my awakened intuitive attraction to art, I dared to enroll in watercolor classes with an expressive therapist and produced a collection of amateur but meaningful paintings. Pictures of lots of women locked up in stone castles revealed my dark struggle with our male-dominated society. My illness kept teaching me that subduing my feminine side was dangerous for me. I needed to stop competing in the corporate world and reconnect with my artistic, intuitive feminine self. I, like so many women of my generation, had an imbalance of masculine and feminine energies, with too much emphasis on my active, masculine aspect and not enough on my receptive, feminine energy. Playing with colors and being given permission to just paint what I felt and not worry about “how good it was” freed me to express all my creative impulses without judgment. My love of art had been slaughtered early on by a cruel art teacher, and I had been too scared to try painting again until these classes. Painting, writing, decorating, and gardening emerged as glorious expressions of my awakened creative self. My inner knowing and trust in my feminine intuitive strength continued to grow stronger and more reliable.
Some time later, I had a wonderful opportunity to study with George Prince, founder of Synectics, an innovation consulting company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his wife Kathleen Logan-Prince, M.S.W. Through their Mind-Free Program™, I learned about the positive power of mistakes and our self-imposed limitations on the creative process. Armed with a series of new techniques, my ability to make new connections and design novel options increased. The process also transformed my fear of being wrong. Taking risks and experimenting with possibilities became more comfortable and even fun when I let go of my terror of being criticized or fumbling foolishly. These added tools, combined with my new ability to both write and paint freely, set my cycle of rebirth in motion.
After several years on this creative adventure with more published articles, piles of watercolors, multicolored clothes, and a redecorated home, I had to acknowledge that I was indeed an artist at heart. I've always been intrigued by creative souls. Those years of running myself ragged with workaholism and denying my feminine expression had eclipsed my true spirit. I appreciated my mother's creativity, almost for the first time, and began practicing and enjoying her art, which was flower arranging. Suddenly I was drawn to attending house and garden tours and reveled in the annual “Art in Bloom” event at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at which she used to exhibit. How was it that I had never gone in to see what she had done during all those years? I suddenly felt a new freedom to choose my own feminine path. Apis, a homeopathic remedy made from bees, miraculously cooled down my fevers. Astrology readings also reassured me that I would one day be stronger. I needed that faith. Claiming my artistic self as a woman became the path to healing and recreating my life. While I still needed lots of naps and had limited energy reserves, I emerged from my transition charged with creative confidence.
Even though I was disenchanted with male-dominated corporate America, I had no interest in embracing the starving artist lifestyle. Since the Medici family was long since dead, and other patrons of the arts were scarce, what were the options for creative souls in this culture? Fortunately I had my career and creativity coaching business to sustain me. For many women, though, fears, particularly concerning money, can be a major obstacle to taking creative risks. For so many of us, breaking free of our societal and psychological chains is a prerequisite to truly creating a life that expresses our genuineness and uniqueness.
Seeking Success Stories
In my early readings on creativity, I was struck by the absence of women in the literature. Except for the regulars like Martha Graham and Georgia O'Keeffe, anthologies on creative people told stories only of men. I vividly remember being a child in elementary school and assuming creative women didn't exist, except for a few rare examples like Elizabeth Blackwell and Madame Curie. This vacuum of education about women's lives had a profound unconscious impact on me; it implied impossibility and danger. If there were no examples of creative women to fantasize about, how could we be expected to dream in that direction? While we now have women's studies programs, I have talked with many women and adolescent girls who still express the same longing to know the details of the lives of creative women that I felt thirty years ago.
As I undertook to transform my life in midstream, I began to look for the mentors of advanced creativity. Who were the best role models of successful creative women? Why this gap of information and stories about women who use their creativity to create products and services and support themselves successfully with their talent? Who succeeds and how were my questions; I wanted a thoughtful road map. I had heard from so many women over the years that self-employment or careers in the arts were “impractical.” I knew that the average writer in this country makes a subsistence income and faces increasing competition. Yet, every year women publish books, design clothing, create pots, and begin businesses, and I wanted to know what separated the women who do from the women who just dream about it. Now, some women are also running multimillion-dollar businesses. Although many of these women are in partnership with their husbands or fathers or inherited the businesses, an increasing number have done it on their own. That kind of monetary achievement and level of responsibility is not everyone's definition of success, though.
In the sacred traditions, the first thing you do in the morning is ask for blessings from the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Because all of the work that you are going to do that day will change the universe.
—LAURA ESQUIVEL, WRITER
Other creative women earn just enough to support their needs, choosing lifestyle and balance over income. They, too, are successful—but by their own parameters.
With this in mind, several years ago I began a journey of interviewing creative women and reading about the struggles and triumphs of others, with the intent of writing a book. My quest was to identify the skills and strategies successful creative women use to transcend the confusion of being a woman in this culture and hold steady on their creative course. I began teaching workshops for creative women and collecting information about creative catalysts. My own creative process took me in many directions during the writing of this book, but my commitment held steadfast. Giving up was simply not an option. I felt as Sarah Ban Breathnach did about Simple Abundance, when she told me, “This is the book I was born to write.” So I carefully filed my rejection letters from agents and publishers and kept sending out my proposal. Fortunately, I was heartened by many kind and encouraging words about the project along the way. Finally, serendipity intervened and I was led to Mary Jane Ryan at Conari Press.
Learning the Secrets
My interviews fueled my mission to help women recognize and express their creative powers. For years, I have seen talented, accomplished women as clients and watched them deny or downplay their abilities and achievements. For some, childbirth remains the only safe realm of female creativity. Yet we women express our creative selves with every business idea brainstormed, every garden planted, every family member or friend comforted, every outspoken word voiced, and every feminine value expressed. Sadly, the creative impulses of too many women are asleep—dormant or unacknowledged.
That's why this book is exclusively about creative women. Even in today's world of post–women's liberation, our challenges are still formidable.
A playwright knows that what is most private in her heart of hearts is also the most astonishing.
—TINA HOWE, PLAYWRIGHT
We continue to be stifled by a host of factors that cause us to censor our inner voices and follow someone else's dream. That's why this book serves as a remedy. It will both affirm and jumpstart your creative power and guide you on your journey of risk and triumph. By reading the compelling vignettes of your imaginative sisters, noting their solid advice, and completing a series of practices called Challenges, you will be roused to spread your creative wings and ascend to new heights. As we go into the twenty-first
