The truth is in the data, and the art...

Apparently, my smartwatch thinks I’m failing at life.

Reader, I’ve been doing all the things to reduce stress and sleep better, but every day my body battery shows up depleted, my stress levels stay high, and my sleep score hovers stubbornly between poor and fair. The hard part is, there isn’t much I can actually shift to lighten the load.

This isn’t a sob story about how busy I am. What’s most interesting, and the reason I’m sharing this, is that my creative play is telling the same story.

​In last week’s Permission to Play group, I invited everyone to do a Free Play Friday activity (you can still download the recording here). The piece I made (above) showed nothing but internal chaos, a mirror of what’s clearly going on inside my body and mind!

This is what happens when creativity is left unfiltered.

Sure, I can bring in some of the skills I’ve learned like adding white here, playing with thick and thin mark-making there, but mostly my art making produced raw, messy energy spilling out on the page.

That’s the power of creative play. It shows us what we’re really carrying, even when we don’t want to see it.

The real question is: what is YOUR creative play trying to tell you when you stop trying to control it?

Your turn Reader

If you’d like to loosen up and see what your own creativity might be saying, here are three things you can try:

1. Messy lines: take a pen or pencil and fill the page with fast, scribbly marks without lifting your hand. Too hard to start? Close your eyes, move your body to music, and let the lines follow.
2. One-colour collage: rip up paper in a single colour and glue it down without worrying about the outcome. Use fabric, add words, or pull scraps from an old magazine or newspaper.
3. Draw without looking: keep your eyes on an object in front of you (a cup, flower, or chair etc) and draw it without looking at the page. Take it further by colouring it in or drawing the same thing every day this week.

These activities help take the judgment out of creative play and free your mind to simply make and create. If it feels hard to start, don’t worry, that’s completely normal. We’ve been conditioned to think art is only for a select few, when in fact it’s essential for all of us to have safe ways to express what’s happening inside us.

👉 If you’d like to explore this more deeply, join us for the next live Play Session inside the Permission to Play group. It’s a safe space to make, reflect, and discover what’s happening for you with no pressure to get it “right.” Join the group and get access to the WhatsApp community group or reply to this email and I will send you the link.

In the meantime, take a look at the FPF session below and let me know what you create, I love seeing play pieces!

Until soon Reader.

Sending love on the wind.

Delphie Joy xox

PS: You don’t need any art skills to join Permission to Play. Just bring your curiosity and wonder!

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Loving these musings? I pour a lot of heart and soul into these emails. If you think someone you know might enjoy, forward it on!

Thanks for being here and sharing,

DelphieJoy xox

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I live and work on the traditional lands of the Jaggera and Turrabal First Nations People. I honour and respect this Country and the Elders, past, present and emerging and thank them for their continued care.

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