I want to smile

Like the way light enters raindrops to form a rainbow, a smile enters the pain of tears to inspire a multicoloured transformation.

For eleven weeks in a row, I had the pleasure of facilitating a creative writing group called Facing the Sun with a lovely bunch of people at a local wellness centre. I noticed that the theme for each week’s session became more positive and life-giving, without trying to force things in a happy-clappy way.

A sensitive, gentle smile flowed through our time together, a smile in the face of mental health challenges and real life hurdles. We still acknowledged how we really were with each other. Sometimes we experienced downers, periods of sunniness, or a mixture of highs and lows.

As the weeks went by, we settled into a natural rhythm of writing creatively. The first exercise for each session generated ideas on themes like our mental health experiences, supporting each other on our mental health journeys, and letting our light shine with our gifts and talents.

The second exercise involved telling our stories like an experience of courage during the Covid-19 pandemic, being intellectually stimulated for an environmental cause, and a member’s dance with her dad as a youngster.

The whole group experience worked its magic on me. One of the exercises, for example, invited us to get in touch with a moment in our lives when a person showed us kindness. I was moved to remember an experience in Spain as an 8-year-old when a young woman soothed my pain with her beautiful smile (read the blogpost here).

Sharing this story with group members brought back similar feelings of being loved and cared for, encouraging me to smile in the face of stress, loneliness and despair.

I learned that a gentle, sensitive smile of a friend can help us to see beyond our pain. A gesture that acknowledges our reality while pointing to more than our tears.

A smile has the power to enter our hearts and sensitively hold our experience. And we are invited to believe the beauty of our pain and that we are actually shining brightly. We may not see the sparkle in our eyes, but we can dig deep and find it in our souls.

We can join our friend who cherishes the beauty of our light. Our only response, then, is to give thanks for our lives and our multicoloured transformations, pointing to smiles and laughter to come 🙂