Another page from my Year of Hope journal:

Hope is a practice, not a destination.

I think I was reminding myself - it's fine to not feel hopeful.

It's not about being somewhere, emotionally.

It's about practicing.

Creative dreaming is a practice, too.

It's not all about getting to a specific destination in your life - though there is the thrill and joy of creating more of what you want in your life.

It's mostly about showing up and practicing... listening to yourself, listening to your soul, sitting with your feelings and thoughts and ideas, trusting your creativity... really it's the process of becoming who you are and this is a life-long pursuit.

Which means: You're doing great.

Parts of it are a mess. Parts are confusing and you can't even identify WHAT your dream actually IS. Parts of it you will fall flat on your face every step you take.

Parts of it are so amazing it's like they glue all the broken parts of your heart back together.

But it's not meant to all be smooth. It's not meant to be easy. Dominant culture tells us we're failing if we're struggling. It's not true. You are healing and growing.

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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The big obstacles I have been dealing with are anxiety, overwhelm and brain fog.

That is putting it all in the most simplistic terms, there is so much more I could say about being a sensitive empathic being in these times who is also getting divorced at midlife but this is really what it comes down to.

I can’t do all the things I want to do because my brain just doesn’t let me right now.

So that’s the big obstacle.

And I’ve been sitting with this obstacle in every way I can think of to sit with it. I’m caring for it and offering it love. I’m getting frustrated and trying to just obliterate it, pretend it’s not real. 

Resources: The Obstacle Is The Way Through | (short version of that is here) | The Un-Sticking Station

And then I got the idea… what if I…. RESPECT it?

What if the way my brain works right now is the perfect way for my brain to work, at this point in my life, to navigate my next steps?

This felt insane and impossible and like the perfect thing to try.

I journaled about it. I made lists of reasons why this could be right.

And then tried to just… assume that this is true.

And what shifted isn’t something I can really put into words.

My whole relationship with my obstacles and my dreams and my current cognitive function and mental health… just changed.

And that’s what led to me re-creating the Un-Sticking Station and next I want to add more new meditations in other parts of the membership.

I need so much more meditation. And I need it to be slower and deeper. 

And I think we all need this.

I’ve been trying to write this all out to explain and I can’t. It’s the kind of RADICAL perspective shift that actually changes everything.

And it can't come from forcing a new perspective, from choosing what we want our perspective to me and then trying to shoe-horn ourselves into it.

It comes from going deeper into the process of really listening to ourselves and our souls and our creativity. And detangling ourselves from all the ways dominant culture has shaped us.

I was 100% WRONG about everything that I thought I knew about my obstacle and how to face it.

We usually are.

This is why alchemy meditation and journaling are SO USEFUL because they help us explore and try to see things from new angles.

Again, resources: The Obstacle Is The Way Through | (short version of that is here) | The Un-Sticking Station

Do the work! There is so much magic waiting for you in 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.

The Dream Lab is a "next level" practice after intention setting and visualizing. It's so good to set clear intention and visualize them happening... but that's not really a way of WORKING WITH your dream. That's just broadcasting it.

The Dream Lab alchemy meditation brings you into a place where you WORK WITH your dream, which helps you understand what you need to do to make this happen.... Which is almost never what you think you need to do.

So, when the Dream Lab meditation surprises you - that's good! Even though it can also feel confusing and disorienting.

My strange experience in the Dream Lab:

My dream didn’t really show up in the meditation. 

So I think about the specifics of my dream, and what my life will look like when I have it.

Then this kind of crabby voice says:

"That’s not your DREAM, that’s just what you deserve to have."

Oh! Because I have less than I deserve and I am dreaming of… what I do deserve? Like my dreams are just setting things right?

"Yeah, most people have less than they deserve of what they really deserve but then too much of all those other stuff that isn’t relevant. Everything is topsy turvy."

Yeah, everything is topsy turvy, that’s for sure.

But… if I don’t have what I deserve, then doesn’t it make sense to dream of it?

This voice pushes me down, gently, to lay down.

"I want you to understand what you are worth."

I feel it’s hand on my chest, almost like it is sending me this knowing of what I am worth.

I turn off the recording at this point. I want to see where this voice takes me.

I sit with it for a while but nothing else happens.It’s like this sense of worthiness is being poured into me, and some new energy deep in my belly awakens. Like a determination that I deserve this.

I didn’t go back to the end of the meditation, I wanted to do my best to hold onto the sensation for the rest of the day.

******

I just really want to stress that the path is not linear. BEING WITH and TENDING TO whatever comes up in the meditations IS the work. We don't know we are building the path until after it's done and we can look back and see it.

If you haven't done the Dream Lab in a while... make a plan to do it this week!

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.

I wanted to share 2 pages from my Year of Hope Journal:

Hope feels like medicine... but underneath that is the fear that it's not enough. (Meaning: hope alone won't change anything so why bother?)

Hope is an inside job. It's easier to feel it when things are going well so we try to control our outer lives so we can feel hope but this is backwards.

Hope is a tricky thing to work with.

I chose YEAR OF HOPE because it felt urgent to PRACTICE hope.

And PRACTICING hope just stirs up so much.

This is how any healing or growth journey works.

I'm finding the places where I want to change my life so that it feels safe to hope. So that it feels justified to hope!

And I am sending soothing vibes to those places.

I am finding interesting new characters to bring into the new + improved Un-Sticking Station.

It feels like it is loosening things in me. Maybe I am loosening the bolts on some long-held un-helpful patterns.

I guess I DO have a lot of hope because I keep engaging.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:

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

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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.

"BUT YOU'VE TRIED THIS SO MANY TIMES AND NONE OF THEM WORKED!!!"

THIS! IS! A! MONSTER! VOICE! AND! NOT! YOUR! INNER! TRUTH! GUIDING! YOU!

This thought is not, EVER, a valid reason to not try again.

It's a STUCK to take into the (new and improved!!!) Un-Sticking Station, PRONTO.

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:

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

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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.

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

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.