Finding creativity amidst the storms of grief

How to keep going and knowing when to stop

Hello friends,

I kept putting off writing this post. I couldn’t find the right words. The longer I put it off, the more embarrassed I felt, and the more I wanted to make it perfect. Leading me to postpone even longer.

But I seem to have finally reached the point where admitting imperfection feels like a relief instead of a failing.

I shared earlier this year that The Total Artist project was temporarily derailed when I came down with glandular fever, leading me to set aside a portion of my creative work in favour of napping for a couple of hours per day while my body worked to heal itself.

But just as I was recovering, my mother entered the final stages of her life.

The last few months have been dominated by mother’s hospice journey.

In May, she passed away from small cell bile duct cancer.

My mother, Anita Cvitanovich Smith, was an amazing woman. She, more than anyone else, was the person who planted the seeds of creativity in me and encouraged me to nurture it at every opportunity.

If you would like to read more about her incredible life, you can find her obituary here:

https://www.horancares.com/obituaries/anita-smith

Creativity in grief

Creativity does not always turn up in the shape we expect. Especially when we are in the midst of a life-quake.

For me, writing her obituary felt intrinsically connected to my creative work. How do I give the sense of the colour and magic that characterised her life? How do I weave in the facts in a way that acknowledges her life’s fullness? How do I look through my own eyes as a daughter who loved her dearly, while also panning out to tell a bigger story that began long before me?

Thinking about her life, and working through drafts with my family, was deeply meaningful.

Moments like helping to choose the dress she would wear to be cremated in similarly felt like acts of powerful expression.

Loss inspires art. And in paying tribute to a loved one, everything can start to feel laden with meaning. Essentially, everything becomes art.

Keeping it all going

I found this all deeply moving.

But I underestimated how draining grief can be.

Even though people told me this was true - and I believed them - I still couldn’t comprehend how deeply these effects would ripple outward in my life until I lived through it myself.

It takes so much energy just to get through the day when we are living under the cloud of grief.

Weighted down by the added burden of sorrow, how do we choose which parts of life to keep and which to let fall away?

There are certain tasks we have to keep doing, even if it feels like we are only going through the motions. Children need to be fed, laundry needs to be washed, bills need to be paid.

If you’re freelance like I am, if you don’t work, you aren’t paid - there is no compassionate leave. There are projects it feels impossible to step away from, for both practical and creative reasons.

Mostly, I have found these things in my life anchoring. My responsibilities as a parent have meant I could not just disappear into a bubble of my own sadness. And my creative work has inspired me and lifted me up when I have felt low.

I’ve used these projects as forms of escape, vehicles for connection, and simply moments of beauty. Breaking things down into little pieces and having the support of wonderful collaborators has allowed me to continue many of my creative projects. I have been grateful for these things.

But I have also been teetering at the edge of burnout.

A postponement - not an ending

I kept trying to figure out the best way to revive The Total Artist.

I couldn’t work out why it felt so hard. This is a project dear to my heart, one I had been plotting for years and enjoyed immensely for the period it was active.

I could think of no better way to honour my mother’s memory. An experiment in creative living? Surely this is exactly what I should be doing right now. My mind kept telling me, Let’s go! This will help to heal your heart!

However, every time I tried to sit down to write the email announcing the date when the project would resume, I simply couldn’t do it.

There was some sort of block there.

At first, I thought the issue was coming from the outside (so many life practicalities to sort!), but it slowly dawned me that, in fact, the obstacle was coming from within.

When I really stopped to listen, my body and spirit were telling me, you do not have capacity for this right now. Let it go.

So that is what I am doing.

Coming: January 2025

I’ve decided to take the rest of this year to grieve and to rebuild my inner resources.

But I am not done with this project or idea.

Far from it.

My hope / plan is to begin fresh in January 2025, and to let the project unspool naturally over the course of the year in the way I had originally intended.

I’m looking forward to integrating discoveries and possibilities I uncovered during this year’s brief first foray to make it even better.

I hope you’ll choose to stick with me.

In the meantime, I will use this newsletter to share thoughts on creativity (including a few bits of content I prepped for The Total Artist but never sent out) and details of my other artistic projects that will keep running during this time. (And you’ll already be signed up for when things officially kick off again in January!)

Following the seasons of life

I’m going to be honest that I still feel some residual guilt about this decision. Or is it shame? The boundaries of these feelings always seem to blur together for me.

Part of it is worry that I am letting down the people who signed up for this project.

Part of it is embarrassment that I was so uncommunicative, hiding in denial instead of sharing how I was struggling.

Part of it is sheepishness that I was unable to see and admit the truth of my circumstances for so long.

Part of it is my skin-crawling hatred of not delivering something I promised I would do.

And part of it is fearing that I have failed to honour my own artistic intuition by not finding a way to carry forward this passion project.

I could go on…

But I can feel that in my life, this project has become the right thing at the wrong time.

I need to listen to the deeper wisdom that tells me that if I trust the seasons of life, it will return and bloom at exactly the perfect moment.

For now,

Alli

Image: Generated by Canva AI. My prompt: A small boat in a storm at sea with darkened clouds in the sky painted in the style of Chagall