I said this to a stranger recently, and he wrote it down. Now I can’t stop thinking about it, because I realised I’ve been living by it for years without ever saying it out loud.
Here’s where it came from. A client of mine once drew a faceless woman in a sketchpad. She sat back, looked at what her own hand had made, and was stunned by it. I remember thinking: I would never have drawn that. Nobody else would have. It was hers, completely.
That’s when it clicked for me. I know a lot of people journal, and journaling is wonderful. But writing pulls us toward a common shape. We reach for the same phrases, the tidy sentences, the version of the story we’ve already told ourselves. We can hide in writing. Drawing doesn’t let you hide.
It’s the same reason I’ve never worked from a rigid script. If everyone reveals themselves differently, then the work has to leave room for that. My job isn’t to hand you my lines — it’s to make you feel safe enough to start with a blank canvas.
And safety comes first. Always. I will never ask you to be brave before it’s earned. Some people arrive as notebook people — they need the lines, the structure, the safety of a page that’s already organised. That’s okay. That’s where we start. But somewhere along the way, something shifts, and the person who needed the lines picks up the blank page. And what comes out of them belongs to no one else on this earth.
Then comes the hardest part, and the most powerful: the mirror. Truly seeing yourself — not the story, not the tidy sentences — you. Hardest thing you can do. And it changes everything.
So here’s my gentle challenge for you this week. Put the journal down, just once. Pick up a pencil instead. Draw how you feel — badly, messily, honestly. Then sit back and look at what your hand made when the words got out of the way.
You might be surprised who you meet on the page.
— Maree-Nicole
