I met my mom for lunch a couple of days ago. It was on a whim, after a random phone call asking if I could take her on a date. I owe my mother 427 gazillion lunches as payment for all I put her thorough when I was a kid. Even at a young age, I realized my mother and I were different. Her long red hair flowed in stark difference to my black androgynous bob. She walked barefoot and I ironed my socks. I begged my mother for a chair when she made me paint a picture laying on my back so I'd know what Michelangelo felt as he painted the Sistine Chapel.

That's right, my mother believed her child painted masterpieces.

For everything she lacked in formal education, my mother compensated in creative gestures as she home-schooled me. Yes, books and rules were important, but–for her–they existed so we knew how to bend them. How to tie them in a bow and stick them behind her ear the way she did with daisies during her hippie days.

My mother and I are still as different as first and fifth gear, but she's instilled a strong sense of creativity. There are days when I feel my work will never be good enough, days when I listen to harsh words of others, days when I feel stuck, but then I remember the freedom of painting the Sistine Chapel. Or the poems she read to me while I climbed trees. Or dancing in our dirty garage to conga drums. Barefoot.

My mother changed my perspective and years later I'm happy to say creativity now comes in different forms, but–mostly–when I allow myself the freedom to simply be. Never doubting, just holding to the promise that when the rules are bent, something new is waiting to be created.

I have my mother to thank for this.