Earlier this week, I did something I haven’t done in years: I let someone take me through a guided meditation, and I actually paid attention.

This came after months of my friend and teacher gently — and then not so gently — suggesting that I would really benefit from doing some heart-and-soul-and-body exploration work, because she’d seen me go from being the most vibrantly expressive person in a given room to someone who could barely dig up an answer to “how are you feeling?” that wasn’t “tired.”

I couldn’t even argue with her, because she was right. For more than a year, I’ve been putting every emotional reaction I’ve had, good or bad, into a box marked “deal with this later” in the back of my brain, and squishing my heart down to make sure it fit in the box when I closed the lid.

This was (is) a survival tactic, and not a rare one. Call it emotional distancing, emotional detachment, emotional blunting — it all amounts to the same basic coping mechanism: holding ourselves apart from our emotional responses in an attempt to keep ourselves safe.

For me, that distancing was about protecting my ability to function. Like so many other creatives, I feel things deeply and overwhelmingly. The past year and a half have been full of so much fear and loss and overpowering grief that I was sure that if I let myself feel any of it, if I opened that box of emotions more than the tiniest bit required to show empathy and care, that I would fall apart. And falling apart wasn’t an option — I’m the sole breadwinner in my household, I’ve got two small kiddos who need me to function, my community needs me to show up and work for the change we know can be possible. I didn’t have time for an emotional collapse.

But I trust this friend, and I trusted her ability to hold me safely and make sure I didn’t completely collapse (I believe my exact words were “we can do this, but you have to make sure I’m functional by the time we get off Zoom, because I have another meeting like fifteen minutes after this”).

So we did this exercise. I opened the lid. I let the box become a room, the room become a library, full of endless shelves, each book holding the stories I’ve told myself, the stories others have told me, the stories I’ve believed to be true. I took books off the shelves, and wrote myself notes about what I read. I handed the books to the presence of the librarian, an embodiment of warmth and tenderness and safety, and I left the box open when I climbed out.

The crying started before we even got to the box. It took a long time to stop.

I’ve been struggling with my creativity over the past year-and-change of emotional distancing, and it took this moment to open me up to what I realize now should have been obvious: just as we can’t pour from an empty cup, we can’t create from a hardened heart. Because how can we? Creativity comes from within us, it relies on our ability to be in touch with the deepest, most vulnerable, tenderest parts of ourselves. If we’ve turned those to stone, locked them away, walked as far from them as we can to avoid the touch of their shadows, how can we possibly create something new?

This is not to say, of course, that creativity can’t happen during these times of emotional blunting. There are always bursts of magic, moments of flow, days when we feel like our heads have broken the surface of water when we didn’t even fully understand how much we were drowning. But so often, the things we make outside of those rare, wonderful moments feel hollow. We look at them, hold them in our hands, and say, “okay.” They don’t fill us with joy. They don’t light us up inside. They exist, and they didn’t before, and there’s beauty in that, but it’s not the same, is it? How could it be?

I’m not at all a car person, but I’ve recently started using a metaphor about auto maintenance (I know, so butch of me!) to talk about the way I’ve managed — or not managed — this emotional detachment, this spiritual exhaustion.

The evenings when I turn off my brain, avoid the news, go to bed even earlier than the kids because I just need to stop even trying to be a person if I want to be able to keep functioning? That’s putting gas in the car. It’s the bare minimum required to make sure the engine keeps running, that we can get through the next few miles until it’s time to refuel. It’s survival.

The days when I get to treat myself to a few hours of restorative time — an afternoon without the kiddos when I get to play music as loudly as I want, a long drive when I can listen to an audiobook, a trip alone to a movie that only I want to see? That’s an oil change. It’s maintenance. The car will run without it for awhile if you miss your scheduled appointment, but it’ll still squeak along. You’ll be fine, at least for the moment.

The moments when I’m deeply, wonderfully surrounded by community, without representing an organization or taking part in an action or lending my voice to a struggle but simply being there, soaking up the love and care and emotion of my people, like when I was able to watch a screening of Come See Me in the Good Light in a (masked!!!) crowd of hundreds, or a recent community benefit that featured a fireside chat between three incredible trans women? That’s getting the car detailed — cleaned inside and out, polished to a shine, so that when you slide into the driver’s seat you find your entire body softening, releasing tension, at the simple delight of being in a fresh, clean space. It’s a treat, a rare indulgence, but oh, is it magical when you can do it.

Those car-detailing moments are hard to find, especially in moments like these, when we’re so often rushing and busy and exhausted by the work of living. But what could we do, how much could we soften, if we stopped thinking of them as indulgences, and started thinking of them as something we deserve? What would it be like to create those pockets of time, of space, of community more often, so that our metaphorical cars aren’t full of dust and dirt and spilled Cheerios and kids’ toys and old Dunkin’ bags, so that the “check engine” light stops flashing, so that the gas gauge stays full?

What would it take for us to feel like we deserve those moments? To make them for ourselves? To find opportunities to intentionally, truly soften?

What do we miss out on, when we don’t?

The warm, loving librarian I imagined in the guided meditation I did earlier this week took the form of my dog Sammi, who died just under a year ago. She was my sweetest companion, my loyal guardian, my nap buddy, my babies’ protector, my daily reminder of the existence of unconditional love. When she died, I was already emotionally distancing myself from the grief of the world, and so I didn’t grieve for her. To be honest, I still haven’t. But in that moment, that visualization, with my eyes closed and tears rolling down my face, I remembered what it was like to feel her weight leaning against me, to feel her tongue licking up my tears, to feel the cold, wet press of her nose against mine.

It opened up a box I’d forced closed. Not completely. But the lid was pushed aside, and everything didn’t fall apart.

I’ve been trying, and failing, to write a version of this newsletter for months. Today, the words are flowing. Today, there’s softness. Today, I can create.

Will you?

how soft is your heart, right in this moment?

when you ask yourself “what am I feeling?”, what are the answers that emerge? do you have to dig in deep to find an emotion, or are they close to the surface, accessible, tangible? where do you feel them in your body? do they flow through you, or are they stuck in one place, blocked off and cornered?

wherever your emotions are: how did they get there? is that where you want them to be? what would you say to a friend, a neighbor, a fellow creative if the softness (or lack hardness) of their heart was the same as yours?

how does emotional softness impact your ability to create?

are you able to create from a place of emotional distance? what happens to the quality of your work, and your experience of creativity, when you tuck your emotions away or blunt your responses to the world around you? are there certain emotions that you need access to in order to create, while others can be pushed away or ignored? what have you noticed about your ability not just to create your own work, but to engage creatively in community, when a soft heart and vulnerability feel out of reach?

what do you lose when you shut yourself off to softness — creatively, and in community?

what happens to you when you harden yourself to the small, simple beauty of everyday life? what are the other signals you’ve found that let you know you’ve started to detach yourself from your heart? when you lose access to your strongest, most overwhelming emotions — fear, anger, grief —what happens to the sweeter ones — wonder, pleasure, joy, delight? are you able to show up for others authentically? to create with intention and care?

are you able to show up for yourself?