The word nurturing conjures up images of mother’s with babies in arms, or nurses by sick beds. While these are real images of what it means to nurture, I wanted to explore what the word means with regards to creativity. How can we nurture creativity? Do we carry it gently in our arms or give is lots of rest and food? While creativity is not really an external thing like some appendage, it is more internal like a heart or lung that give life or breath. So how do we nurture what gives us life or breath? As a verb nurture means to care for and encourage the growth or development of. In order to do this we need to acknowledge that creativity can grow or develop. If creativity is the use of the imagination or original ideas then we can see that for our original ideas to grow or become numerous, encouraging them to do so is possible. If you look at the care work that a mother or nurse performs in their nurturing you see work. Hard work. Exhaustive work. Selfless time serving others. Focused on other’s health or benefit not their own. If creativity is the focus of our work then finding ways that benefit creativity, imagination, original thinking would be our work.

One of the ways I have found to do this is through reading. Reading other’s thoughts often inspires my own. And then time away to noodle on those thoughts. Many people get creative inspiration in the shower. Maybe it’s because their brain has time to run away with their thoughts. Nothing else has their attention so the imagination is free to roam, to try out scenarios, to figure. If we just fill, fill, fill our brains with information it doesn’t go in any faster. We can only take in at a rate that our funnel allows. Everything else is just wasted. Like filling a cup of coffee, no matter how much we want to drink the whole pot, we can’t fit it in the cup. We have to stop, walk away from the pot, sip at it, and then there is room for more. Creativity is similar, we need to fill our minds with materials (ideas we have read or seen) and then walk away and sip at them, taking them into places in our mind where we figure them, we roll them around and see if they have merit or usefulness. And then after a while we add some more. But without the figuring time there is no room for more.

Practically speaking, in order to nurture our creative mind, we must add to it and then we must let our brain play with it. What we add is important. We must make choices. Not everything is a healthy choice. Not everything contributes to our creativity. If we want it to grow, we must nurture it with good quality food. Good quality creative juices come from quality creative sources. There are many…literature, arts, film, discussion. We must sort out what is junk food, we all know what junk food looks like – lots of flavor to hide the sugar or empty calories. What does good quality creativity look like? It is like good quality food, it is colorful in a natural way, it is not covered in something that hides its false quality, it is delicious to our senses, it is satisfying to our soul. We find good quality food from farmers directly – have you ever tasted a real home-grown tomato or strawberry? We find good quality creative inspiration from makers directly – something you have an innate passion in, something you connect with on a deeper level. The more we appreciate the creative inspiration when we see it, the more we recognize the imposter.

Now that we have added to our creative reservoir, we must give time to absorb, to think, to ponder on it. This time is essential for growth. Just as those tomatoes and strawberries need a long time on the vine to soak in as much sun and nutrients as possible to produce ripe fruit, so do our creative juices need time to ripen. How much time, depends on the fruit. As the creativity opens the scent takes over and shows the masterpiece for what it is. Delectable! As this Peony begins to unfold I just know the wait will be worth the explosion of sight and smell. The work of nurturing is hard, arduous, often isolating, but the result is magical!