Creativity in Midlife: Going Back to What You Loved as a Child Might Be Where Your Vitality Is Hiding

I have been making jewelry again.

I’m enjoying beads, wire, a pair of pliers, and an hour where I’m in flow and totally enjoying myself. I picked it up again almost by accident, watching my daughter and her friend sit cross-legged on the floor making friendship bracelets, completely absorbed. I remembered doing the same thing at her age. The particular satisfaction of it. The way time disappeared.

I picked up some supplies the next day.

I think about this a lot when women come into sessions describing a particular kind of flatness, a loss of spark, a sense that the things that used to feel meaningful have gone a little gray. And I find myself asking the same question: what did you really love to do as a kid?

The answers come quickly. Drawing. Dancing in my bedroom. Making things with my hands. Writing stories. Singing. Putting on plays.

I think those early loves are worth paying attention to.

They existed before self-consciousness, before comparison, before the part of us that edits what we do before we do it. They are often a surprisingly direct map back to something essential that perimenopause/menopause and busyness can obscure.

A client of mine signed up for a watercolor class on a whim. She had forgotten she was someone who loved color and was finding so much joy playing with them in class.

Another client got back into pottery. She had taken a class in college and dropped it when she became a mom. She started again at forty-six and described her weekly session as the only hour of the week where she was completely relaxed.

There is real science behind why this happens. Creative activity reduces cortisol, supports dopamine production, and engages the parts of the brain associated with flow, that quality of absorption where time dissolves and self-consciousness drops away. For women in perimenopause, whose dopamine and serotonin are already fluctuating, this is not a small thing.

I want to say clearly: the point is not the output. My watercolor client shows up every week anyway because of how she feels while she's doing it. My jewelry isn't precious.

If you're in midlife and haven't made anything in a long time, I invite you to start super small. Find something you loved when you were a girl and try it out again. Buy the cheap supplies. Take the beginner class. Sit on the floor with your kid and make something with your hands.

See what comes back.

If this resonates and you're in California, I'd love to support you. You can book a session and get started.