I have recently become more aware that I needed to become involved in my own creative work, to engage in this process that I am researching so intensely, not just to be looking at it from the outside, but to be experiencing it from the inside. So I invited an artist and educator (pseudonym, Clare) to facilitate a creative session with me. We spent a sunny afternoon in my kitchen and garden with a range of materials to see what might emerge. There was some fear on my part – the fear of nothing emerging, creating a space, having all the materials before me and just discovering a void, or at least nothing meaningful. However, I was determined not to control what emerged, to allow the materials and our prior conversation and sharing of favourite quotes to act on me as they would. My other fear was that of over-interpretation, trying too hard to produce something useful, engineering something that would fit neatly in with all that I am exploring. At times I stumbled or got stuck, like a branch lodged or jammed behind a rock as it journeyed downstream, however Clare would find ways to release me such that I could keep flowing where the current would take me. 
 
I allowed my hands to begin to mould and play with the materials, following a sense of wanting to put them together to clothe a certain space whose dimensions I did not know. I kept this up until, like coming home, I could rest with the piece in front of me.
 
After having produced the piece, we could see a number of the themes we had been discussing, metaphorically expressed. We had talked about inner and outer worlds (heartwood and bark), patterns, threads of interconnection and playfulness (wire). I wanted to frame my ideas and get a handle on my work (wooden door handle). I sought to do this without closing down the thinking space. I wanted a platform (the heartwood area) to explore further from, rather than a sealed and finished explanation that could be left on the shelf to go stale (wire overflowing the central space down over the bark). No fixing of ideas, like body parts in formalin preserved and lifeless. I wanted there to be movement, freedom and life in my thinking and grappling with these ideas (wire springing and maintaining some of its own shape at the same time as being moulded). I also talked about students being trained to nail down the diagnosis and how I wanted them to see that there was so much more to consulting than diagnosis and treatment. Blue skies thinking was another idea raised (the dried blue petals of love-in-the-mist flowers).