These are my tools: letters and pigments, the twin muses that drive my fingers, mind, heart, and life in so many unexpected explorations. These were the insistent whispers of my childhood that led me to where I stand today.
Although it has been the driving force of my life, these skills were what saved me, anchors, and refuge after my daughter died.
So I toiled and wrote. Thousands of pages that no one saw. I was learning better writing skills and survival abilities as well. Painting still-lives and sculpting raw granite boulders were the same. I was relearning a sense of selfhood. In all these efforts, what was gone retreated to the background, urging rather than destroying.
Everyone is creative. We all have unique skills. I genuinely believe it is in the active participation with them that we find our most profound sense of self. Not to mention the satisfaction of freeing the creative urge without judgment.
So, whether you use food, letters, pigments, decorating, styling, acting, sculpting, or any of the other myriad ways humans express themselves, know that only you can do it. As individual as snowflakes, each voice lends itself to the amazingly diverse symphony of humankind.