At lunchtime today – with perfect timing for CRPS awareness month! – the US Pain Foundation (USPF) presented “Writing about Pain: A Workshop with Book Author Sonya Huber”. This online event was part of the USPF’s KNOWvember educational campaign, for people living with chronic pain; “Art through Pain: How Creativity Helps Us Cope”.(1)
Using art to cope with pain is a topic that’s dear to my heart, particularly as I’ve been trying to reclaim some of the more creative aspects of my life. I’d first put all of my creative activities on hold when I broke my right arm back in March 2016; I’m right-handed.
Then, because that distal radius fracture triggered a disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in my right hand and lower arm, I’d continued to keep most of my creative pursuits on hold.
With the exception of blogging, of course! And trying to adapt real photography to snapping smartphone pics, without using my right – dominant – hand at all. All of the photos I post to the blog are mine (copyrighted by default as ‘creative works’ under Canadian law); the only other images are the occasional poster or a flyer – always posted with full credit/acknowledgement!
Then I tried a few sewing projects, using my ‘wrong’ (left) hand and sometimes the thumb of my right hand, but those didn’t go ‘sew’ well ‘-) I know, that’s a truly horrible pun, but I couldn’t resist! Then I bought a book to try to teach myself how to draw – again – this time using more my left hand than my right.
Earlier this year I decided to try to more actively reclaim my creative spirit, so I signed up for a few special events over the past few months. You may recall that I was a patient-participant during the two-day Play the Pain live event here in Montreal, early last month.
Play the Pain combined moderated discussions, scientific presentations, and participatory creative workshops, organized by a team of individuals who “work to advance medicine through communication, community, and creativity.”(2)
One of the workshops at Play the Pain was on music therapy, and another was on creative writing and pain. The latter, led by local poet Marie-Paule Grimaldi(3), was my favourite session of the entire event! So I was excited to join the USPF’s creative writing workshop today, for individuals living with persistent pain conditions.
I’ll start with a couple of general comments about today’s workshop. First off, unlike the session at Play the Pain, this one was much more focused on the experiences of the author-presenter; Sonya Huber. I’d estimate that about half of today’s session was spent on the author herself.
This isn’t a negative comment, as Sonya did have interesting things to say! It’s just not what I had expected. For example, she told us that she’d recently come across some of the historic scientific work done by Ronald Melzack at McGill University.
Dr. Melzack’s research included the development of the McGill Pain Scale (MCI); which put words to different types of experiences of pain. It was quite surprising to me that Sonya had only recently ‘found’ his work, because his:
original paper in 1965, and a subsequent extension of the theory three years later, went on to be among the most cited neuroscience articles of all time. Dr. Melzack equally went on to become one of the most widely recognized authorities in the neuroscience of pain.”(4)
His publications – and countless references to them – were among the very first I found, when I began looking into the history of pain research myself back in 2016. I even wrote a post about Dr. Melzack’s early research and the development of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ)!
That led me to wonder whether, because of my background is in clinical research ethics, I look into chronic pain research differently than do other people living with these conditions… no matter, it was great to see Sonya mention Dr. Melzack’s work – particularly as I’m now a patient at the pain management unit (PMU) that he helped create!
Once we got around to the workshop portion of the session, Sonya explained that she relies heavily on metaphor in her writing – not only about pain. She encouraged us to do the same during the workshop; to use metaphor to describe our pain during the workshop activities, to think differently about our pain experiences.
Sonya had us complete a few creative writing exercises on our own. She did the same exercises, while we were all writing, so that she could give us examples during the process. The first exercise was for us to each write a description of the pain in one specific part of our body, using multiple words rather than complete phrases or sentences. This is what I came up with:
Burning cold, joint pain, ice on skin, joints coming apart”
Another creative writing for pain activity was to create a phrase using a metaphor, imagining pain as an object or thing. We could use phrases or even full sentences for this exercise. My three lines were:
My right hand burns, with a freezing cold that mimics frostbite, both from the outside in and from the inside out.
Chronic pain is transforming my right hand into my wrong hand.
It feels as though a bear is chewing on my hand”
That’s when the workshop really began to feel like fun, to feel more creative – for me at any rate! So when Sonya explained the final exercise, I was fully onboard ‘-) She asked us to ‘have some fun’ with one of the metaphors we’d come up with, or create a new one, and develop it into a fantastical story image – in just one sentence!
She’s partial to science fiction and medieval dragons and gauntlet imagery, but that’s not my style at all. I’m more of a nature girl, so the natural world is usually where I draw my inspiration.
I’d ended the previous activity with the image of a bear munching on my finger and wrist joints, the way it can feel when the ankyloses (like scar tissue) forms between each of my joints, so I decided to build on that scene. That thought developed, within a very short time limit for the activity, into:
Today’s pain is eating away at my hand, the way a ravenous black bear gnaws on the frozen carcass of an early winter moose”
I pictured a large bear, struggling to rip shreds of meat from a carcass that had frozen solid; his front paws firmly anchored onto the moose’s body with the bear’s full weight, using a truly forceful tearing and grinding of the jaw and teeth, with saliva dripping onto the moose as he moved his head to rip each shred of meat from the bone.
At this point, the USPF host asked whether any of us would be willing to share our creative writing result using the chat feature of the webinar platform – and was then surprised at the volume of responses! It felt as though we all wanted to share our words; to share our enthusiasm with each other!
Our USPF host read out some of the imagery sentences, and many of them were unbelievably good. It was incredible to hear the breadth and range of these creative images, and also very interesting – to me – that so many of them involved animals. Eagles, hawks, owls, my bear, and so many others.
I’d have liked to have more time for the creative writing portion of the workshop, but Sonya then concluded by telling us about some of her publications. This had been a pre-workshop request from some of the attendees.
Several members of the audience were interested in someday submitting their own works for publication, so Sonya very kindly shared the names of some publications which might accept submissions on the topic of chronic or persistent pain.
Today’s USPF workshop was a great introductory session, but I preferred the creative writing activities we undertook at Play the Pain. It’s possible that there are some biases on my part, within that opinion.
First off, because Play the Pain was an in-person event; I was sitting at the same table as our poet-leader, Marie-Paul Grimaldi ‘-) Marie-Paule’s session was also collaborative, in that we incorporated other participants’ words for pain into our own writing exercises.
True to its aims, Play the Pain took a more therapeutic and person-centred approach to creativity and ‘play’ than did today’s online workshop from the USPF, and I think that’s what most attracted me to the former.
Don’t get me wrong – I very much enjoyed today’s workshop, and Sonya did a great job in encouraging each of the participants to find different ways in which to express their experiences of pain. Focusing on the use of metaphor was an intriguing way to teach the use of imagery in creative writing, and I’m happy with my own image of a bear gnawing on a frozen moose.
When I read that line back to my husband this evening, he was stunned. He told me that it conveyed so much, within a single sentence. I hope you liked it too, and have maybe picked up some ideas here for something that you’d like to try on your own.
Our USPF host mentioned that the webinar was being recorded, and should be posted on their website within a week or so. If you’ve enjoyed today’s post, why not take an hour to watch the workshop, and try your hand at some creative writing exercises!
Thanks so much for reading, and keep warm; it’s unseasonably cold here in Montreal this week!
References:
(1) KNOWvember: Art Through Pain. US Pain Foundation. Online. Accessed 20 Nov 2019:
(2) Play the Pain. Media Health; Concordia University [Media Health Lab is a collaborative initiative supported by Concordia University PERFORM Centre and The Milieux for Arts, Culture and Technology]. 2019. Online. Accessed 20 Nov 2019:
http://media-health.ca/events/play-the-pain-4thspace/
(3) Marie-Paule Grimaldi. Artist profile. Les Filles électriques Online. Accessed 20 Nov 2019:
https://electriques.ca/filles/en/select/bio/?id=grimaldi_ma
(4) McGill University. It Hurts Where? Ron Melzack reckoned the pain is in your mind. McGill University: The Brain at McGill – Research and Discoveries; Brain Stories. Online. Accessed 20 Nov 2019:
https://www.mcgill.ca/brain/research-discovery/brain-stories/it-hurts-where