Creativity is a Healer
Where does creativity come from and how do we harness it for healing?
As I drop into my heart space for that answer, I see the expansive field of color radiate outward. I see a verdant field, people dancing wild and free in the distance, and a sky filled with sunshine, rain clouds, and rainbows.
I haven’t always been able to access this intoxicating space of creative healing. It came to me in a dream almost 18 years ago.
The scene was exactly how I described, only the dancers were moving joyfully with tornados as I cowered behind a single cement wall. I had no shelter from my own creative landscape, nor its storms.
My dreams have always been vivid and dramatic. For many years they were unnerving and spooky in the ways they would align my subconscious with my conscious. I started journaling my dreams and this gave me the reins to garner deeper insight and meaning. As I remembered my dreams, they became a vehicle for writing and art.
As I would paint, draw, or write, the dream would unfurl with even deeper insight. For example, this dream I had when I was 19, of a blissful field of dancers punctuated by tornadoes dipping down from the sky, was about my fear of truly experiencing joy in the face of change and upheaval.
I was the eldest daughter in the home I was raised, parentified, and rigid, and yet I longed for the times of the Beats and the Hippies. I devoured On the Road, Howl, and Electric Koolaide Acid Test in high school and although I had straight A‘s, due to my fun ADHD/OCD combination, I just wanted to be FREE. OF COURSE, I started smoking weed and dabbling in psychedelics. By the time I made it to Columbia College Chicago, I was vibrating with a need to be set free upon the world, and yet, I was absolutely terrified.
Let’s go back to the rainbow field with dancers and tornadoes. There are my friends, naked and free, dancing despite the tornadoes touching down. The sky is both colorful and dark. The feeling is excitement and fear. And there I am, unable to access the exhilaration of it all, cowering behind a wall that isn’t even protecting me.
That dream forced me to make mistakes, make art, get out there, learn, fuck up, try again and again and again.
That is what creativity is about. It’s not something we do, it’s something that moves through us, whether we experience it as excitement or fear is up to us. There will always be change and upheaval, there will always be people dancing through those changes.
I know I’m ready to join the dancers. Are you?
