Practices for Care
Tending to Your Creative Life
I’m sitting at the base of the shoreline to start the week. I check the weather to find a window of time to avoid the rain; pack a lunch so I don’t get the anger hunger as I drive. This is how I’m caring: sunscreen, hydrating, working, resting, a short-but-long-drive, walking through the mud to lay on the rock, and being kind to the stories in my mind. In the hot sun I feel my body settle and sigh into a rest state. Rest state gets communicated through fresh air and dappled sunlight. Rest state gives my mind and body a sense of safety — a break, a break and path to ease. The whole experience from start to finish is the practice I turn to to nourish the week.
I’m at the river, and I’m taking care of my creative life watching the swallows fly fast and dip low coming inches away from the rushing hum of the river. I am alone in the way of seeing no other humans around until later when the family with plastic floats arrives but together in the way that the space between rocks and mud or that the air above or the water out front is teeming with life. Ants walk on the mounds of pebbles; tiny fish duck between grasses, swimming; beetles, caught in the rushing water, flail around and float by; something quick and dark — a frog? — jumps up from below the water just at the edge, aiming towards flies. It’s my favorite place in the summer, this river, quiet and residential, tucked away off a winding road. I come here a few times a year mostly when the sun is high. Find a place and love it well, my practice says1. Find a spot of sun or dark or shade quiet from the city but loud by the drone of the water — find something that nourishes your life.
Caring for creativity is essential and not secondary. The creative path is not frivolous; it’s a primary relationship between ourselves and our lives, one that is essential in living with meaning and engaging with practices of care. Creativity at its core is care. When we untie ourselves from the confining idea that creativity is only valuable for the end goal, a state of perfection, or when it is can produce something, or be monetized, or be used to amass something else in return, then we can unfold into our creative lives. We can unfold into the ease of the process and be nourished in that process. Then, creativity unfolds as a skill, a process, a river to flow with, a way to be with life, and a practice overall for living, a way of nourishing our vital force, a way of caring for the art of life.
So what does caring for you and your creativity look, feel, sound, or taste like? Likely it’s different from person to person — me, to you, to all of us, though there may be overlaps. The important thing is not comparison of one creative person or practice to another. It’s not simplified down to a checklist; creative practice and practices of care are most supportive when you can tune in to your intuitive understanding of what you need and feel into what feels best.
Care could be a lot of things. It could be a river day, running around a city, or laughing at the top of your lungs with friends. It could be: Saying yes, saying no, saying maybe — or saying something like “I need to time/space/a break/to sleep on it”. Care could be asking the question or not asking the question, or asking it at another time. Paying attention, listening, watching, or yielding to the honor of privacy. It could be a movie, a song, a run around the park, or giving yourself the grace to be like, you know what, it’s too hot, nope, not today.
Care could be giving yourself what you need even if or when it feels contradictory. Care could be playing with creative constraints like colors, textures, materials, or opening the door wide to whatever your creative life has to say (and listening to it closely). Care could be setting yourself up to feel sturdy, or stable, through consistent rhythms, structures, or supports — parenting your life in the process. Care could be reminding yourself that you’re capable, or yielding to the interdependence of life, remembering that you don’t have to do it alone and asking at times for support. Care could be turning your brain off so your body can rest, standing up and stretching, sitting down to take a beat, take a breath, or lengthening the way that you’re breathing. More on this soon.
Caring looks, feels, and is experienced in a lot of ways. Care for self, relationships, communities, environments. Care is sometimes presence and other times space. Care is nuanced. Care is sometimes holding ourselves accountable and other times letting ourselves off the invisible hook. Care can be personal, professional, collective, spiritual, cultural, ancestral, financial, creative, you name it. For many of us, care can shift seasonally; what you want in the winter might not be what you need in the summer or the spring.
So this week, try this: write a quick or a slow list about what you care about this season, what caring looks/feels/sounds/smells/tastes like, or how you are caring for your life. Writing a list can be a way of acknowledging what’s already present in our existence — what’s abundant — without feeding into any impulse of accumulation. More more more might be the story lack tells us; but in my experience, I find creativity bubbles up actually more in the presence of less.
I’ll go first: my self care is usually two parts alone time to one part socialization, made up of ample walks, interesting books, loud and quiet music, morning writing over black coffee and oats, and a well stocked fridge. It changes from day to day and season to season and I’m learning to honor and acknowledge that. A lot of alone time and a lot of time with friends is generally reviving. Seven hours of sleep, moments of intensity, and of course, to walk around a lot. My creativity often asks for quiet space to hear myself think. My mind and body and nervous system usually ask for time to process everything. Sometimes I need songs so loud I can feel them in my cells that remind me hey, be here, to stay present. Fresh vegetables on the table and and frozen berries in the fridge. More on nourishing our creative processes next week.
I’m happy to share there’s a new event on the Odette Press horizon: Creative Vessels is a class I designed to help us tend to our creative lives — to sense and understand the boundaries of our containers and how to hold them; when to keep/hold/pour/wait when to release. It’s body practice and writing and creative practice and practice for the mind. Come along! Sign up
Write back with any thoughts on care — leave a comment below. Check out the Seasonal Session to support your practice this summer, or Field Guides to deepen your creative connections to the nature of life. As always, Odette Press journals are made for adventures. Find those in the shop, and write to savor these sun filled summer days.
With care,
Kelly
this week,
I’m reading | Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen by Rebecca May Johnson, and “Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde. Two books I reread often for reminders of care: The Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and This is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo, MD. (More on Bookshop)
I’m savoring | vanilla ice cream with frozen sour cherries, dark chocolate shavings, and salt because always salt. Listen to Summer Hum, a playlist for your hot days, rain mornings, summer season adventures.
process
Shot some summer scenes of map journals — my go-tos for everyday writing (standard, here) and great sturdy well made travel companions.
upcoming
July 26 Creative Vessels: Practices in Care
August 13 Suminagashi Basics (Brooklyn)
August 19 + 20 Renegade Craft Fair (Brooklyn)
August 31 Pamphlet Stitch Bookbinding (Brooklyn)
Head to the recording library for journaling classes stocked with prompts on generating intention, ideas, focus, and courage.
