Sitting within the unknown in creative cycles

Honouring our creative process and normalising 'not knowing' as an important part of the journey...

I am so excited to begin sharing here some of my new images from beautiful soul sister Alice Rose.

Hello lovely one

How is your heart today? How are you feeling?

I have had a few days of feeling a little under the weather thanks to the delightful germs gifted to me by my youngest. I guess it is inevitable with a child who likes to sleep with their head practically on top of my own and who regularly coughs and sneezes in my face. However after a slightly less disrupted night’s sleep, and a wonderful strength training session at lunchtime today, I am feeling more energised and alive!

Even though my body has been working hard to navigate the germs, and I am a little weary, my heart is feeling bright, and excited! The last week or so has offered me clarity in areas that I have been impatiently waiting for and I can feel the fizz of new creations bubbling at the surface.

My creative energy this season, so far, has been a little… wild… sporadic maybe…

I have had huge bursts of inspiration and desire to take action and then… nothing.

Massive surges of clarity, and then fogginess again.

I have had some days of wanting to do nothing apart from snuggle down and watch Nobody Wants This (anyone else binge watched it??) and then days of feeling so excited to create things that I might burst.

I feel just like nature currently… one minute it is pouring rain, another we wake and it seems as though we are on the cusp of a first frost, then comes blazing sunshine and a warm glow that could be mistaken for summer. Things can change in an instant.

I am remembering how discombobulated and unsteady I can feel during these seasonal shifts, and even though I adore the transforming environments — especially with autumn — there is much to tend to within my physical being in order to stay grounded.

My 40th Birthday rose bringing an unexpected bloom this week. A reminder that even in the seemingly fallow times, so much is going on.

Truth… always…

In the interest of always being transparent with you I want to share that I am, yet again, in a transitional phase with my own work. When I greet these transient times it can leave me feeling unsure of what to say and share, and a part of me wants to hide away until I have everything figured out.

However, I know that there really isn’t a ‘figured out’ destination… so here I am sharing the mess and the magic of humanness in the hope that you will meet me where I am at.

If you have been journeying with me for a while you will be familiar with these ebbs and flows. For years I have been unpicking the critical ‘fickle’ inner narrative that has held me hostage at times. I have, at last, come to accept my need for newness and exploration in my work and creative life and I truly do see it as a gift instead of using it as another thing to berate myself over.

If you are new here, for some context, I am a Manifesting Generator in Human Design, which means that time doesn’t tend to work in a linear way for me, and it feels like changes of direction and pivots comes thick and fast.

I have got used to not getting too comfortable with going in ‘one direction’ because so often my sacral energy does a sharp re-route that can leave me (and those around me) trying to catch a breath!

Any fellow Manifesting Generators out there get the same feeling?

A huge lesson for me has been not pushing too hard to get answers when things aren’t fully clear. Often in my creative rhythms I am only ever given the first or second step to take to begin with and the rest doesn’t come clear until I have taken those steps. This is not always ideal from a ‘planning’ point of view, and doesn’t fit with many traditional business models… however if I get too swept up in the many steps it sucks the life force out of the process and I feel a flatness wash over the whole project. I can only thrive and feel ‘all the way alive’ when I am following the sparkle (or fizz as I like to call it) that tells me ‘this is it’ and meeting each moment with pure presence.

Another vital learning has been that even when in a quieter period, or in a space of uncertainty, I can still show up and share with integrity. I can still connect and engage. It doesn’t mean that I am not ‘worthy’ or my words are not ‘useful’ because I am not in the crystal clear part of the creative cycle.

A pause during my walk to the lake last week, the water and reflections soothing my uncertain heart.

Getting comfortable with not knowing

The truth is, I probably spend a lot more time in the unknown than I do in the known, and after twenty plus years of running my own business and working with creativity, I have built up a tolerance for this. It doesn’t mean I enjoy the uncertainty, or that I feel comfortable in it, but I do trust and know that it will pass and that it is indeed a very important step of the creative process.

I also know enough now to not turn on myself in these down-times — speaking harsh words to myself is the opposite of what a tender and vulnerable heart needs.

I began this Substack in March last year as a place that I could un-apologetically pour my experiences of Motherhood into. At the time I was three months postpartum with my second baby and writing weekly supported me to integrate the monumental changes that I was going through in my second Matrescence.

I was deep in the trenches of unbecoming everything I thought I was and opening to what was coming next. It was brutal and beautiful, amazing and awful… but writing and sharing my truths caught me when I felt like I was free-falling and traversing the underworld of Motherhood.

This space then morphed again at the beginning of this year as I changed it’s name from The Mother Well to Held.

The word HELD truly captures the deepest essence and feeling that I desire to bring to every element of my work both here in my writing, and also in my mentoring, my circles and my design studio. One of the questions I ask my Branding clients is, if they had to choose one word that embodies their heart work and for me, that is to bring a sense of being held.

If you have a creative space or a business, what one word would you use to describe the way you want your community to feel?

Now that I am edging closer to my youngest turning two (in December) I can feel a shift again. I remember this with my first daughter, and actually it was when she was just over 2 that we began to consider having a second baby. As they grow and change before our very eyes, we also grow and change, however for us as adults, it is usually a much more internal process.

To the outside eye perhaps nothing looks different. But to us… EVERYTHING is different.

What changed?

⋙ I have returned to holding space in person once more because my littlest will tolerate her father lying with her as she falls asleep now. When I am in-person with others a part of my soul comes alive that I had very much forgotten until a few months ago.

⋙ I am slightly better rested. While my sleep is still very much interrupted and I am a long way off ‘sleeping through the night’, it is less excruciating than it was in the first year or so. At the time I was very much in survival mode, my snippets of time to write were like a drug that kept me going, but in hindsight I can see how my creativity was very fractured and really unable to thrive consistently. With a little more rest I can start to feel the stirrings of new ideas and new chapters and the capacity to hold deeper and more expansive containers again in my work.

⋙ My body is slowly starting to recover from pregnancy and birth, while it will of course forever be changed, I am beginning to focus on my strength once more and land in this new physical form with a little more reverence and trust.

⋙ My relationship feels a little more stable. I look back at this article I wrote almost exactly a year ago and wonder in awe at how things change. In 18 months plus of parenting two children it felt like my husband and I have not said more than a few words together (and they were most likely words filled with tension). But there are little glimmers of that relationship re-seeding as we have a tiny bit more time and capacity to focus on each other. I didn’t realise how much that had been impacting me until I can look back and see just what we have walked through together.

⋙ I am ageing. And I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. As I grow older I have less capacity (or desire) to juggle and spin many plates, and more of a grounded knowing of what I want to spend my time doing (or not doing). Since turning 40 last year I feel less defined by expectation, and more courageous and trusting of the stirrings that come from within. I also feel a shift in my mental ability to focus on as many different things without getting overwhelmed. This could well be entering into peri-menopause, ‘mum brain’ or simply not having as much of a need to ‘prove’ I can do it all — whatever reasoning — the crux of it is I give less sh*ts about doing what others expect me to do if it doesn’t align with my values, and more about the things that nourish and feed my heart and soul.

⋙ Mothering two daughters has stretched open my heart in ways I could never have imagined. I see the world differently now. I see both the wonder and the pain. I have faced parts of myself that I hadn’t had the courage to look at before and on the other side of that is a richness that I can’t really put into words. The ripples that these girls have created in me and in my work is one of the greatest gifts I could ever have received.

⋙ The world around me has changed. Economically things have shifted a lot and as a business that has human beings at the core of it, my offerings not only need to spark magic in me, but they also need to be in response to what the world is inviting me towards too.

The only constant we have is change, and yet nothing changes if nothing changes.

You might need to read those words again…

Alice capturing the embodiment of change and shift in a late summer emergence

Leaning on the knowing

In these periods of transition I like to anchor myself to the things that I DO KNOW instead of the things that are unknown. We usually KNOW more than we think we do but the not knowing can blindside us into trying to ‘figure it out’.

It could be as simple as knowing the routines and rhythms that soothe us. Walks in nature. A favourite nourishing breakfast. A familiar book or film that feels predictable. Being with people who remind us of who we are. Listening to music that we love. Moving our body in familiar patterns that feel comforting.

What are your ‘known’ comforts that support you when life is in flux?

I KNOW what my absolute non negotiable values are, and so I use these as a guiding star for every decision and every single step forward. When I am working creatively I allow the essence of that specific creation to guide me. If I start getting too analytical it zaps the magic.

I KNOW that the thing that makes me feel most alive is holding space for others in many varying ways.

I KNOW that writing tethers me and helps make sense of chaos.

I also KNOW what is feeling exciting for me right now, and actually that is the sense of possibility within the creative process itself.

This expansive potential of beginning new things and allowing them to unravel, without actually KNOWING exactly what the end result is… yet.

The messiness that comes with ideas and exploring and playing and dancing with droplets of inspiration. That gives me full body tingles.

It is alchemy. Taking raw material and turning it into something beautiful.

If any of this feels familiar, if you have been here, or if you are in a similar space right now… please know that I see you and I feel you. Maybe… just maybe there is something wilder than your dreams can imagine patiently waiting for you on the other side.

I am holding you in that space with loving arms and gentle hands.

Until next time.

Sent with so much love

Lauren

xxx

If you are local to me in Kent I would love to invite you to my next gathering, a Deep Rest Journey with Cacao on 2nd November in Sevenoaks. Find out more here.

Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren. A Mother of two daughters, Writer, Women’s Circle Facilitator, Sacred Business Mentor & Guide, Soul Branding & Website Creator and multi-dimensional human being. I walk with, and hold space for, others who are treading the tender path of their heart and soul work. You can find out more about this space and what to expect here. Please do subscribe to join the journey, and if you enjoy this, and you do have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations for £5 a month…

If you enjoyed this piece and wish to explore my other spaces please use the links below to explore…

Motherhood Essays
Self-Tending Practices
The Unravelling Podcast
Sacred Living
Work With Me