Burning Bridges

And other things I like to set fire to.

Warning: You might want to grab a bowl of popcorn for this post.

We’re friends now, right? I mean, I have been writing to you for months about all the crazy antics, art, adventures, and even told you a bit of my personal history.

I feel like I have shared some pretty honest truths about myself here.

My goal in sharing everything I have so far is to inspire you—not just to create as in art, but to think about how you show up in life. To be intentional about the way you move through the world and create yourself within it. To choose authenticity over cookie-cutter, dumbed-down versions of yourself. To be true to yourself because I thought I was being true to myself.

Spoiler Alert: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. (Hint: I am not the teacher.)

Most of my life has happened to me. I didn't really plan any of this out. I just got good at showing up for the creative process because it was the only thing I really understood. I learned fast—and at a young age—the six steps of the creative process:

1. This is going to be awesome.

2. This is hard.

3. This is terrible.

4. I am terrible.

5. Hey… this might be okay.

6. This is awesome.

Then we repeat with the next piece, project, or idea.

Creating has never intimidated me. Why? In the words of Picasso: “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” It’s the cycle of creation, where something new emerges from the dismantling or rejection of what came before.

And I like to burn it down. I like to transform and dismantle thoughts, ideas, and perceptions. Why? Because that is where the good stuff comes in. I think I also learned this at a very young age—five, to be exact (more on that reason here).

One of the main things I had to learn to master the creative process was the difference between fear and excitement. I had to build resiliency and muscle to pull the two apart. I had to learn myself well enough to feel in my body which was which and then when and how to react to it.

When I was younger, I did this intuitively. It is the same for me now, except for one slight difference—my overactive mind. Turns out experience is a great teacher, and the mind has to be paper-trained like a puppy.

My mind is:

—a black hole, pulling everything in, swallowing thoughts whole, and spitting out galaxies when it’s ready

—not empty, but infinite. Heavy with unspoken things, yet full of stars waiting to be born.

—a Pinterest board. Things go in, never come out, but somehow it still looks curated.

—less a vessel and more a vortex—where memories, meanings, and visions collapse into light or disappear entirely.

My theory is this: I think the heart is the gateway to “God,” and the head is the gateway to “Hell.” Okay, I am being dramatic about it, but hear me out.

I had a realization almost 20 years ago that shifted my reality. The realization was that my ability to create is equal to my ability to destruct. Being a person of intentional creation, this realization stopped me in my tracks. I looked back at the decade before and saw all the ways this truth had played out in my life—sometimes beautifully, sometimes painfully.

I was reminded of my epiphany the other day when I was scouring the internet looking for some answers around why everything I was working towards was falling apart—including me.

I was having “a moment,” which in my world looks like the world is on fire—thank you, Complex PTSD—and I am launched into the abyss of everything I ever chose wrong.

Now, you would never know this from the outside of me, but that’s the point.

My ability to create is equal to my ability to destruct (even myself).

When I was just shy of my 40th birthday, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Five months later, he was dead. Sounds harsh? It was. I blamed myself. I even asked the doctor: Was I too much for him and caused his cancer? I don’t know if that was me thinking I was that powerful (ha) or just being that anxious that I must have done something wrong, because I was flawed and filled with shame.

Shame is awful.

Guilt says: “I did something wrong.” Shame says: “There’s something wrong with me.”

Guilt is about actions. Shame is about identity.

Guilt can be useful—it can guide us, help us grow, make amends. But shame? Shame is sticky. It sinks into your bones. It doesn’t whisper, it haunts.

And the worst part? Most of the time, it’s not even yours. Shame gets passed down. Absorbed. Inherited. Sometimes without a single word being spoken—just looks, silence, expectations, vibes.

You learn to carry it before you can even name it. And then it buries your voice, your instincts, your art.

That’s where it lives—in the spaces where you learned to be quiet to stay safe. Where you abandoned parts of yourself just to belong. Where you twisted your own truth to keep the peace.

But here’s the truth no one tells you: Shame only has power when you hide it. The minute you name it, the spell starts to break.

The truth shall set you free? So will the admittance of shame.

My ability to create is equal to my ability to destruct.

I had this knowledge. But knowledge doesn’t always bring comfort. It doesn’t stop the waves of grief from knocking the air out of your lungs. It doesn’t hold you up when you feel like you’re sinking. All I could do was cling to the insight, even when I couldn’t live by it. Some days, I didn’t have the strength. Some days, I felt like I was barely treading water.

But I knew one thing: if I didn’t find a way to keep creating—even in the smallest ways—I was in danger of disappearing into the void.

I tried to explain to someone the other day what my heart looked like when something goes wrong and I dip into the darkness.

“It’s like I am standing at the top of my heart and there is a hole where something should have been (i.e., my dead husband, my father—the list goes on). A situation arises through my healing work, and I have to rappel down a rope into the dark abyss. I don’t know how deep the hole is. I don’t know what I am looking for exactly. I am not sure if the rope will hold me or I will just plummet into nothingness forever. All I know is I have to go in there. I fumble around in the dark, placing my hands against the cold, damp walls and never knowing what I am touching. I just know I have to dig. And so I do. I stay down there, and I dig until I feel what I know is mine. I excavate it from the walls of the hole and pull myself back up to the top. I have made it, again.

I open my hands, and within them are the jewels of that devastation.

I take those pieces and study them carefully before I outline the circumference of the hole in my heart with another layer of understanding. The hole is gradually getting smaller, and I know one day it will only be a surface of jewels.

My ability to create is equal to my ability to destruct.

I started living by my own words—watching my energy, noticing when it was working for me, and when it was turning against me. I thought I understood it. I thought I had a handle on it.

I don’t. I never will. That’s the beauty of it.

All I can do is ask myself the questions that keep me accountable for my creations—for myself. Every day, I look around at my external and internal spaces—my home, my work, my life, my relationships—and I ask myself one simple question:

Am I happy with what I have created here?

And when the answer is hard to face, I force myself to stop. Because sometimes, what I’ve created no longer serves me. And that means it has to go. I have to reassess. To get brutally honest. To go back to the six stages of creativity, which at this point look like this:

The Jolene Dames Creative Cycle

1. This idea is brilliant. I am a creative oracle.

2. Okay, this is a little more layered than I thought…

3. This is an emotional excavation, and I might be unraveling.

4. What even is this? Do I have any talent at all?c

5. Wait… something’s happening. There’s beauty in the mess.

6. This is powerful. This is real. This is so me.

7. I want to do this forever—how soon can I start the next one?

Sometimes, I realize that what I once wanted isn’t what I want anymore (and that’s okay—you’re allowed to change your mind!). Sometimes, I see that something in my life is just flat-out unhealthy for me, and I have to let it burn.

It’s not always easy. But it’s always necessary.

This one question—Am I happy with what I have created here?—grounds me when life feels chaotic. Even when I don’t have all the answers, it helps me shift my creative momentum in the right direction. And that’s what life is, isn’t it? A constant act of creation.

So, if we’re here to create, why not make something beautiful, something aligned, something that actually feeds us—mind, body, and soul?

Now, let me ask you:

Are you happy with what you’ve created in your life?

What do you think about the idea that our ability to create is equal to our ability to destruct?

Are you allowing your creativity to flow, or are you stifling it? And if you are—how is that showing up in your life?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Tell me—are you happy with what you have created here in Earth School?

Until Next Time…

I made this digital art collage while I was working on the Amazon series, League of Their Own as a symbol of my strength because I’ve been known to initiate my own fire to become a phoenix. Sometimes, it has to happen that way.