Dear Creativity,

I thought this letter would be about spring.

About the ducks and geese that have returned to the neighborhood. The Canadian geese are moving together with their goslings in tow, the mallards lingering nearby. I love this time of year for that reason. It's the quiet reminder that growth is already underway, that what is small today will soon stretch, change, and move on.

But something else is asking for my attention. It will be a while before it escapes my mind.

The TEDx talk.

When you show up, Creativity, you really show up.

There I was, standing in front of a sea of faces, when the slides appeared… blank. The images I had carefully chosen, arranged, and refined weren’t there. For a brief moment, there was a choice: to panic, or to pause.

There wasn’t time for panic.

So I paused.

I reached for you.

And in that small moment of connection, something shifted. The images hadn’t disappeared entirely. They were still with me, and happened to no longer be on the screen. I had spent enough time with them, shaping them, placing them with care, that they lived somewhere deeper than the slides themselves.

As each blank slide appeared, I found my way back to the story. I could see the images in my mind. I could feel the rhythm of what was meant to be said. It wasn’t perfect. I was a little rattled. But I kept going.

And the message landed. Human confirmation is always helpful and welcome.

It left me with a quiet realization about how I create and how I share. That even without the visuals, I can still paint the picture. The story doesn’t live in the tools or the presentation; it lives in the way I’ve learned to see, to remember, to connect.

And maybe that’s what I needed to be reminded of all along.

It's like my neighborhood geese. The goslings don’t start out knowing how to fly. They wobble, they follow, they grow into it over time. And at some point, without ceremony, they lift.

Not perfectly. But enough.

Maybe this is what growth as a speaker feels like. Not the perfectly executed moment, but the one where something unexpected happens… and we discover we can still rise to meet it.

This makes me wonder:

What helps us keep going when things don’t go as planned?

Innovatively yours,
Dr. Abigail 💛