When you feel alone in your creative expression
'You were made to enrich the world with a sound, a tone, a shadow'
Welcome to Gentle Musings, a publication about reconnecting with yourself, experiencing life as a creative practice, and living out loud. Gentle Musings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“You were made to be yourselves. You were made to enrich the world with a sound, a tone, a shadow.
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In each one of you there is a hidden being, still in the deep sleep of childhood. Bring it to life! In each one of you there is a call, a will, an impulse of nature, an impulse toward the future, the new, the higher. Let it mature, let it resound, nurture it! Your future is not this or that; it is not money or power, it is not wisdom or success at your trade—your future, your hard dangerous path is this: to mature and to find God in yourselves.” - Hermann Hesse
Today’s letter is one from the archives. If you’d like to listen/watch today’s letter, I read it in this video with lots of in-the-moment reflections. It’s called Watch this if you feel alone in your creative expression.
On October 30, 2019, I hovered my mouse over the publish button for a solid ten minutes as I soaked in my inner chorus of doubts.
This is how it would go: I’d wait to write something until the waiting felt unbearable, hesitantly start a new document, get down my initial thoughts while aggressively editing the whole way through, tuck it away and pretend that I didn’t have a newsletter to send out, return to it after days or weeks, stare at the hovering cursor, and think ‘this is stupid and pointless’.
And round and round it went.
If I’m totally transparent, most of the first year of writing the Regarding Dew Letters (now called Gentle Musings) involved sweating, biting my nails, going flush, clenching my stomach, and nearly panicking when it came time to hit publish.
Four years later, my experience of making and sharing is fundamentally more life-giving. And, here and there, this pattern still makes an appearance.
Being creatively expressed churns it all up. And: it’s one of the most liberating things you can do for yourself and others. Expressing your innate creativity, even when the doubt chorus chimes, is a gift to Life.
So here are some highlights from the letter I sent that day (the third Regarding Dew Letter ever).
I’m sharing this in honor of how creativity nurtures connection to oneself (present, past, future), to each other, and to life’s weirdness, grief, and joy.
I hope that today’s letter helps you to feel connected to yourself and your creative expression in truer and deeper ways. And maybe most importantly, to trust how collectively necessary your creative voice is, especially now.
Tara Brach has a quote that settled deep into my mind and hasn’t left:
One of my favorite understandings is that we teach from the radiance of our own discovery. When I can open to the silence and stillness that is here, then words and ideas arise that express that discovery....We teach what is alive for us, and that aliveness is the transmission.
These words have inspired me to write a few things as I find my way through the haze of being a fully expressed person with hope and stubborn trial and error.
Lately, I’ve been lodged between a stifling conundrum: the desire to make stuff and the desire to be in a dynamic community of makers. The lack of the latter is blocking the former.
The following is my attempt at giving some shape to what goes through my mind in the process of making and sharing work. I wrote this thinking about when the joy of solitude in making stuff—whether writing or dancing or whatever your thing is—becomes sore loneliness… or a deeper level of aloneness that I don’t yet have the words for. These are all winding, open, in-process thoughts.
In addition to helping loosen my own stuff-making joints, I wrote this letter for…
▫️Anyone that feels alone in their creative ventures
▫️Anyone that faces sometimes insurmountable feelings of self doubt in expressing themselves creatively, even just to themselves
▫️Anyone that loves to express themselves creatively but faces self doubt when it comes to sharing these expressions with others
▫️Anyone that yearns to experience an expanded sense of community, one that celebrates creativity as the norm
This doesn’t cover the details of having a creative practice, forming creative alliances, or coming up with project ideas. Also related, this doesn’t address insecurity about being a neophyte or an autodidact (spoiler: those are both creative rocket fuel). This touches on just two elements that are part of my current creative conundrum: the tension between making and sharing and the suffering of not making and not sharing.
If this writing helps you build a bridge between the two, or even a bridge back to yourself, I would love to hear about it in a comment below <3
First, embrace the deep desire (and, in fact, the need) for true connection—to be seen and to belong—in the context of your creative self.
How are you presently known and seen?
Does it feel true to the you-ness that you are?
On Making Your Work
→ As the main place for sharing creativity online, social media gets me all frazzled and spilled out. You too? The most substantially helpful move I’ve found: get analog. Brainstorm ideas on paper instead of a document on the computer (if possible). Whether in a sanctioned journal or a huge piece of paper, I find that more ideas surface when I’m not tethered to the internet.
→ Using whatever conditions best ‘welcome the muse’, set the intention to let yourself flow in the current of your own creativity. As John O’Donohue wrote, “I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.” It’s like that.
→ The outcome is irrelevant. The audience? What’s that? Make without a destination, just for the hell of it. If doubts of how it will be received creeps in (what will people think, does anyone care, does this matter?), they don’t need to be pushed away, just reassured that you’ll focus on that later. But for now it’s you and the creative current. Jennifer Louden put it well when she wrote: “What would I choose to do this week if I remembered that I am quirky, fabulous, utterly unique, and perfect as I am?” With this same sentiment, what would you express with this deep assurance?
→ While feeling a sense of belonging is vital, I think that we’re also yearning for deeply experiencing our own individuality. The depths are boundless! This is an opportunity to delight in your presence. What does it feel like to make something for your younger self? What about making things for loved ones as a surprise gesture? How does it feel for you to share your creative self?
Watch: Cultivating delight in your life ⊱✿⊰
On Sharing Your Work
→ Sing it with me: You gotta share when you want to share… What feels best here? Does sharing look like putting your work on display in your home, gifting it to a friend, performing at an event, putting it out on social media? Different seasons call for different sharing, and there’s nothing wrong with sitting on projects.
→ Ok now we’re going to get into the mud of it…What belief are you believing about this challenge? What’s behind this block or discomfort? Peek at it for even a moment. In the words of Mary O’Malley: “look to unhook”.
→ Share to the people who GET it, who feel inspired by your work and expressions and carry sincere support for your growth as a person. Our creativity needs to feel safe to be weird, uncategorizable, nuanced, confronting, delicate, and vivid. A statement for an extra boost: “I belong here. I am welcome here. I am free to be me.”
→ Trust the process as it is unfolding. In the words of Émile Zola, “If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
To living out loud: both in making things for yourself—even if the world never sees it—and in sharing what you’re here to bring. The world yearns for it.
Maggy
PS: Thank you for being here. If you’ve made it this far, please do give this letter a *heart*, drop a comment letting me know any reflections that it inspired, and share it with a friend. Thank you.
Studio Happenings
Before sharing, look how sweet she’s resting! (this is my Vanessa Bell chair—I wrote about here)
𖤣 Pivoting Toward Wholeness, the studio’s signature course about attuning to your wholeness as a creative practice of life, is now open for pre-sale registration until September 14th. This is the lowest price available for Regarding Dew’s signature course that starts in January 2025. I hope to see you there!
𖤣 I have two spots open for Creative Mentorship starting in September. This is an opportunity to receive personalized one-on-one support in bringing forth your gifts with plenty of tenderness and boldness. Click here to learn more and apply.
𖤣 Saturday, September 14th at 11am EST: The final Community Discovery Writing Gatherings offered publicly through the studio! This is for you if you…
⦾ …have never written for yourself before
⦾ …are an ardent journal-keeper
⦾ …are looking to build your ‘creativity support system’ and participate in enriching community networks
⦾ …know that creativity is an ongoing source of comfort and stability in destabilizing and trying times
⦾ …are extremely nervous to read your writing out loud… but something is pulling at your sleeve to try
⦾ …have a desire to connect to your innate creativity and to keep the connection alive
Tickets to both Community Discovery Writing Gatherings (September 14th and December 15th) are included in Pivoting Toward Wholeness registration until September 14th.
Hope to see you at one or all of these!
This reached me today like... a warm hug. Thank you!