I’d like to share this with you. It’s a true story about a way in which I hid myself a wee bit, for many years. Reflecting on it has got me wondering about the connection between being ourselves – our true selves – and the development of our creativity. I’m wondering if it will resonate with any of your own experiences.
I have a loud laugh. I mean seriously huge, noisy, cackling and very, very distinctive. I’ve lost count of the times in the past when friends would comment that they knew I was in the restaurant/pub/cafe/library (!) because they heard my laugh from the street outside. Once these comments starting coming, slowly, over a period of several years, I became more and more self-conscious, more uncomfortable. My mother’s ‘seen but not heard’ mantra kicked in. It didn’t stifle me entirely, but it made me very aware of myself, and not in a good way.

I held back my laughter.

I fitted a silencer.

And then, last month, something changed.

We spent five glorious days with a woman with a laugh.

Maritza is irrepressible, beautiful, funny and blessed with an uninhibited, raucous, whole body laugh, one which fills the space with joy, which proclaims her presence and her comfort in her own skin.

And I realised after a day or two in her presence, in the presence of her laugh, that I was laughing freely too.

It was one of those moments when you suddenly get back in touch with something essentially you. When there is release; a loosening of something you didn’t even know was too tight.

Through her sheer joie de vivre, the glorious (and noisy) communication of her delight, her irrepressible way of being, Maritza inspired me, healed me you might even say. Gave me permission. Perhaps that’s it.

And, as my neighbours, friends and even clients are just starting to notice, I’m laughing out loud again. I had by no means stopped completely, but there is a new freedom to it. A freedom which has coincided with a burst of renewed creativity. Hmmm. Too much to be coincidence?

Maybe what we’re doing when we start to create, to be more creative, is to breathe out and make a bit more space for ourselves. To uncover the things we’ve been hiding. To remove the silencers that were fitted long ago. To fill our lungs with oxygen and sing… or simply laugh.

What do you think? Are there parts of you that have been kept a bit too quiet? What would creating a bit more space for yourself allow you to do?

I’ve used an image of a sea shell for this post because they have such huge meaning in Maritza’s life, and there is something about the beauty of the space inside which touches me.   Here’s a link to Maritza’s occasional blog – if you’re not a Spanish speaker, try using Google Translate.

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In 1991, when Mr N and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, we bought a vibrant pink azalea. It has survived our unskilled gardening techniques (it hates being moved, we’ve discovered, and punishes us by refusing to flower the next year) and every May we look forward to the jubilant burst of colour which marks not just our anniversary, but also both our birthdays.

We did lots of pottering in the garden over the Bank Holiday weekend, and I took advantage of some great light in order to use my favourite lens, the macro one. The one that allows me to see incredible beautiful detail in the flowers and people that I photograph.

I’ve snapped the azalea many times, but this was the first time I’d actually got really close in, lens almost touching the blooms.

I looked into the viewfinder and was stunned to see these tiny tips of glittering silver. I actually gave a little shout of delight and started snapping. I could hardly wait to transfer the photographs to my computer and have a proper look. And yes, I was right, there they were, stamens dipped in molten silver.

That’s what I love about all the aspects of my work:  the way I can be touched to the core by unexpected beauty, the way in which the familiar still has surprises up its sleeve, the way in which each day I learn something by changing the light and shifting the focus.

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I’d like to share a story with you. It starts kind of sad, but the ending is very joyful, very jubilant:

In 1995, I bought a beautiful plain notebook with a specific intention. I’d always been a note-taker, a list-maker, but this was quite different. This journal was to be my companion as I sat with my mother who was about to die.

As an only child of a dysfunctional mother, I needed a friend there with me, and I told this lovely purple book, with the thick, smooth pages, everything that happened over those few hot sticky days in August as I sat at the bedside.

Over that time the journal evolved from being purely a diary of events, a watching daughter’s notes about her mother’s breathing patterns, the way different health professionals treated us and spoke to us. It began to occasionally lapse into stream of consciousness. It became a deep personal reflection on the meaning of my own life, my own mortality.

And as I wrote and wrote, in the time after her death, a strange kind of healing took place. The joy, the delight in my life crept in slowly at first and then obliterated what was in fact a pain unrelated to the death itself.

Something about the experience of writing that summer had profoundly affected me; I’d made a deep connection with myself, and with this process. I was beginning to get to know me.

That winter I started the journal that would be the blueprint for all those which have followed. Largely they are explorations of joy, of happiness, curiosity about the unknown sides of my own way of being, allowing me access to all areas.

The tone lightened very quickly, though the content became ever more fired by pure instinct. Over the years I’ve worked through innumerable life situations – the challenges of being the mother of teenagers and most recently the utter bliss of moving towards and becoming a grandmother.

Now, all this time after that first memorable experience of writing it all out, my pen acts as a conduit, tapping straight into my soul, allowing me to pour a kaleidoscope of emotions onto the page and to pick through all the possibilities to find the right way forward.

Now, here and now, I’m still learning about the high voltage energy potential of the pen. The connection with the brain, and also with the soul.

Writing provides a direct link to our instincts, to our values, to the essence, the very heart of us.

I shared this quote the other day:

If you’re able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence. Barbara Cook

I think that’s part of what writing it out allows us to do.  To get closer and closer to that essence.

I see it on an almost daily basis with the women I work with, women who are learning to harness the power of the pen for their own lives, for their own development.

And I still see it, still feel it, day by day, as I write things out in the pages of my own journal, and explore and share ideas with you on the pages of this blog.

I’m still learning how it works.  I’m still learning how far I can go with it, and still learning from the people I work with just how much power this simple tool has.  And the joy of this approach is that it invites you to learn as you go – to write out what the learning is, to get closer and closer to the heart of it.

Bit by bit, day by day: getting closer and closer to the essence.

This is a contribution to a group writing project at Joyful Jubilant Learning: How do you Write to Learn

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