The Blide Trust door is open when I arrive for the first creative session.
The door is permanently and deliberately ajar, there is no boundary, no burden of pushing to open a way inside. It is a simple, single step. As simple, and as complex, as putting one word next to another. This evening, reading back through my participants evaluation comments I am struck by the courage we shared to gather together, all nervous, all wondering what would happen next. The journey with words was taken, and as we travelled we grew comfortable. I read how participants felt more confident, began to use the time in their own way.
Every exercise is explored differently. This is astounding to me. Brilliant. Life-affirming. Each person has their own unique mode of expression, the themes they explore, the rhythms and word choices are as individual as fingerprints.
I notice how writing allows for self-reflection on the reality of the day and the moment, but also inspires rich visits to memory – including for myself. I found my way back to the round, white kitchen table in my nana’s kitchen, dusts of flour here and there. I am sitting in a dream, delighting in the making and prospect of cakes – as well as listening to my grandmother sing. Sweet as a blackbird.
Poignant with pleasure and loss, the memory would never have come back to me had I not sat at a table in The Blide Trust with this group. On our hard chairs, with paper, pens and pencils scattered around about, with cappuccinos, sparkling water and tea to refresh ourselves – when putting one word next to another a great deal of energy can be expanded. Depending on the topic it can feel rather like having had a massage afterwards, a deep but satisfying tiredness remains – an echo that lasts for the rest of the afternoon.
Oh, we wrote haiku and gratitudes, poems that rhymed and didn’t rhyme, stories that were all true and fantastical, stories that were half true and totally fictional, all bubbling up from the deep lake of creativity within. We wrote about emotions from grief to elation, from annoyance to whimsical delight, from the cheeky to the serious and back ag
ain.
At The Blide Trust the door is always open, and words are also always there for us, waiting for that simple act of being put next to each other.
For my participants I offer thanks. I have learned and grown as a creative practitioner and person.
A selection of our writing will be shared on World Mental Health Day at the Headspace Showcase in Kirkwall.
