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Divinest Sense
by Meg LeDuc
In some ways, the advent of my mental illness was a tragedy—how could it be anything else? It was a transformation of a girl—a Midwestern teenager with a springy blonde pony tail, a soccer player never quite aggressive enough to be a star, a straight-A student driven by the need to please—into a being who cried uncontrollably; whose thoughts wouldn’t stop whirling with anxiety; who was guilt-ridden, self-loathing, and suicidal; who hurt so much she imagined a bomb had gone off in her chest. Yet mental illness gave that girl something—writing. For years, I had longed to write, but never felt the confidence to begin. Mental illness disregarded all doubts. I had to write; the illness thrust me into a place in which I desperately needed art to make sense of myself and what was happening to me. I don’t think art saved me from my illness; good medical care has preserved my life. But without mental illness, I may never have discovered the joy of art’s creation.
Many people with mental illnesses are artists; in fact, as a community, we seem to be far more artistic than average. I think this is because we are driven, over and over again, to the deepest and furthest reaches of mind and emotion. We live on the razor’s edge. We inhabit a landscape too surreal for people without mental illnesses to conceive. And we feel a desperate need to bring back accounts of our journeys; we cry out from society’s margins, driven by the need to create human connections that will banish the loneliness that cuts us to the quick. And we do—many, many people don’t understand our art, but, at times, we create an arc of sympathy, a golden, shimmering thread of emotion and mind that links us, either between ourselves or between us and the outer world.
I am creating Divinest Sense, an online journal and blog that will publish the work of people with mental illnesses as a means of creating those threads. (The name is a reference to Emily Dickinson: “Much Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye….”) It is meant to be a place of congregation, a centering point for people with mental illness to find community and empathy. I hope that people will read the blog entries and see themselves reflected. As I said, people with mental illnesses are often profoundly lonely; any means of breaking these feelings of isolation, our condition—burdened with outer and inner stigma—must be pursued. I also wish it to be a place where people without mental illnesses can gain insight into our lives. I hope that they discover that we are far greater than the illnesses that label us. As Larry Ackerman, a writer submitting art to the site, would say, “No more labels!”
Anyone with a mental illness is welcome to submit writing or visual art to the site. Severity or type of mental illness is not an issue. Contributors need not have chronic illnesses; people who have had a single episode of depression, for instance, are very welcome. I encourage people not only to write and create art about their mental illnesses, but also to create art that details their daily lives, their opinions, and interests. To learn more about this project, visit the website:[ www.divinestsense.org ] To ask questions or to submit work, email me at
[ Meg ] I welcome people of all backgrounds to submit. Please—create art and submit it to a community forum, a place where I hope you find fulfillment by sharing your art
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