The Creative Process of Living: Being Our Whole Selves

Photo courtesy of Stig Nyaagard

I have a sense of these buried lives striving to come out through me to express themselves. Marge Piercy

He, my mentee, wants to know how to fit together what he calls the “puzzle pieces” of his life, how to find square holes for the square pegs of who he is: a young, talented, black, queer, transgendered poet and a survivor of sexual abuse.

As he speaks in a rhythm I understand perfectly, all the tones at the end of his sentences pitch upward into questions. He’s asking how he can live—not simply survive but thrive—in a world that oppresses him through social approbation, cultural stereotypes, the threat of violence, and binary distinctions that are nonsensical to his ways of being. I have no formulas for the variables of identity and experience, no tricks, tips, or how-to suggestions.

I have grappled with the same questions my entire life—how to be a poet, a performer, Chamorro, queer, mixed-gendered, a survivor of sexual abuse, a teacher, an activist and more? How to be all of these things, hold them within me, honor each one as sacred regardless of the oppressive forces that have threatened to rip them apart? I have no pat answers, only my own life to hold up. Look, I want to say. I don’t know how, but it’s possible.

Perhaps loving something is the only starting place there is for making your life your own. Alice Koller

As I listen, I remember when I first met him. At that time, he was still a girl–a teenage, butch dyke, her cap on backwards and offering me weed. Later, I would become his college teacher. Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon after class, he would follow me home to my studio apartment, wait politely to be invited in, and then proceed to entertain me with his stories, tell me his deepest secrets, or share his innermost dreams.

Isolated in a small, college town and lonely for my partner and my friends, I came to look forward to the camaraderie and companionship he offered me. We talked about everything, but the conversation always came back to poetry. “I want to be a poet,” he once said to me. “You are a poet,” I replied. “Just be yourself.”

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself. Rainer Maria Rilke

And he is a poet—a young, talented, sensitive, and brilliant poet. He dons artistic potential as easily as the cap he often wears. He is still learning, of course, but his poetry often moves me, touching off deep and sometimes painful truths that lie dormant within me.

He’s continued to call me on the phone for the last five years since I’ve quit teaching and report his life to me. He still calls me “his” teacher, lays a claim to me that makes me feel happy and proud. He also calls me his “gay dad.” And given that he has never had a father who gave him the love and guidance that he has needed, I consider this title an honor.

Now, on the phone with me, he wants to know how to stitch the pieces of his life into some coherent whole, and I finally say what I always say, “Just be yourself, and write.”

If you don’t tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. Virginia Woolf

I remember, when I was a young, college student, Adrienne Rich visited the university, read from her poetry, and gave a lecture. During the lecture, I summoned the courage to ask her a question: How do we bridge the gaps between white women and black women?

“Why do you want to know?” She asked me.

I explained how I am neither black nor white, but mixed race and pacific islander, how I grew up in a black and white south that always wanted to label me, how I was constantly asked, “What are you?” and always the question referred to my racial origins, how I felt the twin burdens of a racism that went unacknowledged and of a racial identity that went unseen or was trivialized by others.

“Write,” she finally said to me. “Write your own experiences, tell your own story.”

I have held this advice to me during all kinds of trouble as a kind of talisman against the storms of mental illness and oppression that have flooded my life. Through my writing, I have found the empowerment to not simply survive oppressive, social experiences, but to thrive in my creativity and to create a life that holds great spiritual riches and artistic rewards.

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In a recent letter to a friend, I wrote: “Empowerment has nothing to do with ego or false pride. Rather, empowerment, in my opinion, is based on allowing all of oneself to be present at any given moment.”

I have recited this lesson many times. “Be who you are, just be yourself,” I tell him over and over again. “Write, tell your story, and you’ll figure it out.”

But today, as I hear the questions in his voice, I know these words are not precisely the answers. I sense that he has no comfortable and safe space in the world to be entirely who he is, and I understand this experience all too well. I want to reach to him, hold him as a father holds a son, simply love him and let the silence between us answer for me. But I cannot use my arms, I can only offer words.

What words will suffice to soothe a lifetime of emotional wounding and the social and cultural negation of self?

Where there is great love, there are always miracles. Willa Cather

I remain silent because I honestly don’t have the words, and it is time to end the phone call.

“Wait,” he says. “I want to read you a poem I wrote.”

So he does, and it is a huge, brilliant poem—a beautiful poem about being transgender and black and a survivor in every sense of the word. I am impressed by how his poetic skills are growing, and I am moved by the honesty and authenticity of the piece. More significantly, I am touched that he would share it with me, offer up his poetry in a reading intended solely for me.

I don’t ruin the moment, by making suggestions to strengthen the poem. Instead, I tell him it’s beautiful. I tell him to share it with others, to submit it to an anthology he has his eye on, to read it at an open mic. For ultimately, it is in the sharing of our creativity—our poetry, our stories—that personal empowerment has a context in which to flourish.

Before he read the poem, I was worried, as any loving father would worry, that he was suffering. Knowing the world to be a sometimes violent and oppressive place, I worried and wondered how he would ever find his way. How would he find happiness?

After his reading, I feel pride and relief, and I feel more certain that he will carve out a happy, peaceful, and spiritually rich life.

Only the heart knows how to find what is precious. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It has been two days since we spoke on the phone, and I know now what I want to tell him and, more significantly, what I want to tell myself:

I don’t know how you will learn to create a full and fulfilling life in this world. But it’s possible, and you can do it. The world is huge, and it’s big enough for you. And it’s big enough for your poetry, and if you are diligent and have faith, then the universe and its love will never fail you. Delve deep into the creative process of living, trust it, and you’ll find what you’re looking for: happiness, inner peace, well-being, and a way to be all of who you are.