🌈 Returning to Color & Joy: Finding Light in Creative Burnout and Grief

Oct 19

Written By Insa

notes from a slow reemergence

Joy didn’t come back all at once.
It arrived in small moments, through small flashes of color and creative healing.
A foggy car window on a rainy night.
The warmth of fuzzy socks pulled up to my knees.
Colors spreading across paper without a plan.
My hands in motion again after so long in stillness.

At first I wasn’t sure what was happening.
Then I caught myself laughing.
Breathing deeper.
Making art just because it felt good.

🌻 Joy feels different now.

Joy feels different now.
I used to chase it, thinking it had to be big or loud or earned.

Now it feels quieter.
Closer.
More like color returning to my body.

It shows up in the studio, early in the morning, when brushes scatter across my desk and paint finds its way onto paper.
It shows up in the moment I stretch out at a friend’s house, peel off my shoes, and reveal watermelon pink socks that somehow make everyone in the room smile.

Joy is being seen in the most unexpected ways
and letting yourself see the world back.

Morning light in a working studio, paintbrushes lined up on a rag across a desk with neon paint in background — *First light in the studio. A desk full of brushes and the promise of something new, even if I don’t know what it will become.*

🎨 The studio called me home.

I found myself back in the studio, cleaning, making room.
Starting again.
I began painting my medicinal plant series, letting the colors find me.
I touched metal again.
I saw the future taking shape, like something possible.
Real.
It’s like I could finally hear my own heartbeat again, and it was steady.

That’s how I know I’m ready to create, not because the world is perfect, but because I can feel the pulse of my own vision again. Because I decided to rise again after the flood waters retreated.

I’m not chasing. I’m choosing.

💗 Joy lives in the body.

I know joy is safe again when my shoulders drop
When I can feel my breath go all the way down
When I move toward the practices I love without forcing them

That’s when I feel it
The return of rhythm

A pulse I can trust
Even in burnout
Even in grief

🍂 What’s calling to me this fall:

Yellow ochre
Deep magenta and umber
Neon pink and coral
Soft lavender
Moon milk white
Aqua teal

Soft textures under a heated blanket
The scent of rain-soaked soil, petrichor
The way morning light slips through the curtains
The sound of birds before the world wakes

Watermelon pink socks on outstretched legs, cozy and playful, a soft moment of joy. — *Who said compression socks can’t be fun and remind me of how much I have to be grateful for?*

🖌 Reflection for You

What are your socks of joy?
The tiny, colorful, sometimes ridiculous things that remind you you are still here?

What’s blooming late in your life right now?
What beauty are you allowing, even if it didn’t arrive on time?

Closing Words

Joy does not have to be big
It just has to be real

Let it come in sideways
Let it come through color
Let it return quietly
in your own time
on your own terms

Even now
Especially now

Hands with bright nails touching or holding hand-painted Luna moth art by Insa — Luna moths guide me into the quiet mystery of transformation. Painted by hand, held with care.

griefjoyburnouthealingritualcreative process

Insa

Hi, I’m Insa, The Garden Witch, an artist, metal fabricator, gardener, and forest-dweller in Western North Carolina. I write about healing through land connection, growing food in challenging spaces, and building a life rooted in creativity, care, and slow, intentional living. I’m currently working on a series of garden zines designed for neurodivergent growers and anyone learning to move at the pace of nature.