This is not going to be a very long blog post today, nor a very long top ten post. I'm in a kind of weird mood, I'm really tired, and I've been feeling nauseous all day.* :( Sad day. Well...kind of. The afternoon was good, and I packed clothes into space bags.** So anyway. I will make quick top ten list for you with shorter explanations than usual.
Ooooooooooo, I just put IcyHot on my super sore back 5 minutes ago and it feels so so good now. IcyHot is lovely. A lovely lovely tube of medicine and relief.
Okay. So I did have a lovely 3 hours in the afternoon where, despite still not feeling great, I allowed myself to open up and breathe and dance and cry and love. I love the girls I meet with every month and how they open their minds and hearts to me and all of my crazy feelings and thoughts. They are such beautiful people and I am so blessed to know every single one of them--they have inspired me and helped me grow in so many ways. I'm going to miss them while I'm at college, and I hope we can continue to meet whenever I'm home.
Dance and art and creativity have helped me so much in the past year to grow and grieve. Especially to grieve. It's still hard for me to put my sadness into words, so art and particularly dance have allowed me to open up my heart and really feel that sadness.
Alas. I now present you with Kat's Top Ten Reasons to Express Yourself Creatively:
1. You can start to feel things you really need to feel.
.....I don't really know how to explain this one. I think you really have to experience this phenomenon to know how much creative expression opens up your heart and eyes.
2. It helps you discover lost parts of yourself.
When you've experienced a lot of loss or darkness, often you begin to avoid the world and avoid that darkness. In that process, you lose pieces of yourself. Creative expression can help you put those pieces back together.
3. To find the ground under your feet.
When one is falling and lost, stuck in a dark place, often using creative expression helps you to find a little bit of light and feel the ground under your feet rather than falling through that black hole. It might take a while, but eventually it will help. Help you open up a little at least to the light and to accept the help and support and love offered by those close to you.
4. To share yourself with the world.
Share your heart. Your losses. Your experiences. Your dark places. How you learned to fly. Etc, etc.
5. It helps you to express things that cannot be put into words.
I'm bad a talking, so this one is really important to me. But some griefs and losses and emotions just can't be expressed with words. They go deeper than that. They mean something more than the connotations of English words. So art or dance or any other creative expression...I believe they help as long as your heart remains open to the possibilities.
6. GROWTH.
Obvious? Maybe? I don't know. I've always found that expressing myself creatively allows me to grow in a way that I can't always just through talking.
7. Hope and faith.
This one also seems kind of obvious. Just find that little bit of hope inside yourself and place it in your heart for the future dark days.
8. You have more story material now.
...Let's say you're at a different party by now. A much more intimate one, with people you know and like. You can tell stories about your experiences now that you yourself understand them better. Or you can tell stories about spilling paint, leaving on hot glue guns, etc, etc, bad art mishaps. ;D
9. To connect with people.
I've experienced this many times. I have a tough time talking to people about my most intimate feelings and experiences still, but if I share art or dance or sometimes even writing, I feel people understand me better. I understand myself better. And especially when I find people who also pour their hearts out into art. I connect almost immediately.
10. You can blog. :)
Clearly. Just share the ways you've found to express yourself and describe how they've helped. Do a how-to maybe on making origami or knitting. Share yourself.
....I would post pictures of some of my own art, but I don't really feel like taking pictures at the moment. Goodness, I'm tired. At some point I might go back and edit this post to further explain my thought. But just know I put a lot of faith and trust in creative expression, because it's helped me a lot. When I'm happy, sad, grieving, falling, almost dying...it always seems to help. And it's amazing.
Okay. Bedtime now. *sigh*
Cheers!
Word of the Day: wanderlust--a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about.
Inspirational quote/photo of the day: 
Days until I leave for college: 5
*Aaaaaaaack. I hate feeling sick. I really do. And I want this constant sick feeling to go away. Bleurgh. Eurgh. *sigh*
**Space bags are a lifesaver.
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