I joyfully painted this magical jungle above when I was 12 years old. When I showed it to my teacher he shamed me for painting such a childish looking elephant.
Today I’m going to share with you, my dear fellow Wild Spirits, how our inner voices from the past sometimes hold us back from living and expressing ourselves creatively, freely and wildly.
And I will write about how we can unleash ourselves from the past so we can free our creativity and infuse our life with more playfulness and lightness.
We can express our creativity in countless ways. We can re-create something, copy someone, imitate etc. That is a form of creativity too but today I’m talking about the creativity that comes directly from our inner Source.
It’s our unique, authentic, uncensored creative energy and if we let it, it flows freely and wildly within ourselves and into our activities.
When we are connected with this wild creativity, we are connected to our inner child, the part of ourselves that’s playful and spontaneous.
As a child I used to be in that free and wild space. And I remember that it came naturally to me.
I remember using little sticks to draw in the dirt and then decorating my creation with dry leaves and colorful stones. Or I remember just sitting outside in the warm sun feeling sparkly. It made me feel happy and at ease and also part of Nature.
When I started going to school, I was taught that the head space is more important than the heart space. I started to censor my playfulness and wildness.
Instead of joyfully creating, I started to overthink and overanalyze.
When I went to school my teachers didn’t believe in free flowing creativity. The childlike magical expression was ridiculed and I was taught to follow in their steps. Imitation was rewarded, creativity frowned upon.
My teachers were part of the old system that rewarded people who were conforming to the olden ways. There was no room for uniqueness, imagination, playfulness or lightness.
Expressing myself from my inner Source was completely discouraged and we were taught to look for inspiration and learning outside of ourselves.
Needless to say, my school years were a painful experience for me.
I was a wildly imaginative, intuitive child and was deeply connected to my inner Source of truth. I talked to fairies, spirits, animals and felt at home in the invisible world and was made fun of because of this.
During elementary school I had mostly men as teachers and they were stern and used corporal punishment. I was asked to imitate and repeat what they taught us.
So imagine the joy I felt, when I was 12 years old and started my higher schooling and during my first art class the new teacher asked us to draw or paint a jungle. He didn’t offer any guidance and we could choose our own medium.
Finally I was asked to express myself without outside guidance and I happily painted the jungle which you can see above.
One by one we were asked to step to the front of the class and show our creation. It quickly dawned on me how deeply I had misjudged the situation.
When it was my turn, the teacher made fun of the way I painted my elephant and informed me that I was not in Kindergarten anymore and that he would teach me how to create real art.
I felt devastated and shamed. For the next 6 years I made sure that I metaphorically left my inner wildly creative child outside the door every time I entered his classroom.
I had to find a way to feel safe from getting ridiculed, shamed etc. The only way I was able to do that at the time was holding my inner playful child back from expressing herself in ways that would keep me from looking “childish”.
I put metaphorical leashes on my inner child.
How to Unleash our Creativity
Now that I’m an adult, I can consciously unleash my inner child from the past hurtful experiences and infuse my life with more playfulness and lightness.
As an adult I have found countless opportunities to unleash myself from my past.
I have realized by acknowledging that I’m the one who put the leashes on, gets me out of feeling like a victim and gives me my power back.
Freeing ourselves from past hurtful experiences can be such a powerful experience.
In a world that values the head space over the heart space I find it immensely important to add creative wildness to our life.
This is one of many reasons why I wanted to create my Substack Newsletter. I wanted to create a space that honors the connection to our inner Source, to our Heart, to our Wildness and to our wildly free expressions.
And writing on Substack has created more opportunities to free my inner child from another metaphorical leash.
Writing these Newsletters is a creative activity for me and while writing I realized that my inner child needed my attention.
When I started to write about my life and sharing about my inner world, I heard a voice in my head which kept interfering with my creative flow.
In my Newsletter I like to share about my own insights, my truth, my way of experiencing the world and I felt that an inner mental part was trying to censor how I expressed myself while writing.
I became aware that this inner warning voice was coming from a part in my mind which is stuck in the past, and in my head, and remembers how I was ridiculed as a child when I created something wildly from my own inner Source.
So when I started this Substack Newsletter and was writing about Dragons and magic and imagination, this inner mental part started to think that I was very unsafe.
I first felt it as a feeling of unease before I hit publish for my first three Newsletters, I felt waves of panic. Even though it felt very uncomfortable, I knew that this was such a meaningful opportunity for me to gain more creative freedom.
Writing creatively is such a great opportunity for me to free my inner child of the fears from the past by showing her that as an adult I’m safe to express myself freely.
I explained to my inner child that I’m an adult now and asked her to trust ME instead of letting the fears from the past limit her.
So I turned integrating my inner child into a game and invited her to join me on a tour of my life.
I used the tool from my last Newsletter and I imagined that I took my inner child into my arms and climbed my inner Tree to gain a higher perspective of my Life.
I imagined that we became a Bird and I let her choose what kind of Bird we would turn ourselves into.
She chose for us to become Hummingbirds. I loved her choice because Hummingbirds are extremely cute and also very territorial which means they have badass boundaries which I found deeply fitting for this integration.
So together we spread our wings and took flight and soared and I showed her my Life from above. We explored different aspects of my life and she relaxed more and more realizing that she is in good hands with me.
I showed her the whole spectrum of my life while being wild, which includes the ups and downs and she loved the freedom of being herself.
Showing my life to my inner girl unleashed her from the past and brought her into the present moment.
After returning to my inner Tree, I invited her to stay with me, inside of me.
She can now enjoy the child’s perspective of having fun and being playful so when I write my Newsletters she is part of my writing process and is adding fun to it.
If my mind is trying to censor my expression, my inner child part reminds me to have fun and let my Wildness guide me.
I can remember to invite my inner little playful girl to join me for any activity.
For example I can creatively clean my kitchen by adding some dance moves to my cleaning and using my sponge like a paint brush making wild foamy paintings while I’m cleaning.
My inner child also reminds me during the day to just be. Creative energies are sometimes directed outwards into our projects and tasks but they mostly just circulate wildly within ourselves and add enjoyment to our life.
Creative energies make our life more sensual, fun and playful.
And my inner girl is just now telling me to add here that imagining to ride a Dragon is an especially great way to free our creativity ;)
Prompts
Do you remember a time, maybe in school, when someone criticized something you created?
Is there a creative activity that you would like to do that you never tried or stopped doing because you judged and doubted yourself?
Maybe you can remember a time when you put a leash on your creative expression?
You could maybe show your inner child your present life. Maybe use the Audio from my Newsletter last week and use the higher perspective of birds to share your life with your inner child.
And then you could create something out of pure joy with playfulness and lightness and invite your inner child to join you.
Maybe make a mess, sing, paint, dance. If you need ideas, our pets are always a great inspiration. So maybe roll in the dirt ;)
Getting out of our comfort zone creates more creative freedom.
So next week I will share a very different kind of Newsletter with you which will get me even more out of my comfort zone. Gulp ;)
Please feel free to share in the comment section what you are discovering when you unleash your creativity.
“May the Wildness within your Heart inspire you to become more of YOU.”
Until next time!
Katja! This is my favorite yet! ♥️ Your elephant made my heart smile and the idea of using cleaning as a creative outlet resonates! Genius, thank you 😊
I felt my smile throughout the last half of this delightful post. Plus, your prompts have given me food for thought. And I love your elephant!