A Woman Here to Write Her Life

Share
blossomtime
Blossom Time by AussieGal

The erotic impulse and the creative impulse are inextricably intertwined. ~ A Stassinopoulus


I’ve been teaching, rather I should say facilitating, creativity courses for a number of years, and I’ve noticed some interesting things about creativity.

We are educated out of our creativity. Sir Ken Robinson speaks eloquently of this.

We’re born creative. It’s our nature. Yet, only 2% of adults believe they are creative.

Creativity isn’t an act of the thinking mind – it’s an act of nature, and that nature is most accessible by way of a mind embodied, by way of the heart and soul.

Creativity is a flowering, an urge from within, an explosion of life force that propels the seed up through the ground, the baby out through the mother, the cherry blossom to bloom, the seed of an idea into an innovative force.

Creativity, Love, Sexuality, Sensuality are all aspects of our true nature – the life force that flows through us.

Our biggest block to allowing this force to flow is our fear of losing control, which is also our fear of the ‘little death’, the ‘die before you die’ that is at the heart of awakening and the expression of the sacred.

Our creativity is our nature, a nature that is wild, unfettered, feral, and unpredictable, just like our sexuality. Totally unpredictable, yet so necessary to life joyfully lived. It can feel frightening, yet so full of the very thing our souls are thirsting for:  a full cup of life’s eroticism.

Our need to control keeps our true nature at bay. It keeps us in a kind of limbo, where we long for the freedom to create, yet at the same time, telling ourselves that others hold the key that can unlock that freedom.

The freedom is ours if we’re willing to let go of control and allow life to move us.

An Issue of Authority

No one can give the green light to life to move through us, but us. Each of us can speak the quiet, yet powerful, ‘Yes’ for Life to take us on the ride it has planned for us.

For me, Life is God. It is the mystery. We give many names to it, because we want to understand it, to know it, to have some insight into it so we can ‘know’ it and control our experience in some way.

One of the ways I try to control (in a fairly unconscious way) is looking for permission to create what I really want to create. Of course it isn’t so literal when it shows up in my day-to-day life.

As my dear friend Jeanne says, “It’s an authority issue.”

I wonder, when did I put someone else in charge of me? When did I give someone else the key to my feral self, my wild unfettered creativity? When did I hand over the rights of my body, my soul, my power?

At one point in my youth, I traded my power to create for safety and love. Smart choice for a little one that was too young to survive on her own. Until it became conscious, I didn’t realize how often and how much I was trading my voice for all the things that kept me connected.

The only thing is, that kind of connection isn’t real, nor is it true. That kind of connection is a not-so-helpful trade-off of power with another that keeps us both locked up in the search for safety, rather than the expression of what wants to be known.

The deeper I dive into the creative fire, the more I know this connection between the erotic impulse and the creative impulse. The desire to know the mystery that is at the heart of my nature shows itself in many forms.

There are many out there that wish to hold the power over my body, my femaleness, my sexuality, and this feral female instinct. How long will I go along with that crazy-making agreement?

This woman’s body belongs to no one. This woman’s wild self is free. I am fortunate in this. I live in a place where this is still so, even if others are banging drums to change that.

It is up to me to set the impulse free, to write it, to dance it, to sing it, to speak it. And to enjoy the eroticism that life offers, not as a woman that is simply here to please a man, but a woman here to write her life.

The men I honor and respect revel in that writing. They celebrate the coming together of the creative impulse and the erotic impulse in all women, for in doing so they set their own creative impulse free, as well.

In my post on Extending Love, I wrote of learning to love everything, beginning with that which felt the easiest to love. My own sexuality hasn’t been the easiest, yet if I am to write my life, it is one of the most important places to extend my love.

Lucille Clifton writes of magic hips, hips that hold the cradle of creativity in women.

Maya Angelou knows this well:

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

How would I describe this cradle of creativity, this place of the source of infinite generosity and abundance within my own body?

We’ll see what the mystery brings…

Image courtesy of AussieGal on Flickr, under Creative Commons 2.0 License

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Share

16 Replies to “A Woman Here to Write Her Life”

  1. I can think of little of value to add to this beautiful post, except “yes, yes, YES!”

    Just now I was preparing my class notes for my “Writing for Public Relations” course, and feeling a little torn by how boring the text is and how much I want to inject creativity instead of just plain ol’ technical skills. Your post gave me the courage to shift the course of my first class. It’s going to be about “be creative first and technically accurate second”. These young writers NEED to hear it.

  2. Yes to Julie – I LOVE this piece, resonate with it and will share it. Yes to Heather – I think this is the message you’ve been giving me with my writing and it will totally change the feel of your class. Look forward to hearing about it. Love having you both in my life – even if Julie and I haven’t yet met in person. Kathy

    1. Kathy,
      I’m glad it resonates and thank you for sharing it.
      I’m glad we’ve met, and trust someday we may even meet in person.
      Blessings,
      Julie

  3. Our biggest block to allowing this force to flow is our fear of losing control, which is also our fear of the ‘little death’, the ‘die before you die’ that is at the heart of awakening and the expression of the sacred.

    I am RIGHT THERE at the precipice of that fear. Frozen in space and time. Waiting for the breath of creative spirit to push me into a free fall to my death – only I’m not sure if it will be only the little one… which of course is the very root and heart of the fear.

    1. Renae,
      yes, the root and heart of the fear. when you trust in that spirit, in something greater than you, it can make it easier to let go. can.
      i’m trusting you are right where you should be…and least you are right where you are.
      love,
      Julie

  4. oh yes, darlin, i call them authority issues. so glad you understand that i’m talking in layers. and as you also know, this is a hot spot with me. it’s a place where i have a real short fuse, this handing over of power. it’s something i’ve done far too long – we’ve done far too long – and i am sick and tired of doing it.

    yes, it’s time we write our life. in our own handwriting. in the ink and paper of our choice. using the words and stories we choose all by ourselves. women writing our lives and singing our lives and dancing our lives and painting our lives, creating our lives in the medium of our own choosing and doing it one minute at a time.

    1. annie,
      so good to see you here! thank you. i can feel your enthusiasm. i love it.
      thanks for passing it on to others.
      love,
      julie

  5. I love this post for about 10,000 reasons, none of which I have time to explain. Let me just say this: At first, when I became aware of the connection between my creativity, wildness and sexuality, I felt stunned, frightened and small. In time, I realized that this fearful, shrinking response was, itself, evidence of the programming I’d received from parents, school, media – the very air seems filled with it sometimes – that ‘pretty’ and sweet are okay but wild, messy, artsy and real are dangerous – even life-threatening. Thanks for this beautiful

    1. amy,
      they are dangerous, because they threaten the status quo. scary when we’re young, less scary now, but even then, if it is our nature, then it’s calling. thank you for sharing about your experience. that’s so important.
      love,
      julie

  6. Creativity looks like a suddenly enlighted dark room in which we watch all what is inside also it looks like an electric lamp that gives light suddenly so that our mind may be able to characterize all that within this room…bringing back order to things thrown everywhere and putting them in their suitable places within this room ….is the CREATIVITY …pondring

  7. Pingback: Author(ity)

Comments are closed.