”
They go on to note that “making art for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol…Making art is physiologically calming….At a neurochemical level, the act of drawing has been shown to release serotonin and endorphins that foster a more generous, open frame of mind….drawing, by changing brain-wave activity and increasing blood flow to the frontal regions of the brain, has a positive effect on our psychological resilience.”
They also noted that different forms of the art — dance movement, sound waves, etc — have different healing effects on the body and the emotions.
Easing into the pause with art
There is one definite thing I am grateful for as I write this book, and that is what I have needed for sure: People. My husband and son. Loving friends. My therapist. I would NOT do this book without that support. I’ll write more about that in my Tool’s posts about “Why write?”
But to answer my therapist’s question – “What would “easing into a pause” look like for me?” – here are my answers… discoveries actually.
For sure, I read. And not just books about people who overcame tremendous obstacles in life.
At the other end of the spectrum, I love my books about octopuses and tide pools. The new version of Homer’s Odyssey, THIS time, though, with the Emily Wilson translation. A classical scholar, she is the first woman to translate that epic story into English.
And there is poetry. Historical fiction. Music. And movement. Tai chi. Stretching. Walking. And simply going outside and listening to the birds while watching skinks and lizards dart around near the bird bath.
But most especially? Art…for me, in the form of oil paintings. And not the trauma images for this book.
What do I paint to relax, replenish my soul, and restore my “center?”
It’a mixed bag. But it is anything and everything that encapsulates curiosity. Awe. Snuggliness. Peace. Fun. And they range from the very vast to the tiny details.
For starters, I love nature. The divine beauty of a panorama. Hidden nooks in tree trunks that protect small creatures. The mystical silence on a solitary shore or at sunset. And then there are spiritual connections of joy. Or demonstrations of my beliefs in the worthiness of people of all races, genders, identities, and backgrounds to be fully loved.
Maybe that’s the word that best describes what is needed for restorative painting: Just… love.
As I move the paintbrush…spread the paints…and see an image emerging on canvas, I feel a sense of peace spreading through me. I love seeing that imaginary “world of joy” as it slowly takes form and appears on what was before a blank canvas.
I go looking for love expressed in anything around me. Because at the end of the day, it is my love of so many things in life that has kept me going.
Every one of these things represents one of those “Moments-of-Respite” items that I used as medicine to ward off the toxins injected during the abuse in my past. And these days, to repair those same wounds that are re-traumatized when I write of them here.
So, I go to the places I loved all my life – forests, birds, oceans, exotic scenes….and most especially, those underwater scenes I so desperately dreamed of as a kid, when I longed to become a marine biologist.
And of course, the imaginary Halloween realms that my inner ten-year-old always daydreamed about and that I now conjure up in my seventies. Some joys never leave.
These are the moments and places that heal me. The ones filled with God’s beauty, life-giving inspiration, whimsical fantasy,…and love. And it is these moments, when I “ease into a pause” to care for myself, that allow me to go on with this book….
Now, back to other aspects of art.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Tags: books, fiction, life, mental-health, writing
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