An Audacious Hope

by Kelly Meagher

AN AUDACIOUS HOPE

I’ve spent the last five months with my hands deep in the dirt, covered in clay, reenacting the birth of the first human ever made. Like God, I used to create with words, but unlike him, my words suddenly dried up. I don’t know why God chose to form Adam instead of speaking him into existence, but I’ve taken note and followed suit—grabbing clay to see what my hands can make when words have failed me. I have found I am more into forming pots than people. My therapist never fails to ask each week if I’ve made it to the studio. She is convinced it is integral to my healing, and I don’t disagree. Maybe I will gift her a handmade vase when this is all over.

It is an interesting thing to be a creative in the midst of your own soul’s renovation. As someone who has made it a point to radically pay attention to the world, I can’t help but observe my own healing process as if I were an outsider looking in. As a writer and poet, I have hardly been able to write for the better part of two years, and rightfully so. We aren’t meant to always pour out. With my attention turned inward, the subject of my observation has been myself—someone I have spent a lifetime trying not to see. I am told that is a coping mechanism of self-protection, and one that is no longer serving me well. It is a hard thing to learn self-compassion. Real compassion comes when you show up fully present with a heart ready and willing to see, and while many of us can easily do that for one another, it can be difficult to do for ourselves. So, I sink my hands deep into the earth to remind myself what I am made of—dust. And I am promised God continuously bears this in mind as well.

I have spent my weeks and months going to therapy and then the pottery studio—both disrupting my sense of stability and finding grounding again. It is just as therapeutic to sit at a spinning wheel slowly forming a bowl and allowing my mind to rest as it is to unpack a lifelong story of neglect. I need both. In both places I try, and undo and try again, and every once in a while, there emerges a tangible sign that my effort has been worthwhile. And in both cases the process always takes longer than I expected. Pottery, like therapy, is a practice of drawn-out stages some of which seem to regress, stall, and then at times leap forward. I’ve come to trust the process and know that whether I see my intended result or not, I am always learning. I have scrapped more mugs and vases than I can count, but each got me closer to understanding the clay, the timing of my wheel, and the importance of paying attention to detail. I have also scrapped more therapy sessions than I would care to admit, and in that too, I have learned that accessing the truth is the only way forward, that trying and failing is better than not trying at all, and that sometimes I need to believe in the possibility of goodness as much as I believe in the reality of catastrophe.

Though my writing seemingly dried up a few years ago, it has proven to show up for me in one singular location—when I get stuck in therapy. When I can’t feel, I know I can write and I turn to poetry. Somehow, my feelings always are alive and well there. Poetry allows me to access places within myself that I am otherwise not able to go. Some of it is the worst poetry I have ever written, some of it the best. All of it is a gift. I walked out of therapy last week angry at what I had been shown, and the anger I couldn’t metabolize I turned into poetry. That poem in turn showed me my own grief, and I received the gift of it in awe.

Can we create our way to healing? I think sometimes we can. And I will never be so grateful for what my own words have brought me.

I have created solely for myself these last few months and years, terrified that maybe I will never truly get my creative life back. Scared that what used to flow out so easily onto the page might never return. And I have learned during this season that my job as a creative is simply to hold onto the hope that my out pouring will come in due time. To believe that this overhaul of my heart is good and right and will produce a new thing, and one day I will write again with a new song. But right now, it is time to care for the person who sits behind it all. My heart, as it stands, feels as though it has been skinned alive. It is raw and tender, and yet somehow freer than it has ever been. The decades of gangrene have been scraped out, and while it is still painful, I think the hope of healing finally lies within sight. I trust my creative life lies there too—on the other side of healing. And until I see it in its fullness, I will continue filling my home with vases, bowls and mugs—all testaments of process. All symbols and timestamps of what it took to heal my own soul.

KELLY MEAGHER

Kelly Meagher is a writer and contemplative poet based out of Metro Detroit, MI. She is passionate about Kingdom living and all things creative. Alongside writing, Kelly is co-host of The Til podcast and an amateur potter. You can find her debut poetry book When He Whispers Your Name at Amazon and other book retailers.