Tag — Migraines/Chronic Pain
Chronically Creative: Painting Thru Depression with David Sandum
This week Behind the Mic features part four of Chronically Creative; a series about working with chronic illness. Today we meet David Sandum, a fine art painter and depression survivor. David speaks with us about finding art while institutionalized; the use of color while working through depression; and finding healing through art. David, step right up.
My Strange New Looking Bed and Nailed to the Wall Picture
David Sandum, 2001. Used by permission of the artist.
It was there I started to draw - in my room, alone and confused. Many therapists at the time asked if I took drugs, had an alcohol problem or any other addictions, saying that people with such strong anxiety and depression most often had them. They were always surprised to hear me answer no, but I just drew and painted, even if I didn’t see it clearly then. Yet now I realize I did something constructive with the depressive. Instead of a needle or a bottle, I picked up a pen and eventually the brush. So I am completely self-taught. Art has consumed me since this time, not just because I love art, but as I’ve literally have painted to stay alive, and in it, have found empathy. It’s as simple as that. People could never tell me in words what I went through. But I could see and understand it through Van Gogh’s and Munch’s expressive paintings. It was as if they said: “I know everything around you is chaos. But look at this, I felt the same way.” I have written about this extensively in my memoir (in English). It took me ten years to complete and I hope to get it published someday.
Q: As a colorist, do you notice a shift in tones and color as your depression ebbs or intensifies? Are there particular works of yours that you think illustrate that for us?
I think it’s a myth that depressed artists always paint black or in earth tones, though that can certainly be the case. Just look at Van Gogh’s vibrant yellow and stars, Degas inspiring ballerinas, or Matisse’s decorative color schemes. They were all depressed major portions of their life, but I see their work mainly as uplifting, even though Van Gogh’s early period for example was dark and his portrayals and subject matters often conveyed troubled times. But their colors and subject matters were vibrant. They focused on the energy inside. This is my main philosophy in art, like Matisse said: “I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.”
Depression Prayer
David Sandum, 2000 Used by permission.
I have certainly painted darker though, and my first few years I painted so dark people often said they wouldn’t be able to have my art on their wall. But now I wonder if that wasn’t just mental: that I just didn’t quite know how to paint yet and to keep my brush clean. Any true artist will know what I mean. But two of my very first paintings were expressive and colorful, and they will always be key to me.
The Law of the Jungle
David Sandum, 2000.
This vibrant and expressive painting was created late one winter’s night in the year 2000. One of my very first paintings, I painted by impulse. I had no idea what would evolve. But soon Darwin’s theory of natural selection came to mind: How the strong survive and the weak eventually become extinct–contemplating that the world is run by people who pressure others to destruction for their own gain (displayed by the evil man in profile to the left, about to crush and grab me with his claw). The “claw man” is trying to stab me; and in many aspects he represented the world as a whole.
Ironically, this painting now hangs in a law office. The lawyer who purchased it has told me it’s his dream to see it in a courtroom.
Q: You recently spent some time in the deserts of the American southwest. People have long gone to the deserts for a cure – for asthma, rheumatism, etc. Did you experiencing a healing energy in the desert — in regards to depression, or in more general terms? How did this change in atmosphere effect your moods and your work?
I don’t think I have found the answer to this just yet (I returned home from the US last night), as I’m not the kind of artist who works entirely on site. Things need to linger in my mind, sometimes for months, and suddenly one day in my studio things will come together. But the strong impressions were definitely there throughout my trip to the deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico: the peace, the silence, the beauty of the landscape. No cell phones or computers, just me and the earth. Navajo country, Bryce Canyon in Utah, Sedona in Arizona, and Ghost Ranch New Mexico, were all places of healing. I locked my door to my studio two months ago tired and weak, but have returned filled with thoughts, places, and colors etched in my head. I love the desert and I always will.
To read all the posts in this series click here. Stay tuned next week for another addition of Chronically Creative. Thanks for being here.
40 Things I’ve Done In Bed
My friend Claudia Mair Burney and I have a couple things in common. We are both religious misfits. We are both writers. We are both mothers. And we are both chronic pain survivors.
Awhile back, when I was in a period of struggling with pain and the way it limited my work, Claudia sent me a list of things she’d done while laid up with pain. She called her list “Things I’ve Done From Bed.” She wrote novels. She raised children. She saved a marriage.
It helped. Seeing her list rolling out long in that email. It helped.
Because of this pain, I work in a unique way. I work small. I work in tiny steps and short spurts. I have to be very realistic about my situation and work within that reality. Just dreaming big is not enough. I have to work too, in this really uncommon manner. I may not get as much done as others I admire. But I do the work of my hands, every day. Every. Day.
I thought I was getting better, moving out of the pain, but lately I think maybe not so much. And sometimes, this just really breaks me down. I look at my life stretching long in front of me and think, “Really, another 40 years of this pain?” Then I look at my children and think, “Yes, of course. As many years as I can get.”
So I’m making my list now, in the little window of hopefulness that I have today, in case the shades snap down again. So I can remember what I can still do. So I can recall that small is beautiful — even if you have to do most of it from bed.
1. Became famous among dozens for helping “recovering evangelicals.”
2. Wrote several hundred posts on postmodernism as the Urban Abbess.
3. Wrote 453 posts on “soulcare for flibbertigibbets” as Magpie Girl. [Read more →]
Herculean Efforts in the Face of Pain
Woke up again with migraine pain. Day 6..7…I’ve lost track.
I called a friend yesterday for advice on a stuck place in my work. Was told that I am letting what I *perceive* as limitations stop me.
I don’t think this pain is a percieved limitations. It seems pretty damn real. It seems pretty damn limiting.
Apparently, some people can write books while paralyzed by just blinking one eye. Some people can write books while brain damaged. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
I don’t feel like I have the inner resources to be some people.
Still, I am trying to shift my perspective. Trying to think of how I can return to teaching — something I quit because I could no longer trust my body to be well enough to show up when I was scheduled. I’m trying to get around that limitation.
But mostly, I am angry. Angry at the illness. Angry that people can’t see how much it effects me. (I can count on on hand the number of people who truly “get” it. Lynette, you’re number one, love.) Angry at how alone that makes me feel.
Angry that I don’t get more credit for all the herculean effort it takes to do the things I do in just one daywith pain: feed my children; endure the pain of the traffic noise as I walk them to school; exercise regardless of my condition; be emotionally present to my family, my readers, my friends. Not to mention all the extras it takes just to hold a body together when it is this frail: the length of time it takes to shower when you can’t move your limbs without pain; all the hours in the pool, on the yoga mat, at the doctors; the enormous expense of medications and supplements and alternative practitioners. Even my gym costs more than normal because I can’t stand the noise of the popular, cheap clubs. Does anyone see this? This doesn’t flow, it doesn’t come easy. It’s a hike through the desert, every single step of it.
Today’s Plan:Move on Anyway. In spite of. In the Face of Pain. I’m not well enough to bike to the club to swim, and I don’t have time to walk because of a doctors appointment. But i can do yoga at home. I’ll cook from scratch so I can “eat clean.” Write and record the Do Less post for tomorrow. Find a new doctor (requires a bike or bus ride). Walk to pick up the kids from school for choir practice. Walk to choir practice. Walk home. Make dinner (in pain. I hate that part.) If the pain in manageable go to my own choir practice (Tho this kind of singing in on my Mondo Beyondo list, I may have to quit this because I’m usually in too much pain by evening.) Mourn the fact that my brief dalliance with moderately pain free living has passed. I will do all of this — and more — in pain. Despite pain.
What I won’t do because of the pain:learn how to edit my podcasts, learn how to set up an ecourse registration page (can’t concentrate enough or read enough), have sex, truly enjoy anything I do (hurts to much), ride my beautiful bike instead of walking (everything takes so much longer on foot), laugh.
*8 Things: Self Care Essentials
Wouldn’t you know it? I’m gearing up to write a series of posts for the new Do Less Campaign, and my to-do list is suddenly stressing me out.
Universe, meet Sense of Humor.
Do Less kicks off tomorrow with Why I Keep A Have-Done List. But since it’s *8 Things Thursday, let’s do a little warm-up exercise. It’s time to think about what you need to stay healthy and sane on a day-to-day basis. Here’s my basic set:
1. Sleep: I need 8 hours a night, and if my migraines are flaring I grab a nap at 3pm as well.
2. Exercise: A walk or swim and at least 10 minutes of yoga a day is helpful in keeping the migraines and bay.
3. Quiet: My brain hyper-processes all sensory intake, so background noise stresses me out. I work without music or talk radio in the office.
4. Meditative Activities: If I’m feeling stressed, a few rows of knitting or some time on the guitar always helps.
5. Work/Rest Rhythm: This book helped me figure out a good work/rest pattern. If my migraines are bad I have to work one hour, rest one hour. One good days I can work 2-3, rest 1. It makes me feel lame, but I’m learning that it is what’s functional for me right now.
6. Morning Cuddle: this 15 minute check-in time with my girls is a must. (more here)
7. Grown Ups: I work alone and live in a culture where I don’t speak the language. At least one coffee or lunch with a friend each week is required to keep me sane.
8. Meaningful Conversations: “Only Connect” is a big theme for me. Talks with my Soulsisters and my teenage-darlings must regularly for my spirit to feel strong.
What *8 Things are your self-care essentials? Grab a button and play along, or leave your link for this week’s list is the comments below. Thanks for reading!
May Dreamboard: All Systems Go!
It’s Dreamboard time, and the Flower Moon is sending us its lovely blooming energy. According to Trish Hoskins at Suite 101, now is the time to celebrate bouyant, playful energy and to “meditate on your thankfulness for the feeling of renewal and rejuvination.”
All this month I’ve known that my theme for the May dreamboard would be “All Systems GO!” Which has been encouraging because I’ve had a bad migraines in May and every day has brought me pain. Today the pain finally broke and –you guessed it — I came down with a stomach bug. In Sweden. On vacation.
Have you noticed that this tends to happen with stress of all sorts? For instance, my mother was a teacher and was often sick on the first few days of our holiday breaks. I think maybe the fight-or-flight rush of adreniline keeps the germs at bay, and once that’s gone — WOMP! — you’re sick.
So with this dreamboard I’m holding on to hope with both hands that the next few weeks will find me healthy and read to MOVE on all the lovely writing and community-building projects The Universe has given me of late. In spite of the pain this month, I have felt that blooming, joyful energy in great abundance. I am immensely grateful that the work that’s been set in front of me rejuvenates me body and soul.
This dreamboard was made in our hotel room in Stockholm. The Cate drew the rocket ship for me and we stuck them up on the amazing wall paper. I love how it makes me think of the Flower Moon and of my hope for forward motion. Perhaps we should have written: All Systems Grow!
What is the Flower Moon bringing you these days?
I don’t read blogs — but I will read yours.
Hello All. I’m icing my head and listening to John Mayer’s Gravity, which is always a sign that I’m holding on to hope with both hands. It’s a real wrestling-the-angel moment over here folks, with no apparent end in sight. Why? Ten days of migraine, that’s why. Ten days of canceled dates, and parenting through pain, and (uh-hem) not a lot of shugar, if you know what I mean. (Just telling it like it is folks. Chronic pain SUCKS!)
Thankfully I get these little moments of relief where I can dash off a microblog or make notes for a longer piece or writing, or you know, take a shower or something dumb like that.
This is making me nuts because my deamon is downloading writing ideas to me on an every-five-minute basis. I am holding him by the tail and fretting a little. Leonie says, “Don’t worry Possum, they will be there when you need them. And I’m trying Leonie, I really am, just to trust in abundance and to not worry about lack.
In the meantime let me make a confession. I don’t really read blogs. Shocking, I know, and tragically unfair. I don’t really read much at all anymore because of my head, and the eye strain, and the ache. Which is completely awful because words are my absolutely favorite thing. I’m totally dependent on audible.com, which makes me worry that my intellect is slipping because it’s a bit of a dust-up trying to find audio books of quality. So far I’ve dredged up a few good ones and my brain feels pretty well fed. (Phew!) And thankfully some of you podcast and some of you vlog, and there’s always dear old TED and TAL to keep my brain engaged.
But my point is, if you blog, and you know I’ll love you (or that I already do) you really must Twitter or Facebook for me. If you tweet your new posts, or get them up on FB, I will read you. I have the most organized TweetDeck and FB lists in the world, and I follow my readers, soulsisters, and family(ish) folks faithfully. Your’s will be the blogs I manage to gaze at, and retweet, and love-link to. And that’s good for the giant pool of wisdom, right? So good for us all.
So please follow me, and I’ll follow you and together we’ll make it thru this crazy little journey called life.
All my Magpie love,
Rachelle
Now in love with these new-to-me writers thanks to Twitter!
Pen at The Penny Has Dropped (so pretty, so wise)
Emma Bradshaw (because i do love the eccentric britts)
Susannah at Ink on My Fingers (for bravery and beauty)
Megg at More to Me (we live in the same time zone, woot!)
What do you wish to trust in?
my august dreamboard, now on display with a candle in the middle of the kitchen table.
I wish I could trust in healing. That it will come in this life time. That Josh’s deep conviction that I will be free from this pain will triumph over the calm quiet voice inside me telling me, “Girl, you’d better get used to managing this, because this is it forever.”
I wish I could trust my body. That when it wakes up in the morning, it will allow me to do the basics of my day. That it will not make me cancel, lie down, swallow pills.
I wish I could trust my doctors and practitioners – all 31 of them, each of them speaking with so much confidence on my first office visit these words: “I have such good results with migraines.” All of whom now know me only as a cold case, as a stack of files.
I wish I could trust in Alanis’s soft sermon. That I would be good, even if I could do nothing. That I could be good, even if I got and stayed sick.
I wish, I wish…
The Spoon Theory: Describing life with chronic pain.
After five straight days of mild-to-killer migraines, I’ve decided it’s time to pack it in and spend the day on the couch. I’ve been trying to press through, in part because I had a deadline. But now that that’s done, it finally dawned on me that if I’d had a fever for five days I would have been down on the couch long ago, right? So why not try a little rest and re-coup with the migraines.
Most of you know that I am a chronic pain survivor. I have chronic, often daily migraines with a side of insomnia and a new and improved symptom of general muscle-and-joint pain which I’m combating hard right now so it doesn’t turn into fibromyalgia. I don’t write about it that often because there are such excellent sites out there for headache troubles, and because I’m working hard on not letting the pain become my primary identity.
I often forget that for ‘normal’ people, it’s really hard to see and to understand what everyday life is like for people with chronic pain. Because it’s not like a cold–it doesn’t go away with a jug of OJ and a few hours of daytime TV. To some extent I try to mask my pain, especially from my girls who are already expressing concern that they are “going to have headaches like Mommy” when they grow up. (Something I am terrified of, because it is genetic and lurks on both sides of our family tree.) But even though I’m pretty open about being sick, and I feel like I bitch and moan quite a bit, the reality of managing chronic pain must be fairly hidden because nobody really gets it. Not the community that met every week in my home, not my best friends, not my parents.
Once, when I had to go off all my meds for a while to reset my system, Paul and I drove out to my parents’ house and asked them to sit down in the parlor with us. We told them very seriously, in that “Grandpa’s been diagnosed with cancer” sort of way, that my migraines were really serious. We explained that I was going to have to go off all my meds, and that this would throw me into a severe pain cycle for about six weeks. We were letting them know, because we were going to need some back up. Could they help with the kids?
I must have looked pretty bad already, because I recall them looking at me in a very concerned way. It was clearly an ‘ah ha’ moment. By this point I’d been sick for years—at least 3 years if not longer. But it was clear that it had never sunk in how deeply impacting this conditions was. And these were my parents, who we are very close to, who see us all the time. But still, they hadn’t really twigged in. Thankfully, they totally rallied. My mom called during the week to check on me. They took the kids for the weekend. They helped fold the laundry. It wasn’t that they hadn’t been willing to help. They just hadn’t realized how serious the situation was. To me, it seemed blatantly obvious. I thought the whole world was saying, “Wow. Did you see that woman? She is clearly sick!” But it wasn’t working that way—my illness was more hidden than I realized. And all I needed to do to get help from my folks, was to tell them.
So maybe we chronic pain survivors should explain a little more. Maybe that truth-telling would make it a little easier on everyone.
Recently Sacred Suzie sent me an excellent article by Christine Miserandino called The Spoon Theory. It might help you, it might help me, and it might help someone you love. In the article Miserandino describes how after many years of living together and seeing the effects of lupus, her best friend reveals that she doesn’t really understand what it’s like for her to have chronic pain. Miserandino gives her friend a fistful of spoons, explaining that this is all the energy she has for the day. The friend laughs and wants more spoons. Nope, this is what you’ve got. Then the friend tries to say that she’ll use one spoon to get ready in the morning. Miserandino points out that no, that will take three spoons: one for the energy it takes just to get up with joint pain; one for the mental energy of assessing where your body is at today (can you manage buttons? Does a low grade fever require a sweater for the chills? Etc.); one for the act of taking a shower when everything hurts. (In my case it hurts my scalp to wash and comb my hair, it hurts to lift my arms over my head, etc.) Then there’s breakfast… You get the point. By the time the friend is ready for the day half her spoons are already gone. Do you get it? Does that help?
Today, I don’t have very many spoons. Today I have to spend a lot of time on the couch. But tomorrow may be better. Tomorrow is another day.
The Spoon Theory is a good metaphors for describing life with chronic pain. Maybe they will help you or someone you known. And maybe if you understand a little better, that disconnect over not understanding will end, freeing up some energy and preserving another spoon for something better. Here’s hoping you have enough spoons to slurp up life today! May Shalom greet you at every turn. Namaste.
Related Posts:
God, Migraines, and Stillettos
Leftovers: Lonliness
Pain: Collage
Small Things you Can Do When You’ve Been Sick a Long Time
*8 Things: Songs I Need to Breathe
It’s Like a Miracle
On Pain, Mourning, and Telling the Truth
How Pain Shapes an Artist
On Pain and Indentity
Chronic Pain Schizophrenia (or maybe it’s just me)
Gentle readers,
Here is the problem I am having. Whiplash. Schizophrenia. Wild facilitation of perceived reality.
Am I a lucky lady of leisure with time to write, and bake and make art? Or am I an isolated pampered middle class white woman with no purpose in life? Am I blessed with dear souls who love and appreciate me? Or am I alone in the middle of a city so teaming with people I can hardly bare the noise at the grocery store? Am I a productive writer with lots of material and a cache of faithful readers? Or am I an unfocused flake who can’t produce a piece of finished work? Am I a healthy, curvy hot mama who feels pretty damn good about herself at nearly 40? Or someone with a broken down body who’s in pain more often than not and who can’t figure out what to eat to save her soul?
I don’t know how to live in this facilitating world, in this inconsistency. Is stability possible? Preferable? Can one feel like a stable person for more than two hours at a time? Can one feel sturdy, reliable, consistent for a week? Is there some way not to feel like a crazy person over the span of 30 days? How, tell me how. I’d like to know.
Sacred Sunday: Health is My Withmate
This is my dreamboard for August as I pray/wish/hope for shalom in my physical self.
Last month’s dream of curtains and spotlights is still alive and kicking. I’m still playing guitar, and I’m working with a life coach to figure out what that mysterious phrase might mean for me.
For more information about dreamboarding click here. Good shabbat to you!
