Artists/Creatives
“The creative adult is the child who survived.”
— Ursula Leguin —
I believe we are all creative, and that we all glowed and blossomed with our totally uninhibited, natural creativity and brilliance as children, for all the world to see. Now, I don’t want to parent- or teacher-blame here– not at all! Those are some of the hardest and most important jobs in the whole world, and thoroughly noble undertakings. It’s just that we are a hyper-social species, so we are wired, as children, to soak up every single little social message (implicit or explicit) in our early environments so that we can adapt and adjust to the environment in which we will need to survive as adults. And in the process of socialization, broader ecological systems and forces all work together to deliver messages about what kind of person is “pleasing,” and what kind of person gets love. We become more and more inhibited, and soon, that glowing, creative, exuberant child becomes a jaded young adult.
Now, there is particular poignancy to this process when the individual in question came into the world with creative and artistic impulses as their primary impulses and gifts. Some launch swiftly into a glittering creative career at a young age. It’s a charmed life they lead! The vast majority are not so lucky. The majority of individuals who come into the world with creative and artistic gifts as their primary gifts have to struggle to find some kind of career that allows them creative freedom, or to keep their creative life alive on the side, despite exhaustion and the vagaries of daily life. I LOVE working with people in both camps.
Are you:
- Quick to burn out in jobs that don’t allow creative freedom?
- Trying to nurture a creative practice “on the side” but feeling unable to give it the time and energy it deserves, and a little hopeless about it anyway?
- DEpressed when you’re not EXpressed?
- Feeling creatively blocked or stuck?
- Feeling misunderstood in any community that is not primarily a creative community?