12 Secrets: Acknowledging Your Creative Juice

The Twelve Secrets of Highly Creative Women:
Secret #1: Acknowledging Your Creative Self

"We need to remember that we are all creative and
can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed."
--Maya Angelou

In the first chapter of the book McMeekin asks the reader to acknowledge her creative self--done. My siblings and I were extraordinarily lucky to be raised in an artistic stew, guided by gentle and talented parents and thus I have been happily creating my entire life. Where am I in my creative journey? It's hard to say--it's not the sort of thing one can easily place on a number line or neatly pile onto a scale and appropriately measure. However, I do know for a fact that this past year has turned out to be artistic tsunami. I felt a strong connection to McMeekin when she described her need for her art to be part of her life as an act of healing. I too have been using paint as a form of self medication and am proud to say it has yielded astonishing results.

It's been a little less than a year now, and I hardly recognize myself in the mirror when I fiddle with my hair in the morning. I was in a dark place. I had come to accept that my tiredness, lack of appetite, over sensitivity, social anxiety and debilitating panic attacks were no longer just a high school phase but part of who I was going to be forever. I never thought to label it as clinical depression. "My life isn't bad, I don't deserve to be depressed. Depression is for people who have their homes foreclosed, or suffer some unspeakable tragedy. Your just being whiny. Grow the f**k up and get over it, quit being such a candy ass..."

I was stuck at a job where I was verbally abused and sexually harassed on a daily basis. I was surrounded by people who were drunk, strung out, violent and angry-- and as their waitress it was my job to endlessly fill the coffee cups and ignore their slaps, degrading remarks that would make a sailor blush and the parade of endless pinches, for literally pennies an hour. There were several occasions in which I foolishly picked up a late shift and was either mugged, threatened with violence or groped. It wasn't the long hours of being on my feet or living on cherry Pepsi that was making me weak, it was all the energy I was leaking by constantly being afraid. Between the toxic conditions of the workplace, endlessly working yet still being embarrassingly broke, a move I was dissatisfied with, attending a school where I felt alienated and a blossoming drinking problem--the scene was grim. Finally, after an unfortunate incident at the restaurant, I left in tears promising I would never set foot in the forsaken hole again as long as I lived. I was a pallid, underweight, irritable mess teetering on the brink of being a seriously broken girl.

With some much needed Help and endless Love from my family, I figured it out. After an awful experience with a condescending "therapist" who basically asked me how I would like to be medicated before we really discussed the situation, I decided I wasn't going to need his help. I needed to make some changes. It was shortly after this ordeal that I stumbled upon Diane Stein's book Casting the Circle: A Woman's Book of Ritual. In her book she discusses being a "Woman of Consequence"--I'd heard of this before, but wasn't entirely sure what the meant. Do I kick ass and take names? Is it being a Queen Bee? Does it mean people are afraid of me? After learning that being a Woman of Consequence meant refusing to be trash blowing in the wind and taking charge and responsibility for the things that occur in your life I had a bit of an epiphany:

Yeah, I thought, Woman of Consequence.
Look at you--You are not a door mat, you are a Muse.
You've been ignoring what you are--
and Spirit won't stand for being ignored.

My meltdown was an opportunity. Since waitressing was no longer an option, I turned to the only thing I knew how to do: make stuff. I do it to make a living, I do it to entertain people, I do it as an act of healing for both myself and others, I use it as sacred space. The past six months has been spent being a muralist, building clientèle, making connections, creating custom works, writing workshops, rearranging my space and meeting the gorgeous souls I always hoped to find in the city here in cyberspace. Since then it's been Me, My Tribe and Goddess. This isn't to say that I don't have days were "it" (I don't like saying "Depression", I feel like that validates it as some sort of icky illness outside of my control) lurks around but Art keeps me healthy.

Art makes me mean something. :)