My Soft Rebellion
I stopped colonizing my creative essence, and it's changing everything I create: my art, my work, my relationships, my life.
Something quiet and powerful is happening in my studio-
and it’s a rebellion.
Not a grab for control, but a laying down of arms.
A refusal to fight a war with myself.
Not a strategy or performance, but a return to rhythm.
To pulse. To presence.
To the core essence of creation: love.
For the first time in a long while,
I’ve been painting with joy.
Not urgency. Not pressure. Not critique.
Just curiosity and play and joy.
And it didn’t happen by accident.
It happened because I made a choice
to stop colonizing my own creativity.
To stop treating my art, and my life, like a conquest-
something to extract from,
to prove my worth with.
In my corporate art career, structure was everything.
Productivity and performance were unquestioned.
So my first rebellion was this:
I eschewed the expectations- the structures- I had learned to submit to
and began to create abstract art.
And I entered the unknown.
When I tried to control the unknown, to enforce my old expectations onto my art to produce,
to validate my worth,
we had a miserable time together.
Because I had to learn something essential:
My essence- not structure- must go first.
In art. In love. In life.
What do I mean by essence? It’s our unique life force, our own creative signature: What we love, desire and what lights us up.
My art was asking to feel me-
and for me to feel myself.
It was showing me that it was never about control.
It was always about relationship with my essence.
But this terrified the part of me
that had strived to survive within a system of domination.
I had to unlearn the voice that said:
“Push harder.
It’s not good enough.
You’re not enough.”
That voice wasn’t leadership.
It was a hostile occupation.
An inner tyrant I inherited from a culture
that demands speed, control, and constant output.
But our creative souls are wise.
And mine finally refused to be colonized.
So I made a vow:
To like some part of every painting I make
and to let myself love liking it.
Not because it’s perfect,
but simply because love is how I feel most alive
and how I create more of what I love.
This is the practice:
To relate to feeling before pressure to perform.
To find beauty through exploration, not expectation.
To create structure from devotion to love, not demand.
This is what I now call creationship-
the union of essence and form- within and without.
A feminine life force met by a masculine structure
that provides, steadies, and supports creation
without dominating and crushing it.
And it’s not just how I feel in the studio.
This shift has rippled into every part of my life.
I feel lighter.
More open and playful.
More compassionate with myself.
More self-forgiving.
More intimate with my own heart.
More receptive to beauty, to love, to life.
My nervous system no longer braces.
My soul is no longer being managed like a business plan.
There’s space now for joy. For trust. For miracles that do happen.
This isn’t just about painting.
Colonization happens
every time we override our intuition.
Every time we silence our desire,
dismiss our needs,
gaslight our own feelings.
It happens when we demand performance,
but withhold tenderness.
When we manage our own hearts
like territory to be conquered and controlled.
This rebellion is for anyone who’s done that.
Who’s whispered “not enough” to themselves.
Who’s ready to stop striving to survive
and start creating from love.
To treat ourselves- and life- not as something to conquer,
but as something that wants to meet us where we love.
This is the end of self-colonization.
The end of managing our souls like to-do lists.
The end of believing we must dominate life to belong to it.
This is my soft rebellion.
Not against effort,
but for effort as devotion.
Not against discipline,
but discipline in service of desire.
Not against structure,
but for the inner love affair of structure and essence
as sacred creationship.