My safe list

What helps you to feel safe to create and safe to share?

A beautiful view of Parlick Fell from Jeffrey Hill, Ribble Valley. The sun is shining on the green fields and trees. The sky is blue with a layer of wispy clouds. There is an old wooden public footpath sign pointing into the distance

Hello wonderful you,

Happy hump day! Here’s something you might like to try.

Write down your safe list

This prompt was another great nudge from Amie McNee over the weekend. She is cropping up a lot in my writing at the moment but she is just so influential on me right now!

Her approach to encouraging us to uncover our inner stories and how they painfully block us from creating what our heart longs to has been life changing for me.

I’ve never really connected the word ‘safety’ with writing before, but actually feeling safe is really quite crucial isn’t it?

When fear stops us from even starting to create, this is our minds trying to protect us from something bad happening. Or when we’ve made something but fear stops us from showing it to anyone, it’s fear again. We don’t feel safe.

Amie prompted us to write a ‘safe list’ of the tools, people, things and words that help provide that sense of safety so that we’re freer to create and share.

Making art is incredibly vulnerable, so it’s unlikely that we’ll ever feel completely neutral about it. However, there may be things that help us to feel held, supported or a little bit less afraid.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far