The Art of Grieving

Using art and art-making to transform loss and ourselves

Welcome to my first offering on Substack. I’ve been lurking about and circling around the platform, reading and admiring its many talented writers and thought leaders, people who majored in English literature or journalism in college, who’ve written for major newspapers, and authored dozens of best-selling books. I’ve been writing a weekly blog, “Dancing with Everything” and sharing it through Constant Contact faithfully for a decade. That writing practice and the responses and comments I received from readers has made me a much better writer, and a less lonely one. It’s helped me to birth my fourth book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Art-making Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. Now. During these final chapters of my life I’ll finally be playing at the grown-up table.

I came to writing later than most people if we don’t count writing in a private journal, and the invitation to write that I got from Sister Mercia, my 9th grade home room teacher at Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville Ky. She saw her role as a teacher to be one of identifying students’ gifts and encouraging them to develop them, (not ignoring or burying then like one of the foolish characters in Matthew’s Parable of the Talents.) As my English teacher, Sister saw my early writing attempts and skills and encouraged me to pursue writing as a career. It’s worth noting, she was also my Algebra teacher, and it was obvious there was no likely career path there. But I was already a dancer, an art one must pursue while young. By the time I was in her class I already had my 10,000 hours in towards mastering that profession. When she saw me dance, she saw the wisdom in my decision, but she made me promise to come back to writing when my time on the stage came to its natural end.

Making a living as a dancer did come to an end after several seasons of summer stock, work in nightclubs and a movie, and the national touring company of Once Upon a Mattress. When I became pregnant, and my then husband accepted a job in Detroit, I lived far away from places like New York and LA where professional dancers, actors and musicians could make a living. I was left to dancing as an avocation–teaching and performing in Festival Dancers, a dance company out of the Jewish Community Center. We danced in churches and synagogues, art museums and street fairs, and I eventually got a social work degree and becoming a professor and therapist, I used the expressive arts with students and clients.

While managing a behavioral health care clinic I returned to writing and created my first book, Stillpoint: The Dance of Self-Caring Self-Healing. Currently in its second edition it’s now a popular weekly online course. My second book, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss and the Rituals that Heal came about after many losses, the death of two adult children and my best friend, where I used the arts of dancing, storytelling, and writing to process these experiences of loss. Through this, and teaching performing using the art-based tools of InterPlay helped me to discover ways to turn grief into gift.

Turns out that art and art-making surprise us, and that’s invigorating. We’re inspired and energized by art that is done for us, on our behalf. And when we create something ourselves that hadn’t existed before, these activities put us in touch with what I call, “the part of us that’s smarter than we are.” Einstein referred to this creative, intuitive part as a “sacred gift” for which “the rational mind is a faithful servant.” Since that’s not how it is in our culture very often, that’s what we’ll be doing in this space–calling on the arts and art-making to help us transform loss and make art out of what happens to us.

Einstein scolds us that “We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” With the help of readers and collaborators, in this space we will view grief as a gift, and using the arts, take steps towards solving the problems of the world Einstein noted could not be solved “from the same level of thinking we (as a society) were at when we created them.” Hopefully as we’re using the arts to process our own individual and communal grief, this “multidimensional perspective” that Einstein recommends will change us and our culture in the direction that supports everyone living their best lives.

Upcoming Events

Join me for a new offering on the Reimagine Platform, a monthly Art of Grieving Group - Using Arts to Transform Loss. Beginning Tuesday February 19 from 3 to 4:30 pm eastern time, (12 to 1:30 pm pacific time) we’ll use the art-based tools of InterPlay and our creativity to explore our experiences around grief, loss, disappointments and diminishments. My new book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Art-making Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives will be a guide for our explorations. We’ll play with storytelling, dance, music, and visual art to get good at grieving as a lifelong art. This hour and a half session will be interactive, allowing you to connect with yourself and others. Registration is limited so act soon. https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-group-using-art-to-transform-loss-feb

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