We were sitting at the kitchen table, each on our computers working and sipping coffee. I was writing a blog post and he was working on the artistic display of the guided meditation that we had recorded. I was wearing my nighty despite the fact that it was almost 9:30 am. My hair was uncombed and my teeth were not brushed. 

I hadn’t had the emotional bandwidth to write blogs posts. When I am drained I can’t access my creative flow in a way that feels good so I had blocked my schedule to make time for writing while I was rested and balanced. There is nothing worse than trying to access creative flow in a way that feels forced and controlled rather than flowy and magickal. Creative self expression is something that I had been leaning into for the past 2 years, learning so much about myself in the process. 

For years, I had said “I am not artistic”. I had a college art professor who absolutely gutted me and his words were hard to unhear. “For you, that is an A but for anyone else that would be an F so I will give you a C”. I can hear his words like it was yesterday despite the fact that it was more than 15 years ago now. Fuck you. Fuck you so much. That is all that I wanted to say. Instead, I said “this is the problem with art. What you just said makes me feel stupid. It makes me feel insecure in myself and my ability to be creative. You make me not want to try. This is why people don’t want to try to be artistic, professors like you teach people that when they try they will be openly judged and that is why lots of people hate art. If you want, I can take you down to the allied health building and make you feel stupid but I won’t do that to you because I wouldn’t want you to hate learing about the human body.” His comment was made public in a classroom full of artists and I was a science major in a classroom full of art students. His comment was made while I was standing in the front of the classroom with all eyes on me. He was teaching. He was teaching me and every student in the classroom. He was teaching about judgment and how words can be weapons. I recognize that no one can make another person feel anything. The person who is feeling is 100% responsible for their own emotions and their own feelings. He wasn’t responsible for my emotions, I was. I was responsible for allowing his words to land in a place that shut me down, that rested solidly on me. More than 15 years later, I finally landed in a place where his words didn’t have the same impact. His words were a beautiful lesson for me, he taught me how to feel proud of my creative and artistic energy regardless of what others think of it and that I don’t need anyone else's approval for it to feel good for me. 

This morning, sitting at the table and writing I felt proud of the artistic energy that comes from me and recognized that when I meet it with judgment I shut down that creative flow and when I openly accept it regardless of what it looks like, I am able to find joy. 

A cool breeze flowed through the open windows and doors and across our bodies as we both sat creating. I immediately popped out of the creative space and raised my arms to feel the breeze flowing across my body. I smiled at him across the table and he winked back. I was creating more than a blog post, I was creating my life just the way that I wanted it.