(I went to visit my favourite peony patch yesterday, and was so inspired by how it FEELS to be surrounded by peonies I made a peony mediation for blooming + radiance - you can get it on Instagram)
What do we do with this?
Whatever you are feeling is 100% valid.
I’m Canadian, I’m not in the US, but still - I feel it. It was a big step on the march towards authoritarianism that is happening everywhere.
So many people have mentioned to me lately that they’ve been reading up about different forms of collapse and what’s happening in the society - what’s happening to the people - during the collapse.
For the most part - life goes on. It gets more stressful, there are more and more disruptions, but we carry on with everything we can carry on with.
There is no sudden move from one way of living into the next, there is this messy transition where you’re not even sure, for sure, that you are in a transition.
And on top of this - all of the normal life stuff.
And on top of that - all of the creative dreamer stuff. You still have stuff you want to create and do!!
It’s a lot. And so: Whatever you are feeling, however you are coping, is 100% valid.
I still believe that giving yourself space to have your feelings, including your feelings about what you wish was happening AKA your dreams, is key to navigating this time.
Deeply processing your feelings always brings you to new possibilities for how to respond.
I think this will save us.
It’s not the ONLY thing that will save us. But it’s one of the things, and it’s the thing I am equipped to support you in doing, so I am going to keep doing that.
The replay from the Holding Space For What’s Next To Emerge class is available here.
Grab your journal and give yourself an hour to explore.
This replay will be available here until July 1. After July 2 it will only be available inside Dream Book.
What you need:
- One hour of time (or just do the first 30 minutes if you're really short on time)
- Your journal
What you'll get:
- Energy clearing meditation to give you some space away from stress, overwhelm and whatever else you are carrying, to give you space to really BE with yourself.
- Space to process some of your thoughts and feelings about everything that is happening in an atmosphers of "everything you are thinking and feeling is valid, you are not wrong for feeling how you feel AND you don't have to like how you're feeling"
- A new perspective on what you can do next to support yourself
[replay no longer available here - Dream Book members can access it here]
Join me in Dream Book to keep exploring!
Your Dream Book membership gives you access to ALL of my classes, plus live calls every month and the Dream Book journaling system, which helps you navigate the inner and outer work of following your dream - step by step.
I put on a favourite summer dress and went out to do some favourite summer things this morning and... nothing worked as planned.
Other cyclists on the path were so obnoxious!
I forgot my noise canceling headphones and nearly lost my mind in the din of 20 people all talking over each other on the coffee shop patio.
I did get to my favourite peony patch in the park, but it was so full of mosquitos I couldn't stay.
I am thinking about how complicated it is to hold a vision for your future while navigating reality.
Like I wrote yesterday - I feel like my soul is calling me towards a brighter future than the rest of me can see. How do I move towards a thing I cannot see? Especially when every step that I CAN see on this path feels impossible?
This is what creative dreaming has always been.
AND
It's all more complicated right now because you don't dream in a vacuum, you dream in the world.
Exploring "what's next" is actually a jumble of intersecting layers.
As the world changes - how are you feeling called to change with it?
How have you been forced to change and how are you coping with this?
What's been stirred up in you that needs tending to?
What new dreams are being born, and how can you give them some space (even if pursuing them feels impossible right now)?
It's a lot.
AND
NOT exploring any of this only keeps us stuck in it.
Holding Space For What's Next To Emerge is a 1 hour meditation + journaling class (and it's free!)
Meditation to make some space for your thoughts and feelings about all of this.
Journaling to help get it out of your head and onto the page where it's easier to sort it out.
Conversation about what comes up to feel less alone in it all.
The call details go out to everyone on my email list. Sign up here. (If you're already signed up, the call details are in your inbox now.)
The replay will be available for anyone on my blog for 1 week. After that, it will only be available to Dream Book members.
Join me and Heidi Straube (@innerpathphoto) on Monday to talk about following your creative dreams and living a nomadic life!
Heidi is the expert on this and I can’t wait to spend this time digging into her stories.
We'll be going live at 12 pm noon, Monday June 20 on my Instagram account.
Go to this post (from your smart phone) to set a notification for when we go live.
New Class: Holding Space For What's Next
This is a 1 hour journaling + meditation class for making some space to explore what's next for you. NOTE: This is free to anyone to attend! The Zoom link will go out to everyone on my email list - sign up here if you're not on it.
Time: Friday, Jun 24, 2022 01:00 PM Winnipeg - North America, Central (find this in YOUR time zone here)
**The replay will be freely available for 1 week after the class. After that, it will only be available inside Dream Book.
There is just so much happening.
The world is changing. And we are changing. And our dreams are changing.
It's a lot (as in a lot to navigate and it's easy to get overwhelmed/exhausted).
AND
It's a lot (as in a LOT of new possibilities being born and a LOT to be excited about!!).
There is so much MAGIC and FREEDOM in this
Together, we'll tap into that magic and freedom and explore what it is you need to be doing, to create + hold space for "what's next" for you.
I'm planning on a 1 hour call, but lately our conversations on live classes have been FIRE and so we may go to 90 minutes.
If you can't be on time, plan to work with the recording. This work is a journey, and if you're not starting at the beginning it's not going to work.
But if you need to leave early that's fine - you can catch the rest on the replay.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop full of plants. I’m the only one here.
The coffee shop is off to the side of a bakery - which is full of people baking in a wood fired oven which keeps the whole place SO warm and then with the plants everywhere it’s like being in a conservatory, making this my favourite winter coffee + journaling spot.
In the summer I’m usually outside, but it’s rainy today so here I am. I’m sitting at a bar by the window, watching people on the busy street outside.
I had a disorienting night of weird dreams, waking up and also dreaming of waking up but still sleeping.
I feel disoriented in my life.
I lay in bed asking myself what I wanted and decided to come here and journal. Once I looked at my Year of Dreams I saw that I had a lot to journal about. I’d been filling my pages with questions and ideas about what’s next.
I feel un-moored without my routines. As a highly sensitive person, my routines are one of the things that keep me settled in my body enough to hear my intuition and act on my creativity.
The pandemic destroyed so many of my routines and then this last winter I discovered a new form of magic, having ALL of the space without routine or structure.
Anyway. Now I am here - having let go of so many routines that I don’t feel interested in picking back up AND ALSO remembering the magic of routines and how they fuel creative flow and progress AND ALSO feeling really interested in FINDING OUT what’s next for me vs PLANNING what’s next for me.
I’m 48.
A lot of my dreams this last year have been thinking about who and how I want to be in my 50s which doesn’t need to be different than my 40s of course - unless I want it to be.
Which I do.
I feel ready to stretch and grow but in the past that always meant that I had a clear picture of WHO and WHAT I was growing into.
And right now I feel OPEN about all of that. Which is SO thrilling and terrifying.
There are a lot of metaphors in the life coaching/new age/wellness communities about planting seeds and how a tomato can’t be a rose, what you plant is what you get.
What if I am actually a lot more magical than all of that?
What if my brain and it’s clear intentions were only in my way?
What if I don’t need to plan? What if I need to LISTEN?
Since 2015 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in Canada, I have been learning about colonization and white supremacy, which are systems I have lived in my whole life without seeing them for what they are.
Which led me to see the entire new age, life coaching and wellness communities in a different light.
Which led me to feel differently about my own work.
Which led me to re-work my work and create a space that can hold the bigger questions and invite in a more soul-truth aligned kind of growth. (Which is Dream Book)
Which is what brought me here, I think.
To a place where holding intentions feels so small. Like a way to try to control the mystery.
To a place where I’ve let it go.
To a place where I feel ready to LISTEN as my primary way of PLANNING.
Which is wild - in my late 20s my best friend nicknamed me “Planny McPlanster”.
I had this idea that the best growth grew you into who you WANTED to be. Brought you the life you WANTED.
And I still believe that we need to be better at trusting our desires for a lot of reasons.
But now I see how SMALL that is.
To only dream about the life I can visualize for myself.
I mean yes I always spoke about how your dream can be much better than what you’re thinking, about how the inner growth will nurture you in ways you can’t see now, about how it WILL be different and better than what you picture.
But now - I guess I see the next level of that.
Our dreams are a light on the path, for sure.
But that path is leading to something much more expansive than what we dream of.
AND ALSO we are right here in the heart of the mystery right now. We are so creative and powerful right now.
What if we are MORE creative and powerful when we're in the mystery of it all, and not trying to manifest, create, or control the outcome?
Which feels like a different way of holding our dreams.
AND ALSO a different relationship to the mystery.
I'm offering a free Zoom class on Holding Space For What's Next To Emerge.
It's happening on June 24th at 1:00 pm, Central (North America).
Details to come. Everyone on my email list will get an invite to the live class. The will be a replay available on my blog - for 1 week only. Then the replay will only be accessible to Dream Book members.
It's Sunday morning.
I'm sitting on my chaise lounge with my laptop, my cat Bear, and a latte. It rained last night, and I opened up both big windows upstairs and the most delightful breeze is flowing through the loft with that it-just-rained smell.
My husband is asleep upstairs. We are still living apart, but spending more and more time together, and planning to live together again within the next year.
The time apart was so needed. In March 2021, when he moved out, I was ready to lose my mind if I didn't get some of alone time.
And now, with the magic of HAVING SPACE, and also a great couple's therapist, I'm excited to live with him again.
Dreams are not static.
We don't create a dream come true in our lives, and then curl up in it and live there forever, never feeling sad or lost or unfulfilled ever again.
We're alive and our dreams are alive and we grow and change and they grow and change and it can get very complicated at times.
My loft condo was SUCH a big dream for me. I bought it in 2011 - my first year of self employment with the Creative Dream Incubator.
A big modern open space with HUGE sunny windows. This felt like THE perfect place for ALL of my dreams.
And it was. At that time. But I kept growing and changing and then I had a husband and 4 step-kids and the big loft stopped feeling big, lol!
But it's still more than a home, it's a DREAM.
There have been times when I was very frustrated that I couldn't sell it and move on to the next thing. But a shift in the real estate market for condominiums made that extremely complicated. There have been times when I was glad I kept it. There are times when I want to keep it AND get a new home with my husband. And there are times when I am ready to take the financial loss, sell it and move on to the next thing.
When I last wrote about my loft I got so much advice and almost... well it felt like I was being roasted.
My inbox was overwhelmed with people being upset about the choices I was making. Which is wild, since I 100% trust myself to make the right choices for me. I'm so good at this, I help other people do this for a living!
But, people project online. A lot. We only see bits and pieces of each other's lives, fill in the banks with our own projections, and then it's easy to get upset when someone we like does something we don't.
Anyway, I'm sitting here on this gorgeous morning and I still have no clue what to do with this dream house of mine.
My husband and I have lots of ideas for ways to renovate it to make it work better.
And there are other options too, of course.
We'll figure it out....
But I do this - creative dreaming - for a living. So shouldn't I KNOW?
I have ALL of the tools. Shouldn't I never get stuck trying to figure out my next moves? Shouldn't I never make a mistake or mis-step?
It's easy to go there.
And loads of people in the life coaching/Life Your Best Life Industry really are out there saying that with the right tools and support, your life can be perfect. Always. Forever.
And some of these people become such huge corporations with so much impact that it's easy to feel convinced that if your life is not consistently perfect it's because YOU are doing something wrong, and you need to buy a better solution.
That's really shitty. It's the collision of unethical marketing with life coaching/personal growth and there's a LOT of it out there. And it taps into a lot of unconscious beliefs we have from growing up in this capitalist/colonialist/individualist/supremacist culture.
But we don't have to go there. We can shine a light on what's actually happening there, and then we can choose a different path.
Creative Dreaming is about STAYING ENGAGED with your dreams, and your healing and growth.
It's not about imagining that you can control the universe.
Or that being alive doesn't come with a FUCK TON of uncertainty, vulnerability and pain.
It's not about trying to AVOID the realities of life on earth.
It's about STAYING ENGAGED with your dreams/healing/growth/creativity/joy/values/inner truth which is a much deeper magic than "living a perfect life" could ever offer.
So here I am FEELING that magic.
Knowing what I want in the larger sense but also having no clue about what the details or timing will look like and letting it be what it is AND ALSO accepting that I could be in this place for a while AND ALSO - underneath everything, trusting the process.
(And THAT - trusting the process - is a valuable skill to learn which comes from engaging in the practice of staying engaged)
We can feel this magic WHILE being in the process, without a solution or fairy-tale ending in sight, just a commitment to stay on the path.
I'm going to stay here. Lost. Uncertain. Feeling my way.
I am following my creative flow. Starting BIG new projects. Going all in with self care as replenishment from a difficult few years.
I am going to put the LIVE Creative Genius Planning Sessions on hold for now - the ones I do Monday mornings on Instagram. Instead, I am sharing shorter meditations - like this one, for calling in what you need for the week.
I am planning a new free class to happen soon (if you're signed up for my emails you'll get an invite).
And exploring the idea of offering a few small group coaching programs for other people who are navigating deep change, or starting new projects - so we can do this together.
I've been having a lot of anxiety this week.
A few days ago I rode my bike to the park, and stopped for a lavender doughnut on the way.
Then I had a beautiful moment of calm in the park, in a haze of lavender sugar, and I came up with a few questions to help me navigate all of this.
Maybe you could use them too?
Where can you say no? Slow down? Lower expectations?
Where can you do things differently, in ways that honour how you are feeling?
What do you need right now?
How can you process some of your feelings to create even a small bit of space for yourself?
Stay there with these questions as long as you need.
A lot of us seem to have an unconscious goal of “getting back to normal” and working on that goal isn’t going to lead to the future we want.
So, instead of trying to get back to normal, what if we stay present where we are and put our efforts into really tending to what is here?
I Take Excellent Care of Myself: 8 Week Undated Self Care Planner is now available through the Creative Dream Incubator Press!
I Take Excellent Care of Myself: 8 Week Undated Self Care Planner is now available through the Creative Dream Incubator Press!
I've been working on this during the whole pandemic.
With the combination of "a lot of my self care things became inaccessible" and "my life got more stressful on a number of fronts" and "the whole world started freaking out and falling apart" it was both tricky AND essential for me to find new ways to do self care.
There are a TON of ways to define self care. For me, self care is the foundation for everything else. For you, it can be something totally different.
All we know for sure is - we all need it right now.
This self care planner will get you looking at self care from different perspectives and experimenting with new ideas to help you feel how you want to feel, so you can do what you want to do.
Find out more + get your copy here!
**Get 20% off [until Friday] with the discount code:
SELFCAREMAGIC
I am going to promote this "self care style"
It just doesn’t feel very “self care” to push myself to do a bunch of marketing things around this.
So I’m not.
I’m going to show up, as myself, and talk about it. And going to put self care at the center of how I do that this week.
Which means today instead of doing the Monday morning Creative Genius Planning Session on Instagram Live (which I usually do, even on long weekends) I’m taking the long weekend as a long weekend.
So this morning I’ll be eating pancakes in the park with my husband. 🥞 🌳 🧺 ❤️
Picnics are my love language and a huge source of self care for me.
Now - Go check out the planner!
**Get 20% off [until Friday] with the discount code:
SELFCAREMAGIC
(Photo from Leah Gazan's website. Leah is the Member of Parliament for my riding - Winnipeg Center.)
One of my big dreams is a Universal Basic Income for everyone.
I know - people come here for inspiring stuff about dreams, not political posts.
But dreaming is ALWAYS political because we don't dream in a vacuum, we dream in the world.
Who gets to dream is political.
Who gets to have the resources, time, and support to pursue their dreams and who needs to work multiple jobs to try to feed their kids - is political.
Whose creative work receives grants and accolades, and whose creative work is not understood or appreciated - is political.
We dream in the same intersections that we live in.
Racism, ableism, sexism, classism - all the things that make life either easier or harder for us also make creative dreaming easier or harder for us.
Most of the new age and coaching industries focus on the things that you, the individual, can do, to achieve your own dreams. And that's an important part of the work but it's not the whole thing.
I've been coaching for a long time. Full time since 2011, but on the side for a long time before that.
And from everything I have learned along the way:
A Universal Basic Income would do more to support our dreams than any master class or coaching program ever could.
Yes - quality coaching and mentoring are vital.
But so is having all of the SPACE and TIME we need to get in touch with our creative gifts and figure out how to share them.
And yes - your own personal determination plays a role there.
But we have to recognize that your personal situation and the number of intersections of oppression you face plays a much larger role - both in terms of your ability to "be determined" about your dream, and terms of the obstacles you face.
As one example: if you are childfree that's going to make your dreams much easier. If you have kids with a supportive partner you'll have more stuff to work through but if you are a single parent you've got a LOT of work just to make space to make space.
Also, a parent with money is a completely different situation than a parent without money.
And, here in Canada, an Indigenous parent dealing with inter-generational trauma of the ongoing colonial genocide is in a completely different situation than a while settler. (My family has plenty of inter-generational trauma, but all of our stories include "and then we came to Canada and were able to farm here and settle and create a good life" with NO mention of the people who were forcibly removed from the lands we settled on, and what happened to them to keep them from being able to get their land back.)
A universal basic income could help level the playing field. It's not everything we need to end systemic oppression, but it's a very good step in the process.
In a country where people actually die of poverty, a universal basic income would save lives.
For that reason alone, I think it's vital that we put our support behind Bill C-223. (And if you're not in Canada you can do some research to see what is happening where you live, maybe there are people working on this and you can help.)
It's illogical to spend money policing poverty when that money could instead eliminate it.
It's an easy change we can make with a HUGE impact, beyond the peoples whose lives would be directly transformed by it.
A universal basic income helps EVERYONE, not just the people who need it.
Violent crime is on the rise where I live because poverty is on the rise where I live. This morning my husband found out his car was broken into last night.
(We are still living apart, he's in an apartment very close to me, but in a much more bougie neighbourhood than where I live. When he lived here, his car was broken into several times a year)
Even though we are ok, we are going to feel the effects of increase financial instability around us.
Think about what it means to live in a city where EVERYONE has a safe place to live and enough food to eat and can get the medical support they need.
Crime goes down. Education goes up. People are healthier and happier.
It creates a sturdy foundation for dreams. But it also creates a better world.
Everyone's dreams are needed.
Your dream is your soul calling you towards your true self.
Your dream is your purpose, your creative callings, your most authentic way of living.
You know this. You can FEEL how the things we are dreaming of can help save the world.
My dream was always to use my creativity to support others to believe in themselves and their dreams, even long before I had any clue how to believe in myself and my dreams.
In being able to pursue and create my dreams, I've been able to support thousands of other people with their dreams. Dreams are so generative.
Right now, people are dreaming up solutions to climate change and skyrocketing inflation and war and every single problem we face.
But are they all able to have the time, support, and resources to bring their ideas to fruition? Of course not.
Think about what could change if everyone DID have this.
Beyond saving the lives of our most vulnerable citizens, a Universal Basic Income could set things up to save the world.
Solutions already exist.
When Leah Gazan (pictured above) first ran to be the MP for Winnipeg Center in 2018, I was volunteering for her campaign.
I hate politics. But Leah made me feel hopeful at a time when I was feeling less hope than ever, so I was really happy to step out of my comfort zone and help her campaign.
She showed me how the solutions to all of the problems we face in our riding already exist in our riding. There are so many people out there doing good things!
And we have to do more to empower and support those people, instead of putting so much money into empowering and supporting multi-national corporations with corporate welfare and tax loopholes, instead of policing the impacts of poverty.
A Universal Basic Income is one of those solutions and it's easy to fund it.
Even if a UBI was funded by a tax increase I believe it would be worth it.
But it costs less money to give people homes than it does to police homelessness.
It costs less money to police the impacts of poverty, than it does to eliminate poverty.
I know for some people this can feel radical, but it's been thoroughly studied and I suggest you do some research.
If you're in Canada I ask that you check out Leah's National Framework For A Guaranteed Livable Basic Income Act to find out more.
This can happen.
All of the stressful ways that our economy is changing right now could be the impetus to push this through.
This is why I went out of my comfort zone to volunteer for Leah Gazan's election campaign. I believe in her and I am going to stay hopeful.