After two days in a row of meeting the swan, I was expecting the swan when I did the soul of your business version of the Dream Lab.

(If you don't have a business you can meet with the soul of your dream.)

This time - nothing happened.

My dream didn’t show up. The soul of my business didn’t show up. I got to the part where it’s asking me to look at the relationships between things, and I had to just pause it.

I sat with it.

Finally realized - well there is this kind of cobblestone ground beneath me. I guess that is my dream… like a sturdy supportive platform.

But still, the soul of my business was nowhere. After two days of such reassuring meetings with it, this felt like a problem.

I went back into the meditation and felt relieved by the things I said there, about how these things can change from day to day and point us to what’s going on in our relationships with ourselves and our dreams and it doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong when the meditation doesn’t feel right.

I drew out my meditation in my journal.

Me standing on these cobblestones.. That’s when I realized… cobblestones are outside, I am not inside, like on a floor in a home.

Then I noticed how dark and lonely it felt.

And realised… I think there are tall walls around me. Blocking out the sun.

It’s disappointing that the soul of my business had shown up in such a magical and helpful way this week, and now this! The sun is blocked!!

But I had a lot of anxiety yesterday afternoon and this could be related. Am I separated from myself? From my ambition and work?

I sit here for a while, getting increasingly annoyed.

What should I do?

A part of me is wondering why my business hasn’t show up and another part of me is slowly accepting the idea that my business IS here, but I am blocked from it.

Like - these are MY walls.

Then it starts to feel important that I recognize that the walls exist.

And that feels like enough for today.

I’ll do this meditation again tomorrow and see where it goes.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

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Two days in a row I did the Meeting the soul of your business meditation.

(There is also a soul of your business version of the Dream Lab, here. Or if you don't have a business you can meet with the soul of your dream.)

Both times, the soul of my business appeared as a swan.

It was so soft and magical and powerful. It wanted me to sit on its back, it was soooo comfy cozy in there, and it wrapped its wings around me, and we took off for an adventure in the cosmos.

It was swimming through a cosmic ocean. It was magical and healing.

The feeling I got was: Let me carry you.

This felt connected to a larger message I have been receiving from myself and my dreams about accepting myself where I am.

Which is about accepting my brain AS IT IS NOW and STOP trying to accomplish and produce the way I did in my 30s and 40s.

And also, as we talk about on the Marketing as a Creative + Spiritual Practice calls - the stuff I used to do that worked so well for growing my business doesn't work now anyway so what if I just stop trying and .... FEEL GOOD ABOUT THAT?

And that… what if my 50 year old brain, as it is, is actually MORE POWERFUL?

Which feels SO true.

The ways my brain is changing... what if this is WISDOM?

What if it only feels like increasing anxiety because I'm trying to stay in the past?

It's a really big inner shift that looks like nothing on the outside. Like - staying home because I want to honour that I get anxious if I go to the event looks like the same as staying home and wishing I could go but I know the event will make me anxious.

BUT something feels different in me.

And the way I've been approaching my work and creative projects is REALLY changing and I FUCKING LOVE IT.

The way I feel, sitting in that swan and trusting it to take me to the right place, is amazing. I didn't understand it, especially the first day, but this is the medicine I need.

I shared the photo of my journal page as a way of saying - you really don't have to be good at drawing to draw out your meetings as a way to capture the magic of them.

No one but me knows that that's a swan, lol!! I'm still not sure I know what a swan looks like, but I captured the feeling and that helped me hold onto the experience.

The alchemy meditations shift energy and can create DRAMATIC shifts.

Journaling after helps you hold onto and integrate those shifts, otherwise it's easy to shift back to where you were.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Every Monday in 2025 there will be a new journal prompt in the Year of Hope classroom in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership.

​Get this week's journal prompt here.​

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave them in the comments at the bottom of that page so we can discuss this as a group. Practicing hope in community is MAGIC.

A note from my Year of Hope journal: It's easier to feel hopeful about specific things than it is to be hopeful in general.

Is this always true? I don't know. But right now it feels really helpful.

There is so much that is hard to feel hopeful about.

But there are also things that are easy to feel hopeful about.

And we can give those more space, without denying the reality of all the other things.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

This realisation came to me over a few days and then it felt like it sunk down deep and changed everything about how I see myself and my life.

I have been so impatient!!

Why?

Impatience is immaturity. Maybe I am being immature about some things.

Impatience is… a lack of patience. I mean obviously. But why did patience leave the room? What caused the lack? I don’t think it was always there.

I think under all of that, impatience is not wanting to be where I am.

You know how Creative Dream Alchemy is: The art + magic of meeting yourself where you are and moving towards where you want to be?

There is an art to finding the balance between being where you are and moving towards where you want to be.

Trying to not be where you are (while once in a while that CAN kind of leap-frog you into your dream) usually just leaves you stumbling on the path because you are not looking at your feet and what kind of terrain they are on.

And yeah we all love to dream!!! We love to focus on what we want to create.

But life is also life-ing.

And I feel like, in a bunch of different ways, life just dumped me in this place where I never intended to be.

Is there wisdom in that?

Yes, I think so.

Like - I never consciously intended to get divorced AND this divorce process has shown me a lot of things that did want to learn and I don’t think I could have learned them a different way.

Related: I AM TRYING TO DO TOO MUCH.

I get overwhelmed and can’t do all the things I meant to do, so I just…. keep trying. I judge myself for not doing all the things I meant to do.

Since I also keep reflecting every week in the Dream Status Reports, and every month in the New Moon Intention Setting Calls (which you can get even if you’re not in the membership, right here) of course eventually I am going to see that I am stuck in a pattern here.

It’s funny to me how long it took for me to see it, especially since it comes up SO MUCH in my coaching work: Usually we go faster (in terms of making progress on our dreams) when we slow down and take smaller steps.

Creative people have BIG VISIONS and tend to want to take BIG STEPS, so even what feels like “baby steps” might actually be too big.

It’s funny that it took so long to see it AND… of course it did! This is what it’s like.

Understanding everything I do about the process of Creative Dreaming, having so much experience with my own process and helping others through theirs, doesn’t mean I avoid the pitfalls! It just means I don’t get as lost in them and don’t give up because of them.

(And all we ever have to do is NOT GIVE UP)

So… what if I am more patient and do less? What might that look like?

Right now it would look like cleaning up. The whole loft needs a good tidy and it would feel so good to do it! Put on music, and focus on creating a nice space for myself.

And then.... I need to keep sitting with this question.

The idea of REMOVING IMPATIENCE from my process feels SO magical. Especially since I hadn't realized how much impatience there is around me. It's like the fog clearing when you didn't even know it was foggy.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Hey! Before we start... iI you missed my email yesterday I want to let you know - THE NEW AND IMPROVED UN-STICKING STATION IS HERE! 

With the outer world feeling so unstable, we need to be more deeply rooted in the Inner Work and Dream Work. So I completely expanded the Un-Sticking Station meditations and am going to start working adding new meditation to the library of Inner Work and Dream Work practices.

OK -I feel like I have been “going wrong” but actually THERE IS NO WRONG.

We are either engaging with our dreams and healing and creativity and growth or we are not engaging.

All engaging is good! There is no wrong way to engage.

Sometimes we need to go in circles or do what feels like backwards movement because we are multi-dimensional and the growth our dreams need is also multi-dimensional so who’s to say what is forward and what is backward?

Having said all of that.

I had the sensation “Oh wow this is where I have been going wrong!”

My “coach self” would say - it’s not so much that you’ve been doing this WRONG, it’s more like you now have a clear message about what to do NEXT.

So what I need to do next is: be deeper in the Dream Work.

It’s like I’m in the ball in a pinball machine, pinging back and forth between Inner Work and Outer Work.

And Dream Work is the way to stop pinging.

And I feel like… but I AM doing Dream Work… but in another way…. I am not going as deep as I need to.

[Dominant culture tells us we need to work harder to get more results. Or work smarter. Creative Dreaming tells us we need to be more devoted, go deeper, have more love and enthusiasm for what we are doing and let that lead us.]

So suddenly I see the ways that I am avoiding the deeper Dream Work, really connecting to who I am growing into.

I feel like I am at so many crossroads all at once. I keep thinking back to myself in my late 30s, when I was at my most confident, ambitious and brave. And when 2020 and everything that came after was still so far away. For a while I wanted to go back to that.

Now I am starting to feel like… no there is something new for me.

And I have thought about how I want my life to be like going forward, but I am just now realizing that I have not thought about how I want ME to be. 

Fifty feels like such a weird and intense age.

Or maybe I am just in a weird and intense place and it has nothing to do with my age.

It makes sense that I have been staying a bit in the “shallow end” of Dream Work. Going deeper feels like diving into a BIG unknown.

And I feel ready for that now.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

I have been journaling A LOT and my pile of insights keeps growing and I wanted to share them, in no particular order:

I have to stop making so much space for overwhelm and make more space for magic.

My dream is asking me to be braver than I think I can be. I am wrong about how brave I can be. My dream is right.

I’m scared it won’t be good enough. If I give it my all and it’s not enough then what will I do? Easier to keep it as a dream and not really go for it.

I deserve to be believed in. I deserve to believe in myself.

I am powerful and strange.

You have nothing to be self conscious about.

It's time to let go of the struggle.

Everything is alive. Meaning: Everything is in a state of change. Everything is growing. Nothing is stagnant. Everything goes through phases. You're not stuck, you're alive.

As I clarify the picture of what I want my life to look like… there is so much more grief coming into focus. The pain of things not being where/how I want them also becomes clearer.

Overwhelmed is a temporary state and underneath that, my creative genius is a permanent state.

What helps you hold onto the BIG magic, power and creativity that live in you?

👉🏻 If you journal MORE, you will have MORE insights.

The Dream Book journaling + mediation program (the main part of the ​Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership​where I walk you through the process of creating the map that leads to your dream) is set up to help you get MORE insights from your journaling.

Or if that's not quite the right thing for you - there are lots of other journaling classes in the membership! Send me an email to let me know what you're looking for and I can help you pick on.

Then the weekly check-in practice (which I share here on Fridays) and monthly intention setting calls we do help you ACT ON those insights (which is generally NOT a linear process).

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Every Monday in 2025 there will be a new journal prompt in the Year of Hope classroom in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership.

​Get this week's journal prompt here.​

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave them in the comments at the bottom of that page so we can discuss this as a group. The discussions already have been so good! Practicing hope in community is MAGIC.

I wrote a little while back about how doing a creative project just for the sake of processing my feelings has maybe opened a new door to new art projects and how exciting that feels.

I totally forgot about that.

And I'm not sure if this is related... but I woke up one morning with this sentence in my mind:

I am opening a new door

And it felt like the thing to put in my Year of Hope journal for that day.

Showing up every day, or every week, and making space for a thing really helps us work through the thing!!! That can be a dream like starting a business or a dream like feeling hopeful during the most un-hopeful times you've ever seen in your 50 years on this earth.

I do feel I am opening a new door.

Even though I don't see anything changing around me and hope is really up and down, I am going to hold onto this sensation. I am opening a new door.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

I am dreaming of a cleaning caddy. Just something that can store my cleaning supplies and tools.

Seriously, I am DREAMING of it.

Every week, something comes up and I can’t just go get one. So I keep dreaming of it, lol.

I keep my cleaning supplies in a pail.

A really cute purple heart shaped pail. But It’s awkward because whenever I need to use the pail I have to take everything out and it makes a mess.

And now that I am de-cluttering and re-thinking my things and how I store them… I really want to put the cleaning stuff in a cleaning caddy and then put the caddy in the pail. Then it doesn’t take up any more space but is more convenient.

This is all complicated by the fact that I have a leaking roof. 

So I use that pail to catch water.

And then I put the pail in my bedroom closet because when it starts to leak in the spring I want to be ready. (This is where I should say I wrote this over 6 weeks ago, the snow is melting and so far - no leaks!!)

(The roof repair has been “in process” for years and I don’t want to talk about it!!!!)

So my cleaning stuff ended up…. all over.

And I don’t actually know all that I have. It makes cleaning more overwhelming than it needs to be.

So, I am dreaming of having all of my cleaning stuff corralled into one space, where it’s easy to use. Like a cleaning caddy of stuff that sits inside the pail, so everything can be used easily.

BUT as a minimalist my first impulse is to NOT buy things in order to store other things, whenever possible. I know it can help maintain order and calm but I also get overwhelmed by having a lot of “stuff” and it counts as more “stuff”.

We can have contradicting parts.

We can have contradicting dreams. 

That’s why it’s so good to pay attention to our feelings.

My frustration about how my cleaning supplies seems like a small insignificant thing but it’s a signal from myself to pay attention. My dream of having a cleaning caddy is a tiny dream but still relevant.

And when we ignore the signals about little things, it gets harder to hear the signals about the big things.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Just noticing how:

There is the feeling.

Then there is the frustration/annoyance about the feeling.

If I spent less time in the frustration/annoyance, I'd have more time, likely more ENERGY even, to process the feeling itself.

Can I accept myself for being a human being with human feelings?

It's not that simple, we do live in a culture that encourages us to be robots in so many ways.

But can I create more of a culture, within myself, of acceptance of all of these uncomfortable feelings?

On Monday I wrote about "how do I want to handle this despair" which feels like an on-going project and this is a big part of it!

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Everything that is happening in your life is the material - ALL the stuff, both inside and around you.

This is what we use to make art and build our dreams.

Either we are doing that work or we are waiting for the world to change before we can be who we want to be.

In the guidelines to the Creative Dream Incubator Membership I talk about how, after you join, you may find you’re too busy. Something comes up, or things just don’t work out like you’d planned, and it’s just too hard to “get to it”. I talk about how this is not a coincidence. THIS IS THE WORK.

This is how intention works.

You set an intention to move forward on a thing, and then you step right into the obstacles.

When you were not moving with the thing, the obstacle looked different. And you still have the perspective of that version of you who was not moving with the thing, so you don’t recognize the obstacle you have landed in as an obstacle.

It seems like a detour or some kind of waiting station. Like your dream would ever want you to wait for it!!!

The truth is, your dream is waiting for you.

And the thing you’ve stepped in that is stopping you - it’s not blocking the way it IS the way.

And it doesn’t seem to matter how long you’ve been doing this work. It’s still a surprise every time to remember this.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

Every Monday in 2025 there will be a new journal prompt in the Year of Hope classroom in the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership.

​Get this week's journal prompt here.​

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Leave them in the comments at the bottom of that page so we can discuss this as a group. I am getting a lot from reading your comments, and from knowing that we're all practicing hope in our own ways.

Practicing Hope will likely lead to hopelessness at times.

As we've been exploring in the Year of Hope prompts over the last few weeks - there is a spectrum between hopeful and hopeless and different ways of moving back and forth on it.

Trying to make myself stay at the hopeful end doesn't serve me as well as learning to take better care of myself when I am at the hopeless end.

How do I want to hold this despair?

I was just so overwhelmed by the heaviness of despair, laying on my floor, kind of doing yoga, mostly sitting with my feelings.

I got the image in my head of this tear drop, but it was bedtime, so I made a note of it and put it in my journal the next day.

Once I did paint it, I was delighted that this painted teardrop FEELS JUST LIKE how it felt when the idea came to me.

Then I filled the other pages with ideas for how I can hold this despair.

Which ultimately helped me accept... I'm just going to have to carry despair for now.

I don't want to spiritual by-pass. I don't want to force myself to feel different from how I feel. I do want to SUPPORT myself in feeling how I want to feel.

ACCEPTANCE is such a powerful tool. We don't want to accept shitty things and never change them, but to accept that reality is what it is helps to ground us where we are.... and being grounded where you are is the most powerful place from which to build a path that leads somewhere else.

So I am grateful for this new layer of acceptance.

And grateful that I am actually feeling less despair since doing this.

AND grateful that I pinpointed a few things that I have not been doing that would be REALLY HELPFUL to do, so I am doing this.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.

A little while back I shared this little video on Instagram of a new project I was starting. 

I was having A LOT of feelings about the state of the world, and one thing my brain just couldn’t seem to process is - the word “anti-fascist” is suddenly controversial. Like, I thought we were all against fascism but suddenly, in communities I used to be a part of, anti-fascist is controversial.

It’s similar to how I felt when I was learning more about anti-racism and was so surprised at how many people got mad about it. I thought - if you’re not racist then how could you be upset about anti-racism? Well, they are racist and just don’t identify as such and there are a lot of layers.

While I was sitting with my feelings and struggling to really process, I got the idea to use some red linen I had, and make the letters to spell anti fascist and then hand stitch around them, like a very slow meditative process giving me time to with with this word and process my feelings.

Which has been so good, for that.

AND

I think it may be turning into a real Art Project. Or it has the potential to anyway.

A bit of background: I have a degree in fashion design, really excelled at all types of surface design, and set out to be a textile artist out of university in my 20s. Never really made much money but I did make some beautiful textile pieces and that is still in my blood.

(That dream, of being a textile artist, is what led to the Creative Dream Incubator - like 12 years later. I tried my best in my 20s until I ended up so broke and tired of figuring out how to make ends meet every month that I got an office job right before I turned 30, around 2003. That job ended up giving me the space to explore my creativity and spirituality and healing in different ways, which led to me deciding to leave that job to start the Creative Dream Incubator in 2010.)

SO - When I started these letters, I did have skill and experience to figure this out - but I knew I’d be rusty and it wouldn’t look like I would hope it would look like. 

And as I am working on it and I am getting the thread twisted and many stitches are lopsided I am reading myself that I am doing this for the process, it’s fine. This is not going to be SOMETHING...

Until it started to feel like SOMETHING.

Maybe (with a ton of practice and refining my technique and approach) fabric letters spelling out words and sentences is THE ART I have been looking for, with my dream of “being the artist I know I am”.

Feels like it could be, which feels amazing. Like the dream coming full circle.

And it might not be anything more than this particular project, but I feel like I am following intuition and inspiration and picking up the threads - literally and metaphorically and metaphysically.

And I really think I am going somewhere!

And I just wanted to share this moment of doing a thing just because I got an idea that doing the thing might help me feel better in the moment - and that opened up a new door.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership 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 or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

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.