The Business + Boundaries: Creating Space for your Creative Dreams to Flourish class is happening live on Zoom on April 28.
ALL DREAMS NEED BOUNDARIES.
Creating and managing boundaries is how you create space for a dream to come into your life. Done well, boundaries exist to HOLD SPACE.
With a business, boundaries become even more important - and even more complicated!
Boundaries in your business can help you be more creative and effective in your work. They can help you achieve bigger goals that you have before. They can help you and your business grow.
And they help you be FUELLED and NURTURED by your business - instead of stressed and overwhelmed.
The pandemic has made this harder for a lot of us.
So we're going to work on our boundaries together!
This will be an EXTREMELY experiential class where we'll dig in together to look at where your boundaries need to be shored up.
Again - it's happening April 28 on Zoom.
It's a part of Dream Book, my ongoing creative dream mastermind. Join us here.
Monday Morning live meditation + journaling session is on! It’s happening on Instagram live this morning at 10 am (Central, North America). Join me here, or catch the replay at that same link after we’re done.
We’ll do energy clearing + alchemy meditation to connect with your intuition, and get more clear on what YOU need this week to help move you towards where you want to be. Then I’ll pick journal prompt cards for some questions to help guide you through this week.
It's been a month since my husband moved out and I feel more deeply settled in my nervous system than I have in at least a year.
There is this deep calm that I feel in my bones almost all the time. I wake up in the morning feeling happy and light. I have more clarity and focus - I've almost finished a project that's been stuck for the last year!
It's not that I needed to be away from my husband.
It's that I needed alone time.
After a year of pandemic, I was starved for alone time.
And a lot of people don't understand this, or take it to mean something it doesn't mean while thinking that they DO understand.
But the thing is, I need the things that I need. Just like you need the things that you need.
And judging each other for finding ways to GET the things we need, is really the last thing anyone needs.
It's so hard sometimes to allow ourselves to have the things when need when they are different from what everyone else is doing.
I mean social media is full of beautiful quotes about following your heart and being yourself - and then it's also full of people judging you whenever you do something "different". And often it's the same people posting both.
But this is the work that grows dreams. Uncovering and living your truth.
I mean, you can't turn your life into fertile soil for dreams to grow while also conforming to what society expects you to do. You do have to choose.
We live in a garbage culture. White supremacy, ableism, sexism, the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else. The way we're encouraged to conform and fit in and not even know how we REALLY feel about things, deep down. It's garbage.
And yet, we want approval from this garbage culture!
So much so that we're willing to give up our dreams to get it.
Talking about DREAMS is actually talking about something much bigger.
Your dream isn't just to write a book or grow your business or retire in a beautiful place. Your dream is about who you are and how you feel in your life when you have those things.
It's about your growth and healing and living your magic. Being who you know you really ARE.
It's worth so much more than the gifts of conformity BUT these patterns of wanting acceptance from the people around us run deep. Unhooking from them in a safe and grounded way is big work.
It's all worth it for those times when you go deep into the magic of when you getting what you need to FEEL MORE LIKE YOU. And I am just revelling in it these days.
Real freedom is NOT as far away as it seems.
It's about establishing routines that fuel and nourish you in the moment while paving the way for increasingly better tomorrows.
It's about taking the teeny tiny baby steps consistently enough that they turn into momentum.
This is what I call "showing up for your dreams" and I think this is the thing that heals ourselves - and also changes the world.
I do this work - every day - in Dream Book. It's a creative mastermind and shows you a way to journal that helps you be more effective about nurturing your gifts WHILE ALSO healing and transforming the stuff that gets in the way.
I've been getting A LOT of messages about my current situation of living apart from my husband from people who are admiring my courage for making this brave move.
It didn't feel brave.
It felt necessary and also kind of scary.
That's what a lot of "brave moves" feel like from the inside.
We get to a point where doing nothing starts to cost more than taking the risk.
But we have to remember that courage is a PRACTICE.
I didn't roll out of bed one morning and just make this brave choice.
This is why I write EVERY DAY in my creative mastermind group, to share what I am working with in my practice.
The people in my group know I've been sitting with this stuck place around my living situation and working with it for the last year and a half. I was dreaming of a studio space just for me, but also not feeling right about renting a space nearby and actually not feeling right about ANY of the ideas that were coming to me about how to do this.
I wrestled with it a long time, until I worked through it and then I knew what to do.
Everyone is brave. There is no such thing as one person being braver than another.
It's just - how much have you worked through your internal resistance and self doubt? And how much have you learned about how to set your life up to bolster your courage? How much are you really showing up for yourself and your dreams? How much are you PRACTICING?
And yes of course - how much support do you have for the external obstacles you face? How well resourced are you? There ARE external factors that make brave moves easier for some people. (But that is not a measure of how much courage a person has, that's a measure of how much privilege a person has and what they choose to do with it.)
But we can all work on our courage. To show up as bravely as we can to face the things that we have to face.
And of course we have to recognize that "showing up bravely" is a thing we define for ourselves.
Like - for a person with chronic illness taking a nap is a lot braver than pretending to be ok and "powering through" because the people around you don't understand what your actual needs are.
We don't want to buy into the hustle culture or the patriarchy or capitalism and how they define courage and "brave moves'.
True courage is about honouring ourselves in how we show up for our lives.
When you feel that tug in your heart to be braver about something, that's an invitation to show up more deeply in your practice.
I don't mean to practice COURAGE itself necessarily.
What I did that precipitated this brave move of mine was to practice showing up for my DREAMS.
I believes it's our dreams where everything intersects - our potential and healing and wounds and fears and stuck places and creativity and magic and power and all the things we need to work through in order to be where we want to be. It's all right there.
So working with dreams is a way of working with all of this - your own growth and healing.
As I said - I've had a dream for the last year and a half to find a new living situation. But, when I just listened to my logical mind try to work it out - nothing made sense. Financially and practically and feelings-wise - this dream was just STUCK.
It was embarrassing to keep showing up in my mastermind, sharing how stuck I felt for so long.
But I know that this is the way through.
And my work is to live what I teach.
And one of our principles is that "it takes the time it takes"
In hindsight I can see that this particular solution really wasn't accessible any earlier. But I needed to keep showing up, keep making space for that desire, in order to be so aligned with my dream that I could see it when the opportunity came.
It didn't feel brave.
I don't think it looked brave, to the people in the mastermind who saw me continue to show up no matter how stuck I was. But I did get a lot of feedback that it felt HELPFUL to witness me wrestle with this dream because it helped them feel less alone with the dreams that they are wrestling with.
My point is: Courage is a thing we can grow.
We all have tremendous courage.
And we have all practiced our ways into NOT acting/being as brave as we ARE. This is just a side effect of growing up in this culture.
And we all face different obstacles to making our brave moves and comparing our outer expressions of courage to other people's is not helpful.
But. We can become braver. It's a natural side effect of practicing your way into a deeper connecting with your self. It's a natural side effect of working with your dreams. It's a natural side effect of healing and growing.
And each brave move you take opens up new possibilities for what your next brave move can be.
PS: Join me in Dream Book, my creative mastermind and EPIC support system for practicing your way into your next brave move.
*** If you join THIS WEEK you'll get an invitation to the Partnering With Your Soul of your Business live class, happening next Tuesday (April 13)
The Partnering with the Soul of your Business class is happening on April 13.
Learning to PARTNER with the soul of your dream is the thing I teach that allows everything else to happen: growing braver than your fears and stronger than your obstacles and making the impossible dreams come true.
I learned this during my 4 years training + interning to become a spiritual teacher. At the time it felt like this esoteric spiritual thing with no real practical application.
But as I worked with it I realised that this is the MOST practical thing we could ever do. This is the foundation that makes everything else possible.
It works the same way with your business.
This kind of stuff is hard to put into words.
Learning to partner with the soul of my business has helped me to feel more confident as a creative entrepreneur, and less alone. Which is kind of everything. It has given me:
✨ Hands down the BEST advice for how to get to where I want to be (usually NOT how I think it should happen - the soul of the Creative Dream Incubator usually has the opposite perspective from mine, which has been immensely helpful)
✨ Energetic support for working through the hard parts (Again, that piece where it's got the opposite perspective to mine is SO helpful for moving through the hard parts with as little emotional drama as possible)
✨ Magical interventions where the right things happen at the right time
The Partnering with the Soul of your Business class is happening on April 13, as a part of Dream Book, my creative mastermind.
You can attend live or catch the replay. Either way, this is a thing to work with over and over and develop into a PRACTICE, which we will do together in the ongoing online creative mastermind inside Dream Book.
I'm trying to work on a thing that I really want to work on.
But I am just noticing the minutes tick by and I'm just.... not doing it.
I'm distracted and stuck and.... I don't even know.
So. Why is this so hard?
Hmmmm.
I think I'm listening to the wrong music.
OK that's an easy one to solve. I'm now listening to Creativity Boost - Binaural Beats Meditation. Perfect.
What else?
My heart feels tight and breaky, not broken but like it could break very easily.
Well yeah - look at the world! How could your heart NOT be breaking? What do you want to do with this?
I don't want to try to fix it. Just make space for it. I don't want to insulate myself from the realities of the world with positive thinking and spiritual healing. I want to be here.
So, how can you do the things you want to do, WITH a tight and breaky heart?
Wow. This is a surprise but the first thing that comes to me is: less coffee, more tea.
What else?
Look for the simplest ways to do things.
Have LOTS of self care things going outside of work time (I already have this).
Take a break? That feels weird, but, it also feels true.
What if you do take a break from this? What would you do?
I would do that other thing.
Would you do that to AVOID something hard in this or because that's where your flow is calling?
Mostly to avoid.
Shit.
Yeah, I actually do want to understand WHY this is so hard. What it is that I want to avoid?
I might do it wrong.
Yes, that's always there with every project. But is that all?
I really want to do it right. I want it to RESONATE. I'm scared it won't.
(Oh! This is the first answer that feels really true and open.)
If you want it to resonate, how come you're not doing the things that help it to resonate?
Well, shit.
There it is.
I know where to start now: by doing the things that help build resonance.
Do this with me!
In Dream Book, my ongoing creative dream mastermind, you get 24/7 access to 15 different meditation/journaling processes to help you work through different kinds of stucks: like procrastination, overwhelm, fear, inner critics, self doubt, etc.
We ALL have inner fears and doubts and the culture we live in sets us to fail every day - but your creative genius is bigger than the obstacles. There is always a way through.
Before I jump in - The Art for Earth e-course bundle sale is ending TODAY.
This is a bundle of art e-courses valued at over £2900+ GBP, but - for one more day only - is sold for only £75 GBP! (In USD that's a value of roughly $4,000 for $104)
Two of my courses - the Creative Dream Incubator ($147 USD value) and the Creative Business Incubator ($199 USD value) are a part of the Art For Earth 2021 bundle sale.
WHAT YOU ARE FEELING IS NORMAL.
I'm feeling like this needs to be said more often. Like too many of us are feeling all alone in our feelings by feeling WRONG for feeling all the things we're feeling.
You're not wrong.
What you're feeling is normal. All of it. Even the parts that conflict with each other.
Here's what I'm feeling this morning:
- A sense that I call "cognitive shut down" where my brain just CAN NOT
- A wish to feel hopeful for the future
- But then also a feeling that feeling hopeful is dangerous, too vulnerable, and that those hopes will soon be dashed so why bother
- A deeper desire/need to FEEL GOOD AGAIN as my baseline feeling
- Sadness about not feeling good
- Grief about everything I've lost
- Panic about everything I could lose next
- Relief that my husband's health emergency from last week is still serious but not an emergency this week
But I've also had these moments of feeling more creative, peaceful and powerful than I have in a long time.
It can be so confusing to have so many conflicting feelings going on.
But this is what it means to be human.
We live in a culture that teaches us to NOT feel.
But denying our human feelings doesn't dissolve them, they just go underground where they control most of our behaviour, limit our possibilities and just generally do a lot of harm.
And now we're in this time when we can't keep stuffing it all down. There's just too much.
Every breaking point is also a doorway into a new possibility.
That's not just some bullshit thing people say to try to gloss over how hard the breaking point is.
It's the truth.
The degree to which we can be present with the hard parts determines the amount of new possibilities we can receive from the experience.
I mean - it takes work and support and courage. But the opportunity is there.
That's what I am holding onto right now.
I'm grateful for those moments of creativity and clear thinking and feeling peaceful and powerful and like I can do anything. I am using those moments to take care of my business and move important projects forward.
And in the rest of my time, I am resting and making art just for me and reading a lot and also reminding myself that there is an opportunity here.
That "my stuff is up" and I can see it more clearly than ever which means this is an opportunity for healing.
That I can emerge from this difficult time with less of my stuff weighing me down.
Things are hard anyway, why not go on a full on journey through my own underworld and see what I can clean up?
In 2019, my friend Tamara Laports (from Willowing Arts) was feeling overwhelmed about climate change. She always looks for ways to BE the change she wanted to see in the world... so she decided to try to DO something about.
Since she teaches art online, she put togeher an online art course sale, with 25% of profits benefiting TreeSisters, an organization that plants trees to fight climate change.
That sale resulted in 81,000 trees being planted! 🌳🌳🌳🌳
I was really inspired by that act of stepping up to be the change.
It's easy to feel like we need to change our whole lives or be braver than we are or just.... like really BEING the change we want to see is out of our reach. We're too small and the world's problems are too big.
Tamara's story shows how we can use the resources we already have in new ways to help make a difference.
So I asked Tamara to talk to me more about her story, and we recorded this video!
The Art for Earth e-course bundle sale is happening again for 2021 and it's ending in just 3 days!
My husband moved out and I am in the process of "re-claiming" the Dream Loft as my art + dream studio.
Also, I'm re-discovering the me-I-am-when-I-live-alone-and-have-space-for-all-the-things-I-need and all the things she dreams of.
And also - my husband and I are starting this deep process of exploring... how do we have more of what we do want and less of what we don't want in this relationship? How do we honour each other's conflicting dreams and needs? How do we put up some guard rails so we don't fall into the rut we fell into during the pandemic?
Which, of course, triggers a lot of deeper feelings and patterns and wounds that are asking for healing.
And also also - kind of thawing out/unwinding after a really hard winter in the pandemic.
It's been a lot.
And then everything got thrown for a loop last week with a new, sudden and scary health diagnosis that I'm not going to talk about online.
The thing that set this all in motion was a ceremony my husband and I did.
Bear and Snake came to my husband in dreams and he told me we had to do a ceremony for them. So we went to my friend's farm to do it, and on the drive back into the city he said to me "This is going to be crazy, hey?"
And I said "What do you mean?"
And he said "Well, Bear and Snake. There are going to be big teachings coming our way"
But I don't think either of us had any idea.
We have to trust the process.
I mean - not that we ARE trusting the process, all the time, of course.
I'm focusing on staying present with my feelings, which are wildly different from day to day.
And then doing my best to show up for myself and show up for what's happening in my life. Sometimes that includes a lot of NOT trusting the process and getting all tangled up in my feelings.
I feel very behind in everything but I also feel alive in new ways like there is this way that I can be more deeply present with everything when everything is a bit of a mess.
The Art for Earth e-course bundle is on sale starting today until April 4.
This is a bundle of art e-courses (roughly $4000 US worth of courses!) - for only £75!! (That's roughly $103 USD).
It includes my Creative DREAM Incubator e-course ($147 US value) and my Creative BUSINESS Incubator e-course ($199 US value)
>>> Get it here.
Or find out more about the Creative Business Incubator here.
Awkward segwey...
One thing I've been deeply grateful for in all of this change and uncertainty is the Creative Dream Incubator.
Sharing my gifts to help others HELPS ME.
It's a deeply healing balm - this is the part of growing my business that always surprises me. How I keep finding the things I need for my own healing, growth, and self care right there in the daily work of showing up for my business.
It's helped me be more ME.
It's helped me feel more grounded in who I really am which has helped me be more BRAVE in the decisions I make for my life.
And it's also a way of creating financial independence. Which also helps me be more ME and brave and grounded and capable of making good decisions for myself.
There is a HUGE sale starting today, for 1 week only, that includes my Creative BUSINESS Incubator e-course.
This is the course I made at the end of my first year doing the Creative Dream Incubator as my full time job (in 2011). It's got everything I learned about how to build a stable business by sharing your unique creative gifts.
And to celebrate 10 years in business, I am adding 3 new live classes to it in April and May! They are:
- Partnering with the Soul of your Business (basically the secret of how to get the RIGHT answer to ALL of your business questions)
- Business + Boundaries: Creating space for your creative dreams to flourish
- Growth, Chaos + Change: Following your own flow in your business
Grab it right here as a part of the Art for Earth e-course bundle sale - it's only available until April 4.
I actually don't feel like I have the capacity to promote anything right now.
But this has been planned for a long time so - so this is where I just stay present and show up for my life.
The Art for Earth e-course bundle is on sale starting today until April 4.
This is a bundle of art e-courses (roughly $4000 US worth of courses!) - for only £75!! (That's roughly $103 USD).
It includes my Creative DREAM Incubator e-course ($147 US value) and my Creative BUSINESS Incubator e-course ($199 US value)
>>> Get it here.
Or find out more about the Creative Business Incubator here.
My husband moved out of the Dream Loft on Friday.
Saturday he came over to pick up some food from the fridge and then I went over to his place to have dinner with him and the kids.
Sunday I went through closets and drawers and packed up a whole bunch more stuff for him. (He's a packrat and I'm a minimalist - I wanted my closets and drawers to be neat and tidy again.)
He came to pick it up and we had a good long talk about where we are going and how we want to get there.
We both want to get to the same place, but we are not in agreement on how to get there.
But that feels ok. Like we can keep talking, tell the truth about what we need and do our best to make space for each other's needs, and we will find our way.
Sunday night, with all of his stuff really gone, with all this new space in the closets and drawers, I tidied and arranged and vacuumed.
And Monday it felt like I woke up in my new life.
So far it's quiet and sunny.
There is so much less stuff in here that more sun can find it's way in. (I probably do need to get some more furniture at some point, but right now all this empty space feels soothing to my soul)
I can leave papers on the kitchen table and no one will set a dirty coffee cup down on them.
I can use all the hot water any time I want without the slightest thought of saving some for someone else.
There are so many tiny gifts to living alone.
But mostly I am noticing: we should have done this sooner.
This last winter, with both of us living and working in a 1,000 sq ft open loft (it's 2 storeys, but the upstairs looks over the downstairs so no privacy unless you're in the bathroom), when it was too cold to go anywhere outside and everything was closed because we were in code red all winter long, plus with 2 teenagers here every weekend and sometimes during the week to do school from here - it was really hard.
But it's not just about the pandemic.
Us trying to live here together was always insane.
Everyone around us was telling us so.
We were just so in love and also thought it was temporary and we'd move to a different place and also maybe we were naive?
Not that I'm not glad we tried. I am.
There was *so much good* in living with Joseph. I don't believe I could have lived in this space with anyone else. He brings so many gifts into my life.
But the way I feel now, with this space TO BE ALL MINE, with quiet and sunshine and space to set up stations for all of my various alchemy rituals and have everything exactly how I want it - this is what I need right now.
It felt selfish to say " I just want my home to be exactly how I want it".
Like having a wonderful partner should be a good trade-off for making some compromises on decor choices.
Which maybe makes sense, but it's true that we BOTH wanted our home just the way we want it, and that our ideas of what that means are polar opposites from each other.
And - this is one of the hardest parts of ANY dream. Claiming what you REALLY want, even when it feels weird or selfish or uncomfortable or vulnerable or unlikely. Just wanting what you want.
And now I'm seeing it - making my home be exactly what I need means my home holds space for me, in a creative, emotional and spiritual way.
It becomes easier to stay in alignment with my growing dreams. It's easier to face the hard parts with courage. It's easier to be more creative and to have better ideas and... just... everything feels easier.
It's not just about how it looks. It's the emotional connection. How I FEEL in my space.
As an artist and highly sensitive empathic intuitive introvert - holy shit I need MY space. And it's not like I didn't know that! I totally knew that before.
And it's not that I don't miss him. I do.
But I missed ME. The me I am when I have enough alone time.
Also now that I have a little space, I'm seeing all the ways that living with someone and also taking on WIFE and MOM roles changed me in ways I don't want to changed.
I also see how they changed me in ways I DID want to be changed. And ways they changed me in surprising but also-needed ways.
I might want to write more about living in the patriarchy and the ways women in heterosexual relationships take on those stupid WIFE and MOM roles. Or about a relationship between an Indigenous person and a settler during the ongoing violent occupation that is Canada. Because writing here on my blog has always been a way of helping me find clarity and see new ways through.
For today I just want to say: WHOA.
That moment when you dream of a thing and plan for a thing and work at a thing and then all of a sudden it happens.
It's disorienting. Even when it was planned and worked for. It's still a change.
It's still: Wait, what? I actually get to have this thing I wanted? The world will let me have it?
And I wanted to send out a reminder to everyone: you get to want what you want.
And, if you want, you get to do the (inner + outer) work to actually get the thing.
And, if you want to do that work with me - join me in Dream Book, my creative mastermind + dream class for playing/creating/growing/healing your way into your dream.
*I'm not accepting any advice or helpful suggestions about anything in this post 😉 I trust myself and my partner to navigate all of this.
So this is happening today.
My husband is moving out of the Dream Loft.
We're not getting a divorce or even technically separating. We're Living Apart Together - which actually is a thing with a wikipedia page and everything.
He got an apartment that's a 20 minute walk from my place, and a 15 minute walk from the kids' mom's place.
There is a lot I can say about how we got here and I don't know which parts of this story I want to share yet.
I do know this: when you know what is right for you, you have to DO IT.
Even when your kids say "this is really weird"
Even when your friends and family don't understand.
Even when this is just not what people do.
For the last few years I've been stuck.
I don't have the right space for my work.
And we don't have the right space for our home.
In 2011, I bought my dream home - an all-open 2 storey loft condo with 2 floors of floor to ceiling south facing windows (so sunny!). Upstairs looks over downstairs, so while the upstairs bedroom feels separate from everything it's not actually private.
This was perfect for my single self. It was less than ideal when I got married and my husband moved in, but we thought it was temporary and we were in the honeymoon phase so it seemed fine....
Until it wasn't.
And in the last few years we've explored a lot of options for what to do about this, and none of them felt right.
Until this.
This gives us space for the healing and growth we each need to do, to create the life we want next.
AND AND - when we spend time together, we will be more engaged and present with each other. Which we have NOT been doing this all winter. All the stress of everything had each of us withdrawing into our own coping mechanisms.
As one of my friends said "Going to each other's places for sleepovers might really spice things up!"
But, of course, sometimes this feels like a breakup.
Packing, dividing up our stuff, and all the feelings coming up and the arguments they spark.
The fears we both have, and we, or the other one, will feel happier apart and not want to continue the relationship.
There are moments when following your heart does lead to scary places and this is definitely one of them!
But this feels like we're doing this big change to create a way better relationship and future for both of us.
I love where this is headed.
By giving each other space, it feels like we create better conditions for connection.
We both feel it. A lot of change and growth is coming.
And I can't wait to set up my new creative work/play space this weekend.