When the Map Disappears, Then What?
On the vulnerabilities within growth and healing through creativity
What do you do when you reach a point in your creative life where art and healing have become synonymous?
What happens when it feels like you can no longer share about the work that’s coming through you, without also speaking to how your relationship with creativity has been one of your greatest teachers and healers—even as you experience the reverberations of times when making art seemed to amplify your internalized oppression, rather than liberate and transform it?
How do you express how your relationship with creativity has become a fierce, ever-deepening act of self-love, especially when admitting this out loud brings up waves of inner criticism, and a tender fear of being judged—or of causing harm to others?
For me, art isn’t just a profession or trade.
It’s a vehicle for knowing myself,
for communing with the Source of all Creation,
and for witnessing and liberating patterns of inner and outer oppression,
and slowly re-weaving them into a greater sense of embodied wholeness.
How do I create safety and containment for the truth and vulnerability within my process- and how do I honor the fact that my way is no better or less than any others- communicating from a foundation that builds bridges rather than walls?
How do nurture my inner child, and the inner child of the audience, in the ways I express myself?
How do I care for myself as I meet the fierce growing pains of making an invisible process visible to a world beyond the walls of my studio?
How do I handle myself when the fear of collapse or regression kicks in? What measurements and protocols can I set in place to ensure I have a sense of how to care for myself in times when emotions are running haywire, and life feels too overwhelming to hold?
How do I remind my animal body that I am held by something greater, that I’ve been through hard things before, and that I’ve always found my way through?
What do I do when I can no longer run from the reality that sharing my art has become synonymous with sharing my story of recovery, especially when I can’t hide from knowing that sharing in this way will somehow further my own integration - even though I can’t yet see how?
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These are some of the vulnerabilities that have been churning inside of me in recent times, as I’ve been navigating intense waves of emotional volatility 8.5 months into my healing journey through EMDR.
On my walk in nature yesterday, a quiet wisdom spoke to me that sparked these inquiries:
What if the question isn’t “how do I know I’m strong enough to share my truth?” but rather, “‘how can I resource and relate with myself, and the greater ecology, in ways where I feel held and connected with the greater intelligence that guides my emergence, especially when the map I’m navigating feels like unknown territory?
Sharing, with you, seems to be a way of living into these questions.
