Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode, we’ll make some time and space to consider the enormous pain and grief swirling in 2020.
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THIS EPISODE'S HOMEWORK:
Ok, let’s talk about your homework. Whether you need a break from some of your feelings or want a little help accessing any emotion at all, I think there are some simple strategies.
First, what’s up with you specifically? These days, how much pain and grief do you feel or not feel? Are you able to access pain and continue your day? It’s important to know how you’re doing and whether you are in touch with your individual grief and to what extent.
If you want a little respite from your real time pain and grief, I think regular opportunities for levity and joy are in order. For you, I recommend investing more in relationships that bring lightness and laughter to your life these days. You may benefit from a daily practice of a written gratitude list; maybe you share that list with a few of those loved ones who bring lightness to your life.
If you are feeling numb and emotionally void lately, then emotionally powerful art may be a helpful tool for dislodging what is stuck. Music, film, books, podcasts, art, movement, anything that has, in the past, facilitated grief for you may be worth revisiting now. Just to open the grief valve, and let some pain move through.
Finally, talking to other people in your life about how they are or are not feeling and processing their own pain is enormously valuable. When we can’t locate an answer within ourselves, often a loved one will bring it to us.
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.
Mind Your Practice is produced by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. You can find out more about her practice at carolynpennypackerriggs.com
Ep. 5: Oh, the Pain of Life!
Welcome to Mind Your Practice. I’m Beth Pickens and in this episode, we’ll make some time and space to consider the enormous pain and grief swirling in 2020.
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Hello artists. Two of my favorite writers, Michelle Tea and Ali Liebegott, happen to be, respectively, my very close friend and my wife. Michelle and Ali have a 25 year + friendship dating back to their early 20s when they were both broke writers living in 90s San Francisco. They went through suffering, triumph, addiction, near poverty, and so many struggles, some exhilarating, many painful.
By the time I met them both, in 2007, Michelle and Ali had a lot of time under their friendship belt so they possessed a shared language to talk through their feelings and experiences. One of my favorite shorthands comes from moments when Michelle or Ali would either recount a painful time or admit they were struggling emotionally. The two would shout out, ‘ Oh, the Pain of Life!’ I witnessed this, often when we three were driving somewhere. One, then the other, would yell out this pronouncement, just naming and admitting was what was true. Life has pain and sometimes it’s so intense you have to take this fact, name it, and shout it at the sky. When there’s nothing else you can say, you can just say what is true.
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The pressure cooker of living in 2020 with its many absurd, cruel, uncontrollable, or totally preventable experiences results in copious pain and grief. And it’s nearly universal, which changes the experience from seeming individual or micro-level pain to macro-level pain. We’re individually vibrating with our specific pain and grief from both internal and external conditions and then we’re constantly among others who are in their individual stressful grief.
I liken this, for myself, to the phenomena of winter holiday stress. I think about how, every year, during December, if my wife or I leave home to run a few errands, we’ll return to the other exhausted, and shake our head, eyes wide, insisting ‘It’s crazy out there. Everybody's nuts!’ We notice and feel when there is macro-level stress and 2020 has been a year of exceptionally high group pain, and a steady onslaught at that.
One of the challenges is the durational nature of this all. It’s difficult to process experiences while you’re still in them and the conditions that make 2020 epicly difficult - COVID and quarantines, police continuing to murder black and brown people, the tyrannical animated corpse currently clinging to the White House, a truly horrific election cycle, weather events destroying people and natural environments ever exacerbated by climate change, and unyielding financial pressure on individuals, communities, businesses, and crucial services we rely on. OH, the Pain of Life!
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For some of us, we’re mired in pain and we’re trying to come up for air, to find more functionality in our days. For others, we’re numb, feel very little, and tend to avoid anything that would open up the grief valve for fear that it won’t close. And something in the middle may be a good course for the near future; looking but not staring at our pain, surrendering but not succumbing to our grief. How can we both create space for and give attention to our pain while continuing to live, take care of ourselves, and move forward? This, I think, deserves considerable thought and curiosity. It’s something to visit and revisit in the coming months.
How do you assess where you are on the sheer pain to numbness continuum? Do you tend toward feelings in real time or are they significantly delayed? Are your emotions near the surface or somewhere far off? Does this change? When and why? Becoming aware of how much pain and grief we are feeling or not feeling can indicate what to try next, what may be a balm, what can restore joy and serenity to our days.
Regardless, our pain and grief are real and they deserve our attention and care. Feelings have to be felt to move through us. I think unprocessed grief can get stuck, like a ball of hair and soap gets trapped in a drain, slowing all movement and flow. But we can’t feel hard feelings endlessly; it will simply wear us out and prevent us from fully living.
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Ok, let’s talk about your homework. Whether you need a break from some of your feelings or want a little help accessing any emotion at all, I think there are some simple strategies.
First, what’s up with you specifically? These days, how much pain and grief do you feel or not feel? Are you able to access pain and continue your day? It’s important to know how you’re doing and whether you are in touch with your individual grief and to what extent.
If you want a little respite from your real time pain and grief, I think regular opportunities for levity and joy are in order. For you, I recommend investing more in relationships that bring lightness and laughter to your life these days. You may benefit from a daily practice of a written gratitude list; maybe you share that list with a few of those loved ones who bring lightness to your life.
If you are feeling numb and emotionally void lately, then emotionally powerful art may be a helpful tool for dislodging what is stuck. Music, film, books, podcasts, art, movement, anything that has, in the past, facilitated grief for you may be worth revisiting now. Just to open the grief valve, and let some pain move through.
Finally, talking to other people in your life about how they are or are not feeling and processing their own pain is enormously valuable. When we can’t locate an answer within ourselves, often a loved one will bring it to us.
Let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear from you.
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Thanks for listening to Mind Your Practice and be sure to subscribe so you get all the bonus episodes coming your way. If you are an artist who likes to be told what to do, I am more than happy to boss you around through email and social media. You can find me on Instagram at @bethpickensconsulting and join my mailing list on my website bethpickens.com. Thanks for listening and keep making art.
Mind Your Practice is created by Beth Pickens and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.