Agents of Transformation: Grieving Well Leads to Creativity and Generativity

If you’ve ever felt the shock of sudden painful loss, if you’ve ever felt the overwhelm of too much loss happening too fast, this interview is for you.  In this Agents of Transformation interview, dancer/therapist/teacher/author Dr. Sheila Collins makes a compelling case that grieving well is an art that can make us more creative, intuitive and generative.

Her writing, teaching, speaking, and improvisational performances offer thought-provoking insights, embodied practices, and art-based tools to help people deal with what life presents to them. Her award-winning book Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss, and the Rituals that Heal describes her journeys with two of her three adult children through their illnesses and deaths, and of the rituals that helped her family to heal.  Her book for caregivers, revised with co-author Christine Gautreaux in 2018, is Stillpoint: A Self Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, Time to Breathe, and Reclaim Joy. It contains art-based tools, skills, poems, stories, and embodied practices–providing encouragement and support for caregivers to take care of themselves while taking care of others. Dr. Collins’ latest book is titled The Art of Grieving: How Art and Art-Making Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. Her blog Dancing with Everything is available on her website https:/www.sheilakcollins.com.

Here’s the link for the interview  https://youtu.be/8dv2UqtTZnY

Some of the highlights of our conversation:

4:40 “I am because you are”

5:00 grief is not a set of stairs you climb

6:40 the most important questions to answer during times of loss or chaos

9:20 there are no private losses

11:01 for those who are deeply concerned about the losses in our natural world

12:32 fire ritual to integrate loss

14:20 the need to hold space for communal loss and use the arts to integrate grief

17:09 grief work can’t happen from the neck up; here’s some better options!

19:46 the gift of grief that has been metabolized

20:43 antidote to the shock and overwhelm many in the US are feeling now

23:15 how can we get into our creative, intuitive state, the part of us “that’s smarter than we are”

24:54 how can creativity help us emerge out of (any kind of) addiction?

27:40 lament

28:54 writing

32:18 grief can fuel the life stage of generativity (working to ensure the wellbeing future generations)

To connect with Sheila K. Collins, PhD:

Substack: https://substack.com/@sheilakcollins

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sheilakcollins 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sheilakcollins/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sheila.K.Collins.DancingWithEverything 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-k-collins-phd-6387764/