The Worthiness of Creativity

Why do we deny ourselves the things we love most?

I think, deep down, it’s because we’ve been taught we don’t deserve them. As humans, but particularly as women. 

Men don’t carry the same burden. They’ve not been socialized to doubt their right to pleasure, expression, or space. They move through the world assuming they belong in it. Privileged white men, especially, have been told since birth that the world was built for them. They don’t have to explain why they are here—why they do what they do. It’s a given.

Women, on the other hand—we have been taught to prove our worth before taking up space. To earn our right to create, to exist even. To justify our creativity, our joy, our way of being.

Somewhere along the way—especially in this post-feminist (we are not post-feminist), unapologetically capitalist, consumer-driven era—we accepted the invitation to play the game of men. We didn’t create this game. We weren’t invited to the table to hash out the rules. The game was created in our absence. It was made to exclude us. 

And through this game we learned to measure our value in productivity, revenue, deadlines, and deliverables. We traded creativity for someone else’s definition of credibility. We traded our big, bold, complex, thinking brains for anxiety, shame, and lack (and a space at the table).

We told ourselves that once we’d achieved enough, then we’d create. Once we’d made enough money, broken down enough barriers, fought enough ‘good’ fights, then we’d paint, dance, write, dream. But not until then. 

Once it’s enough (it’s never enough), we can look at the zeros in our bank accounts, walk through the rooms in our houses, and count the men in suits who ‘respect’ us declaring “Okay, I’m done now! I’ve played the game. I won! Now I’m going back to find me.”

But that’s not how it works.

Let me state it this way: We’ve internalized the idea that before we can pursue our art (art is defined here as anything that makes your soul sing), we must first be financially useful to the world. That our creativity is only valid once we’ve earned the right to indulge in it.

This is false.

I see it in myself and in the women I coach and write with. We tell ourselves to first prove you deserve the space. First make money—for yourself, for a company, for someone else’s dream. First get degrees, accolades, and recognition. Only then can you return to your own imagination.

A writer friend and I have been meeting virtually for the past three years to inspire each other to keep pursuing our creative dreams. She’s in product marketing (getting paid for her writing). I’m in comms and development (getting paid for my writing). We both get to use our words, our gift, our creativity, in our careers. Fortunate, grateful, etc.

The writing we do for organizations is creative, yes—but it’s a constrained kind of creativity. Strategic, edited, purposeful. It serves a mission (which I love, she may feel differently) but it isn’t ours. Not fully.

And…as much as we both like what we do, every word that we write for a paycheck, is a word not in our books. Each submission for a client is a chapter unwritten. Each captivating tagline for a campaign is a bit of air sucked from the lungs of our creative muse. 

Meanwhile, both of our husbands are gifted and passionate photographers and have made their creativity their career. It is an act of being for them. It is simply who they are. 

When asked, she is in marketing (not a writer). I am in fundraising (not a writer). Her husband is a photographer. My husband is a photographer. 

Their art is work and livelihood and self-expression all at once. They make things because they can’t not make them. We make things when we have worked all the hours, taken care of house, home, family, beauty, self-care (it’s a requirement, you know!), errands, friends, and worked some more hours.

I keep telling myself that someday I’ll make space for my art. That once the week calms down, once the inbox is clear, once my daughter is more settled, once every item on the to-do list is checked, then I’ll begin. 

Ten years from now, I want to be sitting on a sun-washed terrace in Greece, an Aperol spritz sweating in my hand, celebrating a book launch—or three—with the people (women) who pushed me to keep showing up for my art.

It’s not impossible, but it’s not going to just happen. No one is going to make the space for it for me. No one is going to decide that it is A REALLY IMPORTANT THING if I don’t decide that it is A REALLY IMPORTANT THING.

Everything until now has been a warm-up. It’s time for the workout. It’s time to sit through the discomfort—the staring, the self-doubt, the voices that say I’m not a real writer, artist, creative. The thoughts of unworthiness. The feeling that I should be doing something more productive. I need to outlast the gremlins.

A teacher once told me, “During my writing time, I can either write or stare out the window—but that’s it.”

That’s how we reclaim our art—not by waiting for permission, but by honoring it in our actions, in our hands, as much as we say we honor it in our hearts.