A Love Letter to Every Artist Who's Ever Said "I Can't Create When I'm Like This"

What would it feel like to stop fighting your health and start dancing with it instead?

Dear fellow creator who's staring at a blank canvas because your anxiety is too loud,

Dear writer whose depression makes every word feel like pushing through cement,

Dear musician whose chronic pain means shorter practice sessions and longer recovery,

Dear photographer whose ADHD turns focus into a daily negotiation,

Dear maker whose perfectionism has turned joy into paralysis,

This is for you.

There's nothing wrong with you

What if the way your health changes your creativity isn't a flaw to fix, but a relationship to understand?

What if we stopped treating our minds and bodies like obstacles to our art, and started seeing them as integral parts of our creative ecosystem?

For years, I've been collecting stories to understand the relationship between art and health. Stories that sound like:

"My paintings get darker when I'm depressed, but also more honest."

or "I can't work on long projects anymore, but my short pieces have become more powerful."

or "My anxiety makes me overthink every brushstroke, but it also makes me incredibly detail-oriented."

or "Since my diagnosis, I create differently. Not worse. Just... differently."

Do any of these sound familiar?

Here's what I've learned:

Your health doesn't impact your creativity in one simple way. It touches everything:

• Your Process - How you approach the work itself

• Your Content - What stories and themes emerge

• Your Medium - What tools and materials serve you

• Your Productivity - What "getting things done" actually looks like

• Your Identity - How you see yourself as an artist

• Your Business - How you navigate the commercial side of creativity

These six areas dance together, influence each other, create the unique fingerprint of how YOU make art. More about this framework I use:

What Does It Mean to Consider The Ways in Which Health Impacts Art?

This framework didn't emerge overnight. It's been three solid years of:

• Interviewing artists across every medium and at every stage of their careers

• Studying the intersections of psychology, creativity research, and lived experience

• Testing these ideas with real creators facing real challenges

• Examining my own creative practice through this lens

• Building tools that actually work in the messy reality of creative life

Adding to my work here

If you’re following along here on Substack, some of the things that you’re going to see, in addition to the interviews and book reviews and personal essays that I’ve always shared, will include:

• Posts digging even deeper into the various aspects of this topic

• Zines and workbooks that fit in your art bag for when you need them

• Exercises and PDF downloads that help you map your own patterns

• Audio support for the hard days

• And hopefully, you’ll find that you’re here in a community that actually gets it

Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash

An invitation, not a pitch

I'm not here to sell you on the idea that creativity and health are connected. If you're reading this, you already know they are. You've lived it.

And if you’ve been around my Substack for very long, or followed my writing prior to when I landed here, then you’ve heard me develop these ideas in many ways, starting from my own lived experience.

I'm just here to say: let's keep talking about it. Let's get even more curious about it. Let's build resources and understanding together.

Let's stop whispering about the relationship between our health and our art, and start having conversations that actually help.

Because your depression doesn't make you a worse artist. Your anxiety doesn't disqualify your creativity. Your chronic illness doesn't mean you're not "serious" about your work or “can’t do it”. Your neurodivergence isn't something to overcome.

These are parts of who you are. And who you are is how you create.

What would it feel like to stop fighting your health and start dancing with it instead?

There’s nothing else for you do except make sure that you’re subscribed to get the emails:

But if you want to do more …

What's your story? How does your health show up in your creativity? I'd love to hear from you. Every story matters. Every experience adds to our collective understanding.

Complete an interview or guest post to share with others here on Create Me Free.

Or leave messages in the comments.

Or feel free to message me privately if you want to share something but not publicly.