Beginning Where We Are
Parts, roots, needs and juice.
I have been crafting my second post here over the last few weeks. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to write about, way back then. An earthy missive celebrating the emerging of Spring and the planting of seeds and how good it feels to be back in the garden… it was going to be sweet. Spacious, gentle and sweet.
I had quotes from a favourite author to pepper reflections and images.
*sigh*
So very sweet.
Then I lost track of this thought and other things shunted and shuffled their way into view. Other things became present. Jostling for attention these experiences and ideas trampled all over the freshly dug earth of my spring garden and rooted themselves. ‘But NO!’ I thought ‘ I don’t want YOU here right now… I have plans for a simple piece, an uncomplicated piece, a jolly and inoffensive musing on the powers of gardening… For f*cks sake…”
One thing I have noticed in my writing practice over the last year is how I cannot write from a place where I do not find myself. I cannot jump ship from the HERE to THERE without at least a tendril of connection between HERE and THERE. The mind and visceral heart want to focus on what is right now and right here and it will often meander on the page up other pathways, but it always begins from where I am.
I have to begin where I am.
This week a dear friend said to me “I really don’t like being tired and not doing what I had planned.” Boy oh boy could I relate, and it also got me thinking about what ‘I’ is the ‘I’ who doesn’t like the very real experience of tiredness that, presumably, is also happening to ‘I’? (Are you still with me?!) In this instance, I can see the ‘I’ is the one who had made plans to do some things. The tiredness is also residing there, in this body and this mind, and I also wonder if the tiredness may be in part be created by the ideas said ‘I’ has had about lots of things ‘to do’. Underneath this I could hear some needs that were asking for attention. The need for rest, for more space, for expression, for permission to “not be good” and the need for love, just as he was.
We all have ideas about the right way to be.
The right way we feel and think we should be. Somewhere along the line, we have received the information from the outside world that parts of us are welcome and parts of us are not. Parts of us receive love, validation, and praise and others receive admonishment and disapproval. We then carry on with life doing our best - all largely unconsciously - to keep ourselves safe by hiding the seemingly ‘bad’ parts and pulling to centre stage the ‘good’.
There are two things here I’d like to highlight:
1 - When we sit down to write, to create, to make, we never know where we will end up. Even if we are following a step-by-step recipe of some kind, we are never the same human after making the thing and we learn a great deal along the way.
Making space for this UNKNOWN takes courage, practice, and a container. Creativity is the natural order of things, and it does not care for propriety and “being good”. It will flow and make us whole if we let it. This is where containers and support are essential, especially when we are beginning to make space for it in our lives again. By “again” I mean that this creativity was present in its fullness when we were younger, but life has a way of shutting these parts of us down.
It may have been many years since we have allowed ourselves to play, to try and experiment with things we do not have complete control over. In these early days, we need comrades. In the later days too, we also need creative comrades.
We need creative community.
We need a net and network of people who have walked with the unknown and know how to accompany us. I flipping love being one of those people for others, and I am eternally grateful to those folks I have around me who have hearts and arms wide enough to hold this endlessly exciting and edgy returning to full, true life that making space for creativity brings.
Creativity is the natural order of things. This does not always look like art or writing. This too looks like innovative engineering, different ways of managing and supporting networks and groups of people, more regenerative and interconnected agriculture, social justice campaigns that strive for integrity and equity, to name a vast and varied few possibilities.
2 - The idea that there we all contain a medley of “parts” is a theory and practice rooted in Jungian psychology.
I have encountered this as part of Voice Dialogue and Fooling over the last few years. Western social order is rooted in the binary thinking of “you are either X or Y” you are either shy or outgoing. Either kind or unkind. Good/bad. Part of nature or culture. Male/female. Black/white. Each with value judgments erring on one side or the other to make up the skewed central power structures that have governed our lands and thinking for centuries.
This is no longer working.
We are a blend of parts within our communities and within ourselves.
Each with equal value.
Each a vital part of the whole.
Many of us have encountered our “inner critic” before. We may have even gotten to know it. This part of ourselves gets talked about a lot, especially in creative spaces. How to banish the critic. How to not listen to them and to carry on making. My experience with the critic is layered. To try and shut it down straight off the bat does not work. It just changes form, adopts a new way of speaking to me and comes from behind instead.
In recent years my inner critic has sounded like a spiritual guru, but is still, basically, being a little arsehole. Just with a calm expression on their face and sounding like it’s being helpful when all the while its subtext is “you’re not good enough, be different.” Wiley, clever little lavender robe-clad minx.
However, it does need attention, holding and care.
It also doesn’t need you to listen to its voice and accept it as absolute truth. (However, I have found there are often nuggets of wisdom in among the out-and-out cruelty, but if I keep unpacking every meaty tendril I touch upon here you’ll be reading a book length post, so we’ll save that for another day.)
We also have a whole HOST of other parts: the people-pleaser, the rebel, the clever one, the organised one, the whiney one, the funny one, the joker, the strong one are a mere few. They all have their unique flavours, and yet so deeply recognisable to others when we show them. Archetypal characters with traits that stretch across time and cultures.
How do we begin to get to know these parts?
How do we begin to open up to more and more creativity?
For me, it always begins with writing with the all-important container or time and the page.
To set the alarm for 10/20/30 minutes and to write from the hip. To keep the pen moving. Why do we do this?! Aren’t we just going to write drivel?! Write the worst shit. Allow yourself to crack open a little. I can guarantee you there will be juicy nuggets of you, your parts, your stories in among the scrawl. It’s a guarantee you can hold me to, that one.
I’ll be sure to let you know when I have my next writing sessions up and running. Come along. Write crap. Be amazed at your own brilliance.
You can also give Fooling a go, with my dear friend Christie. I will be assisting again on this year’s Fool Camp in Devon. Christie is based in the UK running evenings, days, weekends and camps exploring our unique inner villages of all of the parts. Showing up as you are. Beginning where you’re at. Seeing what comes.
How on earth can we possibly let ourselves do something so wildly unknown?!
By tending to our basic needs. By firming the ground underneath our feet. By nurturing roots and safe space to rest back into.
For many years I was simply not in touch with having needs, other than the sleep, eat, drink water ones, and even then those would often get sidelined. Wound up like a spring and holding close to the unconscious whirring away of “if I can just keep being good, if I can just keep striving, I will be safe.”
It took life to throw curveballs of ill health and loss to bring things back to basics. There was only so far I could carry on living in the cage of fear and restraint. Healing needed to begin, and even though I had no idea how the path would show itself, I began therapy and making more space for the things in my life that felt good.
Creativity is the natural order of things, as I have said, and our psyches, bodies and hearts will naturally lean towards life and healing, even if that manifests as complicated and unhealthy behaviours. (Again, there is a meaty tendril right there that I will put a pin in for now.)
Now, full disclosure, this cage hasn’t evaporated but it’s certainly more roomy and less pushing-on-the-ribcage that it was a decade ago. Plus, I have had the privilege of working with a deeply skilled core process psychotherapist over the last decade. This isn’t where I say “with the three-step process I created all on my own I have changed my life and here’s how you can do it too….”
Creative healing is about support.
Creative healing is about connection.
And in recognising that connection and support are fundamental we can unravel our belief that being separate, hyper-independent and going it alone is the only worthwhile way of doing anything.
Pffttt to that. And I can say that now, after many years of a therapist’s deep patience and love and slowly integrating this into day-to-day life.
Asking myself what I need in my work and life is something I have returned to again recently. As I am in the process of setting up a creative livelihood (a sure-fire way to bring up all of the parts, self-doubt and fears) and looking to settle in a more rooted home space for the next year. (Caveat: As long as it comes with the freedom I need)
What do I need?
What do you need?
I can often think that my needs are frivolities rather than necessities. I have managed so far without having one, two, some, most of them not being met so can’t I just carry on like that?! Not really, no. Not if I want to be creative, to heal, to live, work, connect and take care of myself and be part of community. Not if I want to love well, and be part of the change I wish to see in the world. (A little bit of smug barf emerged then, but I mean it too. We can’t go on how we’ve been going on.)
A few years ago I was working at an event with a friend and her then 7-year-old daughter. One morning this friend arrived for our morning meeting looking harassed and tired. She shared that her daughter had been having a meltdown and she didn’t know what to do about it. She had asked her daughter “What do you need?!” to which the reply came “ I DON’T KNOW WHAT I NEEEEDDDDDD!!!!”
We can all relate to this, right?
So when I say basic needs, they can often feel so far from basic. Here is a list of needs from the Non-Violent Communication bods who know about these sorts of things. Many of these words are long are potentially complicated to understnad how they manifest so i’ve been thinking more basic than basic. The real tangible things.
As I begin working with the splendid human and business mentor Jo Hooper, to take the necessary steps in building a creative livelihood, these are some basic needs I have recently named:
-Solitude, peace, and quiet.
-Creative time.
-Meaningful connection and conversation.
-Time spent in nature during my week.
What a radical thing to name NEEDS as a foundation for business making. This certainly was not in my original plan. A plan that got written through the winter months alongside mentors whose businesses I didn’t much fancy emulating and values I didn’t much relate to. A plan that fell flat come the Spring when I began trying to implement it as I had written it.
The container was too tight.
The roots shallow.
I am not throwing NATURAL INK. out of the window and setting up a whole new thing, but I am readdressing HOW I make space for things. How to make space for creative energy to flow, so that it isn’t a push and a cajole and more of a trusting that all of the ingredients are present and things will unfold. This is the current big juicy tendril to end all tendrils that I look forward to writing more about soon, but for now I shall leave you with this:
Creativity is the natural order of things.
We can trust the process, and this takes time, support and containers.
We can call on support.
We can make containers.
We are better off together.
We can begin where are.
Messily and wholly as we are.
“There is a stand of undeveloped jungle, a place for indigeneity within each of us, that can never be domesticated. It is borderless land, beyond personality and convention, even beyond thought, where pure creativity arises…. Few make the trek into this creative wild, because the path requires great vulnerabilty. To come into our true originality, we must surrender the layers of numbness we use to protect our hearts.” Toko Pa Turner, Belonging.
I would love to hear what your creative inklings are at the moment.
Are you making space for them?
Is there something stopping you?
Written and shared in creative camaraderie,
Kathryn
I am currently having a SPRING STUDIO SALE of Natural Ink. works on paper. There are a selection currently available on my Instagram, with lots more to come.
I will be joining another 100+ artists and makers at the Sherborne Artisan Market on Sunday April 24th if you’re in the area and fancy stopping by my Ink Apothecary.
I will also be running some Pigment Paint making workshops and hosting a Natural Ink. space at this year’s Green Scythe Fair - the ultimate Somerset event!
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