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Questions for Honoring Creative Energy and Play

Filed Under: Contemplative Practices, Everyday Feminism By Beth Godbee February 13, 2021 Leave a Comment

Throughout today’s writing retreat, I’ve been considering how to honor creative energy and engage in creative play.

Inspired by the CHANI app (and surely by this week’s new moon), I’ve been feeling such a pull toward creative play (crocheting, drawing, baking, gardening, and even listening to and writing poetry). And I’m realizing that creative play (with color, texture, shape, craft, and purpose) might be just what’s needed to fuel, inspire, and sustain more serious writing, serious work.

seven balls of yarn (in shades of yellow, orange, cream, green, and teal) for my current crochet project

Seven balls of vegan yarn (in shades of yellow, orange, cream, green, and teal) for my current crochet project.

So, I’m writing to share some creative play questions—questions I’m asking myself—with the hope that these might provide fuel, inspiration, or sustenance for you, too.

Questions for Honoring Creative Energy and Play:

  • What are you currently creating? Or being called to create? Or longing to create?
  • What’s currently inspiring you, lifting you up, and bringing you joy?
  • How does creation fit into daily life right now?
  • If you could sketch or paint your creative energy, what form would it take? What color? What size? What texture? What tone?
  • How could you indulge your creative energy?
  • How could you give it structure?
  • What is your creative energy asking of you?
  • What’s the relationship for you among creative energy, pleasure, and play?
  • What’s the relationship for you between creative energy and commitments, particularly commitments to justice?
  • What are you hoping to speak aloud, to reckon with, to repair, to block, or to build through your creations?
  • How could you affirm your creative energy now, in this moment?
  • And how might your creative energy affirm you?

I hope that this weekend and the weeks ahead involve creative play, as the pandemic stretches on and there’s just so much to rage and grieve and continually reckon with.

I want to affirm again both/and, which includes complex emotional terrain.

I want to do the radical act of claiming pleasure within pain (not in a toxic positivity way, but as an affirmation of human complexity … and I’m really appreciating adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism!).

I want to prioritize creative potential, as it’s surely part of envisioning liberatory futures.

And I want to create and honor each of us as creative beings, as holding creative energy, as shaping the world through our creative acts.

With these wishes and in the midst of creative play ~ playful energy to fuel continued commitments,

Beth

colorful origami paper and folded stars handmade card of cut-out flowers and the saying “Bloom where you are planted” (a mantra that got me through high school)

The photos above show some of my current creative play: (1) seven balls of vegan yarn (in shades of yellow, orange, cream, green, and teal) for my current crochet project; (2) colorful origami paper and folded stars; (3) handmade card of cut-out flowers and the saying “Bloom where you are planted” (a summer camp mantra that got me through high school).

—
This post is written by
Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands.com. For posts like this, you might be interested in “Answering the Call for Artistic Activism: Yes, I’m an Artist!,” “On Choosing a Writer’s Life,” and “Crocheting Granny Squares, Connecting to Grandmothers, and Crafting a More Just Future.”

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Tagged with: art, creative, emotional literacies, habits, learning, play, practices, questions, resilience, writing, writing retreats

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Update: THANKS to everyone who alerted me to the a Update: THANKS to everyone who alerted me to the account and who reported it. It appears to be down. I’m really grateful. 💚

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So … apparently someone has cloned my account and started one at @bethgodbeee (with eee — 3 e’s at the end). 

If you’ve received a request from this account, will you report them?

And if you’ve had this happen or know more about this sort of copycatting/cloning, I’m so grateful for camaraderie and advice. I’m in a learning curve.

Thank you!!!
If you're currently on a journey with a writing pr If you're currently on a journey with a writing project, consider joining this Thursday's #writing retreat.

I think of retreats like this boardwalk: there's a pathway to follow with clear edges and a lot of spaciousness to work/walk throughout the day.

Learn more about one-day online retreats, sliding-scale registration, and upcoming dates here:

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It's fall! A few views from here: 1. My partner J It's fall! A few views from here:

1. My partner Jonathan and me hiking at Great Falls.
2. Crocheting in progress. I'm picking back up this project started early in the pandemic.
3. Pumpkin pancakes. Yum!
4. Weird leg-like mushrooms sticking out of a log.
5. Book display on whole food plant based (WFPB) eating.
6. Embers in a simmering campfire. 
7. Shadows of me and my partner on a winding trail.

{Not pictured: Recovering from covid and flu vaccines. Send healing wishes! :-)}
Updates to the new offering “Pathways Through Bu Updates to the new offering “Pathways Through Burnout: A Cohort Experience”:

For the past year, Candace and I have been listening to requests for an offering around burnout (or, more precisely, being burned up), and we launched a new cohort experience August 1st. We are deeply grateful for the range of responses we’ve received since then, and we’ve been prioritizing time to listen and discern what people want and need.

Through a lot of conversation and reflection, we’ve decided to slow down further and to reshape the offering. 

We’ll continue offering interactive workshops on practices for navigating burnout—with new dates announced for November 3rd and December 15th (and more to come in 2024). 

Starting in January, we’ll hold a few one-day retreats with time for art, play, contemplative practice, conversation, and coaching. We hope the retreat will feel like something that’s possible now (with so many pushes and pulls on time and attention).

All of this is leading to a 12-week version of the cohort experience: a season of connection to match a season in life. We’ll reopen applications in the spring and hope that a small group forms well ahead of our start date in September 2024.

The details of all of these experiences—and an invitation to join the workshops in Nov and Dec—are shared online here: https://heart-head-hands.com/pathways-through-burnout/ 
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And we continue to appreciate all sorts of feedback (questions, suggestions, affirmations), so please reach out anytime. <3

[Image says: “Pathways Through Burnout / Practice Workshops / One-Day Retreats / Cohort Forming for Fall 2024” and shows photos of the two of us—Candace and Beth—side by side.]

With @dr._candace_epps_robertson_ #burnout #update #practice #contemplative #meditation #writing #art #retreat
I am slow to edit and share photos, but I want to I am slow to edit and share photos, but I want to share these from the Beyond Granite public art exhibit that just left the National Mall here in DC. I wish this installation was staying long-term. How I struggle with visiting the Mall in the best of conditions. And how these pieces helped me appreciate what could instead be done in this space. 

Also, Jonathan and I got really lucky that the night we visited was the most spectacular sunset! Scroll through for photos of how "America's Playground" appears against an orange sky (no filter).
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About Beth Godbee

I'm an educator and former writing studies professor who believes our fully embodied selves matter in the world. We can’t just think our way out of the incredible injustices, dehumanization, violence, and wrongdoing that characterize everyday life. We must feel and act, too. [Pronouns: she/her.] Read more ...

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