overcoming creative resistance

I have a difficult relationship with creativity.

Creativity seems to be absolutely essential to my wellbeing, to making me all of me. I feel an almost constant and fierce desire for creative efforts.

And yet, I confront my own incredible resistance to it. The resistance wins, more often than not.

Sometimes, I think of the problem as a matter of being able to allow creativity. That, say, conditions must be just right for my creativity to emerge and flourish.

I think that maybe I need daylight hours in which to do my creative work. Or I need a particular environment that is somehow unavailable to me. Or I don’t have the right materials. Or I’m not skilled enough. Or the planets are not in alignment. Or the Muse is absent. Or. Or. Or.

Kind of sounds like excuses, eh?

And then I think that it’s not really a matter of engineering conditions to allow creativity. The problem is really a matter of eliciting creativity – calling it forth.

This involves setting the intention to do my creative work, committing to it, and forcing myself to carry through despite conditions.

I managed to prove to myself that this is possible. And fruitful.

Still, such commitment takes both courage and self-compassion.

I am not whole if I am not creative. If my creativity is suppressed, part of me is missing – a pretty important part.

I have looked long and painfully at the reasons my creative soul hides. I have learned a few things.

The world is a pretty scary place for that corner of my soul.

She is not at all convinced of her own absolute legitimacy and worthiness. She has no assurance whatever that she is loved and wanted and safe. And she just knows it’s totally not okay to get messy.

It is a matter of compassionately taking her hand and showing her it’s okay to come out. Indeed, showing her that the world is not whole without her.

It gets better with practice.

Intention, commitment, action.

note to self: anything is possible

circles

I made my first penny rug about 2006. This was a piece of black wool felt cut into a circle, maybe 8 inches in diameter. On to it, I blanket-stitched smaller circles in a variety of colors, in a circle. The blanket-stitching was purposely very visible in black thread atop the bright colors.

This penny rug was the first of many, many penny rugs I made. They are called rugs, but they are usually decorative table mats or wallhangings. Each one was entirely hand-cut and hand-stitched, all by my own design. They were all very colorful, and often created in a family of colors – say, blues or browns.

I was inspired to make the first penny rug after a trip to Indiana, during which I toured a historic home. It contained many original furnishings. Among them was an actual small floor rug, created penny-style, very faded and worn. I had never seen one before, and I have never seen another quite like it. I could not get it out of my mind.

I came home and did a little research, discovering that penny rugs were a Civil War era phenomenon. Old wool clothing and blankets were repurposed to create the rugs. The penny part came in supposedly as pennies were sometimes inserted to weight the rug. I’m not buying that part of the story. If you’re repurposing your old wool clothing, you’re pinching those pennies, too. Besides, wool lays down all by itself just fine.

A more likely explanation is that pennies could have been used to trace the smallest circles.

I’m not sure I buy any of the explanations I’ve read. No matter. For whatever reason, I became driven to make these things (and still struggle with the urge, complicated now by my vegan views!)

Through the years, as I labored over these creations, I’ve given much thought to their design and materials. It’s all very simple stuff, really. Mostly solid colors and circles. Mostly carefully chosen, repurposed textiles. That’s pretty much what you’re working with most of the time.

But the more I worked on these things, the more symbolic they became to me. In later years, I titled them. I gave much thought to what the circles represented, how they related to each other, and the space around them. I carefully considered textures, stitches, colors, and the repurposed history of the textiles.

In the end, it became obvious to me that they comprised a metaphor for individuals and communities, a subject very dear to me. Each circle was like a person, and there it was fixed in place in a community of other circles – a panoply of colors that worked whether they were randomly placed or carefully selected by tone. Together, they all danced.

And then within the array of circles, that original circle was overlaid by two or three other, smaller circles, a small unit of its own, a tribe or a family, if you will, within the larger community – creating its own history.

I suppose it seems silly to imbue this much meaning onto my lowly craft, but, it is, in fact, there when I look at, or make one of my creations. There are always deeper significant nuances to each particular work, as well.

The very lone circle itself – it is both finite and infinite, isn’t it? Like each of us.

remembering who you are – the toolbox

I still struggle against unhealthy patterns learned early on in life and in a long-term abusive relationship. The objective is always to remember who I am, and to honor that. That’s not always as easy as it might sound.

There’s been a tremendous amount of work and education sorting it out. Along this journey, I’ve realized there are a few essential things that facilitate the process in a practical way – my tools, if you will.

My toolbox contains six go-to items that reliably help me remember who I am. I try to ‘touch’ my tools every day. (As a quilter, I remember a maxim that one should at least touch their current quilting project every day. The logic was that if you took time out to stop and touch your project, you couldn’t help but be drawn in to working on it no matter how busy or crazy your day was.)

So here are the tools in my toolbox right now:

• Write

Writing is essential to me, whether I am journaling or writing for publication. The act of writing helps me to process and organize thoughts, to explore issues, and to connect. I write lots of different ways. Even when I am not writing, I am making notes. Writing also relates to photography, making me more aware of what I see in a day, and what matters to me.

• Run

If I’m not running, or at least walking, it is a clear signal that I have shut the door on my self. Running is an amazing gateway to remembering who I am. It is a meditative process which engages my body and all its memories. When I run, I am very present. I am able to quiet the noise of the inner critic, and to just see what’s there. I am so grateful to have discovered this tool. It is indispensable.

• Make

Creativity is at the core of who I am. This relates to writing, but it also relates to hands-on, tactile creative acts. I learned to sew when I was 12 years old, and the process of creating things from textiles has been a part of me ever since. Pen and ink is another medium to which I am always drawn. Building things, using tools, always satisfies. I love to express and to give through creative acts, but this is an area into which it is often very difficult to allow myself.

• Nature

Oddly, it took me awhile to recognize my real need to be in nature. Nature is absolutely restorative. It brings me back to one. All of my running and walking is done outside, which is part of the reason it is such a profoundly centering experience. I love to feel the wind, the rain, the snow. I love the trees, the birds, the wooly bears, the Monarchs. When I am in nature, I am home.

• Nourish

If one honors one self, this most basic act of properly nourishing one’s self must be addressed. I have noticed that, like running, when I stop eating and hydrating well, I have turned away from remembering who I am. It is, obviously, fundamental. This is a far more complicated topic than it might appear, because it touches on so many big issues from physical to spiritual, environmental, gender, ethics, and more.

• Connect

Given the destructive patterns established early on for me, I struggle with connection. I do find ways to connect through all the other tools in the box, though. For example, at times, when I may have difficulty actually connecting with other people around me, I may connect by writing and/or publishing. I recognize, nevertheless, how important it is to be connected with other folks and with my self.  It is something at which I must consciously and deliberately work since my self has learned so well to simply hide. Running, creating, hiking, food are avenues to connection. I stay mindful of this. I am gentle with myself about this, though. This tool is not always easy to use, but it’s essential. Spiritual connection is also integral to, well, everything.

There’s a lot more I could say about each one of these areas.

One of my little ‘grounding’ reminders is to sort of count off my first five tools on the fingers of my hand – write, run, make, nature, nourish. Then, I put my hand against my heart to remember: ‘connect’. My little mantra helps to remind me that I have these tools, and to look for ways to employ them each day.

When I honor who I am, I am the best I can be for others.

What’s in your toolbox?