Real talk: I attempted the “no art” thing for nearly four months. My hands and soul needed to rest after a beast as large as thesis to fall in love again, to be able to work without pangs of anxiety wrenching my chest with every knot I tied against a flower’s stem. 

But here’s what sometimes happens after you hiatus from your passion for nearly four months: you get scared. It seems far away, foreign. Creative thoughts ravaged my brain while I worked at camp and the few weeks following but my hands didn’t connect. I remembered how much my hands hurt sometimes in the process of tying thousands of flowers together. I remembered not being able to breathe in the studio some days because the burden on my shoulders was heavy. 

But when something’s a part of your soul, when something used to be so familiar, you cannot be scared. Last night I felt bravery knocking from the inside, I let it out and bravery tore all of those thorny lies out of my body and stomped them into the dirt. And I made something. 

It feels like I’m home again. No anxiety, no stress, no fear of failure like I felt with thesis anymore — just bravery. I was upset with myself all summer for neglecting art but I think I needed to give myself time away to fall in love again. And oh, how it’s so much sweeter now. My arms are elbow deep into the mess. I remember why I love making. I remember why I was created to create.