Healing Handcrafting

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Summoning Creativity #10: Creating While Stressed

So… how’re you doing?

Really… how are you? Like, really-really?

Most of what I’m reading about these days is news to stay current on all that is going down everywhere, and articles about stress. On repeat. I also read a lot about the kinds of things people experience no matter what’s going on in the political sense. Issues like grief, trauma, racism, chronic illness & pain, depression, anxiety, poverty… these themes are all part of our greater human story. And they all cause stress.

Stress is distracting at the very least. Stress can also lead to total shutdown of the nervous system when it pushes past a person’s management threshold. Stress impacts health physically and mentally, as well as relationships and productivity.

Often, the first things to go when stress climbs are those very pursuits that help us the most: exercise, rest, eating well, and creative efforts.

In this month’s Summoning Creativity post, I want to share some thinking I’ve been doing about creating while stressed. Why? Because I’ve been wrestling with this myself. And, I truly believe creativity is one of those things that nudges us humans along in the evolutionary story. If we let go of our creativity, we let go of the spark in us that can imagine something different, better, more generative…

My thinking has taken me to these places…

Let’s start with some facts. Creativity is good for us. Here’s some research supporting this:

  • 45 minutes of creative activity significantly lowers cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone (Kaimal et al. 2016).
  • regular participation in a creative practice boosts mood and reduces likelihood of depression (Fancourt & Steptoe, 2020).
  • engaging in creativite pursuits can build connection and significantly reduce loneliness. “Art engages, inspires, empowers, and connects us. As Dr. Nobel stated, ‘it provides a kind of intimacy with life in a way that sometimes cognition or rational analysis simply does not.'” (from interview with Dr. Jeremy Noble in Creativity, Connection, Happiness, and Health, online article, 2024).

What I’ve noticed in myself…

  • I feel freed up when my creative practice is fluid; I have several projects going that each call to me at different times depending on time, mood, how my hands feel (I have arthritis that holds me back sometimes).

  • Sometimes I like creating with other people. Sometimes I need alone time and take it when I have the chance. Both are important to me.
  • Keeping my art “ingredients” visible helps me to stay connected to my ideas. Having a space where I can keep works-in-process out helps a lot. Yes, sometimes my family has to walk around my projects. It’s ok.
  • I let my art flow from feeling- and let it help me see where I’m at. For example, I just pulled a piece off my loom that hadn’t worked the way I wanted it to. But I didn’t want to discard it. I just sat with it on the floor and “followed it’s directions”. The warps needed tying off or it would all fall apart, so I did that, and then as I did that, it took on a shape that I was into, so I moved more in that direction, and then I put it on the wall to look at it and had an idea for how I want it hung, and then I saw that it is reflecting how I feel and what I am trying to keep together- and – there it was… a totally unplanned expression of feeling at this moment in time…

  • I look at art- if possible in person, but also in books and magazines and online.
  • I face down the internal pressure I feel at times to make all things useful or “worth it”.
  • I don’t judge my mistakes (or i try not to). Sometimes (like above) I end up liking them!

Creativity may very well be a strongest bridge we have to cross to better health and more dynamic social connection. Creative expression brings people together and brings us closer to our own hearts. It’s a total win-win. It’s not a waste of time. And it’s not selfish.

Tell me about your creative process! I love hearing about how people nurture their own sparkly ideas.

Until next time,

bradie


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America’s Shadow

The Shadow of America has burst forth,
Hideous in full form,
Visible to the world.
Not for the first time,
But still, this time too
Is trying our souls.
Many have known this Shadow.
Those able to see have recognized it,
Studied it,
Preached, sung, written of it.
Courageous vilified for naming it.
Truth-sayers killed for challenging it, taking it to court.
Those countless murdered by Shadow’s effects on humans in righteous denial,
Their blood is on our hands,
Fostering dis-ease until we ease ourselves into taking it on, this Shadow-illness
That, when denied becomes more itself,
Tyrannical.
To know is to descend into darkness,
Where ancient Destruction lives,
With Her corpse wall hooks,
And His poison.
No wonder there is turning away.
To face Shadow is the stuff of legend.
Legend’s heroes have scars, every one,
Valiantly earned,
Skin debt paid in the quest towards light.
The lid is blown off this American dream.
Now we must, oh we must!
Welcome the cracked open broken heart that comes with Shadow
As it swirls and climbs,
Snuffing out white-washed lies,
Engorged on delicious ignorance,
Creating and co-creating with light
Something new.
A new table where all have a place,
Eyes looking into eyes, with recognition, sorrow, love.
This time,
And again,
It is an invitation.

b. mccabe hansen

Notes:

“With Her corpse wall hooks”; references Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian goddess of death and the underworld who hangs sister/goddess Inanna on wall hooks; the myth of Inanna explores many themes, including the process of descending to darkness to face that which we have not seen or accepted within ourselves, claiming our cut-off parts.

References:

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer

Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women, by Sylvia Brinton Perera

“And His poison”; references Phthonos, Greek spirit and embodiment of malicious envy.

“Is trying to our souls”: Reference to Thomas Paine’s American Crisis, December 23, 1776. Excerpt: “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”