When we receive a creative impulse, it can come through quickly. When it arrives, it doesn’t always make sense in that neat kind of way. And when we spend time with our ideas, developing them through the creative process, meaning can be fluid. We’ll start one place and end up someplace radically different.

Some of you may know that I became a hypnotherapist and coach alongside my practice as an artist. Some people ask me if I am an art therapist. It would be more accurate to say that I am often a therapist for artists.

Have you ever felt it was challenging to feel truly free to create and express yourself? Maybe you hesitate to spend time doing the things that you enjoy — painting, singing, drawing, writing, playing the guitar, taking photos — worried that you should be doing something more practical, concerned what you make won't be good enough?

One of my mentors once shared a way of looking at how we grow and move through life. She suggested I imagine the process of drawing a flower — like a daisy or a wildflower with a circle at the centre and petals looping around.

It's springtime in London and the season of renewal takes on an even greater resonance this year. Out in the hazy sunshine, I feel myself taking gentle and playful steps in the world.

When I moved to London over eight years ago, I underestimated the change I’d experience in this city. Letting go of ideas of girlhood to become a woman, facing some of my greatest personal challenges, and allowing myself to reconnect with parts of myself I had abandoned.

Your essence is your fundamental nature and what makes you uniquely you. It is the deepest part of yourself, where your authenticity lives.

From the moment we wake in the morning until we drift back to sleep at night, we move along the path of life making decisions and taking actions that steer our life in a nearly infinite set of directions.

This is the eleventh post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy.

This is the tenth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection.

This is the ninth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion.

This is the eighth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength.

This is the seventh post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection. It’s been two years since I first completed The Artist’s Way and it’s taken me as long to look back and reflect. I make plans, then life has its own plan.

This is the sixth post in a series on The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, a book and a self-study program developed by Julia Cameron in the 1990s. I’m looking back on Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance.