For as long as I can remember, it's been a sadness to experience how doggedly my sister, Mim, resisted - almost resented - the suggestion that she was exceptionally creative, with a unique style all her own.
Never understood it. Anyone who's read her poems in our alumni magazine knows she was a gifted writer. The privileged few who saw her wonderful line drawings - usually part of a note or letter or even an envelope - delighted in her artwork. For years, first for our family then for others, she was the ultimate Christmas Guru. Then there was the spate of years when she put together totally over-the-top Easter baskets!
Mim was at her most creative with people. She worked her magic with the youngsters in our little hometown, from coaching a boys' football team in her early teens to touching girls' lives with the clubs she put together for us to the families who were so much the better for having Mim around.
And she never let me describe her as creative. She'd shrug off compliments & seemed openly suspicious of praise. Mim never seemed to embrace her creative self.
In considering the differences between the two of us, that is possibly the biggest one of all. We processed what happened in our lives from opposite perspectives. I embraced my creativity, Mim denied hers.
If it hadn't been for reading Brene Brown's Rising Strong, the impact of embracing or apparently rejecting our creative self might never have dawned on me.
For most of my adult life, was aware of the brokenness in Mim's, which I could never figure out. Still can't. Was aware of what felt like almost a distrust of connection. She'd connect with people over her life & maintain relationships I still envy, but she always spoke of them as if they were tenuous, even fragile.
Then, I discovered Brene. Consider a few comments from her about the relationship between creativity & integration:
- I've come to believe that creativity is the mechanism that allows learning to seep into our being & to become practice.
- If integration means to make whole, then its opposite is to fracture, disown, disjoin, unravel or separate.
- We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration - it is how we fold our experiences into our being.
This past week, first reading, then journaling those words left me stunned. And grateful for discovering them months after Mim's passing, after I'd celebrated my sister's life by sharing some of the remarkable moments in it.
If I hadn't honored Mim's life in that particular way, the realization that hit me about half way through might never have occurred to me - she did all those incredible things, yet none of them seemed to significantly change her life, shift her dark opinion of herself.
Relatively few people know that Mim was a gifted abstract artist, conveying so much through simple lines. She kept that part of herself hidden from most eyes, scoffed at - even mocked - praise for her work. If creativity "allows learning to seep into our being & become practice," if it is "how we fold our experiences into our being," then what is the impact of denying your creativity?
For most of my adult life, I've pondered the key differences in our lives. Why did Mim's life go in such a different direction than mine? Why, in spite of doing so many astonishing things, did she still seem to see herself as massively lacking, someone who seemed more at ease with feeling pitied than praised? It could all come down to how differently we responded to our creativity.
Under John's tender supportive influence, I came to wholeheartedly embrace & literally celebrate my creative self. Mim - at least to me - disowned hers. My life feels like a shout-out to abundance, while Mim always spoke - at least to me - about scarcity, like whatever she did would never be enough, that SHE would never be enough.
Embracing or rejecting our creative self - could that be at the root of all that was different between us? Something to ponder...
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