Creative Healing

Oct 12, 2025
3 min read

There’s something sacred about arriving at a place you once only dreamed of. Not a grand, sweeping arrival. Not a loud celebration. But a quiet moment of recognition. A pause. A breath. A glance backward to say: I made it here. And I’m still becoming.

That’s how it feels to be on the other side of writing and publishing my book.

For months, I poured pieces of my heart into those pages. Truths I lived through, healed through, wrote through. And now I find myself doing something unexpected: rereading my own words as if they were written for me, right now. Because they were. And maybe that’s what creative healing really is. Not just making something, but letting it remake you.

I’m in that phase right now.

The one where clarity is beginning to form, and creativity feels less like pressure and more like presence. I’ve been moving slowly through this season. Feeling what it means to heal through creation, not just after it. Sitting with old wounds that show up in new ways. Relearning how to trust my voice. Honoring how far I’ve come without rushing where I’m going.

And through it all, something beautiful has begun to take shape.

I recently started the podcast series. Something that’s been on my heart for a while now...where I get to sit down with creatives who’ve shaped my life, inspired my path, and mirrored back the importance of healing through expression. There are lifelong friends. They know what it means to feel broken, open by life, and still choose to create. These conversations feel like balm. Not interviews, but exchanges. Not performances, but presence. We talk about burnout, grief, joy, self-doubt, identity, and the creative rituals that help us return to ourselves. Every episode feels like a little piece of medicine, for me, and I hope for anyone listening.

It’s been healing just to listen. To witness the ways we’re all figuring it out in real-time.

And in many ways, that’s what Create Space has always been about.

What is Creative Healing Anyway?

I don’t think there’s one definition. I think it lives in the overlap between the parts of you that ache and the parts of you that still want to express. Creative healing is when making becomes mending.

It’s a poem that says what you couldn’t say out loud.

It’s painting through anxiety.

It’s singing into grief.

It’s journaling after therapy.

It’s a breath. A pause. A playlist. A dance in your kitchen.

It’s finding beauty where you thought there was only survival.

Find Your Own Version

If you’re reading this and wondering what creative healing could look like for you, here’s what I’ll say: it doesn’t need to look like anything.

You don’t have to be an artist to heal creatively. You just have to be curious.

What used to bring you joy before life got loud?

What have you been craving a safe outlet for?

Where in your body do you feel the need to express without judgment?

Try something small. Let it be messy. Make without the need to share. Journal like no one will read it. Create like your inner child is watching.

My Own Version

There’s a strange tenderness in reading your own writing after time has passed.

I’m revisiting my book now, not as the writer, but as the reader. And in doing so, I’m realizing how much of what I wrote was my own medicine. It still is. I’m doing the practices. I’m sitting with the questions I posed to others. I’m letting the words hold me again. And it feels like a loop closing. Like a quiet reminder that healing isn’t a straight line.

We write to heal.

We read to remember.

We return to our own voice to rebuild trust.

A Note For You

If you’re in a season of creative pause, gentle return, or full-on reinvention, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re rebuilding.

Let creativity be a soft landing.

Let healing be something you don’t have to force.

Let your voice find you again, in its own time.

And when you’re ready, speak. Create. Move. Rest. Begin again.

You’re allowed to be a masterpiece and a work-in-progress all at once.

With love and light,

Ariel