THE LAST SIX WEEKS
I have been writing other things recently, important other things. All the things I have been writing revolve around the topic of creativity. I have been a student of creativity ever since I first discovered its power to save me. The more I poured myself into doing things, not just art things, creatively, the more I liked who I was becoming. The less I worried about what was expected, the happier I became with what I could do when I left myself to my own devices. 

For the last month and a half, I have been reading up on what other people have written about creativity, and while the topic has been examined from academic and professional perspectives, the one thing I have noticed that is not mentioned is the emotional content, the very meat of what makes creativity such an important element in any society. 


WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT
We are taught to suppress our feelings. Creativity is the act of expressing them. It does not have to be a drawing or a sculpture, it can be anything, from the way you dress to the way you take a bath. Once you make something your own, you have been creative. The problem is, we are all taught to keep our feelings to ourselves. We are taught that any expression of emotion is a weakness. We are taught that it is a sign of strength to keep a stiff upper lip. But emotions are powerful tools that tell us who we are, what we fear, and what we can do to more meaningfully engage with the world and the people in it.

We are taught to conform to a standard or norm. There have been many times in my life when I have been pressured into doing something I didn't really want to do; whether it be change my hair, shave my toes, or dress in a way that didn't suit me, I, just like everyone else on the planet, have been taught to conform through advertising, the educational system, friends, relatives, partners, and anyone else who might want to throw in their two cents. Conforming is always rewarded, and diverging from the norm is at best questioned, and at worst, punished. Women must look a certain way to be considered beautiful, and beautiful is the standard by which women are judged. Men must look and behave a certain way in order to be considered masculine, or strong, which is the standard by which men are judged. Creativity, intelligence, empathy, these characteristics are secondary to looks and power. 

We are taught that we are not creative. We are taught all through school that if you aren't good at art, you aren't creative. It's a way to keep people from questioning the norm. It is a way to control a populace full of people of different genders, races, religions and political parties. It's a way to keep people from discovering and using their power. Because the truth is, we are born creative.

George Land's NASA creativity test proved that people are born creative over and over again. His study showed that as children progress through school, the educational system trains them out of their creativity, that basically, creativity is un-learned. 

• At five years old, 98% of the 1600 children tested, tested as creative geniuses
• At ten years old, 30% of the 1600 children tested as creative geniuses
• At fifteen years old, 12 % of the 1600 children tested as creative geniuses
• Out of 280,000 adults, only 2% tested at the creative genius level

This test has been given many times with similar results each time. This test, originally created to select highly creative engineers and scientists for NASA, has proven over and over that the educational system in this country is actually dumbing down the populace and has now put us in a place which many say is a creativity crisis in the US and abroad. 

I realize this is not what I usually write about. I usually write about my emotional journey through my life; what I learn from the mistakes I make, the fears I have, and the people with who I interact. This in itself has pushed me to explore the idea of creativity and why so many people are afraid to take risks, put themselves into their lives in a meaningful way, and allow themselves to express what they think and feel about themselves and the world. I believe that if more people accept the fact that they are creative and become curious about how to express that, the world will shift in such a way that many of the social issues we face today will be lessened if not completely resolved. 

BEHAVIORAL CREATIVITY
I have been reading a lot of books that tell people how to be more creative, a lot of complicated steps that will teach people to be more creative at work. But the thing that all this misses is that creativity is an expression of what is inside, and if we keep suppressing our emotions, if we stop ourselves from expressing who we are in favor of conformity, nothing will change. 

In short, behavioral creativity is the extent to which people diverge meaningfully from the norm, it is the way an individual expresses themselves in the things they do every day in every aspect of their life that makes a meaningful impact on the level of satisfaction and joy they derive from that activity. For instance, The American Dream is something that US citizens and people all over the world have been sold on for a long time, so many people believed that going to college, getting married, and having kids was THE WAY to live a life. The problem is, during this life, many people who bought into it felt empty, had mid-life crises, and lacked the satisfaction with their lives that they expected to obtain by living something everyone believed to be a DREAM. 

It is not to say that this life is not good for some people, but for many, it is no way to live a life, and surely no way to fully develop into the person they could be if they were not putting so much energy into being someone they do not truly feel themselves to be. 

Make sense? No? Then just do this. Consider for a moment what you would do if you believed yourself to be a creative genius. Consider if your life and the things you do would alter at all if you did not believe the lie that you have been taught about yourself.  Consider who you could become if you were not afraid of standing out, speaking up, or simply, not participating. 

Now....get started. Express yourself. Experiment with your day. See what happens when you follow your heart, when you do the work of taking a risk for who you really want to be. 

Below you will find an entire gallery of images of things I have done and created in order to meaningfully engage with the world and express my point of view. Take a look and see what you think. Leave a comment if you would like. 

My heart sank when my phone stopped working. It was 8 a.m. on a Monday and I had a whole other day planned, full of organizing, cleaning, and making, but my phone stopped, well, technically, it stalled, and I kind of panicked. 

I tried all the tricks to fix it, tried to get my mobile carrier to help, found out that even though I had been paying nine bucks a month to insure my phone, I would still be paying $150 out of pocket to get a new one. 

I spoke to Apple, whose iPerson sent me on a wild goose chase all over my small town. Then, when I had just about decided to give in and buy a new phone,  a young, earnest man behind a counter in a small, soulless building told me that he could fix it. And within ten minutes, he had. When my phone started working again, the display read 2 p.m. and I had lost my day and a part of my mind in this crazy whirlwind of pursuit.

As I walked out to my car, taking on the familiar crook-necked posture humans are evolving into, it hit me. My phone really controls my life. It keeps me from feeling things I probably should be feeling, thinking things I could be thinking, and most importantly, making things I could be making. I realized in finding my phone that I might be losing my mind.

After all that has happened in the last month, I can see how my life might be telling me to put a bit more emphasis on real-life relationships and interactions, and a bit less on virtual endeavors. 

I realized throughout this day without a phone, as I drove from one place to another in search of answers, or waited for service that would prove to be ineffectual and rude, that I was feeling a bunch of stuff I usually squelch with distraction. I was feeling my feelings, and it made me uncomfortable. 

Feelings, by nature, are there to make me feel uncomfortable, and in so doing move me into some kind of action, and realizing I had been going without that lack of comfort was a bit troubling. Acknowledging that I had been avoiding so much of what normally keeps me awake to the world was profoundly depressing. In this journey to get my phone rebooted, I also decided it was time to get my emotional body rebooted as well.

I have a new strategy with my phone now, and while it was painful to look at how I had been ignoring my feelings, in the end it pushed me to be better about how I spend my moments in between. It's never easy to acknowledge that I have been ignoring some large part of myself out of laziness or fear, but once I get on the other side of it, I'm usually pretty good at doing something about it.

This forced hiatus from technology turned out to be a good thing. So good, in fact, that I just might take that same time every day just for myself. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. will be all about me. I will feel what comes up, make stuff, think stuff, and live a life of engaged action.

I used to be a fighter. I would climb atop the highest horse possible and dismount into the most self-righteous power stance I could take as I would retaliate with pride, courage, and unfortunately, anger. I always believed it was the world that was hard, unyielding, brutal. And around this belief, for most of my life, I have been at war with myself.

But this has recently changed. I no longer fight, and for this, I am grateful. It is not that the tendency to jump down the throats of anyone foolish enough to challenge me is not there, it is. But now, I wait. I think about why I'm angry, and beneath that, I always feel the pain. The pain of  the fear of my suspicion.

I suspect that I am unworthy. I have an inkling that I do not deserve good things. I have a hunch that my time is not as valuable as the time of the people I know and work with. These fleeting thoughts and feelings are what upsets me when I am treated like my efforts, my space, my very time does not matter. It is not that someone else is treating me this way, it is that this treatment is confirming the thoughts that haunt me in my darkest moments. 

But I have been practicing walking away for as long as I need to and feeling these things, asking myself if they are true, moving through my fear and anger, and coming to the pain. I am training myself to be friends with the ache that has for so long controlled me, for so long had me exploding at friends, colleagues, and loved ones alike, in fear that I might be right. In fear of unlovable. As I sit with this pain, I know that none of this is true. 

It has always been too easy to blame myself, to tell myself I must be the problem if my parents are screaming at me, or ignoring me, or my boyfriend is lying to me, or this business man is harassing me, it has always been, "it must be me, it must be me, it must be me." 

But it is almost never me. I have given up trying to control the actions of the people around me and more importantly, I have stopped blaming myself for their bad behavior. I still have the inkling, I just don't believe it any longer.

This last week, I was treated more than once as if I was not worthy of the love, respect, and admiration any human is due. In both cases, instead of flying into a rage, I withdrew and gave myself an opportunity to act with compassion for myself. Instead of self-blame, I sunk deeply into my sadness and examined myself. I cried. I held myself in a soft place until I could come out of it confident and softened. 

Being hard, tough as nails, or as an old friend used to say, "a pleasing creature with sharp edges," is exhausting. It just wears me down and gives me one more thing to regret or attempt to maneuver into justification later. 

I hold more compassion for myself in these moments, and in so doing, hold more compassion for the thoughtless mistakes people sometimes make. 

I write about this now after decades of struggling with my anger in the dark without a compass. I have had years and years of therapy, hundreds of different alternative modalities exercised upon my energetic system, and many opportunities to practice not jumping to anger, and here I am, almost 50, and the thing I never thought of, treating myself more tenderly, with more compassion and love, has finally yielded the grace I have been seeking all this time. 

I have found the courage to not believe the lie and the compassion to believe that I am worthy.

It is a vital and uplifting pulse that I feel around my people. Quick to laugh, maybe too quick to speak, and always happy to listen for them, those I have gathered around me over the course of the last 30 years have come to mean a great deal to me. More than I guess I realized, before this last excursion.

And I returned to the deep sorrow of reflection. It is stunning to see yourself through the relationships you maintain. And now there is the lens of the virtual world through which I measure my efforts. I have put myself into so many things that have just sucked my energy away from me, and so many things, like this blog, that have fed me through the years. 

I have been through many "business building/speaker training/leader teaching" courses that have all felt...not really like me, and every time, I am reminded, in one way or another, it is because they are not actually for me, they are for the money I spend on them. And that is where the sorrow comes in, because I know intuitively that this is a false reality. 

But I carry on, because I always do, believing I am moving toward helping more people, inspiring more people to be real, and reminding myself, always, always, always, remember who you are. 

​And for today, that is enough.

The toys I have been installing in my tiny house remind me of the choices I can make and the reasons I need to make good ones. I have had some great days, full of making and building and eating and bicycle riding, full of old friends and new experiences. 

My life has been blooming in so many corners and forgotten patches, I am excited and sometimes, unnerved by it. There are things happening and opportunities appearing that I never dreamed I would have. 

But still, I struggle. Of course I struggle. My anger still flares up when I am feeling anxious or frightened and I know that the best thing to do is walk away before I say or do anything that could destroy someone. Sometimes, I can manage it. Sometimes, my rage gushes out of my mouth and into the eyes of a person who didn't see it coming. 

I am always sorry later. 

It's not that it happens often, but when it does, it forces me to see that these people who trigger me, who treat me like I am not worthy of consideration in any meaningful way, are actually wonderful people to have around, because I don't want them or anyone like them to have the power that pushes me to anger and destructive rage. I don't want good days ruined because someone was inconsiderate or thoughtless. I want to be able to see the behavior of others as a reflection of them, and not of me.

When I spiral downward into anxiety and fear and lack, I have nothing but to scream into the void that follows me even into my good days. I want to scream for every time I was discounted, discredited or deserted. I want to rage against the people who put my feelings at the bottom of their list of priorities because they were too weak to admit to their own horrors. 

But anger, screaming, rage, they don't make me feel more important or worthy. On the contrary, my behavior only serves to validate my fears and sends me into anxiety after who I might become.

This is the real reason for the old wooden toys I have installed onto the walls of my home. The moments I take to pause before my days begin and after they are through are what anchor me to what is possible. The time I take to play with the old wooden xylophone and the wooden ball roller reminds me that at my core I am not rage or lack or anxiety. Those are the things that happen when I forget that my value is based on the joy I take in my own life. 

As I run the tiny mallet across the surface of the old metal keys, I remember that there is joy blooming in me, and there are people who bring that out, who love seeing me happy, and celebrate every new opportunity that comes my way. There are places and experiences waiting to be met by my curiosity, and though I struggle with my rage, it is not what defines me, it is what reminds me that the choices I make can change my day one way or the other.

I just have to remember to make the right choices and learn from the people who tempt me to go the other way.

As I watch his red truck race down the frontage road next to the air strip, I hold back my tears and wonder why I didn't make this last longer. It is always longer with my father, ever since he moved to Maine, we do the best we can with letters every week and bi-annual visits. I visit in the summer because Maine is pretty, and tolerable, weather-wise.

I don't know, sitting on the airplane, choking tears back behind the sturdy plastic window, that later in life I will have other summers full with missing a man I love dearly. I don't know that this longing will set its talons in me and hold tight, searching for ways to bring that longing back.

Is this how I will know that I love someone?

I long to be near him then revel in the short presence of his person. There is so much that I don't know, but I do know it is almost impossible to really share a large part of my life with anyone for too long. I like my alone time. I like drinking tea and sitting silent, staring at the grass, the sky, or the small painting of Humphrey Bogart in my tiny home. I like walking slowly, working on the seven projects I have going at random intervals, taking bike rides and maybe going to yoga. 

Unpredictable, even to myself, keeps me on my toes and interested. It keeps me open to what might come next. Having to explain all of the intricacies of this type of freedom feels exhausting. The person I long for doesn't need this explanation because he is there long enough to appreciate and gone long enough to miss. 

This is the love that suits me, where I have my own life, full up to my eyeballs, then precious moments, sharing breath with the person for who I long. Tiny bursts of joy and connection, laughter and love. 

I wish it weren't that I had to feel this pain in order to truly understand myself. The horror of looking back at my life and seeing that I have been denying who I really am because somewhere along the line I was convinced that I was typical. I was trained to believe that I need what suits other people just fine. 

But I am not that person, and I won't be that person ever again. Especially not in the summer, when longing for someone is even sweeter as it mixes with the memories of my youth and becomes something altogether unique, cherished, and sacred.

I walk slowly down the middle of the late afternoon street, binoculars in hand, head tilted upward, ears searching for the familiar call of the Merlin. I have had the gift of seeing them every so often, and every morning and evening they call; the rhythm of their presence echoes through the neighborhood. 

I think only a few people in the area understand how special they are, and I have talked to only two other people who have gone out of their way to look for them. Their presence ties me to my time with my ex, and simultaneously feel like a symbol of freedom and possibility. 

I never expected to be a person who watches birds, and that is why I think I love the activity so much; I have found such joy in something I never even considered interesting. I will admit that I first wanted to learn to bird because it would mean I would spend more time with my beloved, but I soon caught the fever of the activity, and while I am not sure I will ever be as good as my ex, I have become familiar with so many birds and their habits that I feel as if I have uncovered an entire universe full of brilliant potential that has managed to in some way inform my own.

Birds are dependable and consistent, yet ultimately serve as a reminder to be brave, take risks, to fly. They are beautiful, and these Merlins, they are fierce. They hunt and move so quickly that they are hard to see. Very often you only know that a Merlin was there by the racket and the frenzy stirred up in the flock of birds that are left after she has taken one from the crowd for a meal. 

Two days ago I woke early when I heard their call. I used to wake up to 5 am text messages from my ex going to fires. As I wandered down the early morning street searching for the Merlins, I remembered those early hour messages and how connected and sweet it was to share with him. It was a strange world to me, the leaving for an entire summer to fight fires in the west, but I enjoyed missing him. I came to see him as seasonal as the birds we would count together in the winter. He left when the birds were migrating and came back as they were returning. It was a perfect rhythm that gave a sacred structure to my time with him.

Now I am structure-less. So I listen for the gift of the Merlins, and I try and create my own structure from the rhythms I have created in his absence. He was as consistent as the birds he taught me to appreciate, and I can only hope that I will pick up on that a bit too; that consistency might rub off on me a bit more, and within dependability I might find the freedom to fly.
​

I walk down North toward my tiny house and I smell it. Rain is in the air. It fills my head and leads me back to the space I have created for myself. After years of having nothing. After the profound sadness of not being absolutely welcome to live, really live in a place, I have made one for myself.

I know why the crazy crept up on me. I can feel it in the back of my neck, right below my skull. My falling apart resides in my spine as a tingling echo of my ardent desire to be wanted.

I think back to that, almost a year ago now, when my moods were unpredictable and the words that came out of my mouth sometimes melted the face off a loving partner. I couldn't help but fall apart. My body kept telling me over and over, but I was deaf to it, so its only option was to send me into frantic rhythms that would leave me soaked with sweat, shaky, on my knees, and sobbing.

I listen now. All the time. I take as long as I need to feel what my body is trying to tell me. This practice has transformed me completely in a very short amount of time.  None of it has been easy. It started with sobbing into my pillow for almost two months and was paved with hard choices and littered with denial, doubt, and frustrations. I have felt every inch of this journey radiating up from the soles of my feet, pulsing through my fascia and bone, and into the back of my skull where it hangs like a nervous pendulum, anticipating the first swing. 

For more than a year, my art has been about grief and pain. For a year I have ruminated on every loss I have felt, every relationship I have ended, every loved one who has passed. For a year, I have been studying the effects of grief on my bones, and it has been beautiful. It has worn down the sharp edges of me and carefully pulled the resentment out from my cracks and crevices. It has hollowed me wonderfully, delightfully, thoroughly, and I am light again.

My work is becoming and it's hopeful. It's optimistic. It is a reflection of the garbage I have released and transmuted. I have come back to reside in a body that trusts me to listen. My body trusts me to listen.

The other day I finished a piece, and my body whispered, "The Believer." As I looked at it, I ran my fingers along the edges, trying to understand the shift that had come about gradually but seemed to appear out of nowhere. It shined like a new freedom within me, cheering me on and telling me that forward will not be easy, that the adventure is just beginning.

​I guess that is why I must be a believer.

There is such a gift in the telling of a story, the sharing of pain and trauma, the trust of the person who reveals that pain. I am never numb to it and always grateful when I have the opportunity to hear the stories I have heard. No matter what the pain, the very fact that they are being told is hopeful, inspiring, and uplifting.

Taking a person's story into your body and relating to it is one of the most human things we can do. The gift of a story can never be overstated, and when the teller wants to use that story to inspire change, or empathy, or hope, the gift becomes a blessing.

For so long, my stories have been excuses. I used them to excuse my bad behavior all through my twenties and thirties, and even in my last relationship, I used the trauma of my youth to explain why I could not believe that my partner loved me. I look back at all the ways I rejected the idea that he loved me, all the times I looked for proof that he didn't love me, and I know down to the soles of my feet that I was proving to myself, once again, that I am unlovable. 

But something in the ending of that relationship woke me up to this. Maybe it was that I had finally had enough. Maybe it was that every other part of my life was so different, so honest, that I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. I had to find my way back to my joy, to my love, to my perspective of bliss. 

I know now that ending it was good for me, for us, because I see it differently now. And though he and I have become great friends, there is still a difference in the way we see it. It was astonishing to me that the last time we spoke, he spoke of what he was doing with others, and I was still trying to convey that I had wanted to be treated differently. That no matter who he told his story to, how ardently they agreed with his view, I know, I wanted to be treated in a different way, and I had to leave the relationship to re-frame that for myself. I had to be alone to consider what I really need in my life. I had to start really treating myself differently. And that was the biggest difference in the break up. 

I know when I talk with people about their stories there are many sides, many differences in opinion, and a whole lot of ways to see something. I respect the pain my partner felt at me not believing I was lovable, and being afraid that he would leave me if he found someone better, I own that and will never be able to make up for doubting his love. The wonderful thing that has come of all of this for me is that now, I have no doubt that he loves me. I would take that to the bank, and I know that his perspective, though it doesn't exactly mesh with mine, is worthy of my respect and compassion.  I know that we will be friends because we can each have our perspective and still love each other.

My personal story, my journey through this life is no different. I could still be mad at my parents, at my abusers, at everyone who I feel has ever wronged me, but I am not. I have come to a place where my blaming mechanism sets off an alarm in my gut which alerts my nervous system that I am upset about something I have done. Upset about something I have not asked for. Upset about something I have not taken a stand for. So when I go to blame or judgment, I know it's about me. My body no longer lets me get away with believing that it is anything other than that. 

There is still the stress in it. There is still the profound sadness in knowing that my anger is around my own actions, and there is still a struggle and a lot of work around getting to personal responsibility, but I do it, because no matter how long it takes, if I get there, I am free. Free from being the victim of others, free from feeling vulnerable, free from the fear of the unknown. This work creates a more resilient form of me every time I do it. 

So I work at it and I will keep working at it until it becomes muscle memory, just like believing I was unlovable used to be. 

I told a new friend the other day that I used to be known as "Angry Sara," and that, at that time,  I was afraid if I let go of my anger and my persona, that I might just disappear. She couldn't believe the person in front of her could have ever been that. It was and is always a joy to tell this story, because in this story, I am not the person I used to be. In this story, I am altogether transformed.

This is the story that came from letting the other stories go.

I need new music, new food, new movies to watch. So many have memories tied to them...like those stupid cans that clank after idiots freshly married, driving down narrow streets, blithely unaware of the metaphor they are dragging behind them. 

I want to replace the memories anchored to the taste of beer. Beer of all things! I can't. Oysters. Fury Road. It's all a minefield. But only some days.

Other days, it is a lovely stroll down memory lane, happy images sprinkled among the daisies in the field, blowing among the tall grass. Sweet footsteps down familiar paths where hands were never held, but souls intertwined. So much more to the senses than what is perceived. 

The birds some mornings call only to me, and on other mornings ask me why he isn't there to identify them, lying there, rubbing his eyes, telling me what he can hear on the other side of the windows and trees.

​They miss him too, I guess. They understand the appreciation that comes with identification. The love wrapped in the attention it takes to remember the sounds and the names of the lovely winged messengers.

And how lucky am I to lament such a loss? Who would I have been without this, this life where I had the opportunity to feel more deeply than I had thought possible? Where would I be without this loss of great love?

I'm happy I chose this path, though it is strewn with thorns and shards of old sturdy jars, the kind used to pickle and preserve, kept safely in the dark, under the counter, until the perfect moment when everything inside them blossoms. 

There is so much intertwining now. So much joy that brings up sadness and so much sadness that brings me back into joy. Is this how it's supposed to be? Are these my feelings? Am I so fortunate as to feel these simultaneous and wondrous complications of light and dark? Will this be how it goes?

​For now I am happy to remember with all my senses all the things I used to enjoy. I am happy to understand the depth of my loss and still have the wherewithal to celebrate it.