People hear the word creativity and think it has to mean “official” creative acts like writing, painting, drawing, pottery—creative careers.

It doesn’t.

As one of my greatest teachers, Louise Hay, always said, you can be creative in the way you make your bed, or cook dinner, or throw a party. You can take your creativity to the office and work differently. You can be creative in your friendships, Creativity is everywhere—and it makes the world brighter. Better. More alive.

We’re all creative in some way, and we all deserve to explore that. We have a duty to ourselves to explore that. And this isn’t just artsy people advocating for the concept of creativity. Back in 1981, a study by Frances Grossman wrote a piece called “Creativity as a means of coping with anxiety” for The Arts in Psychotherapy. 

In it, she says, “To be human means to be creative, since this is the one ability that distinguishes human beings from all other species…creativity is humanity’s survival kit, necessary for continued existence on the earth.”

That’s science, folks. 

As a writer, I’ve used words as therapy in so many situations. They’ve come in the form of journaling, writing my actual books, random lines of poetry, one-off scenes that come to mind to address a situation or a feeling. Most of these things, aside from the books, will never see the light of day. And that’s okay. I wrote them down to get them out of my head, to put them in some kind of order, like puzzle pieces that only fit once you’re looking at them in front of you, laid out piece by piece, instead of jumbled together in a box. 

Creativity is an act of service to yourself. It doesn’t have to be for public consumption. It doesn’t have to make you money. It just has to help you make sense of life. 

As I’m building a business, I’ve done a lot of thinking about who I want to serve and how I want to serve. It would be easy to focus only on writers who want to bring their work to the world. And while that will certainly be part of it—because we all know I love to champion writers to write their masterpieces—I want to focus on the foundation of creativity that ALL writers need to nurture, whether you’re goal is to journal daily, or write a novel. 

To me, that’s about building a creative practice that leads you to doing your work with grace and imperfection. A practice built on the pillars of a deep spiritual practice and enhanced by tools that further a connection to your higher creative power—you know, those things some people call woo woo: the affirmations, the crystals, the essential oils, the oracle cards. Call it what you want, but it works. 

And this is what I want to bring to the world. Because this framework saved my life, and I think it can save yours too.