Last Saturday I cooked my mother and I dinner at her house. During dinner she communicated some anxiety concerning changes to the interior of a local mall where she liked to walk very early in the morning. The management had decided to replace a delicate spiral staircase and the fountain that surrounded it with a large glass elevator. In addition, they ripped up all the intricate brown floor tiles, which my mother had studied for so many mornings, and replaced them with shiny white ones. When the construction was finished, my mother chose to continue to walk at this mall in the mornings but found that her walks were making her angry instead of relaxed.
Upon hearing this I asked if she would be willing to do an expressive therapy experiment with me. I knew that she was an English Literature major in college and loved words, so I asked if she would be willing to write me a poem. She refused at first and said that verbalizing her dissatisfaction was enough for her, that I had helped her already by listening. However, when I beseeched her to appease my curiosity, she looked for a bargain by asking if she could write her response in prose. I said that it would be fine but poetry was a better method by which to reach her unconscious feelings because it was so symbolic. This idea enticed her and so she promised to work on it when I left and to write to me about her process.
I wanted to see whether the creative process actually helps in the development of feelings or whether, as my mom had said in the first place, "Talking is enough."
The following is my mom's poem and reflections, which she wished to share:
Transformation:
Earth tiles,
Sun spots,
Latticed opaque sky.
Statuary,
Foliage,
Beauty one can't buy.
Ripped apart.
Torn down.
Gleaming white and steel.
Pay your money,
Get your stuff,
Forgetting what is real.
"I composed the poem above at the insistence of an
expressive therapist. It describes the
transformation of a favorite public space from
spiritually serene to crassly commercial.
Through this creative process I actively owned my
feelings of sadness and anger. I shall return to the
space with gratitude for having known the beauty and
acceptance, not of the change, but of my own feelings
toward that change."
Later she wrote:
"As the words came out of me onto
paper, I read them and they told me how I felt. It
was like a clarifying circle."
I would call this a successful experiment. ;) It is more or less what I have been doing with myself and my feelings throughout the year and it was interesting to explore this process with my mother. Not only my mother, but I, too, learned a great deal from our discussions and interactions surrounding this process.
