the artist is in and she is done playing small

testimony time

Disclaimer, not an apology: In general, I am reshaping this newsletter as I realign my energy in this season, which is going towards long-term projects I will share more about soon. 

Today is a special exception because I need to testify. We make exceptions for testimonies. 

I will continue to share perching lines, life updates, what I'm reading and working on with an ongoing focus on what a gentle landing is/could be. I would love your feedback on this new format (see last week's post for an example)! Comment below or reply to this email.

If you really miss the essays—or are new here and want to read more in depth thoughts, check out the archive from on/before May 14, 2025.

Hello gentle-people,

Can I share a testimony with y’all?¹

I have been having some serious creative fun. It is what has been getting me through some of the more stressful current events, to say the least. I have been performing at open mics (music and poetry) and writing—songs and poems. A collection of poems I am working on is almost complete. I am practicing my calligraphy—slowly learning Spencerian script and expressing confidence with my brush pen in a modern style. I am learning how to make zines and collages. I am dreaming up new podcast ideas. I am designing digital retreats to help others approach digital media wellness in ways that reclaim our attention and intention. I am working with Lucille Clifton’s poetry—as sacred text for a sermon and in conversation for a podcast on how it connects to the principles of yoga. I am even sharing on social media again—lightly and with every intention of focusing on the archive.²

I said serious but I really, really want to emphasize fun. I haven’t felt this creatively alive since I was a teenager. At 15, I was in classes (at a vocational-technical school) in graphic design and printing, where I preferred making t-shirts on the printing side. I was in the photography club and the RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) club. I was writing songs and learning guitar, convinced my best friend and I would start a band. I wrote poems to fill a notebook every 3 weeks. I wrote stories. I drew. I painted. I did hair—and Black hair was a world that opened itself up to me as a new avenue for expressing my style with more agency in the world.

I dressed “weird” too. As weird as I was allowed to get while looking like a good Haitian girl—I wanted shirts with skulls on them but my mom wouldn’t allow me to leave Macy’s while we were at the mall.³ With narrow margin for self-expression, wrapped in the fearful prayers of my parents, I still managed to find a personal style that helped me attract my (often weird) artsy friends in school.

I told y’all about Legliz, Lekol, Lakay, right? Church, school and home. The only places I was allowed to go besides my fourth L—the library. Friends were not allowed to visit. So I had a lot of free time and a lot of imagination that needed to show up in volumes people around me could handle. That is how I survived a daily reality I am still not free to testify about outside of my hush harbors.

I could cry today.

I mean, right now as I write now—and I hear my closest girl friends saying, “let it out, girl, it’s okay.” Like good friends do when you are in the middle of testifying and get choked up. Which did happen a few weeks ago when I told the sacred Black sisterhood version of this testimony—it is too rich for anyone outside of that sisterhood. Context would enrich your experience—context begins at about 23 years.

“By trusting, we learn to trust.”

—Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

They’ve known me—when I was that creative middle schooler when we first met, into the high schooler who said she was going to go to RISD to study interior design. Who was voted the superlative of “Most Creative Girl” in high school. They knew me through my spoken word phase—when we were all convinced *this* was what God put me on the earth to do.

They saw how doubt and negative voices creeped in. They heard my stories where I was being misunderstood—and they often misunderstood me in ways that were deeply painful. We hung close to each other despite our differences—even when I felt like I was reaching out to talk to them from another world sometimes. They loved me, including the parts of me they didn’t understand—like where all this creative energy came from. Their affirmations filled me with a warmth and closeness that made up for all that—my girls had my back and they still do.

So I must say, you are not getting the best version of this story. Only they have enough context to testify to how rich it truly is—so I will do my best to give you the version I hope reaches the furthest subscriber I’ve never met who has never commented⁴—

The Artist’s Way just became one of my top 10 favorite books. But it was more than a book. It was a journey.

Richest creative journey I’ve been on since I cut all my hair off the first time, around age 18, before I started doing spoken word. When the people around me couldn’t tell me anything about the Bible I didn’t already know because I studied it so much.⁵ The artist in me emerged and was in what I thought was full bloom when I cut off all my hair. I looked how I felt—vulnerable, courageous, bold, and assured of her beauty without hair. Even after growing my hair down to my shoulders, after learning to care for it on my own—

[I told y’all I would try to give you the best version of this testimony and I need you, if you do not have a Black woman in your life, to know how significant a hair journey this is—I told you—23 years of context—but there is also a lens of being from the Black diaspora that enriches this story in a way you wouldn’t understand—but to be even more specific—there is a version of this story I can only share to Haitian-Americans—you’d have to reach into history starting in 1804 to get enough context to appreciate it—anyways—]

The Artist’s Way didn’t take me back to that time. I have always thought *that* period of my creativity was as good as it’s ever going to get. I thought I wanted to go back there—to when it seemed like all these different creative streams flowed naturally from me. When I was an artist who wanted to be an artist who did a lot of artist-ing. It was like breathing for me. Since then, yeah I’ve been creative but:

• I’ve let doubt keep me from finishing projects. Doubt and anxiety led me to delete a podcast that was very beloved and received a lot of support from professors, seminary classmates, my friends, and all kinds of gentle-people on the internet.

• I performed only in my bedroom for years, rarely singing in front of people because of a history of being taken advantage of by white evangelical spaces for being a Black girl who sings and plays guitar.

• I stopped writing spoken word and performing poetry in front of people because it made me feel so lonely walking the path of a minister-artist because I had no model.

These are just a few examples, but I could go on. My artist child—as Julia Cameron calls our creativity—was wounded. She did not want to play. She would cooperate when coerced by a deadline or some external source of authority into making art. She could be persuaded by poverty, allowing me to use her in ways that were resourceful.

But for fun?

She hid her playfulness from me…for a long time. When she wanted to express her disapproval, she was loud. Bitter and loud—she knew she was not at her best but had no real process for healing herself. So she nursed her wounds, keeping them fresh so they were sensitive to the slightest setback, finding new reasons to give up more of herself.

I thought I was on a journey to helping my artist child get back to her old self. So we can do all the creative things we used to do then. Sometimes, I wonder if my journey is to go back to spoken word. I feel like I go to these poetry open mics, to hear spoken word artists like I am watching the ropes swing and I want to jump. But my little artist child had forgotten how to play so she just watches others have fun.

It has dawned on me that perhaps I am not here to return to some prior version of myself—

I cut my hair again.

This time, it was after sitting with the richness that met me at the end of The Artist’s Way, which followed the end of A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer weeks earlier. It was after my creative self felt like she was unblocked. Unblocked for the serious creative fun I unpacked in the first paragraph. The haircut did not usher in a new way of seeing myself, taking in the world, and producing art with deep fluidity. This all came before I made my way to the barbershop. I was making the outside match the inside that was already feeling vulnerable, courageous, bold and assured of her beauty without her hair. Even after growing my locs down to the middle of my back after 6 years—

—again, if you need me to unpack the significance of this hair journey—I’m sorry, I won’t because again, context is wealth, so God bless the meek and help you—because I have a testimony that keeps wanting to emerge…

…and some part of me wanted people to be able to tell just by looking at me that something significant has changed. Otherwise, why do we have hair? And having the privilege of being a Black woman—one who can do all kinds of styles on her own head—means I have infinite possibilities and I chose this.

All to be able to say, in a deeply embodied way:

The artist is in.

She is playing again—

But she will longer be playing small.

Carrying a small notebook around began as an outlet for the thoughts I’d share on Threads or Substack Notes. Now it is a practice I am keeping for thoughts that might still be finding their contexts beyond myself. From now on until I get over this color, they will be orange.

I want this feeling for more people, so I keep telling people I love, who are artists (or who need to wake up as artists). I have ignited the spark for morning pages in a number of friends.

You know what has been the hardest part about any of this? Sharing testimony with the people who are closest to me so that they know, in the version of the story that gives them all the rich context-based pieces. It’s been the hardest part because I keep feeling like I am holding back because some part of me is still trying to hide all I have to express—

But my artist child is alive and well and she wants to PLAY. I have acted on dreams I’ve had for years in the last few months. And I am just getting started.

I have never felt more awake in that feeling—so as often as I can, I let her play, wherever she feels called to show up. Together we are having so much fun. We see the ropes swinging and other artists, having the time of their lives.

We approach—with cautious respect when new, or rushed delight when known.

We find our rhythm.

We take a breath.

We jump.

landing tracks:

• Try The Artist’s Way—it is so much more than a book to read. I will repeat this for awhile, but also caution you: if you lean in, you can change your life and discover new dimensions of yourself. Your world could be rocked. Are you ready?

• This newsletter’s tagline is "a poetic playground for restless dreamers.” Are you in a space of restlessness? I mean that in at least two ways: Are you without sleep, dreamer? Or having a hard time staying still? What game on the playground helps you to lean into what you need to rest? What metaphors lie within that game?

Look out for more gentle notes like this on Instagram @rosejpercy. Curated for archival devotion, not the algorithm.

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1. This is my newsletter so the answer is yes.

2. Yup, I made a gentle return to Instagram through accounts rosejpercy and EldestDawtahRage to update my archive. I try not to scroll on the timeline, which I don’t make much time for. On days I am on, I give myself 30 minutes to share my post and do some looking around to re-familiarize myself with the app. So much has changed— it has been humbling.

3. I’ve still never been inside of a Hot Topic!

4. If I succeed in this, let me know. Are you someone who has never commented before?

5. But I would not have bragged about it—I would have just expressed my concerns for biblical literacy through a spoken word piece. I learned as early as 11 that asking questions about the Bible was just as unpopular as knowing answers.