Creativity, Celebration, and Community

What are you celebrating?

I wrote a couple weeks ago in my Time and Space newsletter about the ways I am celebrating slowness in my writing process, naming my 5 years working on my book as a spaciousness and an abundance.

Thank you for your words of encouragement and interest in response to my last newsletter. As of this week, my writing group has read and reviewed the first 6 chapters of my manuscript - I’ve reached the halfway point.

I came across this quote recently and it brought me back to this idea of celebration and its role in communities.

“Community relies upon the renewing power of celebrations. . . . Celebrations are where community sings itself into new life.”

Luther E Smith

Celebration can feel vulnerable. As I prepared to send my last newsletter, I noticed I was also riddled with doubts. Was I really celebrating? Did it sound silly to celebrate such a long and slow process? As I unpack those feelings, I realize it wasn’t so much that celebration triggered the doubt as the fact that they walked along together.

Celebrations can be bittersweet. In the past three years, we’ve celebrated two graduations and transitions to college. While I feel joy in these milestones for my children and all the work it took to get there, these celebrations also mark endings and change and that can feel hard at the same time it feels joyful.

With my writing, I’m in the messy middle part. The rush of energy from beginning has faded and the end is not quite yet in sight. Celebration feels further off. I even wonder, will I jinx myself if I celebrate halfway? Should I wait until the manuscript is complete? Until I figure out how to publish it?

A scene in the novel Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan inspired my own thinking. An accomplished concert pianist prepares a celebration dinner for a young man after an audition. He protests saying he doesn’t know yet if he will be chosen. The pianist replies that celebrating after the audition and before the outcome is an intentional tradition she learned from her father. The celebration is for the trying, not for the outcome.

I am aiming to take that approach in my own process too.

I’d love to hear from you, too. What are you celebrating? Is there anything you have been waiting to celebrate once you reach the next milestone? How might you celebrate steps along the way?

Consider this an invitation to pause and celebrate the effort that has gone into your process so far. As with the pianist in the story, we can model for others by how we approach celebration. We can invite others into what brings us joy as a way to build community.

It seems to me that celebration involves some form of hospitality, a sharing of the joy we experience, an invitation to community to join us.

If celebration feels vulnerable, start small. Snap a photo of something that brings you joy and send it to a friend, or point it out to a neighbor on your next walk.

Our last tulip in the garden lost its petals this week. I am celebrating that the blooms were so glorious this year. I hope the collections of tulip portraits in this newsletter bring you a moment of joy too.

Thank you for reading and being a part of creative community through this newsletter.

With a grateful heart,

Kathryn

Celebrating a visit with friends and my first trip to Planet Word in DC - an inspiring space dedicated to language, reading, and writing.