Creativity is our medicine bag: Part Two
'The long bag we drag behind us'
We go through life gathering things: people, possessions, memories.
Also, thoughts, opinions, attitudes and behaviours we’ve (knowingly or otherwise) inherited from others. Where do we put this stuff? There’s so much that it needs a receptacle to hold it all. Receptacles, containers. As I wrote in my last post, they hold words and stories, and stories hold worlds.
According to poet and essayist Robert Bly, we go through life dragging behind us an invisible bag. During childhood, we put in the bag all the parts our parents don’t approve of; all the aspects of our being that our teachers don’t want us to be. These things are likely to be opinions or behaviour that are too challenging to deal with, or that don’t reflect well on the caregivers themselves. Being good is rewarded; being quiet and compliant is rewarded. Being angry or difficult or weird goes in the bag.
This pattern continues until, by adulthood, our beings are ‘fixed’ in a certain way; we’ve developed a set of traits that we know will gain us approval and attention. By then, we’ve become conditioned to hide those shadowy aspects of us that were judged in the past. As Bly suggests:
We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again. Sometimes retrieving them feels impossible, as if the bag were sealed. Suppose the bag remains sealed—what happens then?
What happens then? Good question. What happens is that we disconnect from parts of us that are precious and tender; parts that we deny because they’re too challenging to face; aspects of our being that nonetheless long to be seen and witnessed and express themselves. We live a sort of half-life, sometimes without even knowing it.
I know that, from an early age, I crammed many things into my own invisible bag. One thing I stuffed into it was risk-taking in relation to writing. As a young adult, I produced a short story that made someone close to me uncomfortable. It hadn’t been my intention—though, at the time, I blamed myself for the upset it caused. Looking back, I see now that the response was more about the other person than it was about me.
But I stopped writing.
Into the bag went shame—about my imagination and my impulse to create. Into the bag went discomfort at making other people uncomfortable.
It took a long time, almost two decades, to begin to acknowledge this thing was even in the bag (actually—more accurately—that a bag even existed). How I did that is a long story—actually, many stories—but in short, the process was precipitated by having a group of peers (other writers on a residential retreat) as my compassionate witnesses.
Of course, that’s not the end of the story.
I’m still unpacking all the things—as we all are—ad infinitum. And it’s frustrating because, just when we think we’ve unpacked a particular item, it miraculously reappears in the invisible bag.
If we’re willing to embrace it, creativity can help us unpack these shadowy things and bring them to light. We need to be careful about how we do this; it’s imperative that we go gently with ourselves to avoid re-activating the hurt (as writer Sophie Nicholls has explored so beautifully here). But while our bag might feel like a dead weight, if we hold the intention to unpack it, and the courage and grace to begin—and if we can do so supported by willing and supportive baggage handlers—we not only lighten the load for ourselves, we show the way for others.
We have the joy of turning the difficult, challenging things into something beautiful. We metabolise that dark material and transform it into art.
Who wouldn’t want that for themselves? Who wouldn’t want to create something so transformative to share with others?
I’m reminded of a gift my daughter was given as a child. When she unwrapped it, it was a royal blue bag tied with a toggle. When she opened it, the real gift was inside: a big, beautiful parachute with panels of silk in primary colours. She loved that parachute. She spent many happy hours with her friends draping it over chairs to make a den; and playing party games, opening it wide and running underneath it.
What do you risk if your invisible bag remains sealed? And what silk parachute are you longing to play with?
Thank you so much for your kind words about my piece, Rachel. I loved reading this and here's to going gently in the company of 'willing and supportive baggage handlers.'
Love the bag metaphor! My writing "baggage" is not as clear cut as yours seems to be. Maybe it's older (meaning a younger me), maybe it's about comparisons made of me to my older sister. I guess, WHATEVER it is matters less than the willingness to do the work. Thanks for the thoughts!