Getting caught up in the question, "What is my purpose?" is like looking for shoes instead of walking forward.

While most people think of reality as something that happens to us, the shamanic approach is to 'get behind the creation' of your story.

Life isn't only happening to us: we are happening to life.

-Toko-pa Turner

Worry is a hungry beast. It’s always looking for its next meal.

Sometimes, worry comes from things that aren’t how we think they should be. When I figure it out, whatever it is, I’ll feel okay.

And maybe these things will make a difference. But maybe they won’t - so what to do? We have this hungry beast roaming loose around our mind causing havoc.

Well, maybe we could tame the beast.

This is your invitation, into delight - allow yourself to be delighted.

Make yourself available for small moments of unexpected beauty, calling you into presence. Let yourself feel the lightness that comes from these tiny moments of connection with something magic.

Follow these ten steps and you’ll get results in just seven days. Take my three month program and you’ll be the you you wish you were. And when we reach step ten and we’re not where we were promised, we think there’s something wrong with us and we look for the next solution.

There’s nothing wrong with us.

In my experience, on my journey through life, literally nothing has worked like that.

Everything I have that brings me joy and satisfaction has taken time.

In a nutshell - when we jump into personal development from a place of ‘not enough’, looking for ‘the thing’ that will fix us, we don’t find it.

When we come to it from a place of absolutely enough, coming from curiosity, magic happens. We find there’s nothing to fix, and we’ve been solving a problem that doesn’t exist this whole time… 

...and we smile at ourselves because we know there’s still nothing to fix - we’ve just been following a harder path than we need to, and now we can follow a different one.

Creativity is freedom.

When you write or draw or make things or sing - you can do anything you want.

Put red here. Blue there. Burn it and begin again.

Write some words, fit them into sentences, read them back and reorder them so they sound like poetry.

Creative freedom is absolute within whatever limits exist.

It’s a nice puzzle. You’re not free, because there are limits, but within these limits, you are completely free. 

In past years I’ve have goals. This year I have curiosities.

Golden threads, asking me to follow them, posing the question - “what if…”

“Someday” is not a real day. Tomorrow is also not a real day. Not until it turns into today.

Today is a real day. Today is the ONLY real day.

Because the only real time is now.

Yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is a dream… today is what we have.

You are worthy of receiving support. Piles of it. As much as you need - it doesn’t make you weak, it doesn’t mean you’re not enough on your own, and it doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

Going to say that again - receiving support is not proof that you’re not good enough.

What do you need, and how will you get it?

These are two of my favourite questions. They’re deceptively simple, and deceptively powerful.

They can give you almost anything…

There’s something to be said for having no idea where you’re going in life. When you don’t know where you’re going, the journey is the point. And when the journey is the point, you have all the time in the world. To me, this is a thought that feels kind and soft.

When there’s no destination, there’s no pressure to get anywhere. No pressure to do anything. No pressure to be any particular way. A weight lifts and all my fears ease. Fear of judgement, fear of not being enough, fear of failing.

It’s so spacious, having all the time in the world. Time to stop and smell the roses. Time to be curious and follow that curiosity. Time to try things out just because they look fun. Time to wonder and delight. Time to share a story or two. Time to pick up feathers and stick them in your hair. Time to dream.

And… dreaming is where it begins.

Right now I’m feeling…

This is a little but powerful prompt I use to check in with myself whenever I think of it throughout the day. I make a game of it to find the exact words to describe how I’m feeling, and I know when I have it right because part of me lights up and I feel seen when I get it exactly spot on.

For any healing process, we need a quiet moment.

There’s something about that sentence that settles me, helps me take a deeper breath. A quiet pause.

Lots of us want to feel better. Not many of us take the time to create a quiet moment to plant the seeds of whatever feeling better is to us. We don’t create quiet moments to tend to those seeds as they grow.

We’re so often caught in our heads, so removed from the physicality of our own bodies that sometimes we get around in a state of ‘body? What body? I’m just a floating head’.

And yet… our bodies are where feeling better starts.

Today’s public service announcement:

Do nice things for yourself. Treat yourself kindly.

Find small things that make you feel cared for, and do those things.

Find small things that make your days feel brighter, and do those things.

I read someone's Instagram post the other day with these words, and it struck a chord.

I sat down to write my own list and it went: read, write, draw.

And that was the end of the list.

About a second later, I got an attack of the guilts that I hadn’t put moving my body on there. Or eating amazing food, or the work I do in the world, or having interesting conversations with interesting people, or spending time outside in nature.

These are still important parts of my life, but right NOW, this day, this week, all I want to do is read, write, and draw.

And when I stopped trying to sneak other stuff onto that list, I felt a lot of different things…

I want to offer kindness, as a lantern in the dark.

Kindness as a recognition of our own humanness. Kindness that tends to our fears and hurts. Kindness that sees we need a loving word or a gentle touch, and offers it to us, unasked. Kindness that feels like a gentle breath, a softening through our bodies, knowing that we've got this, knowing that we're here for ourselves, knowing that we're walking with ourselves through the woods, knowing that we're deserving of this kind of solid, unwavering love.

We are worthy of kindness from ourselves.

“Well, the thing about trauma is that people suppress a lot of their feelings, a lot of their experiences, and art by definition is the opposite of suppression, it’s expression. Instead of pushing it down, you get it out.

Now, when that’s done consciously, when there’s conscious expression, that’s where the healing takes place. And that conscious expression, that conscious pushing it out, can be verbal, it can be emotional, but it surely can be facilitated by artistic expression, which bypasses the intellect and comes right from the emotional, gut level…”

Calm is the eye of the storm.

Calm is safe harbour.

Calm is a regulated nervous system that has the capacity to handle the challenges of life with grace.

Calm is a super power when holding space for others - like the doctor, other people’s nervous systems pick up on the calm of mine, and they start to feel that things are okay. They start to feel that nothing’s wrong here. They start to feel like THEY’RE ok, exactly as they are.

Into the woods…

In the woods, you can’t see the forest for the trees. Can’t see anything for the trees, and that’s kind of the point - when you journey into the woods, you’re leaving certainty at the door. Check in any inkling that you might know what happens next - you can collect that again when we return. If we return. If you want it back..

Making tiny altars is one way that I bring moments of space and sacredness into my ordinary hours. They're a way of intentionally connecting with the unknown. They’re also good way of bringing some kind of creative practice to your day without needing to know how to draw - art therapy can take many forms!

I build tiny altars usually for one of two reasons. To hold an intention, or to hold a meaning.