Читать книгу The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women - Gail McMeekin - Страница 9

Your creative self is alive and waiting for your invitation to evolve! Dare to embrace your creative self and manifest your dreams. Recognizing your creativity leads you into a life of self-expression, fulfillment, and contribution.

 Responding to Creative Callings

 Experimenting with New Processes

 Seeking Success Stories

 Learning the Secrets

Your creativity is waiting for you like a dancing partner.

—BARBARA SHER,

WRITER AND CAREER CONSULTANT

Yes, you are a creative woman. Creativity is not just for “talented geniuses.” Creativity is a tool we can all access and utilize. It doesn't matter if you've never picked up a pen or can't draw a straight line or flunked out of music class, you have a creative self waiting to be awakened or amplified. Webster's definition for the word create is “to cause to come into existence; bring into being; make; originate.” Creative women are innovators—they manifest the new.

They dare to believe in their insights, to intuit the next step, and to take risks, even if it means getting lost or being wrong. You too can participate in creative expression and share your personal talents. You are an original; therefore, your inspirations are original as well.

As a career and creativity coach, as well as a licensed psychotherapist, human resources consultant, and trainer for the past twenty-five years, I have helped thousands of women discover and access their creative potential; achieve their personal, professional, and creative goals; and reduce the stress in their lives. It was my own personal journey, however, that deepened my fascination with the creative process and was the catalyst for my own creative awakening. That journey, which gave birth to this book, began quite unexpectedly.

We need to remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.

—MAYA ANGELOU, POET AND WRITER

When I was thirty-five and in the midst of a successful career, I was suddenly overcome by chronic fatigue syndrome. I was exhausted and plagued by a number of terrifying physical symptoms. I had all kinds of x-rays and diagnostic tests, including an MRI to rule out multiple sclerosis when I began to have trouble walking, but they all tested negative. I saw doctor after doctor, searching for answers, but because of the negative test results they all minimized my symptoms and wrote me off as possibly depressed. As a trained psychotherapist, I knew the symptoms of depression and would have gladly taken Prozac if that made sense, but I was running a temperature, experiencing numbness in the left side of my body, overreacting to medications, having heart attack symptoms, and feeling too tired to perform the tasks of daily living. I was not depressed, just tired. I got up every day wanting to chase my goals, not escape from them. To me, life had always been a seductive, stunningly gorgeous, and appetizing buffet table—but suddenly I couldn't stand in line long enough to have fun sampling. I decided to take matters into my own hands and in the course of doing research, I found a book on chronic fatigue syndrome and diagnosed myself.

According to everything I could read on the subject, it was a syndrome, not a disease, so it was unacknowledged by the traditional medical community.

I think the creative process is not about creating something else; it's about the process itself creating who I am.

—MAYUMI ODA, ARTIST AND WRITER

Worse yet, it was dubbed a women's illness and was too easily dismissed. I also learned that other autoimmune illnesses common to women, like lupus, had gone unrecognized for years until definitive tests were developed. No blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome was in sight, so it was up to me to try everything I could to get well. I located two doctors, one Eastern and one Western, who confirmed my diagnosis. I began intensive acupuncture treatments as well as herbal and vitamin therapies to boost my immune system. I spent a fortune on healers, herbs, and visualization workshops as well as other alternative therapies. Fortunately my intuition warned me to cancel my appointment with a nationally known physician who was later exposed for sexually abusing women with chronic illnesses after dosing them with the drug Ecstasy. As I tuned into my body, the potency of my intuition grew and guided me to the right choices along the way to recovery. The truth was that rest worked best. Similar to when I had had severe mononucleosis in my twenties, I started subtracting things from my life. I cut back on my consulting work, gave up relationships with people who drained my energy, dropped out of professional organizations and networks, and learned to say “No” more effectively. My focus was self-restoration.

My work is giving space to the creative spirit—learning to get out of its way and be in its service at the same time. We each have responsibility to express ourselves. And in this expression is the key to our healing.

—GABRIELLE ROTH, DANCER AND HEALER

Along with alternative treatments and lots of sleep, I married the man I had been involved with for years and transitioned my psychotherapy practice into more of a coaching business with an emphasis on career and stress issues. As one healer told me, I had been psychically absorbing all of the pain of my clients, and now there were holes in my aura. I knew intuitively that she spoke the truth and that I needed to create a limited and more selective client practice.