Category Archives: creativity

Healing Power of Poetry

Some “thoughts” over the years on the role of poetry in healing.

What do you think?

2/25/03

The Poet

I am my mother’s daughter
and I am the Mother of my Self—
one who made the form
and one who filled it.

And I am the mother of my daughter,
a beauty like no other.
She forgot to wash her socks until midnight and,
smiling her smile, asked if I could put them in the dryer
and I did…easily…again.

Who rules on any given day?
What boundaries between the roles I play
tying me to sanity?

No instructions, no models or even myths.
In all the worlds there ever were
not one has ever been exactly like me…or you.

Or has done what we are about to attempt.
I am tempted to stop, not life, but struggle
to be more, to become what I imagine.

But a poet who is fearless,
who carries on regardless,
whose words are kind and true and honest

is more than essential for survival…
is the compassionate and dispassionate glue
that holds it all together—

or later, after the fall,
uses the bricks from the wall
to make something else altogether.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2003

4/21/06

My Lesson

If I take on your pain
but do not get with it
the tools to work it through—

the tools you have been given
as this is your lesson—
then all I get is grief

and all you get is numb,
temporarily. Brace for
the next onslaught

perhaps even worse.
But if I leave you
your pain, no matter

how deep and bitter,
and sit with you in the dark,
holding your hand in hope,

perhaps speaking in a soft,
reassuring voice, or sitting
in rich silence,

then you may discover
the tools you were given,
buried deep or resting in your hand,

and you may recover
your power to heal
yes…even from this.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2006

2/1/07

Poetry as Healer

And you might say,
how can poetry heal,
it is not a pill I take
into my body?

And I would respond thus
from my heart, the source of poetry:
poetry is word spoken
which is vibration
which is energy
and the body which is matter
is energy very slowed down,

so poetry is energy
into the body which is energy
so energy heals energy.

Of course the frequency of vibration
of the words is important. There are
words that tear down, as you know.

And, as has been graphically shown with
the crystals of Emoto, there are words
which health can be built upon.

These words from the heart
with healing intent,
these are the words that heal,
there is no doubt.

Try them out.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2007

2/27/07

Thinking of Beate

Sometimes art heals
by soothing, sometimes
by lancing the boil, or
by opening the eyes
to fresh possibilities.

Sometimes it is closing a door
to a room filled with stale air,
sometimes a scream
from a dark bottomless pit,
sometimes presenting
wonder on a silver platter.

Sometimes art compels to look,
sometimes can barely look;
the healing can be subtle
or heart pounding,

one moment resounding
over the ages.
All I am telling you is this:
there is no doubt art heals.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2007

“The Poet” is from my CD, Full Blooming and my next book, Letting Go and New Beginnings: Poems and Photographs

“Poetry as Healer” and “Thinking of Beate” are from my chapbook, New Year’s Eve Surgery, 2007.

Free to Be Me

My blog was partly prompted by an affirmation by Louise Hay from Heal Your Body: “My mind is gentle and powerful. I love and approve of myself. I am free to be me.” It is the last sentence that especially resonates. Free to be me. Free to make mistakes or mis-steps. Free to learn as I go, not have to know it all. Free to forgive and let go of judgment, silence the harsh, critical voice.

This week I was late to an appointment. It was a long distance, driving in a fog and torrential downpour, with thunder, lightening and small hail. (The second-most rain in Chicago in February in 138 years, the equivalent of 20 inches of snow!) I worked on conscious deep breathing and tried not to look at the clock. By the time I arrived I was mad at myself, mildly berating myself that I had not left home earlier, etc. Not as extreme as in the past, but not happy or calm. Worried that the chiropractor (a delightful woman) would be ticked off, disappointed in me, not able to see me, etc. I don’t think any of this showed on my outside, I tried to laugh it off, though I probably seemed somewhat stressed. (The first time I was late I had driven 2 hours through a blizzard for a 40-minute drive.) We joked that there seemed to be something weird about the weather on the Thursdays I was coming.Yet it all worked out. The person before me had more time for her appointment, which she needed, and the woman scheduled after me had cancelled, leaving me a good amount of time for my appointment. When I think I have quieted my inner critical judge, circumstances arise that show me that harsh voice can still be provoked. And then forgiveness, and humor, and moving on…

Every poem I write is different, its own entity. Over almost 14 years of writing my poetic journal, my writing has changed a lot. My writing voice has developed and matured (I like to think). Something about this poem is different, maybe more revealing or something. I realized I was holding back, not wanting to reveal too much. This is a poem I have been reading to people (including my chiropractor) and I wanted to let it go, not hold back.

2/14/09

Floating On Sitar Notes and Drum Beats

(dinner at The Peacock on Valentine’s)

So much done to the body.
So much stored in the body.

The body a map of the past,
the snake entwined around Eve.

The body: the sitar, the lotus, the onion,
the pond to swim in, and the fish swimming.

The foam in the cup,
the gyrations of dance,

the main course,
not so much dessert.

The color red as it
plays on the water,

the helium balloon,
the red rubber ball,

the accelerating rhythm,
the glint on sheer glass,

baby’s breath and
tiny ruby carnations.

It is amplified,
it is sober and still,

plays well with others,
puts dirty feet on the table.

The body is the flying horse,
the sparkle on new snow,

it is a glass full
and a glass empty.

It is payment for services,
it is the nourishment taken in,

it is the pen and the words
and the hopefulness.

It is less like soap
and more like anise seeds,

more a home, than a prison.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2009

Purpose

Let me tell you a story:

To set the stage: It was 1997. I was exhausted after surgery to remove two breast tumors, followed by chemotherapy. Weeks of extensive radiation left my neck and torso badly burned. The radiologist suggested I take a short break to heal. I struggled with the decision of whether to permanently stop treatment. How could I make a balanced, potentially life-altering decision when I was so off balance? I talked, I wrote, I read, I mulled, and I listened. I cried out to the Universe for help. And I paid attention. Here was an immediate response:

2/10/97

A Messenger

A man came to my house today
to fix a sump pump
and replace the battery.

He was heavy-set, wearing
smoke-filled work clothes,
spoke kindly and worked well.

He talked of a sister who had died
of breast cancer and of her last year,
“Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.”

How clearly
I can occasionally
see;

so fearful of death,
I start to believe in
limited view and limited options,

and lose hope
and lose heart.
I deserve better.

From As Easy as Breathing: Reclaiming Power for Healing and Transformation.

Sometimes the most ordinary people in our lives can help us, if we pay attention. His comment, “Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease,” unintentionally supported my decision to stop radiation. Three years later, I mentioned the poem to him and gave him a copy, since he seemed open to it.

Years went by. When he came again to replace the sump pump battery, I mentioned that “A Messenger” was in my book. This is what he told me: Three years ago, when he read the poem I gave him, he saw himself differently and was inspired to stop smoking! He had been a heavy smoker and had not had a cigarette in two and a half years. Three more years passed and when he came again, he said that he had been thinking about that poem and had recently given a copy to a friend who smoked. Amazing!

So this is what I want to say to you: Doing art, in whatever form, from that deep, honest, heartfelt place, can heal, inspire and move—you and others—in ways you do not control or even intend. I suspect there are many people like me who grew up feeling cut off from creative expression. As my story shows, that rift can be mended with awesome results. Hang in there!

And tell me your healing stories…

Adapted from an article in 2004 in WomanMade News, the newsletter of the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL.

Space of Grace

After several years of working with health professionals, I healed from multiple sclerosis in spring of 1995. The body is amazing; it will do its best to adapt to any circumstance. It took years of additional rehab to undo all the adaptations in my body, to enable smooth, fluid walking for example, muscles and nerves coordinated and in balance. I learned a lot about how complex and interwoven these ordinary tasks are. And I had a renewed appreciation for the hard work of babies to learn to walk in the first place.

I did not set out to heal from MS, which I had been told was not possible. I set out to deal with depression as my physical symptoms increased and the life path that stretched out before me diminished. I am careful when I say that I healed from MS, and there is solid evidence that this is so. This is not the day I want to talk about that healing process, nor what I learned. What I do want to say is that healing from MS cracked me open creatively speaking.

Most of my life I had the impression I was not a creative person. In looking back, I can see some of how that misunderstanding took root. It seems ludicrous now that I have found my home in creating beauty, in poetry, photography, music, etc. For me it took MS to bring me home to my creative self. The symptoms most often affected my left side, controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, the creative center. In some unconscious way, I had cut myself off from my creative side. This is obviously simplistic, but has truth in it. Once the MS was gone, I had a creative awakening, with ideas bursting out of me as if they had been waiting my whole life for me to notice. I continued working on healing. I began a poetic journal, which has now been going for almost fourteen years.

Within a year (1996) I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Two tumors, one in each breast, picked up on a routine mammogram, followed by further testing. I was 44 years old with a husband and two young children. It is not stretch to say that writing the poems saved my life. It was an integral part of my healing from cancer. Writing allowed me to express what was happening to me, to understand, and to share. It turned out that others were also helped by these poems.

Early on in my writing, I noticed that certain people seemed to stimulate my creativity. When I was going to my voice lessons or having a massage, for example. I started calling these times, my space of grace. A time when I could more easily draw from the universal creative well. I am sure you have these times and people in your life as well. What people or places or events open a space of grace in your life?

3/17/06

Space of Grace

There are some times, some places, some people
which evoke in the space before and after
like a cushion of rarified air—

a space of grace during which anything
can happen: insight, inspiration, healing, clarity,
answers to thorny questions asked, joy, levity, harmony.

This grace is unearned, unmeasured, unpaid for,
unencumbered by elegant expectation.

This grace is a miracle or
the environment for miracles to happen—
a little bit of heaven,

casually interwoven with
the apparent ordinary.

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