But before I allow that voice to push me into the muck and mire of my own insecurities, I recall something that was said, which I found interesting. One woman described herself as artistic but said she was definitely not an artist. She is a business owner. She is dynamic and creative, designing her business as a community touchpoint. She said her daughter was a true artist, a painter, but she was merely artistic.

Merely artistic. Having or revealing natural creative skills.

Can one be merely artistic, but not an artist? Conforming to art standards and satisfying aesthetic requirements, but not making art?

Artists are known for their creative imagination and skill in expressing themselves through artistic mediums. I like this definition from Ecwid: An artist is anyone capable of conceptualizing an emotion, idea, or moment, or of more value, someone who can express themselves using their imagination. This business owner, this beautiful, successful, compassionate woman, was not just merely artistic.

However, another woman agreed, saying her sixty-year life had a non-linear trajectory. She had worked in many different fields, including environmental science, philanthropy, photography, filmmaking, and government, and she was accomplished in all those endeavors. But she was not an artist. She was also merely artistic.

I did not speak up. I did not disagree with these women. When asked, as a get-to-know-each-other exercise, what was on our minds, I shared that what was on my mind was the notion of getting out of our own way. Someone had told me that many people don’t know how to get out of their own way. They make their lives more complicated than they need to be. We’ve all done it, caught ourselves in the web of our own making, woven from the impostor syndrome, the insecurities, the familial programming, the smooth-tongued devil that talks us onto the ledge and dares us to jump. The consultant who gives us all the reasons we may not succeed at something to help us prepare to leap over the obstacles, but instead weighs us down in our own doubts.

My life, too, has also been nonlinear, and I’ve done many things in my nearly sixty years. Yet, because they were done in a small town and not a big city, not New York or San Francisco, not even Denver or San Antonio, the accomplishments seem less to me, which is crazy because I had to work harder to get my name out there. My rural existence was novel and interesting to those in New York and other big cities. I was a rarity to them—someone from nowhere, figuring it out. Conceptualizing emotions and ideas, expressing them with my tools of creativity—my words, my heart, my physical presence, my listening ears, my kind and compassionate soul.

Creating creates me, not just the creation—the writing, the collage, the painting, the poem, the music—but me, excavating something, my doubts, my insecurities, the stuff I have put in my own way, preventing me from taking the next step and then the next.

So here’s what I want to say now—what I wish I’d said to those beautiful women in the room that day:

You are artists.

Because creating anything—a business, a life, a family, a community touchpoint—that emerges from imagination and intention is art. Because merely artistic doesn’t exist. You are no less an artist because your medium is people, spreadsheets, earth, or policy. Art is not always hung in a gallery or read aloud in a bookstore. Sometimes it’s how you host, hold space, or harvest joy.

We get to decide what we call ourselves. And it’s time we reclaim the word “artist” from the museums and give it back to the makers.

Catori slept. Her afternoon nap was an almost daily ritual since the car accident. On this day, her fingers were delicately folded around a piece of broken pottery, no more than an inch wide, its shape indicative of a bowl - white on the outside, an ornate geometric black and white pattern painted gracefully on the inside.

Her sleep was heavy, weighted. She felt as if she were slipping the bounds of earth and time. She tried to wake herself, afraid of how deep the sleep might take her, how far she might actually fall. Intellectually, she knew that this type of sleep was what she needed, what her body craved, much the way an addict needed cocaine or a menstrual woman needed chocolate. But it was this suffocating sleep that she feared and fought.

She only recently began fighting sleep. The first few months after the accident she couldn't sleep, her head felt as if it were in a ligature, pain pulsed over her crown and along her occipital nerve, behind her left eye. The burning pain in her neck and back wouldn't allow her a moment of peace. She went through her days in a vacuous state, remembering nothing. This was followed by weeks that were nothing more than sleep. She slept continually. These days she napped once or twice a week, sometimes for 45 minutes, sometimes for two hours.

Somewhere in the distance she heard a door open and close, a heavy thud and the voices of children. Children. Yes. They were her children. Home from school. But the weight of sleep held her down, pressed her into the mattress, her eyelids too substantial to lift. She tried to open her eyes, but her brain was no longer listening, it had taken over. It was in charge and it wanted to sleep.

It was shutting down. Little by little the synapses were going out, like the stars in the sky, twinkling in one moment and imploding in upon them self into nothing. She felt it. She knew each day a few more neurons stopped firing and that she was slowly being transformed from a vibrant, living galaxy into a black hole. She would look at her children one day and not know who they were.

She knew this and she was not yet forty. She had hit her head one too many times. Slammed it into a tree while sledding, landed on it in a fall from a trampoline, another fall from a horse, and then the car accident. Who knew that the jarring back and forth motion would slam her Jello-like brain into her skull over and over and over? That it would change everything. Her life was slipping from her and hse had not fulfilled her dreams, achieved her goals. She had not published her first novel, she was not producing and selling her art, and her corporate career ended soon after the blackouts began. She did have her children. Two sons. Alien life forms who burping and farting and discussion of penises were beyond her comprehension. Yet they were her best creations.

There was squealing and the repetitive thumping of a ball being bounced against the floor. She heard the door of her bedroom open, the plodding of each of his size two footsteps. He forgot to take his shoes off and leave them at the door.

"Mom! Mom!" his seven-year-old voice released her from the captivity of her sleep. "I love you," he said falling across her chest, his arms on either side of her. She managed to life her left arm from he bed and return his embrace.

"How was school today?"

"Good," he said and turned and ran from the room.

He understood her afternoon naps. He was two-years-old when the accident happened. He only knew his mother as a perpetually tired woman and yet he loved her unconditionally.

She rolled over onto her side, heart elevated as she had learned in yoga and felt the shard of pottery in her right hand. She stared at it, turned it over in her palm. a Thousand years ago a woman formed the bowl with coils, smoothed it with a stone handed down from her grandmother to her mother to her, painted it with an organic paint made from Rocky Mountain Bee Plant boiled and reduced, using a fiber brush made from the chewed end of a yucca leaf, and fired it in a trench lined with sandstone, capped with a hot wood fire. Catori could see the brush strokes. Had it been a big bowl? Did someone eat out of it? Or was it used for ceremony?

Pottery was something women created. The elaborate black patterns against a white background were handed down from mother to daughter. This was what women did. They made pottery. They cooked. They raised children and they did it in a communal setting of aunts, nieces, cousins, mothers, and daughters together supporting and encouraging one another.

Catori needed women in her life. A clan of her own. It was in a communal gathering where Catori first learned to make her own pottery; a workshop in a community center where half a dozen women gathered and learned to feel the clay between their fingers. To wedge it and work it until it was soft and pliable, then form it into a ball and place it on a wheel head. Hands dipped in water; and electric motor spinning the clay beneath wet hands, fingers pressed together, palms pushing the clay into the center of the wheel. Pushing until it rose in a cylinder between her hands and she pressed it down into itself, into her palm and started over again feeling the slick wetness of the clay ooze between her fingers. She was there to relearn how to be creative. Always a writer, six months after the accident no words formed in her head. She stared at blank sheets of paper unable to form a sentence until she gave up and slept the rest of the day away.

"If I can't write, what's the point in living?" Catori said to one of the dozen of doctors and therapists that filled her life after the accident.

"It will come back," the doctor promised. "Try something visual or tactile. Do something with your hands."

That was how Catori found herself in a pottery class with other women: Rainey, Julie, Kelly, Beth. All women in their 30s and 40s, raising children, running businesses, married. The women talked while they worked, chatted about spouses and children, about friends and bosses, dreams and wishes. They discussed politics and laughed together, sipping homemade orange liqueur.

"Try forming the edge of the bowl like a piecrust," Rainey suggested.

"Collar in the top of the vase and then flare it out," Beth recommended.

"Sometimes I feel they don't listen to me unless I yell at them," Kelly said.

"I asked them to pick up their toys and when I got back the toys were still on the living room floor. I threw them out with the trash," Julie added.

Catori observed. She listened. She copied the shape, the form, the dimensions of Rainey's bowl. She mimicked the design Kelly stamped into the still wet clay. She realized the challenges of being a mother were not unique to her alone. She ogles over the sensuality of brown clay that turned to chocolate in her hands.

Working with clay taught her patience. It took weeks to learn to center the ball of clay, to pull open the cylinder, to rais the walls of a bowl. It took months of practice to throw bigger, wider, larger bowls. Clay is imperfect. Her work was shaped by hand, something she created with her own strength and vision.

Had women done the same thing a thousand years ago as they dug the earth, formed functional bowls, jars, mugs, and ladles? Did they talk about their husbands out tending the fields or hunting deer? Did they gossip about the family living on the next mesa or up the adjacent canyon? Did they brag about how well their son played a hoop game or danced at ceremony? Did they show off their daughter's first piece of pottery? Did they share their pigments? Dig clay together? Did they show each other how they painted each stripe, angle, and pattern? They created priceless works of art everyday. Pottery traded for beads and seeds and things from lands far away. Elaborate black on white patterns reflecting the tapestry of the stars in the sky, the path of the moon--an offering to their god. It was Rainey who gave Catori the pottery shard in her hand and another natural clay piece that looked like a woven basket. Tiny indentations made with a fingernail the same size, the exact curve of Catori's own pinky fingernail. they came from Rainey's mother's home near Cortez, Colorado.

It was sacred, the pottery shard Catori held in her hand; an ancient woman's form of worship. She felt connected to the past through it. By holding it in her hand the purpose of art became clearer. Art didn't have to be distant, something intellectual and ethereal, the aesthetic of which was debated on college campuses and in New York lofts. Art was supposed to be something created everyday. Art was living. Living was art. Something formed and shaped, one coil at a time, smoothed, centered, built. Walls were formed with even pressure that forced the clay to reach upward, the potter's fingers acting as guides. The clay was not citrus until fired, the glaze did not shimmer until heated.

It was time to restructure her dreams, rewrite her goals. Writing wasn't about publishing. Her sculpting and pottery weren't about galleries in Santa Fe or reviews in Southwest Art. She was alive. She could write again and she had been given the gift of pottery. She was blessed.

Catori climbed out of bed, replaced the pottery shard in her sacred ritual bowl--one of the first pieces of pottery she ever made. It was turquoise in color, a broken rim all jagged like arroyos and cliffs and in it she had gathered things of meaning and value to remind her. Sage from New Mexico, a piece of brightly colored wool, a raven's feather all gathered during a week of creative exploration, a mudra goddess made out of clay purchased from another woman potter, love notes from her husband. Rocks and crystal from her sons; a foil candy wrapped imprinted with "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life."

She went to the garage and sat down at her pottery wheel and felt the clay slip beneath her fingers.

Submission were evaluated by the Images Staff. Images is the literary arts organization at Fort Lewis College, a nonprofit publisher of unknown poets, writers and artists. Special thanks to Maria's Bookstore and Durango Mountain Resort for providing the contest prizes.

“Unused creativity is not benign…. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame. But we are divine beings, and we are by nature creative. And It gets lost along the way. It gets shamed out of us.” Brene Brown

Unused creativity is dangerous.

Remember this quote the next time you think you don’t have the time or energy to be creative. Remember this quote the next time you think you don’t have the money or the ability to be creative.

Creativity is essential to being human—it's how we process the world, solve problems, and express our inner truths. When we neglect or suppress our creativity, there are real consequences. Here are some of the perils of unused creativity:

1. Creative Stagnation Leads to Emotional Frustration

• Creativity is energy, and when it’s not expressed, it doesn’t just disappear—it turns inward. This can manifest as restlessness, irritability, or even a sense of emptiness.

• Unused creativity often finds an outlet in destructive ways, like self-criticism, comparison, or even cynicism toward others who are creating.

2. Suppressing Creativity Can Lead to Mental and Physical Distress

• People who ignore their creative impulses often experience heightened stress, anxiety, or even depression because they are suppressing an essential part of themselves.

• Creativity is a form of play; without it, life can become rigid, routine, and devoid of spontaneity—contributing to burnout.

3. Creativity Is an Internal Compass—Ignoring It Leads to Disconnection

• Creativity helps us make sense of our experiences. When we ignore it, we lose touch with our intuition and deeper understanding of purpose.

• This disconnection can manifest as feelings of loss, uninspiredness, or uncertainty about what we truly want in life.

• Many people who suppress creativity feel "going through the motions" rather than truly living.

4. Unused Creativity Breeds Regret

• One of the most common regrets people express later in life is not pursuing their creative ideas or passions.

• Creativity often requires courage, and failing to act on it can lead to self-doubt and a nagging feeling of "What if?"

• Every creative impulse is a chance to build something meaningful—whether or not it’s “successful” by external standards.

5. The World Misses Out on Your Unique Perspective

• Creativity is how we contribute something only we can bring to the world. When we hold back, we deprive others of ideas, stories, or innovations that could inspire them.

• Even if your work doesn’t reach millions, it could impact one person profoundly—and that matters.

6. Creativity atrophies when it’s not exercised

• Like a muscle, creativity weakens when it’s not used. The longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to access.

• Many people stop themselves from creating because they fear they aren’t “good enough.” But the truth is that creativity flourishes with practice, not perfection.

How to Honor Your Creativity

• Create without expectation – Allow yourself to make things just for the joy of it, not for an outcome.

• Make space for curiosity – Follow the tiny sparks of interest, even if they don’t seem “productive.”

• Recognize creativity in all its forms—writing, painting, music, problem-solving, gardening, cooking—it is everywhere.

• Silence the inner critic – Permit yourself to create, experiment, and play poorly.

• Surround yourself with creativity – Read, watch, and engage with things that inspire you.

• Commit to creative practice – Even small, consistent actions will keep your creative energy alive.

Creativity isn’t a luxury—it’s essential. Ignoring it leads to stagnation, but nurturing it opens doors to self-discovery, joy, and connection. The choice is always yours and mine.