Emma Del Rey: Healing through Play

Did you think of yourself as a creative kid? What does creativity look like for you these days?

No, no, no. My childhood was wrought with trauma and pain. I did not think of myself as creative but when I look back now, after spending a lot of time healing a part of myself that shut down because of the trauma, I realize I was. 

I always had a journal, I was always taking notes or writing. I had books filled with drawings and song lyrics. When my parents did not get me a dollhouse for my dolls, I built my own out of cardboard and drew the design of the house on the inside. I loved drawing, coloring, painting, and playdough. I loved singing at the top of my lungs, even though my parents told me I wasn’t good. We had this big deck on the back side of our house, I would play music on our outdoor speakers, so I could sing and dance. I would pretend I was in concert every time I heard music. I would dance for hours in my room. So, yeah, I was creative as a kid but after a specific trauma, this all went away, my world became dark and I stopped playing and creating.

Now, I tap into that inner child I have been healing, the one I had to shut down to protect myself. I write, I make up silly songs and sing them around the house, I dance, I paint. I listen to my creativity when it moves through me, and as long as my toddler allows, I follow what it tells me. I keep a journal again of ideas and inspiration. While I have tapped back into a lot of my old ways of accessing creativity, I am also finding now ones. My son is starting play pretend and that is immensely healing for me. I love helping him in his little kitchen or following along with his own inspiration and creativity. I love seeing where his ideas takes us, within reason, he can be a daredevil! 

How did motherhood change your creative practice?

I could write an essay on this but I will contain myself. I was not very creative before my son was born. I painted, I wrote poems but I did not thing of myself as a creative. I did not think creativity was essential to my well-being, it was something I did when I had the time and space. Then, my son was born and he changed my whole world. Slowly over time as I began to put my new self together, the version of me that was birthed through motherhood, I realized the importance of my own creativity. 

Motherhood is a creative act, I made my son, I grew him inside of me, I birthed him. That is creative. Raising him, guiding him, letting him open my heart is also a creative process, where I am asked daily to trust in the flow of it all. Now, I think of creativity less as this thing I do and more of a quality I have. I am creative and everything is creative. Life is a creative act - I love Rob Bell’s book How to be Here - it talks all about life as a creative act even if your profession or passions are not quintessentially creative. 

Now, I make more space for what fuels my creativity, time alone, rest, movement. I listen to my creative urges, I write down the endless streams of ideas I have flowing through me some days. I trust more because of my son. The way he just is, the way he is just being in his life, the way he just flows through life with such an open heart because he knows nothing else. It gives me hope, it reminds me to be creative, that everything is creative and in creation. He is a big part of the reason I write, he helped me understand how I matter, how what I have to create matters, maybe because the world could use my words and creations, but more because it makes me feel alive and most like myself.

What do you do when you feel burnt out or filled with doubt?

Get outside. Walk away from any screens, noise, or excess stimulation and go lay in the grass and put my face in the sun. Sometimes I move my body, meditate, paint, or write but usually, when I am burnt out and overwhelmed, Mother Earth is the only medicine that can shift the energy for me. I lay down on her and I breathe. I let the sun reach me. I remember I am alive. I remember most things are bigger than me and not for me to understand. I remember I am human and I am doing the best I can in that moment. 

What do you hope your kids will learn about creativity from you?

I don’t think my son needs any help learning about creativity. He is 18 months old, he already likes to play the drums and constantly asks to paint. My partner and I are both creative, between the both of us, he has a few artistic outlets covered…music, painting, writing. He is learning a lot from both of us about what it means to create. But what I want him to learn about from me, specifically is how creativity is not about having a finished product or a certain outcome, creativity is about the process. Creativity is about how you feel while you are in the process of making something. Creativity is about the tiny piece of you that is left behind in your art, music, or creation. I hope he learns to express himself freely, trust his inner voice, and make because he wants to.

(Painting by Emma and her son)

If you had a free hour, how would you spend it? What about a free day?

A free hour - I would head to a coffee shop and write. I tend to be a person who gets extremely overstimulated by most things, especially being out in public. But there is something about drinking a cup of coffee at a shop and everything buzzing around me that feels oddly grounded and allows me to drop in and create. But if I am home, and my son is screaming and the dog is barking, forget it!

A free day - I would drive with my family to the mountains. We would go to hike and immerse ourselves in nature. We would listen to music on the way and laugh about the silly things our son was doing. We would laugh about how the dog hates car rides and never settles until we arrive at our destination. When I first read this question, I thought what would I do with a whole day alone, but in this phase of life, I am not sure I would know what to do. I love my time alone and time to pursue my own passions and take care of my needs. But a whole day without my family is hard to think about, I love being with them.

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Emma Del Rey is a mother, writer, and trauma survivor. She is two-thirds through a therapy masters program but she is currently taking a pause to raise her son and heal herself. Emma spends her days fielding communications for a social media marketing agency, chasing after her wild toddler, and taking every free moment to write, create, and be. You can find her at

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