The Unexpected Gift of Creative Rest

When Wonder Comes Back

Over the past few years, I’ve started to notice a pattern in my own life.

I’ve noticed it often enough now that I no longer think it’s a coincidence.

Whenever life becomes very full, my creativity quietly disappears first.

It doesn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t dramatic. Instead, it slips away so gradually that I often don’t realise it’s happening until I’m already in the middle of it. The first thing to go is usually the simplest. I struggle to write an Instagram caption that feels like me. Then I find myself staring at a blank page, unable to think of a blog post. Photographs begin to feel repetitive. Ideas that once came easily suddenly require enormous effort.

For years, I assumed I simply needed more inspiration.

I’ve always considered myself a creative person. Long before I started writing regularly, I loved painting, drawing, sewing and making things with my hands. Creativity has always been part of who I am, so when the ideas stopped flowing, I naturally assumed I needed to go searching for them again.

I’d buy another book. Scroll Pinterest for an hour. Listen to another podcast. Save another article. Fill another notebook with ideas I thought might spark something new.

What I didn’t realise was that I wasn’t actually lacking inspiration.

I was lacking space.

Looking back now, that seems so obvious, but at the time I couldn’t see it. My mind wasn’t empty. It was overcrowded. Life had become so full of responsibilities, plans, decisions and constant mental juggling that there simply wasn’t enough room left for quiet curiosity to emerge.

I’ve started to see that loss of creativity differently now.

Instead of treating it as a failure, I’ve begun treating it as a signal.

It’s my mind’s gentle way of telling me that life has become too busy again. That I’ve spent too long producing and not enough time simply noticing.

It’s something I’ve noticed with children too.

We instinctively know they need space. We don’t expect every minute of their holidays to be scheduled because we understand that imagination often appears during long afternoons when nothing much is happening. Given enough time, they invent games, create stories, build dens, draw pictures or disappear into a world entirely of their own making.

We accept that children need room for wonder.

Somewhere along the way, many of us stop giving ourselves that same gift.

Instead, we fill every corner of our lives. Even our free time becomes productive. We listen to podcasts while we walk. We answer emails while waiting in the car. We scroll while drinking our coffee. We become so accustomed to filling every quiet moment that silence itself begins to feel uncomfortable.

I’ve noticed this pattern several times now.

Last Christmas, after an incredibly busy autumn, I reached a point where I simply couldn’t think of anything new to write. I had spent months juggling the blog, my little candle business and family life. I wasn’t unhappy, but I was exhausted. Rather than forcing myself to keep producing, I made a decision that felt surprisingly difficult.

I stopped.

I took the whole of January away from the blog.

Then, just a few months later, I found myself making exactly the same decision before we travelled to France this summer.

I very nearly packed my laptop.

Part of me thought I should bring it, just in case inspiration struck. Just in case I wanted to write something while I was away.

In the end, I left it at home.

Instead, I packed a notebook.

I told myself that if an idea came, I’d write it down or record a voice note, but otherwise I would simply let myself be on holiday.

The first few days were harder than I expected.

Although my body had stopped, my mind hadn’t quite caught up. I still found myself mentally planning, organising and thinking ahead. But gradually, something softened.

We wandered through little French villages without an agenda. We bought warm croissants each morning from the boulangerie. We stopped at a tiny farm kiosk for fresh milk and cheese. We floated around the lazy river chatting about nothing in particular. We lingered over long lunches and even longer evenings where nobody seemed to be in any hurry at all.

None of those moments were extraordinary.

Yet together they created something extraordinary inside me.

Without trying, I found myself noticing things again. The light through the trees. Dragonflies skimming across the water. Fresh bread still warm in the paper bag. Conversations that lasted simply because nobody needed to leave.

Then, almost without warning, the ideas started returning.

Not because I’d gone looking for them.

Because I’d finally left enough room for them to arrive.

I’ve noticed exactly the same thing happens at home too. Sometimes it’s only after an hour pottering in the garden, deadheading flowers, wandering around the fields with the dog or simply sitting outside with a cup of tea that my mind begins to settle. The ideas rarely arrive while I’m trying to find them. More often than not, they appear while I’m looking at something else entirely.

Recently I came across the phrase creative rest, and it immediately resonated with me. Not because it offered me a new way of becoming creative, but because it finally gave a name to something I’d already experienced several times without fully understanding it.

Creative rest isn’t simply taking time off.

It’s making enough space for wonder to return.

And perhaps wonder isn’t something extraordinary at all.

Perhaps it’s simply paying close attention to ordinary things we’ve stopped noticing.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that creativity isn’t reserved for artists or writers. It’s part of being human. It’s how we solve problems, decorate a home, cook a meal without a recipe, plant a garden, comfort a friend or notice beauty in an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

It’s not something we lose.

It’s something we stop hearing when life becomes too loud.

These days, I don’t panic when the ideas stop coming.

I don’t immediately assume I need another book, another course or another source of inspiration.

Instead, I ask myself a different question.

Have I left enough room for wonder lately?

Because every time I’ve made that space, whether through a quiet January, a slow walk, an afternoon in the garden or a few weeks in the French countryside, the same thing has happened.

Wonder returns first.

Then curiosity.

Then, quietly and without any forcing at all, creativity follows.

Looking back now, I don’t think creative rest gave me new ideas.

I think it simply helped me hear the ones that were already quietly waiting.

Perhaps that’s the unexpected gift of creative rest.

Not that it makes us more productive.

Not that it helps us achieve more.

But that it gently returns us to ourselves.

And when wonder comes back…

Perhaps we do too.

Chat soon,

Ciara

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