singing away your worries
In the past week, I...
Had a complete stranger invite himself into my yard and almost onto my porch because he, “liked what he saw.”
Got news that I will likely have to move out of my house to have some major repair work done that I’m still in an entanglement with the insurance company about
Buried the eldest living member of the Solomon clan
Had a deep talk with my mother in which we retraced the legacy of physical and emotional abuse through our family tree.
As a result, I’ve felt for much of the week like I’ve been walking around with a gaping hole in my chest. A wound that won’t close because it keeps getting abraded, keeps getting re-injured.
I’ve been singing quite a bit lately. Not songs, but the words of shock and pain and frustration that I have when these wounding experiences happen. I improvise a ditty on the spot to express what I feel. What I see. What is happening inside. It alchemizes the pain of the moment. It makes magic out of levity. It banishes the dark spirits looming near, hoping to slip into me through my open wound, my unhealed places. I sing into my wounds, blocking their entry, coaxing the hurt out of hidden places with ‘la, la, la’ and silly lyrics that often leave me laughing at the end of the nonsense song.
And I am a terrible singer.
But here she is. Not only alive. But thriving. Last year when the single bloom she arrived with fell off, I was worried. Would it ever come back? How I could i tell if she was healthy? There were just these big leaves at the base, and some weird looking roots. I mostly just gave her the recommended amount of weekly water, a lovely spot in front of a sunny window, a few words of inspiration and encouragement here and there and... well... look at her. She’s stunning!
This week I also sang a song to the last of the 6 flowers that finally bloomed on the orchid a friend gave me as a housewarming gift last year.
“This plant is doomed,” I thought when she arrived. I have little talent for keeping houseplants alive... and an orchid? The notoriously fickle flower? Tuh.
What Science Says About the Healing Power of Singing
“There is no delete button in the
nervous system,”
By telling yourself not to think about something, says Steven Hayes, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, “you’re increasing the number of associates that remind you of it.”
Instead, it’s better to treat them just like you would a silly, meaningless song. They exist, but they have little bearing on your life.
The Atlantic, 2016
One study “found that various defusion techniques,
including singing the unwanted thought and saying it in a cartoon voice, reduced the frequency of the thought while making it less believable. The strategy worked better than both the control and another strategy called “restructuring,” in which the person tries to come up with an alternative thought.”
The Atlantic, 2016
I don’t know how any of the aforementioned travails are going to turn out for me. But I will keep singing my nonsense songs, and sitting myself in front of sunny windows and speaking words of encouragement and inspiration to myself. I am notoriously fickle. But I have a feeling that after this dark, confusing time has become a ‘was’, I will catch a glimpse of my bloomed self in a mirror or a windowpane and think... ‘stunning’!
