Years ago, I kept a blog called My Peacetree where I explored art, healing from trauma, and the natural world. I took an extended hiatus after I enrolled in college, started my career, and settled into adult life.
But looking back, there are so many bits and pieces of those years of writing that still ring true.
Even cooler, sometimes they speak to and build upon one another:
Starting – picking up a paintbrush, a camera, a pen – can be one of the most difficult things to do in a creative’s life when inspiration has vanished. If we feel we have nothing to give, our minds ask us why we should we begin at all. And so we get discouraged, believing that we have lost our gift, and sink deeper into a creative rut.
Let me share a secret with you, darling, one that I must remind myself of again and again and again: often, the inspiration comes in the creating.
Inviting Inspiration, 2011
My experiments in art do not have to result in perfection. In fact, they rarely do. We as a society, as a world, are obsessed with success, and failure is often a threat. Not so in my art journal. Here, I can play and seek out and explore and find comfort in the tension and disharmony of my mistakes. Here, I can accept them for what they are.
I thank them for the wisdom they’ve given me. And I turn the page.
Lessons Learned in Art and Life, 2016