My observation of the week is that as I ease I create more easily.
Does that make sense?
I remember being a mom, a worker bee, a wife, an all round busy lady that I was tight. I let so many external things dictate me that I didn’t have time to just be me. In retrospect I did have that right, despite all the hats I chose to wear, to just be myself for a while each day, week, month, year. In retrospect, I think being me for a while each day would have helped with all of the change that life offered up.
I feel like I started out as a grape and as the years went by and I didn’t honour me, I started to prune up, wrinkle here, squeeze there. And then, when all those labels were shed and I was allowed to be me more, the wrinkling, pruning, squeezing eased and I emerged.
Not like the beautiful butterfly from the cocoon, that is still coming, but like a regular everyday butterfly. Fresh. And with that release of being reborn, creativity has expanded.
The four or five drafts of novels I have on the shelf are only years old, not decades old. They represent a release of stories that I have carried within me for all this time. And it is only now that I can sit and let them flow from my thoughts into the ink of my pen.
As I look back now, I acknowledge that I let myself become tight because I was striving to be some ideal of what a wife/mother/worker bee should be. Some ideal divined by the culture and expectations of the generation before me that were reinforced by the force that was my mother. Not the best set of expectations to have for oneself. After all, in that generation Valium use was popular.
The energy that I have for projects, the time I take to sit and consider, the walks that I use to let the mind sort while I watch where I walk and listen to the birds all help me expand into the creative being I am supposed to be. That we are all capable of being. If we just ease.
I am grateful that I have been able to ease these past years. That I can look back and see where I have been and accept it for what it was. That I can turn my energies to creativity in whatever form I choose. That I can be the beautiful butterfly that I always wanted to be.
Flitting easily from moment to moment, adding beauty to the world.
