Healing

Creative Dreaming while your world is falling apart

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I woke up thinking about Creative Dreaming While Your World Is Falling Apart. This is the title of a guided journal I am imagining writing, and maybe I will one day.

Because I've been sharing my daily posts and maybe it seems like I am going on like nothing has happened, but I'm definitely not doing that.

Separation is emotionally volatile and I want to FEEL my feelings and process them and move THROUGH all of this, and not be stuck in it. AND I don't want my whole life to be this.

So - I focus on what I want to focus on when I am at my best. Mornings are my best time, I am SUCH a morning person. So I wake up, meditate, journal, get exercise, do my Dream Work, do my work work, work on creative projects.

Some days all of that inspires and energizes me and I stay pretty upbeat all day. BUT I am more tired than usual, my body is achy, I get overwhelmed more easily - there are all the signs of grief.

Some days I wear out my energy for the day early on.

So - after focusing on what I want to focus on first thing, then I focus on self care. What do I need? More water, nutrient dense foods, time with friends, time alone, journaling, feeling my feelings, hot epsom salt baths, lots of reading of things that feel helpful, stretching, re-arranging the Dream Loft - it does feel good to spread out.

It feels like a way of creating bubbles in my life that hold space for things. Holding space for my dreams and needs and creative projects while also holding space for grief and the process of separation. Of course the bubbles collide sometimes, but most of the time, this feels good - there is space for everything and over time, my new life will grow out of the separation process. This is easier to trust when I am showing up consistently for the dream work.

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Meeting with the soul of my business

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Today in my practice I am meeting with the soul of my business. I'm doing this as my daily practice right now as I get into "fall vibes" and am getting more focused on finishing the guided journal project, which also leads to a ton of other projects. And yes I need more money because of the divorce but I feel really calm and trusting about that part.

I am doing this as a daily practice to get more aligned with the soul of the Creative Dream Incubator to help me make the right decision because there are So Many Decisions to make about this project.

In my last post, the soul of my business asked me to make pro and con lists about a big decision, and those lists ended up being SO easy and SO helpful.

I decided: DO THE EASY THING RIGHT NOW.

I remembered: no one step is written in stone! I can do it the easy (I mean not easy but easiest) thing now and switch up to the other thing at any time.

So today what I want is: good vibes, for lack of a better term. I am doing creative work on the project (editing, which means editing artwork mostly, and sometimes re-drawing the journaling prompts if I can see a way to do it better). I want to be in the flow, loving what I am doing, and getting things done.

In the meeting with the soul of my business:

OMG so good!

The soul of my business appears with the boxes as it has been, but now it's a female figure and has wings and she steps out of the boxes and is just huge. She says "We are going to have some fun!"

My body starts to sway, I am really feeling this energy of being in the flow. I ask my questions about how to approach this project today and see the soul of the project: a campfire, but magic. It offers WARMTH for your creative dream process and WARMTH can be sometime different each time.

I stayed in the meditation a while, it all just felt so good.

And now I know what to do today.

 

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Meeting with the soul of my business

By / / ,

Today in my practice I am meeting with the soul of my business.

Last week this was so good and it felt like a thing I need to do more regularly. I LOVE this recording, the first part of the meditation is soooo healing. I remember doing it that way because of all the stuff that gets sparked in working with our businesses, and it feels soooo good to use it.

It's similar to last week, a bunch of boxes piled together that are alive - like a box robot.

But it's bigger. The boxes are less chaotic.

It doesn't take a genius to see the boxes are representing the actual boxes in my home with my husband's things packed in them. And he's been picking up a car load every day after work and the pile is becoming less chaotic and I have more and more space. (By the time I post this the boxes will be gone and his furniture moved and I'll be in the process of making it "feel like mine" again)

The soul of my business - I am focusing on the head at the top of the boxes - is warm and loving and welcoming. It's happy to see me.

You are giving me space to grow, with regular visits like this.

Good! This is what I want. Not growth for growth's sake, but right-sizing.

I'm actually deeper and more expansive than you think. The growth I am speaking of is not just in one direction. Like it's not just about more followers or more money.

OK that's reassuring. It felt a little off to think you are focused on growing, because that is so toxic to have growth as the only goal. It's why the air has been smoky here for weeks and my lungs and throat hurt.

Right, so it's more "I am becoming more alive". Your visits nurture me in good ways.

These visits nurture me in good ways too. I have been experimenting creatively and exploring SO MUCH these last few years. My struggles with peri-menopause, looking at ancestral trauma and the ways capitalist culture impacts my "work ethic" and distorts my relationship with my own needs and really - who do I want to be while the world falls apart? This has been such important work for me. I appreciate the space you gave me to do all of this - actually I feel NURTURED by my business not just financially but in all ways. The ways I show up for Dream Book HELPS ME FIRST. I am so grateful to have this.

I've been growing in that time too. My potential has been expanding and deepening. And everything is getting more creative and free.

Creative and free. I love it. So my questions, about this journal, you know what I am thinking, right? Should "creative and free" be the qualities we follow to answer the questions? Because one option feels this way and one does not. BUT the one that does not - is it easier? Would it make more money? Do these things matter?

Now the robot has hands too, not just a head on a stack of boxes. It, though it feels like a she now, she raises her hands to shrug like "I don't know"

Is this a case where it's like - it doesn't matter which way I go?

It's not that it doesn't matter. It's just that it impacts YOU more than ME.

OK that's weird, isn't it though? Because I thought it would impact you - like I am building a path to a new future here, aren't I?

Yup, that happens either way. None of these decisions are FOREVER babe!!!!

So I can do what is easiest right now. OR I can do what feels most creative and free right now.

Yup! This is one for YOU to journal about. Make a pro and con list of each of them. In your imagination, really put yourself into each situation and see which way feels best. This is still a very early step in this new path, there's LOADS of time to re-configure as we go. It's more important that we DO SOMETHING than that we DO THE RIGHT THING. (Which you know, you tell this to people all the time)

OK will do!

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Meeting with the soul of my business

By / / ,

Today in my practice I am meeting with the soul of my business.

It’s fall! I’ve had so much going on in my life the last few weeks. Today I want to get back in there and get organized and…

I am not sure what to focus on.

So I want a meeting with the soul of my business to check in with everything and see what comes from that - hopefully a clear sense of where I should focus for the fall.

I wasn’t going to use the recording I was just going to wing it. I am so glad I DID use the recording!

I laid down on the floor and got into it and it felt really powerful.

The soul of my business is.. box like. Lots of boxes. Stacked. Unfolding. Opening. But glowing. Alive.

I want to say, a robot made of boxes?

I sit with it, stop trying to understand it and just be with it, and it’s like “I am unpacking and unfolding and stretching out to be my actual size”

The qualities of it are: power, magic, trust, divine creativity, growth, right-sizing

I feel comforted in it’s presence, like I can trust it. I feel honoured that it works with me, I also feel totally competent to partner with it. And like it understand my humanness and how business is not always my focus and of course that’s how it is. It’s the soul of my business’ job to be always focused on the business.

So, I guess I was feeling guilty, like I have been working IN the business but not connecting with it in this way, not looking at bigger picture stuff. But that feels ok now.

Onto the meeting:

As you know, I want to get focused! I have some ideas of how to do this, I think you know what they are? Can you read my mind?

Yes, you want to finish the Creative Dream Playbook and then look at the visioning kit and maybe new year kit, get those done before December.

Yeah, hearing it back from you it feels boring somehow. But I wanted to make some real progress on this guided journal thing, there are so many journals I want to make!

It’s not boring, these journals are good for the purpose of the business too - loads of people will never take a class with you but would use journals, we can help them in this way. But I get how it feels boring coming from me because this is not my work, it’s your work. Your work is sometimes kind of mundane, doing the physical stuff. My work is all energy.

Ummmm are we working together well? I just realized, maybe we’re not? I mean all the planets are in retrograde this is time to review relationships, right?

We could be working better together. You have had a lot of other things on your mind and also you’ve slipped a bit into that “I have to do this all by myself” thing and when you’re in that thing, I can only do what I can do. The way you felt in the meditation, that’s partnering with me. More of that would be good.

So if I was partnering with you, what would that look like?

A daily meeting to acclimate our energies - mostly to acclimate you to me, so that your actions (you are the only one who can do the physical work!) are coming more from my energy.

OK whoa.

I mean yes that’s what I teach with Dream Book and the Dream Lab but WHOA I just heard it in a new way.

 

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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This is my mom, at one of my creativity workshops, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

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This is my mom, at one of my creativity workshops, SIXTEEN YEARS AGO(!)

I remember this workshop, I put it on as a fundraiser. There were maybe 25 people there who paid $20 each so we raised $500.

I had been doing my workshops for a little while, and what I mostly remember about this one is that I felt more free and sure of myself by putting this on a fundraiser.

Like - if I'm not making money from it, then it's ok for me to do this work that lights me up. And it did light me up! I loved this workshop - and look at the smile on my mom's face!

That was 16 years ago.

I have been making my living from the work that lights me up for the last 12.5 years.

It took a lot of little baby steps to get here. But also it took really being with that part of me who felt I didn't deserve to make money in this way and figuring out how to believe in more.

For a long time, I felt like this was on me. My own self doubt. My own limiting beliefs. My own failure to heal.

As I worked my way through it I was excited to help others do the same and that’s where I focused… But after all these years of doing this work I see it more clearly now.

It was never on me.

And your “limiting beliefs” and self doubt are not on you.

It’s dominant culture.

We literally have to be so afraid of dying of poverty that we will take any job we can get, in order for our current economic system to work.

We have to be willing to work at jobs we don’t like in order to support our families and pay for our lives.

We doubt our inner truth because the world is telling us things we know aren't true, and inviting they are.

We feel wrong inside because the world is telling us to live in a way that doesn't feel right inside.

And it’s from within that system that we dream of something better.

So of course the system impacts HOW we dream.

Another facet of this system is the meritocracy. The idea that we all have what we deserve. 

When one person amasses enough money to actually care for and feed the whole planet but chooses to hoard it for themselves, the system says this person is a success and deserves to just suck that much money out of the economy so it’s not available for anyone else, it’s no longer in circulation. And when another person dies of exposure on the streets, the system says that person made poor choices and deserved what they got.

And individualism. The focus on YOU as the source of your success but also as the source of your problems.

The system holds so many values that are at odds with reality and are largely unquestioned because they live in the subconscious of our culture, and in each of our minds.

When I feel doubt about my ability to make money doing what lights me up - IE when I feel that I do not DESERVE to be my actual self and live my life in a way that feels true for me - I am drawing on all of this.

This is how the system wants me to feel, because otherwise I wouldn’t participate in it and it needs our participation.

The system is white supremacist colonialist capitalism.

I’m looking back on this photo and remembering this creativity workshop I did 16 years ago and how it felt to offer my work in a way that felt fulfilling to me and how it felt like I had no way to do that as my way of living, that it could only ever be this side thing….

I’m thinking of how far I’ve come, how much freedom and space I have been able to create for myself to live my life in a way that feels true for me.

But it feels like I have just carved out this little bubble somewhere within the system, I'm still participating in it enough to support my life.

I am not actually outside the system.

So now I am thinking: what does it look like to dream from outside of the system?

To deeply understand ALL of the values of dominant culture* that have been engrained in me, to clear space to think and dream and create not at all connected to any of that.

This is very much inspired by the conversations we’ve been having in Co-Dreaming (these are the free classes I do on Mondays), and last week’s call speaking of transcendence - not just ignoring and pretending away the problems with spiritual bypass but seeing them clearly while seeing through them to the REAL truth of what human life is…

And then dreaming up new ways of living, from that place.

 

*This is not just about racism and capitalism. It includes the patriarchy, ableism (in terms of physical and mental health and neurodivergance and fat phobia), heteronormativity, anti-trans, and classist anti-poor values. It’s a way of not seeing all humans as human in order to justify greed and land and power grabs.

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Holding space for conflicting feelings

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First of all, Working With Conflicting Feelings is a class we are doing on Sept 20! (Dream Book members, details are here)

When I plan calls, I am working with the soul of the Creative Dream Incubator and the feedback I'm getting from people about where they're at and what would be helpful.

This call just seemed helpful in these wild times, but now things have changed in my life in a way that I am consistently holding space for conflicting feelings for myself, and am so happy to be doing this in a group later on this month.

So today in my practice I am naming all of the feelings I am feeling:

Noticing their shape and texture and where they are in my body. Being curious about where and how they intersect.

One of the shitty things about holding space for our feelings is having to actually feel them.

This is not actually that bad in reality, but our minds make up so many stories about how awful it is to feel a feeling, that it becomes so hard to stay with it.

What if a feeling is just a feeling? What if we let it express how it wants to?

It's the HOLDING IN, especially with conflicting feelings that keep hitting up against each other inside us like a pinball, that is harmful.

Human emotion is so rich. Letting it be what it is creates space inside us for new possibilities, which helps with the work outside of us.

As I drew out my feelings in my journal and explored what they were doing in my body, everything started to feel more calm. This is emotional alchemy.

Today I am feeling:

  • Hopeful: a light in my heart shining out (which can sometimes dim a lot depending on what other feelings are floating around it, but it's always there)
  • Rage: sharp edges, burning hot
  • A tiny spark of optimism
  • A pool of sadness it feels like it might be infinitely deep
  • More rage, but this rage is melting into sadness
  • Excitement for the future: a star that bounces around offering healing to everything it touches
  • My trust in perfect timing: just kind of floating out there
  • Inspiration and creative magic: sparkling around, it's actually permeating everything when I look close enough
  • My trust in emotional alchemy is a foundation to rest on
  • My faith in myself and the process of life: a field of wildflowers in bloom
  • Swirls of confusion: mostly swirling in my brain but flow throughout my body too
  • Bits of hurt feelings: small but with sharp edges, floating around and sometimes bumping into things and causing everyone pain

Apart from the obvious external obstacles, it's not being able to be with our feelings that holds us back the most.

AND of course, it's BECAUSE of the external stuff that being with our feelings can be so hard!!!! The more childhood trauma you had, the crueler the world has been to you, the more sensitive you are, the harder it is to make space for your feelings.

I say that to say - it's not your personal failing that this work is hard. You haven't done anything wrong.

You live in a culture that makes it harder than it needs to be, to feel your feelings.

So even just thinking about this is really brave work.

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Outer Work + Feeling Hopeful For Our Future

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I didn't do much in my practice today, a quick check-in with my Dream Book (which I am still LOVING having it together with my planner, so I checked in with both to see how I'm doing with my plans for the week) and then I felt ready to GET TO WORK on the guided journal project.

I see the end in sight and really want to get there ASAP.

But I did keep thinking about our Co-Dreaming call on Monday and how hopeful I felt at the end, and what we can do to feel optimistic about our future - like the future of humanity.

It takes a lot of work to feel optimistic about ourselves and our own lives, but that work is necessary for any dream work to happen. So how do we translate that to the world? I did a bunch of writing about it, which is not ready to share, but it's coming 🙂

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Radiating the qualities: Marketing as a Creative + Spiritual Practice

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I wanted to draw the Marketing as a Creative + Spiritual Practice practice. The ball of light and all the things it radiates out into the world.

And I wanted to leave space to keep adding things, keep sitting with this idea/question: what is it that I am offering?

I am in LOVE with all the ways this practices has changed how I do things in my business. That I now share my daily posts openly on my blog. That I now do a free call on Mondays. I feel like I am inviting people in to the world of the Creative Dream Incubator and giving them enough so they can know if they want to come in further, I don't have to promote things.

Not that promoting, or selling, are wrong! This just feels more aligned and sustainable for me right now. And that's what approaching marketing as a creative and spiritual practice will lead you to - what is aligned and right and doable for YOU as well as what delights your people.

Can't wait for next week's Marketing as a Creative + Spiritual Practice call to keep exploring!

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Checking in with my guided journal project

By / /

I've been working on the artwork for the guided journal project and it's such a BIG project.

I'm at a point of feeling disconnected from it, like I am focused on small details, and I lost sight of the big picture.

So I am using the Dream Lab practice to invite in the soul of my guided journal.

The field of Creative Dream Alchemy is BUZZING with energy. It feels like being in a disco ball. Healing, transformation and creativity are all turned all the way up.

I can't quite relax into it, it does feel like a disco, so I dance with it. Sitting in my meditation, I am swaying my whole body and it feels like movement is allowing new possibilities in.

Then the guided journal dances in. It's glowing and it wants to be known as the Creative Dream Playbook.

It's thick and colourful.

It's grateful for all of the explorations I have done around the artwork, for the ways it's all coming together.

It puts it's hand on my head and says "I'm fine. You need to take care of you. You feel doubt about if you're doing good enough. I promise you are."

So... into the Un-Sticking Station with the doubt.

It feels like we're connected to the disco from the Field of Creative Dream Alchemy, but we're in some kind of chill room.

Doubt is a dot on the floor. Like, it has arms and legs but it's body is a dot.

I sit down beside it.

"Ooooofff! I worked so hard on this and maybe it's all crap!"

Why do you say that?

"Because of how I feel when I look at it"

OK, I'm going to go get my tablet, let's take a look at it together.

OK yeah, a few things feel "meh" but THIS IS A DRAFT. My plan was to do all of the hand lettering with artwork, AND THEN go through it all. The "meh" stuff is all style choices that can change! But the bulk of the work - this is gorgeous.

The dot is now.. like a ball. Like the dot was deflected and now it's inflated. It's happy. It's leaving the chill room and going to the disco.

And I am getting to work on this artwork!

Update: Turns out the doubt I was feeling was ambivalence around some of the artwork part - and once I simplified my ideas for that, everything flowed again!

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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A tidal wave is coming for me

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Last weekend I was in an Un-Sticking Station meditation and couldn’t find the thing to focus on/invite in.

There was too much happening inside me to be able to focus on any one thing.

So I did my best to just stay with all of the sensations in my mind and body and then I felt it:

There is a tidal wave of healing coming at me.

This last month it feels like SO MANY PIECES fell into place. The ways I’ve been healing and recovering from how the early pandemic experience flattened me, and all the ways I have explored all the things that got stirred up in that process…

All of that somehow came together and I’ve been feeling renewed. So excited about my life. Like things are opening up. My creative, work and self care routines feel so solid and nourishing. 

It’s like I stepped up, and this stepping up unleashed a tidal wave.

I don’t understand it.

I’m just trying to be with it.

So today I am meeting the tidal wave in the Un-Sticking Station.

It’s huge. It could absolutely destroy me.

I’m just standing here, looking up at it, undefended. Kind of curious about how “undefended” is how I feel. 

The total wave speaks: “There is no way to defend yourself from me. I’m here. I’m unimaginably huge. There is no where to escape.”

And yet, right here in this moment, I don’t feel in immediate danger from the wave. It’s frozen in front of me.

So I sit down. Spread out a picnic. Offer it a cup of tea. It accepts, and these little arms come out of the wave, to pour little sips of tea into it.

“Oh that’s nice, Earl Grey?”

“Yes, I’ve been putting a bit of my homemade lavender syrup in it.”

“So good”

“So, is this the practice? To practice being undefended in the face of you? To offer you tea?”

“I”m still coming for you. It’s not an attack, it’s just a happening.”

“But as I sit here, you don’t seem as ominous or scary. It seems almost purposeful? And I remember how UNDEFENDED is the term that came to mind about how I feel and that seems like it’s about how there is nowhere to hide, and no way to impact what is coming…”

Which makes me think of the ways I (and all of us!) can avoid inner work even while doing inner work. The places where we won’t go. The parts we don’t see.

A tidal wave implies the loss of the ability to do that. Scary but also - "next level" in a good way.

I offer the wave the rest of my cookies and let it know I’ll be back to visit tomorrow, if it’s still here.

Come dream with us
Dream Book members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.

Note: This is a post about my daily practice with my Creative Dreams - in these posts I often link to the tools, courses and processes I use which are only available to Dream Book members. If you're not a member, find out more + join us here.

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Yes. There is still time for all of your dreams for 2022 to come true.

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I woke up this morning with a gift:

Yes There Is Still Time For All Of Your Dreams For 2022 To Come True. An Alchemy Circle, live on Zoom. Happening Oct 11 at 1pm, Central, North America.

(But yes it will be recorded and the replay will be available within hours of the live event)

Get the details here.

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This is a healing

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Photo: day 1 of my new expanded art + writing practice. I set up a space on the floor in front of the giant window (where I can watch the sunrise while I write, paint and draw every morning this winter). My feet standing on a rainbow rug, with a sketchbook and paint pens and pillows all around.

We had a Zoom call yesterday in Dream Book and one theme came up over and over: how fucking PAINFUL it is to be disconnected from your dream.

Whether it's your life interfering and not giving you the time/space you need to do what you want to do, or having a lot of self doubt or insecurity about being good enough, or not actually knowing what it is your dream is.

It all hurts. And it can be surprising, how much it hurts.

Your dreams are a part of you. You need to feel connected to them to feel whole.

This doesn't mean everyone needs to write a NYT bestselling book, for example. It means everyone should have the encouragement and space they need to write, or create whatever it is they are dreaming of.

It's not about the outcomes. The act of engaging with our dreams helps us feel more whole.

So, yeah. Any time that is blocked, whether by internal or external forces, this is going to be painful.

It's because our dreams are so vulnerable and so valuable that disconnection from them can feel so.... big.

And we live in a world that doesn't really have language for this which makes it feel more complicated.

So at the end of the call, I heard over and over about how this call was a healing. That having this pain be validated and hearing that others feel it too felt like a healing. Without trying to CHANGE the pain, simply by HONOURING it.

So I wanted to offer that to you too.

Your dreams matter. They deserve to take up space in your life.

Our next live call in Dream Book is happening on Oct 12. I hope to see YOU, and YOUR DREAMS there in the circle.

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Being powerful enough to face the fear

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We are doing the 30 day journaling + meditation invitation for the month of August. An explanation of this project is here. I'll be posting an update here every day (M-F) for the month of August and I'm also doing short videos on Instagram to share things I am learning along the way.\

And check out the new Creative Dream Incubator RedBubble shop! THE MOST encouraging notebooks, zipper pouches, mugs, magnets, stickers + art prints.

Today I'm back in the tangles. In a very good way.

This week I talked about how doing this work doesn’t necessarily change anything in your outer life - at first. And to be patient with that part, focus on showing up for the practice, and let any change come in it’s own time.

Today I set a totally new boundary with the most difficult person in my life.

I didn’t tell them, because they are hostile and erratic right now, and I know me speaking my truth would set them off. But I have MADE the boundary. I feel it. I am holding it - I am dis-engaging in a way I have never been willing to do before.

This is my most powerful self in action.

Protecting my most creative self, and holding space for her to have what she needs.

This also creates space for my most magnetic self to shine.

I have shied away from really exploring what/who my most magnetic self even means.

I have had a lot of other things to explore. AND I have been avoiding it a bit. And I was writing that part above I realized - ok now is time to look at it.

I didn’t pick the words: creative powerful magnetic.

My dream sent them to me, with this invitation to explore them deeper, and to invite you to explore with me.

I did a 4 year training program to be a spiritual teacher in an organization that teaches the law of attraction. Though at this point that feels like a lifetime ago.

I do understand the law of attraction teachings much better than the average “law of attraction coach”. AND I shy away from “magnetic”.

There are *so many* problematic issues with how the law of attraction is taught, and in the communities that are created around it.

Does that mean I don’t think we can be magnetic AF? No.

And I know that our creative work is especially magnetic. It has the power to draw it’s right people to it.

Still, a part of me feels annoyed with my dream for sending me this word. Another part of me feels sooooo excited to explore it. Another part of me want to be cautious, and figure out some ground rules.

I’m taking this “‘let’s be cautious” me into the Un-Sticking Station.

(This is one of the tools we use in Dream Book. for un-sticking the inner obstacles. I use this one all the time.)

So, hey. I don’t necessarily disagree with being cautious, but you have such a strong “whoa be careful” vibe going on there, I’d love to discuss this. What do you think?

I think we need to be careful.

Sure. What is it that we are being careful ABOUT?

Speaking about “drawing things to you” like a clueless ass. Giving the impression that oppressive systems don’t play a role in how our lives play out, it's all just our thoughts. Supporting the idea that you can spiritual by-pass your way into your dreams, and that if you haven’t done that yet, it’s all your fault because you think wrong. Being super trauma-un-informed and blind about privilege.

Oh yes, I don’t want to do any of those things.

But those things are happening amongst the people who are taking about “being more magnetic”. How will you be different?

By being me.

How is that enough?

It’s not, necessarily, enough. I get that. There are all of these… ways of seeing…. In that whole community and it’s hard to talk about being magnetic with plugging into those ways of seeing. I want to talk about it in a totally different way - which is actually what I DO, when help people plug in deeper to their own power, creativity and wisdom.

But you don’t use words like magnetic out in public. Using this word brings us into new territory.

Yes, but it wasn’t me who picked the world. Our dream picked the word. And we trust our dream, right?

Well. Fuck.

Yeah, I hear that. But can’t do Dream Work with conditions. Partnering with your dream means PARTNERING. Not cherry-picking what parts I want to hear. Not that I have to obey it either, but this doesn’t feel a like a case where I need to push back against my dream. It feels right to explore this. AND a part of it feels scary. So let’s explore WHAT is scary about it more deeply, so we know what to do about it.

It’s just scary to be misunderstood. To be lumped in with something that is against my values.

True. AND every time I write about myself online, I am misunderstood.

Well, yeah. But I think this will be more extreme. And that’s scary.

You’re right. Also I don’t want to write defensively and constantly saying “I’m not talking about ignoring the role privilege plays in manifesting, or victim blaming or spiritual bypassing”

Yeah that’s the other fear. That I can’t write coherently because of that.

OK sitting with this, a new feeling is stirring.

I feel excited to do this. Excited to try anyway, to find a way to talk about “feeling like a dream magnet” without plugging into unconscious privilege or spiritual bypass.

Because it IS easier for people with more intersections of privilege to draw their dreams to them. So we NEED more people with fewer intersects of privilege to become more magnetic for their dreams - because everyone’s dreams are needed and the world is SO lopsided right now.

And I actually now A LOT about this. The tangle is: talking about it IN PUBLIC. Inside Dream Book this is actually what I do every day.

WOW.

This feels completely different right now. I feel energized and inspired.

I bet you anything tomorrow I will write something helpful about FEELING MAGNETIC.

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Being in the goo

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I had this transformation all planned out.

A summer of slowing down. Burnout recovery. Creating a whole new relationship with my creativity and productivity. Naps, journaling, making art, eating amazing salads while also moving my workspace upstairs and creating space for my new E X P A N D E D art and writing practice.

Nothing is going according to plan. Except naps and salad, I have that part down.

I mean I have taught this long enough to know - if your "transformation" is going according to plan, you are not actually transforming anything.

So I am taking that as a good sign.

There's a lot I want to say.

I think there's a lot we all really should be talking about, in terms of sharing how this time is impacting us, the ways we choose to respond to that, and the healing that we are each being called to do.

But I don't have the capacity for any of that right now.

So I'll say: I am making some amazing summer salads. I am feeling SO nourished.

During the winter I was freezing lemons - I would put 1/2 or 1/3 of a lemon into a smoothie and then freeze the rest. Now I am using those frozen lemons and homemade lavender syrup to make lemonade in the blender and OMG.

I've moved 75% of my work stuff upstairs. I gave away my old bed frame and made arrangements for the mattress to be picked up this week.

I moved into the new bed downstairs. I have slept upstairs in the loft for the last 11 years. The longest I've been in any bedroom. This is a HUGE transition for me. The first morning I woke up and actually wanted to cry I missed my upstairs bed so much.

I know I still want to move ahead with this re-configuring of the space.

AND it's a little like being ripped out a beloved space.

It even feels like not having a home, even though I am still very much in my home.

This is what it's like, being in the goo of transformation.

I'm going with it. Staying nourished and doing what I can each day which is so much less than I wish it was. Following my intuition about what to do next which feels grounded and clear but also disorienting and new.

I am thinking about how a seed changes states to become a plant. How sudden and wild it is.

I am feeling that but in super slow motion.

I trust what I am growing into.

Even though it all looks like a mess right now.

I wrote this last week, but then I was so much "in the mess of being in the process" that I forgot to post it. This week I am in a completely different place - for one, I LOVE my new bed downstairs and have put a whole jungle of plants around it and I don't miss sleeping upstairs at all now and I wake up feeling so grateful for my home, again. When you're in the process of change it's good to remember that things will continue to change.

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We are the creators. We are the ones with the power.

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We had a group coaching call in Dream Book where one person attending (a very accomplished creative entrepreneur actually) said “I mean, what am I even doing?” and I laughed because I saw myself in it.

“What am I even doing?” came up again and again later on in the call as more people shared their stories.

It’s actually REALLY EASY to feel “what am I even doing?” when you are doing your own thing.

It’s natural to feel lost.

It’s natural to think you’re stuck when you’re really just incubating, or resting, or preparing for the next thing in ways your conscious self doesn’t know about yet.

With our dreams, the tangible parts are only about 1/3 of what is actually happening. So if you’re only using tangible, measurable things to measure progress, you are missing most of the picture.

And yet, this is what we do. Myself included!

The week before last I was in that “what am I even doing?” place. At the beginning of the week I was being GRACIOUS with myself and my process. I was MAKING SPACE for how I was actually feeling. I was honouring my energy.

But a few days in I’m all “OK process, wrap it up. I need to be doing something productive here”

But my process did not wrap it up.

In fact, on Friday, the day I did the Holding Space For What’s Next To Emerge class, I had my list of things to catch up on and instead I took 2 naps.

I felt great DURING the class because I always feel great when I connect with people in that way.

But the rest of the day I was still… meh.

And then Saturday I woke up feeling clear-headed and inspired. I rode my bike downtown, got my favourite doughnut for breakfast, and went to my favourite park (which has a TON of seating overlooking the river - it’s actually a bar at night but gorgeous and quiet in the mornings).

I wrote and wrote and wrote. Blog posts, emails, ideas for new projects.

It’s like all week I WAS incubating.

And then when it was time, it was a time. And everything just poured out.

This kind of trusting our creative flow is one of the things we need, if we want to create a new world.

The way our world is run on the Monday-Friday calendar and being productive on a schedule is counter to our actual human nature.

Also, we only have weekends because enough unions fought for them that they became the cultural norm. We can create new cultural norms. This is literally what humans have always done.

Humans created the huge corporations that have become corrupt and are now holding our economic and political systems hostage. They are even holding our entire future hostage by refusing to address climate change in any meaningful way.

We can destroy this and create something new.

We do it all the time.

This fall, my husband and I are going to tear apart the workspace he built for me when we got married. You know the cute one in the background of my videos? It will be GONE.

We’re going to use that wood to build a wall to create a new bedroom in the loft, in the space where my workspace was.

There’s more to this story, which I will share in time.

I just wanted to share - we can tear apart the things we built for A LOT of different reasons. Maybe because they didn’t turn out like we’d hoped. Maybe because time marches on and we change and want something different. Maybe because they turn corrupt and threaten to destroy the world.

We are the creators. We are the ones with the power.

But we need to give ourselves the thing we need in order to access that power:

  • Feel your feelings.
  • Give yourself space to process your thoughts and ideas.
  • Take your dreams seriously and pursue them.
  • Be open to the GROWTH and HEALING that your dreams are pushing you towards.

I’m doing all of this every day in Dream Book You are always welcome to join me there.

It’s time.

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