Over the past few days, I’ve cried more than usual.

I’ve cried because I looked back at parts of my life and realised how much pain I’d learned to accept as normal. I’ve cried because some memories suddenly felt heavier than they ever had before.

But I’ve also cried for the exact opposite reason.

I’ve cried because someone treated me with a kindness I wasn’t expecting. I’ve cried reading a simple sentence: “We’re a team.” I’ve cried because I realised that sometimes the smallest gestures can reveal just how deeply you’ve missed something your whole life.

What surprised me most wasn’t the sadness. It was how easily joy and grief could exist at the same time. Over the course of just a few days, I found myself moving between heartbreak, gratitude, hope, vulnerability and excitement. It felt like every emotion I’d been carrying had decided to speak at once.

It made me wonder about something people have been saying for centuries: do artists create because they suffer?

So I started reading about it.

The answer, surprisingly, is no.

Psychologists don’t believe that pain automatically creates creativity. Suffering, by itself, often overwhelms us rather than inspires us. What researchers have found instead is something I find much more interesting. Many creative people seem to experience emotions more intensely, notice connections that others overlook and feel a constant need to make sense of what happens to them. Art doesn’t come from pain alone. It comes from the attempt to understand experience.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been creating so much lately. Not because I’ve been suffering more than usual. But because I’ve been feeling more than usual.

Maybe that’s what art has always been for me. Not an escape from emotion, but a conversation with it.

I don’t think pain makes someone an artist. I think the need to understand what we feel does. And that need doesn’t distinguish between heartbreak and kindness. Both can change you. Both can become art.