Hello world,  My name is Kathy.  

I am a Kaizen Muse Creativity Coach.  It’s a wonderful thing to be.  But I wasn’t always in this happy place.                        

Like a lot of you I spent the last 30+ years going and doing and striving and working.  Somewhere along the way I lost my creative self.  That self used to dance and play music and paint.  She played tennis and read lots of books.  She had dreams.  Then she started fading away.  Over the years she shriveled up into a small hard raisin in my deepest self.  I will admit I knew something was missing.  There was a vague sense of unease; of irritation; a scratchy label at the back of my psyche, sand in my spiritual sneaker.  But I didn’t allow it access to the upper layers of consciousness.  I didn’t allow it the light of day.  I put on my Scarlett O’Hara persona and left it for another day. 

I think I was waiting for an epiphany.  A great swelling of angels’ voices leading up to a Hollywood moment that would show me how the rest of my life was going to pan out with step by step instructions.  Finally, one of my inner voices, the wiser one, finally got a word in and let me know that this was not how it worked.  It let me say out loud that I was feeling like a square peg in a round hole.  That’s very painful, you know!  My spirit was scraped and bruised and there were empty spaces that needed to be filled.  Hmm, did I say that out loud?  Now I had to listen; now I was ready to listen. 

Creative recovery does not necessarily happen overnight.  Creative recovery is not a straight line.  I am more like the Family Circus comic strip character Billy.  Billy gets sidetracked a bit.  His path is never straight; it zigs and zags and sometimes travels the same stretch of road twice.  It’s a path of discovery. However, staying aware and awake on that path does produce serendipitous results.  I accepted that my creative self needed to be tended.  What to do; what to do?  Where to start? 

Writing.  It should have been obvious; it should have been obvious since about the age of three when I would sit in my little rocking chair and dream up stories.  But there it was; bubbling up into my consciousness.  I took some writing classes; joined a wonderful writing group.  At the same time I joined a creativity group.  I then went for training to lead writing groups and I am now a certified creativity coach. 

Again, none of this happened overnight. One thing led to another as I listened to my intuition and stayed aware of what felt right for me.  I met people of like minds and learned that the creative process was just that – a process; that my creative spirit got stronger when fed. 

I continue to listen and stay aware.  I allow this awareness to keep feeding my creative self.  The writing group nurtures me.  Art trading cards, water colors and funky colored twig pencils remind me of what’s fun.  I walk outdoors and play in my garden.  My path may be a little circuitous like Billy.  I’m okay with that.  That path is leading me in the direction I want.  I can see a glow ahead of me; my guiding star.  The needle on my compass still quivers a bit, but I know I’m headed in the right direction.  I am living creatively and trusting that my inner wisdom, my listening and my awareness will keep me true in my journey. 

Where is your compass pointing?  Are you paying attention?  How can I help you in your journey?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Creativity and Everyday Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.