7 Ways To Deal With Loss And Grief As A Creative
This year has been tough to say the least, and we’re barely two months in! On January 1st, my daughter woke up sick – not exactly how you want to bring in the new year. She ended up testing positive for the flu and it took her weeks to fully recover and feel better.
Just as soon as my daughter was feeling better, my grandfather ended up sick with – you guessed it – the flu. He ended up going to the emergency room for what he believed were severe flu symptoms. Little did anyone know that we would find out days later that those symptoms were actually caused by a large tumor in his abdomen. My family received the shock of a lifetime, and my papa was diagnosed with late-stage metastatic cancer, given only six months to live.
A few weeks later, still in the hospital and after multiple unsuccessful surgeries, that prognosis dwindled to only weeks left at best. After a month in the hospital, he was finally released and put in hospice. The news grew even more bleak – he had only days left to live. He held on for nearly two more weeks before he passed away on February 18. In the blink of an eye, someone I was close to, who had seemed perfectly okay from the outside, had disintegrated from good to bad to gone.
How To Deal With Loss and Grief As A Creative
When we experience loss, it affects all areas of our life – including our creativity. Ever since my papa passed, I’ve been navigating the many stages and emotions that come with loss, as well as coming to terms with how it’s affected both me and my work as a creative.
In today’s post, I thought I’d share all the ways I’ve learned, and am still learning, how to deal with loss and grief as a creative. These are some approaches I’ve adopted in my own journey of navigating grief while trying to stay connected to my creative self.
Allow Yourself To Be Present With Your Feelings
Dealing with tough feelings such as grief after a loss is never fun. While it can be tempting, especially when you’re busy with day-to-day responsibilities to suppress those feelings, you are only prolonging the healing process. Bottled up emotions can lead to burnout or a mental breakdown if not addressed in a timely and healthy manner.
While distracting yourself with TV, video games, and even work can be healthy to a certain extent, it’s important to allow yourself to feel and process complex emotions such as shock, denial, anger, and sadness. Allow yourself to be present with your feelings. As hard and uncomfortable as it is, this is the only way to truly process, and eventually heal, from the pain.
Give Yourself Permission To Rest
If possible, take some time off from work for a while. It takes time to process and heal from the great pain that loss causes.
As most of us know, healing from loss is never a linear process. There’s going to be good days and bad along the way. Oftentimes, things have to get worse for a while before they can get better.
During this time, give yourself permission to step back from projects without guilt. Work will always be there. Taking care of your mental health and spending time with loved ones is what is most important during this time.
Don’t pressure yourself to be productive or feel like you need to “use” your grief as a way to create art.
Learn To Ask For Help
I’ll be the first to admit that I am the worst at asking for help when I need it. I tend to be a bit of a control freak. I struggle with having to do things my way or fearing that they won’t be done well enough. But I’ve had to accept that done is better than perfect.
There’s been days on my own healing journey that it’s all I can do to get out of bed. Just taking a shower some days has felt like a monumental task. I’ve had to set my pride and need for control aside and ask my boyfriend for help around the house. He has so graciously helped me by taking on some of my chores so that I can be present for my family and my own feelings during this time.
People can’t know you need help unless you ask. Be open and honest with how you’re feeling with others. Ask for help when you need it and delegate some tasks for a while where you can – both at work and at home.
Lean On Others For Support
As you deal with loss, it can be helpful to lean on others for support. Seek community – whether in your co-workers, peers, church, family, or friends – who will comfort and encourage you during this tough season. Having a loving community of people backing you is a beautiful reminder that we are never alone.
It can be beneficial to talk about your feelings with a trusted friend or loved one. Just having someone listen while you talk can be cathartic.
Consider joining a support group. There are even groups that focu.
Therapy can be another valuable resource. You can work together with a therapist to learn to navigate and cope with challenging emotions in a healthy way.
Use Your Creativity As An Outlet
It can be therapeutic to express your feelings in a creative way. Journaling, painting, dancing, singing or any other medium of art can be a meaningful way to help externalize your emotions.
This can be especially helpful for when you can’t or don’t know how to vocalize what you’re feeling. It can be difficult to pin certain emotions – there’s been times I don’t even know what emotion I’m feeling! When this happens, I find it helps to use my creativity to get these feelings out of my head and into the world.
Remember to be kind to yourself and not to put any expectations on what you create during this time. You don’t have to share your creations with anyone if you don’t want to! It’s okay for these works of art to be raw, messy, and to even remain incomplete. That can be a direct reflection of how we feel inside, too.
Find Meaning In Loss
Loss often reshapes our perspective on life. It’s a harsh reminder of how limited our time is here on earth. This realization can renew our sense of purpose. When we consider how precious our time is, we are often more compelled to make the most of it. As tough as it is to deal with loss, it can often be a good motivator to keep us working toward our goals.
We can find a deeper sense of meaning, as we deal with loss, through our creative work – which can act as a bridge between our pain and healing.
As creatives, we can even use our pain for good. When I think of some of my favorite works of art – whether music, paintings, or poems – most of them originated from a deep place of hurt. Many of the most profound, moving, and thought-proving creations are the by-product of pain and suffering.
We all experience grief at some point in our lives, and we all get to choose what we do with those feelings. I think there is nothing more beautiful than taking something so painful and ultimately using it to make something that touches or inspires another human being in a positive way.
Have Self-Empathy
I had this entire year planned out – it was going to be my most productive year yet! I had planned out all of my yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals. But, as life would have it, that didn’t go as planned. I didn’t reach any of my January or February goals at all.
Instead, I took the time to be emotionally and physically available for my family. And I’m so glad I did. I’ll always have my work, but being able to support my family during this tough time was super important to me.
Additionally, taking a few weeks off as I initially grieved was so beneficial to not only my mental health, but my creativity as well. Instead of rushing back into things, I allowed inspiration to gradually come back to me.
While I’m someone who ordinarily beats myself up when I don’t reach my goals or cross off everything on my to-do list, this season of life has taught me to have more empathy for myself.
Don’t be harsh on yourself as you grieve. It takes time to process and heal and there is no magic cure for “getting back to normal”. Your sense of normalcy might even look different after a loss.
Remember to have self-empathy and be kind to yourself. You wouldn’t rush a grieving friend back into work, or guilt trip them for not being productive enough during this time. So, don’t do that to yourself, either!
Conclusion
Dealing with loss and grief as a creative person can be both deeply challenging and profoundly transformative. Creativity itself can offer a healthy way to explore and process complicated emotions. I truly hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any other tips for how to deal with loss, please share them in the comments below.
Feeling out of touch with your creative side after dealing with loss? Check out this article to learn how to fall back in love with creating!
Photo Credit: Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels
