Tanya Torres  
Art for Love, Peace and Joy

What happens to our creative soul when we don’t take care of it? 

 

I should know...

 

For many years, I was happily living my dream of being a full time artist in my NYC studio.

Until one day, when it all collapsed.

 

My old building, the site of my home and art studio, had some serious problems. I lost my studio, many of my artworks, my home and my wonderful dream life. I was devastated and tried everything to fix it, but in the end, I took a regular job. 

 

Before I realized it, seven years had passed. It became very difficult to do anything beyond the daily routine of going to work and coming back to my many temporary homes. And after so many years, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t imagine, and I couldn’t create. 

 

But… I also couldn’t let my dream die. I wanted to live—really live.

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The Challenge

 

I could see that there was a lesson hidden in this situation. Why was it happening? How could I have let it happen? I didn’t understand. 

 

I sensed that the reason had to do with growth, potential, and mission. We can’t teach if we haven’t gone through the lessons and mastered them. 

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Through my years as a full-time artist, I had the time to help many people complete their own creations. By guiding them through the process of publishing a book, creating a product, completing a painting, or doing their first exhibition, I was able to help them believe in their own capacity to bring forth their creative work. It was something I did naturally and spontaneously, in friendship. It was my way of giving back. But the truth is, I had forgotten how difficult it was to owe your hours to a job and then come home to create. 

 

If I really wanted to help people, I would have to experience what they experienced on a daily basis. I would have to remember the commutes, the daily grind, the frustration, the exhaustion, the mind-numbing existence into which we fall when we lose our freedom. 

 

I needed to find a way out of this situation again, this time without the advantage of youth. I was back in so I could understand others and help them achieve their own dreams. But first, I needed to succeed at reclaiming mine. Because how was I going to help others if I couldn’t help myself?

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Practical Matters

 

My problem was work. During all those seven years, I had earned a great job. Even though I had been through some difficult work positions, I finally arrived at a school where I felt really valued and where I could make an impact that truly helped people. I struggled greatly with balancing my commitment to my dream and doing my day job.

 

The first time I decided to leave my job as a college instructor to live my dream of becoming a full time professional artist, I was 36 years old. It was not a difficult decision because I had just gone through an experience of illness that showed me the preciousness of life. I also had resources that I had obtained through financial discipline and a good investment. A good investment I had just lost.

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And at 55 years old I am not so far from retirement. This is an age when we really start thinking of the future. My day job provides great benefits, great people to work with, and why not say it, a great flow of income… This time I couldn’t leave it all behind as easily as I had in the past.

 

I only had one option: do both. At least for a time. I would find ways to blend the two parts into which my life had divided in order to create one complete work of art. 

 

But how?

 

Through practice and discipline. Moving from the inertia of rest to creative momentum.

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Imagination and Action

 

Some years before, during the Pandemic, I had written many pages describing my imagined ideal life. It was my way to cope and also to create magic. I was designing a life. But it stayed on paper.

 

Then one day, after selling the old building, and settling into a new apartment and a new studio, I decided to review those pages and give them a beautiful design, as a way to honor that part of myself that I felt I was about to lose.

 

I started enjoying the hours I put into this new creation. The writing flowed differently. The words I wrote were not the ones on the handwritten pages. I realized I was creating, or receiving, a new blueprint for life.

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And I began to really imagine a different version of my life. A version that could fit all the parts of me.

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But while imagining is great, there is no change without action. How could I apply the ideas dictated by my heart?

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I decided to start drawing Mary Magdalene and writing in the Magdalene.org blog every day, something I had been meaning to do for years. This simple (although not easy) practice, together with a series of intuitive actions that both recognized and reclaimed my dormant skills, helped me find a structure that made space for my art.

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I had to change the way I saw things, and I had to create new ways to act. If I didn’t have hours, I would work minutes. If I didn’t have energy, I would create it. If I felt like giving up, I would try again the next day. Slowly, I found that, after the initial resistance, my energy would grow. And if I could be playful, then I would create a new day at night. 

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This is how Creative Soul was born. I started intuitively writing the advice of my heart, and it soon turned into a strange book. A book that speaks soul to soul, and gently nudges into creative action. 

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Let Passion Glow

 

Creative Soul is also the name of the passion project that culminates my process of renewal and invites others to engage in their own.

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As I developed the book, it became the starting point for The Creative Soul Project, conceived to help people take the first step into the life they had one day envisioned for themselves, but forgot along the way. I definitely know how that feels… ​

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Your Future Self

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Did you ever dream of creating art or publishing your memories, or of editing that collection of poems hidden in your drawer? Did you ever view yourself, even for a brief moment, surrounded by your creations, transformed into that person that you know lives inside your heart? Did you ever dream of yourself in a little cottage where your books and your art live as a testament of your commitment to yourself, or in a big city living the life of the bohemian, having fun and creating day and night? Did you ever dream of traveling the world with your sketchbook and writing love letters while your are living the dream? Were you afraid to do it alone? Did you not know where to start? Whether you want to become an artist, organize your first exhibition, publish a book, or discover your creative promise, sign up for The Creative Soul Project to gently start the process of becoming the person you aspire to be.

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The Creative Soul Project  is a free program that can help you realize your vision of your future self. The main goal of the Creative Soul project is to help you walk into the liminal space of creativity by being supported in community. I invite you to own your creative self through the completion of a soul project that helps you learn the steps to become an independent creator. For those who want additional support, affordable individual guidance, workshops, services and retreats in Puerto Rico will be available.

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With more than 25 years of experience as an artist and writer, editor and educator, I have organized many exhibitions and traveling art shows, published handmade and commercially printed books, created large mosaic murals in schools, promoted my art with simple marketing strategies, coordinated large school projects and effective teams, and most important of all, I brought myself back from a 7-year creative hiatus into full blown and unstoppable creative action. 

 

To make your dream a reality and to never lose another minute of precious life, take the first step.

 

Remember yourself being free. Live your life in freedom. Liberate your life forever in your heart. Be your true self. Let passion glow!