Greetings, Dearest Wild Heart Creator,

I’m writing to you from my wildly colorful home, five weeks into the sheltering in place directive with another edition of Creativity In The Time Of Quarantine.

I think of you all often and hope you are navigating this weird and rocky time by holding yourselves with as much kindness, compassion and creativity as humanly possible. And when that feels like it’s totally out of your reach, my wish for you is that you find time for a nap, a good cry and an entertaining show on Netflix.

Like so many of you, my world has been turned upside down in the blink of an eye. There’s all the day to day stuff to figure out around things like food shopping, new ways of getting exercise and staying in contact with friends and family in a way that feels safe for me and my loved ones but also protects my larger community. This all takes a bit more thought and planning than it did in the past but ultimately feels doable.

But what feels like it has less of a straightforward solution is my work and business life which has been impacted tremendously. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know that for the past many years my primary way of working with folks has been via in-person workshops, classes, retreats and training programs.

Many moons ago I had a robust and thriving psychotherapy practice which meant I worked primarily with clients one-on-one. But once I discovered the power of working with creative clusters of people and developing creative community my whole healing and business model shifted to working with groups.

I love working in community with a holy passion. And I also love the deep and transformational healing work that happens for folks when they come together for a sacred creativity retreat, class or workshop.

But now in the time of Covid-19, in-person group work is no longer possible which has meant I have had to scramble to find new ways of working with my beloved students.

The retreat biz is for all intents and purposes out of commission right now. Which initially totally freaked me out since retreats were my primary source of income.

But luckily, I have many years of trusting both my intuition and the creative process under my belt, which meant that I first took a deep breath and went inside myself to listen to what bright ideas my inner guidance and muse might have to offer me.

Since all bets were off and I had no clear idea exactly WHAT would work I also felt a great freedom to experiment and simply try things. Now that everything I had planned had disappeared I didn’t feel like I had much to lose by taking some risks.

So I jumped head and feet first into the online world by offering things to my creative community like weekly online painting classes. And free webinars exploring courage and creativity.

I was trying to practice what I preach by not allowing myself to get too attached to the outcome. Of course I WANTED people to respond positively to my classes and webinars, but I was also open to the possibility that stuff might not work out initially, and I would just have to keep trying things until I found something that did.

And one thing that I was really curious to try was an online intuitive painting retreat, since retreats really ARE my favorite thing ever.

I started with a two day intensive, excited and nervous to see how working in this way would unfold. And also not at all sure that anyone would even sign up.

I called this new event Into The Deep:Intuitive Painting As A Practice Of Soul Reclamation because I wanted to communicate my intention that this event would be a journey into those places in our souls and psyches that we don’t access on a regular basis.

I was first of all THRILLED when 14 people registered for the workshop which was my maximum number participants.

But I still wasn’t sure how working in this online format would translate into evoking those deeper realms.

The workshop actually exceeded my wildest expectations as the participants opened up to their creative and divine feminine personal power through engaging with intense emotional experiences ranging from sexual pleasure, to raging anger, to heartbreaking grief, to wild joy. We laughed and cried a LOT during those two days! And after the emotional release there was an increased capacity to drop into a sense of rooted groundedness and powerful presence.

My work has and always will be about reconnecting with a deep and profound trust in the life force that courses through all of us and that can be accessed most reliably through creativity.

And I am grateful, as always, to witness over and over again how that trust gets reinforced when I stay open creatively to it’s clear and life affirming directives in both my own life and the lives of my beloved students.

So I want to encourage you in this era of profound unsettledness to take your OWN deep breath and make the time and space to listen…. really listen… to what your soul and spirit and creative muse has to tell you and where it wants to lead you. And maybe allow yourself to take a few risks to experiment and play with the information you are given.

Trusting that in the times of greatest uncertainty, our intuition is often WAY smarter than our freaked out linear mind.