The Magic of Creativity
Last week was certainly fun! Thank you all so much for sharing your memories of your childhood festive seasons, along with the activities that made (and still make) the holiday season come alive. If you didn’t catch all the comments, link back and take a look:
I hope you are continuing to find ways to feel bright and cheery on the otherwise dark and, in my case anyway, rainy and grey days and nights. Even though the solstice is only a week away, I think the continuation of longish dark and grey days in January and February are when the deeper stores of resilience are needed to carry us through. We’ll work on that together, shall we?
Various pieces of content on the topic of living a creative life have resonated with me recently. I have a bit of the woo-woo, universe-giving-you-what-you-ask-for (but maybe not exactly in the way you were thinking!) in me, so I took it as a sign that this topic is important for me to dig into a bit deeper.
This article, in particular, stopped me in my tracks; it is so obvious, yet I had never thought about the day-to-day creative efforts we make throughout our lives quite like this. Some snippets:
It’s not Father Christmas, elves, Lidl or M&S who make the festive magic happen. It’s women. A predominantly female army of silent project managers festoon the tree, conjure decorations, diligently write cards, wrap gifts and cook dinner. Ditto: Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid, Chinese New Year and Thanksgiving. It’s largely the effort, stamina and creativity of women that makes these celebrations happen on time, year after year. Not to say men don’t contribute or play a role – but I suspect it is mainly women who do most of the planning and heavy lifting to manifest these big days….
…This quiet, everyday female creativity that makes the world go around spans generations. Our mothers did it and their mothers before them, taking resourcefulness (making ends meet, rustling up something from odds and ends) and bright ideas in their stride, fashioning a more fulfilling life for themselves and those around them.
…While in the festive context, this creativity is about spreading happiness and a positive experience, it also brings benefits for the gifter – or creator. Creative activities can reduce stress and anxiety, cultivate a state of flow, keep things fresh and interesting, build personal confidence and bring people together.
This essay was written by by Nilgin Yusuf: The Female Gift of Creativity. It’s not long, and there’s lots more food for thought in there!
I still fondly remember decades-ago evenings spent hand-painting names on homemade party favours for children’s birthday parties, or stuffing plastic easter eggs with treasures for back-garden party hunts. Although it was always at the end of a full day working at an office and caring for two young children, it was still a moment to indulge my creative side and enjoy the flow of creation.
This other idea that the act of being creative can build confidence, though, is a new one for me. When I read this next essay, there it was again: Confidence coming from creativity.
This article gently encourages us to be brave, to push our art out into the world, even when it is not perfect. This is the issue I face weekly publishing these essays for you lovely readers, not knowing how they will land or if anything I have to say resonates with anyone else. Here is how Charlene Storey of Haver & Sparrow puts it:
It’s not just the courage to risk being seen, it’s the courage to say, “This didn’t turn out exactly like I hoped, and I know it’s far from perfect, but here’s a little piece of me that a little piece of you might recognise….
…sharing my work here has already changed my life: each time I send out a letter it makes me a little braver and believe in the dream of it all a little more. It’s been building up my creative courage week after week and that confidence has started spilling over into the rest of my life. That feels like magic to me and it’s not to be underestimated - magic never should be.
If the link above doesn’t work, try clicking here: Create imperfectly and share it anyway.
For me, writing has always been a soothing, comfort habit; a way to think and process my emotions and internal conversations. I have been writing my thoughts in journals and letters for decades, but only in the case of letters, for eyes that were not my own. Considering that others might also find some resonance in those thoughts is a bit scary and uncomfortable.
The rituals of a creative life have taken me awhile to gather and sort through to find the small habits that work. I have been publishing weekly essays for well over a year and these rhythms have calmed my nervous apprehension. When I began I wanted to explore “finding a sense of place, and how we fit into our world as we move and others move around us.”
As it turns out, writing itself is part of my journey to find home. The daily writing routine, the thinking and planning, and the reading and exploring to craft something each week all create a familiar place for my heart and soul to settle. While I live a somewhat nomadic life, and have friends and family spread across our fragile globe, having a creative, writerly routine is giving me a new way to be myself in the world.
And, as Charlene alludes, that is magic too.
Confidence in writing has taken it’s own sweet time, but it is growing in me, slowly. That of course is down to each and every one of you who show up week after week to read and spend some of your precious time with me. Your presence and comments give me the courage to try one more time, each week, perhaps to tell you a small story about a place you didn’t know before, or find some words that might help you see something differently, or from another perspective. And maybe you can find a little bit of yourself or someone you know in there.
Each week I look forward to meeting you here while we explore our homes and lives and the worlds we inhabit, both internally and externally, now and dipping into the past. So thank you again, for being here. I hope you understand how much it means to me, and why I am so thankful!
Let me know in the comments what creative pursuits YOU enjoy, and if they too, bring you confidence and magic!
Until next week,
xoxo Sabrina
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Thank you for this, Sabrina; as always, I love your clear and thoughtful and kind voice. I used to be much more creative, in a minor sort of way (writing, painting, drawing, cartooning), than I am now. (I blame too much screen time, which has gradually sucked out much of my brain.)
The one sort-of creative thing I do now, as you know, is take and post at least one photo every day. I started taking a daily photo some twelve years ago at the suggestion of Larry the Buddhist, the therapist I started seeing after Heather's initial cancer diagnosis; he thought it might be a way for me to keep myself in the present, even if only for a few seconds, rather than worrying about a future that was, after all, unknowable. (Did it help? I don't know. Maybe.)
My first efforts were pretty crummy, but I think I've gotten a little better, even though I would NEVER describe myself as a "real" photographer (I don't even own a camera - just an iPhone!). To me, the most amazing aspect of this discipline (if I dare call it that) is that it has resulted in two gallery shows, proposed by spaces who began following me on Instagram. Some foolish souls have even paid actual money for my prints! I've also had a photograph published in Orion Magazine, and a different one accepted as part of a temporary exhibition at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts.
I still find all of this quite surreal, if not downright miraculous, but I'm very grateful, and intend to keep it up as long as I can.
Another incredible post, Sabrina. It hits home (meaning heart and soul) like last week's but in a different way. Your thoughts and the excerpts you included from others about the importance of creativity made me realize how little I do these days to engage in creative activities and how routine life can become. It takes effort to find ways to be creative and then carry them out. When these little bursts come, they make me so happy - making books of photographs of the children's lives, granola for my friends here, dinner for guests, and the dining room table and the apartment look festive at Christmas. When I feel like preparing dinner is a drag, I remind myself that cooking is a creative outlet with an important outcome - happy eaters!
I'm very grateful as you are for the writing habit and the kind of thinking, planning, producing, playing, and writing and re-writing and re-writing that produces. It's given me much pleasure in learning, growing, figuring things out, and coming up with new ideas. It helps me process and connect things and makes my mind work in a different way.
Your post comes at a great time (any time would be) to start some of the creativity practices mentioned here and in the prompts you sent me. As Sanjay Gupta reiterates doing things differently and finding new ways to think about the world is brain health. We're all interested in that!
Thank you again for a heartening, inspiring post.