A person who shall not be named just suggested to me, in a public forum, that if I was struggling with creating something, then I was a.) inferior to him, and b.) probably shouldn’t be creating it.

If I wasn’t nearly 40 years old and extremely secure in my identity as a writer and creator, that comment (full of not only cruelty but misspellings and grammatical errors) may have done some serious harm.

The truth is, beautiful things are very often born of struggle.

Now, you don’t NEED to struggle or suffer to create something beautiful, but often that struggle comes from us processing, coming to terms with, and understanding our own journeys.

And the revelations that pour in during or after processing that struggle can be invaluable beacons of light for others as well as our future selves.

Frederick Douglass posed that “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” If you quit every time something becomes difficult — and trust me, most things worth doing in life *are* difficult — then you’ll never make it anywhere. And you won’t learn, and you won’t grow, and you’ll end up as a bitter, secretly resentful troll who belittles other people’s creative journeys on the internet.

The idea that writing and creating is (or should be) fun and easy all the time, or that if you find it difficult then it’s not somehow “for” you, is incredibly toxic.

Creating anything — a story, a podcast, a painting, a delicious apple pie — can come with varying measures of both struggle and delight.

It’s our job to embrace the journey and move forward, even when it gets difficult. Are you with me?

Words & warmth,

Sarah