Join us for our fourth episode with dr moore (lower case preferred by the artist)!

Mental Health and Creativity Collide is about celebrating inspiring stories through the lens of mental health and creativity. This week's episode features dr Sharon moore, she is a conscious wanderer, consistent wonderer, lifelong educator and learner, originally from the south suburbs of Chicago and now a resident of Bronzeville. When not writing stories or facilitating others in the writing of their own, she can be found putting together expert level Legos.

dr moore is one of the most inspiring humans I have ever met. Not only does she nourish a healthy and beautiful creative world of her own with her writing, but she invests in creating that relationship within her students as well. The poem she shares has been a constant for me on the hard days. I hope you enjoy the gift of dr moore being dr moore.

dr moore's poem:

Friday, June 4, 2021 I woke up today with much the same spirit as I have for too many days in a row to matter. My waking up is a faint echo of my going to sleep, which is fitful when it happens, and soul defeating when it eludes, hiding behind one of the four pillow on the bed or nestled underneath one of my UGLY dolls that linger on the unused side of things, variously serving as reminders of what has been lost (one orange doll whose black string mouth has come undone was a gift I gave Pamela which she apparently laid her head upon for the last time in the passenger’s seat of her ‘64 Corvair) and a teasing reminder of a playfulness I perhaps will never again know. Anyway, I woke up today wishing the day wouldn’t start, wishing the sun would hold in place and than Earth would stop rotating on its axis for if I could just be fixed in space, in time, in mind, I could figure out all the things: what I am doing, what I need to be doing, where I want to be, who I want to be.

I woke up today and for the first time in some time I wished I hadn’t. Not because I am actively suicidal, not because I have devised a plan for the 9th time, the 12th? No, I woke up today and thought, I need peace. And ceasing to be would provide that. My mind could use some quiet. My heart could use something? Anything. Anyone? I woke up today and thought, it is all too much. And then I took a shower, I fed the animals, I walked my dog, I went to Roseland and painted and planned and talked and listened, I texted with former students, I facetimed my folks to explain where the SNAP device must be installed in their cars only to realize what I already knew which is that that will happen on Saturday when I visit and help them navigate senior citizen drivers’ bootcamp online for 8 hours which leaves me wondering who in the world thinks having septuagenarians and older on a computer for that long is a good idea or will work. I smiled, I laughed, I was present. I did, and I did, and I did some more. And here is my current truth, I woke up this morning and thought, it is all too much, and then, well, then, it wasn’t.

Art mentioned:

Luscious Jackson

James Baldwin The Fire Next Time.

Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman: Song of Myself: This is where dr moore's tattoo “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.." comes from.

Maybe we all become trees: Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Want to connect with dr moore? Email: [email protected]/contextos.org

Want to watch the episode on Youtube? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD48jzUT1WU&t=18s