This week, I’ve been worrying about friends in Minnesota and in Iran—places facing new levels of turmoil. At the same time, I’ve been noticing how many artists I follow are responding with poems, songs, drawings, and paintings. It’s inspiring to see heartbreak turned on itself to make something new. There is something undeniably beautiful about how shock and grief can provoke art as a form of resistance and resilience.
And then I hear the slogans: make art with your broken heart.
I go quiet.
Where there is pain for me right now, nothing magical or beautiful has emerged. There is only sadness, anger, and frustration. I sit with that annoyance in my morning prayers. I meditate on how I can respond to what is happening around me, even when I don’t yet have words to offer.
Fortunately, I don’t feel shame about this silence. I’ve come far enough to know that healing arrives in waves. We make headway, and then we fall back again, like water crashing along the shoreline. Strong emotions take time to process. Expressing ourselves through art isn’t always the first thing that comes—and sometimes it doesn’t come at all, at least not for years.
This is the message I want to offer you: you can be a talented, sensitive artist who is deeply moved by events in your life or in the world, and you do not have to make art about it. If and when that time comes, you will feel it. You won’t have to force it.
Don’t rush the process. Art takes time. Take care of yourself. Work toward healing rather than performing. What you make—if you make anything at all—will be truer for the waiting.
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