Secret # 4 ~ Surrendering to creative cycles

This week the chapter talked about cycles, and how to remember to embrace those times of our lives that we might not feel the creativity flowing. I do understand that creativity comes in cycles. I can look back on my experiences and see different periods in my life when I have been more creative than others.
I could also relate to certain parts of the chapter, and understood more why I felt the need to be creative a few weeks after I hung up my "homeschool mom" hat. It was difficult at first to listen to my inner voice who was telling me to start doing things for myself, to pick up my quilting, to grab a paint brush and play, to take the camera and just start shooting, or even to cook and bake. I felt at that time like I was being selfish, and that it was almost wrong. It took me some time to listen to that little voice and follow it, but when I did, it felt so good!
In my reading notebook I copied a quote from this chapter because it was exactly me:

"As we release an old identity and move into a sense of being lost, purposeless, undefined, or confused, we must encounter the darkness in ourselves." (page 63)

I had an identity when I homeschooled my children, I was the homeschool mom. That was my passion, my "job", where I put all my energy. Even when I wasn't actually teaching my kids, I was busy researching what we would be doing next, or reading up on a different learning/teaching philosophy, or preparing for the next lessons at the library or on the internet, etc... I loved it, so it never felt like work. When we stopped, even though we all agreed on trying out the public school system, it was a difficult transition, for me mostly, the kids did fine! When Gail McMeekin wrote that sentence that I copied above, talking about being purposeless, undefined, lost, that is exactly how I felt. The darkness in me wasn't pretty either. But now that I am out of the darkness, the world is a beautiful place again, and I am excited to discover it.