Be Your True Self

On my studio table: pencils for the Mary Magdalene drawings, Creative Soul book in progress, a cup that my young friend Carolyn gave me as a gift a few years ago, brushes and an Atabey Taino Symbol painting in progress (now completed and sent to Baltimore.) My magical white table of potential creations!

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

I should know.

For many years, I was happily creating as a full time artist living my dream in my NYC studio. Until one day when it all collapsed. Such is life, unexpected things happen.

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 life dream. I was devastated and tried everything to fix it, but in the end, I had to take 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.

I couldn’t let my dream die. I wanted to live. Really live.

However, I could see that there was a lesson hidden in this situation. Why was it happening? How could we have let it happen? I didn’t understand. We had been financially responsible. We had no debt beyond a mortgage that paid for itself. But these were the wrong questions. At least for me, the reason had to do with growth, potential, and mission.

The truth is we can’t teach if we haven’t gone through the lessons and mastered them.

I had sat with people many times, helping them create a website or a book, guiding them through the process of creating a product or planning a painting, or doing their first exhibition. It was something I did naturally and spontaneously, in friendship. But I was living such a dreamy life, that if I really wanted to help people, I would have to experience what people 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 and become creatures of habit against our will.

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?

My problem was work. During all that lost time, 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 also where I could make an impact that truly helped people. I struggled greatly with my commitment to my dream and to my day job.

And at 55 years old I was not so far from retirement, and as we know, that’s the age when we creative souls start thinking of the future. 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. Find ways to blend the two parts into which my life had divided in order to make one complete work of art.

But how?

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

This is why I decided to start drawing Mary Magdalene and writing in this blog every day. This simple (but not easy) practice, together with a series of intuitive actions that both recognized and reclaimed my dormant skills, helped me find myself living a redesigned vision of life and work.

I had to change the way I saw things, and I had to create new ways to do things. 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.

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

The book is not published yet, I’m putting in the final touches. So I pause now to thank Mary Magdalene for her guidance. It has been difficult to learn this lesson, and it’s all still too new to confidently say it was worth it or that the process is fully completed. I wrote more in this long post, but I leave the rest for much later. Right now, this is the story.

Remember yourself being free.

Reclaim your freedom.

Live your life in freedom.

Liberate your life forever in your heart.

Be your true self.

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene: Dancing the Dream