Creative Block - The Series

On January 17th of this year I set out to confront my creative block. I had not been writing in a long time. I decided to not only confront my creative block but to really get back to writing.

One of the things the process did was take me back to where it all started, which is my blog. I have been blogging since 2008 and I would write at night when my sons went to sleep. During that time I had a teenager and a toddler. Trust me, at night was the only time I could get my thoughts out. 

Earlier this year, I started getting on here every night between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. I'd get on my blog and write or I'd write in Microsoft Word. Now, I don't always write or type and I've been telling my clients recently to use voice notes or dictation to assist with my blogging. That's really been helpful for me.

My Creative Block Series talks about crying when you need to, being patient with yourself, being honest with your support system and that there is value in at least trying. I hope that you enjoy this series and I look forward to your feedback.

Connect with LindarInsights.

Getting Back To Trying

Be Patient With Yourself

Be Honest With You Support System

There Is Value In At Least Trying

Cry When You Need To

Perfectly Packaged Series

    In January, I started writing about having a creative block. During that time I began to realize that I'm perfectly packaged. Perfectly packaged to me means that I'm a writer, I self-publish my books. I'm also an educator. I'm a mommy. I'm a Believer. I'm a daughter experiencing the first year without her father and I assist with caring for my mom. All of those things make me who I am.

    During the pandemic and even afterwards I heard a lot of people talk about niching down and just focus on that one thing. As a self-publisher, I have assisted several authors with releasing their books. What I found was that niching down wasn't working for me in the way that I thought it would. 

    So a lot of my posts on social media were about self-publishing and about the books that I have written. I created www.lindarinsights.com & I also have a Google site. I was doing all of the things. However something was missing.

    Through those experiences I began to realize that by niching down I was leaving out parts of me.  Those parts of me are just as important or even more important than just sharing about one thing that I do. I think that helping people to bring their book to life is incredible. I also know that my life experiences are incredible too.

    Below, I've included links to all of my blog posts in the perfectly package series. I hope that you enjoy reading each post. Know that you don't have to niche down. Your life experiences are designed to encompass the whole of who you are. You are creative and knowledgeable and I don't think you can set that aside just to niche down.

Releasing the Pressure to Niche Down

When “Niche Down” Costs You Parts of Yourself

Nothing Was Wasted

Leadership Without a Title

Creative Block - Epiphany - I Am The Niche

    I didn't sit down to create a series when I wrote Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying. I sat down to be honest. What started as one blog post became six, including this one. It's not because I planned it that way, but because something in me needed room to breathe. Somewhere between patience, honesty, trying, and tears, I had an epiphany: healing doesn't arrive all at once. It unfolds when we stay present with ourselves.

    Grief doesn't ask politely for space. It reshapes identity, disrupts rhythm, and forces you to move at a pace you didn't choose. Over the past couple of years, illness, recovery, and loss have all asked something different of me. Patience became an act of compassion. Honesty became a lifeline. Trying, on the days when motivation was gone, became enough. And crying stopped feeling like a setback and started feeling like release. These weren't separate lessons. They were connected. They were lived.

    For a long time, I believed creativity had to look a certain way, finished, polished, productive. But this season taught me something gentler and truer. Writing recently hasn't been for performance, but for peace. I didn't force clarity. I allowed truth. I stayed present with my grief and my creativity, without asking either one to disappear so the other could exist.

    Months ago, I saw a creator on TikTok say, "You are the niche." At the time, it sounded encouraging. Now it feels undeniable. This process magnified that truth for me. My lived experience, my pauses, my healing, my uncertainty, my persistence, is not something I need to package or overcome before it's valuable. It is the work. I am the niche.

    I draw where I am. I write where I am. I create from the place where my feet are planted, not from an imagined finish line. And in doing so, I've learned this: my voice didn't disappear during grief, it softened. My vision didn't blur, it widened. And my victory isn't loud or flashy. It's steady. It's real. It's choosing myself, again and again.

    I've also learned that while I have many things to cry about, I also have so much to look forward to.

In All Things Give Thanks,

Arlinda

Creative Block - Cry When You Need To

 

    This season of my life has definitely had its share of tears. There are days when the tears are uncontrollable. There are days when I don't cry at all and then days later I'm in tears all over again. Especially after all that I've been through with my illness and thinking, okay... things are getting better right? And then my father passed unexpectedly and the tears returned. It felt like I never really got a break from sadness and heartache. 

Crying is not a setback. It’s a release. Holding everything in doesn’t make you stronger, it makes the weight heavier. Grief needs somewhere to go, and tears are often the safest place for it to land. They don’t mean you’re undone; they mean you’re processing. You're processing what was. You're processing letting go. 

When I was in the hospital people would come to visit almost daily.  Every time someone would walk into my room I thought, "Oh my God!" & I would immediately begin to cry. Visitors came daily. Some were such a surprise. I would simply cry at the sight of them because it was overwhelming. Knowing that people had thought enough about me to come and visit me at the hospital or hang out with me in the hospital made me reel so vulnerable. Little did I know that by Spring my tears would increase.

I remember the night that my son called me and told me that my father had passed. I remember freezing in that moment. Hearing him and processing the information caused me to freeze in that moment. Once we got to the house, to wait for the coroner to come and to remove my father's body from our childhood home, the tears began to fall. I recall standing on the sidewalk in front of the house as we were saying our goodbyes and gathering around him as a family. Those tears were continuous on all of our faces.

I’ve learned that letting myself cry clears space inside me. It doesn’t solve everything, but it softens the pressure. Sometimes after the tears, I can breathe a little easier. Sometimes I can think more clearly. And sometimes all it does is acknowledge the truth of what I’ve been carrying and that alone is enough for that day.

Creative Block - Be Honest With Your Support System

The second point in Creative Block - Get Back To Trying is to be honest with your support system.

This has been hard for me to verbalize to others, friends and families included. There have been so many days that I just shutdown. It's not done on purpose. Some days are better than others and some days are just that, "a day". A day with no makeup and earrings, a litmus test for me is when I have them both on. A day when I may get dressed by sundown. Heck, it might even be a day where I have on what I had on the previous day because I slept in it. That's real talk.

One of the hardest things to do is admit that you’re not okay—especially when you’re used to being the strong one, the creative one, the dependable one. But pretending everything is fine takes energy you don’t have.  So, while I don't pretend, often I shut the world out. Grief already asks so much of you; masking your truth shouldn’t be one more burden.

Honesty creates room to breathe. It allows the people who love you to show up fully, instead of guessing or assuming. Saying, “Today is hard,” or “I don’t have words right now,” is not weakness. It’s clarity. And clarity invites connection, support, and sometimes relief—if only for a moment.

Between my sister and my three closest girlfriends, I can almost guarantee that one of them will pick up when I'm shutting the world out. In those moments I am grateful to have someone try to pull me out of that space of grief, depression and loneliness.

What's crazy to me is that I tend to be outgoing and pretty much happy go lucky. However, since Fall of 2024 my days have been so unpredictable. I honestly think that writing about it has been really helpful for me.

Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying

   

    One day this week my mom asked me if I had been writing recently. I didn't know how to answer that question. What I've been trying to do, especially since December is to journal my days. I've been trying to post more on this blog site and to my social media pages. Like I have really been trying.

    But some days it's hard. It's hard to gather my thoughts, to organize my thoughts and then to put my thoughts on paper or to type them out or use dictation. Some days it's just hard. Over the past year and a half my life has had so many moments of grief that I find difficult to complete writings or to continue posting on my blog. It really depends on the day.

    Grief has a way of taking hold of you. Even as I try to fight for things to be normal, grief seems to hold me back and sometimes I can't move forward or I move very slowly. I liken it to a runner being prevented from continuing a race because someone is physically holding them back,

    I have learned that grief has shown up in several areas of my life. It's the ending of a career, it's the time loss because of illness and the passing of a relative. When you combine all of that happening in less than 2 years, I have to be honest and say most days are difficult. Well maybe not most days, how about some days are difficult.

    I love to write. I'm very creative. I am a creative who has dealt with hard things over the past couple of years. I have therapy and I have my support system. I make sure I get enough sleep and I do need to drink more water. If I could give advice to anybody who's in a similar situation I would tell them;

1. Be patient with yourself because going through trauma and grief has a way of spiraling in a way that sometimes you can't really control. 
2. Be honest with your support system. Don't try to go through life and make it seem like you're okay and everything is just fine. Because everything isn't just fine. 
3. There is value in at least trying. Make an attempt each day to do something that you love. Make an attempt each day to talk to your family and talk to your friends. Get a good laughing. 
4. Cry when you need to. It does you no good to hold everything in.

    Since Fall of 2024 I have gone from having a serious illness, to rehabilitation, to trying to heal at home and to losing my father less than a year later. There are days where I just sit & wonder & pray & believe that I'll get back on the pathway of writing and creating. But right now honestly I do have a creative block that I working through.

    It might not seem like it with this long blog. lol This is really a heart spill for me just to get it all out. 

    For that I'm grateful.

    Arlinda