A Year To Create

We’ve arrived at this most interesting week of the year - between Christmas and the New Year - where the quiet always presents a dilemma: do we rest, reflect, or plan?

The resounding answer is REST! The year’s work is done, the hard push of the holidays is over, and almost no one is in the office this week. But we achievers don’t know what to do with a week that falls so quietly on the calendar.

My family set this time aside to connect and have no expectations. Except, I’m over here in the corner madly dashing notes into my phone about essays I want to write. New chapters of a book are flooding out of me as well, and I’m hopelessly in a reverie about the insanely creative year I’ve just come through and the big things I learned about myself - and the act of creating - in the process.

My favorite word right now is liminal. It’s such a beautiful word on the tongue, on the page, and in concept. The actual letters in the word liminal appear to line up like levers to pull, archways to walk under, and a small wormhole in the ‘a’ inviting a complete departure. Liminal space is the uncertain transition between where one has been and where one is going.  It can be a deeply unsettling time of dissolution, quiet, confusion, and sometimes the unshakeable fear of being lost and never again found.

Up until last year, I was a frustrated creator always prioritizing achievement and self-sacrifice, hoping that my creativity could still thrive on the dregs of energy I had left at the end of the week. I figured twenty years was enough of that nonsense and I permitted myself to exist in an extended liminal space, for the exact purpose of liberating myself from one identity to create my way into a new one. Freelance writing provided a modest income, but mostly I created for the sheer experience of creating, and to see where it might go professionally if I let it take the lead.

Liminal space is one of the most important components of transformation, but, damn, is it tricky. When utilized well, it invites a lot of permission to play. No fixed walls here, which gives it its unsettling nature. If you let that unsettling feeling get the better of you, a lot of demons appear to take your head for a spin through all of the best reasons to get a job.  What exactly do we do with a week - or a year - with no defined parameters and very few expectations?

For this reason, this year will go down as one of the Big Ones because here’s what I did. In just over 12 months, I launched a podcast with 70 published episodes to date, started blogging, wrote over 100k words towards my first book, went on four creative women’s retreats, became a certified Level 2 Reiki Energy Practitioner, and unraveled my way to the best health of my life. Phew!

So much had to go. So much shedding was called forward in the liminal medicine of what I now call the Mush State of Transformation. All that I accomplished sounds wonderful now. It’s a lot! But behind the release of pent-up creativity and self-expression, there was a lot of hard work wrestling those demons to the ground and doing the work anyway.

So this week, while I was “resting”, I took a walk back through the last twelve months and reflected on the primary demons that gave me the biggest fight. If you have a breath in you, then you might recognize these, too. Here’s my takeaway.

1.         Fear of Failure is poison, and mostly not real. Yes, failure is always a possibility, but we all know failure is usually the gateway to success. So do it, fail magnificently, and then go right ahead and win the day anyway. I had no idea how to podcast, or produce audio. It was a huge risk, and there were many hurdles and perceived failures, but I just refused to let the fear of absolute failure take me down. Guess what? I still produce the podcast, people listen, and it brings me immeasurable joy to create. This sounds like success to me!

2.         Unworthiness is the biggest hurdle. This was the grandest A-HA of 2023. When I met the familiar threshold of hesitation or backing down, I traced it back to all of the times in my past that I felt this way. It always led to a pattern of dropping out right as I was up for reaping the rewards of my effort and expertise. I always stepped away before getting the promotion, the team, the title, which I attribute to the ever-present belief that I didn’t deserve it. And if I did deserve it, what if others didn’t agree? And if I got the thing, what then? Did I have what it takes to hold it, nurture, and sustain it? In other words, I always had a sense that my achievements were built on smoke and mirrors, so if I was asked to put my cards on the table, I preferred to fold them. Yikes. When I put my finger on this one, and decided I was worthy to throw my voice on the airwaves and my writing hat in the arena, my creative juices went into supercharge.

3.         Patience is a virtue. I’m not talking about the good girl waiting her turn. I’m talking about the grown-up woman who stands still long enough to allow goodness and blessings and inspired connection to flow to her. I’m talking about the person who doesn’t put something in motion and then run after it micro-managing the heck out of it until it’s fully realized through effort and self-sacrifice. I’m talking about the patience that comes from knowing that letting go, easing the white-knuckle grip, and ALLOWING good things to come, is how real magic happens.

One of my favorite quotes this year is, “Relax, the universe is always conspiring in your favor.” I tested this. It’s a long game, but it’s true. So much so that I’m writing a book about it in 2024. The book has many working titles but one of them is You Are the Sacred Place. Named that on the premise that we are the wellspring of creative force. We are the fractals of the divine in human form. We are God’s only hope for proving divine existence, and so we better start acting like it. My acting like it came in the form of patience. Don’t hustle, just do the quality work, put out feelers in the right direction, and WAIT. Not a normal state for me, so a lot of growth came from this, but the waiting is now bringing things around that are easier and better than I ever could have imagined. Magic!

4.         No one is coming to grant permission to create, you have to do that for yourself. I essentially gave myself what I had always dreamed of most - modest savings for a sabbatical, a quiet room, and permission to create. Guess what? I still made excuses! In my busy working life, I made these same excuses around prioritizing my creative time that cemented in place so many roadblocks. Here’s the truth: the roadblock is me. Because when all of that other stuff dropped away, I was shocked at what stirred up as roadblocks to my ability to create what I wanted, when, and where. I had to overcome that again and again and again by permitting myself to do the work I’m here to do.

Wrestling with these truths made for a pensive and messy year. Truth-telling is hard work. Showing up is hard work. Demons-slaying is hard work. But somewhere in the liminal time, a strength overcomes the weaknesses, and momentum takes hold. This inexplicable lifting happens, and against all odds, one starts to behave like the divinely granted creative we’re all sent here to be. Creative pursuit is here for all of us, whether we find it in the outline of our life or the centerpiece of our day.

So, on the threshold of a new year, whether you’re resting, reflecting, or planning, my wish for the year ahead is that we all feel we belong to our creative process, whatever that looks like. For all of the raging wars and darkness that seems to only grow bigger in the world, I believe that the pursuit of art, and the sacred calling to create beauty, is the light that will lift us to a better collective place. Let us not excuse away our genius, but rather embrace it as the liminal medicine to heal the world.