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...And another ART SCAR is healed!
Dear Ones -
This weekend, I was blessed to be able to teach a creativity workshop in Warren, Michigan at the Renaissance Unity Church (and what a heartfelt community that is — holy moly, I loved it!)
During the course of the workshop, I asked people to write letters to and from different aspects of themselves, as a way of helping people connect with all their different selves. After all, none of us is a "self"; we are all many, many different selves — all of whom need to heal, grow, and be listened to, when it comes to creative living.
One of the letters I ask people to write is a "permission slip from the principal" — drawing upon their ultimate interior authority, in order to give themselves permission to do, make, or become WHATEVER their soul wants them to do, make, or become.
This is always my favorite moment of the workshop, because the intensity that fills a room when 1600 people are furiously (and FINALLY) giving themselves permission to BE...well...it's amazing. It feels like the room will explode with power.
One of the people who took the workshop is April Hadley, who is a friend of this page, and whose graphic art I have shared before on Facebook and Instagram.
She took the assignment really, really literally — which I love.
April wrote herself an imaginary note from her ACTUAL middle school principal, apologizing to a younger version of April for not having included her in a program for talented children.
Oh, how I love this letter!
It's not so much a permission slip as a long-overdue formal apology — 31 years in the waiting. April's been waiting for this apology for decades...and now she finally just wrote it for herself. Because the poor littler-version-of-April had been so wounded back when she was a kid, back when her school essentially said to her: "You are not special. You are not one of the talented ones. We don't expect any miracles or beauty from you."
But now, the older-and-stronger-version-of-April knows better. She knows that she IS beauty and she IS creativity, and she is fighting back. Taking her story into her own hands. Re-writing history. Not waiting anymore to be invited, but declaring her own membership in the realm of the special, the talented the miraculous.
This is a letter that says, I BELONG.
Brilliant!
This kind of old pain lurks within so many of us. We all have memories of having been shunted away into a corner, when all we wanted was to be part of the play, part of the story, one of the chosen ones. Rejection, exclusion, and a lack of recognition: These moments become what Brene Brown calls our "art scars" — the deep shame wounds that forbid us, later in life, from trying to be creative.
Those old memories of painful rejection become the demonic voice that lives in your head and says, "You're not good enough."
But you ARE good enough. More than good enough. You're amazing. You have outrageous possibilities. You are a creative experiment of the universe that has never been attempted before — you are incredible, and you absolutely belong.
I love it when people finally realize this.
I love you, April, for taking back your creative soul from the monster of sad memory.
What a bold act of self-rescue! What a creative solution. And what an honor to have been in the room when it happened.
THAT'S Big Magic, right there.
So, my Dear Ones...if you were going to write yourself a "permission slip from the principal" today — or even an apology from someone who had caused you an "art scar" years ago...what would it say?
Is it time to finally change the story?
ONWARD,
LG
LG
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