You gave up on your creative work and regret it

That the regret still aches is the most hopeful thing about your situation, and I want to help you turn it into a return. The regret is proof the need never died — if your creativity had truly been a passing phase, its abandonment would not still trouble you, so the persistence of the ache tells you the maker in you is still alive, still calling, and the pain is your creativity making itself known, unextinguished all this time. It is not too late to return — creative work waits patiently and does not close its doors on those who wish to come back, and many have set their making aside for years or decades and returned to make fine things, so the door you thought closed is open still. And begin again small, without punishing yourself for the years lost — forgive yourself whatever led you to set the work down, and take it up gently for the pleasure of returning rather than to redeem the lost time, letting the return be a kindness, not a reckoning. What did you give up, that still calls to you?