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Creativity can be a strange and elusive thing. Acclaimed author Elizabeth Gilbert has written a lot about the creative process. In her novel, Big Magic, Gilbert defines creativity as, ‘the relationship between a human being and the mysteries of inspiration.’ The universe, she says, ‘buries strange jewels within us all and then stands back to see if we can find them.’

Sometimes the thought of creating something—whatever that something may be—feels inherently overwhelming, because, at least in our culture, it encompasses a level of expectation that what you create should be brilliant, and if it’s not particularly ‘good’, then why are you doing it?

I guess it’s because when we do, in Gilbert’s words, ‘anything new,’ there’s an inherent fear of failure, a fear that we aren’t worthy, that we don’t deserve the rewards of creativity. When I say ‘rewards’, I don’t mean success or wealth. I mean the catharsis that human beings experience just by creating. That fear isn’t going to go away, so we might as well embrace that creativity and fear go hand-in-hand and allow them to work in unison.

I’ve found that creativity is also a valuable tool to work through grief or trauma, because according to Gilbert, grief requires enormous creativity. Grief can elicit a despair that requires us to somehow figure out how we are going to live without something we thought we wouldn’t have to live without (whether that’s a person or something else entirely). Being creative, then, can allow us to both retreat into ourselves but also interact with something outside of ourselves. What we produce doesn’t have to be physical, either. For those who might not define themselves as typically ‘creative’, this can manifest in ways other than painting or writing a poem. It can mean creating the self by having the difficult conversation, by growing. In doing so, says Gilbert, ‘you’re bringing yourself into being.’