I had this moment where all I felt I could do was send out this tiny bit of hope that I would figure it out.

So I made this journal page:

And since that was all I felt like I could do - then that was all I COULD do, in that moment.

Of course I did have some voices in my head saying... this is not enough. Surely you can do more. This is pointless.

But they are wrong.

 

BEING IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGE IS AWKWARD.

BEING IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS IS AWKWARD.

CREATIVE DREAMING IS A MESS SOMETIMES.

I AM YELLING THIS TO HELP US ALL HEAR.

It doesn't matter how messy your process gets.

It just matters that you stay in it.

 

THIS IS IMPORTANT:

What you can do in any given moment has no real relation to what you'll be able to do, if you stay in the process over time.

By doing the thing you CAN do in the moment, even if it feels really small and pointless, you keep yourself in the process.

You WILL get there, as long as you stay in the process.

 

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This is continued from and related to yesterday's post about going in circles with resistance and inertia:

Have I found this SO STRESSFUL because I am trying to do something that cannot exist?

This question just popped into my mind.

I have been trying to “re-build my marketing systems”

I have these dreams of systems, routines and processes that feel really good for where I am now and are simple to do every week.

But actually creating these systems, routines and processes has felt SO HARD this week.

And it just dawned on me that I am on the wrong path.

That I am looking at this wrong and tripping over my own feet every time I try to do something.

I mean - THERE ARE NO WRONG MOVES IN CREATIVE DREAMING. Every step teaches us something. 

So - if I re-frame it: I have learned that I need to shift my perspective.

Ok Good! But, like, how?

It’s one thing to see that I am looking at this in a way that isn’t helping.

It’s another thing to figure out… what is the helpful perspective?

I’m going to use Project Miracle to help me do it. It is specifically to help “call in the shift you need” but it feels weird because I can’t name the shift I want, but if someone else was in that situation and asked me about it I would say it’s fine to not know, that being in the process will give you what you need.

So I am getting myself into the process!

This feels amazing!

I printed out the pages, watched the video from day 1, filled in my journaling sheet and did the meditation and WHOA.

Yes, this is helping.

I am starting to see new possibilities already and really excited to give this some time and see where it goes.

Project Miracle is a 30 day program but I am definitely NOT going to do it within 30 days. I am thinking a few times a week. Really give it all space...

UPDATE:

Shortly after writing this, we had our April New Moon call. And I had this intense experience in that mediation where I SAW MY WHOLE PROJECT IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT.

I don't fully HAVE the new perspective I am looking for, but I am almost there.

 

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When you feel INERTIA or RESISTANCE or just plain feel stuck.

You really only have two options:

1. be with it
2. avoid it

Avoiding looks like scrolling, being busy with other things, etc.

Being with it is so much more uncomfortable. It’s SO uncomfortable that most of the time we will avoid.

Avoiding gets you out of the discomfort but does not change anything about the situation.

Long term avoidance starts to look like “One day, when I _____ then I will _____”

Avoidance in the moment usually looks more like scrolling the internet or a sudden urge to do the dishes.

I just loaded my dishwasher and went through the freezer to pick out something to thaw to cook later.

When you KNOW you are avoiding, that does open up a little pathway that can lead to being with it. Like “Yeah, I am avoiding right now because this feels so uncomfortable but I am going to stay aware that I am avoiding which makes the odds that I STAY in avoidance much smaller.”

As I notice that by loading the dishwasher NOW, while trying to write this, is a sign of resistance... I try to move myself into BEING WITH I notice all the muscles in my shoulders tense up.

I feel frustrated.

I think my heart starts beating faster.

It feels like there is a heavy fog, like literally heavy. A fog with gravity. In my head, encasing my brain in heavy fog so it can’t think it’s way out of this.

Not that you ever CAN think your way out of avoidance.

OK, hello all forms of discomfort that make themselves known when I try to sit with this. Can we talk?

I want you to know that I do want to do the thing. Can you tell me why you don’t want me to do it?

I listen to my discomfort.

My jaw gets very tense.

But the only kind of response I get is a very vague and kind of far away voice that says “I just don’t want to”

But don’t you care that I REALLY, REALLY want to?

But this part is SO HARD! You don’t want to do THIS PART, do you? Isn’t what you REALLY REALLY want to be done with this part, and be further down the path?

Wow, I feel like you are twisting my own dreams on me! WTF? I really really want to do this thing, to do it I need to take all of the steps. Why are you so opposed to this step?

This is a hard step. Please admit you would rather be done this step already. You don’t want to DO IT, you want it DONE. These are different.

OK if that is an important thing for you to acknowledge. Yes, I really want to be in the place where this part is done. Does that help you feel better?

I just again, sit with the discomfort and wait for a response, and then it comes. 

But I’m scared I’ll do it wrong.

Oh. Sweetie. I’m so sorry.

Really? (the voice seems genuinely surprised that I have empathy for it)

Yes! It sucks to be scared! I don’t want you to be scared!

You’re not scared of getting it wrong?

No. I mean I don’t think there is a way to do it wrong. The next step is to EXPERIMENT… so I guess yeah some “fails” will be a part of that. But that’s just a part of the bigger process of finding the way that I want to do this.

Each fail is a fail.

Oh! Darling! You are so wrong! I’m so sorry you see it this way, it’s not even accurate. Each failure is a LEARNING and step towards finding the way. There is literally no way to “just do it” except by following someone else’s instructions about how to do it and the WHOLE THING about this thing is that I want to find/create MY WAY to do it. A way that fits for me and my life and my needs and my creativity. We can only do that by experimenting.

Can I do anything to help you feel like you have permission to have things go badly in the process and not have it be a big deal?

Oh. WHOA. WHAT IF I had permission to have things go badly in the process and not have it be a big deal? That would be so cool.

But that brings us to the next thing. This is annoying.

This is annoying? This task?

Yeah, I hate it.

This voice has more of a form. She’s like eight years old and dressed like a Holly Hobby doll, but she is a girl.

Why do you hate it, sweetie?

It just feels so much like WORK.

Now she’s flickering back and forth between Holly Hobby and my teenaged self.

I send them both love.

I get to choose to work if I want to. 

But not right now.

Why not right now?

I don’t feel like it.

I do not want to go in circles with this!

WHAT IS MY REAL RESISTANCE HERE???!?!?!?!?!?

I’m scared I will fail. I don’t know where to start. The project feels too big.

Sat with that for a bit…

OK good.

It feels better now.

I can start by finding a place to start and YES the project is too big. That feels really relevant.

Let’s break it down into some tiny do-able things.

Resistance and inertia feel gone. For now.

 

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I saw this "map" in a meditation and then drew it out.

This is where I am now.

(Notice the little circle off in the corner that is: being consistently productive + getting it all done, and the writing around the circle that says: This does not exist.)

The last few weeks I've been sharing how GOOD I feel, and how amazed I am by how good I feel: this explains that.

Starting in January, I let go of all of my precious routines I had developed over years. All the things that helped me show up for my dreams every day.

I realized: I am not the person I was when I created and then refined all of these routines and systems.

I held onto these ways of doing things as I aged through my 40s, and as the world changed dramatically and then as my life changed dramatically with a divorce.

And then in January I knew two things: I want to really BE the artist I know I AM (and I felt I wasn't fully BEING that version of me) and I need all new ways of doing things.

So I dropped my routines and chose to focus on this dream of being the artist I know I am and build new routines, systems and ways of doing things.

I knew it would be hard.

It was harder than I thought it would be. For a lot of reasons.

AND

I got through it.

Slowly, new ways of being that reflect and support the person I am now AND the person I want to become, are coming into focus.

Of course sometimes I still think about past me and the things she loved and I miss those forms of joy.... And I am learning to reflect on that with love and gratitude and stay grounded in the present.

But here I am now!

That bottom corner: richness, depth, magic, expansion. There is SO MUCH GOOD here in the way I am living now.

AND

I am still stunned by how much I can't do.

What this map is really saying is: I am so powerful, creative, magnetic and magic WHEN I STAY WITHIN MY CAPACITY.

I have to move very slowly here, but I am so much more powerful so this doesn't matter in the ways I think it does.

So much is possible for me in this space that just isn't possible in other spaces.

This is amazing!!!!!

BUT/AND

So! Many! Things! Overwhelm me now in ways they didn't used to.

Even riding my bike right now, which I love doing on the bike paths and river trails - the parts where I am on roads getting to the parks is SO STRESSFUL. Part of it IS that drivers are more distracted than ever and driving more dangerously. Part of it is my decreased nervous system capacity for close calls.

And when I try to push myself and do the things.... I end up in the BEING OVERWHELMED spot on the map.

So many things I think of as very normal human activity type things are in this part of the map. THIS FUCKING SUCKS.

Last weekend I was in the overwhelmed space from hanging out with friends!

Once I am in the BEING OVERWHELMED space, if I don't immediately do the things that move me back to richness, depth, magic and expansion - then I move up into TOTAL FREEZE.

Last weekend, the day after hanging out with friends, I hung out with my family. This pushed me into TOTAL FREEZE.

Not because I don't want to do these things! I do! It's just too many things in too short a time frame.

Once I am TOTAL FREEZE I really have no choice but to do the things that move me back into BEING OVERWHELMED and from there I can move back to richness, depth, magic and expansion.

It's always better to STAY in richness, depth, magic and expansion but it still really surprises me how little it takes to bump me out of that place these days.

Part of this is my age and where I am at with aging and perimenopause. But part of it is what we're all facing with rising stress.

I worry that if we don't combat this, then we become habitually even more over-stimulated than we are and this makes it harder to act on behalf of the world we want to create - one without fascism, colonialism, imperialism, etc.

But for me personally, I am PISSED that it takes so little to overwhelm me AND really happy with how I am handling things and staying in my zone-of-magic most of the time.

 

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I painted this in my Year of Hope journal a little while back but it applies to dreams too.

Taking the time to write "Why is this so hard sometimes" and then paint around the letters gave me space to sink into the question.

Then I filled the other side with answers.

Of course dreaming is hard right now.

If you understand what is happening in the world.

And of course dreams are more important than ever. Living our values is more important than ever.

And yet we have a LOT of cultural programming that impacts how we are experiencing this moment.

I keep noticing myself saying "Why am I so tense??" Like, my muscles are SO TENSE and I think about how I have been exercising, looking for the answer. We live in this culture of hyper-individualism that impacts the way we see the world and ourselves so we do look to blame ourselves for anything that goes wrong in our bodies and our lives.

So then each time I have to remind myself: I'm so tense because the situation in the world is so tense. This makes sense. A better question to ask is "What do I need now?"

And that is usually: more rest. More gentle stretching. More art. More meditation. More water. More sleep. More than that.

 

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I had another unsettling meeting with my dream - using the Dream Lab practice.

The Field of Creative Dream Alchemy was a desert, with mountains off in the distance. This just felt like an unsettling start, since this is SO far from the terrain where I live - there are 100,000 lakes plus arctic ocean shore in my province, and the city I live in is on a flood plain.

Then my dream shows up as a bunny rabbit. It’s being lowered in and it’s standing stiff/frozen.

Oh, it’s a cartoon. It’s Bugs Bunny.

He stays frozen the whole time and I’m like “I wanted a good dream meeting that made me feel inspired and energized and like everything is possible for me”

Thank goodness I was doing the 10 minute (shorter) version, so I only had to sit there for a few minutes, lol. At the end of the meditation when I held out my hands - Bugs turned into a real rabbit, so soft and snuggly and sleeping.

I just want to be soft was the message I got.

I drew it out in my journal and journaled about it and then I saw it more clearly.

Late stage capitalism, the way that in Canada we only have a few grocery store chains and they have been making record profits, higher every year, while prices soar and it’s like… this doesn’t feel like inflation, it feels like straight up oligarchy and greed. Tarrifs, fear of being taken over by the US, nothing feels stable economically and my dream right now is about having more people in the membership.

There is a part where I’m feeling so inspired and alive in my work I want to share it with more people.

And there is a part where I just need more money to feel secure with all of these changes.

And it’s like Bugs - I just want to be soft. But the coyote keeps chasing me.

So it brings up a few questions: how do I bring softness to my marketing efforts?

And also:

I can’t just kill the coyote and have it stop chasing me. Trying to do that never works and can take up energy I could use for other things.

Where am I trying to kill the coyote instead of using my energy for the things I really want to do?

I have no idea, but that feels like a good question to sit with.

And I want to talk a bit about some other dream meetings I have been having.

I am obsessed with the Dream Lab lately - I usually listen every morning before I get out of bed and then sometimes repeat later in the day.

My dream keeps showing up as things that are ready to GROW.

It showed up as a flight of stairs, and showed me that my dream is only like halfway up the stairs, so it felt like “there is more, you just can’t see it yet”

Then it showed up, on our Co-Working/Co-Dreaming call on Easter weekend, as a chick and I was like WTF but then my dream said “No! This is AMAZING! I was an egg for a long time and now I’m a chick” and it felt magical.

Then it showed up as a caterpillar. In the mediation, I was in space. And the caterpillar was made up of a galaxy. But I brought it to earth and it was bright green and I was like “This is cute but what could this mean?” and then it finally sunk in that the caterpillar will soon be a butterfly.

That’s when I put all three together: My dream is sending me encouragement.

Things are getting ready to step up, come to life and transform into something magical.

I think sometimes you get the message more clearly when you do the Dream Lab practice a few times and then look back.

 

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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.

 

I hope we learn to truly take care of each other + make it so everyone is safe everywhere.

I've been a bit off in my Year of Hope daily practice. And I shared last week that a part of this is because... I HAVE THE THING I WANTED FROM THIS.

Which feels like a major miracle.

And doesn't look like I thought it would.

But I feel more hopeful, and grounded, and optimistic, and confident even about my own future.

And I don't feel I need to keep practicing it in the same way now.

So I am shifting to spending time practicing hoping for the things I hope for. Writing it out in big letters and then painting around them is kind of time consuming and gives me that chance to just sit with my hope and feel like I am sending it out somehow.

Which gives me an opportunity to get ideas about steps I could take, to be a part of the change I want to see with this.

 

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:

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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.