TERRE HAUTE —
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.
— Shakespeare, Macbeth
U.S. society has a lot going for it, but the way we deal with loss is not one of our stronger suits. Mourning — our own or others’ — tends to make us uncomfortable.
Maybe it’s tied to our cultural inclination toward superproductivity and problem-solving. Americans reflexively want to fix things and situations, right away. We don’t like to see people or machines limp along at half- or quarter-speed.
Like many contemporary Western cultures, we’ve abbreviated the formal mourning process that a death sets off to little more than a handful of strung-together days. Even after a loved one dies unexpectedly, the cultural clock starts ticking. After a few weeks, You really need to get back to work. After a few months, You really need to move on with your life … get over this.
So fearful are we of publicly displaying our wounded hearts, we opt to take medication — eagerly offered by people who are worried about us — just so we can make it through a funeral without “breaking down.” (As if sobbing, even keening, isn’t the most normal, natural response to the death of someone we love.)
Other losses usually are given fairly short shrift, be they the loss of a pet, a home, a job, a dream of success, a marriage or romance, a sense of security or the physical and cognitive abilities that diminish as we age. The collective attitude toward such lesser loss: Suck it up. Everybody’s got problems.
But sucking it up, shoving it down, repressing and self-medicating with alcohol, food, mindless shopping or obsessive work often comes at a delayed but high price. Loss punches holes in us, some pencil-sized, some dangerously deep and wide. We may paper over the holes but, sooner or later, we discover that paper provides pitiful structural support.
On Nov. 6, the nonprofit Maple Center for Integrative Health is offering a daylong workshop downtown to help people properly tend to the holes.
The fourth annual such gathering, this year’s session is called “Creating a Path Through Loss: The Arts as Healing Tools.” It will take place at 686 Wabash Ave., beginning at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 3 p.m. The $10 fee includes a catered lunch from Market Bella Rosa. An art exhibit, “A Path Through Loss,” at the Gopalan Contemporary Art Gallery at 9 S. Seventh St. will accompany the workshop.
Registration and more information can be obtained by calling Cathie Laska at (812) 234-8122 or by visiting www.themaplecenter.org.
Participants will be guided through exercises in writing, music, drawing, collage making, movement and — if they choose — verbal sharing. Each exercise is aimed at allowing a person to channel his or her sense of loss and pain into creative expression.
Zann Carter, who will lead the writing portion of the workshop, is among the guides who know firsthand about the holes that loss can punch inside of us. Her son died of a drug overdose in 2006 at the age of 20. She, her husband and other children were, naturally, devastated, and each member of the family has worked to deal with the sadness.
“It’s a central part of my life,” Carter said of her son’s death. “I think I’ve done really productive things since then and I’m getting on with my life, but I have this core wound that may never heal.”
And that is OK. People can live and even thrive with wounds that never quite go away. But just as there is a difference between healthy venting and whining, there is a difference between tending to a wound and denying its existence.
For Carter, the tending worked best after she was inspired by a book of simple drawings from a South Bend hospice program, which were reproduced by Linda Jeffers and titled, “The Hole in Me Since the Day You Died.”
Carter’s longtime work with textiles had not attracted her in her grief, but a pen, a set of children’s watercolors and a drawing journal did.
“When I was feeling overwhelmed, I would spend 20 or 30 minutes making these crude drawings. I was astonished at the pressure it relieved in me,” she said.
For her husband, the way through the pain was music, which provides many people with an outlet for expression of their sadness. As part of the Nov. 6 workshop, the gifted music therapist Tracy Richardson will help participants work with melodies and lyrics and collectively create a song as a path through loss. Sharon Boyle will lead group drumming.
“If you are human, you know loss. If you are human, you are creative,” Carter said. To learn to creatively express the complex feelings of loss, “you don’t necessarily have to be creative with art and music. You could do it with gardening or cooking or any activity.”
The point of the workshop is to help people open a channel that might not be readily evident.
Carter stressed that the day’s exercises are not about classifying and ranking the severity of individual losses, and certainly not about judging who deserves to hurt and who doesn’t.
“As a person suffering a loss, you have a right to make a hierarchy [of its significance], but no one else does,” she said. “You should be allowed to acknowledge your loss, to name it and to honor it.”
Finding a way to do that through creative means gives the loss “an honored space,” Carter said, “and it takes some of that raw woundedness out of it.”
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com
Opinion
Stephanie Salter: Using the creative arts to open the way after a loss
- Opinion
-
-
Mark Bennett: High-profile mural connects historical dots from city to river
At 96 feet wide and 2 stories tall, the power, impact and value of the Wabash will be evident.
-
EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
-
READERS' FORUM: May 19, 2013
• Flawed reasoning on gun checks
• A hint of things yet to come?
• Are the ‘makers’ doing the ‘taking’?
• The ‘Obamination’ is finally revealed
• Pondering effects of Obamacare
• Fantasizing on the ‘Apocalypse’
• Another view of Hinduism
• Great experience for HCMS students
-
FLASHPOINT: A legislative session of missed opportunities
Given the nature of politicians, grand claims of accomplishments and overblown rhetoric about “historic” efforts are to be expected at the close of any legislative session.
-
RONN MOTT: Mushrooms = Hoosier happiness
Someone wrote or said a few years ago a statement that would define the word “Hoosier.” According to this urban legend, a Hoosier is somebody dribbling a basketball around the Indy 500 while eating a fried, morel mushroom. It did not define me, at the time.
-
EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
-
READERS' FORUM: May 17, 2013
Hinduism doesn’t deserve ridicule — Shefali Purohit, Terre Haute
-
RONN MOTT: Israel’s Air Force
Recently the Israeli Air Force bombed and rocketed a convoy leaving Syria going to Lebanon with rockets that were going to be used to attack Israel. It did not get there. It was destroyed.
-
EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
-
Readers' Forum: May 16, 2013
Moving Deming folks sounds ‘nuts’
-
Readers' Forum: May 15, 2013
Participants rise to the challenge: I would like to write a letter congratulating all the Wabash Valley Roadrunners that competed in the One America Indianapolis Mini Marathon.
-
RONN MOTT: Media merry-go-round
Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows. That isn’t a unique phrase to this writer or to this era in time. But, when it comes to the musical chairs of broadcasting, it certainly applies.
-
LIZ CIANCONE: Courts see a different appearance than cops
Have you ever noticed the transformation between the arrest of an accused lawbreaker and the first appearance in court?
-
READERS' FORUM: May 14, 2013
ISTEP failure exposes flaws
Community hasn’t changed its spirit
Egregious threat to nation’s defense
-
READERS' FORUM: May 13, 2013
• Women’s group criticizes Bucshon
• Let’s hope this doesn’t come true
• Many get thanks for fest success
-
MARK BENNETT: Life at face value: Mom’s simple advice still presents a valuable daily challenge
Most moms don’t base their advice on scientific research.
(Unless, of course, your mother is a scientific researcher. If so, carry a No. 2 pencil and take good notes.) -
EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
-
GUEST COLUMN: Nursing more than medicine and bandages
Being a nurse … Like most nurses, I chose this profession because I had a strong desire to help others and no other career would allow me the opportunity to touch lives the way I have been able to through nursing.
-
READERS' FORUM: May 12, 2013
Vigo Youth Football, entering 45th year, seeks new support
Media ignoring important case on abortions
Proud to be old-fashioned
Guns in school? What’s next?
Promoting hate not a ‘brave’ act
-
FLASHPOINT: Again in 2013 General Assembly, middle class generally ignored
Last year, the people of Indiana entrusted the Republican Party with some of their most precious possessions.
-
RONN MOTT: ‘Raccoons II’
In the Algonquin Indian language, raccoon means “working with hands.” They are really cute little fellows until they injure a child, or a pet, or leave feces around where you certainly do not want it.
-
Readers’ Forum: May 11, 2013
I just wanted to express my disappointment at the lack of response shown by President Obama after the Boston Marathon bombings.
-
Readers' Forum: May 10, 2013
CANDLES event plants new seed: On April 26, CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center hosted an event called “Sowing Seeds of Peace: A Celebration of Spring” at the Apple House. Our purpose was to introduce people to our concept of forgiveness as a seed for peace.
-
RONN MOTT: ‘NRA Convention’
At the recent NRA Convention in Houston, Texas, where the right-wing political hot air almost lifted the convention's building off its foundation, the NRA trotted out the forever yours political dame of the right wing, Sarah Palin. Sarah did not disappoint.
-
EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
-
Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
-
EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
-
RONN MOTT: ‘Heritage gone’
The last high school I attended was being torn down just a few days ago. I didn't learn about it until I saw classmate Dick Mills on television and a display he had put together about State football championships in the middle 1930's. I began elementary school with Dick Mills. That was Matthew South Elementary School on South Sixth Street in Clinton, Indiana. After seeing Dick on TV, it dawned on me that all schools I had attended in Clinton have been torn down.
-
LIZ CIANCONE: We always want more than we need
Washington seems more preoccupied with the unemployment rate than they are about the constant stalemate. Still with thousands out of work and the unemployment rate hovering somewhere between 7 percent and 9 percent, it does deserve more than a passing nod.
-
FLASHPOINT: Indiana lawmakers reinforced school safety mechanisms
Nothing is more important to me than the safety of my children. Every parent has felt that instant, apprehensive rush when their child plays too close to the street or falls down while playing soccer and it is our responsibility as parents to implement every safety mechanism we can muster to protect our kids.
- More Opinion Headlines
-
Probe Begins After Conn. Commuter Trains Crash
Coffee Run Leads to Hatchet Hitchhiker Arrest
NTSB Begins Investigation Into Conn. Train Crash
Lotto Fever Sweeps the Country
Fmr. IRS Head Insists No Politics in Targeting
Conn. Commuter Trains Collide; 60 Go to Hospital
NM Mom Chases Down Child Abductor
Raw: Gun Scare Mars Cannes Film Festival
Raw: Suicide Bomber Kills 2 Americans, 13 Others
CDC: Fecal Bacteria Common in Swimming Pools
Raw: Texas Gov. Flies Over Tornado Damage
Music Therapy Bonds Parents and Preemies
China, Others Want What's Under the Arctic Ice
Raw: Crash Sends Car Into Fla. Pool
Raw: Driver Ejected From Truck, Over Bridge
One Million Evacuated As Cyclone Hits Bangladesh
Raw: 6 Die in Russian Ship Fire
Raw: Obama Sits Down With Elementary Kids
Raw: Germany Protestors Picket Barbie House
$1 Million in Jewels Stolen at Cannes Film Fest
Raw: Tornadoes Spotted in Kansas
Twiggy, the Water Skiing Squirrel
Sailor Surprises His Mom At Her CU Denver Graduation Ceremony
Official: ‘Amazing’ No One Was Killed In CT Train Crash
Coffee Stop Leads To Arrest Of YouTube Sensation Wanted For Murder
Bearded Dragon Reunited With Owner
Marine Reunited with Warzone Companion
Beyonce Is Pregnant!
SF baseball player overpaid $500,000 RETURNS money -- and team says KEEP IT
Dad returns from Afghanistan, surprises family during Rays' first pitch
See Jennifer Lopez's New $10m Hamptons Mansion
Woman tricked into taking abortion pill
Emma Watson Goes Pantless
IRS scandal: Republicans seek to tie Obama to agency's woes
Play of the Day: Flipping to Safety
Pregnant Kim Kardashian Squeezes Her Swollen Feet Into Stilettos
Top Videos of the Week: Angry Taco Bell Guy, Glacier Moves on House, Dog Hates Baths
