Bent, Not Broken

How I'm learning to welcome a little sway into my creative life

Photo by Ch P on Unsplash

My whole life, I’ve had a desire to share stories. Despite not getting published until the age of 75, my grandmother always fancied herself a writer and passed her love onto me. Time spent with her was filled with crafting and listening to stories of all kinds. As I grew, so did my love of words. In fifth grade while the other kids played chase, I pestered my teacher to proof read my short stories. In sixth grade, my proudest moment was winning our Veteran’s Day poetry contest where my poem was read aloud during our school assembly (“50 stars and 13 bars/make the flag that we call ours/Red, white, and blue make it stand true/helping us remember the ones who died for me and you…”)

In high school and college, while my peers grumbled over essay writing, I reveled in the assignments. Writing not only connected me to the world, but afforded me a way to process it. As someone who has always felt like an outsider looking into life, writing gave me an avenue to feel like I belonged. I hoped for my words to awaken something in my readers, even if that reader was just my teacher, just like the authors I loved awakened something in me.

While I was focused on said academic writing assignments, the blogging boom of the early aughts was taking place. At one point I considered jumping on the bandwagon, but ultimately, the timing wasn’t right. I was too busy writing papers about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the like, and true to form, I decided my safety needs (earning a degree) outweighed my esteem and self actualization needs (writing for fun).

Instead, I began my outward facing creative work in 2017, at the height of girl boss hustle culture. After years of my creativity lying dormant, phrases like “you have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé” and “your dreams don’t work unless you do” fueled me to keep going, keep creating, and never stop. When KB and I started the Craving Connection podcast, we hit the ground running.

For 204 Mondays, we released new episodes. Never mind that during those four years, between the two of us, we experienced more miscarriages than two people should ever have, an apartment fire, an out of state move, multiple in state moves, pregnancies, the birth of a baby, a parent’s cancer diagnosis, infertility treatments, a global pandemic, and the welcoming of a foster baby. We were determined to keep going (and by we, I mean I. I was determined to keep going). In my mind, if we stopped, if we took a break, it meant we weren’t committed to our craft. In order to stay credible, we had to stick with the schedule we set for ourselves, which led to churning out content at an untenable pace. 

After four years of constant production, the inevitable happened and we ended our run. To be fair, before the end, we had settled on a slower, more manageable speed, but still, it was time. I can honestly say we ended our show before we hated it and I look back on those years with nothing but fondness. While we sometimes pushed ourselves too hard, those years taught me the importance of having a consistent creative outlet. They taught me how vital creating and sharing are to the fabric of my makeup. They gave me something to focus on when the throes of sadness after my miscarriage threatened to swallow me whole. They served as a reminder that I was still me as I navigated becoming a foster mom while also going through IVF. They tethered me to a community when meeting friends in a new city felt impossible. But nevertheless, by the end, I was exhausted. So exhausted, I didn’t create anything for two years.

While I was thankful to not have deadlines to meet or a recording schedule to follow during yet another transitional period in my life, I yearned for an outlet. The few times I was asked on as a guest to another podcast or we hopped on to record a random episode, I walked away with an ache in my chest, missing the microphone. It wasn’t so much podcasting itself I missed, but the connecting with others through words.

When we shifted Craving Connection onto Substack last fall, I once again felt the creative part of me I had put on pause come back to life. Not wanting to set myself up for burnout this time, I knew I didn’t want to commit to a publishing schedule, but I still craved a consistent way to relate to others. After I got my footing, and quite by accident, I found myself publishing once a week. I joined a creative community with weekly opportunities to share creative work and while it was by no means required to create or share that often, every missed opportunity felt like a knife to my high achieving heart. Sharing my work weekly was also a great motivator to keep going. With the podcast, KB and I were creative partners but with her taking a step back from writing, I was searching for accountability.

This accountability worked for me, until one day, it didn’t. In the middle of February, after publishing my last piece, I simply had no more words to write. For the past few weeks, I’ve been searching my mind for something, anything, to share, but I come up short every time. Most ideas didn’t feel significant enough, while others felt too weighty to tackle.

I tried to be gentle and let myself off the hook. I told myself I didn’t have to push, no one was counting on my words but me. I filled my time with lots of reading and other creative exercises, but every day without the next “idea” felt like a step further and further away from this practice I longed to cultivate.

I realize this sounds dramatic, it’s only been a month, but I feared I was entering into another barren season and the prospect terrified me. I know what it’s like to go into creative hibernation and after just emerging from such a state, I’m not ready to enter back into that cave.

I also hated breaking a commitment, even if it was one I only haphazardly made to myself. If I pledge to something, come hell or high water, I’m going to stick with it for as long as I can (hence the four years of Monday podcasts that was only ever a hobby). So every week I went without writing felt traitorous, not to others, but to myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have started this. Maybe I’m not really cut out to be a writer. Maybe I only had a few good ideas and now they’re gone forever.

But over the last week or so, I’ve felt my grip loosen bit by bit. Ever so slowly I’ve started to remind myself this pressure I feel is arbitrary—I’m the only one putting bounds on my creativity. There are seasons for input and seasons for output and taking a break isn’t the same as quitting. My writing life has been an ever evolving process, so why would I think that would stop now?

Like a tree whose branches sway in the wind while its trunk remains firmly planted in the ground, my writing practice is allowed to have flexibility and fluidity. My schedule can bend without breaking, I can remain a creative who doesn’t constantly create.

I know these fears aren’t original, from what I can tell it’s a struggle most writers battle, but that’s what fear does— it isolates and makes you believe you’re the only one. Perfectionism convinces you if you don’t do xyz perfectly, then everything is ruined. Part of Craving Connection’s mission statement, from the beginning has been:

“…to help women feel understood and united, to feel part of a community that sheds the weight of isolation and loneliness. We want them to say “I thought I was the only one” while sighing with relief that they’re not.

So I hope by allowing my writing practice, my creativity in general, to sway, you will allow yourself the same grace. Together, may we remind ourselves we are more than what we create and like branches who blow in the wind, may we remain rooted in who we are as creatives while life takes us through different seasons.

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Dinner

In my imagination, I am someone who makes Half Baked Harvest recipes consistently. They are beautiful and delicious and use great ingredients. But in real life, I can never get my meals to turn out as beautiful as Tieghan’s and a 30 minute recipe ends up taking me an hour. But last night I made her one skillet saucy chicken tortilla enchilada rice bake and the end result was every bit as lovely and tasty and easy as the recipe seemed. I subbed ground beef for ground chicken, but I will definitely try it again with chicken. This meal will be on our spring meal rotation for sure!

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Rave

For years I have wanted a better water filter than the one in our refrigerator, but such a device hasn’t been a top purchasing priority (actually I’ve wanted one of those systems that filters all the water in your whole house, but I knew we needed to take baby steps). Finally, though, such a device made its way to the top of the list and we are now the proud owners of a reverse osmosis water filter. This little (actually kind of big) guy fits under our sink and comes with its own spout to deliver clean water.

Installation required some rearranging of cleaning products under the sink and some handiwork to make a spot for the spout, but nothing a little organization and a father in law who knows what he’s doing couldn’t fix.

Now is this the creme de la creme of water filters? No. But does it make me feel a little better about the water we drink? Yes. Sometimes making “clean” switches feels daunting because I think it has to be an all or nothing ordeal, or I feel paralyzed by all the options, or the naysayers who says to this instead of that (I struggle with perfectionism in all areas, not just creativity). So for now, this is a great fit and while it’s probably psychosomatic, I swear this water tastes fresher than other water.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Sway."