Julia Cameron says, “You don’t have to be in the ‘mood’ to write…just write.” I know there are words that want to be written, but they seem far away. Living solo it’s easy to slip into these quiet phases, but for a writer it can also be dangerous.

There’s a stack of cards by Sacred Bee laying in a basket which is sitting on this giant, wooden table and they are within reach. I pick them up and flip through them often just to look at her delicate, yet colorful drawings on each one. They inspire that little bit of artist in me who I haven’t seen since childhood because perfectionism tried to kill her.

Growing up as the youngest in a household of six we didn’t have anything extra, but we always had enough. My Mother was a force to be reckoned with and nobody wanted to get on her bad side. She was a good, Christian woman who worked full-time, served her church and community, but somehow kept all of us alive and healthy. Every Sunday she would save the comic strips from the newspaper and hand it to me.

I think she wanted me to have more laughter in my life, but I started drawing what I saw on the pages to paper. One brother, 3 years older than me, would glance over my shoulder at my drawing and start picking on me ruthlessly, so I learned to stop drawing at the kitchen counter. I would find a spot far away from him, or draw when he wasn’t home, but it was the highlight of my week when Mama would hand me the comics and say, “Go find a pencil and paper.”

In her wildly, busy life she took a moment each week to feed that spark of creativity inside her youngest daughter. At some point I outgrew the Sunday comics, but that spark of creativity seeped into my veins.

Instead of shuffling through the basket of cards to admire their beauty, I need to pull one from it’s protective sleeve to lay it open, flat on the table and grab a pen. I believe we are born with creativity inside of us and all it needs is a place to land.