The Space Between Reflection and Form
What happens when we translate experience into shapes — and trust what follows
This Thursday I finally brought a workshop into the world that had been living quietly inside me for a long time.
What stayed with me most was not what was made, but how it was made — and how differently each person moved through the same process.
Everyone worked with the same prompts. And yet, the results could not have been more individual.
What struck me was that no one got discouraged, even when the process became challenging. The difficulty didn’t close anyone down — it invited them in. Each participant found their own way through the work. No one imitated what I shared. No one tried to “get it right.” This was deeply meaningful to witness, because that was exactly my hope: not to teach a style, but to create a structure that helps people arrive at their own.
The first challenge emerged during translation.
We are so used to reflecting through words — journaling, writing, explaining. But translating reflections into shapes, symbols and visual language felt unfamiliar, especially for adults. It asked something different of them: to trust images instead of sentences, intuition instead of articulation. I realized how rarely we allow ourselves to think visually, even though it is such an ancient form of knowing.
And yet, once this translation happened — once each person had paused long enough to distill their reflections into a small visual vocabulary — something shifted.
The next step, mark-making, became surprisingly intuitive. Because the thinking had already happened. Because there was something to refer back to. The small library they had built earlier became a place of orientation rather than limitation. It allowed them to move forward without overthinking.
It made something very clear to me: the pause matters. Translation matters. When we slow down enough to translate experience into form, the rest of the process can unfold with much more ease.
Another moment stayed with me: the hesitation around cutting and reassembling shapes.
Some participants initially resisted this disruption. Others began by drawing marks almost as complete abstract pieces. But when they finally cut the shapes apart and rearranged them, new meanings emerged — meanings that hadn’t been accessible before. It made me think about how attached we often are to feelings, forms, or situations, and how difficult it can be to imagine them differently. Perhaps disruption — even a literal one — can be a gentle vehicle for transformation, offering another point of view, another reframe, without erasing what came before.
What I learned alongside the participants is that self-trust grows through doing.
Not through certainty, but through following a process all the way through. Through staying present when things feel unfamiliar. Through allowing meaning to emerge rather than forcing it.
This gathering reminded me that creative work doesn’t need to be rushed or perfected. It needs space. It needs translation. And it needs the courage to trust what appears when we give ourselves permission to keep going.
I’m very grateful for the experience — and for the reminder that I am learning just as much as those I have the privilege to guide.
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Thank you for reading, for being here, and for walking a few steps of this path with me.
- Tatjana 🌿🪡✨
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