When I was an MFA student, the writing workshop was a battleground. Each week, one particular person in my creative writing class would trash our writing so viciously, so personally, that I and the other poets waved the white flag, made polite defenses, and just waited until she was done. Every week.

I don’t just mean she was a little sharp; I mean every week she hunted for evidence in our work that we were bad people inside. Even the professor seemed a little scared of her, so the dynamic continued. 

To cope with this hostile atmosphere, I basically faked my participation for the rest of the semester. I stopped bringing in work I actually cared about. I wrote just to have something to bring to class, watched this work get ripped to shreds, then licked my wounds in my therapist’s office. 

In public though, I kept it moving at the speed of business. I wanted to graduate after all, to succeed by some measure, so I rolled on.

I knew intellectually that this negative feedback wasn’t an objective judgement from God, forever and always, so I downplayed its reality. I’m an adult and adults get over this kind of thing. I am a professional. I don’t let failure, rejection, and disappointment affect me for long. Excuse me, I have to make dinner.

The rallying cry of “productive” adults goes “IT’S FINE.”

But of you’re anything like me, you don’t really forget. On the surface you move on, yet you subtly make choices to avoid that same negative outcome again. You don’t create with the same enthusiasm, you play it safer, or you decide that “those people” will never get you anyway.

It’s like that Whitney Houston song, “It’s Not Right, but It’s Okay.” But it becomes, “I’m not right, but it’s okay. I can try harder. Or hide it better. Avoid that next time.”

After the sting of not getting the result you wanted, you quietly seal off the part of you that felt rejected from view.

Now, I could use this opportunity to say, “What possessed this person? Why do people act like this?” But I know why. The way she spoke to us is — I’m sure of it — the way she managed herself. I can relate, as I have also looked for evidence of my personal Badness and Wrongness in what I create and don’t create. It’s one way the punishment paradigm appears. 

But this isn’t about her, or any other critic. 

This is about what we do after we get knocked down. Because we will. If we continue to pour even an ounce of our hearts into what we make, our heart will sustain bumps and bruises from the outside world. Maybe a look on someone’s face conveys indifference, or we get a rejection letter, or there are only crickets in the comments section of our brilliant post. 

That kind of pain is in the moment and physically felt. What does it feel like in you? For me, it’s tightness in my chest, like fists are squeezing my lungs. My heart beats faster. Now that I think about it, it feels a lot like fear.

Rejection cannot, and should not, be dealt with rationally first. As in, “oh, there’s always next time.” “It’s not so bad.” “This is part of what you signed up for; get up and keep going.” “Stare harder at your vision board.”

Analyzing the dynamic of my MFA in my therapist’s office gave me a lot of ideas about what was going on, which gave me a false sense of control. It was a kind of theoretical sympathy that did not help me feel real compassion. Compassion means “suffering with”.

Heartbreak is a skill. Creatives (read: humans) need to practice it to keep our hearts and minds open.

The skill to be with the heartbreak of disappointment and criticism is the skill of being an unshaming witness to your innocent heart. (I am borrowing this language of Unshaming from the brilliant psychologist David Bedrick.)

The unshaming witness within us sees the pain and the person at the same time while trying to change either. No fixing. Just presence that sounds as simple as “ouch, that hurt.” 

Notice how sensational that kind of awareness is; this witness sees the actual physical response in the body for what it is. It does not write a story over it or dismiss it. When you witness the sensation in your body lovingly, it can move. It can do what it wants to do, which is express itself. It can even become part of your vitality. 

Pain is the occasional cost of love, and our creativity must come from love to be satisfying. But there is pain, and then there is suffering.

A creative injury turns into suffering when the wound is untended, covered with an “IT’S FINE” instead of washed clean with compassion. A creative injury that continues to suffer will hide, hedge, and brace, as it must to project itself.

We cannot make ourselves so efficient at moving on to the next task that we forget how innocently we offer our best efforts, brightest thoughts, and deepest hopes into the world.

It’s almost like we need to forgive ourselves for loving, for hoping, for being open to injury.

And I don’t mean forgiveness like we’ve been taught: “you (or I) screwed up, but I’ll stop thinking about it.” 

I mean the root sense of the word: “to give up completely,” especially the power to punish.

You’ve tried things that didn’t work out. You found yourself in situations you wish you hadn’t been in because people didn’t honor you there. You worked hard without the big pay off, which feels like loss.

This is not your fault. This is not evidence that you are missing a fundamental piece of the winning formula. It’s only a sign that you loved. 

Some prompts to consider:

• What creative injuries might want your attention? It could be from when you were 3 years old, or last week?

• What have you been through that you need to give yourself more credit for?

• In what ways are you, and have you been, courageous as hell? No dismissing this one. I know you have been.

• What objects, people, parts of nature, or pets comfort  and relax you?  How can you let those parts of the world support you as you move through the discomfort of heartbreak?

Let me know what this brings up, or curse my name for making you feel sad, whatever floats your boat,

Maria

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