claiming back my creativity

[Starshaped]

I have for so long lived with my creativity under the shadow of bad experience. Although I have wanted so much to be able to express myself through painting and art, the memories associated with something that happened to me have just pushed me further and further from being able to create. I loved painting... I LIVED painting for many years, I sold work, earned money from it, then punished myself for such a long time by not allowing myself the freedom to paint. like I was not worthy of it, I didn't deserve this creative outlet, it had been sullied by what had happened to me and I feared I would nevver get it back.

I have started to journal elsewhere on the internet, but would like to share my journal here with you wonderful members of isurvive, because without your support and care, and the love of people who I have met here, I would not be at the place I am now, certainly not now, maybe I would have got here a long time in the future, but Isurvive has been here for me and has been a huge part of my healing journey, sure, I have wanted to leave a couple of times, have got triggered, angry and upset, vowed never to come back, resolved stuff, worked through it, and this place has become as important to me in my healing as my formal therapy has been.

So, this is the first part of my journal,

*** Potential triggers as details a cleansing ritual- not linked to any religion and not harmful in any way, no mention of anything negative, but be aware if you are triggered by the mention of rituals***

Part 1: Cleansing and Creativity...

Having decided that I will reclaim my creative and spiritual side, the need and urge to paint has been tickled and excited and the need to cleanse my creative and spiritual space has felt crucial. My spiritual self feels utterly and inexorably linked to my creative self and I really need to nurture both in order to keep moving forward on my journey. I have lived under the fog of bad experience and trauma for too long and the desperation to express myself artistically is bubbling up inside me and overflowing. I have made some significant life changes over the past year, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am feeling optimistic about the future... I am not religious- at least not any known kind of religion, and I am not sure which religion or lifestyle my own personal brand of cleansing ritual has been lifted from, having read about so many and identified with parts of probably all of them.

Somewhere in the filing cabinets and notice boards of my mind- and encouraged by a good friend- came the plan to cleanse my space, emotional and spiritual self, and creativity using sage. Now I know that this is something used by Native Americans in their cleansing rituals, and some utterance form the inside of my head suggests to me that I read somewhere that Pagans and Wiccans (are they the same thing?) use sage also. Not wanting to set off the fire alarm in my flat, I opted for sage oil rather than the bunch of dried sage, which for fragrance's sake I added to some frankincense oil- which I understand to be good for feeling 'closer to god' (whoever you may understand him/her to be) and all round spiritual goodness- they burn frankincense in churches, and a good glug of Melissa. It wasn't supposed to be a good glug but I prised the drip dispensing plastic thing out and loads went in the oil burner. Just so I had some smoke I added 5 incense sticks (dragons blood flavour and frankincense and myrrh flavour) which actually probably made the same amount of smoke that a bunch of sage would have produced. It was too late to go back by the time my eyes had started stinging from the great billows of smoke wafting up from my coffee table. Just to add to the all-round spiritual and earthly atmosphere, I put on a long Enya playlist and got myself really in the mood.

There really is no point burning all that incense and oil and listening to panpipes if one doesn't accompany the whole scene with some positive affirmations. These were the result of a conversation with the same good friend as suggested the sage, and included 'I am safe now', 'I have a right to my art', 'I am worthy of creating', 'I deserve to paint and express myself'... amongst others. And everyone knows that affirmations are better said out loud, so there I was wafting about the place, dropping ash on the carpet, telling myself what a worthy and comple human being I am and how much I deserve to create stuff, My dog wondering what the heck was going on, eyeing me up with bloodshot eyeballs and almost asphyxiating from the plumes of smoke....

I must have looked a complete nutcase....

But you know what?

I DIDN'T CARE.

Whether sage oil has some magical properties and really does cleanse things, whether the fankincense and dragons blood and myrrh and melissa somehow attuned me to my higher self and some sort of magic occured, or whether this cleansing ritual was purely suggestion and Just the willingness to let go of that negativity was enough to make something shift... I felt it.

Something did shift in me, and a whole wave of emotion crashed over me. I suddenly felt connected to what I was doing and felt that I had the right, the worthiness, the deservedness, the willingness to be creative. I felt the pain of stagnancy and inability to daub paint with wild abandon and freedom of spirit lift.... I realised that I didn';t have to be free of all pain in order to create, that the pain and the memories of those awful things would probably always be there to some extent, but that nothing of them could lessen my worthiness.

I called to mind this poem by Robert Frost:

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. xx

[SparklingDawn]

Hi Starshaped,

I love this.

D

[Starshaped]

thanks SD, that means a lot to me

star xx

[eff]

(((star)))

so happy for you........x

eff

[Starshaped]

thank you for the hugs eff, and Im really warmed by your being so happy for me. thank you.

it took a lot of pain and hardship to reach this point, but i think i am fially seeing results after years of hard slog!

SD- I just wanted to say how happy I am to have been able to reach you with my post, I would love to hear your toughts on it when you are able to write again Like I said on your thread in open, We seem to be in a very similar place creatively, and Id love to talk more with you about that....

take care,

Star xx

[Truth teller]

So excited and delighted with this post Starratty. You are finally in a safe and calm space to let all those wonderful traits out to the world.

You are:
creative
insightful
sensitive
warm
super intelligent
compassionate
fun

Remember this and look at it when the hard stuff rears its ugly head. Thank you for working so hard to reach this place. I know it wasn't easy Please continue to share yourself here. It is a a real blessing to see this progress. Stay calm and carry on! Hugs for Mollydog, the cutest pup on isurvive and your sweet partner.

big smiles,
Tt

[glowworm]

Fantastic, Star. So happy for you!!

[abusewarrior]

I realised that I didn';t have to be free of all pain in order to create, that the pain and the memories of those awful things would probably always be there to some extent, but that nothing of them could lessen my worthiness.

((Star))
There is an ebb and flow to pain, I think. It does not necessarily stay all our lives, but it doesn't just disappear either. If we wait for our pain to subside for our inspiration to strike, we may not create anything for years. I truly admire the process you are going through to get your art back. At the end of the day, it will be the thing that can save you from feelings of despair. When you create anything, whether from beauty or ugliness, it is a work of our soul's longing...a testimony to our resiliance and creativity in tandem.
The best advice I ever received about writing was to put aside all the lofty dreams and grand schemes and just sit my ass down in a chair and write. Sometimes it seems harsh, but I think the idea is that we can only create art and work that is truly ours if we do not put too many lofty expectations on ourselves. Organic and original art always prevails over anything that is made by our self loathing or our pride.
I think the more we try to grasp the complexity of our own feelings as relates to our art, the less we see our art as the signature of our lives. We cannot see our work as just one aspect of our lives as relates to our abuse, but as a myriad of strokes and words that makes up the best and worst parts of us. Therefore to try to wait until you are whole may take away the very stroke to your painting that makes it touch someone's heart or life.
Painting should never feel like an obligation to your healing, but rather a process of drawing out the most beautiful, most malicious and the most scattered parts of your existance. When you stop judging yourself on your external validations, you will know that the best art you will create will be from the internal truths. No one can tell you which color to use or which brush to value on a given day; it is ultimately up to you to find the sentiment in your own mind to make the patterns and see the light in each swirl. There is no right or wrong to art, there is only joy.
I was thinking the other day about what works of mine have been published, and how it still amazes me on how one short story or article or poem is picked over another. Sometimes, I am thinking the editor must be mistaken, because they will pick something I just threw in there to make the envelope feel fuller or to give them the required pages to read. Yet, when I chat with them later I learn that a certain image from my work made them think of something they valued. It is really subjective. The things I valued writing weren't always the things editors valued reading. Yet, it didn't make those stories or poems any less valuable to me.
Worth cannot be decided by others, it must be decided by us. If we rely on others to place the worth on our work and our lives, we are only setting ourselves up for disappointment. Self-worth is the worth we live with and if we give our power away to others to determine that, then we are giving away ourselves.
Keep believing in yourself and your painting. There is no shame in having to fight for this if that is what it takes. I have given up being a writer in a fit of temper more times than I care to count. However, I am not happy unless I am doing what my soul longs to do.
AbuseWarrior

[mary jane]

thank you for your post.
I have seen a woman who heals people in a schamanistic way... (I don't wanna go into that too much now)... she used sage to clean me as well! it's got a nice smell, doesn't it. I found it really calming. apparently francinsence is used to get rid of evil spirits so it's a good idea to clean your house using that. I'm sure your mixture was great for both.

[Starshaped]

(((((((Truth teller)))))))) Thank you for that lovely long validating list of things you see in me. I find those parts of me difficult to recognise, I am so used to putting myself down and only seeing the bad... I think that is years of being named as the problem, the one who is getting it somehow wrong because my family said so. So it really helps me to be validated in this way by the people I care about. I am so happy to have achieved that 'calm safe place' but also to have learned that that space is not the only one I can create in. I have always placed so many rules on my pcreativity, the main one being that I had to have dealt with the pain from the past as much as was necessary to paint and not be affected by it- which was challenged so much by my cleansing of the space, creativity, spiritual and emotional self. the other big rule I have is that I can't paint unless my home is immaculate. I think this is another one of those old family messages, but I also feel like creating when there is any form of chaos around, and that includes dishes that need to be washed, hoovering that needs doing, laundry that needs folding... etc etc... is somehow evil and bad, like where there is mess, there is this awful part of me that needs to be 'dealt with' and I am unworthy of something as pure and beautiful as creating...

I am challenging this by sketching when there is washing up to be done or painting when my bedroom is still a mess, but it is still so hard to fully immerse myself in the creative process when there is mess around....

(((((((glowworm)))))))) Thank you so much for sharing you pleasure at my creativity, really knowing that people who I have come to care about can share in my happiness has been so healing for me. I have had a lot of validation and support for the parts of me that are painful and difficult, and not enough for the parts of me that are beautiful and free and flourishing. I love your thread about finding your purpose in your writing. I feel like I have found mine too, and not just a new purpose but the one I knew about and missed so deeply all along. I love to write, draw, paint, cook, and I have put such strict and devastating rules on all of those things, My purpose is to create, I know that now, so no wonder I was so depressed and sludgey and unable to live when I was not doing so. finding my creativity again has been massive, like taking back a part of me that was stolen by someone else.

(((((((AbuseWarrior)))))))) there is definitely an ebb and flow to pain. I think that for years I have told myself that one can only create in the flow of happiness and freedom from distressing thoughts or images- therefore I was never going to paint again....

Therefore to try to wait until you are whole may take away the very stroke to your painting that makes it touch someone's heart or life.
Painting should never feel like an obligation to your healing, but rather a process of drawing out the most beautiful, most malicious and the most scattered parts of your existance. When you stop judging yourself on your external validations, you will know that the best art you will create will be from the internal truths. No one can tell you which color to use or which brush to value on a given day; it is ultimately up to you to find the sentiment in your own mind to make the patterns and see the light in each swirl. There is no right or wrong to art, there is only joy.

I founf every point you made to be really real and true for me, but this bit stuck out in particular. I guess that is the shift Painting doesn't feel like an obligation to my healing, it feels like an obligation to my very soul, I mean I feel obligated to MYSELF. not that I feel obligated because some other person tells me I am wasting my gift. I have realised the importance of the process of creating artwork to my healing, to my growth, to my sanity, to my journey, to my life. I realise thatt waiting until I was 'whole' was impossible, art and painting makes up my wholeness, I cannot be whole without it. maybe I didn't feel worthy of wholeness, maybe that has changed too.

thank you so much for your advice, your support and your belief in me throughout this process. I care very much about you and have valued your iput during this process. I'm sure your support will be crucial to me the further down the road I go with this.

(((((((mary jane)))))))) Yeah, that combination of oils had an amazing smell, it smelled of sweet and sherberty, uplifting goodness. it really did me the world of good going through this process, especially as it made me realise that I do have some sense of my worth in order to do something so positive for myself.

***************************************

had a good weekend, this weekend, full of laughter and love, and my wonderful partner bought me a gift certificate so that I can go on a photography course, it's a 4 hour course in a studio with models to photograph and lessons on how to use a digital SLR camera to it's full potential.... I am hoping that this will be something that I will find invaluable in my creative endeavors. I have a great camera and would love to use it more effectively. feeling pretty good about stuff, theres still things that I am struggling with, like food and my weight, but I am able to hold onto both and that is progress.

Sending out good wholesome healing thoughts to anyone who wants some....

Star xx