For over a year, I’ve been drawing and colouring in permanent marker every day. At the end of 2025, I started posting these meditative pieces on Instagram to reconnect there after some time away. I’ve created almost 500 pieces and even had people buy and commission them. And I still don’t have the word “artist” anywhere in my bio.
That’s the tripwire in action, even on me.
The word artist is so loaded. We all have an image it conjures, and so few of us feel we live up to it. There’s a whole identity attached to the word, an identity most of us don’t feel we have the right to. And so we keep the door to that part of ourselves slightly, carefully closed. And by doing that, we lose access to something vital.
My friend and collaborator Johanna Reynolds, a brilliant painter, introduced me to the name for what happens the moment the door first closes. In our Map of Now workshop, she called it the creative wound. It happens in art class when the teacher criticizes your painting, or when your sibling is the talented one. It happens when you compare yourself to other people who you see as artists. The quiet accumulation of messages, direct and indirect, that creativity belongs to other people. Real artists. Not you.
Most of us received some version of this. And most of us believed it.
What I want you to know and what I think matters deeply right now, in this particular moment in the world, is that none of it was true.
We don’t expect everyone who moves their body to be an Olympic or professional athlete. We intuitively understand that physical activity is for everyone, that moving our bodies joyfully is an intrinsic part of being human, regardless of whether you’ll ever compete. Creativity works the same way.
We are all born creative. Creativity isn’t a talent distributed to a lucky few. It’s a capacity, like language, like love. And like those things, it can go quiet when it isn’t safe. It can feel foreign after years of neglect. But it doesn’t disappear.
To paraphrase the poet Mark Nepo: by creating something, we clear our vessel and let what we create, in turn, create us. That’s what my daily practice gives me, a way of moving through the world with more of myself present. And of course, it’s a peaceful, grounding activity at a time when it’s so easy not to feel that way.
Creativity isn’t only about making art. It can show up in every choice, every conversation, every meal, in the way you arrange your morning, in the way you approach a problem with no obvious solution. Reclaiming your creativity means reclaiming a whole way of being.
And yes, having an actual artistic outlet matters too. For wellbeing. For the parts of you that don’t have words.
If you already think of yourself as an artist or a creative, this is a place to expand, grow, become more deliberate, to refine and align your work and your life.
If you sense that by not creating, you’ve left a piece of yourself behind, this is a place to reacquaint yourself with that part and let it help shape what comes next.
What would life look like if you let your inner artist make more of the choices?
What would the world look like if more people took their own creativity more seriously?
How much more beauty, love, nuance, and empathy would there be?
If you’re curious about a creative path forward, we can explore it together in a single session or on an ongoing basis.
