Our Creative Truth

April 5, 2013

“The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed…The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning.
As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation and had them received, heard, and validated by other women, I found healing.
I also needed to hear other women’s stories in order to see and embrace my own. Sometimes another woman’s story becomes a mirror that shows me a self I haven’t seen before. When I listen to her tell it, her experience quickens and clarifies my own. Her questions rouse mine. Her conflicts illumine my conflicts. Her resolutions call forth my hope. Her strengths summon my strengths. All of this can happen even when our stories and our lives are very different.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

After being hopelessly inspired by the collaborative concept behind You Are My Wild, I felt called to create a collaborative post, too.

It’s so beautiful, the simple and profound act of coming together, isn’t it?

So, I asked each woman to send over an image with the prompt “My Creative Truth.” No other rules, except to tell the truth of where we are, in this moment, on our creative journeys.

My hope is that when sewn together, these images create a tapestry of truth and inspiration for other creative women.

It can feel so separate; being a woman on a creative path. Painters, poets, photographers; sometimes we all can’t help but feel spread so thin and disconnected.

Our voices so often become drowned out in the telling and tending of other people’s stories. Our clients. Our children.

But under all of it, there is still us.

And we are not alone.

Sometimes we tiptoe, sometimes we stomp. Sometimes we roar and sometimes we whisper.

All of us are completely imperfect.

And we, and you, are seriously amazing.

Wherever we are.

Always.