High in confidence. Low in self-control.

Everyone has a pee story. This is mine.

A 5-minute read.

I’m 5 years old. I’m at an easel, paintbrush in hand. A tray of paints and a cup of water to one side. I love to paint. And I LOVE my painting. It’s got a house and a witch. Blue sky at the top. Green grass at the bottom. Splatters of watery grey for the rain.

I need to pee. But I NEED to paint. The peeing can wait. Although it can’t. A puddle appears on the floor.

 I paint on. 

The teacher appears. 

I paint on. 

By now the puddle has taken on Alice In Wonderland-style proportions.

‘I spilled my water.’ (Liar, liar. Pants on fire!)

10 minutes later I’m back, the ‘carrier bag of shame’ in my hand. I don’t care. I’m happy to suffer for my art.

That sense of commitment, that ability to get lost in my painting, that absolute belief in myself as an artist, that feeling of determination mixed with joy and a sense of connection to something bigger than me - I remember that creative confidence so well and I felt it again in that art class 50 years later.

But I seemed to be the only one.

I look over. Mariane's lost in the moment fully absorbed in her art.  

‘‘Ooh, I love that! That’s fantastic!’

A glimmer of delight passes across her face before the cultural conditioning kicks in.

‘Oh no, I don’t think so.’

The compliment gets batted away as the wee feisty creative soul that’s been having a ball with the paints steps back into the shadows.

Sound familiar? If it does that’s because it is.

That class was so much fun but it was as hard to find someone who’d take a compliment as it was to find a paintbrush that wasn’t a dried-up shadow of its former self - often the way with communal art supplies.

It might have been a room full of folks of a certain age but when we got into art-making it became a room full of children exploring what they could do with paper, pencils, and paint. 

And loving it!

Yet, say something encouraging or appreciative, and off they’d go! If they did hang around long enough to take the compliment they’d hold it with all the uncertainty of a child playing pass-the-parcel for the first time.

‘Should I open this? Is this really for me?’

Before the music starts again and an adult reaches over and dunts it out of their hands, the child left confused, not quite understanding what’s going on.

Why do we do it? Why do we find it so hard to champion our art, to openly stand beside, or stand up for, our creativity? Maybe we never learned how. Or maybe we were taught that it was not okay to do so.

I was brought up in a tough-love world, taught to play small by a generation who had been taught to play small by the generation before them. Saying something vaguely positive about yourself would be treated with the same contempt as lying or stealing. 'Stop boasting.’ 'Listen to you blowing your own trumpet.’ ‘No one likes a show off.’ featured heavily in my formative years.

And whatever you do, don’t express any wants or needs. 'I want doesn't get.' ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you.’

Hard to hear when you’re only 8 years old and in your world - it does!

I learned to keep my dreams and my self-worth in check. When I did something I could have been proud of ('Pride comes before a fall' - there's another one) I’d often play it down, talk about it in a jokey, self-deprecating way, sabotage it, or not talk about it at all.

The natural creative confidence and self-belief we’re born with gradually chipping away.

I kept that painting with me through the wilderness years - faded and folded, tucked into an old wooden chocolate box between my Dad’s airmail letters and a photo of me, aged 15, sporting an (ill-thought-out on so many levels) curly perm. It was held as evidence of the unstoppable creativity of my 5-year-old self.

But the thing is, as it turned out, that creativity wasn’t unstoppable after all.

Her eternal cry of ‘What can I make now?’ gradually faded to a peep and she finally wandered off sometime in my late 30s when I was simply too busy to notice her go.

I used to wonder ‘How could I have been so creative for so long and then … nothing?’

No painting. No dress-making. No doing imaginative things with flowers. No creating crafty stuff with fabric scraps or bits of string. No love of modernist architecture. No monthly Elle Deco habit.

It was as if a part of me had died and the grief was palpable, yet at the time I’d no idea that’s what it was. There was an underlying discomfort, an easy irritation and the feeling of being uncomfortable in my own skin, of accidentally living someone else’s life, was so normal to me that for a long time I didn’t think there was another way to be.

In truth, she wasn’t dead but she was certainly missing in action, gone for years, along with my self-worth. Although they’re one and the same. Creativity is so much a part of my identity that when my self-worth left the building little Miss ‘I love to paint so much that I’ll happily pee myself in the process’ went too.

Or maybe it was the other way round. It doesn’t really matter.

It’s hard to believe in yourself when you’re not being true to who you are. And it's hard to be true to who you are when you don’t think you matter enough to believe in.

In time, I learned to believe in myself again and make a space in my life for my inner creative soul to thrive. I took her by the hand and gradually led her back out into the light.

Through the creative wasteland, I found the desire to heal and also the ability to help others do the same. Over time I got the opportunity to work with artists, musicians, writers, and performers. 

‘I feel blocked.’ ‘I get terrible stage fright.’ ‘I didn’t get the audition and now I feel crushed.’ ‘I want to submit my work but I’m not sure I can.’ ‘I love to write poetry but I don't want anyone to read it.’

Their issues were different, but always the same - a lack of confidence in their creativity and in themselves. They believed that their value as a human being was intrinsically linked to other people's opinions of their art. This put them on shaky ground and they often felt vulnerable, scared, and stuck.

But the truth is our value is not linked to our achievements, creative or otherwise, and when we know that to be true, and we live our lives accordingly, we have the freedom to make art, put it out into the world, and say ‘To hang with the consequences!’

How liberating is that?

Just think. No longer at the mercy of other people’s opinions. The ‘I can see a face in that.’ comment is water off a duck's back. The ‘We're sorry your piece wasn't successful this time.’ email hardly causes a dent. And as the number of likes, comments, shares and follows rise and fall your sense of self-worth stays rock-steady.

But this isn’t about being hardened and uncaring. As you develop this new level of resilience you also develop the freedom and ability to bring your sensitivity into your creativity - right where it belongs. So you can show up in the world and in your art as your wonderfully imperfect self: resilient, confident, sensitive, and creative.

As you can probably tell this is a topic close to my heart - so close to my heart that I decided to write a book about it.

BULLETPROOF PEACH - Confidence and resilience for artists, creators, and writers. (That may not be the final subtitle but let’s go with that for now.)

If that resonates, (the whole idea - not the fairly lackluster subtitle) I’d love to hear from you. Perhaps you’ve lost your creative mojo. Perhaps you hold yourself back for fear of judgment. Perhaps you've had it with the negative self-talk that gets in the way of your art. Or perhaps you find it hard to believe in yourself as an artist, creator, or writer and have no idea what to do about it.

Whatever your situation, I’m writing this book for you.

Interested?

I’m looking for people who would like to share their experience of putting their art out into the world (or not!) and to help test the book as it takes shape.

If you’d like to be involved just let me know by popping your details in the box below. It would be great to have you on board and I value your opinion so if you do become one of my beta readers there will be a credit given in the book and a free signed copy on its way to you once it’s done! How does that sound?