Where's the Love?

Sis,

Is this a safe space? I have to be honest in saying that making creative friends over the last few years has been incredibly hard for me. I hate to say that, but I believe there is power in being honest. Being a creative is such a unique experience because we have our quirks, we have our art forms we love and some of the world just does not understand what we do and why we do it. That's why having creative friends as a creative is so key. You need people that get you and most importantly, see you. They see the beauty in what you love and why you choose to create.



Knowing the importance of having community within the creative world is why I originally built the Triad Women Bloggers Network several years ago. I know how essential it is to have a place where creatives can come together, learn and talk about our journeys with people that truly understand. Although the group is deactivated, I still know the significance of finding your creative community. That has been my personal struggle over the last few years.

In fact, it has been a pain point I have often brought up in therapy. I currently do not feel I have creative friends that I can turn to for support and that's hard. It wasn't always this way, but I slowly started to see a change over the last year. I've seen creative friends that supported me heavily online for years slowly stop their support. I understand that people have lives outside of social media and the algorithm does not always show our content, but this was different.

It went from people showing lots of support via comments and likes to simply just occasional likes yet I would see those same people commenting on mutual friends' posts constantly. Where did the love go? It caused me to withdraw a bit last year to really take time to reflect. It still hurts somewhat because you begin to think, were these ever really my friends or were they just getting what they needed from me at the time? I may never know, but I did learn a few things about myself in the process.

I had to learn to stop over giving. I'm so big on supporting other creatives that I was often blind to the fact that that support was repeatedly one-sided. I had to learn to fall back on that. I also learned that at my core, I do have a big heart for people in general. There will never be anything wrong with that, but with that, people can take advantage. Your discernment has to be on point and you have to know not to ignore it. 



As much as I love being a creative, I've had a few times where being online has reminded me of high school. I was never in the in crowd in high school and I often feel the same about social media. However, I had a few close friends in high school that meant so much to me and I'm hoping that one day I will find those same creative friends today. The journey has been hard, but it's most certainly not over. Here's to manifesting I connect to the right people this year... 

How do you connect with other creatives? Any recommendations on where to meet fellow creatives?

God bless & stay fab,