As a child, were your gifts always celebrated? And if not, how did you overcome or what did you hold onto when it wasn't easy? —Ambre, parent
I feel very, very blessed to have had parents who celebrated the heck out of their kids. My parents have three children: one grew up to be a writer and artist (me), one grew up to conduct operas and symphonies in Europe, and one grew up to be an actor who has performed on Broadway and now creatively incorporates the arts into church ministry. How did my parents do it? What magical food did they feed us, that all three of us eschewed more normal and practical career paths and chose to follow our wild imaginations in these weird creative directions? I’ll probably never fully know the answer, but I can make a few guesses.
For one thing, they read aloud to us and encouraged our love for books from a very early age. We’d go to the library regularly and bring home towers of books, and we had one of those houses that oozed bookshelves from every spare wall. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this family literary culture for nurturing the imagination—my childhood was thoroughly soaked in words and stories. (That's why I'm a HUGE fan of the Read-Aloud Revival!)
As soon as our unique interests began to emerge (my brother Joe, the future opera conductor, was listening intently to musical scores even before he could read!), my parents found ways to encourage and enable us to pursue them. I know that required a lot of sacrifices on their part and they couldn’t provide everything, but they made sure that if we found something we loved to do, there was a way for us to do it. And they never said, “Art? Acting? Operas? How do you make a living doing that? Those are fine as hobbies, but you need a real career!” Instead, all I remember is affirmation. They were the first ones in the door at every concert, every performance of every play. They praised every picture I drew and every poem or story I wrote. They were behind us pushing us onward. It was my dad who urged me to submit to publishers and told me over and over again that I could be a writer, even when I didn't believe it.
I love it, as a creative writing teacher, when I encounter parents who don’t consider themselves to be “creative” (though I would disagree with them on that point) but who see the flicker of creative passion in their children and are trying their best to figure out how to fan that flame. A mom comes to me and says, “My son spends all his time reading and writing stories, and I want to give him more opportunities to develop that, but I’m not a writer myself and I don’t know how. What should I do?” That’s a parent whose child is going to flourish, because she’s not trying to mold her son after her own image; she’s watching that personality and passion growing and she’s saying, “I want to help him be what he is meant to be.”
That early encouragement from my family was especially important for me because rejection from the world came FAST AND FURIOUS. My first novel wasn't published until I was 35. I've only now in my early 40s had the courage to put my visual art out into the world again and recover my childhood dream of illustrating. How do I overcome the challenges of living out my creative gifts? I don't—alone. I need my family. I need my community. I need the people who love me and who know me and who will continually celebrate me, no matter what.