The hard things we go through in life—traumatic experiences, mental health struggles, physical health battles, grief, loss, addiction, and more—often take more from us than we realize. They rob us of our sense of agency, our joy, and, perhaps most profoundly, our ability to create. Creativity is an intrinsic part of being human and it is spiritual; it’s how we process, express, make sense of the world, and contribute to making it better. When we create, we are at our most whole. But when life becomes overwhelming, our creative energy can feel drained, locked behind walls of exhaustion, fear, shame, and uncertainty. Our voices are silenced. Our capacity to imagine beyond the immediate is clouded. We lose the motivation to engage in the things we once loved. We exist in a state of survival. This loss of creativity—of our ability to imagine, to dream, to create—can feel like the loss of ourselves.






 

Yet, in the process of healing, creativity can be RECLAIMED! It’s not about returning to who we were before the pain, but about discovering new ways to experience and express ourselves around the pain—new forms of creativity that emerge from the cracks and scars. Healing is a journey of proximity with ourselves, others, the world, and perhaps a higher power—slowly allowing ourselves to reconnect, recover, and rejuvenate. Through self-care, support, and trauma-informed care, we can begin to restore the creative selves that trauma and hardship once took from us. Creativity becomes not just a means of self-expression, but a powerful tool for rebuilding, for connecting with our humanity, and for finding hope and meaning in the places we once thought were lost.