(I do my weekly planning with the printable version of the Year of Dreams 2022, all the details of how I printed + bound it are here. The journaling printables I cut + paste onto it are from Dream Book)
Get the free full Creative Genius Planning Sessions video (15 minute meditation + journaling class for planning your week from your most wise, brave + creative self, here)
Sharing yesterday's talk with Michael Redhead Champagne about his new book, We Need Everybody, and the process of writing books (or pursuing any kind of dream) that help to change the world.
This is AMAZING, so rich and inspiring.
Watch it on Instagram to leave your comments.
View this post on Instagram
We Need Everyone is currently available as a pre-order. Get the info here.
(I do my weekly planning with the printable version of the Year of Dreams 2022, all the details of how I printed + bound it are here. The journaling printables I cut + paste onto it are from Dream Book)
Get the free full Creative Genius Planning Sessions video (15 minute meditation + journaling class for planning your week from your most wise, brave + creative self, here)
PS: I hope you're coming to my Instagram live today to celebrate Micheal Redhead Champagne's new book!! Such a great chance to soak up the energy and magic of a big dream coming true and SUCH a great time to talk about WRITING BOOKS THAT HELP CHANGE THE WORLD!
PPS: The Obstacle Is The Way Through is happening This Thursday!!
(February 10, on Zoom at 1:pm Central - and it will be recorded and the recording WILL be effective and we can chat in the comments section if you have questions).
We're going to work with the thing that is MOST in your way RIGHT NOW. It can be an internal or external thing.
The call will be about 60-90 minutes, depending on what kinds of conversations come up in the process.
We'll go deep....
And you'll leave knowing EXACTLY what to do next✨✨
This call is included in your Dream Book membership for February.
Join us here.
Your future self will thank you.
Photo by James Lee on Unsplash
Things are intense in Canada right now.
And one of the things that has felt distressing to me personally, is how we can no longer agree on what is a fact and what is not and that makes it really hard to even begin to have a conversation about how to find common ground.
There are no more gatekeepers in the media, and so everyone can choose the media that reflect their own biases. We can all feel like the media we choose is telling the truth and everyone else is biased. That's always been true but never to the same extent as now.
So, right now, for some people it feels like this amazing freedom rally went across the country and is fighting the communist Canadian government and standing up for freedom for all.
And some people, me included, feel like white nationalist groups, many of which are funded and organized from outside of our country, are occupying the capital, displaying white supremacist symbols, allowing thugs to run wild, assaulting people for wearing masks, committing so many hate crimes the police have no way of keeping up with the reports coming in and appropriating First Nations sacred items and practices in disgraceful ways.
And everyone has a cell phone. There is plenty video evidence to show what is happening on both sides.
Both of these things are happening.
I looked at some photos that the people who support this protest were sharing and I saw the love and unity that they saw. I saw how badly they want that, they are have been willing to "overlook a few bad apples" and keep supporting this movement, despite all of the controversy and reports of hate crimes.
We actually ALL want that. Unity and freedom and every opportunity to feel good.
But if we want our movements to be supported by everyone, we have to include everyone.
There was a ridiculously hostile happening on the social media accounts of my favourite doughnut shop this weekend. And supporters of the freedom rally were getting angry and saying "but we're fighting for YOUR freedom too" and that's when I saw it so clearly.
You can't angrily tell someone you are fighting for their freedom too.
If you truly are fighting for their freedom, you have to find out where they are not free. You can't project your own experience onto them and expect it to fit.
So the people in favour of the freedom rally feel oppressed in a specific way, and want to create freedom in a specific way.
And the people not in favour of it don't feel oppressed in that particular way, and the solution being presented by the freedom rally actually feels oppressive to many, even dangerous to some, or at the very least not helpful.
It's not the flavour of freedom I want. I agree with you that freedom is great! But this particular flavour of it actually doesn't taste like freedom at all, to me.
I wrote last week about how much I am loving couples therapy.
One of the things I've received from it that I love most is the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are.
For a person who has makes her living by helping people make their dreams happen - accepting things as they are is NOT a place where I thought I would find a lot of magic and healing.
However, the magic of accepting things as they are can be a vital tool for relationships because when applied right (I'm not talking about resigning yourself to having less than what you really want) it helps you make space to find common ground.
So I though about my experiences with that, and laid it over my thoughts about the freedom rally and.... oh.
We really all do want unity and freedom.
So the only effective way to go about it is to take an intersectional approach and find out what that means for everyone.
Hold space for what every single person wants here. *There is a HUGE caveat to this of course and I'll come back to that.
Even though many people will want the exact opposite of what others want, and the wants will conflict in ways that make it seem impossible that we can ever come together.
That's where we apply the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are. In accepting what other people want, too.
You don't have to agree, to accept.
How can we make space for being aware of and accepting of what other people want?
How can we assume that other people have valid reasons for wanting what they want?
It really shifts the way the you look at it, and creates space where new possibilities can emerge.
Conflicting wants and desires actually CAN all be held together.
When you can sit with WHAT IS.
Even when it's uncomfortable.
Even when there are no solutions in sight:
You want an end to the mandates now.
I want the mandates to stay in place, and get better (with more forms of support for everyone) until the pandemic has subsided to the point where our most vulnerable people are as safe as they were pre-pandemic.
(Ideally I'd love for the pandemic to have taught us about what vulnerable people go through in our society, recognize that they're not vulnerable by nature but MADE vulnerable by the way organize our culture, and make some changes, but that's a bigger topic)
Clearly, these two wants conflict directly and it appears that we can't both have what we want.
And we can both point to information and ways of seeing the world that completely invalidate the other person's point of view.
But what if we don't?
What if we see the pain everyone is in right now?
What if we recognize that we're all acting out of our trauma responses because living through a global pandemic is traumatizing?
What if we just stay there for a minute, without any solutions at all?
I don't see another way of coming to any kind of unity.
Not that I see solutions right now, but I see this as a way to move towards them.
Back to: We need to hold space for what every single person wants here.
***Except for the white nationalists and nazis who have been given carte blanch to run around committing hate crimes for over a week in Ottawa.
If your values include the oppression of other groups of people, there is no room for you in unity.
Unity can't be ALL peace and love and rising above and saying "we're all welcome here" while turning a blind eye to the hate crimes. It's an EXTREMELY privileged stance to allow these people in your movement and give them the opportunity to do harm.
While I recognize that all people are, at their core, good - if people are so disconnected from who they really are that they're waving nazi flags, threatening rape and murder to people who chose to wear masks, throwing rocks into windows in apartment buildings that have pride flags on them (all documented events that are happening at the rally in Ottawa) - then good people can't unify with them.
You can hold space for them to get better - if they want to.
But hate can't be a part of unity.
Unity needs judicious boundaries.
And if you're feeling like "oh no I can't dis-include people from the movement" please think about how well you are including people who have been the victims of all of these hate crimes.
The presence of hate groups means everyone can't be safely included.
So you do have to choose: groups of people who actively want to destroy other people or everybody else?
But once you've done that, some form of unity has got to be possible.
In truth we are all one.
Micheal will leave you motivated, inspired, and ready for action.
Michael Redhead Champagne, born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, is an award-winning community organizer, public speaker, and a proud member of Shamattawa First Nation. Michael believes we all have a gift and shows youth the path to discover their own. He is solution oriented and passionate about building system literacy, encouraging volunteerism, and engaging communities to be involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of any initiative that affects them.
He's also been a HUGE source of inspiration to me for the last 12 years.
I am so excited to go on Instagram Live with him and talk about the making of this book:
We Need Everyone. (<--- follow that link to get your copy!)
This is a children's book and it is a celebration of our many gifts!
We'll go live on Instagram at 2pm (Central, North America) on February 7.
If you go to my Instagram account on your phone (doesn't work from a computer) you can sign up there to get a notification when we go live.
Joseph moved out of the Dream Loft in March 2021.
And at that time, one of the things I shared is that we are NOT separating, we ARE still married, and we need some time apart, to work separately and together, on what we want to create next.
I'm leaving out a lot of details. I just want to highlight that because every time I write about my personal life, I DO leave out the details that I want to keep private. But people reading tend to not be consciously aware of that. So they think they know the whole story, and want to offer me advice based on what they THINK they know. I don't need or want advice and am not going to accept any. Not only do I know the whole story, I 100% trust myself and Joseph to navigate this process.
Dreaming and creating together in a partnership is NOT something I have any experience with.
I don't even have a lot of great role models in terms of seeing people do this in a way that looks good to me.
In my life I've seen a lot of one person giving up more than they want to and then getting resentful about it. And it's a pattern I find VERY easy to fall into myself.
Or both people compromising in ways that don't seem that bad but also don't light their souls on fire.
True co-creating and taking everyone's multifaceted and ever-changing needs into account is a LOT!
And once you add kids to the mix, and kids from previous partnerships which also brings those previous partners into the mix - it's beyond a lot.
We can acknowledge how hard some of these things feel WHILE ALSO acknowledging that we are creative and smart and resourceful enough to navigate it. And that love helps us grow and be strong!
A lot of people have asked me to start a blog about being a step-mom which - well given my policy of honouring my step-children's sovereignty and privacy while also not sharing about anything I don't 100% trust myself to handle - well I just don't know what there'd be left to say.
Anyway, I want to live in a way where my decisions DO help light my soul on fire.
And I want that for my partner.
And I want to help his children, as they move into adulthood, to create this space for themselves in their lives as well.
So when I say that Joseph and I are going to therapy together - to me this is a really good thing and I am excited about the new possibilities it's opening up.
I know people hear it as something that indicates THERE IS A PROBLEM but I think therapy is supportive and helpful for living your best life. The way Joseph and I speak differently to each other with the therapist in the room is really next-level helpful.
Way before the pandemic, I had decided to start therapy, and I was looking for an art therapist that I felt like I could resonate with. A monthly check-in with an art therapist felt like a great thing to add to my self care toolkit.
And then the pandemic hit and my overwhelm got so bad last winter, I decided to find a therapist on Zoom and stopped looking specifically for art therapists and found someone I immediately resonated with. And during our first session, she said "I'm not an art therapist, but once we're doing in-person therapy I'd love to do some expressive arts therapy with you!"
Then Joseph started therapy on his own, and we started couple's therapy.
Yeah it's a lot of therapy but it's also a lot of insights and healing and noticing new ways to do things that work better for everyone.
It takes deep work to really pursue a dream.
Pursuing a dream triggers a process of growth and healing that is necessary for the fulfilment of the dream. Th.is tends to push us right into the stuff that we most want to avoid.
To pursue a dream with a partner it goes deeper because there's also a lot of old childhood stuff that comes up in any intimate relationship anyway plus multiple layers of boundaries issues and just how complicated it to to meet multiple people's multiple needs.
Often a good relationship will create a container for healing and growth, but then the places where we're not conscious aware of our own stuff just feel MAGNIFIED because of the container is there as an opportunity for healing.
Opportunities for healing can often look like a crisis or a setback or just like a steaming pile of shit that you want nothing to do with.
So, it feels like what is happening is that Joseph and I both wanted nothing to do with a few of our steaming piles of shit so we just tried to work around them.
The pandemic made it harder to do that.
And our living situation (in a loft with no privacy and not enough storage and where it really does feel like MY home and not OURS) also made it harder to do that.
Pandemic + living situation = these steaming piles of shit are suddenly in our faces.
The dream is the solution, the new life we are creating together....
But the dream, in order to be fulfilled, needs us to look at ALL of the steaming piles of shit, not just the ones already in our faces.
And it all feels like too many layers of too much shit.
It's not though.
I mean - it was all always there.
And now we're ready to stop tiptoeing around it and start cleaning it up.
This process is messy and smelly and all, but how much happier will we be once it's sorted!?!
So that's how couples therapy feels right now. I'm holding the new possibilities that are being created close to my heart and making new plans for our future while plugging my nose and getting to work.
So I just found this post in my blog post drafts. I had written it months ago and not shared.
(This is not unusual right now, I have been writing a lot, and then losing those writings instead of sharing them. It's just one of the ways my pandemic overwhelm has manifested)
Anyway, I saw it and re-read it, a note from my months-ago self.
Where are are now is different.
We don't really have steaming piles of shit, and I am laughing at myself for using that description.
What we are now are continually noticing where we are getting better and better at honouring ourselves and each other.
Like "Oh wow, if (thing) had happened a year ago I would have (unconscious reactive pattern) and then you would have (unconscious reactive pattern) and FUCK I am glad we're not doing THAT anymore"
Therapy and Dream Work are a miracle combo.
Joseph and I now have a journal where we are dreaming our future together.
There is so much we can't figure out right now, so many moves we can't make right now.
And that's all fine.
There's also so much to enjoy about right now.
And there are so many ways to play with our dreams for the life we want in 5 years, and 10 years, and 15 years.
(I do my weekly planning with the printable version of the Year of Dreams 2022, all the details of how I printed + bound it are here. The journaling printables I cut + paste onto it are from Dream Book)
Get the free full Creative Genius Planning Sessions video (15 minute meditation + journaling class for planning your week from your most wise, brave + creative self, here)
(Artwork from the Dream Book journaling kits)
I am open to receive all of the good things I want.
This is tricky.
There is this thing we all tend to do that I call "Circling The Dream"
I'd love to start my own yarn store/coffee shop but, ugh I don't want to deal with all of the, like, business stuff, you know? lol
The person's whole being literally LIGHTS UP when they mention the yarn store/coffee shop and you just know that they can see this perfectly clear in their mind's eye and they are flooded with joy and excitement for all the magic that could happen there and how amazing it would feel to LIVE inside this dream.
And then the lights go out and their shoulders hunch forward a little, shrinking in, as the "you don't have what it takes to really handle this" inner critic takes over.
And then the smile or laugh as the "you know, I'm just not one of those people who can run a business and I'm totally ok with that, I really don't want all of the stress" story takes over.
You know when you are plugged into your truth.
If your deepest truth is that you don't want to own a yarn store/coffee shop then you have likely never LITERALLY LIT UP while saying "I would love to start a yarn store/coffee shop"
For me personally, the yarn store coffee shop feels like a really cool idea, I can see me knitting on a comfy couch drinking amazing coffee and helping my customers learn how to use double pointed needles, and it sounds great but it doesn't quite light me up.
So I don't keep thinking about it.
It's not calling me.
Maybe it's not calling you either.
But what about the thing that IS calling?
Because I have one of those and I know you do too.
When I think about it, something shifts in my heart. It's tangible.
In those moments when I can say " YES I WANT THIS" I feel the thrill of the full body light up.
And then I feel the body mind crash of "but I don't know if I can pull it off"
Maybe I'm not good enough.
Maybe I can't BE this lit up.
And then stories flood in. Look around you - how many people are THAT lit up in their lives? Who am I to want MORE? Plus, I am not good enough. I could go broke trying - financially and emotionally.
So I tuck the dream away.
But it's calling me.
So it doesn't stay tucked.
I call this Circling The Dream.
It's an especially annoying part of the Dream Work where you are working through your resistance to fully claiming what you want.
Circling the Dream is a VALID and VITAL part of the work.
ENGAGING with your circling leads to the resolution your ambivalence, so you can direct all of your creative energy towards building the path that leads to this juicy new dream.
Do this with me, in Dream Book - remember if you join before Feb 10 you also get The Obstacle Is The Way Through class.
Your obstacle is the path.
You have a natural human tendency to see the obstacle as an obstacle, and to either wait for it to go away or try to find a way around it.
The only way through is through.
I promise this is always true.
On February 10, we'll do this together.
I am offering a live Zoom where we'll do my The Obstacle Is The Way Through alchemy process together.
It will be about 60-90 minutes, depending on what kinds of conversations come up in the process.
We'll go deep.
And you'll leave knowing EXACTLY what to do next.
This call is included in your Dream Book membership for February. Join us here. Your future self will thank you.
This week my theme is: Making space to make space for the things I want + need
The world is always coming at us, so hard, so fast, and it can be a real challenge to do this work.
This is why, for me, building HABITS + ROUTINES out of these practices is the only way.
A big part of the work of working with any dream is THIS work of making space to make space for it.
Get the free full Creative Genius Planning Sessions video (15 minute meditation + journaling class for planning your week from your most wise, brave + creative self, here)
So - what do YOU want for your wild + precious new week?
It feels kind of surreal, given the state of the world right now, and how overwhelming I have found this pandemic, and the ways it's intersected with peri-menopause, difficult parenting issues, and of living in colonialism and late-stage capitalism.
I feel deeply connected to my dreams for 2022, which helps me feel more connected to myself...
Which has helped me remember how important all of our dreams are.
Which helps me feel more optimistic for our collective future.
These are the times when artists need to get to work.
And when I say artist - I mean everyone with a vision. Everyone with a gift to share.
(That includes you)
Our work - and it doesn't matter if that is work your exchange for money or not - is needed.
ESPECIALLY now as a lot of systems are falling apart, as we face catastrophic climate change, as we come to terms with the consequences of how we have been living.
ESPECIALLY NOW we need to flood the world with our dreams + creative gifts.
Every dream is a seed.
I am adding a monthly "Let's get our shit together, together" call to Dream Book for the rest of the year.
Doing these calls in January has been invaluable.
There is something about connecting to like-minded people, even if just virtually, that makes it easier to stay in your seat, and get the work done.
I am also doing a new round of The Obstacle Is The Way Through.
Because our dreams are NEEDED and we have a lot of obstacles right now!
This is a deep alchemy process/healing circle thing we do together, to transform the obstacle into the path.
This will happen on February 10 at 1PM Central - but the replay will be VERY helpful, if you can't be there live.
And I'm adding some new Creative With Money calls!
These are not scheduled yet, but I want to do a few of them over this next year as money remains a huge obstacle for a lot of dreams.
Creative With Money is a BEAUTIFUL program I did years ago, all about bringing your creativity + power to your relationship with money. You do get that program as a bonus as soon as you join Dream Book - but the new calls will bring new energy to it, and you'll get a chance to have your own questions answered, and do the alchemy work on the exact money situation you are facing right now.
All of this will be included in your Dream Book membership.