Grief is extremely important. Although in the midst of grief you may feel that emotions overwhelm and crush you, they are a vital part of your road to healing.
In the center of your grief there is a place of creativity. Your heart is already looking for ways to move forward, you have a desire to create some new way of coping for yourself.
When creating out of your grief, you may not always feel that it makes sense. But that is ok because the whole process of grief often does not make much sense. You really have to allow yourself the freedom to flow with your emotions when you are creating.
Creating can take many forms such as art creation. Painting, drawing, collage, etc. Or there is writing. Poetry, journal writing, brain dumping, writing letters, these are all creative actions as well. Even cooking, learning a new skill, gardening, setting up memorial space for your loved one. Anything that takes a step toward healing for you. This is creating out of your grief.
Grief Takes Time and Changes Your Life
The process of all this creating and grieving may take many weeks, months or years but it never has to feel rushed. You will constantly be creating into your new form of life without your loved one. You will adapt and make changes as needed and you will grow stronger as you create this new environment
You will be adapting and learning new ways to cope and to love again. Creative action is healing for you. It is a catalyst for binding up the wounds of heart and mind. It is able to spur you on to continue this life when you feel it really isn’t worth it.
Pain is A Tool To Create With
Pain is a tool, and from pain can come some of the deepest felt and most beautiful creations known to man. Think of Vincent Van Gogh. He was grieving the loss of his identity and his depression was crushing him. Yet out of this man’s deep set pain, he created some of the most beautiful paintings we know.
Or what about some of the great poets? Many of them created beautiful poetry out of the deep grief of their life and situation.
Artists, musicians, poets, writers, and so many more built beauty from a place of pain and grief. Perhaps their grief was not the death of an individual, but a loss of some kind nonetheless.
If your grief is because of a loss of health, relationship, job loss or other loss there is just as much intense emotion within those areas of grief as there is in the death of a loved one. So don’t discredit these kinds of losses when you need healing in these areas.
Let me show you a few ways to get your creative juices flowing as you find healing for your loss.
Start here.
Watch this short clip of a collage I created of my sister. I truly believe this kind of art creation can help you process and find closure for your grief. I talk mostly about siblings here because this is a clip from my e-book on sibling loss. But the same concept applies to any loss.
Writing Letters
Letter writing is a great way to create from your place of loss. You can compose a letter to the person or even things such as a job you lost that will help you process your grief.
Use these three easy steps to help guide your letter.
- Start your letter out with something positive like a memory or story you would like to share with your loved one or the thing you lost. Think of your loss as though it were an individual, which may be the case, and that individual would be able to read this letter.
- Talk about what is in your heart, where you are right now with letting them go, how much you love and miss them, how angry, sad, fearful or helpless you feel.
- Close your letter by giving yourself permission to feel all these emotions as you work through the loss. If your loss is a loved one, tell them that you will carry on their legacy of a beautiful life and try to move one step at a time forward in life. Despite what you feel now.
If your loss is a job or relationship talk about how you will move forward and what you have learned about yourself and letting go.
Spending Time In Creative Environments
Creative environments can also help you to heal from grief. Going to an art museum, a symphony, a book club, an art class, a knitting or weaving class, an open mic night of poetry at your local coffee shop. There are many options for you to choose from. These environments will help you heal because you will learn new perspectives from them. You will recognize yourself in the work being made or presented and you will discover new strengths inside of you.
Art Journals for Grief
You can also use Art Journals to document and contain your grief. There’s no right or wrong way to do an art journal. You can be as messy or as neat as you like. You can represent emotions with color, words, magazine cutouts, sketches. Whatever way you desire to express can be in an art journal. You can use the art journal to look back on and see how far you’ve come in your healing. For more information on art journaling, download my free guide to get you started.
Nature Walks
Another great way to create out of grief is to take a walk in nature and collect seeds, branches, feathers, rocks, tree bark, etc. Anything that you find interesting or that speaks to you. Use these items in a collage, your art journal, or simply display them as a reminder of your thoughts on that day.
Perhaps photography of nature would be a way for you to express your emotions in grief. Taking photos of things that are symbolic for you or have great meaning, is a special way to find healing and new perspective.
Nature is constantly renewing and has much to teach in the way of hope and renewal. Sitting quiet in the woods with your thoughts and listening to the gentle breeze or the twittering of birds can help renew your soul. We have a connection to nature as humans which gets lost quite often in our world of technology and fast paced society. I encourage you to take time to get out and connect with nature again. It really does put grief and pain into a hopeful light.
I hope these ideas and suggestions have been a help for you wherever you are in your grief journey. Please feel free to comment and ask me questions if you would like to know more on this subject or if you found something particularly useful for you. I’d love to hear from you.
Blessings of beauty on your day!
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