Beauty is the remedy
“You can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left. Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination. People think you're Jesus because you've gone through something special. They treat you like you've got special knowledge, or they treat you a little bit like Frankenstein.”
We recently got vinyl tiles to replace the terrible DIY backsplash attempt I had done in our kitchen (and by we I mean I bought them, my husband put them up). I have an old desk sitting in our basement we rescued from a thrift shop awaiting a new coat of paint. I’ve been slowly working through “phase 1” renos in our home, things like painting trim and doors. I’ve always loved colors, creating cohesive aesthetics, and my dream home board on pinterest is overflowing.
All of these home decor upgrades reminds me of the advice I give medical professionals when they ask me for easy ways to improve the holistic patient experience. It’s a joke I made frequently during my own multi-week hospitalizations. Paint the damn walls.
Here’s why that’s a thing. I’ve talked a lot before about BJ Miller, a hospice doctor who lost 3 limbs in an accident. He talks about dying well, coexisting with suffering, and one of his most impactful talks in my own life was on the importance of beauty. When he said aesthetic (as in beauty, curated, artistic) is the opposite of anesethtic (or what is used to sedate people in hospital settings), it was a pivotol moment in shifting how I viewed the world. It suddenly made sense to me why, after spending years of my life in medical settings, I was so drawn to beauty and creating it in any way that I could.
the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. don’t go back to sleep.
Back in February I gave a talk at the embodied woman summit on beauty as the remedy. How I brought myself back to life post transplant, post medically inflicted drug addiction, in the midst of intense trauma and PTSD, was to surround myself with beauty.
I took selfies, took notice of how the light reflected off the apartment window, I didn’t deny myself any pleasure. The way that I midwifed myself through that experience was very sensory, very visceral and tangible. Being surrounded by beauty not only relaxes the nervous system, it causes us to slow down and refocus the mind. Ever heard the story about the wolf, and the one that grows is the one you feed? It’s always baffled me that in healthcare settings, where the ultimate goal is healing, mental and emotional wellbeing don’t play a bigger role in the process.
I read an article last week about how we’ve become distanced from the body, and especially in the medical field view it as something to overcome. Instead of working with our body’s natural healing mechanisms, we fight it. All this does it deepen the seperation within. If we reduce ourselves to our parts, is it any wonder more people than ever are walking around feeling splintered, cut off, isolated and alone? We live in a world that has successfully sedated us, keeping us stuck in the grind of everyday living, and we’ve forgotten the remedy to come awake again.
Let death be what takes us, not a lack of imagination
Last November, during my latest surgery, it was late and I was alone for the night, and I wandered off the ward into the main corridor of the hospital. What had been busy and full of activity that morning was suddenly quiet, with a few odd personel wandering around, the entire thing lit up by faux street lamps. I remember pulling out my phone and thinking to myself “I will find beauty, even here” and snapping a few photos of the way the lamplight glow reflected off my IV pole. It was a different kind of beauty, not flowers and bright colors, but I was determined to not sink into robotics. I will die when I’m dead, but I refuse to walk around half alive.
As hilarious as it is to joke about me being some kind of frankensteined zombie, I did not recieve this gift of life to not squeeze every drop of pleasure I could from it.
Let death be what kills us, let us soak in pleasure and capture every moment of bliss we can. Beauty is the remedy, the answer to a life well lived.
Right now I’m looking at the disco ball hanging in my office as it reflects beams of sunlight. I am a woman obessed with making her life beautiful. I plan on seducing myself with pleasure and delighting in my senses for a good long while, so when the time eventually goes I will show up to my own death so beauty-full.