Link to full podcast: https://soundcloud.com/heelhang/the-artists-circle-grief
"Grief is the price we pay for love."
Prompt:
It’s no secret to anyone here that I have recently experienced some deep sadness. I am no stranger to the heavy weight of grief, and this time I find myself having a lot of thoughts I’d like to share. So please join me to share your experiences as I delve into mine and how it effects my art.
My Answer:
I have experienced many levels of grief and many styles of loss. Loss of family, friends, friendship, relationships, business, identity, freedom, dreams, and most recently, my best friend Fonzie.
Loss is a part of “having” anything. Nothing lasts forever. Often, we can see the end coming, we can think that we have prepared ourselves for the grief that we will feel when we experience our loss, but the act of losing something or someone is still powerful.
Grief feels so familiar to me its almost a comfort. Not to say that I live in a place of grieving, I’d just had the fortune to visit it many times. And I use the word fortune intentionally because I have had so many loves in my life. I am thankful for each of them. Without them, my life would have been less.
When I have experienced the various flavors of grief, each time I have had the same response(s) but to a greater or lesser degree…
When I have been buried under the weight of grief I’ve felt like everything is impossibly difficult, even meaningless. Like a giant pause button has been pressed on my life, a life that usually has so much passion and drive. It feels like a dull lifelessness.
Eventually, this is replaced with a numbness, which allows for the basic forward motion necessary to live my life.
And then, from this, eventually comes an intense motivation: a desire to create, to work, to evolve, to share, to connect.
It’s always the same. And there is some comfort in that for me.
Thoughts and Actions:
Art and Grief
While telling our story activates the language portion of the left brain, art activates the creative centers of our right brain allowing a processing and release of emotions that often can't happen through talking alone.
If you have ever experienced the loss of someone or something close to you, you are viscerally aware that grief breaks us open, bringing deep and powerful emotions to the surface and making us feel raw and vulnerable. Often when we are broken open, we exist in a place beyond words. In this place, visual art can be a light in the darkness.
Art may help us find some momentary comfort in our grief, as it can be a safe place of refuge and a container for overwhelming emotions like anger, fear, and anxiety. It creates space that provides relief from the intensity of loss or helps us transform challenging feelings into more manageable (or at least comprehensible) ones. There is also ample research to suggest that the act of making art can be physiologically soothing, calming the nervous system and inviting our bodies to relax.
On top of these many benefits, art can be incredibly empowering, giving us a sense of control when everything in our lives seems so out of our control or even simply something to focus on for as long as we are practicing.
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