I come down to the living room on some day, some month, and some time. I come down and I see my housemates crocheting up a storm in the living room. It's a craft that has slowly but surely taken a hold of my whole house. I don't personally partake--more of a digital art, coloring book, journaling kind of gal--but I know that fiber arts has filled the Zoom screen of LT trainings, covered random nooks and crannies with loose balls of yarn, and provided a means for my housemates to connect over.
I've been reading a lot of "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma" by Bessel van der Kolk, and one thing I've learned is that creativity has a lot to do with recovery from trauma. In fact, the parts of the brain that sustain a lot of the damage from trauma is also responsible for creativity. Part of that recovery process is re-engaging those parts, and re-establishing a balance between all realms of the mind and body. When you make bread, you are feeling dough through your fingers, taking in the lustrous smell of bread, and if you're giving it to someone else, reconnecting with people who it might feed. When you play the piano, you are feeling the coordination and sequencing of fingers and limbs that make the melody of your present. When I hear my housemmate Sky talk about how crocheting for them helps arrive better to work Zoom calls, I can't help but think that something amazing and important is happening.
This has been one of the main reasons why I and the planning committee for the spring fundraiser decided to do something around art and made things--because we wanted to lift up all the ways that our ability to create has gotten us through the past 2 years. It's been a rough ride, but getting our fingers into some yarn may truly be the thing that has sustained us.
As a tribute, I'm listing all the ways that I can think of, and have learned, that creativity does for us:
helps us reflect
lets us dream
helps us process
helps us take joy and pleasure
helps us rest and heal
transforms a situation from a dead end to open doors
transforms the power, narrative, and truths that we hold
gets us out of looped narratives
gets us out of flight/fight mode
recovers lost time
reconnects us with our body and spirit
reconnects us with community
helps us understand values, expectations, perceptions outside of our own
renews capacity to feel empathy
helps us plan
helps us play out new and different scenarios
relieves boredom/brain atrophy
alleviates pain
helps us survive the present
revives intuition
recovers your flow
There's so much more that creativity, and that part of our brain, does for us in our lives, and I can't wait to celebrate it this spring with my community.