Creative Communion
During a recent session with Z, a long-term one-on-one client, I followed a hunch and asked her to read one of her poems out loud to me. To us.
She agreed, and it became the focus of our session—not the poem per se, but what transpired between her and her own words, and the way that being with her writing allowed her to be with herself.
That preposition is an important one. If we are of our creativity, and we are also for our creativity, then we must be with our creativity, too.
And yet…so many of us can’t stand looking at our own work! In fact, I get the sense that self-judgment increases the more we care about writing.
How did this become normal?!
As if the more we love the thing, and the more that love informs our sense of self, the harder we are on the results.
And not just love: to even like what we make, to be willing to assume it might contain some value in there.
And not just like: to show up, curious and neutral, and simply not assume the worst.
Instead, we come locked & loaded with cruel assumptions, often paralyzed by insecurity.
Where did this come from?
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I refuse to believe these experiences are organic and not the result of generations of social conditioning, especially for those of us raised afab in a still misogynistic world. (And if we carry trauma, the effects can feel doubled and tripled.)
We learn so many damaging things growing up: That we’re supposed to be humble, supposed to be quiet; supposed to look attractive, but not like we’re trying to look attractive. We’re supposed to be curious but not too eager, to ask questions so long as we’re not asking too many of them.
And we’re supposed to move through time and space unaware of our own beauty or genius or value, only to recognize it—and even then, barely—when an astute observer (usually, a man) bestows the assessment upon us.
I think for many of us, our writing troubles intersect sharply with these kinds of gender troubles. And I tell you this not to discourage you, but to situate your understanding of your own struggles: If you sometimes feel bad about yourself or the things you make, there might be a wider cultural context that explains that feeling’s origin.
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There is relief to be had here.
That critical, hesitant voice you sometimes hear? The one that bellows from a deep, familiar place inside you—it might not be your actual voice. It might not even belong to you.
We pick up these harsh voices—from school, from work, from family and intimate relationships—and carry them around with us for so long that we can forget what we really sound like.
Because Z and I have built trust and safety after months of working together, her real voice, and the full scope of her authentic creativity, is able to enter the room when we meet. When she read her poem out loud, I listened—not only to the words but to something like auditory alchemy, this tangible thing happening in the air between us and surrounding her. The phrase, “creative communion,” came to mind. So, too, the notion of spellwork—that her efforts were oracular.
I witnessed her hearing her own self, pausing between stanzas here and there to take in the shocking truth or beauty of a given line. I saw her knock herself over, saw her moved by her own craft and output.
And I noticed her noticing herself, which is one of the most profound and transformative results of long-term creative mentorship: the cultivation of a more generous—and more truthful—self-regard.
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For some of us, poetry is a way of communing with the world, which becomes in turn a way of communing with the self. Nothing else quite competes with the experience. We sit down and let it all show up: lines and line breaks, imagery and repetition, condensed phrases and concise utterances. Then we give ourselves time—days, maybe weeks—before returning to the page to discover what transpired.
If we can do this in a safe, intentional space, with a guide & ally we trust, we can get the noise out of the way and hear what our creativity is really trying to say, both to us and to the world.
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What I want you to know today:
That it is possible to find yourself excited to look at your own words, for the page to be a mirror you genuinely want to look into.
That is it possible to be in awe of your own creative efforts.