Hey {{First Name | there}},

Last week I sent you an email about something new I've been building.

Move & Make Art Studio — an in-person art series for kids, launching in Iowa City this summer. As far as I know, none of you live in Iowa City!

The moment it left my outbox, the spiral hit.

Oh, well. Now I've truly lost them.
I'm so chaotic, launching yet another new thing.
These people have probably had enough of me.
Who am I, anyway?
What is even the thread here?
They’re all just thinking, “Why can't she just — pick something?”

I sat with that for a while. The familiar weight of it. The old story that my expansiveness is a liability. That every new thing I bring into the world is one more piece of evidence that I can't be trusted, can't be contained, can't be taken seriously.

And then the replies started coming in.

Warm ones. Genuinely excited ones. More replies than I've gotten in a long time. Someone even reached out to ask about getting involved. People weren't confused by Move & Make — they were activated by it. Delighted, even.

I couldn't ignore that.

This is important data for someone like me who carries a deep wound around the idea that my creativity — my full, sprawling, uncontainable creativity — hurts people. That it asks too much of them. That it costs goodwill rather than building it.

I talked about this wound on the podcast this week, and I cried, which tells you exactly what layer this lives at.

So when reality talked back last week — gently, warmly, undeniably — I had to let it mean something.

Then the weekend came, and the Move & Make flyer went live to the school district.

I sold out a third of the seats.

That included the first full series purchase. Multiple families registering kids for multiple sessions and siblings signed up together. People who saw a simple flyer and a one-page website and didn't need any more convincing.

I don't have a content marketing plan behind Move & Make. I don't have a nurture sequence or a launch strategy. I have a flyer and a clear offer and I got it in front of the right people. And for the people who saw it, the work sold itself.

I can't fully describe how that felt.

As a writer and philosopher, I spend enormous amounts of time and care on my words — on the thinking, the structure, the sentences, the meaning. I publish that work and then I have to do even more work (and use more words) to help it find people who might care, and even the feedback loop is so faint and easy to misread.

If I’m not in a good spot, I can easily loop around the “WTF do I do this for?!?!?!” soundtrack. Creating for crickets. Putting myself out there for little perceivable gain. Reaching out for connection and being met with the void.

Trying to “find your people” who will care about what you write, say, make can feel like damned if you do, damned if you don't — do more to spread the word, burn yourself out, lose the thing that made you want to create it in the first place.

I don't write for the response. I write because I'm compelled to. To process, to pause, to find meaning in ordinary things, to create something that didn't exist before. Writing is part of my work and I believe that deeply. So when I am in a good spot, I share these newsletters without an expectation of response — I trust that me doing the best I can to communicate the thing on my chest is all I need to do.

But this weekend, for the first time in a long time, I got to actually enjoy a tangible reaction to what I'd made. To watch people see value in something I created and exchange value for it — cleanly, directly, immediately.

A secret door opened and let in a whole new source of air.

Here's what I keep turning over:

If I had shrunk — if I had decided that Move & Make was too weird, too off-brand, too much to ask of you — I never would have found out that it wasn't.

The confirmation that I'm safe to be myself was only available on the other side of acting like I was.

My expansion wouldn't bring harm. But I couldn't know that until I stopped protecting you from it.

I don't think I'm the only one carrying this. The belief that your full self — all of it, the sprawling inconvenient beautiful pile of it — is too much. That you have to earn the right to be received before you show up completely.

What if that's backwards?

What if the only way to find out you're safe is to stop waiting until you feel safe first?

Warmly,
Jennifer

P.S. If this newsletter (any letter) has meant something to you, I'd love to hear it. Reply with whatever comes to mind when you answer: "What has Creative Foresight given you permission to do, think, or believe?" I'll be sharing responses on social — let me know if you'd like to be named, tagged, or kept anonymous.

Creative Current is the podcast I just launched with my friend and creative partner, Jess Schimm. We talk open-book style about our relationship with creativity and all it brings up in our lives. I love it so much. I trust you will too.

P.S. Want to encourage someone in your life whose taking creative risks? Share this email with them. It’s an encouragement to me, too!

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