What Shape Is Your Heartwood?
- May 31
- 7 min read
On creative thresholds, hidden roots, and the self that has kept us safe
There are moments in a creative life when we realise we are not only trying to make new work.
We are trying to become someone who can hold it. This is the part we often underestimate.
We imagine change as a practical matter: clearer goals, better habits, a new website, a more consistent rhythm, a stronger body of work, a braver way of speaking about what we do.
And all of those things matter.
But sometimes the reason we stay circling the same threshold is not because we lack discipline, clarity, talent, or desire. Sometimes the next version of our creative life asks something deeper of us.
It asks us to look beneath the surface. To the roots. To the hidden structure that has been holding us. To the shape of the self we have grown around. The roots we imagine, and the roots that are real.
If I asked you to draw the roots of a tree, you might draw what most of us draw. A trunk rising upwards. Branches reaching into the sky. And beneath the soil, a neat mirrored system of roots: balanced, branching, almost symmetrical. A tidy underground reflection of the tree above.
But real roots are not like that.
Real roots do not grow according to an idealised picture.
They move towards water. They bend around stone. They thicken where support is needed. They split, knot, tangle, deepen, search. They become shaped by weather, hunger, pressure, obstacle, damage, nourishment, and survival.
Perhaps we are the same.
We imagine our creative lives should have a clean structure. A visible logic. A clear trunk. A balanced branching. A story that makes sense from the outside.
But the truth of us is often stranger, wilder, less symmetrical. Our roots may not look how we thought they would. And maybe that is not a problem.
Maybe it is the beginning of understanding.
What has shaped you beneath the surface?
In psychological language, there are many ways to talk about this.
Schema therapy speaks of deeply held patterns that shape how we perceive ourselves, others, and what is possible. These patterns can lead us into coping styles such as avoidance, surrender, or overcompensation. Not because we are broken, but because we are trying to avoid pain.
Internal Family Systems speaks of protective parts: inner aspects of us that take on roles to keep us safe. The part that delays. The part that overprepares. The part that perfects. The part that hides. The part that keeps us busy, scattered, useful, or endlessly in preparation.
Nervous system approaches remind us that safety is not only an idea in the mind. Our bodies are constantly scanning for cues of safety and threat. Sometimes what looks like resistance is the body trying to protect us from crossing into something it has not yet registered as safe.
I am not writing about this as a therapist, but as an artist, mentor, and woman who has spent many years meeting these patterns in my own life — through therapy, reflection, research, reading, and through the quiet work of witnessing how creative women approach thresholds in their work and lives.
Again and again, I see the same thing.
A woman wants to change. She wants to make the work. She wants to be seen. She wants to simplify, begin, complete, share, launch, return, emerge.
But something beneath the surface keeps pulling her back into the familiar shape.
Not because she is lazy. Not because she doesn't care enough. Not because she is incapable.
But because the new life, the new work, the new visibility, the new devotion, may threaten the structure of self that once helped her survive.
The self we have grown around
We talk a lot about resistance in creative work. But I think resistance is often too harsh a word. It can make us feel as if we are fighting ourselves. As if there is some stubborn, sabotaging part of us that needs to be overcome.
I am more interested in listening to what the resistance has been protecting.
What if the part of you that keeps delaying is not trying to ruin things?
What if the part of you that stays scattered is trying to keep you from being fully seen?
What if the part of you that keeps healing, learning, preparing, and refining is not avoiding growth because she does not want it — but because some deeper part of her believes growth will cost too much?
What if the unfinishedness has been a shelter?
What if the smallness has been a form of safety?
What if the constant searching has been a way of not having to stand still long enough to be witnessed?
These patterns are not failures.
They are roots.
They are places where we bent around difficulty.
Places where we thickened in response to pressure.
Places where we learned to grow in the direction of what felt safe, available, or survivable at the time.
There is tenderness in that.
There is intelligence in that.
But the threshold arrives when we begin to recognise that what once helped us root may now be shaping the direction of our growth.
What shape is your heartwood?
Inside a tree, heartwood is the older, inner wood. It is no longer the living transport system of the tree, but it remains part of its strength. It holds memory, density, structure, and endurance. It is the inner core that tells the story of how the tree has grown.
I keep thinking about this.
What shape is our heartwood?
What is the inner core of us, formed over years of adaptation, devotion, injury, resilience, longing, practice, disappointment, hope?
What has become dense within us?
What has strengthened?
What have we mistaken for damage that may actually be evidence of survival?
And what, perhaps, has become too rigid to allow the next ring of growth?
Because not all strength is freedom.
Some strength is armour.
Some strength is a beautiful old structure that once held us upright, but now prevents us from bending, reaching, softening, expanding.
The work is not to rip out our roots. The work is not to reject the old self. The work is not to shame the parts of us that learned how to survive. The work is to understand the shape we have grown into — and to ask whether it still allows life to move through us.
The threshold to expansion
Creative expansion often asks for more than action. It asks for identity shift. It asks us to become someone who can be visible. Someone who can complete. Someone who can claim the work. Someone who can be witnessed without collapsing into shame, over-explaining, disappearing, or beginning again from scratch.
This is why a new website can feel enormous.
Why sharing a painting can feel exposing.
Why launching an offer can stir fear.
Why returning to the studio after a long absence can feel like grief.
Why finishing the work can sometimes feel more frightening than beginning it.
Because at the threshold, we are not only meeting the task.
We are meeting the self who believes the task is dangerous. And she deserves gentleness. She deserves to be heard. She deserves to know that expansion does not have to mean abandonment.
You do not have to abandon the self who kept you safe in order to become the self who is ready to grow.
You can bring her with you. You can thank the roots. You can honour the knots. You can recognise the old pattern without letting it determine the whole direction of your growth.
Growing differently now
Perhaps the real question is not: why am I still stuck? Perhaps the better question is:
What part of me has been trying to keep me safe here?
What shape have I grown around?
What has become familiar, even if it no longer nourishes me?
What would expansion feel like if my body could register it as safe?
What would it mean to grow from my heartwood rather than from my fear?
Because our roots may be stranger than we imagined.
Our inner structure may be more tangled, more beautiful, more adaptive, more complex than the neat diagrams we once believed in. But there is information there. There is wisdom there. There is the story of how we became.
And there may also be the first clue about how we are ready to become differently. Not by cutting ourselves away from the past. Not by forcing ourselves through the threshold. But by understanding what has held us — and choosing, gently and deliberately, what will hold us next.
REFLECTION PROMPTS
What do I imagine my roots should look like?
What do my roots actually look like?
Where have I grown around difficulty?
What protective patterns have helped me survive, but may now be limiting my growth?
What part of me still believes visibility, completion, or expansion is unsafe?
What is the shape of my heartwood?
What would it mean to grow differently now?
We do not need to judge the old shape. We only need to see it clearly. To understand how it formed. To honour what it protected. And then, when the moment comes, to let the next ring of growth begin.
If this piece has helped you see something in your own creative life more clearly, you are very welcome to stay close.
I write Stories from the Studio on the new and full moons — quiet letters on creativity, thresholds, cyclical living, art-making, and the deeper patterns that shape our work.
And if you recognise yourself in this piece — if you feel you are standing at the edge of a new creative chapter but are finding it difficult to cross alone — you are welcome to begin a conversation with me.
You do not need to have the right words. You can simply tell me where you feel stuck, what feels like it is shifting, or what threshold you sense you are standing before.
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