How to Love a Creative Woman

Creative women are different and should handled with care.

Y'all, I have been called distracted, unfocused, attention-seeking, jealous, obsessive compulsive, bi-polar, and narcissistic, and what's crazy is that I am sure at some point I have demonstrated all of these qualities, but what people who love me or who want to love me fail to realize is that these are the things you will encounter when you love a Creative Woman.

The longer I live, the more I realize that I need space to allow my thoughts to flow and the time to process them. I pretty much always have to have an escape plan. As a mom of two kids under the age of ten (at least for the next couple of months), I have very few chances to get away on my own to simply just be. Also with having small kids in the home, I very rarely have moments to sit quietly with my thoughts or to create. In fact, when I have a free moment, I usually fill it by either cleaning, cooking, grading papers, washing clothes, anything other than what I want to be doing, and this bothers me to no end. So I thought it necessary to share ways I think those who love a Creative Woman can best support her.

Be patient with your Creative Woman.

After 46 years of being with myself, I have come to realize that I cannot be rushed to make a decision or answer a question without telling a story. There are three ways people generally view me in this scenario: indecisive or dramatic or both. When what is really happening is that I taking the time I need to organize my disheveled thoughts. Creative Women are always thinking, and our brains are often cluttered, and when this happens, we tend to become frazzled and frustrated, and it is because we can't fully process our thoughts. Don't get me wrong, we do experience moments of lucidity and perspicacity, but these moments happen less because we are rarely given the time and space to create.

Be gentle with your Creative Woman.

Quick story: Do you know how many times I’ve told myself that it has to be perfect? Too many to count. I have all these self-imposed rules and expectations for myself, and some days I am so overwhelmed with not being where I think I should be, it’s a struggle for me to get moving. On days like this, I realize that I need some help.

Creative Women need gentle nudges instead of full-out criticisms. If you take nothing else from this blog post, take this: Creative Women are super hard on themselves. We criticize and critique everything we do, so if it seems we are insecure and attention seeking this is why. Personally, I am confident, that is until I am not. See the paradox? When I am dreaming about something, I am in my most delicate state (which is pretty much all the time). So anything that someone says to me can cause me overwhelm, so tone really matters to Creatives. That is why it is important for Creatives to have people in their lives who will gently nudge us or communicate with us because we already beat ourselves up enough.

Accept that Creatives thrive in clutter and chaos.

I know it sounds bad, but while ideally we crave organization and structure, in reality, many of us lack the ability to maintain it without obsessing over it. That is why it is important for those who love us not to condemn us but support us. Question: have you ever come home to a messy house and wonder what the hell is going on? That's what it's like when you live with a Creative. In my case, my house is the messiest when I am being my most creative self. I mentally create (I call the dreaming phase) before I actually start to style what I’m dreaming in order to bring it into fruition, and oh my, this can either be a timely process, or not so much, but nonetheless, when the process is happening, mess will happen. We know our spaces are chaotic, and we will fix them, eventually, but know that while our focus is on creating, the messy house, the sink full of dishes, and the mounds of dirty laundry will simply have to wait, and you pointing them out to us does nothing but frustrate us all the more, and it can make protract the creative process.

Understand your Creative Woman's moods.

Creatives really are quite emotional. I cannot put into words just how emotional we are. We feel "some type of way" about everything, even things we try not to feel anything about. What I mean to say is Creatives often "stay in their feelings", and for this reason, we are generally thought of as moody. To shed some light on why we are seen as moody, understand this, a lot of the time we are in our feelings is because that is when create. I, for one, write poems when I am most emotional, and even when I try to calm my emotions, I find tangible ways to be creative like rearranging my furniture or changing the decor in a room. Basically, even when Creatives try to unplug and not be creative, guess what, we're still being creative. It is very difficult for a Creative Woman to take it easy, calm down, and simply breathe, even if she really wants to do so.

What it all means...

Creative Women are challenging to love, but not impossible to love. We are often misread and misunderstood, we are often more emotional than rational, and we can be more selfish than selfless, but we still require and desire love, we just have to be careful not to accept any kind of love in the process. Since I have determined why I am the way I am, I able to communicate my randomness, my distracted behaviors, and my impatience with others, but I even when I do this, I know that there is a chance I will still be misunderstood, but the difference is that now I am okay with others not getting me. I guess that's why Creative Women are mysteries even to themselves.

Taking all I said into consideration, I reserve the belief that one day my quirks and idiosyncrasies, and all the things that make me unique, will make sense to the perfect someone. While there are those who get me, I need someone who speaks Tamara, a language of its own, even if it is only one person.

In the meantime, know that if you love a Creative Woman, whom I refer to as mermaids, feel honored, for you have been chosen; do not take your position lightly because this is a role given to a select few. You possess something that your Creative Woman needs in order to continue being the magical being that she is, and that is a beautiful thing, so don’t force her to be who you think she should be, you’ll only push her away.

In the spirit of creativity and inspiration,