"A Bluebird Day"
Migraines, Emotional Overwhelm, and Soothing Creative Practices For These Cold, Trying Times
I awake and ache from another night of piercing pain permeating through my head, preventing me from sleeping. Another week, another migraine. I recoil from light and sound. The pain becomes a gift of sorts, forcing me to take a break from the unkind light of my phone. I have seen too much. I have slipped from awareness into absorption as the news headlines bring about yet another bout of nausea and grief: the arrests of journalists, the death of Catherine O’Hara, and the new releases from the Epstein files.
I oscillate between breathing and tears leaking while the weight of my head and the turning of my stomach pin me to my bed. In the evening, anxiety, anger, and sorrow worsen as the overwhelm now comes from within my own home.
The next morning, I awake. I’ve slept some, but anxiety, shame, and sorrow remain wrapped around me. With my coffee in hand, I open the pages of my journal. I use the pages as a confessional and a sanctuary. I use them to hold me and to speak back to me. And still, the heaviness crushes my chest.
I want to breathe—and I can’t stop thinking about those who can’t.
I reach for my art journal, wanting to make something, but I’m emptied of words and ideas. I consider what I can create intuitively when I come to the page with hardly anything to give, without a plan or a vision. I turn to my go-to practices: blackout poetry and collage.
I open my desk drawer of old magazines and catalogs and start cutting whatever seems to offer a calming sensation in my body when I see it.
I’m drawn to blues and whites. Colors of the Mediterranean and the sky. The crispness of the color palette that emerges offers me a deep inhale and exhale.
I’m finding words.
I’m finding breathing space.
I clip a paragraph from an old Magnolia journal article to try a blackout poem. Right away, in the first two lines, I see a poem that meets me where I am. First, the phrase “a bluebird day” acts as a fitting descriptor for the blue skies I’ve been clipping and pasting and the hope in the poem, but I’m getting ahead of myself. In the second line, I read “crushing powder” as “crushing power.” And so, the poem unfolds.
“a bluebird day”
crushing power
time to thaw
soothe tired limbs
warm from the cold you’re coming from –
peaks or your own backyard.
by Kristin Vanderlip
The poem articulates the journey that many of us are on right now. We start with the crushing powers (ie, ICE, the current administration, and billionaires causing harm) and move to the idea of thawing from their coldness and soothing our bone-level exhaustion. The poem then references the various proximities to the cold we face—the cold in the “peaks,” the extreme, unfathomable happenings in the world, and the cold that can occur in our own backyards and homes. The poem expresses a longing for freedom, for warmth, for care.
As previously mentioned, I find the phrase “a bluebird day” from the first line of the paragraph to be such a perfect title for the poem. Its direct reference to bluebirds1 and a day with blue skies speaks to the poem's metaphorical, symbolic call, offering hopes and prayers for freedom and breathing room for all of us—to “restore us from today and ready us for tomorrow” as the clipped phrase in my collage says. The title also feels like a personal Divine nod to the Western Bluebirds that greeted me earlier this week while hiking and seeking some breathing space. Here they are again.
The bluebird finds me on my walk, and in the words of this poem.
I return to my collage, reading the phrases I’ve pasted to the page. It’s a prayer I didn’t realize I was writing—words now to the wordless one I’ve been praying.
“Pulling on a pile of clouds” is what prayer and the act of hope can feel like. Pulling on the clouds, “chatting at the sky,” as Emily P. Freeman would say, we call out, we pray: “restore us from today and ready us for tomorrow.”
My breath has returned, and anxiety loosened.
And so, I share these words and images with you now as an offering of that same help and hope.
More Ideas for Anxious, Overwhelmed Hearts Trying to Make It Through These Trying Times
1 - First, journal. I shared these 3 reasons why on Instagram this week and have plenty of resources in my shop for you and in our prompt archive here:
2 - I’ve been taking as many walks as possible to get out into open spaces under the blue skies here in California and find cathartic, rhythmic movement for my body. During each hike through the hills, I’ve been gifted the delight of encountering beautiful creatures—bluebirds, horses, deer (see images below). I know most of the country is experiencing frigid temperatures and weather that isn’t walk-friendly right now, but if you can, I hope you can get outside and breathe a little. Or, if you can’t, due to ice, ICE, illness, or other factors keeping you in, create a collage that feels like breathing space to you.
3 - My friend Emily Dilbeck of Art Your Grief has been sharing quite a few helpful art practices this week. I encourage you to check them out and try any that feel supportive. Here’s an example of one:
4 - My friend Karla Peters, of The Inspired Foundry and The OK Factor, has two beautiful, practical offerings for us right now — a “Be Kind, OK?” yard sign (I totally bought one) and an invitation to write love letters. Learn more here.
5 - Tomorrow, I’ll be sending out February’s event invitations to Substack subscribers. You’re invited to join me for a variety of virtual writing opportunities—because writing and gathering in community help.
I hope you’re taking care.
Feel free to share any small or big ways you’re taking care of yourself these days in the comments. Let me know if you try any journaling or creative practice inspired by this piece.
Stay warm—
Kristin
During a brief Google search about the symbolism of bluebirds, I discovered this: “According to Native American mythology, seeing a bluebird means to look forward to New Harmony soon; the message is simple – peace is coming.” Lord, I hope so.