What's really blocking your creativity

Happy Sunday, Soothers. Just a short little light note on mortality and creativity today... you know, the easy stuff of being a human.

I know I have a lot of creative folks in this audience. Folks who want to write books, start podcasts, draw, paint, quilt, write newsletters, decorate their homes, raise chickens, plant a garden, build businesses.

And I know a lot of you feel stuck around the process, or self-sabotage your efforts, and struggle with the resulting shame.

I wanted to offer today a viewpoint into one reason why this might be so hard for you.

It's not because you're broken, or lazy, or not talented enough.

It struck me lately that one (of obviously many) reasons we struggle with creating is because, by the way the human body and the universe works, what we will create will ultimately be finite. It will never feel like enough.

And in that finiteness and not-enoughness is embedded our resistance to accepting our mortality and the mortality of all we love.

Our time here will end, and we don't know when. We don't know how long we have.

We get this intellectually, but because we live in a society that will not teach us how to be with and process grief, that avoids grief at all costs, we do our best to not let this truth land in our hearts and bodies.

And if we don't create, aka, if we don't make a finite, tangible, maybe-not-enough thing, we can keep up the pretense that our time here will last forever.

Better to stay in the heady potential of creating a million things, of producing all the books or art, instead of reckoning with the fact that maybe we only have one or a few acts of creation in us.

As I've been musing on resisting creativity and creation as a process of not acknowledging mortality, I can see it so clearly:

If we keep pushing off the finite and important thing we can create, we keep pretending that our time here won't end.

And we turn instead to numb out on an endless newsfeed of whatever platform of the moment that promises us a never-ending stream of endless content.

We can sink into the comfortable numbness of a false infinity.

The people that I admire that create the most, impact and volume wise, I think they've reckoned with this in some manner. They get that the time is short, so it's time to get to work to create whatever they can, even if it's limited, even if it will never be enough. It's time to hurry up and MAKE.

It is less painful for them to create something that may ultimately feel inadequate or too finite than to never create at all.

I can promise you all this:

Whatever you create will never be enough.

And at the same time, it will be everything.

I know in me, I have hundreds, maybe thousands more newsletters or podcasts. I think I might even have a couple of books in me. I have a garden in me, dinner parties with loved ones. A home that I will steward, land I will learn from. I have a little dream of running a small-town apothecary and workshop space one day, we'll see if that one comes to fruition.

I don't have an Oscar in me, a Pulitzer. Fame at the Oprah-level, or hell, even at the like, Instagram influencer level, is not in me. Probably not fame at the New York Times Bestseller level. Maybe if I write a book, not many people will read it.

And that's painful sometimes to acknowledge, to accept. My human brain wants it all, it sees the infinite.

And then I look at the finite potential of my energy and body and desires and I acknowledge what is true. I can't say yes to everything. I'm highly sensitive and my energy levels are truly finite. My talents and my will, while beautiful and impactful, cap out at a certain amount.

And yet, I would rather create the limited amount of what I can than nothing at all. Than stay stuck in the daydream of ideas. I would rather make messy, make imperfect, make ugly, make inadequate, make not enough, make what will be seen by fewer eyes than it might deserve.

I would rather make.

I was coaching a client the other day who is sincerely stuck around a massive desires of theirs. Something they really do want, something that would be life-altering, but something that have not been able to take meaningful steps towards for years.

I turned to a somatic inquiry process I often use in my coaching called Focusing. We tuned into the part of their body where they felt the fear and resistance to this goal and ask it its message.

The client sat and whispered... "It's scared of change. If I make these changes happen, then something about that makes it scared of mortality. Progress is freaking this part out, because progress means we get closer to our end. It would rather stay stuck than do that, because it can kind of pretend then that nothing will change. New stages bring me closer to the end of life."

Ahh. What gorgeous and painful truth and tenderness in that realization.

So let this be your beacon call:

Your creativity lies behind the wall you have built to protect your tender heart from grief and mortality, not just of you, but of all the things and people you love.

You don't have to get right with this all at once, or ever. I'm definitely not right with it. What kind of horrible trick is it to show up on earth one day as a baby, to fall in love with people, animals, homes, ideas, and then, literally without any warning or preparation, they could be snatched away from us? Honestly, it's a cruel cosmic joke.

And yet, it is the way it is.

So tend to your heart that is already broken all the loss and grief that has and will continue to occur in your life.

And make.

Your art deserves to be heard and seen and absorbed, whether if it's only by you, or by millions of people, or by somewhere in between.

Your creations count.

Making, creating, is the only thing we can do in the face of the yearning abyss. It's probably not enough.

Or maybe it is, maybe it's actually absolutely everything that we do this.

I choose the latter. It is everything to create.

Make.

If you're interested in learning the tools to regulate your nervous system, hold and process your emotions, and live up to your creative potential (no matter how finite it may be!), make sure you read about Soothe, my mastermind for highly sensitive women. This opens to the public on December 1st and we start in January and go for one year.