Creativity is one of the oldest forms of spirituality, imagining how the cosmos works even before knowing, conjuring connections, through will and wistfulness, reading the external world as signs and symbols of something greater than their surface meaning. Creativity is closely akin to the religious point of view in that they share a deep-seated desire to see depth in reality, a depth that may or may not be there, though this thought is entirely beside the point of the playfulness percolating at the heart of the creative spirit. Nearly every religion the world over both modern and ancient ascribes an origin story or creation myth to what currently is, and the creative spirit is likewise invested in origins, with a love for calling into being what is not, a virtual creatio ex nihilo, pulling from pain and heartbreak, chaos and destruction as much as any inspiration from the brighter sides of life, weaving seemingly disparate elements together into a tapestry of original insight, a birthing of something formerly nonexistent, now present, and imbued with previously unknown presence, a gestational moment not only for the art but artist, not only for the created but creator, affording an undulating sense of one’s own power and promise. Creativity often begins in the dark. It is the blackness before the big bang, the bare canvas before being caressed with color, an inkling of an idea belonging to the blank page before the ink flows. The desire to be a doula delivering something to the world is more familiar to some than others, though suffused throughout the human condition as a whole nonetheless, an inseparable umbilical linking us to one another and to nature’s uncanny and unending fecundity, observable each morning in the sunrise, in a father’s forgiveness, and in a bereaved woman’s willingness to begin again, shaping loss and longing for what was into a newborn effort, the next chapter in a life the likes of which no other has ever known.