On Becoming Resilient in Your Creativity
How to keep making art after you've been knocked down again and again.
I hope this feels like a big hug and wind in your sails. XO Jenna
What experiences imprint us with pain is fascinating to me. There are some events that are so naturally painful, they would unravel anyone, and socially we recognize them as such: the loss of a loved one, losing a home, a physically or emotionally violent experience, a betrayal, a terrible accident, witnessing a tragedy.
Then there are experiences that don’t broadly fall into categories of pain, yet somehow wedge even deeper into our hearts. It’s the thing that happened to you—that sinks your stomach just thinking about it. The thing that, when you finally mustered the courage to share it with someone, they just blinked at you blankly, not knowing how to comfort or address it. You’ve since resorted to over-explaining. Or just not sharing at all — because watching other people fail to acknowledge something that was catastrophic to you as even remotely painful is too much to feel or bear.
You may have been told to reframe it or just stop thinking about it. Or that you don’t have it as bad as someone else. Or that it’s about time to move on. But for you, it was a before-and-after event — there was life before and life after, and the event left a painful, unfortunate mark right in the middle. The pain—debilitating, depressing, constantly occupying your thoughts — is dismissed. And being dismissed certainly does not allow for much healing.
An isolated event may not sound catastrophic. But when we contextualize it in someone’s story, a full painting reveals itself. Often, no—it was not that one event that was catastrophic, it was that the event was an affirmation of some terrible belief about ourselves or the world. And a small circumstance can amplify into the final nail in the coffin.
The breakup with a person they only dated for a short time causes someone searing pain. That’s not because that relationship was so formative, but because it affirmed a feeling of “not-good-enough” that was formed two boyfriends ago with the guy she thought she’d marry. The new breakup affirmed this, and she’s devastated. Somehow, this one hurts worse.
The layoff from the job you didn’t even love has sunk you, not because of that loss itself, but because you believe you are falling behind in life. That belief came from somewhere in childhood, when you were struggling to keep up with schoolwork and were reprimanded.
The threads of pain get tugged. Our brains sense a pattern and forecast doom, loudly.
People are completely unique paintings of our completely unique stories. And it is unique to each of us what colors stick to the canvas. We can all remember offhand random mean things said to us in elementary and middle school—why? Why are some things so sticky? Someone could tell us the same thing, and it may not affect you at all — while it sends me into a spiral. Some experiences just imprint us.
I have navigated really intense, painful marks on my canvas in a very specific area. Much of the most painful things I’ve gone through are in the orbit of my creativity. Which is absurd and tragic. Because creativity, since I was very, very young, was the place I naturally felt safest and freest. I believe God gifted me with creativity in order to be a blessing to others. But my early twenties contained a series of events that felt like bombs dropping on the very same area of my heart. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone through something similar—where it happens again and you almost laugh, like, “Seriously?! Again?!”
What was born from those years is a lifelong, fireproof creative resiliency. I was tested to my limits and realized that nothing will knock the desire to create out of me — so I’ve proven this to myself and feel fortunate to know my childhood love of creative play will be with me until I die. It also proved to me, vividly, that God does not forsake or abandon me. We got through that fire.
I was, in an unfortunate number of ways, on the receiving end of some of the worst adult behavior I’ve ever seen when I was really young and starting my career as an artist. Sometimes, those moments and exchanges flash back to me and I am astounded. Astounded that I had to withstand any of that as a very young, ambitious, overly eager-to-please kid.