How my creativity is coming full circle in 2023

And why that can be a good thing

Photo by Biel Morro on Unsplash

Salted (adjective): having developed a resistance to disease by surviving it.

Rewind to 2015. I’ve just (insanely, according to my extended family) left eleven years in the police service to instead get a new community gym up and running in my home town, having completely pivoted and requalified as a fitness instructor and personal trainer on maternity leave, whilst wrestling with a 4 and a 2 year old. I’m teaching twelve high-intensity fitness classes a week. I’ve finished treatment for postnatal depression but have a sneaking suspicion that as soon as I stop breastfeeding I’ll drift straight into the spiral of perimenopause. I’m simultaneously pinging out enthusiastic emails and Facebook events (while changing nappies) for the gazillion ideas I have in my head; ideas that soon turn into reality, and pretty successful reality, for women’s bootcamps and weekend retreats. I’ve just had a miscarriage, just lost my nan, just lost my step-dad, and was about to lose my longest friend and our dearly loved dog. I’m still plagued by memories of my ‘old life’, the life that makes me shrink and cringe and wonder how that could have ever been me, and that still follows me with ghosts every time I go into town near old haunts. I obsessively plot my health recovery, as if I can make up for my youthful toxic misdemenours, and shove ‘health’ down everyone elses’ throats while I’m at it. Ironically, I get sick, with colds and flu, all the time. We’ve bought a house, sold a house, bought a repossession, lived in a building site for 6 months without a toilet…and I’ve brought almost all of it on myself.

Did I mention I was a new mum?

Since then I’ve shifted identities (often only in my own head) more than I can imagine anyone else ever doing while still continuing to stay sane. I click off and on Instagram like a jack in the box because I can’t bear the monthly/weekly/daily Bio change I feel essential to justify my existence. I get swayed by shiny creative projects and hurl myself into being an artist/DJ/coach/singer {insert random job title just to feel I fit somewhere, here}, ricocheting like a pinball in an arcade machine.

This is raw talk, but it’s real. I think it’s time we all got real, really, it’s the only way forward. Honesty and authenticity. We can’t get deep without getting meaningful. We can’t find fixes without drilling out the decay. And maybe we’ll never find a ‘fix’, but we could still learn something by talking about it. By giving it air. And then perhaps we can exhale it away.

Shall we keep going?

I think the reason I’ve been making life so unnecessarily hard for myself in 2022 is that I can’t quite believe my luck. My little complexly traumatised brain can’t comprehend that it can be any other way. Because it’s always been ‘a little bit hard’, and sometimes ‘a lot bit hard’, up until now.

If I’m completely honest, life in 2022 is the quietest and calmest and most spacious and least cluttered it has ever been. Of course there are challenges; I have a good cry some days and a belly laugh others. But it’s positively dreamy. I’ve established the best boundaries. I have the most wonderful little family. I have a handful of marvellous friends and colleagues. I work loyally still for the same sports charity, managing the same gym that I began as a rookie instructor in 2015. I’m surrounded by superb people and am rewarded with their triumphs over long-term health conditions. I’m a stones-throw from the coast and hardly have a day without setting eyes on the sea. I have my own yoga and fitness studio, in a log cabin. I’ve been through all the groundwork of getting a new business off the ground for my private teaching - all the bootcamps, all the retreats, all the one-to-ones. And now I’m out the other side of the doing and can enjoy a little more of the being. I know what works.

And yet, I make very hard work of it.

Something is missing that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like there’s a lost puzzle piece, not a central part, not a character’s face, but perhaps a bit of blue sky and a tiny patch of cloud towards the top left corner. No-one else would really know it was missing. But I do.

I write for those of you who feel a bit like this too. And I teach yoga and fitness for you, if you’re in my neck of the woods. Those of you who feel weathered by life (I wrote a whole post about weathered women, here) but on the surface are happy, achieving, competent.

I’ve thought for a while that creativity is the thing that will fill the gap. Beware though, for you can be led even further off-track by the shiniest of glittery creative projects. They may be beautiful…but that doesn’t mean they are meant for you.

And so, having established over the course of a very long 2022 that creativity is what I’ve mislaid, I am heading back into the creative pursuits that I originally began in 2015, for a second tour around the labyrinth, another revolution of the cycle, and a deeper excavation of how the things I previously skimmed the surface of can support me now.

I’m still very much honouring the precious boundaries I’ve erected in the last few years, but…

• I’m revisiting how it feels to teach outdoors, for yoga on the beach next Spring

• I’m returning to retreats, but this time as a guest, not the organiser

• I’m weaving music into everything I do, because it is a close second to movement for ‘things that bring me joy’

• I’m delving back into study and picking up on my 300 hour advanced yoga teacher training, including certifications in yin, restorative, pre/postnatal, trauma-informed, adaptive, yoga nidra and Ayurveda

• I’m reading more fiction and plenty of poetry (I’ve read 35 books this year and all but 4 of them were non-fiction. I need more storytelling and escapism)

• I’m writing, yes, but to no particular end (what a novel idea!)

• And I’m keeping my own workouts HIIT and weights based; short, sharp and focused. And I’m keeping them just for me, because I have a terrible habit of turning everything I love into ‘work’, into something to be shared, or even into a business. No more.

To many, this list may still seem like ‘too much’. But to me, this feels like an easy, breezy, lilting measure of promises to myself. Here, I can breathe, but I can still be fulfilled. What a magical balance to find. What a gift.

Do click the little ‘heart’ below, if you’ve found this article. I love to hear from you too and will always respond to any comments. Let’s start talking.

With love,

x Luisa

You can still listen to my rather eclectic (*quite bonkers) Winter Inspo playlist, that I posted in this article here. It’s being added to every day ;) and I can’t stop playing this track from it, as a nod to my Hebrew roots.

And, if you’re in West Somerset like me, I’ve created a gathering on Facebook to ensure you hear first when I have news on Yoga and Fitness on Minehead Beach in Spring 2023! You can join the Facebook group here.