When Will My Creativity Come Back?
Indiana Jones and the Lost Creativity of Doom.
When that creative spark feels like it’s gone out, the whole world goes dim. Even the things that used to make you light up barely register. Especially after trauma or a significant change in your daily life.
Creativity is mystical at the best of times, but it becomes increasingly more elusive in the face of pain, grief, and loss. The overwhelming saltiness of uncertainty combined with the spice of change creates a flavour profile with no room for self-agency.
It’s why I’ve come to understand trauma and creativity as opposites, two sides of the same coin, parts to a whole. But it does beg the question: where does all that creativity go?
Creative Self-Inquiry
When will my creativity come back?
“When…”
As humans, our lives are dictated by the clock: when we get up, how long we’re at work, cooking times, sunrise, sunset, and everything in between. We ask ‘when’ second only to ‘how’ because we’re meaning-making machines – and time helps contain meaning.
But as the physicists have told us, time is an illusion – everything, everywhere is happening all at once. So is it our impatience with healing that forces us to look to the clock for an answer to our own creative block? Or is there another mechanism at work, shielding us in plain sight, from the terror of our own reality? It’s probably both.
Our body, in its infinite wisdom, can shut down parts of our inner world to conserve energy and keep us alive when we need it most. When trauma bursts onto the scene, it sends our nervous system into overdrive, relinquishing control of the regular programming. Time can’t compete with that – in fact, time might just be the thing that makes it worse before it gets better.
“…will my creativity come back?”
The short answer is no… because it didn’t actually go anywhere. I’ve worked with dozens of people who were convinced they’d lost the magic – only to ‘rediscover’ it while washing the dishes, drawing with their kids, or letting their mind wander over coffee one random Tuesday morning. But how did that happen?
They let go of the desperate desire to BE CREATIVE. I see so much ‘creative advice’ online that shouts platitudes like ‘we need your art’ or ‘artists don’t sleep’ or ‘start before you’re ready’. While these might work for the person who isn’t filled with holes, getting blown around their life from the winds of grief, it often just makes you feel like you’re not enough.
You can’t look outside of you for a process that only exists within you. Creativity isn’t something you can buy, drink, or watch. It lives. It breaths. It IS you. Wired deeply into your brain, felt in your body, and expressed through your actions and behaviours. So asking if it will come back is the wrong question.
Lost creativity isn’t actually lost
The question to be asking instead is more pointed: when will I let my version of creativity be enough? For years I’ve beaten myself up for not being an internationally recognised writer. A best-seller. A cultural icon. But then I realised I was so caught up in that story that I wasn’t even creating anything that I liked.
The moment I turned inward and doubled down on the story that’s only mine was the moment it all finally clicked. It’s still a work in progress – because I want this to last forever – but creativity hasn’t left my side since. So could today be the day that you finally put down the weight of expectations and embrace the creativity that’s already yours?
Creatively yours,
Dr Maz xoxo
PS: I was quoted in the article which has caused quite a stir. So much so I got my first ‘hater’. It feels like a turning point in my life because I stood up for something I believed in and spoke about something that many women are afraid to speak about. That, to me, is a creative win.