Navigating creativity with chronic illness
madelleine.substack.com/p/navigating-creativity-with-chronic
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The medical gaslighting and general trauma that I have gone through has affected my creativity too. The shame from medical gaslighting and too many times of not being listened to or believed has caused a bit of a mental and emotional block for me. For a long time (and I’m still working on this) I felt like my voice didn’t matter, like it’s not a valid contribution to the world.
After a few lessons she said to me: “You know, it seems like you have a lot to tell the world.” And I really did. All the loss, all the confusion, all the shame, all the grief, all the fear from getting sick and losing the life I had needed to be expressed.
I never really thought about how much brain power and how much physical energy creativity takes
But as I got sicker, the words eluded me. I couldn’t hold one idea in my mind to combine it with another idea and my thinking became very one-dimensional, not ideal for creative writing. I could only write a few sentences at a time and then my brain would shut down.
The whole experience of finding my creative spirit and then losing the body I needed to be able to produce my expressions threw me into a spiritual crisis.
I find it ironic that chronic illness was what opened my creativity, but it’s also what has shut it down.
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