"That's okay, honey. You're just not all that creative," the teacher said.

I was ten years old. It was Saturday afternoon, and I was one of five students in a crochet class at Stitchville, USA. As I jammed my incomprehensible pile of knots into my jacket pocket along with all my frustrations, I also unknowingly closed the door on an understanding of myself. I believed the teacher's words; I was not creative. The evidence was in a tangled mess in my pocket.

I am not sure what she actually said that day. Likely a poorly-executed-but-well-intended attempt to ease my frustration. The knotty evidence in my pocket, when paired with her words, however, shaped what I decided about myself and what I believed for another twenty years.

This formative experience is commonly called an ‘art scar’. They are often acquired at a young age, and the accompanying ‘art shame’ can remain actively at work within us well into adulthood or even the rest of our days. While you may not readily recall your first art-scar experience, you may have a knee-jerk response to even the suggestion of doing anything creative.

"Creative? Not me. I can’t even draw a straight line."

Too often 'creativity' is assigned only to artists, musicians, or writers – professionals who do things well. But here is the truth: Creativity is our very nature from our first breath to our last. We create our lives daily. Creativity is within each of us in one form or another but far too often is quashed or suppressed to our detriment.

I remember the day my limiting view of myself changed. I was attending a women's retreat, and we arrived at the obligatory craft project. My ten-year-old self in a thirty-year-old body tentatively approached a table covered in one-foot-square upholstery samples, mounded three-feet high in every conceivable color. My hands unconsciously dug deep into the piles of fabric. Soon my arms were buried up to the elbows in fabric, and something within me stirred. One hour later, I had created a wildly imperfect upholstery covered journal. I loved it dearly.

Two decades of art shame fell away, and a creative dam was broken.

Elizabeth Bayer is a graduate of Green Lotus’s 200-hour and 300-hour yoga teacher-training programs. She is a noted lecturer, workshop leader, and author of two non-fiction books dealing with self-discovery – her 2003 memoir Wednesdays at the Fluff 'n' Fold and 2016's Yoga Expression Spirit in which she chronicles the three pillars of her life. In 2020, Elizabeth and her husband founded the Annandale Art and Textile Center, the non-profit home of the Heart of the Lakes Weavers, a vocational-weaving program employing individuals with social and developmental disabilities.

Insight & Inspiration