Creating Lemonade
Using the power of creativity to turn lemons into lemonade
Hey friends,
Welcome to my new creation, Creating Lemonade! This space has been a long time coming, and so I'm super excited to finally share it with you.
The culmination of a lifetime of living creatively and more than a decade of running creative businesses, Creating Lemonade is all about how we can use creativity as a tool to turn lemons into lemonade and create a better life for ourselves along the way.
Who am I?
In case we haven't met before, then hi! I'm Cassie and I'm a writer, creative mentor, and photographer currently based in Perth, Western Australia. I'm also a long-distance caregiver for my mum who has late-stage young-onset Alzheimer’s.
Her diagnosis came around the same time my entire world collapsed, and, stranded on the other side of the world from her with no work, no friends, and no chance of running away - which is what I'd previously done every time life was too hard - embracing my creativity was the thing that got me through.
You can read more about my journey on Making Lemonade, where I share weekly essays about life, love, loss, and lemons.
What is Creating Lemonade?
While Making Lemonade is more about all the ways I’ve turned the lemons life gave me into lemonade, I wanted to find a way to share more actionable tips and bridge the gap between my blog and my creative mentoring practice, which is where Creating Lemonade comes in.
Note: although they are both hosted on my main Substack account, you have the options to sign up for one, the other, or both. You can also update your preferences at any time.
I’m not very creative, is this for me?
It's funny how many people I've met who say they don't have a creative bone in their body. But then I ask them if they ever have dreams, or if they like reading or watching TV or going to the cinema - and they always say yes to at least one of the above, which leads us to a whole other conversation of what creativity is, and what it is not.
Creativity is not:
Being an artist or creative figurehead
Making money from your art or creativity
Becoming famous or known for your art or creativity
Being “good” at art or creative endeavours
Creativity is:
Embracing our imagination as a tool
Being able to think outside the box
Opening up to the magic and mysteries of life
Learning to colour outside the lines instead of always in them
A way to find awe, magic, and wonder in the everyday
Truth is, when we watch TV or movies or read books, we let ourselves fall into someone else's imagination. We let ourselves get swept away. Our minds know what we're watching isn't true (unless it's a documentary), but the way it's filmed lets us fill in the gaps and imagine we're there.
Dreaming helps us imagine a better life for ourselves. It gets us through hard times. It helps us feel encouraged when we're in a dip. It helps us keep going when things get tough, or dream bigger when things are good - humans are designed to dream. We're not designed to settle. We're programmed to want more.
“Man is a perpetually wanting animal.”
Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation
Where does creativity come in?
Creativity is responsible for the world we have today. We may have reduced the term creativity to refer to just artists, but without creative thinking we wouldn't have cars or mobile phones or the Internet.
Hell, where I live we wouldn't even have water if it wasn't for someone thinking creatively and outside of the box. Humans can only survive where humans survive because of creative thinking. In all honesty, humans have probably only survived because of creative thinking.
But somewhere along the way, the lines have been blurred. Creativity is now seen as something for artists. Something people have to be good at. Something that if we're not good at then there's no point in trying.
Creativity has been commodified.
While I do believe there are benefits to using our creativity to help us financially - as someone who has run a creative business for more than 10 years I would be hypocritical to say otherwise - I don't believe that we have to make money from our creativity for it to be of value.
There are a million and one ways for us to embrace our creativity and I am here for all of them.
What can you expect from Creating Lemonade?
Creating Lemonade is a weekly newsletter dedicated to how we can bring creativity back into all of our lives and use our creative minds to make our lives better.
It's about using our creativity as a tool to make lemons into lemonade, just like how artists have alchemised emotions into art and storytellers have alchemised lessons into stories and engineers have alchemised problems into solutions since the beginning of our time.
Creativity has been a key element of the human experience for as long as there have been humans having an experience.
I believe it's time for us to take it back and use it for our advantage.
Join me, week after week, as we unpack different elements of the creative journey, including:
Play - and how play is the best way to learn
Embracing the Beginner’s mindset
Dreaming big and seeing our lives as our best creation
Letting go of perfectionism and procrastination
Separating the process from the product
Taking a big old leap into the unknown
Finding new, creative ways to solve problems
Using creativity as a tool to fall back in love with life
Down the line, I’ll also be running interview series, writing workshops, creative brainstorming sessions, ask-me-anythings, and plenty more exciting things. I have so many dreams for this space and I can’t wait to get stuck in.
I’m so glad you’re here.
All my love,
Cx
PS: If you’d like to find out more about my creative mentoring practice, book a free discovery call or a one-on-one session, or check out my workshops, you can find all that and more on my website: cassiewilkins.com
PPS: If you’d like to support me and my work, you can upgrade your subscription or buy me a coffee. I appreciate you so much!