To my dear creatives,

I know you are probably sitting in front of a blank slate right now.

I know you believe with every passing moment that words don’t form in a sentence or you aren’t able to mix colors just right on a pallet or your cake falls flat for the third time that you are no longer creative. That something inside you isn’t working right anymore.

And I know that the shame piles on from there. 

Man, does it hit you like a wrecking ball. Each time you say you are going to do this or that and come up empty. Each day you set aside time to practice or write or sculpt or cook and you end up cleaning the house or reorganizing your coffee cup collections for the fifth time.

You don’t know how to sit with yourself and not feel the shame pile on, not feel the guilt or the all of the “I told you so..” about your creativity.

And I know you probably feel if you have to call the creativity out of yourself that something in that isn’t natural.

But sometimes, my friend, we have to call out to our creative spirit. We have to yell at it and tell it that it needs to come to the table and do some work. We have to remind it that there are nuggets and truth and whimsy below the surface and sometimes we can’t wait for it to just be there, sometimes we have to ask it to show up.

So, my dear creative friend, to you, I say first: shame off. You are no less on the days when you feel incapable of creating then in the days when you write the great American novel.

And second, on days where you feel the furthest from the creative that you are take a deep breath and choose to call the creativity out of yourself. 

Tonight, amidst yawns and back pain and exhaustion that’s what I needed. I chose to, in any way shape or form, find a way to put words on a page and realize that the shame creeping in wasn’t mine to grab onto.

So third, please remember this:
You don’t have to always create be a creative. 

You are creative because it’s who you are, not what you do.

It’s in you, down to your tiptoes and it pours out of your finger tips.

You are still creative even when you feel incapable of creating.

With love,

A writer who doesn’t always feel like a writer but knows forever she will be a writer.