Create: Conversations on Creativity and How Women Heal
A New Series
I remember my dad used to tell me that I was a writer when I was relatively young.
I wrote a narrative about rainbows and how each color made me feel when I was kindergarten age, and my mom would always reference how beautiful that piece was. I told her I could write things I couldn’t say.
I painted landscapes of sunrises over the old branch-heavy trees that separated my house from the Hudson River.
I spent weekends rehearsing dance pieces and dialogue for musical theater productions throughout my teens.
I majored in creative writing and dance at a small liberal arts college.
At 46 years old, I find myself once again writing weekly here on Substack, while also working on my second book project. I make my way weekly to dance classes and enjoy sketching alongside my very creative daughter.
When I was young, these creative endeavors felt like what I simply loved to do. Now, these same things feel like how I survive the world.
I know I’m not alone.
What I’ve come to understand on some basic level is that women are multi-layered. We possess moving parts, pieces, and personas. We express these different parts of ourselves in different ways. These different parts need different outlets to have a voice. We need modes of expression, or else these parts get stuck, even stifled. Then we wonder where our true selves have gone.
What I’ve also come to understand is that as women have children, careers, and yes, as we age, we must rediscover ourselves. Parts of ourselves that we buried, forgot, or neglected. We must also make logic out of the often illogical events of our lives up to this point.
As my mother says, everyone has a story. But what do we do with these stories? It doesn’t feel quite right to let them fester or rot inside our psyches. Something calls us to make something of them.
I want to talk about this with some smart, creative women.
Women who create from their passions and their pain.
I want to know why they do it and what it feels like.
And I want to inspire those of you who are here to use your own creative impulses to heal, explore, and express who you really are.
It’s such a worthy endeavor.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for written interviews with some of my favorite creatives, as well as live conversations with them about how they’ve healed and learned about themselves through what they create.
I can’t wait to dive into this topic. It’s really up for me as I’m writing my next book, so I’m sure it will meet you wherever you are.