Resting our creative bones

Reflections + prompts to navigate the shape of this season

I was truly hoping to be writing this last letter of the year from a very different place. I wish I were feeling more inspired, more settled in my new home in Portugal, more advanced in my pottery practice. I wish I felt less paralyzed when speaking this new language, less foggy about my next creative season, and less constantly dysregulated by the state of our collective reality.

Perhaps you find yourself reading this letter wishing you, too, were in a different place, state, or form as the year draws to a close. Maybe there’s disappointment in not being further along (deeper, wiser, or better) than you were when the year began.

This letter, at its core, is about letting that be. “That”, being wherever your creative life is at, and whatever feeling arises from standing right there.

I wonder what might soften within us, within our relationships, within the world we’re shaping together, if we allowed things to be as they are instead of tightening around all the ways we believe they should be otherwise. We can agree there are countless ways things that must radically change right now. And, at the same time, the true creation of a new way of being can only begin with an honest acknowledgment of what is.

For those of us who live in the creative impulse, the drive to transform, mold, review, and improve can feel insatiable. It’s part of our nature. And precisely because this drive is so strong, it becomes all the more important to meet reality without immediately rushing to change it.

Our natural orientation towards change (of the self, of the environment, of the narrative), imagining what is not yet, reinterpreting what was, and reframing what lies before us, can leave little room for the part of the creative cycle that requires stillness, observation, and acceptance.

And we desperately need that part.

Some dimensions of experience only come into focus when we pause long enough to let them register. They’re inaccessible while we are in motion. They refuse to reveal themselves from a place of seeking, or striving.

In the wheel of the year, at least how I interpret and experience it, that part is here now. The dark womb, the fertile emptiness, the deep rest, the last moment of the exhale, the dissolving into complete obscurity. The less, the less, the less.

You don’t need anyone else’s permission but yours here, but if you feel like it would help, I hope this letter can be your invitation to take things off the to do list. A full permission to let things slide, to strip away, to say later, to say thanks but no thanks, to let yourself off the hook, to soften the expectations. To collapse. To let your creative bones sink into stillness. To let be what is¹.

My invitation for you as we cross the threshold into 2026, to sit with the discomfort of unfinished things.

And, there is always that thing.

For me, it’s the book I’ve been working on for a couple of years. I feel disheartened that I am not celebrating finishing the first version. This was the only promise I had made to myself in 2025, and I won’t be able to honour it. It feels heavy to sit with this.

I will be taking a couple of weeks away from work as we transition into winter and into 2026. It will require all my might not to hyperfocus and try to finish this book during that empty space and time.

But I won’t.

Because I have learned to trust the creative spirit over the creative mind. My creative mind is wonderful at generating ideas and discerning which are worth pursuing, but the creative spirit is the true animate force that guides me. She makes sure that the ideas have soul, that they feed me, and allow me to feed those who need it. That it becomes nutritious creation.

The last full moon illuminated the missing piece of the puzzle I had tried to complete in the dark for so long. Had I rushed this writing process, I would have missed what will allow the book to come together. I’m grateful (now) for the past 4 months where I haven’t touched the project. As frustrating and painful as it felt, deep down I knew there was a reason for it, and I’m glad I trusted that nudge.

This book was meant to be written from a very specific place.

And my creative mind alone could never have escorted me there.

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Yule to Imbolc

Creative energy forecast, what to work with, pay attention to and practice.

The winter solstice reminds us that not everything needs to move forward right now. Yule to Imbolc is a season of flat lines, stillness, and suspended moments. It’s a time to nourish the creative soil without expectation. Trust the soil, feed it, and it will feed you.

Let what needs to be digested be digested. Let the old patterns, the unfinished loops, the overworked corners of your imagination, sink into the fertile darkness.

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Prompts to play with the energies of this season

Prompt 1: I begin most coaching sessions with a short celebration because most of us systematically skip this essential part: acknowledging and highlighting progress, no matter how small or intangible it might be. It could be a tiny step you took, a shift in your thinking, or something you didn’t notice at first. Pause here, and name it now. Even the smallest recognition is an anchor for your creative spirit and a reminder of the life and energy already moving through you.

I'll go first. I'm celebrating learning pottery and making slow progress this year.

Prompt 2: If your 2025 has been anything like mine, you may feel exhausted of being exhausted. Allow yourself to physically collapse, withdraw, round your shoulders forward, and surrender. Notice how your body and mind respond when you stop doing.

43rd move in 12 years. Another ending/beginning. I'm tired of moving. Welcoming the stillness.

Prompt 3: Choose one project you’ve been trying to finish, and for now, intentionally let it remain incomplete. What happens when you don’t intervene? What surfaces on its own when the pressure to do is removed?

Paintings I’ve started and am in no rush to finish.

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Art I’m grateful for right now:

• The landscape around me.

  

  

What are you listening, watching, admiring, enjoying?

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What surfaced for you as you read this? I’d love to hear your reflections and discoveries. Feel free to reply or share with another creative mind.

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Receiving support in your creative life would feel like a big exhale?

I believe our most profound art emerges when we stay with the question long enough to hear what it’s really asking. I hold space for that work: listening deeply, discerning what to release, and noticing what wants to come through.

To navigate it, we sometimes need guidance. Someone to walk alongside you, and help you unearth what is ready to emerge into form. I’d be honoured to be that creative companion for you.

When you’re ready, here’s how I can support you:

꩜ 1:1 coaching partnerships: let’s meet in a free clarity call.

꩜ The Creative Liberation Portal, a self-coaching space to move from self-denial to self-expression.

꩜ Email coaching, a simple way to receive guidance & direction.

1. *An important note about stillness: Much well-intentioned guidance falls short. Invitations to “just be with what is” often presume a baseline of internal safety that was never established. For those who learned to survive through change, stillness can have a charged texture. Many of us have grown that innate drive to transform as a way to stay oriented in environments that felt misattuned or unsafe. Changing the self, reshaping meaning, or imagining alternatives became a way to inhabit life with some measure of agency. Learning to be comfortable with stillness is a gradual renegotiation with the nervous system, and you can take your time with this.