Being Unrejectable

"The work of art is born of the artist's experience. It is only through life's wounds that creation can emerge, but the fear of exposure keeps many from taking the step." - Rilke

This week an old wounding resurfaced.

I was reminded of the early days when I first stepped out on my own, leaving the safety of the music industry, a consistent well paid job and an identity that opened doors. When I made the bold move out of that identity and created this thing called “Creative Mentoring” that didn’t yet exist, I didn’t have a clear plan of how it was all going to work but I knew that the first step was getting my music industry peers on board to support me.

And that’s not what happened at all.

I received rejection after rejection when I pitched my work to other managers and record labels. Many people and friends didn’t even respond to my emails. The people who did support me were the artists. They got it, they spread the word and I will be forever grateful for the people in the early stages who understood and championed my work from the seed stage through to now.

The thing about rejection when you’re a creative person is that it cuts so much deeper than how most people experience it. Many creatives will speak to the feeling of being skinless. The feeling of being so open and attuned to sensation and feeling is simultaneously the source of creative power and the thing that makes ordinary life almost unbearable.

A fear of exposure and rejection is what stops most of us from really living honestly. From using our voice, from truly investing in and sharing the fullness of our work with the world. It’s so much easier to stay hidden than to risk being hurt by revealing your heart, your thoughts and your imperfect ideas.

This mass rejection from an industry I gave my life to took me a few years to heal from. Continually crumbling on the phone to my mentor at the time, having to dust myself off and put together my fractured confidence to keep going. But all those doors that closed in my face, or never opened, pushed me to widen my lens outside of the music industry and realise that the work I offered could be available to creative hearts and minds of all kinds. It was here I found my tribe.

Fast forward eight years into doing this work and this week I had two clients reach out to ask me about why I wasn’t guest speaking at a music industry event. They were shocked I wasn’t on the panel or running a workshop at this renowned event that I knew nothing about. The old sting returned momentarily (that feeling of not belonging) but all those years of early rejection reminded me that even though others could choose to reject me, I could choose to be unrejectable.

Being unrejectable is not a means to bypass the hurt. It’s a way to take ownership of our feelings and choose unconditional self love. To choose that even if they don’t accept us in our authenticity, we are still deserving of being here. That our ideas matter, if not to them, then to us.

Choosing to stay small, to not share our ideas or use our voice, is a form of self rejection. And the cost of that is a life unlived on your own terms.

Being unrejectable is a sense that you can carry. When the fear of assumed rejection rises, or when you find yourself standing in the full terror of it, the practice is to come back… to offer yourself a quiet, unhurried voice of compassion. To be the steady presence that perhaps no one was for you when you were younger and still learning that your existence needed no justification. To remind yourself, again and again, of your own worth. This is how we learn to stay in the room.

Not because the room always welcomes us. But because we stopped waiting for it to.

The early years of building something no one had a name for yet taught me that belonging was never going to come from the outside in. The artists who championed my work in those fragile first stages didn’t give me permission to continue, they simply reflected back what I already carried. The doors that never opened didn’t define my worth or value. They just pointed me toward a wider door I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Rejection will always carry a sting. If you’re someone who moves through the world with your heart close to the surface, that won’t change and honestly, you wouldn’t want it to. That sensitivity is the very thing that makes your work alive. But you can choose not to let the sting become your story.

You are allowed to be here. Your ideas are allowed to exist, imperfect and unfinished and still becoming. And if the room doesn’t know what to do with you yet, don’t let that stop you, you’re only just beginning.

With love,

Rach x

I’m currently welcoming my last cohort of mentees for 2026. My Creative Partnership is a 6-month 1:1 immersive mentorship for professional artists and creative minds — a space where I pour my 20 years of experience working with culture shapers and prolific creatives into supporting you to connect more deeply with your interior life, and shape what emerges from it. A weaving of Vedic meditation, somatic parts work, creative strategy and tender support to help you materialise the visions you’re here to bring into the world. There are two pathways — one for artists, one for established creatives. Check out THIS LINK or hit reply if you have any questions.