I've been thinking a lot about the idea of creating. What it means to be creative, what it means to create something. So often, and for so long, in my life I've considered myself not a "creative person" and discounted even trying to show up in "artsy" places. But while I was doing this, I also realized that I was discounting and dismissing many important parts of me and making myself small. I was believing the lie that said, "I don't matter here," or "I don't belong here," and this belief went well beyond the art spaces. I didn’t want to risk trying something new or creative out of fear of being rejected, judged, or disconnected even further from the places I thought I wanted to be apart of.
How does creativity and the Chronic Good Girl connect?
Over the past few weeks, I've started to think about this idea of "Chronic Good Girl." The girl who has lived her whole life trying to "be good" only to find herself a perfectionist, people-pleasing, exhausted self, trying to live life for everybody else, and struggles to know what she really wants for herself and/or her life. She has followed all the rules, kept herself small and out of trouble, done what was expected, didn't push back or say the wrong things, felt totally defeated when she was given any kind of criticism or feedback that wasn't positive. She learned the best way to keep herself safe is to keep herself small. To discount, dismiss, and push aside the real her in order to find a sense of belonging, safety, and connection, only causing disconnection with herself.
Creating offers a space that helps to integrate all parts that the Chronic Good Girl has pushed to the side. It allows for imitation, dreaming, curiosity, play, trying and failing and trying again, the permission to make mistakes, the permission to show up in the world. The Chronic Good Girl has learned to be small, but when she accepts the permission to create, to make something out of nothing, she learns she gets to take up space in this world. Her voice, perspective, experiences, thoughts, all matter. They've been invisible for so long, she now is able to reclaim what is actually hers and own the space that's hers.
Creating helps breathe life back into the world
When we create, we're doing something that was innately a part of our identity and DNA. We were created to create. We are able to take a few elements and make something new: take a few random ingredients and make a nourishing meal, take a few pieces of fabric and create a new outfit, take words and speak them into the world, take a home and design it into a refuge, take the holidays and decorate with color, style and flash. We're literally taking nothing and making something. This is wonderful. With so much of our world being fake or a replica of what someone else has already done, when we create, we get to do something that nobody else in the world has ever done because nobody is like us.
The Chronic Good Girl has worked hard to blend in to belong, but what if she started to give herself a little permission to tap into her creative parts, and offered life back into herself and the world around her? What if she said, "I get to take up space in this world" and found a way to put what's inside her out into the world? What parts of her and her world start to heal, I wonder?
It doesn't have to be for anyone else
Sure, it can be judged, criticized and critiqued. Sure, some people won't like it, understand it, or appreciate it. But creating for others was never the point. Creating as a means to take up space, because we enjoy it, because we want to try something new, because we get to expand our world, because we get to play, because we get to confront what we've believed for so long.
Creating lets us tap into the younger parts of us who couldn't stop creating before the world got in the way.
So go create something today! Even if it's a new recipe, a doodle in your journal, a blog post, an Instagram post (of something fun and that you liked), and take up the space that's already yours. You were created to create!
If you're reading this and recognizing your own Chronic Good Girl — the one who learned to stay small to stay safe — you don't have to untangle that alone. This is the work I do with women in my Burbank office and online across California. If you'd like to talk about what it could look like for you, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation. No pressure — just a conversation to see if we're a good fit.