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 - Be Patient With Yourself

    Patience is not something grief asks politely for, it demands it. Trauma and loss don’t move in straight lines, and neither does healing. Some days you wake up ready to try, ready to write, ready to think clearly. Other days, your mind feels foggy, your body feels heavy, and even the smallest task feels like too much. That isn’t failure. That’s grief doing what grief does.

    Grief will have you rethinking and reshaping your identity. As the clock was counting down to 2026, anxiety set in. I felt that my father's memory was slipping away along with 2025. I was leaving the year I lost him and entering a new era without him. That was hard. I've never known a year without my father. This is new territory for me. 

    Seeing Diana Ross perform on television reminded me of watching Mahogany and Lady Sings The Blues with my parents. Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? As of right now, I'm not so sure.

    I’ve had to learn that impatience with myself only adds another layer of pain. When you’ve been through illness, disruption, and loss back-to-back, your nervous system is still catching up. Yes, my nervous is still catching up, even nearly a year and a half later. Healing doesn’t follow a schedule, and creativity doesn’t respond well to pressure. Patience becomes an act of compassion—one that says, I’m allowed to move at the pace my life has set for me.

Check out my post Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying