LEARNING TO TRUST YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS IS LEARNING TO TRUST YOURSELF

Hi, Friends:

I’ve had my head down working on the content for the retreat I’m leading this weekend in Texas. Fifty women are joining me to explore practices, prompts, exercises, and experiences centered around cultivating more self-compassion. It’s clear to me that I chose this topic in an effort to deepen my own ability to embody self-compassion more fully, but also because I bear witness to how hard most people are on themselves and how much pain it causes. I also wanted a topic that would not only benefit the women in attendance but one that would cause me to stretch and grow in the planning and creation of it.

Through this experience, I deepened my trust in my creative process.

Here’s what I mean.

I’ve taught a few workshops in recent years on the topic of self-compassion based on the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, who led the charge in this area. Her work is not wholly unfamiliar to me. That said, I have never built an entire weekend of workshops on the topic. Crafting seven separate hour-long workshops that incrementally build upon each other was a very different task and initially rather intimidating.

But slowly, as I moved through the process of researching, gathering ideas, playing around with them, turning them over and over like puzzle pieces unsure of where they fit, creating a structure, ditching the structure and beginning again, reshaping and re-crafting and playing some more, I finally found the flow of the weekend that felt clear and satisfying and also felt like me.

I could have made it easier on myself by choosing a topic like, “Healing Your Story” or “How Acting Skills Can Make You A Better Human Being” or something. I could have likely put those retreats together in a weekend. Instead I chose a topic that I believed not only held great value but that would also offer me an opportunity to stretch and grow in the process of creating it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s also a whole lot of fun to teach in areas of deep experience. When I had my acting studio and directed theater, I thoroughly enjoyed guiding actors with the confidence and flexibility that comes from years of teaching and experience. Many teachers know this wonderful comfort zone. But my soul was calling for something else.

It used to bother me and in younger years when I would develop skills in one area and then feel a desire to do something completely different. As in, you. know, why can’t you just stick to one thing and get really good at it? Answer: Because I actually want more that.

As a creative — and yes, I believe that is all of us— I benefit when I stretch my capacities. I love to see how seemingly disparate ideas or activities “talk to each other” and “come together “ in fresh ways. Everything I’ve ever learned impacts everything else I lean into. Isn’t that what creativity is? Isn’t that what we are doing when we create anything?

I have learned to trust my process. When you trust your creative process, it doesn’t matter what the subject matter is or whether you have years of experience in the area. You trust that you can find your way even when you don’t know the way.

Of course, resistance and fear will rumble up initially, and that seems to be part of the dance, but as soon as you actually begin to engage in the work it fuels you, it helps you, it draws you forward. It sometimes even spins and dips you on the dance floor and you can’t help but laugh in exhilaration!

When you trust your process, you can wander and explore any landscape and be at home.

“The creative integration process is an ongoing, lifelong flow of invitation, awareness, and growth so you can create from new perspectives and embrace the truth of who you are as you change. The more you can be flexible and have faith as you sit with discord, the chaos you feel will give way to cohesiveness. Your creativity will deepen and expand in new directions you can’t possibly see or conceive of right now – and that’s the point. As you integrate more and more pieces, accepting them into a balance, your creative vision blows wide open in the most sacred, natural ways. It’s also a deep, all-encompassing act of self-healing.”

- Katrina Pfannkuch

A poem by Chelan Harkin

Each untended pain
inside of you
is a child
that needs so much attention
and care.

Don’t neglect them further
with philosophy,
with any kind of attempt
at moral perfectionism,
with meditating
into aloofness.

Please, don’t try
to transcend—
transcendence is a decorated
synonym
for dissociation.

Enter your heart.
There is simply no
possible way
to escape the world’s history
stored in our bodies.
We cannot please, prove
or perform our way
out of pain.
There is simply no way
to escape any part
of yourself.

Go to your tears.
Go to your heart.
Feel your sadness.
Let God wail through you.
Be small for a long while.

Connect with the simplicity
of your sorrow
beneath the complexity
of your self-deception
to take down
the whole show.

Be the brave mess
this whole world
is so resisting
collapsing into
that might finally put it back
together again

reordered this time
with compassion,
with true acceptance
with an openness
that can only be known
by an unhidden heart.

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Write with me this winter. PROJECT 444 BEGINS IN JANUARY 2023. Write, heal and share your story.

Join the WAITLIST here.

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3 THINGS WORTH SHARING:

1 Series, 1 Film, and 1 Practice

• Under The Queen’s Umbrella- I’ve only made it through three episodes of this Korean historical drama on Netflix, but let me tell you, get through the first episode which sets the stage ( if a bit slowly )to get to the payoff of the end of Ep. 3. One of the most beautiful scenes I’ve seen on television in a long time. Truly. I will probably watch that episode a few more times.

• The Good Nurse - powerhouse performances by Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain. A dark topic based on a true story but handled deftly by director Tobias Lindholm.

• The Self-Compassion /Loving Kindness Break by Kristin Neff. If you practice just this, watch your self-compassion grow.

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RON’S WORLD:

Ron asked me what I had for lunch.

I said, “ A delicious blue cheese salad.”

“Voodoo cheese salad?"

His hearing isn’t what it used to be, but it did give me an idea for next year’s Spooky Food Night!

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Sending you warm hugs and encouragement! See you next week. I’m sure I’ll have lot of joy to share from this weekend’s retreat experience.

xo Mary