Due to expire in a couple of days, due to expire. And I’m not going to renew it.
I’m attached to this, my sweet little bloggy home. Truly, I am.
I’m attached to all of you, whose faces I see, whose hearts I feel I know, somehow.
But I think this time, it really is time.
Time to reinvent myself, maybe.
Time to be brave and…do something else (you all know I’ve been wobbling about for quite sometime.)
I’ve got my new creativity website which may need some attention at some point. (The link for that one is brookecutlercreative.com. Please head over and subscribe if you’re not already, I’d hate to entirely lose you all. xx)
And, of course I’m intending to continue my novel, and to keep writing at medium and see where that road drifts to.
But I think I’ll let my plan expire, here, and…just see what happens.
I can’t pay for two websites: that’s one thing I do know, and that leads me to thinking this may just be the perfect time to let the wind blow. And sit here. And let it all be.
I’m so very unsure.
But I can be brave enough to let the wind take me.
I can be brave enough to allow uncertain life to meet me here.
Perhaps I am here to write. But at the core of that, at the core of my words, at the core of my message…I’m here to love. I always have been, and it’s more clear to me now that I’m allowing my love to be seen.
I can’t help but feel great waves of empathy, particularly for those who are struggling in life. Those who are scared. Those who are being unfairly treated, by those who don’t even recognise the wrongs they perpetuate (as a result of their own messy humanity.)
It’s all a bit of a mess.
It’s all a bit of a mess.
So maybe I shouldn’t waffle at you about love.
Maybe I should be writing something of substance: something about the politics of what’s going on with the floods in eastern Australia, maybe, and how they’d want me to say it’s got nothing to do with the way we treat the planet (when, actually, I believe that Mother Nature was the very first woman who learned to powerfully speak her truth.)
But I’m not going to talk about natural disasters, or about who believes what.
I’m going to talk about love, and how I feel it, and how I feel for everything and everyone, and wish that more humans did.
Because underneath every natural disaster, lives love. The rescuer rowing a family to safety while their own home—a home they have loved and cared for with everything they have—drowns behind them.
That’s love.
That’s not politics.
It’s not who made the wrong choice about dam management and should be fired because of it.
It’s not who is right and who is wrong about the effects of climate change on a struggling earth.
It’s funny. To think of the damage caused by cultural norms and stereotypes.
Of course, there are the absolutely beautiful cultural narratives out there. Those that cherish and honour human life by holding it, by respecting it so beautifully that even the hardest of hearts must surely be touched by the story of it all.
I heard a story as beautiful, just the other day. My counsellor told it to me: how, in her culture, when a woman becomes pregnant, she becomes the queen. The whole tribe lavish her with love, care, and most importantly, perhaps…food.
This discussion came about after a lovely tender moment where she looked over at me, my bulging belly sweetly growing a perfect little gift, and offered to bake me something lovely to celebrate the occasion (that’s right, surprise, I’m fourteen weeks pregnant. And how lovely it is, to me. How lovely it is. xx)
But, I digress. Because although there are some absolutely beautiful cultural stories passed on by certain cultures in the world, other cultures do not even realise their own toxicity. (And when I say toxicity, what I mean is…truly, their cultural ideas are heartbreaking and damaging to individuals who do not fit into the selected story being told.)
There are some absolutely wonderful things to be said about the culture I was born into. But one arm of the narrative, an arm that destroyed any hope of me developing healthy self-esteem in my early years, was the idea that vulnerability and softness were somehow character flaws. I was mostly soft.
As it turns out, this soft part of me, this sensitivity, is my super power; a power that helps me soothe, and bring safety to those who need it. A power that helps me tap into the world of everything and nothing, and pull down the words and creativity needed for my writing to touch people in the way that it seems to.
But my culture called me ‘soft’. It told me to ‘harden up’, and it assumed that If I didn’t…then surely I must be broken, at worst. Naive at best. Never have I been these labels.
And if you are a deep and tender heart resonating with these words…never have you been these labels, either.
Always we’ve been perfect.
Just the way we are.
Think of the trillions of flowers, plants and trees out there. Some are soft. Some are hard, shrubs built to last in the wind and rain and hail. None of them judge each other for being ‘wrong’ in anyway. They simply exist.
I lay in bed last night, at 4am, thinking of the tortured artist, thing.
We feel so deeply, us creative folk, and therefore, we capture the world in its fullest expression.
Which is beautiful. Really, ice-shatteringly beautiful.
But we are often not understood, at best. And at worst…we are grossly misunderstood, usually by the logically minded folk of the world, who do not (perhaps cannot) see the world the way we do.
Sometimes we are judged as weak, overly sensitive; irresponsible, messy. A lonely human, this does make, at times.
A lonely human this does make, at times.
I remember sitting at my piano as a nineteen year old, feeling the world in all its depth; the beauty of the autumn leaves outside the window, a huge comfort as I sat and wondered about my place in the world.
These creative eyes.
They make everything a little more beautiful. A little more horrible. A little more alive.
I’m grateful, for them, I am.
I’d imagine all the tortured artists out there were grateful, even the ones who battled to a sometimes tragic end.
Misunderstood, they were, and a little bit lonely, maybe.
A little bit scared of the depths that dragged them beneath the surface, on occasion, maybe.
Hello sweet bloggy friends. How are you all? I’m good, thanks for asking. ☺️
I’m sitting at my little white desk, on a grey sky day, wondering about the aching quiet of life. Thinking about how it so often comes across like the most beautiful magic, in everything creative, but especially in the arts. Music. Dance. Writing.
The aching quiet is what makes the art of the world shine. Our joint humanity: it’s what brings us together as humans, and it’s what inspires us to make the most of every beautiful moment we share with others.
I’d imagine I’m here on this earth for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons is to remind people of the beautiful ache that lives within them, and to use it to shine.
To create.
To love, and to live, all the way through.
Some of you may remember I created a new website a while back that really didn’t resonate with what I wanted to do with my life. I kept that website, wondering if I might return to that space, one day, to use it for something new.
Last week, it became very clear what I would be doing with it, and so: brookecutlercreative.com was born.
Here I will be sharing everything I know about creativity, and after living a lifetime as a creative person, and spending way too much money on a bachelor and masters degree (in drama and writing, respectively) I really do feel it’s my duty to pass on what I know.
Because my knowledge and passion is so much bigger than me, or my own dreams to write, to create, to shine. If I can help even just one human catch their own creative sun and shine it on the world…what greater privilege could there be?
My new website will be a place of learning (for me and for others) but it will also be a place to celebrate the depth and beauty of the works humanity has already produced. One of the things I’m really looking forward to on this new journey is the return of my book club (which I briefly ran on instagram during Covid lockdown.) It was so nice to take a closer look at what other writers were doing with the beauty of the aching quiet, and I so look forward to learning more from that space again.
Anyway, that’s happening, so that’s nice. ☺️
Also, I’ll still be here.
Always.
Your Brooke. xx
(ps. Just click on the site address above to visit my new site. Enjoy! xx)
