The Pattern of the Dance

I was in the shower, letting the warm water lure my body and mind into relaxation. As I stepped out, two pieces of my life fit together so neatly I can still hear the mental click.

I had been trying to figure out what to do for a master’s thesis I had already started to refer to as “The Damn Thesis.” It felt like a piece of busywork tacked to the end of three years of what I hoped was scholarly inquiry into the psychology of the creative process. I had also been reading bunches of writing by people experiencing chronic illness. That morning, in the shower, I recognized the similarities in my areas of study: the journey of response to illness parallels the journey of the creative process.

In the short term, I was delighted to find a subject for The Damn Thesis. In the long term, I had stumbled onto one of the organizing principles for the rest of my life. (There’s an argument for higher education!) Shortly after I received my degree, I started presenting my ideas in talks before groups of people living with chronic illness and their caregivers. The sick folks thanked me for naming their experience. To my surprise, the “normal” folks told me I had described their lives, too. It turns out that living itself is a chronic, creative experience. I should have understood it earlier, but I was blinded by my youthful misperception that my suffering is unique and special.

Now that I’m solidly middle-aged, I understand that everybody suffers. Everybody has crummy things happen to them for which there is no cure and from which there is no recovery. Plans fail; ambitions fade; illness strikes; lovers leave; loved ones die. That’s part of being alive.

It’s one thing for me to remind myself that my struggle is a creative one. It’s probably a conceit for me to suggest that the same is true for anybody else. I am driven, though, by the need to find purpose in my experience, the thought that these ideas are what I have to give you and I had better do it now while I can. So here they are. As my 12-stepping friends say, “take what you like and leave the rest.”

Overwhelm

My entry into a new cycle of experience with illness is always dark. It begins with hints of change. Physically, things are not quite what they used to be. Right now, there is heaviness in the back of my head that (I know from experience) may evolve into a headache that will last two days. It is not yet two p.m. and my fingers are starting to fumble at the keyboard. I may not be able to finish writing this piece. My defenses leap into action. Part of my mind wraps itself around the idea of impending pain and disappointment. These subtle sensations can become so powerful that they cannot be ignored. I can’t feel anything except pain or grief. I call this part of my experience “Overwhelm.”

We might imagine that a creative process would begin in a sunshine-filled planning session, but that is not always the case. Scholars of creativity have labeled the early parts of the process “The Mess.” We are called to a project, but the results of our efforts are unknowable. There is a sense that something is not right or is missing, but there is no clear plan of action. It is a bewildering time.

Too often, I fight against the feelings of Overwhelm. I keep on typing regardless of my fingers’ response. I bluster to the next item on my “to do” list. I try to ignore my grief and analyze the physical aspects of my situation. I try to control my surroundings and my body as much as possible. Perhaps if I ignore my emotions, they will go away. I always, sooner of later, lose this fight and give in.

Incubation

Sometimes, there is no choice but to be sick. I cannot keep working when the back of my skull feels like it’s dripping down my chair. At some point, I will have to stop typing. I enter into a place of passive waiting and surrender. I need quiet and rest. Having experienced this surrender enough to know what follows, I have named it “Incubation.”

In the creative process, too, we give up—temporarily—and do something else. We take a walk, work in the garden, take a shower, wash the dishes. While this may appear to be “time out” from the problem, it really isn’t. Even though we’re not consciously thinking about the project, we are continuing to work on it. We turn the project around in our minds for short periods and then tuck it out of our attention, but the problem solving continues. Formlessness and passivity are important qualities of this stage.

Reconciliation

For hours (sometimes days and, occasionally, weeks) I exist, dulled by pain or disability. I am simply surviving and waiting. Into this emptiness come flashes of life. The pain lifts for a few minutes or I am lifted out of it by a bird stopping outside my window, my child laughing, a momentary sensation in my right toe. The experience may be physical or it may be some kind of psychic internal shift. At such times, even in the midst of discomfort and weariness, there is a feeling that right now, in this moment, everything is all right and that, no matter what the future holds, everything will continue to be all right.

These moments of grace parallel the creative process called “illumination.” This is the stage that gets the most attention in our culture. Because illumination is often described as the “aha!” or “eureka!” stage, it is easy to imagine it to be a joyous experience—and it sometimes is. Sometimes, though, it is a quieter “click” as the reasoning, judging parts of our minds figure out what is needed to make our imaginings become real.

These times, short-lived as they may be, give us precious seconds to remember all of who we are. They allow us to open ourselves to true healing.

Such moments draw us out of incubation into reconciliation. Enough slivers of light enter into our darkness that we are willing to move back towards the day. We can’t return, though, to what was. What we were is gone. Even if we expect to regain our earlier level of functioning, we have to integrate the experience of being ill into our lives. We have encountered the disorganization and end of what we were. We have been swept up in grief and frustration and suffering until we have no choice but to surrender to them. We have caught glimpses of a place of calm and grace. We are full of questions: What is happening to me? Who am I now? How can I live in this changed world?

We begin, slowly, to build relationship with our changed selves. We discover what is new about our abilities, our attitudes, and our environment. We experiment to find out what works and what doesn’t. We are not called upon, in this period of reconciliation, to make changes. Instead, we listen and witness what is in order to develop compassion for ourselves. We realize that we are enough as we are, even if we do not fit our old ideas of what is normal or healthy.

Rededication

As we become able to accept ourselves, we begin to open out to our souls. We pay attention to what it is that we love. In the process of accepting ourselves, we may have sorted through many messages about who we should be, but aren’t. As layers of cultural myth and social learning are stripped away, we reach the bedrock of our essential being.

We begin to express who we are. We begin to do what gives us joy. We take up long-deferred dreams. We return to the piano, start singing again, write, paint, study history, start support groups. In the chronicles of healing I have read, I see this pattern repeat. We rededicate ourselves to those things that are important to us. They are that much more precious because we understand, in a new way, how fragile they are, how easily lost.

The last stage of the creative process is elaboration and communication. We express our ideas in creative form in an attempt to communicate them to others. Any action can be creative, from making chicken soup to crafting a disarmament agreement.

Line of Dance

Like creativity, healing is not a linear process, but a cyclical one. Upon completing an historical review of theories of creativity (where the steps of creativity were variously quantified as two, three, four, and seven) one scholar concluded that theorists were labeling the process, rather than understanding it. So, too, I describe healing experiences without really understanding how they happen.

Though we move through times of overwhelm, incubation, reconciliation, and rededication, we do not move sequentially. Healing and creativity both double back on themselves, spiral down and skip. Creativity and healing dance, rather than march.

There seem to be smaller cycles within large cycles. During each flare-up (doctors and MS veterans call it an “exacerbation”) of my illness, I return to disorganization, frustration, grief, and the quiet of incubation. As I heal, I once again attend to my body, mind, and soul and rededicate my self. These are the large rhythms of my chronic healing. Each day is different. A physical or emotional event may send me spiraling into grief or into joy for a few minutes or hours or days. These smaller rhythms nest inside the large ones.

Like all dances, healing and creativity require balance. We balance between doing and being, between stillness and movement. When I resist my experience, I clench myself around what has been, unwilling to make room for the unknown that is unfolding around me. I get stuck at that stage and feel powerless to take action. Only by opening out to what is do I align myself with the healing process.

This does not imply that I should try not to resist. I will resist and will get stuck. Trying to control the process is just going to get me stuck in a different way. At their core, creativity and healing are both about release. With both creativity and healing, I need to let go and trust the process.

Copyright 2006, Kate Wolfe-Jenson, All rights reserved.