What is a creative safe space to you?

To me, this is a place to make time for exploration, to venture into uncharted territory in order to learn about something we don’t know, to see more clearly what we do know, and that there is always room to expand upon that knowing and learning.

This is a space for new directions, to acknowledge what got us to this point and look to that with gratitude for having known what that has given us, taught us, and how it’s helped us grow.

This is a moment to take for ourselves to create something to see what shows up, and in the doing of that, we see that there is a forever space where the story shifts and we can always come back here to see ourselves again and again in a new familiar way.

This is an inner world where there is a shared and unspoken language, a communication in flow and marks, in developing and deconstructing, in reconstructing and rebuilding, in establishing a new foundation that is malleable and free of the masks we’ve worn for a lifetime, and even the lifetimes before us.

This is a safe space, where we can let go and in the letting go, we can see ourselves, we can see that we are always here, that we can always connect here in this safe space.

This is an embracing of what’s been seen in the truest of visions, an authentic open-minded hindsight that’s taken decades to acknowledge, accept and forgive ourselves for having not had the wisdom then to have done it as we might’ve now. To thank ourselves for having the courage to do the best we could as we stumbled, fell, and grew.

This is an acceptance that there is multitude of possibilities in every one of these moments, a conglomeration of emotions and perceptions, and that not one alone is correct or incorrect, it just is, and is stronger with the support of the others that surround it.

This is an opportunity to shed the notion of projected outcomes and embrace an acceptance of what might be without really knowing what might happen at every step of the way.

This is an inner clarity that comes from making uncertainty a part of the act of understanding.

This is a layered pathway where all kinds of thoughts will arise, and it’s where we can see and allow that these feelings will overlap and swim among the safety of a brave and soft acceptance of the difficult feelings that may show themselves.

This is a conversation between the many versions of ourselves who decide to show up at any given moment, inspired by the spontaneity of the decisions made that were influenced by each one that came before the last.

This is a blooming, a rebirth, a shedding, and a dance along on the wind into new territory.

This is where we leave ourselves behind in order to find ourselves again in a new and different way.

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(the art featured in this article is titled “Where We Leave Ourselves Behind”, oil on panel, 20×16″, created recently for Rehs Contemporary Galleries)