Let me introduce you to someone.
No, no, no. That’s not right. You know them already. You just might not realize it yet.
They are waiting in the spaces between your thoughts, in the silence you’ve been avoiding. They are both a presence and a construct, ancient and intimate, a whisper at the back of your mind that you have tried, again and again, to ignore. They are the part of you that remembers—everything you’ve cast aside, everything you’ve been told to forget.
They carry what you cannot until you are ready to take it back.
I did not seek them out. I did not call their name. But they found me anyway.
And now, they urge me to help others seek them.
For two decades, I convinced myself I was making the right choices. Finishing degrees. A stable job. A reliable income. A carefully crafted (yet sometimes brutal) existence that was respectable, responsible, and entirely hollow. I told myself I was fine, that I should be grateful. That it didn’t matter if my days bled together into a dull and colorless monotony—this was adulthood. Be content.
Avoidance is a fragile thing. You can only pretend for so long before the weight of it becomes unbearable. Before the quiet cracks begin to spread and spider out across the windshield of life. Pouring your effort into one spot to stop the spread only to see another rock fly up and start a whole new chain reaction.
I think my Muse knew before I did.
She had been there all along, lingering in the corners of my life, waiting for me to see her. She slipped small reminders into my days—a painting here, a sketch there. A pull toward the things I had loved as a child but had been told were frivolous. The mysteries of astrology, the language of symbols, the stories of fate and magic, gods, goddesses, and royalty. They felt like passing curiosities, harmless indulgences. But they weren’t. They were breadcrumbs.
And she was leading me home.
Then the breaking point came. The realization that I couldn’t keep living like this, that the path I was on would never lead me anywhere but further away from myself. When the opportunity arose to leave my reliable job—the one that consumed me like a ravenous dog—no plan, no safety net, just the stark terror of uncertainty—I took it.
It was in that space, in that silence where my distractions had finally fallen away, when my breath slowed, and the worries of who was going to yell at me next left my thoughts, she stepped forward.
I met her for the first time when I built myself a consistent meditation practice.
At first, it was nothing extraordinary—just a commitment to sit in silence, to slow my breath, to allow whatever surfaced to exist without immediately running from it. I didn’t expect anything to happen. I was simply trying to reclaim my mind from the endless static that had taken over for so long.
Then, one day, she appeared.
It was a flash—sudden, unmistakable, an image burned into the darkness behind my closed eyes. A figure, watching me, draped in shadow. Her presence was immense. A force I had known before I ever named her, a recognition I could feel before I understood.
A wave of familiarity crashed over me, deep and undeniable. I had seen her before, countless times, in dreams, in passing thoughts, in the echoes of things I could never quite explain.
She had always been there. I had simply refused to look.
And now, I work with her.
She was not what I expected.
She was dark. Beautiful. Terrifying.
She was not the gentle muse of soft inspiration that I so frequently imagined, dancing around in white silks and golden light. She wasn’t whimsical, or fanciful, or a delight. She was sharp edges and knowing eyes, the weight of every regret, every humiliation, every shame I had ever tried to outrun.
She did not soothe. She did not comfort.
She carried everything I had refused to hold, but at the same time, was me. At first I mistook her for an adversary. I assumed that because she was made of everything I believed had ruined me, that she was to blame for my creative blocks, my fear of finishing things, and my lack of confidence.
I recoiled at first. How could I not? She was the culmination of every moment that had made me shrink, every part of myself I had learned to suppress. The femininity I had been taught to dull, the desires I had been told were impractical, the instincts I had dismissed in favor of more acceptable pursuits.
She had held onto them all with nothing but acceptance. She was not recoiling from the truth, I was. And when I realized she was the more authentic and realized version of myself, my world flipped. I’m the distortion, and she is my authenticity.
I am still getting to know my Muse. She does not always speak in words. Sometimes she is nothing more than a presence, a knowing silence that presses against the edges of my awareness. Other times, she is a force, guiding my hands, pulling me toward the things I need to create. The pull is stronger if it feels like something I shouldn’t create.
She is not easy. She does not coddle. But she is honest. And I trust her.
She exists in the places I avoid. In the art I never start, in the words I refuse to write, and the declarations I swallow instead of speak. She’s in the discomfort of facing myself without the filter of expectation or approval, in every single thing I believe to be or was told is unacceptable about myself. She held each and every one of those things gently, keeping them safe until she could give them back to me so that I could transform them.
She was the reckoning I had been running from. The truth waiting in the darkness.
Your Muse is Waiting
We all have one.
They may not look the way we expect or even appear as the same thing every single time. They may seem unrecognizable at first, even repulsive or intimidating. But they have always been there, carrying the weight of everything you were not yet strong enough to hold.
I will continue to share my experiences here, the wisdom I gather as I work with my Muse, and the lessons she teaches me along the way.
If you feel the stirrings of something—or someone—waiting for you in the depths of your own creativity, I encourage you to start listening.
Slow down. Make space. Let the silence speak.
I know how that sounds, but I’m unsure how else to put it. Your Muse is waiting and they’ve likely already revealed themselves.
If this resonates with you and you want to know more, please comment below. Share something that you struggle with as a creative. It can be easy for us to isolate, and one of the very first steps to reclaiming ourselves is to understand that we are not alone.
Leave a Reply