I’ve been reflecting on how life teaches us. How every season invites us to look closely at the places within ourselves that ask for examination. Of course, it’s one thing to recognize those places and another to commit to the work of moving through whatever keeps us stuck or stagnant. Earlier this year, I made the commitment to taking better care of myself. That has included overhauling my diet, exercising consistently, and incorporating the sauna into my routine. In many ways, those changes have altered my relationship with myself, deepening my appreciation for my health and strengthening my desire to cultivate longevity, to remain as active and mobile as I can as I continue to grow older.

Perhaps this is something many people encounter when they reach the point in life where the days behind them begin to outnumber the ones ahead. Along with that realization comes a more settled understanding of one’s values and sense of self. These days, there isn’t much anyone can say to persuade me to abandon my own internal guidance system. Living with integrity has become increasingly important to me as I’ve gotten older. Honoring my yeses and my no’s. Trusting my choices. Endeavoring to be a good human being. Remembering that despite our differences in opinion, belief, or experience, we are all part of the same ecosystem. I’ve also been thinking about how much time I once spent judging others, investing energy in people, places, and circumstances I could never control. How easy it is to point the finger, to stand upon a moral high horse, to divide the world into “us” and “them.” To blame, shame, and convince ourselves that the problem always exists somewhere outside of us.

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about another war. The one within. The places where we build walls instead of bridges. Where resentment hardens into identity. Where fear disguises itself as certainty. Where we withhold compassion from others, and sometimes from ourselves. Where we feel compelled to control everyone and everything in order to feel safe. I’ve also been thinking a great deal about peace. Maybe peace doesn’t begin at a negotiating table. Maybe it begins the moment we’re willing to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question: Where, within me, am I still at war?

For me, that internal battle has always been tied to my own sense of self-worth. For most of my life, I have measured my value through achievement, through being needed, through proving that I am someone others could depend on. If I showed up as the consummate team player, the trusted friend who always answered the call, the partner willing to go the extra mile and place my own needs on the back burner, surely I would demonstrate my value and my worth. Looking back, I can see how these parts of myself were also attempts to create a sense of control and safety. If I could be enough for everyone else, perhaps I would finally feel like enough for myself. It has been a journey to let those parts of myself soften and fall away. And yet, something shifted over this last year. I discovered that my value and worth transcend what others think of me and are rooted in what I believe about myself. That the intention we carry in our hearts to extend kindness and care toward others should come from love, not from a desire to earn acceptance. That I have to live with the consequences of my own actions if I am not endeavoring to lead with love. And often, no one else is paying attention. But me.

What if we became curious about the ways we are just as much a part of the problem as we hope to be part of the solution? We criticize social media while remaining tethered to it. We condemn the billionaires who own these platforms while continuing to give them our attention. We resent corporate greed while participating in the systems that sustain it. None of this is meant as an indictment. It’s simply an acknowledgment that, in one way or another, we are all plugged into the same machine. Perhaps recognizing our own participation is more productive than endlessly demonizing one another and fueling even more division. What if transforming the places within ourselves that live in fear or ignorance became the beginning of meaningful change? What if we focused on becoming better parents, siblings, partners, friends, colleagues, and neighbors, contributing to our families and communities one small act at a time?

These are not lofty ideals. They are entirely possible. Every meaningful change asks us to look inward. To learn to accept ourselves, appreciate ourselves, and love ourselves, and through that process discover what it means to extend that same compassion, understanding, and grace to another. I may be a naive optimist. I know the atrocities of this world cannot be solved simply by kindness alone, or going to therapy, eating healthier, or working out. But I do believe everything is a teacher. Every experience is an invitation to look more closely, to become curious instead of certain, and to begin with the only person we have any real power to change.

© Alana Foy 2026

Lately, I’ve been pondering the distinction between independence, interdependence, and a topic I know all too well, codependence. I’ve been thinking about the fine line between being fully responsible for your own life and how in partnership there is sometimes a tendency to slowly merge your identity with another person. Somewhere between those two extremes I want to believe there is a healthier middle, where the individuals who are part of the relationship remain whole unto themselves while also creating something meaningful together. That middle is harder to find than I once believed.

Over the years, I’ve been pretty diligent about working through many of the codependent tendencies I learned early in childhood and carried well into adulthood. Therapy, recovery spaces, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, the journey of being single taught me more about myself than I ever anticipated. They helped me develop reverence for the life I’ve built and for the person I’ve become. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that being single for the last few years has fortified a sense of independence that has been incredibly empowering as a woman. In learning to value my own time and prioritize my own needs, I adopted ways of relating that may be considered unconventional, largely because of the freedom and autonomy this season of life has afforded me.

Of course, that hasn’t come without questions from those closest to me. Some partnered friends and family members have struggled to understand my choices, as though choosing a different path somehow suggests a lack of maturity or certainty. Some of my single friends haven’t fully understood them either, perhaps because they still hold hope that one day they’ll meet their person and ride off into the sunset. I understand that hope because I still believe partnership can be one of life’s greatest teachers. I also know that every lasting relationship, no matter how beautiful, eventually asks something of us. Love in relationship is not sustained by chemistry alone, but by honesty, vulnerability, and the willingness to keep choosing one another long after all the feel good hormones have worn off and novelty fades.

Having married young and become a mother before I truly knew who I was, much of my identity was built around the roles I occupied: wife, mother, career woman… After my divorce, nearing forty, I experienced the strange disorientation of discovering myself for what felt like the first time. There was tremendous freedom in laying down some of the identities I had accumulated and beginning to build a healthier relationship with myself. Ironically, only a couple of years later, I found myself completely merging my identity with someone I loved immensely, someone who struggled with addiction. By the time I realized I was never going to be able to save them, nearly seven years had passed. There I was, single again, but this time fully aware that I had spent much of my forties trying to rescue another person while completely abandoning myself in the process.

Eventually I came to understand that I could no longer where a mask. Not for a relationship. Not for my friends or family. Not even for the version of myself I had convinced myself I was supposed to be. I made a promise that I would never again abandon the woman I had worked so hard to discover. That promise changed the way I move through the world now.

There are still days when I romanticize what partnership might look like with someone who has done, and continues to do, their share of inner work. Someone who values solitude as much as togetherness, who has cultivated a healthy relationship with work, friendship, adventure, and themselves. I still believe that kind of partnership exists. However, I’ve also come to realize that the grass has a way of appearing greener on whichever side we’re not standing.

I’ve met single people who seem profoundly alive and others who seem deeply lonely. I’ve met partnered people whose relationships inspire me, and others who seem to have lost themselves and each other somewhere along the way. None of this is a judgment. If anything, it’s a reminder of how human we all are. Regardless of our relationship status, most of us are still learning how to be honest, how to be vulnerable, how to loosen our grip on control, and how to have the difficult conversations intimacy inevitably requires. Myself included. Which is why I find myself returning to the same questions: What happens when we begin examining the places within ourselves where we hide, control, rescue, or project? What happens when we stop asking whether singleness or partnership is the better life and instead ask whether we’re living honestly and authentically within whichever life we’ve chosen?

Maybe that is what these past several years have been teaching me. What my entire life, up until this point, has been teaching me. If I’m fortunate, I may have twenty-five or thirty summers left, and I don’t want to spend them inauthentically, shrinking, or abandoning myself for the comfort or approval of others. I want to spend them honoring this one precious life I’ve been given.

It has taken me nearly two decades to realize that my life, and certainly my worth, are not predicated on being partnered. That being single doesn’t somehow make me unlovable, nor does being in a relationship make someone whole. What I’ve come to value most is not my relationship status, but my willingness to stay connected to what is honest and true, even when doing so asks me to disappoint expectations, release old identities, or walk a different path than the one I imagined.

We’ve all been conditioned in countless ways to minimize our experience, dismiss what genuinely brings us alive, and accept the love we think we deserve instead of the love that allows us to become more fully ourselves. Maybe “the work” isn’t simply finding someone to share our lives with. Maybe it’s growing into someone we never again have to abandon in order to love or be loved.

These are the questions I find myself pondering as I reflect on independence. I’m learning that the answers to life’s questions rarely arrive all at once, or in the ways we imagine they will. More often, they reveal themselves incrementally, over time. What I’m also discovering, as I continue making my way through this human journey, is that I have not figured it out. I probably never will. What does feel true is that life continually asks me, in any given moment, to remain present long enough to let it teach me what I need to learn. And I have become much better at paying attention and listening. Perhaps that is the kind of independence worth celebrating.

© Alana Foy 2026

I’m sometimes asked where I derive inspiration and what practices I employ when it comes to the creative process. For context, very early on in my writing adventures, I was looking for a framework I could abide by. When I discovered The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, I felt like I had stumbled upon gold. The sheer act of showing up to the page and writing for writing’s sake felt less stringent than the rigid rules that had been imparted to me in high school and undergrad. There was something liberating about setting down some of those technical expectations and simply returning to the practice itself, something that had been a companion on my journey since I was young.

When I set out to write my next book, Living Artfully: Creating Without Conditions, I outlined five simple practices that I have been employing for over a decade. The intention behind the book was to inspire other creatives to be where they are. Not to chase the muse, but to cultivate a relationship with themselves. A relationship that, through engaging more deeply with your life, allows you to listen to the inner nudge of creativity and to practice what it means to show up fully for your life.

The idea is that in cultivating a more loving, attentive, and accepting relationship with ourselves, life begins to reveal threads along our creative journey, or what I like to call flecks of gold. These threads arrive not through force, but through attention. Through noticing what life and the creative process are subtly trying to reveal, often in ways that are easily overlooked, and yet undeniably present when we allow ourselves to slow down enough to see them.

As a writer, I’ve discovered that inspiration is everywhere, but often we are too busy or unwilling to notice it. To practice presence inside ordinary days is to pay attention to what is arising in the moment. It is to be immersed enough in what is in front of you that you allow yourself to be moved by it. Creativity, like life, asks for a kind of curiosity. A willingness to stay with what appears long enough for it to reveal something deeper, something just beneath the surface that cannot be accessed in a rush.

When you slow down, when you stop reaching for the next thing, something begins to open. The moment offers an invitation. Sometimes serious, sometimes playful, sometimes daring, and often easily missed if you are not paying attention.

I think what many artists and creatives struggle with is the belief that the muse, when chased, will suddenly open itself to us, as if creativity were a kind of mating ritual where we perform and it chooses us. What I’ve discovered, however, is that inspiration does not arrive on command. It isn’t something we can coerce or will into being. It is felt, received, and observed. It shapes you as much as you shape what you create, and in many ways asks something of you before it reveals itself fully.

The invitation, then, is an earnest willingness to behold. To let go of our best-laid plans. To be open to following the threads of inspiration, even when they lead us somewhere we did not expect, somewhere we may not have chosen had we been left to our own devices. That, to me, is the real gift of this journey. The opportunity to let ourselves and our creativity be moved by what the moment is asking for.

There is an innate beauty in living artfully. A kind of surrender that opens doors to possibility. The grasping and clenching that so often accompany our need to control outcomes, whether in our personal or professional lives, stand in contrast to the trust required in the creative process. To create in this way is to hand over the wheel to what wants to be made, and with a kind of faith, to follow that thread wherever it leads.

Sometimes, like anything in life, the result is not ostentatious in its expression, and we discover that the idea doesn’t quite have legs. Sometimes the thread leads to another thread, and we find ourselves following something entirely different than what we set out to create, projects unfolding more slowly than we anticipated. Sometimes the flecks of gold are pieces of art made only for ourselves, born from grief, from longing, from the work of trying to understand our place in the world. And sometimes, we catch that glint of gold at just the right moment, and something clicks into place. Something that feels, if only briefly, like kismet.

What we begin to discover is that our only job is to show up. To follow the subtle threads. To allow them to take us on creative adventures. And to remain willing to explore wherever those portals of imagination may lead.

In Living Artfully, I introduce a framework I call D.A.N.C.E., a way of approaching the creative process that is less about rigid structure and more about rhythm, relationship, and trust. It’s not a formula to get it right, but a way of staying in motion with your creativity. A way of creating more than you consume, of loosening your grip on productivity, and of returning to the steady practice of making.

If you feel called, you can explore more of that here: D.A.N.C.E

Want to purchase a copy of my new book Flecks of Gold: A Year of Living Artfully, grab a copy here: Order Flecks of Gold

Creative Cue:
Set a timer for 10–15 minutes. Sit with your surroundings and observe. Notice what is present. What you see, hear, feel, and sense. When the timer ends, write for a few minutes about what you experienced. Capture thoughts, emotions, and any intuitive nudges that surfaced. Then choose one thread and follow it a little further.

Question to Carry:
What did I notice, and which thread feels most alive to follow next?

© Alana Foy 2026

I’m always surprised by how much can change in a year.

This time last year, I decided to share my writing publicly. While I had attempted to create a blog 15 years prior, this time felt different. It meant I was finally willing to share my work with the people closest to me. It meant I was ready to honor a childhood dream of becoming a writer, not with the expectation that it would lead anywhere in particular, but with a simple commitment to give myself permission to sit down, write, and share what felt like it wanted to be shared.

In many ways, I was terrified. All of the familiar inner dialogue surfaced, questioning whether I had anything meaningful to say, along with the imposter syndrome that often accompanies the act of creating. At the same time, there was something else. Time. Experience. An inner knowing that enough life had been lived to begin trusting what wanted to come through. For whatever reason, I felt inclined to share insights shaped by my own experiences about life, love, identity, mindfulness, and creativity, a subject that has remained at the forefront of my life.

There is something to be said about arriving at a place where you begin to let go of what other people think and choose instead to risk uncertainty in order to do the thing that makes you come alive. To move toward what feels most congruent with who you are, even if you do not yet know where it will lead.

Alongside the decision to begin sharing my writing on Substack, I also stepped into a year of living artfully. What emerged was not a linear story, but a lyrical memoir that traces how I came to practice Living Artfully across four seasons of a single year. Divided into 24 entries, each chapter began to form a mosaic rather than a traditional narrative. A collection of moments. A body of work shaped by returning again and again to the page.

Here is what I have come to understand. When you choose to follow what calls you, especially beyond the confines of what you think is possible, something begins to reveal itself. Not all at once, of course, and not in a straight line. But in glimpses and threads of possibility.

In what I have come to call flecks of gold.

They appear when you stay close to what’s knocking at your heart’s door. When you return. When you continue to show up for the art that wants to be made, even when it feels uncertain or incomplete. Over time, those threads become directional. What once felt like a loose idea becomes a path. Doorways begin to reveal themselves. Possibilities emerge that you could not have planned.

This is why I believe so deeply in pursuing our creative aspirations. Not because they guarantee a specific outcome, but because they change us. They ask us to listen more closely, to trust more deeply, to be fully present, and to create without needing to know where it will all lead. In many ways, the creative journey is synonymous with our human journey. And in this way, we become the protagonists of our own lives.

Today, I am sharing the result of that year.

Flecks of Gold.

A lyrical memoir of living artfully across four seasons. A deeply personal and intimate body of work that came into being by choosing not to abandon what was asking to be made.

If there is something calling you, an idea, a project, a nudge to create something, follow it. Stay with it. See what happens when you continue to return to the thing that is beckoning your attention.

You might be surprised by what appears.

To the friends and family who have supported and encouraged me along this journey, thank you for your love. And to the newfound friends and co-conspirators in creativity I have connected with over this last year, you inspire me. Let’s continue to do the thing that bridges connection and meaning by living artfully.

Hugs.

xx Alana

You can order Flecks of Gold now in both paperback and e-book. Order Here

© Alana Foy 2026

Hey Underground Crew,

As you know. There are things I don’t always say in the pieces I share above ground, something that lives just beneath the surface of what I’m willing to share out loud. This week’s essay: Honesty: on truth telling, creative courage, and becoming a writer brushes up against the honesty, the courage, the subtle negotiations we have with ourselves about whether or not to be seen. And if I’m being fully transparent here with you, I can feel how often I still hold something back. Not intentionally, not in a way that feels dishonest, but in a way that feels… protective.

I think I’ve spent years learning how to tell the truth in a way that is digestible, in a way that can be received. And while there is care in that, there is also a kind of distance or what feels like, hiding. A shaping, if you will. A softening of the edges before I let something leave me. What I’ve been sitting with lately is the question of what it would mean to let myself be seen without that layer. To speak from the place that is still in process, still uncertain. To share the work not as something complete, but as something alive.

Read more

I caught up with an old friend yesterday, a fellow creative and multidisciplinary artist whose work I’ve long admired. As writers, we found ourselves discussing the challenges of getting our work out into the world. First and foremost, getting out of our own way. Letting go of perfectionism. Quieting the inner critic that insists whatever it is we are working on isn’t good enough.

Writing, unlike many other mediums, doesn’t offer instant feedback. There are lovers of words, of course, those who seek out the work of writers they follow, but still, writing asks something more of its audience. It requires the reader to sit down, to slow down, and to enter the world someone else has assembled on the page. And then there is the courage required to share it, the vulnerability, the honesty.

There is no real hiding behind the words. Yes, there is metaphor. Yes, there is fiction. But even then, there is always intention. Writers make choices about plot, character, theme, and the emotional experience of the reader. The work may be interpreted through the reader’s lens, as all art is, but the act of writing itself demands a kind of truth-telling.

Perhaps this is why it can take years for a writer to produce a body of work, years to finish a book, years to share it publicly. I know I’m not alone in this. The self-sabotage, the limiting beliefs, the ever-present inner dialogue, all of it kept me feeling stuck for far longer than I care to admit. But something shifted for me last year.

When I finally decided to share my work publicly, moving my writing to Substack and onto my website which is my digital studio, confessionsofacreative.co, it felt like a declaration. A promise to the younger version of myself, the one who dreamed of being a writer at eight years old. It was a quiet but resolute decision to move beyond the confines of my own beliefs and do the thing that has always brought me back to myself: to write, and not just to write, but to tell the truth.

Not only because something inside me compels it, but because I sense how much we need spaces where this kind of honesty can exist, where we can speak to the very things so many of us carry: the doubt, the resistance, the longing to honor the part of ourselves that wants to give voice to how we experience the world, and, in many ways, the longing to be understood.

In passing, I have caught myself saying, I can’t believe I wrote one of my books over ten years ago and I am only now sharing my work. The truth is, I can believe it. I don’t experience our paths as linear. I experience them as cyclical, as seasonal. Things unfold in their own time, and the journey carries us where it does, often teaching us what only time, space, and lived experience can.

That doesn’t mean everything is easy to make sense of. It doesn’t erase the difficult moments or the realities of what some have had to endure. There are experiences that shape us in ways we may never fully reconcile. And still, something in us adapts.

In many ways, we are strengthened by what we move through, not in a way that justifies the pain, but in a way that reveals the resilience that was there all along. The subtle ways we held ourselves together. The ways we kept going. Perhaps we arrive on the other side not untouched, but altered. A little bruised. A little wobbly. But still here. Still intact.

And maybe that, too, is part of the honesty. The willingness to honor the seasons of our lives and the art that wants to be made, regardless of the outcome. There is something deeply freeing about relating to creativity in this way, and to ourselves in this way.

Honesty and integrity ask us to let ourselves be guided by our inherent goodness. The desire to live authentically, to show up imperfectly as we are, feels like a return home, one that took me many years to recognize, and even longer to trust.

Perhaps this is the gift of writing. It is a mirror, a refuge, a place to put down our armor and intentionally give ourselves over fully, devoid of the façade and the walls we are so prone to build to keep ourselves safe and to project our best selves forward. There is no bullshit on the page. It will call you out and reflect back the places where you hide, where you keep yourself and others at a distance, where you do not show up.

Writing has been a faithful and steady teacher. An accountability partner. A patient and honest companion on this path.

What are some of your challenges? What are you working on? What is something you’ve had to overcome as a writer? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hugs.

xx Alana

© Alana Foy 2026

I’ve written before about how writers and creatives do not speak enough about instinct. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that we rarely talk about the moments when we find ourselves at a loss for words or stuck somewhere in the creative process, and how daunting and self-scrutinizing those moments can be.

After writing nearly every day for most of my life, I know that showing up to the page is less about certainty and more about steadfastness. Some days the act of writing is simply about processing—gathering the fragments of the day and distilling them into meaning. Other days, it becomes an invitation to stay curious about where the threads of inspiration might lead.

Merely showing up does not guarantee brilliance. Sometimes the page receives a rant about the state of the world. Sometimes it holds the absurd contradictions of being human. And sometimes, if we are patient, a small fleck of gold appears simply because we made the commitment to sit down and write.

The creative process asks that we pay attention. To notice subtle details and remain open to inspiration that appears in places both novel and familiar.

This morning I did not know what I wanted to write. I only knew that I wanted to send out this week’s Substack. When that happens, I often turn to a longtime companion on my writing journey, The Right to Write by Julia Cameron.

Many years ago I attended a workshop where Julia Cameron was speaking. Afterward, feeling buoyed and newly committed to pursuing writing, I walked up to the signing table with my copy of the book. Not wanting to take up too much space, I simply told her that the book had felt like an invitation to embark on a creative life—what I now refer to as living artfully. She smiled, asked my name, and wrote something inside the front page.

When I stepped out of the conference room, I opened the book to see what she had written.

“To Alana, May our words be friends.”

For reasons I could not fully articulate at the time, those words felt like a literal initiation into the world of writing. As if she were inviting me deeper into the crucible of the creative process. Not simply to produce work, but to build a relationship with language itself. To trust the instinct that keeps drawing me back to the page.

This morning I picked up that same worn and signed copy and turned to page 48. The chapter is called Valuing Our Experience.

The first line reads:

“We do not see our size. We do not view ourselves with accuracy. We are far larger, far more marvelous, far more deeply and consistently creative than we recognize or know.”

It struck me again how difficult it is for creatives to accurately assess their own work, and how fear can convince us to abandon the very gifts we were meant to offer.

When we are inside the process of making something, we are standing too close to the canvas to see the completed work. Doubt does not usually appear in the middle of creating. It arrives later, when we step back and allow outside voices and imagined critics to enter the room.

Our job is not to censor, shame, judge, or devalue the work while it is being born.

Our job is to stay in the process and be a steward of what wants to be created.

A Few Reminders for Creatives Who Are Questioning Their Worth

1. Stay close to the practice.
   Showing up regularly keeps the channel open, even on the days when nothing remarkable happens.

2. Trust instinct more than opinion.
   The impulse to create usually arrives before the explanation.

3. Do not judge the work too early.
   Doubt is loudest when a piece is still forming.

4. Pay attention to the threads.
   Small curiosities often lead to the most meaningful work.

5. Remember that proximity distorts perception.
   You are standing too close to your own work to measure its value accurately. Keep going.

6. Create first. Evaluate later.
   Protect the sacred space where ideas are allowed to emerge without criticism.

Here’s the brass tacks:

Most of us are not struggling with a lack of creativity.

We are struggling with the courage to trust it.

If you are questioning whether your voice matters, whether your ideas are worth sharing, whether the work is good enough to continue, that is your guidepost.

Keep creating.

You may not yet see the full scale or shape of what you are making.

We rarely see our own size clearly while we are still inside the work.

Hugs.

xx Alana

© Alana Foy 2026

I don’t talk very much about the ten years I taught and shared mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation. Despite being regarded as a teacher, it feels like so much of that period of my life was about learning and growing, that the work I was meant to do was off the mat and in the world.

To be honest, if you practice long enough, that’s what you arrive at. The realization that the teacher is always a student.

In many ways, I feel fortunate that I stumbled upon these practices because they have provided a way for me to navigate this human journey with a greater sense of ground, and the opportunity to practice what it means to be present to the ever-changing seasons of our lives.

I think it’s fair to say that half of the reason I’m able to look for joy and appreciate the ordinary moments is due to the gifts these modalities have offered.

Mindfulness is a skill that, when practiced, affords us the opportunity to attune to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us in a way that opens doorways of connection, empathy, compassion, and deeper understanding. It in no way means that we are automatically going to live a life of Zen and have it all figured out. That we won’t continue to endure moments of sorrow, grief, or outrage. It simply means we get to experience the full range of feelings and emotions as we navigate this human experience—but with far less attachment. Because in the great words of Rilke, “No feeling is final.” (I’ve included a translation and reading by Joanna Macy for On Being below).

Over five years ago, I made the decision to step away from the classroom. To focus more time and energy on being present for my own life. To give myself the opportunity to be more creative by focusing on writing, creating two small businesses, and making things. What emerged was seeing how this practice of presence would inform my writing, along with every facet of my life. The result: more connection, more vulnerability, deeper trust, and a growing sense of self-empowerment. An established relationship with my own creative process. A confidence rooted not in external approval, but in my willingness to show up for myself. One could say, more freedom to create without conditions.

There is something deeply empowering about taking back our agency. About relinquishing the need to outsource our value and worth, and instead cultivating a healthy, loving relationship with yourself, and in turn, with others.

I’m not sure if half of this awareness has stemmed from being steeped in midlife, or by way of over two decades of practice. Either way, I feel a sense of gratitude for having arrived at a place in my life where outside validation or approval no longer occupies so much space. Where I get to do life on my terms, even if it is unconventional and means that the relationship I am now prioritizing is the one with myself and my creative life. A life that feels honest and congruent with who I am.

If you’re endeavoring to create something, or committed to making things, I want to offer a few thoughts:

Be gentle with yourself as you create and as you navigate this wild human journey. Creativity asks a lot of us. It asks us to risk being seen, to move through doubt, and to sit with the discomfort of not knowing if what we’re making is any good. That rhythm takes time to discover, and it requires patience. It’s natural to question what you’re doing. Afterall, you are building something out of nothing. Practicing patience and gentleness is a generous offering to yourself, and one you’re absolutely worthy of.

Keep going.

xx Alana

© Alana Foy 2026

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy. The ways we allow ourselves to meet it, and the ways we hold ourselves back from experiencing it.

What I’m learning is that joy, much like creativity, asks for our participation. A willingness to lean in and a curiosity about where the sensation of aliveness might take us.

This led me to wonder what happens when we turn away from joy. When we avoid the very experiences that make us feel connected and alive. Why we sometimes choose the familiarity of what is safe over growth, even when growth might expand us into the life we say we want.

Sitting with this question, what arose was fear and the many versions of fear we experience. Fear of the unknown. Fear of showing up and being present. Fear of being seen. Fear of living in truth and congruence with who we are. Fear of doing the work that could open the door to the experiences we long to inhabit.

As I move through the final stages of editing and prepare to publish my book, I’ve been reflecting on how long this path has been. The moments along the way when I chose comfort over growth, when I saw the glass as half empty instead of half full. It took more than a decade to arrive here, and more than half my life to call myself a writer.

I share this because, as creatives, it’s easy to criticize ourselves. To censor what wants to move through us. And as humans, there can be a compulsion to delay joy, to push away the people and experiences that help us feel more connected. I can feel that impulse when I think about how long this has taken. Still, I choose gratitude for the journey that shaped the perspective I now carry.

Joy, for me, is not superficial or sentimental. It is a teacher. A measure of how willing I am to meet my life with openness and notice what is meaningful within it.

I often say creativity is a relationship, one we are asked to tend to with care and honesty. That relationship mirrors how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us. Joy lives inside that exchange. It is not a destination but a form of feedback.

So I want to offer a small invitation.

Stay close to your relationship with joy. Notice where you lean toward it and where you retreat. Get curious about the moments you censor it, and the moments you allow yourself to soften into it. Then sit with what you discover.

Sometimes the smallest permissions lead us back to ourselves, opening the parts essential for growth. More importantly, they reveal what it means to live a connected, honest, intentional life. That is what it means to live artfully.

If you need somewhere to begin, keep it simple:

• Take a beat, notice what feels alive.
• Make something without measuring its worth while you are inside the process.
• Follow curiosity instead of certainty.
• Offer yourself small permissions to rest, begin again, or change direction.
• Follow the threads. Stay in relationship with what moves you and return to it often.
• Share a fragment of yourself that is real, even if it is unfinished.

A question to carry:

Where am I being invited to choose aliveness over safety, even in a small way?

© Alana Foy 2026

It’s been exactly one year since I joined Substack. To be honest, I almost quit a dozen times.

Not in an overwrought, pull-the-plug-on-everything way. It was much more subtle. The “maybe this isn’t it.” The “maybe I’m not it.” The “who am I to call myself a writer and write a book?” Ya know, the slow erosion and self-criticism that happens when a project stretches longer than your confidence. But I kept at it.

For a year, I’ve been following a thread.

That’s what creativity feels like to me. A thread. Thin, easy to lose, and impossible to force. You don’t control it. You listen for it. You notice where it pulls. You respect where it knots and frays. Some days the thread disappears. Or it leads you somewhere unwelcoming, somewhere inconvenient. Somewhere that asks more of you than you planned to give.

That’s when resistance shows up. Abandon it. This is total shit. Surely this will fail. Start something else. Pretend you were never that invested.

But the work does not respond to will. It does not respond to you wrangling it into submission. It responds to attention. Listening is the discipline. Respecting the process is the initiation. And not giving up, especially when no one is paying attention, is the art.

Yesterday, I finally sent my upcoming book, a lyrical memoir titled Flecks of Gold: A Year of Living Artfully to my editor.

It exists because I kept following the thread. It exists because I kept listening. Because I did not quit.

I do not know where this wild, winding road is taking me. All I know is I am supposed to follow the thread and see it through. Sometimes creativity is as simple as that. It asks us to make art for the sake of making it. Not to arrive somewhere. Not to prove something to someone. Not to secure an outcome. But because something inside us insists.

The making itself is the point.

Sometimes you have to let that be enough.

If you are in the middle of something, my friend, something that feels longer than your certainty, stay with it. Your only job is not to let go of the thread.

The world so desperately needs the voice and art of creatives right now.

Keep following the thread. Keep living artfully.

Thank you for being on this journey with me,
xx
Alana

© Alana Foy 2026

It’s been a little while. How has life been treating you? Personally, I’ve needed some space to move my body, to be still, to laugh and spend time with friends, to work, and to savor this season of life. I’m remember that sometimes creativity asks us to step back, to remember that we are living art, not just makers of it.

These past weeks have been a reminder that the pauses matter as much as the act of creating something. That presence is part of the practice. I’ve been learning (again) that when we stop trying to force inspiration, life begins whispering its way back in.

This piece is for you, for the quiet moments between doing and being, when the muse feels far away, but something deeper is still stirring.

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Before the art. Before the love stories. Before the partnerships, the projects, the offerings we send out into the world, there’s one relationship that quietly shapes it all: the one we have with ourselves.

Of course, we don’t talk about it nearly enough. We’ve been conditioned to speak of soulmates and collaborators, business partners, creative allies, and inspirations. But what about the part of us that keeps showing up, day after day, no matter how many times we doubt, abandon, betray, or overlook our own evolution?

A creative life, an artful life, begins with presence. And presence begins with self-relationship—how we listen to ourselves, how we care for the parts that still feel tender, how we meet our resistance with curiosity instead of shame, how we trust our timing, and how we dare to stay when times get difficult. This relationship isn’t always easy. It requires tenderness. Attention. Repair. But it’s also where devotion is born.

To the degree that we can hold ourselves with tenderness and care, that we can show up for ourselves, sit with our own discomfort, and learn to regulate our own nervous systems, is the degree to which we will be able to meet another’s tenderness with care.

I realize not everyone’s commitment to their own growth is a conscious choice they’ve been taught to prioritize. So much of what we’ve been taught is to prioritize the needs of others—even when it comes at the expense of our own well-being. Perhaps life experience, and being a recovering people-pleaser, has helped me see the forest through the trees. To realize that putting on my own oxygen mask, in service not only to myself but to those around me, is of greatest benefit.

Over the last six months, I’ve been thinking about how prioritizing self-care relates to the creative path. How vital it is to make space for not just one’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being, but also space for creativity. For those who have ever endeavored to create anything—whether that’s a business, a family, or art—you know all too well how easy it can be to let your own well-being, let alone your own interests and creative pursuits, fall by the wayside.

When we begin to honor the self not as a brand or performance or endless project to improve, but as a living, breathing creative force, we start to live artfully. Not just in what we make, but in how we move through the world. We begin to see just how important it is to tend to our inner world. To tend to the inner garden of our being, with nourishment and care. Because ultimately, how we relate to ourselves is how we relate to the work. To others. To life.

Questions to Carry:

• How am I tending to my relationship with myself right now?

• What kind of friend, companion, or creative witness am I being to myself?

• What might shift if I treated self-connection as the foundation, not the afterthought?

© Alana Foy 2025

In a 2017 article for Vanity Fair, Rich Cohen wrote:

“Irony and a keen sense of dread are what make Generation X the last great hope, with its belief that, even if you could tell other people what to say and what not to say, even if you could tell them how to live, even if you could enforce those rules through social pressure and public shaming, why would you want to? I mean, it's just so uncool.”

While I’m not convinced that my generation is the 'last great hope,' especially given the current state of affairs both in the U.S. and abroad, I do resonate with the belief that it’s not my place to dictate how others should live their lives.

Don’t get me wrong—I have my thoughts and opinions. For instance, if we all endeavored to lead with kindness and compassion and sought the common threads that bind us—rather than succumb to the rhetoric and hate perpetuated by white supremacy and our current president and administration—perhaps the world would be a vastly different place. As for public shaming, in my book, shaming of any kind is cruel and inflicts harm.

That said, I am grateful that most of my Gen X friends are generally kind, abhor shaming, and tend to view life through a particular lens. When engaging in conversations about the state of the world, yes—there is often an undercurrent of existential dread. But more often than not, there is also a level of objectivity and critical thinking—an acknowledgment that women should have the right to decide what to do with their bodies, that all human beings deserve equal protection and rights under the Constitution, and that meaningful dialogue around contentious topics—politics, climate change, human rights, social justice—matters. Unlike the dehumanizing and “othering” that has become commonplace in our culture whenever there is a difference of opinion, I find that most people in my generation—at least those I surround myself with—look for truth and seek to understand rather than vilify.

Maybe I’m biased and generalizing here. However, I can’t help but think that those of us in my generation who lean socially liberal, value personal freedoms, inclusivity, and progressive social policies, have an ability to engage in meaningful discourse because we came of age in a world before social media ruled the roost and artificial general intelligence was even a forethought.

When I reflect on my upbringing, it does feel like my generation was, in fact, the last to grow up in a world where kids not only preferred but were also encouraged to play outside. A time when primary school fostered curiosity and creative arts, when families gathered around the dinner table every night without the distraction of devices—but also converged around the television as a family unit. We are also a generation raised during a time of significant social, political, economic, and technological change, brought up with the belief that if you worked hard, you could achieve the American Dream.

I think it’s important to note, as a quintessential Gen Xer—one who is also slightly cynical and employs a healthy dose of sarcasm—I’ve never subscribed to the idea of the American Dream or believed that any one generation has it easier or harder than another. However, when I think about the time in which my fellow Gen Xers and I were raised, I feel fortunate. We grew up in an era when being outdoors, running through sprinklers on a hot summer day, chasing the ice cream truck down the street for a Bomb Pop, playing kick the can, and hopping on bikes in search of adventure provided a sense of autonomy and independence. That kind of freedom was not only formative but also instilled in me a deep curiosity and wonder—about people, about the world, about the paradox and complexity of it all.

I’m not sure what the future holds for us. Day by day, the political upheaval and the dismantling of our government are cause for deep concern. At times, it feels like the very foundation we were raised to believe in is fracturing before our eyes, and I often find myself pondering the resistance required to navigate such turmoil. Yet, amid the chaos and uncertainty, I return to what I know: the simple, enduring truths of being alive. All I can do is stay present, make meaning of my days, spend them with the people I love, be creative, and do my part—however small—to contribute to my community and a world that values curiosity, critical thinking, and human connection. Perhaps that, in itself, is an act of resistance.

© Alana Foy 2025

Inspired by Rich Cohen’s 2017 article on Generation X

Rich Cohen, “Generation X: The Last, Best Hope,” Vanity Fair, October 4, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/generation-x-the-last-best-hope.

Want raw, unfiltered musings on life, creativity, and the beautiful chaos of being human? Diary of a Gen Xer dives into culture, nostalgia, and deep reflections, while Confessions of a Creative explores the messy, beautiful process of living artfully with notes on inspiration, doubt, and making things anyway. Subscribe to both and let’s journey together.

📩 Diary of a Gen Xer
🎨 Confessions of a Creative

I haven’t shared with many people the details surrounding the end of a long-term relationship nearly 3 years ago with someone who struggles with alcohol abuse. Mostly, I’ve kept it private because I care for them, want to honor their journey, and protect their anonymity. However, I’ve reached a point in my own journey where I feel compelled to share some of what I went through, with hopes that it may help someone facing similar struggles.

Let’s Talk About Codependency

First off, I’m not sure everyone fully understands what codependency entails. I also believe shame is one of the reasons people struggling with codependency don’t seek help and often isolate themselves. I know I felt ashamed of being in a relationship with someone battling alcohol abuse—because it forced me to confront childhood wounds and relational patterns that not only shaped me but also contributed to why I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for so long, despite knowing better.

Along with the isolation, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which isn’t uncommon for people who struggle with codependency. As a result, I spent months feeling overwhelmed by thoughts of whether I should stay with or leave someone who was clearly suffering but refused long-term help. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore and chose to leave, the insurmountable guilt I felt only exacerbated my grief, driving me even further into isolation.

Alcohol use is so woven into our culture that its overuse and dependence often go unnoticed and unchecked. If you’re struggling because someone you love is battling alcohol dependency or addiction of any kind, I encourage you to seek support. You may not be able to get them to commit to recovery, but there are free programs that can support your mental and emotional well-being as you navigate the complexities of loving someone who is grappling with addiction.

Personally, 12-step recovery programs, including Al-Anon and ACA, in conjunction with therapy, my people, my daughter, and my little French bully, Luna, literally saved my life.

© Alana Foy 2025

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© Alana Foy 2025

© Alana Foy 2025

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© Alana Foy 2025