When Words Are Not Enough
Sometimes words can’t express what we feel deep within our bones, within our core; sometimes the emotion is too strong and the mind too quick to interpret and/or wanting to escape, not feel, not see, just run away… When such moments arise, expressive arts offer solace, illumination, clarity, wisdom and medicine. The following piece offers a glimpse into the power of applied expressive arts.
The Inquiry
Loneliness, you paid me a visit today. You needed expression, you needed my undivided attention… I honoured you. I offered you space to emerge in image.
Allow now my hand and my pen to dance on paper the words you long to say so that I may reap the wisdom of your essence. Thank you.
The Image’s Response
“Starved for love and affection, I am withering away, can’t you see?
My name is sorrow-loneliness… i am collapsed loneliness… I sit in the pit of your being, emanating long deep pangs of emptiness throughout your core.
I demand your attention in a subtle yet growing and gnawing way and with ever increasing strength, to the point sometimes of inducing anxiety.
‘Angsting’ for connection…to LIFE, to VIBRANCY, to ADVENTURE, to OTHERS!
I’ve been living in you for a very long time and ironically you generally feel me the most present when you’re in company of others… especially family and intimate relations. That’s because you tend to shut yourself off… you’re afraid, I can sense it, and so you keep me trapped but I won’t tolerate it much longer. Not sure how it’ll turn out but until then I continue to grow and mope around here, filling you with deep, deep sorrow, turning to anxiety of dying without ever having fully lived or loved!
…and then collapsing… can you feel me now? Can you feel the heaviness in your limbs? The fog in your brain? The sudden inability or even desire to move? See me… feel me… I am important! I demand that you notice me! And honour me… don’t push through me… simply listen and gently, gently allow movement to emerge from within… dropping the mind’s need to run away, to push through, to ignore, to avoid, to jump ahead without first BEING with what is…
I have medicine you know! If you would only stop and listen… perhaps we wouldn’t return to the same place and pattern over and over again.
I have medicine.
And now that you are old enough to understand that, and act with discernment of situations that are safe or not, it’s time that you hear me out and understand me, my medicine. I’m here to remind you that it is time to connect with life. By doing so you can connect with other humans more fully.
Connect to what’s alive in you, touch it, feel it, allow it full respect, honour it, that which is alive now in your body. Feel it and let it express itself through you, naturally, organically. It — I show up for a reason. Heed my call. And you won’t need to feel so alone anymore. Ask yourself, when next you feel the full weight of me: “what kind of connection am I lacking now? How can I get it? What is my first right action to reconnect, first with my self? What needs to open? And how can that happen safely?””
Gratitude
Thank you Loneliness for your wisdom. I’m grateful I listened today. I’ve been censoring my heart and starving you. I can see it now. And I’ve been ignoring you for far too long.
The way out is not over you but through you. I see that now.
I feel you.
I see you.
I hold you.
I release you.
…for now…
Thank you.
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