Midlife wibbles and wobbles

There is no on/off switch for creativity. Instead it is a place to nourish your way into. Fuel for creativity is about feeding all the senses, not just about what you see, it is about sparking all the senses so you feel alive!

Hmmm, all good if all is well and good. Enter mid-life with all it’s additional stressors of teenagers and hormonal angst, and my own hormonal angst! A sense of my own mortality and the tipping point of mid-life and suddenly I am navel gazing, procrastinating and pondering what is life for?!

My sense of creativity has become a litmus test for my general wellbeing and when it’s blocked I know something is amiss. Being an online tutor who helps others bust through creative block into creative flow, I suddenly became very aware that I needed to go inwards and work out what was blocking mine.

In my 30s my body was designed more efficiently for creating, inline with a biological function to create children. My body has now aged beyond this and I arrived in peri-menopause with a dearth of artistic feeling. At the point that my children needed me less and time was more abundant, I felt duped by the slide away from who I knew myself to be, and the rise in anxiety.

It has taken a while to recalibrate and some long, hard soul searching, including the letting go of a quarter century long relationship, and the grief that incurs.

If you find yourself in a similar transition, be kind to yourself. I have shifted towards trusting the process and I have been offloading, sorting and releasing. I have been sitting with myself more, and taking time for gentle meditation. My soul space is calling.

In the stillness I know that I need to say ‘no’ where previously I would have said ‘yes’ and I have selfishly chosen more time for myself. Actually I will rephrase that, It is not selfish it is essential. I have signed up for new activities; choir, African drumming, spoon carving! And I have followed my instincts and intuition and let myself be pulled into a world of reading and writing that was second nature to me as a child and in my early teens.

I have become more interested in the essence of experiences, of places, of people. I don’t want the superficial, I don’t want to pretend.

In my art work this has translated in me going in to new processes, experimenting with ceramics adds another way to express the textural qualities of the world that I inhabit. I hope to combine ceramics with paper and cloth and create work that is sensory and intuitive. I have become more focussed on the experience of making and less concerned with an end point and saleability. Of course I still want the work to be admired, and fallen in love with but it isn’t my primary concern. There is a trust that work created with love and intention will find its rightful home.

This ethos carries back to my wider life too. I am less focussed on people pleasing and trust that relationships will form that are meant to be. I look for connections that are raw, essential and vital. And I accept myself as I am.

We are making progress, my work and I, evolving through the midlife wibbles and wobbles of self and creativity and I have let go of trying to control where that will lead. I encourage you to sit in stillness and to listen to the messages from your soul of what you need to live a more fulfilling life. I hope that you can nurture yourself into a space of being able to flow and express yourself fully.