A Life in Bloom: Finding My Way Back to Creativity

Making space to create, without the expectation of making something.

There’s something about being outside, away from the familiar rhythms of everyday life, that allows a little more space to open up.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself thinking more about the things I intended to do this year. I had planned to write a new A Life in Bloom post each month, but somewhere along the way, that intention slipped. As it often does, life took over.

Being a solo parent to two children who need a little more support at the moment means that much of my time and energy is directed towards them. Their needs, their wellbeing and the things they’re navigating have taken priority, as they should. But I’ve also become more aware of how easy it is to lose sight of yourself in the process. Not intentionally, and not all at once. Just gradually, in the spaces where your own needs get pushed a little further down the list.

For me, one of those things has been creativity.

Edenwilde is such a big part of who I am, and making things has always been a natural part of my life. But when your creative practice is also your work, it can be difficult to separate the two. There’s always something to design, something to finish, something to prepare for the next collection. Even when I’m drawing or painting, there’s often a small part of my mind thinking about what the work might become.

And lately, I’ve been craving something different. Not a new project or another idea to develop, but simply the opportunity to make things without needing them to go anywhere.

A day just for me

Today, instead of working from home, I decided to take myself to the Royal Botanic Gardens here in Melbourne. It’s somewhere the children and I spent a lot of time when they were younger. I’ve always found it peaceful, and I have so many memories of wandering through the gardens together. But today, I went on my own.

It was a beautiful spring day. Warm sunshine, a little shade beneath the trees, birdsong and the gentle movement of people passing by. I found a spot to sit, took out my sketchbook and a collection of oil pastels, and began to draw.

There’s something wonderfully uninhibiting about oil pastels. They’re tactile and immediate, and they encourage you to work with colour and shape and just be playful.

I began filling the page with blocks of colour, letting one shape lead to another. Mustard yellow, bright blue, pink, rust. I wasn’t trying to draw anything in particular or working towards a finished piece. I was simply playing.

And somewhere in that process, I felt myself settle.

I wasn’t thinking about the next thing I needed to do. I wasn’t checking off a list or trying to make the most of every minute. I was sitting beneath a tree, making marks on a page, noticing the light and the colours around me. It felt good to be there, with no particular expectation of myself.

I ended up creating two little pieces that I really love. Not because they’re necessarily going to become anything, but because they came from that experience. They’re a small record of the time I spent there, of the colours I was drawn to and the simple pleasure of putting colour on a page and enjoying the texture. And perhaps that’s enough of a reason to create.

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Remembering what drives me

Partway through the afternoon, I put on a podcast featuring one of my all-time favourite creatives, choreographer Twyla Tharp, talking about the creative process on Huberman Lab.

I’ve long admired Twyla. I’ve read her autobiography, Push Comes to Shove, several times, and I also love her book The Creative Habit. Her work has always resonated with me, particularly her extraordinary discipline and commitment to her craft.

One of my most vivid memories of live performance is sitting in the front row of the Australian Ballet watching In the Upper Room, choreographed by Twyla Tharp and set to the music of Philip Glass. It was truly transcendent.

Listening to her speak today brought back memories of my own years as a dancer. I had a strong work ethic from a young age, and that determination to keep going, to work hard and push through challenges, has stayed with me throughout my life. It’s served me well. It’s helped me navigate difficult times, build a business and carry the many responsibilities that come with raising children on my own.

But I’ve also experienced burnout at different points in my life. When you’re used to pushing through, it can be difficult to recognise when you need to stop. When there’s always something that needs doing, resting can feel like something you’ll get to eventually, once everything else is taken care of.

Except everything is rarely taken care of.

There will always be another email, another meal to prepare, another load of washing, another piece of life admin. And when you run a business from home, the boundaries between work and life can become almost impossible to distinguish.

Our home usually feels like a sanctuary, but lately there’s been a lot of stress and worry within its walls. I spend so much of my time there working, managing the household, looking after the children and trying to keep everything moving.

Taking myself somewhere else today felt like a small but meaningful shift. I wasn’t abandoning my responsibilities. I was simply stepping outside them for a little while.

And listening to Twyla speak about creativity, while making something with my hands and allowing my thoughts to wander, reminded me of a part of myself that can sometimes get lost beneath everything else. The part that loves to explore, experiment and make things without needing a reason.

Creativity doesn’t always need a purpose

For a long time, much of my creative practice has been intertwined with Edenwilde. Ideas that begin in a sketchbook often find their way into new greeting cards, art prints or collections. It’s a process I love, and one that continues to inspire the work I do.

I also have a small daily practice at home, when the children are winding down for the evening. Sometimes I’ll sit with a sketchbook and some markers, drawing and playing with ideas that may eventually inform a new design.

But I want to make a little more room for creativity that doesn’t have to become anything.

I want to explore colour, shape and mark-making simply because I’m curious. To experiment without worrying whether something is good, whether it fits with my existing work or whether it will ever be seen by anyone else.

I want to give myself permission to make things that are entirely my own.

Today reminded me that where I create can be just as important as what I’m creating. At home, even when I set aside time to draw, I’m still surrounded by all the things that need my attention. It’s easy for a creative moment to become another task squeezed into an already full day.

Being outside, somewhere beautiful and removed from those familiar demands, allowed me to experience the process differently. There was no pressure to be productive. No expectation to turn the day into something useful. Just time, space, fresh air and the freedom to follow an idea wherever it happened to lead.

It felt restorative in a way that’s difficult to explain, but easy to recognise when you experience it. And it made me realise that perhaps what I’ve been missing isn’t more time to work on my creativity, but more time to simply be creative.

There’s a difference.

Making space for myself

I’ve been thinking about how I might carry this feeling into the weeks ahead. I’d love to make a little time each week to take myself somewhere. Perhaps back to the gardens, perhaps to a café with my sketchbook, or somewhere new that sparks my curiosity. Somewhere I can sit, observe, collect ideas and make things without the usual distractions.

Not every outing needs to be an inspiring experience, and not every drawing needs to turn into something I love. I don’t want to turn this into another commitment that I feel I have to keep up with perfectly.

Rather, I’d like to make it an invitation to myself. A reminder that I can create space for the things that make me feel like me.

Motherhood is an enormous part of my identity, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’m also a person in my own right, with interests, ideas and a creative life that exists beyond the roles I fulfil each day. I think it’s important to remember that.

Perhaps this is another part of learning to live with intention. Not simply being more present in the life I’ve built, but being mindful of the parts of myself that need tending to along the way.

Today, that looked like sitting beneath a tree in the Botanic Gardens, listening to a podcast, playing with oil pastels and letting the afternoon unfold without a plan. Nothing particularly remarkable happened. And yet, I came home feeling a little lighter, with two small pieces of art, a balanced nervous sysytem and a renewed desire to keep exploring.

Sometimes, the things that bring us back to ourselves are the simplest ones.

A little time. A little space. A willingness to follow our curiosity.

And the freedom to make something just because we can.

Until next time,

Lou Jane 🌿