Hello Creative QB’s,

4 minute read

Together as sisters we have cried during some very sad times of loss and hardship and cheered each other on during times of celebration. We stuff up and make mistakes all the time and we learn and grow from our mistakes and each other. Right now Belle is having one of those times of great sadness and loss. Through reflection and personal growth she is learning to reconnect with her true creative self.

The following blog from Belle is deeply personal, heartfelt, authentically honest and brave.  We love and support her while she works through it and wholeheartedly cheer her on as she reconnects to her personal creativity. We know she will find her own way to live a happy, healthy, creative life.

Prelude

At the time of writing these soul bearing words many months ago, I was at Design School, learning the importance of reading potential clients needs in relation to their personality type, interests, subconscious likes, dislikes and so on. This lead us to left and right brain “theory” and a lengthy discussion took place with many of us looking to our own thought processes. Are we the creative emotive dreamers on the right? Or are we the objective logically left?

Left and right brain dominance is a theory most of us are aware of, but how often do we actually use it as a guide in our own personal growth? Growth that leads us to the realisation of “who we really are”!

The jury is still out in some circles on whether left or right brain dominance determines our way of thinking, but after much reflection I can see how our day to day lives and careers can have us swinging in roundabouts. Some of us have the genius gene and are gifted with both, however I believe that at our core we are essentially defined by the right or the left.

My far right loving brain allows me to throw myself whole heartedly and at full speed into any hair brained idea, love affair or journey, sometimes without consequence and sometimes with heartbreak. But, it is essentially who I am. These damn rose coloured glasses are an extension of me and they still refuse to come off. I just need to learn to sometimes identify when they are blurring my clarity.

It has taken me 42 years to finally have this blatantly obvious epiphany, which led to furious tears of self-realisation. How could it have been so hidden? How could I have been so blind?

Creativity, love, loss and my right brain.

So here I sit, in the kitchen of my soon to be sold home. The place I have poured so many tears, so much damn hard work and so many dreams, only to be told these fields of green were never mine to walk on in the first place. My marriage, my little family, my everything was broken.

Left heartbroken, devastated, scared as hell and gripping at the last remnants of the life I thought I would lead, I decided to choose!

On the precipice of change, I decided to choose the “right” path for me.

Literally and metaphorically I should have been on the “right” path all along. However, this right minded individual was trying so hard to squeeze herself into a “left” box. A fruitless attempt for a box I was never going to fit. I squeezed so hard that along the way I lost who I was and the joy of being me!

Oh, for sure, on the outside I could and would be the life of the party, the ever changing comedic chameleon. But, as soon as I walked into the place I called ‘home’, with the beautiful vistas from every window, my heart would sink. For I knew the drudgery of a ‘left’ life would soon replace the glow I felt when I was away from it.

In fact, subconsciously I was in complete denial that my right brain was screaming on the inside. I allowed myself to be fooled by well wishing ‘lefties’ that all those frivolous creative pursuits were only permissible as a “luxury”. And, “luxuries” were unnecessary. So, my subconscious right buried herself so very deep, because there was no way in hell I was going to be deemed “unnecessary”.

I recall at 29, I found myself with a beautiful 2-week-old baby girl in a mothers group sharing our hopes and dreams for these wondrous little beings in our arms. There were the predictable responses of course, health, wellbeing, happiness and all those fundamental things we all wish for our children. But mine was different. I shared with them all that my greatest hope was for my baby girl to “know her path”. I have been in pursuit of my “path” for it seems eternity. I am sure if I had acknowledged my ‘right path’ at a younger age my life would look very different today. But who is to say that I wasn’t meant to stumble across it until now…because for me it is all encompassing. This is my growth.

So, I lived my ‘left’ life. I kept myself busy, organised, possessed even. All to ensure that ‘unlovable’ right brain only surfaced on occasion in desperate need of nourishment. Just enough creativity allowed out of the box until the next time I felt my sanity slipping.

This ebb and flow felt wrought with fraud and completely inauthentic and took an immense toll on my marriage with the partner I had so emphatically chosen at the naive age of 27.

I suppose in my marriage, living with the most genetically left person on the planet, I never allowed my ‘right’self to jump up out of the box and proclaim:-

“This is how it really needs to be for me!”

So, years of resentment and blame followed.

He blamed me for not being so ‘left’, and I blamed him for not allowing me to be so ‘right’.

I was so afraid that if I actually told him what I really needed that I would indeed be left. Left and lonely because I couldn’t fit the mould he thought he so desperately needed as his wife.

So the miserable ‘left’ version of myself (ironic that word ‘left’) felt guilty for many years.

For me the fear of pursuing creativity has never stemmed from “what if I fail”. The fear comes from outgrowing the one I love. The journey, the creative challenges, the financial and social implications will all be too great for them to bear. They will not come with me, they will not wait for me!

Yes, I probably would have stayed for years, maybe even forever. But in all that pain I was forced to seriously face the question that had eluded me my whole adult life!

“Who am I? Where do I choose to go?”

I no longer wanted to be lost in a haze of perception. I no longer wanted my children to see my constant struggle and to have the same tumultuous journey.

I no longer wanted my beautiful and quietly wise daughter to wish so desperately for her mummy to become her “artist”.

Why could I not see the huge cost of those years until now?

I wanted them to see their Mummy as brave and in pursuit of living itself. How could I teach them to do the same if I wasn’t prepared to jump?

Over the many months since, I have asked so many questions of myself, some still unanswered. I have thrown myself into creative pursuits and fought so hard for great love hoping the band-aid would hold me together. But is it just that… a band-aid?   My right brain joy that I need so very much in my life is so intricately intertwined with my idea on connected love. Love, like creativity is a drug for me. It comes from the same place buried in my right brain. I need that next fix, that connectedness, I crave it. When I get it I am flying the highest trapeze, however when I slip I experience the fall to a hard unforgiving place. Sometimes the self introspection gets worse after time and similar to an addicts withdrawal, I too suffer the withdrawal from connected love and creativity.   Self doubt and sabotage creep in and the insurmountable “why’s” become my friends. My true creative right self gets slammed against the wall, dazed, confused and the hamster wheel begins. Everything becomes trancelike. My conversations, my attempts at creativity, my authenticity, my everything. I am existing but not living.

So what has to change to permit me to rip off the band-aid and jump into life itself as me, myself and I? I am still trying to figure it all out. But I do know I need to stop asking ‘why’. Why I crave connected love I may never know.  Essentially it is who I am. Accepting that may be just part of the journey.

Belle xx