Roots + Branches: The revolution begins with self-love

Your writing is about more than your writing

Devoting time to what you love is revolutionary

Today is a big one for love. The flowers, chocolates, etc. are all about showing love to someone (or ones) else, but only one kind of love.

Today, I want you to remember the power of self love. The power of your love for what you make. The power that lies in building the world you want to see, which you do every single time you sit down to write the work that really, really matters to you.

The powers that be, however you choose to define them, want you to stay small. As a creative, you’re probably told it’s selfish, or meaningless, or frivolous to devote time to what you love, or even worse, to find pleasure in doing it, rather than focusing on what (other people think) matters.
It’s in the interest of the current status quo to tell you your work is small and unimportant, and that you’re just being silly for wanting to do it, because that robs your work of its power. And it robs you of your agency to create change.

How likely are we, individually and collectively, to remember that we can manifest the world we want, or to remember that what we create is actually a really central part of that? How likely are we to remember ourselves as the powerful world-builders we are, if we’re feeling completely powerless?
Not likely at all (which is part of why so many of us struggle to make space for what we love, even when we really, really want to).

This is part of why I want to scream with joy from the rooftops every time I see a writing client, or myself, carving out time for their work and honoring their big writing dreams. This is why I celebrate each time I see a writer devote time and attention to something they love, whether or not it gets published or even read by anyone else.

World-building with words, literally

Each time we sit down and honor our creative work with our time and attention, we are reshaping our reality, even just a tiny bit, in the direction we want it to go.

What if we lived in a world where we each honored our creative energies and the work that we feel most deeply led to create? What if our creative work was actually centered in our lives, and we individually and collectively got to experience the rich, nurturing, expansive feeling of encountering all those things we’re each creating? Can you imagine how many new books, and songs, and paintings, and gardens, and quilts, and a million other things would come into the world simply because we acknowledged that they’re important to make and they belong here?

When you honor your writing (or your other creative journeys, whatever they are!) and I mean the stuff that really makes you tick, you’re reading a revolution of self-love and love for creativity: You’re saying to those ideas that they matter, and that they belong here. That the world we’re building together has a place for them, and you want them in it.

And, you’re showing everyone around you: Your friends, students, colleagues, children, etc., that they have the capacity to do the same. You’re mirroring the behavior you want to find in the world you want to build. Really powerful stuff!

This is doubly so when you take real pleasure in your creative work! How many of us are taught that our creative projects need to be a grind in order to have any meaning? Or that they only deserve stolen moments of time, and we’d better feel guilty for stealing that time away from things that actually matter?

It is so deeply, beautifully liberating to say “fuck that, my writing time is my own, and I’m going to absolutely relish in it.” To write what you want to write, the way you want to, for the pure pleasure of doing it, will have ripple effects through the rest of your life, and will help you fall more deeply in love with yourself and your work. I promise.

I can go on, and on, about why centering your creative work matters, so here’s a tl;dr:

• When you devote time to what you love, and you do it for you and for the pleasure of creating, rather than just focusing on an outcome (will people like this? will it get published?), you are engaged in revolutionary and magical work of the best and most powerful kind.
  You are literally building the world you want to see, and bringing forward wonderful things that never existed before.
  AND, an added bonus: You’re telling anyone who thinks that’s wrong/silly/won’t work that they’re wrong (or even if you are scared they might be right, you don’t care. You’re doing it anyways).

• When you celebrate yourself and your creativity, you are teaching the world and most importantly yourself, that your ideas, your work, you as a creator, are worth celebrating as much as anything else.
  You’re a builder of magical things, whatever they may be, and deserve celebration each time you sit down and devote time and energy (even just a few minutes!) to those creations.

So my fellow writers (and all creatives), this is my Valentine to you:

Thank you for devoting time to yourself and to your work. Thank you for imagining what might be and working towards it, thank you for asking questions rather than accepting the existing answers, and thank you for creating new worlds with me.

Roses

I made these bath salts (pictured above) to celebrate myself today with a cozy bath after my writing time.

As I made them, I imagined pouring self-love into the mix, as well as love for all I’m creating this year and the pleasure and fun I’m going to feel while I do it.
Now, I can tap back into all those wonderful feelings and anchor into them further each time I take a bath.

For a pint, I used half and half dried rose petals to Epsom salts (1 c each), plus 1 tbsp dried lavender flowers and 1 tbsp sea salt.
There’s really no way to mess this up: Swap things out and use whatever feels most luxurious and celebratory to you!

So take a bath, or a shower, or I don’t know, just sprinkle the salts in front of your doorways, and let’s get back to creating.

The work you have to share with the world isn’t just important: It’s revolutionary. Thank you for all that you do.

Thanks for reading Roots + Branches!
I'm on a mission to help my fellow creatives build sustainable, joyful writing practices that give their biggest, most magical, and important ideas space to come to light.

You can support my work by sharing this newsletter, becoming a paid Root subscriber, joining our Mycelia virtual co-writing community, or by working with me one-on-one.

Thank you for your support, and happy writing!