Your fifth adornments as a whole woman: Voice + Creativity
What does your voice reveal about you?
Do you sound confident or hesitant? Do you reveal, flatten, or hide your true feelings? Are you speaking your truth or afraid how you might be judged?
You know how your body responds when you listen to an amazing actor, singer, or speaker, or someone tell it like it is with full feeling? You nod your head. A soft “mmm” vibrates in your throat. You throw your head back in laughter. Or tears well up in your eyes.
That’s because they’re using the full range of their instrument, their voice.
♥ How do you speak?
♥ How do you express yourself?
♥ How do you create?
What’s your voice tone like?
- Is it aggressive to shield your frightened little child?
- Is it soft, pretending weakness in a man’s world or one in which you have no authority?
- Is it a pressured brightness where “everything’s great!” to hide difficult emotions?
- Is it arrogant trying to bury insecurity and panic?
- Is it practiced and cultivated so as not to to reveal your vulnerability?
- Or are you rich and deep and resonant, transparently sharing the full range and nuance of your embodied emotional life?
Your fifth chakra, physically housed in your voice, neck, and mouth holds your creativity, self-expression, bridges body and mind, and is a portal to your imaginal realms.
Your early beginnings
As an infant, you whimpered and wailed, cried with the full immensity of your little being. Every cell in you told your mother or father what you needed. Now!
But as a child, you may have been told to “Stop crying!”
“Nice girls don’t ask for such things!”
“Be quiet! ___ is looking at you!”
“Ask nicely!”
“Shut up or I’ll ___”.
So you learned to control your expression and suppress your voice. You learned to learn to control your mouth and jaw muscles. Your wild and hungry needs. Over time, your emotions became civilized, that is, silenced or buried. Your nervous system impulses were blocked or rerouted.
Your voice shut down from a full expression your body and was driven up into your head or anywhere else, where it was safe and approved of.
Yes, socialization is essential, but it’s also hugely damaging to your self-expression and creativity.
Why is your voice important?
Your voice is a barometer of your truth. Who you are. 
Your feelings and your power. It’s a direct expression of your heart.
The center of your self-expression, you express (or don’t express) your needs, your wants, and desires with your voice. You claim your right to take up space, to speak, and to have. To will, act, and manifest. In fact, all your rights as a whole woman. And from which you also claim the rights of others.
It’s the source from which you manifest. From where you put out and share your uniqueness with others.
Your creativity
Creare, in Latin, means to make life, to produce where there was nothing before.
As a woman, you create. Whether you birth a child, a sculpture, or a corporation, your creativity is your unabashed expression of your true self.
So many women think they have to do something special to identify as creative. You are creative! No matter who said otherwise or what you believe about yourself.
Because every day you weigh options and make decisions. Whether you cross-stich, hoe your garden, pen poems, raise your children, manage your team, or play the clarinet, you create your life every day.
Here are 7 ways to feed and water your creativity:
1. Nourish your creative juices
Take in and be around others who are creative. You may have not been given permission to be creative, so stopped giving it to yourself.
The first step is to feed yourself. Explore different art and creative forms. Even what’s outside your familiar interests.
Go to a concert, an art show, a poetry reading, a craft fair, or a rose garden competition. Check out events in your area. For a mere hour or two, you receive a whole lot of food for your creative spirit.
2. Play!
What makes you feel playful?
Access your inner child for she knows how to play.
Give yourself permission to be simple, ordinary, ridiculous, frivolous, indulgent, and child-like. That’s where your beauty and flow and wonder live.
When you play, your mind stops and you open up to another dimension. You open to allowing and receiving inspiration. It’s a way to simply do and not judge.
3. Open to and own your creativity
Cultivate your creativity, your life-juice. Whether you love to garden, beautify your home, paint animals, do stand-up improv, or dance, give it to yourself.
What are some things you loved and longed to do as a child? Begin now.
What you create won’t look like what someone else will create. That’s the point—it’s to be totally you.
If your fears or blocks come up, work with a coach or therapist or art teacher.
4. Embrace your animus
You may be wildly creative, but unable to express and manifest your talents in the world. This is where your animus or masculine energy comes in.
Your animus is an inner force that acts for you ( and no one else!) to put your gifts out into the world.
If you struggle with putting yourself out there, chances are there’s something in your relationship with your father that needs working through and/or that your mother and women in your family modeled that you’re not supposed to speak out, be assertive, or have power.
Don’t be hard on yourself because women through the centuries have been treated as supporters of males and not as valuable. So it’s in our feminine DNA. But the great thing is we can now reverse that outmoded dynamic.
5. If you’re stuck …
Begin small. Do what’s simple and easy. And most importantly, F-U-N.
Don’t set any goals. Play.
If it’s too scary to draw, buy a coloring book.
If it’s too scary to write a short story, journal.
Find company, like a friend, a group, or take a workshop. You may be someone who likes creating with others, not in solitude.
I highly recommend The Artist’s Way, a fabulous resource to un-stick and open you up to your creativity.
6. If you’re a perfectionist, set out to fail
Plan on failing. Once. Twice. And a hundred times.
Imagine the worst. Then set out to achieve it.
It’s a great way to start. Because if you’re a perfectionist, you’re terrified to begin for fear of failing. So you don’t act.
The best way to succeed is to set out to fail!
7. Share and build creative community
Once you’re creating, begin sharing your creations with the world. If you knit wool scarves, make spice blends or herbal remedies, are a closet artist, sculptor, or musician, share your creations with friends, family, and the community.
You need to be seen and admired by others to continue to grow. Others may receive more than you imagine.
And the exchange of design and concepts and work are fertile fodder for you.
[If you got this far, here’s a side note: Yes, this blog post is titled correctly. I believe both voice and creativity are equally important! And, its imperfect grammar is a good example of play 🙂 ]
Happy Creating!!
[ Click here for the Introduction, Body, Sexuality, Power, and Love posts of this 8-part blog series.]
[Image: Holly Sierra ]
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