Flip the Script: Creativity as Manna for the Soul
Day Ninety-three:
Creativity as Manna for the Soul
Art was always just part of our natural environment. It was never about making a commitment and saying, “I want to be an artist….” It just seemed to be a kind of organic unfolding, of being involved with making things. ~Betye Saar
I share this with compassion for my mother with no judgement. There was a moment when my mother shut down my creativity as a child. It was a moment when she said something offhandedly to a friend and I took it to heart. It was also a mirror of how she had shut down and judged her own creativity.
I heard her tell a friend, “Andrea and I are not creative. We don’t have a creative bone in our bodies.”
I say that it shut us down although, a more accurate description is that it placed thoughts of criticism, negative self-talk and doubt with limitations. It took away the freedom to be messy and make mistakes, as if a writer or a painter would sit down and create art as a linear process from an idea to completion.
I know that not believing I was creative cost me the lead in the high school musical because I didn’t believe I was good enough. The next year, I had a conversation with one of the teachers who was on the committee for auditioning students for different…
