Start From Where You Are & That Which Hinders Your Task is Your Task

Dear Creative Crusader,

I’ve been thinking about creative blocks lately. It’s the theme for the second week for my online creativity intensive. 

Over the years, I’ve experienced and worked through a lot of blocks to my creativity and I’ve helped a lot of other people with theirs. I’ve used my creativity, my expressive arts therapy training and techniques from my study of the arts to work through these blocks.

There are so many kinds of blocks, and so many creative ways we can work through or with our blocks. We can work through them on the mental level—questioning our beliefs. We can work through them on the physical level—relaxing the body, deep breathing. We can work through them on the emotional level—acting as compassionate witness to our inner resistances, like fear. We can work through them on the spiritual level—opening up the channel of our creativity to a higher source, and relinquishing the smaller self. 

I have tried all of these, and they have all have worked for me depending on what the particular block is, and my current relationship to it.

But, there’s one method of unblocking that never fails and is applicable to all situations. It doesn’t require any special equipment or knowledge. You don’t need to spend a lot of time with it. And it is always available. 

START FROM WHERE YOU ARE

That’s it. It’s really that simple.

What does it mean?

It means checking in with yourself and asking yourself honestly, in this moment, what do I feel? What do I want? 

And if the answer is: I’m blocked.

Then what do you do? You start from that place.

You create from that place. You feel into the block. You get curious about the block.You use your imagination to imagine the size, the shape, the color, the weight of the block. You draw the block. You dance the block. You speak to the block. You describe the block with your words. 

And then something is starting to happen. It may be a very small something. It may feel insignificant. But, I can tell you, it’s not. It’s very, very important. Because you it's a way of seeing that your creativity is always there, it’s just that you have not been able to see it. You can't use it if you don't acknowledge it. Acknowledging what is happening in the moment is the first spark of your creativity. 

Still feel a wall between you and your creativity?

Draw the wall. Mime your hands up the wall. Write an ode to the wall. What does it feel like to touch? How has the wall served you? 

You may soon be laughing. Or if not, maybe you are crying. At least creating something.

Go ahead, and laugh. Or cry. And then get curious about what happens next…
 

There is only one thing I can teach.

I can teach people how to look within to access the resources they already have. 

The resources are:

creativity

curiosity

compassion

consciousness

We all have those resources and they are endlessly renewable and free. We don’t need a new app or an upgrade or a class. We just need to learn how to look.

There is another phrase I am fond of saying:
 

THAT WHICH HINDERS YOUR TASK IS YOUR TASK

It’s a different way of saying the same thing.

This phrase comes from Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher. For two years, I trained in his methodology, not under him, but with two teachers who had trained with him. My teacher posted this phrase in large letters on the wall of our acting studio. It summed up everything we needed to know about Meisner's method.

The technique Meisner developed was called the repetition technique. The basic idea is to have two actors sit on the stage, in chairs, facing each other. The actors take turns making simple observations about each other. "You're smiling." The other actor repeats the statement, "Yes, I'm smiling." The repetition goes back and forth until the statement no longer feels true, or until one of the actors notices something new that is happening either in herself or in the other.

A photo from my Meisner class with Joe Anania, in the late 90's. That's me, all in black.

The technique is about staying connected to the emotional truth of the moment, and riding those emotions as they change. Many years later, I trained for 3 years to become an expressive arts therapist. I consider my earlier Meisner training an invaluable part of my training as a therapist. And it was essentially the same thing—a training in emotional presence. In connecting with the truth of the moment, and allowing oneself to let go of the former moment in favor of what’s happening right now. 

You don’t need to train in the Meisner technique or as an expressive arts therapist, to make use of this concept. All you need to do is drop in, at any moment, to the truth of your experience. That is where your real and authentic self is. Your self is not a thing, but a process. You are not a noun, you are a verb. 

I think it is safe for you to try this at home. 

Get comfortable in your chair. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and check in with yourself: What do I feel right now? What am I aware of? Whatever first hit you get— a pain in your shoulder, a fluttering in your chest, an image of a blank page. Create something out of it. Let the dots connect from one moment to the next. If you get frustrated because your cousin drops in unexpectedly as you are creating, then, by all means, invite your cousin into what you are doing.

That which hinders your task is your task.

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

The 2019 January Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge is Here!

Join me on Tuesday, January 1st 2019 for my third January Art Journal Challenge!

I am thrilled to be offering my Third January Art Journal Challenge. This creative challenge combines Art Journaling and Blogging. Meaning, if you choose to join this challenge, you can pick one of these daily practices, or both—alternating between the two, however you feel inclined to do it. In some cases your art journaling practice might become a digitized blog post. 

If you do not have a blog, but have always wanted to start one, this is a great opportunity for you to get your blog jump started. In fact, this challenge was inspired by my first blogging project, ZOELAB 365, where I committed to blogging every day for a year in order to lift myself out of postpartum depression. And let me tell you, it worked. That year was the most creatively fulfilling of my life, and planted the seeds for the many inspiring projects I am now doing out in the world.

This year, I am offering the challenge as a pay to play. For only $1 A Day, $31 in total, you will receive:

1) Access to the private Facebook Group only for the Challenge Participants

2) Daily journal/blog prompts or creative assignments designed to help deepen your connection to your intuition & creative flow

3) Daily inspiration

4) Daily Support from Zoë - you will get feedback from your posts, answers to your questions and other forms of guidance

5) Support form the community of people also doing this challenge

6) A chance to win a free 90 minute coaching discovery session with Zoë! For all who complete the challenge, send Zoë an email by February 2 stating that you completed all 31 days of the challenge. The winner will be chosen at random on February 3rd.

How does the 31 Day Art Journal Challenge work?

1) Sign up here. It’s $31 for the month of January.

2) Once you have signed up, you will receive an email from me with a link to the private Facebook Group.

3) Starting on January 1st, 2019! You will receive a prompt and/or creative assignment every day in the Facebook Group. If you are not a Facebook user, you can still do the challenge. The prompts & assignments can be emailed to you. However, you will not be able to participate in the group experience or receive feedback.

4) Complete the prompts either in your journal or on your computer (if you are blogging) or alternate between the digital and analogue. I recommend an 8.5 x 11 blank journal. You can order a journal like the one you see on the right, here. Use whatever supplies appeal to you. For some prompts certain supplies may be suggested.

5) Another exciting option is that you can participate in the Sketchbook Project at the Brooklyn Art Library in conjunction with this challenge. Sign up for the Sketchbook Project by January 9th, by buying a sketch book from them, which you can complete as part of this challenge. After you are done, mail your filled sketchbook for them to keep in their library, which features the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world!

5) Feel free to post your art journal pages, blog posts (from the challenge), questions, process, or anything that relates the topic of art journaling and blogging in the Facebook group. That is your space to connect with others as well as with me.

6) If you enjoy posting your pages on social media, please use the hashtag: #31dayjournalblogchallengejan19

I imagine everyone's reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. It may be because you want to get back into your writing and/or your art again in a daily way. You may just be to learn about art journaling. For some, it may be an opportunity to have a quiet moment to connect with yourself. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity. And for all of us, hopefully, it is simply a way to practice and increase self connection and love! You may discover some new reasons along the way.

For me, this year's challenge is about three things:

1) To promote the inspiring, creative & healthy practice of art journaling and blogging

2) To build online community through creativity and authentic connection

3) To promote the practice of self connection

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and words. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making, goal-setting and planning. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the common ground for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling is unique in that it combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. For the past six years, I have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos, Mexico, near where I live. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express.

You do not have to be a trained artist or serious writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools during the challenge. One of my life's missions is to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of the Self, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

What is blogging?

As many of us know, the reasons and ways to blog can vary greatly. It can be a tool to promote business, a way to keep track of your travels or other kinds of adventures, or a way to promote and share your creative work, political ideas, or simply to connect with your inner life. Whether it is for your business, for personal, or political expression, I believe a successful blog always stems from personal truth. If your business or your politics has no degree of personal connection for you, then perhaps you already have a great topic to or journal or blog about why this is so.

The most difficult and most important part of what it means to blog, or even journal, is that it is regular. It is also, as many bloggers will attest, the key to success. (Success = getting readers to read your blog.) From my experiences with daily practices, which is something I promote in my art journal lab class, as well as personally, I have come to believe in the amazing power of creating a daily practice, especially something that helps you connect with yourself, with the invisible world, feelings and other parts of us that we usually work hard to avoid, push down or unconsciously act out on others. These types of inward-directed daily practices keep us holistically healthy because they keep us connected to something true and deep in us.  These kinds of daily practices have helped me out depression, anxiety, a sense of loss, relationship issues, and more. They have helped me enormously with my creativity as an artist and as a mom and human being—when you do something daily, it forces you to be more creative with it—otherwise you get bored. We tend to look for new ways, new approaches when we know we have to do it everyday. 

So, use the term blogging however you feel connected to it—my definition is as follows:

To share words and images (hopefully self-generated) online about any topic, as long as it has has meaning or importance to you personally. One additional other feature: it must be dated for it to be a blog post, otherwise it is just a webpage. The date makes it time-connected, and therefore, applicable to a certain moment of time for you. This is the same for art journaling.

I love blogging because it delivers a sense of immediacy that appeals to the performer in me. Blogging is a digital performance—the act of baring a personal truth, an art piece, or just a slice of life, with others, sometimes strangers, sometimes not, brings me a certain thrill. If it doesn’t feel thrilling, a tiny bit risky, I usually don’t blog about it. For each of us the thrill will come for different reasons, in different areas. What is risky for me may not feel risky for you. And so it is very much up to you to come up with your own topics to write about. A blog post can be very simple or complex. There is no rule in this department. A blog post might simply be sharing a photograph you took that day and sharing a little caption or small story or sentence that explains it. Other times a blog post might be a highly informative piece that is designed to help and/or inside others learn a specific skill (EG: this post you are reading now.) Some blog posts have taken me 15 minutes to create, others have taken many hours. Neither is better than the other—the beauty of blogging is that it keeps going. We can’t get to hung up on our last blog post, because we are already thinking about our next one! This represents the natural flow of life. We cannot afford to get perfectionistic about our daily practices, they are designed for us to make mistakes, and to learn and grow from them, that is why they are practices. If you think of your blog or your art journaling as a practice and it will help you let go of the inner critic.

The reasons I host creative challenges it to help connect people to their creativity, passion and personal truth. Doing something every day creates a new habit that is affirming and helps you grow--expanding your sense of authentic self that you bring into the world. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding, and the sense of accomplishment from completing a whole month with a daily creative practice is a real thrill.

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

Love & Creativity,

Zoë

Why I Love Art Journaling & Self Love

I seem to feel compelled, over and over, to explain why I promote art journaling, why I love creative challenges and also, why self love is so damn important.

So here I go again:

Why Art Journaling?

Art Journaling (and personal blogging as the digital form of art journaling) has allowed me to move through many depressions in my life. Ever since I received my first journal at 7 years old, I have used my journal as a space for personal reflection, insight and expression. It's been a free and safe space to connect the dots of my creativity. The journal is a space to capture ideas and to play with the chaotic elements of the mind. The journal is a space to dream, observe, interact with life around us, as well as within us. 

How is art journaling different than any other journaling or arting?

Art Journaling always involves visuals and words. That’s the only thing that defines it, as far as I’m concerned. My form of art journaling is often focused on depth-work and making meaning, because that is my training and orientation. But art journaling can also be a companion for creative projects, which is also just as valuable. 

Some of us are more image-based and some of us are more word-based, but either way, the intention of art journaling is to weave the two halves of the brain, the two principles of the universe: the masculine and the feminine. The art journal holds space for both our linear and non-linear processes. It holds space for our emotions, fantasies & intuitive guidance as well as our story-telling, planning & problem-solving. It is both a space to capture our experience of life as it unfolds, to process the patterns of our past, and to channel what we want to manifest in our future. I believe it is opening up to our unique wholeness, and in particular, the integration of the masculine and feminine within, that brings us into our deepest potential and highest purpose. Art Journaling does just that. And the best part is it’s a low cost activity available to nearly everyone. 

Have I convinced you yet?

Okay, so why a month-long challenge?

I love time-based, daily, compassion-based (or internally-based) challenges because they work. They push us to reach beyond our normal limitations and comfort zones, but not from a place of external pressure, but rather from a place of inner organic expansion. The most inspiring, creative and productive times in my life were when I was in school or when I participated in creative challenges. Creative challenges have an awakening, reaffirming affect. They affirm who we are in our truest sense. And they affirm our connection to others. They grow community. And, they help us to create new habits that are more aligned with our higher selves. 

And what is Self Love?

Ah, this is a big one. And it’s a relatively new one, for me. 

Growing up, the message I had about self love was that it was embarrassing, shameful and should be hidden. I felt that I shouldn’t love myself and others shouldn’t love themselves. In this culture, we see so much narcissism that we get confused--we hope we aren’t narcissistic, or selfish, or have a big ego. We wouldn’t dare possibly share that we like or, god forbid, love ourselves. What if someone was offended or didn't agree that we were lovable?

Well I am on a mission to bring us into a much more expanded idea of what it means to wholly love ourselves with out sounding too much like a Self-Help guru from the 1980's.

What is self love? What is the difference between self love and narcissism, selfishness or egotism?

Self Love is about loving your wholeness. Loving all the parts. Including the ego, and its “petty” attachments and desires that allow it to keep going. It’s about loving the wounded parts, with their drive to heal, to become whole again. It’s about loving the heart, the natural healer we all possess, loving its feelings that radiate out—the joy, but also the grief. It’s about loving the body, with its flaws, its way of revealing the truths that the inside can no longer hold in. It’s about loving the world, too—our interaction with it. It's about loving our experience of the world—the vulnerability that comes just from being open and receptive.

Narcissism is not Self Love, in fact, it’s the opposite. Narcissism is loving only a fixed image of one of your selves. It is an unhealthy attachment to the frozen mask that covers a part of ourselves that is deeply wounded, so wounded that it cannot be loved. So in fact, ironically, Self Love is the cure for narcissism. The warmth of our love can melt even the most frozen, stuck, rejected places within.

Self Love is about The Self with a capital S. In Jungian terms, the Self is the organizing principle, the center that holds all conscious and unconscious experience. The Self is a microcosm of an individual that reflects the macrocosm of the universe. The Self holds all the smaller selves, or identities. And through this holding, we allow healing and transformation. The Self is the full potential of what is human, what is felt, imagined, thought about, seen, heard, sensed, tasted, touched, and also what is in shadow. The Self is wholeness. It is round, and with out end. Its center touches all centers. Its circumference has edges, but no end. Jung discovered the Self archetype is represented by a Mandala. A circle. 

To love The Self is to love all that you are, all that you experience. To unfreeze the parts of your heart that are afraid or ashamed. It means to actually feel into your heart. Bring its awareness to your life, to call on it when you are anxious or lonely. It means to practice non-judgmental awareness—within and around you. To know that all potential lives inside you and to judge it would be to cut yourself off from an aspect of life. 

Whether you participate in the art journal challenge, or not, I invite you to enter this new year, on this day of the full moon, to allow yourself to love yourself, all parts, voices and uncertainties. To make more and more space for what it is to be human. To let your heart heal you. 

With our self love in tact, we can change our outer world. I do not believe it’s possible to bring lasting change in the world until we fully can accept and love our inner world.

Let's love ourselves fully into 2018 so we can create a world flows from our own radical irrepressible self love.

As Always, Love & Creativity,

Zoë

The January 2018 Art Journal Challenge is here!

Join me on Monday, January 1st 2018 for my second January Art Journal Challenge!

The basic level of this challenge is free. This year's challenge is going to focus only on art journaling (as opposed to last year which was a combo of both blogging and art journaling). If you are a blogger, you can still adapt the prompts for your purposes.  This year's challenge is also different because I've added an additional coaching element for those who feel they want or need additional support, guidance and feedback. The basic level is free for everyone. The coaching package is $100 and includes a 60 minute phone session at the beginning of the month and email coaching through out the entire month. One additional new aspect of the 2018 challenge is that there is a theme! The month-long theme is: SELF LOVE. I am very excited about this theme, and self love is something I've been promoting and developing as an integral part of my own healing journey and in my work as a therapist, coach & teacher.

How does the 31 Day Art Journal Challenge work?

1) Sign up in the form at the bottom of this post with your email. Basic participation in this challenge is free.

2) If you aren't in it already, join my Art Journal Lab Facebook Group. The Facebook Group is where you will receive your art journaling prompt every day. I will post each prompt the night before. The challenge starts on January 1st and goes every day through January 31st.

3) Optional: Add the $100 coaching package by clicking the image to the right or at the bottom of this post. The coaching package includes one 60 minute phone session with me at the beginning of the month as well as email coaching with me for the whole month of January. The coaching offers an opportunity for you to identify your challenges, intentions & callings and to receive personalized attention, support and feedback on your writing, arting and self love practices. Note: Once you have paid for your coaching session, you will receive an email from me with a link to schedule your session and some questions to get you started.

4) Do the prompts every day in your journal. Use whatever supplies appeal to you. I recommend an 8.5 x 11 blank journal. If you are in Todos Santos, I have those journals for sale. Send me an email if you'd like to purchase one. Otherwise, you can order a journal like the one you see on the right, here.

Another exciting option is to participate in the Sketchbook Project at the Brooklyn Art Library in conjunction with this challenge. Sign up for the Sketchbook Project by January 5th, by buying a sketch book from them, which you can complete as part of this challenge. After you are done, mail your filled sketchbook for them to keep in their library, which features the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world!

5) Feel free to post your art journal pages, questions, process, or anything that relates to the self love or the topic of art journaling in the Facebook group. That is your space to connect with others as well as with me.

6) If you enjoy posting your pages on social media, please use the hashtag: #31dayjournalchallengejan18

I imagine everyone's reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. It may be because you want to get back into your writing and/or your art again in a daily way. You may just be to learn about art journaling. For some, it may be an opportunity to have a quiet moment to connect with yourself. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity. And for all of us, hopefully, it is simply a way to practice and increase self love! You may discover some new reasons along the way.

For me, this year's challenge is about three things:

1) To promote the inspiring, creative & healthy practice of art journaling

2) To build online community through creativity and authentic connection

3) To promote the practice of self love

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and words. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making, goal-setting and planning. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the common ground for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling is unique in that it combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. For the past five years, I have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos, Mexico, near where I live. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express.

I have a Masters’s in Counseling Psychology, with a focus on Expressive Arts Therapy, meaning I use drama, dance, music, writing and visual art as a form of therapeutic intervention with the goal of integrating the personality, healing trauma and practicing new ways of being. I also teach creativity, not only for all types of artists, but for anyone who wants to practice a more empowered, creative and compassionate way of being in the world. I believe the most important relationship we have is with ourselves, but this is often the relationship that gets shoved by the wayside as we tend to prioritize everything else: our spouse or partner, our children, our work, our home, our family of origin. I believe if we cannot engage in a creative, conscious, curious and compassionate way with ourselves, we are not living up to our full potential and cannot offer the full version of ourselves to anything we do. The more we know ourselves, and ultimately, accept and love ourselves, the more good we can do for our families, friends, communities and our world. It’s an inside out approach—which is the reverse of what we have been trained to do in our culture.

You do not have to be a trained artist or writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools on the blog. One of my life's missions is to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of the Self, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

I know this not only from the work I have done with my students and clients, but also from my own personal journey, which I have shared at two different presentations at Women Awakening, a women’s summit in Todos Santos, of which I am a co-creator. In my talk, I shared my philosophy, artwork, music and personal story, about what it means to be yourself, which is about being, and ultimately loving, all your selves. Sharing this talk was a personal revelation for me, as I discovered what it felt like to open myself up and share authentically, weaving my professional, personal, intellectual and artistic life in one space. My goal, more recently, has been to integrate these disparate parts of myself. I have intuitively felt that this way we separate our different selves is not just a problem for me, but for many others, and especially for women, who struggle so much with disappearing into our roles. The goal is not to disappear into any one role, but to bring your whole self to every role you do, so you have access to all your selves whenever you need them. I believe this is the goal of human development. And through our working with what we are, in an honest way, we also access our spiritual power. It has been my experience that when we contact our soul, we open up to spirit, which helps us expand into more love.

The reasons I host creative challenges it to help connect people to their creativity, passion and personal truth. Doing something every day creates a new habit that is affirming and helps you grow--expanding your sense of authentic self that you bring into the world. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding, and the sense of accomplishment from completing a whole month with a daily creative practice is a real thrill.

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

If you want to join me in this challenge, subscribe below with your email.

If you would like to add the $100 coaching package for personalized guidance and feedback, click the button below the form as well.

A Letter from ZOELAB Headquarters

ZOELAB DAY 92

Date of Original Post: Saturday, December 1, 2012

 

Dear Reader:

Welcome to a new month of ZOELAB! (Please note that if you subscribe to the RSS feed, you have to resubscribe by clicking on the RSS button every month.)

I sincerely hope you have been having as much fun reading and looking at ZOELAB as I have had creating and sharing it. I have been working hard on it, harder and more consistently than I have ever worked on a single project. (But really this is not a single project, but more an amalgamation of many projects.) 92 days in a row, so far (give or take some days of falling behind and catching up). We have reached the first quarter of the year, and every day I feel more and more inspired. I feel like I climbing slowly into the creative flow that I always dreamed of, but never had the discipline to make happen. That is why I made myself accountable for posting for 365 days in a row--I knew instinctively that it was the way for me to become the artist/person I have always wanted to be.

I have many goals and dreams for the next three quarters of ZOELAB, including: to enhance the website experience (with theme pages and an about page), to complete and report on projects, to promote ZOELAB to increase readership, to find ways to create a more interactive experience (research how), to write a book proposal based on themes from ZOELAB, to create a manifesto, to submit ZOELAB content to other websites, blogs, and magazines.

Right now I have a very specific goal for ZOELAB. I would like to have a reader whom I have never met. I would be very excited to know that someone I don’t know is enjoying ZOELAB. If you are out there, please give me a sign (in the form of an email.) I would love to hear from you. 

Also, if you are a happy reader, please spread the word by emailing the link to people you know who might enjoy it.

For those of you who have written to me: thank you for your comments, encouragement, and stories. Hearing from you makes my day. I want you to know that I am not only doing this happiness project for me, but I am also doing it for you. My aim is not only to keep myself inspired and creative, it is also to entertain, inspire, connect and communicate with you. This is an act of love and of revolution. I am risking my ego, my anonymity and my normalcy to open my heart and make this virtual connection. This experience so far has expanded my enchantment with every day living. I truly hope, it is, in some way doing the same for you. Thank you for experiencing this with me. It means the world to me that you are out there. 

Heart out,
Zoë

what I learned from posting words and images (almost) every day for a year

I am sharing here, in honor of completing the 31 Day Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge, my second to last post from my first blog, ZOELAB 365, where I blogged every day for a year. This is the learning and meaning I made from that intense year, which catapulted me out of postpartum depression and into a highly-charged creative inner life that has informed me, and my professional work, ever since. 

THE WRITING PROCESS

I love to write. But writing is very taxing on the mind. I need to be alert, awake, I need to feel clear. I need few distractions. Also, writing takes time. No wonder writers always seem to be writing. Writing is the most time consuming art for me. Of course there are times when writing is quick—sometimes a poem just flows out of me, or sometimes I do free writing from the unconscious that is uneditable. But, for a lot of the writing I do on here—autobiography, essays, story-telling and even poetry has become a labor I work at and edit. 

Writing cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes. Feeling rushed is no good for writing. No good at all. Yet, structure is very good for writing. Therefore, I like to give myself regular periods to write. I like writing every day for about an hour, but not to let time determine when I am done with a particular piece. Having watched the emotional damage an unrealistic writing deadline did for Hannah in Season Two of Girls, I am convinced that kind of writing deadline is no good for no one. 

There is nothing good or bad about this discovery—it just is. But it does lead me to want to change the parameters of my next project. Writing every day is great. Publishing every day is a challenge I am not up for again, at least not this next go round. It is too taxing on my brain. 

Writing in the mornings is ideal. Writing in the afternoons with a cup of coffee is great too—but if I drink coffee in the afternoons then I can’t sleep at night, so therefore it is not ideal.

Insomniac writing can be very good for me--way healthier than lying bed with thoughts circling.

PROCESS

I like to have different stations already set-up around the house with pens, pencils, markers paper or notebooks, recording devices, books.

THE LONG VIEW

One of the lessons I have learned over and over this year is basically a cliché—when we hear something said the same way enough times we no longer pay attention, but here it is: nothing great is easy. It’s true. It just is. Going for our dreams, building a life that mirrors our values, living life that is less governed by practicality than it is fun, going for happiness—all of these sound great, but all require enormous amounts of sacrifice and hard work, which isn’t always fun. And time. Building a dream takes enormous amounts of time. It’s hard to be patient with long-term goals, but if you are like me and Lucas, and have a low income, you must make up for lack of funds with creativity, time spent and acceptance of a lower standard of polish--with the understanding that it is all in process. This is something I never understood before I moved to Baja, or even before I met Lucas. He reminds me over and over again when I start to become despondent about the state of our house or the vermin factor that we are working on it—it’s improving a little bit every day. Be patient. Take some time for relaxation or fun. It would be awfully hard for me to stay balanced if it weren’t for Lucas holding up the other side of life.

It’s all about priorities. Every day I make little and big choices based on these priorities sometimes I find myself doing something that does not align with one value, but it aligns with another, but in that moment—I must prioritize one value over another. And what I have discovered in motherhood—is that more and more often—I choose what’s good for me in the moment because I believe I am a better mother when I take care of my own needs first. This is not to say I neglect Emilio when he truly needs something. This is to say that I let him watch a video if I really need a break and he is particularly demanding of my attention. This is to say that I eat a snack before playing with him to avoid getting grumpy and hungry later. This is to say I go out dancing with my friends and risk being tired the next day so that I can release some energy and have fun and grown up time. 

AESTHETIC

I have honed my aesthetic which is fueled by different combinations of reality: dirt, simplicity, naiveté, freedom, and expression over perfection of skill. 

ORGANIZATION

Organization seems to be the bane of many creative people’s existence. I have come to believe disorganization is really an unwillingness to spend time organizing when that time can be used writing, thinking, reading, painting, lying on the couch, chatting with a friend, almost anything else seems more fun/valuable/less daunting. However, if I find a way to feel creative about organizing, and when I realize how useful it is for creativity, to be organized, organizing takes on a whole new meaning. The problem is organizing is quite time-consuming and overwhelming, it is best to take it one step at a time. Conquer one area of the house, or one aspect of my work at a time.

Being organized makes my creative time more efficient, fun and smooth. I think of creativity as a constantly flowing river that runs through us and through everything in the world. Our job is to continually work on letting that water flow, lest it become stagnant and disease-ridden mosquitoes hatch their eggs in it.

MEANING

I make meaning by paying attention and by making connection between things. I spin those connections into art.  

A YEAR

Is not nearly enough time to build something. Especially not a blog or a relationship or a business or anything at all. A lot can happen in a year, and yet, building something is a slow process. Especially if you are doing it all by yourself. But I have learned that I don’t want to build it all by myself. I am ready to have more collaborations/co-creations. 

I view creative collaborations as a game that two people agree to make up rules for as they go along.

PROCESS

As an artist, I have always been interested in revealing the process of art. Of artifice. As a way to burn through the ego and get to something more authentic, more spontaneous, more honest, more alive. I believe the truly revolutionary thing I am trying to do here is to study and reveal process. Process is our mess--it’s what happens on the way to what we show to the world. But I think process is what’s most interesting and valuable because it is how we learn, and how we learn is a big part of who we are. 

PERFORMANCE

One of the essential truths about me is that I am a performer. Now, I am not sure if a performer is the same thing as an extrovert, but certainly the two are related. However, I think the essential difference is that performance has around it an air of make-believe. Even if the performer is being him/herself to a certain degree, there is an assumed set of imaginary rules, an invisible (or sometimes visible) stage, frame or context that heightens what is being performed. A performer is creating, ideally, with a certain degree of spontaneity. Another aspect of performance that differentiates it from say, drawing, or writing, is physicality. The body. This is not to say that the body is not involved in drawing or writing, but usually not consciously--not for me anyway. The body is not usually a part of the creative process (except in the case of performance art, or artists who use their body as part of the work.) In performance—music, dance, acting—the body is the mode of communication in a more conscious way. I have really missed that. Performance is also about being seen. Making a more direct connection with the viewer. The viewer becomes the audience—it is more reciprocal. This kind of reciprocity is what I long for. There were moments of performance in zoelab 365, but it certainly was not the main focus, and the kind of blogging I did did not inspire performance. Performance is also a very vulnerable thing—the spontaneity lends itself to that kind of vulnerability which is both an attraction and a fear for me. I am not sure if I was fully ready to embark on that kind of journey—as putting myself out the public in the way that I have was already a new and risky thing. By now, after doing it every day (or nearly every day) I have gotten used to it.

HAPPINESS

What I learned is happiness is not a final destination, but a goal that is in the background of every choice I make. It is a pursuit. Perhaps satisfaction is really the state I am heading towards, and satisfaction is certainly not an outwardly-measured state. Satisfaction has everything to do with the meaning I make and the point of view I take.

PHOTOGRAPHY

When it comes to color, composition and style I have a very good eye as a photographer, however, I possess a certain laziness when it comes to technical skill. After being a photographer for twenty five years, I still basically don’t know how to use a flash, and therefore, almost never use one (except when shooting grass or trees or bugs—which looks awesome with a flash). The camera I use for most of my photos, except for my earlier work which was shot with a Nikon 35 mm film camera, is a Canon G12. It’s a great camera—but it is not at all a professional-level camera. It’s perfect for my everyday uses. I have mixed feelings about creating images that are “magazine style” – one of the key ingredients for this kind of imagery is using an SLR (single lens reflex) that creates short depth of field. This makes all photos look more professional, even when shot by an amateur. I have mixed feelings because an aspect, not only of my aesthetic, but of my art ethic is what as known in the music world as a “punk rock ethic,” or a “do it yourself” ethic. I have always been interested in exploring the high art/low art crossover, and the everyday ness of certain kind of art forms. I like the work to be accessible that gives people a feeling of “I can do that too!” And yet, at the same time, I do want my images to look as good as possible—I may be able to express even more creativity through having a camera that is that much sharper.  That being said,  one of my new goals is to explore using a higher quality camera--using Lucas’ 40D or even his new Mark 2 to get better, cleaner, sharper shots.

EVERY DAY

It was nearly impossible to recover/make up for a missed post. There were weeks where I tried for a while, but I’d get too behind, and then I had to put a little hole so that I could keep up with the current day I was blogging about. 

I love having something creative I do every day, but having to share it everyday created more drama in my life than I would like.

LONELINESS

I would say loneliness was a big part of why I decide to do this project. The interesting thing is my loneliness does not have a self pity feeling to it--I recognize that I could live a less lonely existence if I wanted, but I recognize some part of me needs loneliness. That perhaps loneliness is a an important part of my creative process. As is collaboration. This blog did not so much assuage my loneliness as much as clarify it. I think an artist needs both loneliness and connection. Again, it comes down to balance.

BALANCE

Perfection is the enemy of balance. Or rather, if the goal is to live a balanced life—accepting that no one thing is bad, as long is it is in balance with its opposite--then there is no room for perfection.

THOROUGHNESS

Sometimes it is my thoroughness, my desire to adhere to truth, my compulsion to do what I said I was going to do, that offers a certain kind of dizzy craziness. My oppressiveness in standards. It was the kind of effort that kept me up past midnight many times per week, or allowed me to let the house get filthy, or to let Emilio watch more videos than I think is good for him. It put a lot of my relationship with Lucas on hold, and made it so I had less time for other activities. It put me out of balance, as most of the work I did here was very Left Brain. I developed my mind and my work ethic more than anything, but I miss the more emotional, sensual parts of creative experience.

I cannot say exactly, but I estimate, that on average, it took 2.5 hours to make a post— after 350 days (I missed 15), that adds up to 875 hours of work, divided by 52 weeks, which is about seventeen hours a week. That is more time than I spend doing anything else other than sleeping—cleaning, cooking, exercising, working, reading, etc. It was a big commitment, but it was so worth it. Though I must be honest, I am so glad it’s about to be over.

Tools of the practice: Art Journal Lab

So now, I keep in my zippered pencil case for on the go art journaling: 

• 2-5 sharpies in my favorite colors: neon pink, dark blue, black, yellow, gray (fine, ultra fine)
• 2 mechanical pencils (1.3 mm, .5 mm)
• one mechanical eraser
• 1, 2 black Microns (size 01)
• 1-2 Pigma brush tip pens, in black and green or brown
• A yellow-green neon highlighter
• My favorite writing pen is often hard to find here in Baja, the Pilot Precise V7 Rolling Ball, black in ultra fine tip.

In my purse, I keep a 5.5 x 8 spiral bound journal

In my vintage green Samsonite hard briefcase, which I use as my indestructible computer case, I keep my 8.5 x 11 spiral-bound journal

In other words, I am NEVER with out my journal. And almost never with out my computer.

In 2011, getting ready for a two month family trip to Europe, I decided I wanted to draw and write during my travels, so I bought myself a small square spiral pad, a varied selection of markers, pencils and pens and a little zippered pouch to keep it all in. I was so excited by the idea of creating my own travel kit of varied supplies, rather than just bringing one set of the same type of utensil.

My plan for that trip was to create a drawing for each city we visited, something that summed up my experience and impressions of the place. I made about three, but dropped the exercise after that. But, that book and that idea stayed with me, and I used it to create illustrations for my ZOELAB 365 project, when I blogged everyday for a year. 

Two years ago, I decided to try to sell art journaling supplies at the local Farmers Market, near where I live in Southern Baja, Mexico. I bought the same zippered cases I had bought myself for my trip, as it turns out the company that makes those cases, Blue Q, has its headquarters in the Berskshires, where my parents live, and they know the owners. I LOVE their products because they are made from 95% post consumer materials, 1% goes to charity, and they are so useful, clever and good-looking. So it felt like a win-win to sell their products as way to promote art journaling and meet new people. 

This November, my husband and I opened Luz Gallery, a photography and graphics gallery in the heart of Todos Santos. I knew I would continue to sell the tools that I love to use for art journaling. Spiral bound notebooks of different sizes, moleskines (which are lightweight and great for travel), Micron pens (brush tip and regular tip), Sharpies of different types, and those same zippered cases from Blue Q. 

And now, for this 31 Day Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge, I am motivated again to share my recommendations for the tools of art journaling. Of course, everyone is different. Some people love colored pencils (pencils of color), water colors, photography, collage, or even crayons! I have an amazing artist/illustrator friend who loves to buy herself a full box of 64 Crayola crayons as a treat. 

As for me, I am mostly a marker and pen girl. Always have been. I studied oil painting in high school and college. But then decided it wasn't for me. I also have dabbled in watercolor. And find it very fun and playful. But, when it comes to drawing in my journal. I have always been crazy for that more graphic-y, comic-book-y, children's illustration look. I love black pen. I love filling in those lines with markers. My drawings have a naive look to them (sort of on purpose, sort of out laziness). Sometimes I try to make things look more realistic, but I also love the spontaneity of creating a line in ink and committing to its irregularity. 

However, one day, I did rediscover the pencil, and things have changed for me. It all started when I decided I really wanted to learn hand-lettering (and eventually sign painting) I bought a book on the topic, which was very inspiring and useful. It's a book by Mary Kate McDevitt called: Hand-Lettering Ledger: A Practical Guide to Creating Serif, Script, Illustrated, Ornate, and Other Totally Original Hand-Drawn Styles. Mary Kate advises in her book to pencil out your hand lettering before you ink it in, and then erase original pencil lines. It makes total sense, right? But I had never before thought of sketching letters first in pencil and then inking them. Using a pencil was one of those obvious revelations. Immediately, I started to get that I was capable of making my lettering and drawing more technically correct, if I just allowed myself to take the time. And used an eraser! 

But more recently, I have developed another hand-lettering technique, which is spontaneous and improvisational, which truly is much more my style. It's block letters made with a sharpie, with no sketching involved. I used it for this promo I made for my new song Rock-n-Roll Thing using this technique, which I videos on time-lapse with my iphone. The iphone is another tool that is very new to me. I just received my first smart phone as a gift in May, and it has changed a lot of how I do my blogging and social media creativity. 

If you want to jumpstart your creativity, whether you are an artist, writer, performer or just someone who wants to feel more engaged with daily life, I highly recommend that you create a system of capturing that works for you. Keep a notebook by your bedside table. One in your bag or purse. One at your desk. Always travel with something to sketch and take notes with. 

This is how we develop ideas, capture insights and engage with our daily life, even the most mundane aspects. Nothing is too shallow nor too deep to capture. 

There are so many more tools out there. But I wanted to start with the basics. Those are my basics.

What are yours?

A List of Future Blog Posts and Essay Topics

I have an opportunity to start blogging for a major website, yet I have hesitated to publish there. It's not fear exactly, that has kept me from taking that leap, but maybe a need for clarity, before I feel ready to put my voice out there in a bigger way.

Here is my list of blog post ideas (as well as longer essay pieces that I will eventually publish) that I have been mulling over.

• What is creativity?

• What is art journaling?

• How I lifted myself out of postpartum depression through art journaling, blogging and dancing

• How to use technology selectively

• How to be authentic on social media

• Phases of Creativity

• Is Our Obssession with Yoga is Killing Our Creativity?

• Art Advice in Opposites

• How to discover your soul’s code

• How to deal with the inner critic

• On being both an introvert and an extrovert

• What I love about living in Baja

• Narcissism, how to cure it and how it’s the last taboo

• How to be all your selves

• On death and the afterlife

• How you can bring more singing, dancing, writing, drawing & acting into your life

• Why I think Buddhism is sexist

• Why it’s important to be in love with yourself

• Love is the antidote for shame

• I am not an expat, I am an immigrant

• Creative Motherhood

• My philosophy: Living Life as Art

• A personal history of spirituality

• On Being In-Between: Androgyny, bisexuality, bilingualism, biculturalism and multi-identity

• How to create a class from a place of complete selfishness

• The paradox of parenthood and childhood

• How to slow down

• How to live your dreams after 40

• How to be a bad off-the-gridder, but an off-the-gridder all the same

• Why I want to be the voice of my (very small) generation

I am curious to hear what you think, which ones resonate with you or spark your curiosity? 

Why I must write

To write

before they wake up

before the sun rises

before the tea boils

before my thoughts become practical.

To write before I say why I shouldn’t

before I eat something,

before my stomach settles,

before I take a shit,

before I take off the layers of me that I put on for other people,

before

before

before.

Because if I do not write, something in me will surely die.

What is it? This something?

It is rain.

It is paradise.

It is the smallest voice of the surest truth.

It is the part that cannot speak.

It is the part that needs protection.

It is the part that saw me grow into a woman.

It is my voice.

Of invisible knowledge.

Of inside celebration.

Of inner heartache for the invisible and indescribable and untouchable.

I must get others to join me—in this waking up of the voice. 

In this holy act that no one will ask us to do.

I must lead the way for the others who are even quieter than me.

I ask you to wake up your own voice!

Let this voice

lead you to faraway places

allow you to end jobs and relationships and situations

that squelch this voice.

Or, at the very least,

if you cannot leave anything,

Make a space for yourself:

It can be a very small—

Small enough for you and your hands, and whatever you need to express your voice.

But, by all means, express this voice inside of you.

Because if you do not,

Something in you will surely die.

You will find it again, one day, when you return to the gentle listening,

But the voice will need some thawing and some massaging.

Something to WAKE IT UP!

So instead of waiting, 

Just do it now.

Okay?

Do it first. 

Before the kids wake up.

Before the sun rises.

Before the coughing stops.

Before you feel alright.

Before the other voices call you away.

Because I have a secret to tell you:

you were born an artist.

Because you have a soul,

and that soul speaks.

Your soul speaks!

It speaks in languages that are quieter and complex and sometimes unseen.

The language it speaks

is a kaleidoscope of pain and longing

And celebration.

The soul is eternal, as is art.

Which is to say, it exists outside of time.

Your job is to become alive to this language, this voice.

To ride inside time,

Like a mother attuned to her child’s quiverings and stirrings.

It belongs to you, but it belongs to the world.

Your soul doesn’t care 

If your voice sounds good.

It only wants to sound like itself.

Start From Where You Are For Blogging and Art Journaling

This is not the first time I have titled a blog post with this title. And it won't be the last either. 

Start from where you are.

It's the best advice I can give anyone looking to explore their creativity, find truth, or get started on a project that feels daunting.  For this advice, I am thinking of the bloggers and art journalers who have joined me on this month-long challenge to blog or art journal every day. I am thinking of my commitment to this practice, and the inspiration that I want to offer people.

I love this advice so much that I even teamed up with my friend/collaborator/colleague Holly Mae Haddock, and together, we wrote a song about it when I told her how I was going through a stuck period with songwriting, singing and guitar playing. It's called: Where I Am.

Here is the chorus:

I'm gonna start from where I am.  

With no memory or plan.                                                                                                                

I'm gonna offer who I am.                                                                                                                    

I'll be my own biggest fan.

How do you start from where you are? 

For me, it's always about looking within. Connecting within. It usually means closing the eyes. Slowing down the breath. Opening the imagination. It means turning on our awareness. What do we actually feel? It means noticing what kind of energy do we have right now in this moment, before we change it all with a thought, with a "should" or a "have to"?

And then, once we get a little taste of it, we create from that place. Maybe I notice I am feeling anxious and I focus on that feeling for a moment, and then draw that feeling. Or maybe it means I have an image of a little girl, and I want to create from the space that she occupies inside me, using crayons, or dancing to music she likes. 

For art journaling, it means capturing an essence of our experience, what is up for us, what feels important, juicy, or even scary. If you are art journaling, it is most likely private, and so the space of the journal page is a really safe place to let it all out. There are no limits to what you can create there--sometimes it's nice to start with something really simple. A feeling, an image, something that you are connecting with in this very moment. And then let it flow from that place.

Every blogger is different in terms of your goal, themes, styles, topics. My blogging sweet spot is about communicating something that usually stays inside. Sharing something that I would normally want to hide from people in everyday conversation. I like the feeling of the risk of sharing that kind of material on my blog. The shadow. It's what drives me. My shadow material might not look the same as yours--and it might not seem risky to you. But what's important is how it feels to you, the blogger. 

Morning Pages

One of the best, easiest and most rewarding practices for art journaling or blogging, is morning pages. For those who don't know, morning pages is an exercise that Julia Cameron invented in her book about the spirituality of creativity called The Artist's Way. It's basically the same thing as stream of consciousness writing. Her version is write 3 pages in a notebook with a pen or pencil with out stopping. I have adapted her exercise for my Art Journal Lab class, and set the timer for 15 minutes and do not limit the exercise to the morning (as our class meets in the afternoon.) Also, I am okay with doing the practice on a computer, though Julia insists on doing the morning pages with paper and pen. What matters most, in my opinion, is that you write with out editing, with out stopping, with out letting the critic get in your way. You write out the most mundane stuff in your mind, as well as the deepest stuff. It's a writing meditation, and it works. It allows us to get to know the contents of our mind before we block ourselves. The writing does not have to be good or even interesting. It's a process exercise designed to empty the chatter in our mind, and to let out the thoughts and feelings that are under that white noise. So on days you really don't know what to do with your blogging or your art journaling. Just write for 15 minutes with out stopping. If you are blogging, you might find something useful in there that you can edit or expand afterwards and turn into a blog post.

For the visual component, one thing you can do with your morning pages is scan the words after you are done to look for words that feel important to you. You can circle them with a colored pen (pen of color) and then choose one or a few to illustrate your blog post or your journal. Let yourself play--it's not about perfection but about exploring your visual senses in addition to your verbal expression.

In June 2015, I decided to quit Facebook because I was feeling frustrated by the lack of authentic expression on there--mine and others. I wanted to be real, but I didn't feel safe to be real, so I returned to my blog and committed to blogging daily for the month of June. I gave myself the parameter of writing daily for 15 minutes (morning pages on the computer). Then I gave myself another half hour to edit and expand, and add imagery and turn into a blog post. It was such a wonderful way to make my blog feel more alive, and I developed a more confessional style. I will be sharing some of those blog posts with you soon!

Let me know in the comments below how it goes for you to start from where you are.

Does any resistance come up?

If so, start from there. 

31 Day Art Journaling and Blogging Challenge

Join me on January 1st 2017 for my next 31 day challenge. I will be blogging and/or art journaling every day for the month of January in order to promote art journaling, return to my hiatus from blogging regularly, and to develop my art journal lab online course which I plan to release on my website in 2017. 

This creative challenge combines Art Journaling and Blogging. Meaning, if you choose to join this challenge, you can pick one of these daily practices, or both—alternating between the two, however you feel inclined to do it. In some cases your art journaling practice might become a digitized blog post. 

I imagine your reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. Some may use it as a way to get back into blogging or to start your first blog. For some, it may be a very private practice of meditative writing and drawing. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity.

For me it is about four things: 1) To get back into blogging 2) To develop and my material for the upcoming art journal lab online course 3) To promote and teach art journaling 4) To attract new readers to my blog

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and text. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the basis for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. I also have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos for the past five years. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express. I have a Masters’s in Counseling Psychology, with a focus on Expressive Arts Therapy, meaning I use drama, dance, music, writing and visual art as a form of therapeutic intervention with the goal of integrating the personality, healing trauma and practicing new ways of being. I also teach creativity, not only for all types of artists, but for anyone who wants to practice a more empowered, creative and compassionate way of being in the world. I believe the most important relationship we have is with ourselves, but this is often the relationship that gets shoved by the wayside as we tend to prioritize everything else: our spouse or partner, our children, our work, our home, our family of origin. I believe if we cannot engage in a creative, conscious, curious and compassionate way with ourselves, we are not living up to our full potential and cannot offer the full version of ourselves to anything we do. The more we know ourselves, and ultimately, accept and love ourselves, the more good we can do for our families, friends, communities and our world. It’s an inside out approach—which is the reverse of what we have been trained to do in our culture.

You do not have to be a trained artist or writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools on the blog. My mission in life for a while now, has been to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of ourself, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

I know this not only from the work I have done with my students and clients, but also from my own personal journey, which I recently shared in my talk at Women Awakening, the first women’s summit in Todos Santos. In my talk, I shared my philosophy, artwork, music and personal story, about what it means to be yourself, which is about being, and ultimately loving, all your selves. Sharing this talk was a personal revelation for me, as I discovered what it felt like to open myself up and share authentically, weaving my professional, personal, intellectual and artistic life in one space. My goal, recently, has been to integrate these disparate parts of myself. I have intuitively felt that this way we separate our different selves is not just a problem for me, but for many others, and especially for women, who struggle so much with disappearing into our roles. The goal is not to disappear into any one role, but to bring your whole self to every role you do, so you have access to all your selves whenever you need them. I believe this is the goal of human development. And through our working with what we are, in an honest way, we also access our spiritual power. It has been my experience that when we contact our soul, spirit arrives, aiding that process.

What is Blogging?

As many of us know, the reasons and ways to blog can vary greatly. It can be a tool to promote business, a way to keep track of your travels or other kinds of adventures, or a way to promote and share your creative work, political ideas, or simply to connect with your inner life. Whether it is for your business, for personal, or political expression, I believe a successful blog always stems from personal truth. If your business or your politics has no degree of personal connection for you, then perhaps you already have a great topic to or journal or blog about why this is so.

The most difficult and most important part of what it means to blog, or even journal, is that it is regular, preferably daily. It is also, as many bloggers will attest, the key to success. (Getting readers to read your blog.) From my experiences with daily practices, which is something I promote in my art journal lab class, as well as personally, I have come to believe in the amazing power of creating a daily practice, especially something that helps you connect with yourself, with the invisible world, feelings and other parts of us that we usually work hard to avoid, push down or unconsciously act out on others. These types of inward-directed daily practices keep us holistically healthy because they keep us connected to something true and deep in us.  These kinds of daily practices have helped me out depression, anxiety, a sense of loss, relationship issues, and more. They have helped me enormously with my creativity as an artist and as a mom and human being—when you do something daily, it forces you to be more creative with it—otherwise you get bored. We tend to look for new ways, new approaches when we know we have to do it everyday. 

So, use the term blogging however you feel connected to it—my definition is as follows:

To share words and images (hopefully self-generated) online about any topic, as long as it has has meaning or importance to you personally. One additional other feature: it must be dated for it to be a blog post, otherwise it is just a webpage. The date makes it time-connected, and therefore, applicable to a certain moment of time for you. This is the same for art journaling.

I love blogging because it delivers a sense of immediacy that appeals to the performer in me. Blogging is a digital performance—the act of baring a personal truth, an art piece, or just a slice of life, with others, sometimes strangers, sometimes not, brings me a certain thrill. If it doesn’t feel thrilling, a tiny bit risky, I usually don’t blog about it. For each of us the thrill will come for different reasons, in different areas. What is risky for me may not feel risky for you. And so it is very much up to you to come up with your own topics to write about. A blog post can be very simple or complex. There is no rule in this department. A blog post might simply be sharing a photograph you took that day and sharing a little caption or small story or sentence that explains it. Other times a blog post might be a highly informative piece that is designed to help and/or inside others learn a specific skill (EG: this post you are reading now.) Some blog posts have taken me 15 minutes to create, others have taken four hours. Neither is better than the other—the beauty of blogging is that it keeps going. We can’t get to hung up on our last blog post, because we are already thinking about our next one! This represents the natural flow of life. We cannot afford to get perfectionistic about our daily practices, they are designed for us to make mistakes, and to learn and grow from them, that is why they are practices. If you think of your blog or your art journaling as a practice and it will help you let go of the inner critic.

Those are the reasons I create these challenges--creativity, connection, personal truth. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding. 

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

STAY TUNED FOR JANUARY 2019 ART JOURNALING/BLOGGING CHALLENGE!

That which is all of you

Today I meditated, and I felt through all my chakras. And I saw again how my stuckness is in chakra 3 and 4. Power and Love. And that through my love of 3 and 4, my liberation of 3 and 4, I will become whole and fulfill my destiny.

I talk about destiny because I feel it. It’s a feeling in me, that I’ve always had. It’s consistently there and it always relates to voice, of being seen and heard. Of reaching many people. My destiny always speaks to me of the child, of the woman, and the man. My destiny speaks to me of love. My destiny speaks to me of innocence and kindness and creativity. My destiny speaks to me of community. Of human potential. My destiny speaks to me of transformation—the butterfly. And annihilation and creativity—the spider. And what is the symbol of love? The heart. And what is the symbol of wholeness? The circle. And what is the symbol of integrating opposites—the mandorla. The circles overlapping. And so these are my symbols.

What is unique in you that must emerge in this lifetime?

It is your duty to give birth to it.

During my meditation, I wrote something in my head.

It went like this:

Let’s assume for a moment that you do have gifts. That you possess something so unique and so beautiful that no one can touch it. No one can reproduce it or steal it. It belongs only to you and will be with you through this lifetime and possibly into the next.

And if you trusted and had faith in your gifts, you would know how to nurture and protect them as if they were your children.

And then what?

You must find a way to look unflinchingly at your inner truth. You must find a way in, and bring wholehearted compassion to all the dark corners of your being. You must love all of yourself. The pettiness of the ego, the fear, the hatred, the intense neediness of the child. You must love all of it. And through that love, you will find the secret gold of your empowerment, and the fullness of your unique gifts.

You must, by any means, find a way to let your ego work in service of your gifts. You must learn to work hard, harder than you thought you were capable of, not hard in the sense of rushing around and busyness, but hard in the sense of steadfast and devoted. A labor of love. That kind of labor—where it transcends work, and feels like deliverance of your soul.

And then, by all means, you must find a way to share the fruits of your labor. You must be willing to dig down deep and face the fear that keeps you hidden and keeps your vulnerability disguised. You must find a way to let this work by seen. Not by anyone. But by those who have earned your trust. One at a time, gradually, with gratitude and non-attachment, lifting the veil, sharing the truth of your soul.

I came here to liberate the soul from the constrictions of culture. The constrictions of gender, of identity, of race, of abuse, of neglect, of trauma, of avoidance, of apathy, of the illusion of isolation, of brokenness. I came here to teach you how to liberate yourself from the box in which you put yourself. I came here to remind you who you really are. That you are complete and full of love. That you are much more than your mind. Or body. That you are both a fully unique soul that lives on this planet in this precious lifetime, and you are part of something much larger than any one mind can fathom. Your heart beats in the universal rhythm of the one heart, the one love. This is the one love of Bob Marley, and Jesus, and Buddha, and Mohammad. This is the one love of Rumi and John Lennon, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. And what about the women, hidden in history, who felt and feel this message? Who know this with out even speaking its name. Yes, them, too. Us, too. This is the one love of all of humanity.

We are all of evil and of good. We are all of darkness and of light. When we encompass all of who we are in love, we no longer suffer. We find our wholeness, and we can shine.

7.4 billion bodies. 7.4 billion minds. 7.4 billion souls.

One Heart.