Reason for Living #12: A Creative Pause

finding creative ritual through physical and emotional pain

I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month and an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversations about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain thisnewsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is physically and psychologically unable to work at a traditional job.

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Content warning: suicide

I have a recurring issue with my right eye—a tendency toward corneal scratches and abrasions that happen without warning. I realized they’ve happened as soon as I wake: a sharp pain that isn't quite like something caught in your eye; it’s a distinctive feeling that a few ER visits, urgent care, and ophthalmology have taught me are injuries to the cornea. The ophthalmologist told me that when they’re not caused by a virus, these injuries might be caused even by blinking—a natural, ceaseless function turned suddenly dangerous, but not unusual due to aging (I’m 41).

I say dangerous because I'm almost completely blind in my left eye. My mother has instilled in me since childhood a lifelong fear of something permanently damaging my functioning eye, leaving me significantly more disabled than I already am. The possibility of this occurring feels almost unbearable each time I wake up with a stabbing sensitivity to light—a reminder of how tenuous my hold on perception really is.

If I've learned anything about health, it's that physical ailments often coincide with emotional distress, intertwining in more complex ways than I believed before I fell mysteriously ill a decade ago. This isn't to validate dismissive doctors who love to proclaim that organic symptoms are "just stress" or something made-up by an anxious or attention-seeking mind. Rather, it's an acknowledgment that our bodies and spirits speak to one another in languages we're only beginning to understand.

My latest corneal abrasion coincided with news that has shaken me, and I still don’t know what to make of it.

When Death Arrives

Recently, I learned of an old acquaintance’s suicide. I won't share details that aren't mine to disclose, but the news traveled through our tiny hometown community like a stone dropped in a lake. One of my closest friends, whom I’ll call Adam, was much, much nearer to the person we lost (I’ll call him Peter), and can in fact take great responsibility for Peter remaining alive for as long as he did. And now Adam has entered that weird landscape that follows unexpected death—a territory that brings about acute emotional pain subsumed with seemingly infinite logistics.

There's so much we don't discuss about suicide in polite conversation. The gruesome realities of the room, once a home, that becomes a crime scene. The questions that can never be answered. The way survivors move through the world afterward, carrying both the memory of the person and the manner of their departure. The guilt. Adam sent me the eulogy and asked if I thought it was okay. I said that I would be honored to have such a beautiful oration at my death.

While reading Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life years ago, I was furious with it. I was also struck by its unflinching portrayal of suffering that is beyond redemption, taking apart the comforting fiction that enough love can save someone determined to leave. (A book that does this much more effectively is All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews.) Despite this intellectual understanding, I've realized how persistently I've clung to that very belief—that enough love, properly applied, could prevent such profound despair. After all, Adam had convinced Peter to move next door to him so that he could keep an eye on him, which he did for years. He’d seen him through previous suicide attempts and mental health crises. And I’ve also been the person to take late-night calls with friends that last for hours, feeling like the stopgap between a bad night and a permanent solution to pain.

My therapist reminded me recently: suicide is not correlated with being unloved.

This truth feels both obvious and impossible. We want so desperately to believe that love is enough because the alternative is unbearable—acknowledging that sometimes, despite our most fervent efforts, we cannot save those who have such an enormous place in our hearts. That our love, however vast and genuine, has limits.

The Body's Protest

I woke on Tuesday with eye pain and blurred vision. My vision literally blurred just as I'm trying to see my way forward through grief and the attempts of my body to get back to my baseline, just as I'm attempting to return to my jobs as a small business owner and author who is laboring over a new book.

There's an irony to eye injuries when you're a writer. The very organ I need to put words on the page forces me to stay away from the page or the screen just when I most want to write—to write through the feelings and make meaning from chaos. But I am forced to pause. I’m not good at pausing. Sometimes my body just wants me to rest regardless of what my brain wants.

I applied the ointment. I put on the cold compress. I lay in darkness, and in that stillness, I began to think about ritual—about the sacred space required for both grieving and creating.

Creating a Sacred Creative Space

I recently encountered Jeanna Kadlec's concept of the "book altar"—a dedicated space that consecrates the act of creation. The idea resonated so deeply that I immediately began gathering items for my own altar, objects that might hold both my grief and my creative intentions.

On a small table near my writing desk, I've placed:

• An orange candle; orange is the color of creativity

• Rose quartz and amethyst crystals—one for gentle healing, one for intuition and connection to one’s own heart

• A small owl sculpture whose belly holds tiny books, a reminder of the wisdom that comes through stories

• The cover page of my manuscript, anointed with essential oils, a consecration of the work I've committed to complete

The physical act of creating this space has become ritual itself—a daily practice of tending the space. I light the candle before beginning to write, a tiny ceremony that separates creative time from the mundane.

Moving Forward Through Ritual

As my eye heals and my vision clears, I'm expanding my altar. I plan to add some more crystals, a sculpture of Saint Hildegard of Bingen (a saint who was also a female novelist), and a Cup of Stars candle.

Showing up for creativity even through difficult news feels particularly vital now. Not because creative work transcends suffering, but because it provides structure when emotions feel chaotic. I am frequently feeling scattered, wishing for something to hold me together when I fly apart. Coming to my book when I physically can is important. When I can’t, I get frustrated and down on myself, but my BFF reminds me that even when I’m not actively writing, I have the book on the back burner. She says: You’re working on the book all the time, Es.

When I’m lucky, once begun, the words flow for hours. Both are victories.

Blurred Vision

My corneal abrasion will heal. The physical pain will subside. But the metaphorical blurring—the way loss—and particularly suicide—alters how we perceive everything that follows—remains.

The creative process makes space for grief to exist alongside beauty, alongside meaning, alongside connection. Peter was a writer. He cared deeply about getting the words right, about being the best writer he could possibly be.

And as I tend my book altar and protect my healing eye, I'm grateful for this community, here, that holds space for these reflections. We navigate the foggy path forward together, lighting candles for each other's darkness, honoring both what we've lost and what remains possible with what’s left.

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Note: Some book links on this page are affiliate links. This means if you purchase through them, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend books that have genuinely helped me in my own journey. Your support through these links helps sustain my writing practice, and for that, I'm deeply grateful.

I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month and an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversa

tions about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain this newsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is physically and psychologically unable to work at a traditional job.

If Reasons for Living has moved you, challenged you, or given you something to hold onto, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. If a paid subscription isn’t possible, a free one is just as appreciated. Either way, I’m grateful you’re here.

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Art by:Jeffrey Alan Love

Sight

BY FAITH SHEARIN

Go north a dozen years
on a road overgrown with vines
to find the days after you were born.
Flowers remembered their colors and trees
were frothy and the hospital was

behind us now, its brick indifference
forgotten by our car mirrors. You were
revealed to me: tiny, delicate,
your head smelling of some other world.
Turn right after the circular room

where I kept my books and right again
past the crib where you did not sleep
and you will find the window where
I held you that June morning
when you opened your eyes. They were

blue, tentative, not the deep chocolate
they would later become. You were gazing
into the world: at our walls,
my red cup, my sleepless hair and though
I'm told you could not focus, and you

no longer remember, we were seeing
one another after seasons of darkness.

What rituals or sacred spaces have you created to hold both grief and creativity? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

I write because it’s what I do best, and Reasons for Living is where I share my most personal, thoughtful work—the kind of essays that don’t fit anywhere else. If you enjoy what I write, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber.

Paid subscribers get two exclusive essays per month and an invite to our monthly Fireside Chats—intimate conversa

tions about creativity, resilience, and the things that keep us going. Your support doesn’t just help sustain this newsletter; it helps sustain me as a writer and artist who is physically and psychologically unable to work at a traditional job.

If Reasons for Living has moved you, challenged you, or given you something to hold onto, I hope you’ll consider subscribing. If a paid subscription isn’t possible, a free one is just as appreciated. Either way, I’m grateful you’re here.