Caroline Allen's Blog

When you write memoir, you're not just telling your story, you're relaying the tales of the seven generations before you. When you're healing with memoir, you're not just mending yourself, you're restoring your ancestors (yes, even those who have passed).

It's an tremendous, sacred, sometimes overwhelming task.

Semi-autobiographical fiction also invokes the stories of our predecessors. I know this happened to me in the writing of my novel, Earth. Oh how it drew up the specters of my Missouri kinfolk.

Often you're the very first person ever to chronicle this multi-generational journey -- you're giving the women before you a voice. You're invoking their thwarted hopes and dreams. Their traumas. Their love. Their regrets.

What a beautiful weighty purpose.

I've worked with dozens of memoir writers, and have found this in my own writing -- emotions can become overwhelming during the writing process. The beauty and the poetry are there, too, but the grief can weigh heavily on a writer's shoulders.

Here are five tips for handling telling your story, and the story of your ancestors.

1. Go slowly. Really slowly. Like a snail's pace. Write just one story. Sit for a few days with the emotions. We feel our mother's repressed emotions when we're growing up. We feel her mother's and her mother's mother's. Finally these stories are getting aired, chronicled, acknowledged. You're not just dealing with your emotions -- you have ancestral emotions embedded in your DNA.

2. Don't worry if you can't verify all of the stories you've been told about your predecessors. Tell the ones you know. That's all you can do. Verify where you can. But don't shut the project down simply because you don't have written proof. It's your job as the family chronicler to tell the stories for posterity. Don't forget to write the happy tales too! Don't forget the joy.

3. Circle the wagons. Let friends and loved ones know what you're doing. Call in your healers, therapists, your self-care practices, like yoga, meditation, journaling -- I wouldn't recommend writing a memoir without a great deal of self-care. You may experience body pain. Your back goes out. Hip pain. Stomach problems. These are common. Take great care. Keep a process journal, and write out the emotions that come up.

4. Boundary your writing sessions. Open and close your writing session with a ritual, light a candle, acknowledge that you're diving into the soul of the work, and when the session is finished, blow out the candle, release the writing. Even when you do this, sometimes the pain of your people can bleed into your every day life. Keep practicing. Over time, the boundaries solidify.

5. Create an altar and invoke spiritual help. There is so much help just waiting for you to open the door. Put photos of your ancestors onto the altar. Objects they love. Light a candle. Invoke ease. Invoke help. We deserve all the assistance we can get as the chroniclers of our family lineage.

Do not underestimate the task you've agreed to undertake this lifetime. Treat it and yourself gently. Take great care. Accept help. This is a karmic, epic heroine's journey. And you've been called.

Is our purpose limited only to the work we do, or is it more than that? Is it just what we turn on for clients or a zone we only get into when we're writing our books? Do we turn it off for the most of the day and week?

What if we let that passion and purpose permeate everything, all of our relationships, even how we keep our house, how we cook food, how we look at the view out the window, how we perceive the world? What if our purpose and passion gave more SOUL to every aspect of our lives.

While thinking about this, I had a dream where I was reminded of a scene in my novel Water.

In the following autobiographical scene, I describe my first workshop on shamanism in Seattle with the famous shamanic teacher Michael Harner. A large group of us sit in a circle. For those who don't know shamanism, part of it includes doing visualizations, taking "journeys" to meet spirit guides to ask them questions. The following recounts my first time ever "journeying" for another person.

***

I turn to the woman beside me. She looks like Tammy Faye. Short and round, a tight perm, pearl necklace, pearl earrings. Her perfume overwhelms me. As I look her over, she looks me over. My skinny jeans, tight concert t-shirt, combat boots. We are an odd couple. We are two people who would never hang out.

The assistant says we must give our partner a question, and we will go on simultaneous shamanic journeys to ask the other person's guides for answers.

I ask her what her question is and she says, “How can I expand my work as a Christian missionary?” I think: how odd and wonderful that she’s Christian, and she’s here doing this shamanic workshop, something so pagan.

We’re told to lie back and have the sides of our bodies touching. The drumming starts. I find myself immediately transported.

I'm at a river bank. The grit and mud, the sparse grass like balding hair, it’s as real to me as anything in normal reality. A guide comes up beside me; he looks like Jesus. In front of me is a small pool of water. Beyond the small pool is a narrow strip of land, and beyond that a wide river with a strong current. It’s muddy and reminds me of the Missouri River.

Jesus hands me a wafer, the body of Christ. I know it well from Catholic Mass. He tells me, “Put the wafer on the ground, in the grass.” I do so. He traces around it with his finger. “This is the extent of the space it takes up,” he says. “You see the space it occupies?”

I nod.

“Now put it in the pool.”

I do so, placing it into the tiny, still pool in front of me. It breaks apart and dissolves.

“Now, in this small pool, it has dissolved, and see what space it takes up," Jesus says. The pool is less than two feet in diameter.

I nod.

“Now watch this.” The river swells, breaks the bank, and swirls into the tiny pool. The river absorbs the pool and the tiny particles within it, and the current pulls it out and away. “Now see the space the wafer takes up. It flows in vast directions.”

I nod.

He says, “Tell her to bring her Christianity into every area of her life, not just church. Tell her to dissolve it into the waters of her soul and have it permeate her every breath.”

I hear rapid drumming and this is the cue that we're meant to come out of the meditation. I do so and sit up and blink my eyes. The woman also sits up.

I give her the message word for word, with all of the visuals. She melts. She cries.

“Yes, I keep my Christianity at the church. You’re right. It needs to be everywhere in my life.” She has the bluest, most gentle eyes. I didn’t notice them before. She thinks for a while, then looks at me with such trust until I melt. “Thank you.” (She tells me the answer to my question but I'm editing that out here for brevity.)

She hugs me. I don’t see her as “other” anymore, like I did before. I realize we are both just people, just living, just doing our best.

***

Think about this for yourself. How much of your spiritual/creative life is a wafer that you keep limited to the grassy area of client calls or the 30 minutes you do yoga? How much of your spiritual/creative work is compartmentalized?

I know when I attempt to let soul permeate everything, I'm so much happier, so much more fulfilled. When I see a person or the forest or even my dog as a painting of lights and darks, when I see it all as poetry, my soul sings. What if we could see the soul in paying our bills?

What if our soul work is a conversation we bring everywhere, waters we swim in all day, an energy we bring with us wherever we go, the very air we breathe.

What if you dissolved your soul expression into the very current of your life?

In Water,, my fourth novel, I describe my own dark night of the soul more than 25 years ago, and how finding my voice as a novelist and mystic helped pull me out of it.

Today, depression, and anxiety are skyrocketing as the world goes through an unprecedented shift.

Just as meditation, yoga and exercise can help during dark times, so too can a disciplined, ongoing creative practice.

Here are some tips for using your creativity to pull you back into the light.
1. Slow and steady wins the race. Set regular days and times aside for your creative practice. Over time that schedule will get locked into your psyche. Clients will call me to discuss their dark nights of the soul. I'll ask them about their creative practice and sometimes they'll answer, "Yeah, yeah, I did the 'creativity' thing last year. Been there. Done that." That's like saying, "I watered that plant a year ago, I don't know why it's dying!" It's like going to the gym once a year and wondering why you haven't built any muscles. You have to do a creative practice regularly for years to see real results. You have to build the muscle over time.
2. Paint the darkness. Write the darkness. I'm working on a young adult novel now called Indigo -- and I'm folding in the wildfires into the narrative. I was evacuated one year ago this month as the Riverside Fire burned 276,000 acres of forestland. The way I deal with the emotions around this is to enfold it into the plot and characterization of my novels. To find poetry and soul amidst the destruction.
3. Creativity is so wonderful because it uses every emotion. You don't have to have it together. You don't have to look good. You can use every single emotion in the painting and in the writing. That's why I love being an artist. No hiding.
4. Do your creative practice even if you feel like crap. You don't have to feel good to do good art or writing. In fact, some of my best art comes when I feel horrible, broken open and raw.
5. Don't think: What use is creativity now? You're wrong. It's of tremendous importance. Look at what happened with the pandemic. Where did people turn? To the artists, to the writers, to the filmmakers, to the actors -- to Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime and Apple TV. Who created the content? Artists. Writers. Actors! Your craft is needed now more than ever. People need a soulful way to approach this chaos.
6. Many of us have more time now than ever before because of the pandemic. Look at the lockdown as a way to go deeply into yourself, find that creative spark, blow on it, nurture it, build it into a transformative force.

Want to know more about the dark night of the soul and creativity? Listen here to my conversation with Coach Ellen Newhouse.

Need more guidance? Besides ongoing book coaching, I offer all kinds of sessions to help you get back on track with your creativity. I'm passionate about helping people reconnect with their raw, passionate, innate creative power -- because I know that CREATIVITY is the answer to all of the destruction we're seeing.

For more than two decades I’ve been honing the scheduling around my creative practice. And I’ve been helping book clients and others do the same. As a novelist, visual artist, and coach, I’ve had to learn the magic of transition from helping others to working on my craft. I’ve had to figure out the best schedule for my creative energies on a daily, monthly, seasonal, and annual basis. And as is the case with novel-writing, I’ve had to find the balance over a series of years.

I’ve had to switch between clients and my own creative practice, and I’ve had to learn how to move from novel writing to visual art and back again.

How do we find the time we need to wonder and wander and fill the creative well, when we have family obligations or a full-time job? (No one can create with an empty creative well.)

How do we switch from the left linear brain to the right creative brain even when we do have some extra time?

How do we manage a long-term creative project like a novel? I tell clients novel-writing isn’t a sprint, it’s a triathlon that lasts three to five years!

Here are five steps that have worked for me:

1. Vision Comes First
Start with the vision of the project. Spend days or weeks envisioning what you want to create. I have to “dream” the novel or artwork to create it. Start with soulful exploration. Explore other artists and writers. I just finished my middle grade novel BLUE and for two years prior to writing it, I devoured delicious middle grade literature. How can you envision your project first? Create a vision board. Look through art books or online at great artists’ works. Inspire yourself. This is especially useful if you feel your creative well is dry.

2. The Beginning is the Hardest
For me, starting a novel or a new piece of artwork is the hardest part. I need the vroom to get started. I get myself revved up by first focusing on my biorhythms. I’m a morning person. What are you? Where do you find you have most energy and focus during the day? The hardest work of structuring a painting or a novel comes first thing in the morning when I’m fresh and “on”. In fact, I find when I first wake up, I can do in one hour what takes three hours if I wait to tackle it in the afternoon. If you can, schedule errands or money-making work during the times of your day when you have less energy. Conserve your best most beautiful energy for your own creative work. This can take years to set up. I’ve spent decades transforming my schedule to focus first and foremost on my own creative process. Be creatively selfish. I give you permission. 🙂

3. Scheduling is Crucial
This is huge! A consistent schedule for your creativity is the single greatest factor in determining your success, especially as a novelist. Work at the same time and on the same days each week, week to week, month to month. I schedule clients around my own consistent art/novel time and not the other way around. That tight consistency helps me get a lot done (5 novels, 4 published, hundreds of paintings). Three days a week of three hours of creativity each day seems to be the sweet spot for most people.

4. Posting is Fun
Don’t let social media override your creative practice. Schedule it at the end of the day. I love sharing my work. What is the story of the painting or the novel? What is your creative process? Use social media, blogs and podcasts to share the love. I believe our creativity inspires others especially during these times.

5. Blocks are Creative too
We all have blocks. Sometimes debilitating ones. You might have read the first four points here and thought: That’s all fine and good, but what if I can’t even get myself to do anything creative. I have a trick I use with clients. Take that block and paint it. Take that block and give it to a character in your novel. Take that block and write a self help book about it. Use the block. So if a parent was shaming, do an abstract painting where you put colors to your feelings. Finger paint it. I often give characters my blocks. In my middle grade novel BLUE, I have a little girl who is scared to tell the world what she sees as a mystic. This is definitely a block I’ve been working with for a long time. Use your block to own the block, explore the block, even love the block.

Studies show that creativity decreases anxiety and depression. We need creativity in our lives. The more we structure it into our days, the more joy we can feel and express, especially in these difficult times.

I grew up in rural Missouri with conservative parents. Almost every lesson I learned as a girl (knitting, sewing, cooking, cleaning) was how to run a household and how to support a man.

I wanted out. I wanted to find own way. I wanted a real voice.

First, I had to reach escape velocity.

Once I did, once I was out, I was left alone. It was fine to do my own thing, as long as I understood I'd be on my own.

I was left alone.

Really alone.

I could not ask for ANYTHING.

The message I got again and again – expect no help.

I’m 57 now, an artist/novelist/coach, and everything I know about being an indie woman artist and finding the support I need has been hard-won.. I've learned a lot from my clients' journeys, too. 

1, First and foremost, any spiritual connection you have is a thousand times more supportive than any person could ever be. Spend most of your time cultivating that alignment with spirit. The emotional and practical support you get from this connection goes far beyond anything that could ever be done to help you in your normal day-to-day life. You’ll feel better. Ideas will flow. You’ll know where to turn for practical support. Support often appears as if by magic. This spiritual connection gets rid of a lot of the “struggle”.

2. Please stop expecting so much support from women who have not figured out their own issues. And is it fair to expect a woman, who is trained in the dysfunction of being just a caregiver, to caregive you? Accept the help, but don’t expect it. Lift these women helpers up. For all of us to really be free, we can’t just become the “man” in the man/woman paradigm and expect selfless caregiving from women. We need to shift the entire paradigm.

3. Look at where support is coming to you. Stop looking at where it’s not flowing. Stop crying over unsupportive friends or parents. They’re part of the old paradigm. Expecting them to give support they’ve never received or truly don’t understand – it’s just hitting your head against a wall. Let them go. (This is a journey and can take a while to achieve.)

4. A friend recommended this, and it’s great advice. Write out what real support looks like to you. Go as big and wild and full of hope as you can. Vision Board it. Manifest it.  (Give it time to come to you.)

5. You may turn away support. You’re not used to receiving it. It may feel invasive. You don’t trust it. People have used you before. Look for where you’re turning away the very thing you need.

6. Many of my clients say: I’ll follow my artistic passion once I receive support. It doesn’t work that way. You have to take the leap for support to appear.

7. Support may appear in an unusual package. You really have to let go of expectations on the who, what, when and where of support. And the how. Let it go. When you demand or command it from a certain person or a group of people and it doesn’t come, it’s crushing. Be open to allowing the universe to provide support for you in its own way.

8. Support yourself. A big rule in this game – you have to support yourself. Buy the art supplies. Set up the studio. Commit to the writing time. Get healthy. Do the foundational work for yourself. Don’t expect someone else to do it. They can’t.

9. Accept the truth that women do not receive as much support for their passion projects as men. I know there are people reading this saying: “Oh my husband’s a great support.” First, this is a long long conversation. What is the ratio between your caregiving  and the support you receive? I’ve seen this again and again with clients. They spend decades cleaning and cooking, and oh yeah, they get support after two decades of giving. Is this really fair? And even if you are receiving such support, please stop saying this to women looking for support. Just stop. There’s a global paradigm that we’re up against, and your comment doesn’t take into consideration a larger reality. If you have any doubt what we’re up against as women, watch the Netflix documentary This Changes Everything about women directors and writers in Hollywood.

10. Support other women when you’re ready. Follow your own passions first, then when you’re established, help other women. Part of our journey as women artists in shifting this paradigm is to find our own way, then help the women coming up behind us. Giving back is a major part of healing this paradigm of women/art/support.

For some women I coach, giving up a mainstream career to follow their artistic passions or their passions to be a coach – it can feel like jumping into an abyss. Just know that any moves you make in the direction of your dreams, however small the steps, is a dismantling of the toxic patriarchy and a building of the Divine Feminine.

Sending you all of the love and support in the world.

I was at the beach at Nehalem Bay in Oregon a few months ago. A 5-year-old girl was doing the worm in the sand, her mother standing nearby.

"Is that the worm?" I asked her.

"Yes!" She wormed some more.

She jumped up and ran up to me and my dog Atlas. I held his leash tight. He's twice her size and weight, and I was worried he might hurt her. He's always jumping. I often fear he'll hurt an elderly person or child with his overwhelming love.

I looked to the mother.

"It's OK. She has the touch."

She put her tiny hands on both sides of Atlas' face. He calmed down profoundly.

She did have the touch.

We talked some more. Something about her profoundly moved me.

She was pure soul.

She was magic.

You are magic. We are all magic.

Often, though, that magic is lost beneath piles of conditioning by society and our parents. Our traumas, our parents' trauma, our cultural mandates, they change us. It's our spiritual journey, it's the whole reason we're born I believe, to spend our lives coming back to our authentic selves. It's not an easy journey. I've been on this path for 27 years and it's the hardest thing I've ever done. When we touch the raw place of our lost authentic selves it draws up all sorts of grief, rage, denial, fear. That's why they call it a Hero's Journey because it takes serious courage. I write about my challenges on my journey to purpose in fiction form in my novels Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

If you want to find your purpose, the only way is through this excavation. Your purpose is the essence of who you are. In an imperfect world, we have to go on a journey to find this essence if we are to truly find our purpose.

One great way to engage our innate magic is to revisit our younger selves. Here are 5 tips for doing that.

1. Write down a list of things you loved to do when you were little. Do one of them!
2. Look at a picture of your younger self. Ask her what she's feeling, what she needs, what she wants, what she thinks. Write it down. Listen to her.
3. Finger paint. We're taught to be so practical as adults. Be impractical. Goof around.
4. Read children's books. They're magic and will remind you of your magic.
5. Play. Play. Play -- in whatever way that comes to you.

Now, bring any one of the above into your current spiritual/creative practice. Invoke and involve this younger self when you meditate, or journal, or write, or do art. It will reinvigorate your practice.

It's all about what you love. It's all about love.

I am lounging in a lush green recliner in an office near Greenlake, Seattle, a narrow pillow over my eyes. Urban mystic Judith Laxer has one hand on my ankle. In the other hand she’s shaking a small gourd rattle. Her eyes are closed. Every once in a while she opens them to write notes on a pad.

Judith is performing a shamanic journey to help me answer the question: “How can I fully own my power as an artist?”

The journey is quicker than usual. She comes out of the trance, puts down the rattle, makes a few more notes, and we move to chairs at a round table in the middle of the room.

She dives right in. I have worked with Judith for 25 years, and we no longer need a lot of explanation in our work together. “Snake took me straight to a past life. To a dungeon where you were brought and left to starve to death for being an artist,” she says.

This resonates. I can feel it’s true. My stomach growls.

For those of you reading this who are not familiar with shamanic work, for those who think that snake spirit teachers and past lives in dungeons seems too odd, I can relate. I was an international journalist before I was called to the life of a mystic. At first, I thought it was all just so whack! I discuss my transition from old world to the life of a mystic in my novel Water. If you’re interested in the mystical, if you’re being called to a more mystical life and it feels scary, read the book. It’ll help you see one woman’s journey from “normal” to the metaphysical.

Judith continues: “You were put in the dungeon for saying things, drawing things, painting things, singing things, writing things, something that was not OK. You were from a rather wealthy privileged family and were given painting lessons. And where you went with that was way beyond what a woman of your station and age should ever have gone. Because your family had money and you were privileged, they didn’t actually execute you, but they left you in the dungeon to starve to death.”

I’ve been having stomach and digestion problems lately. Judith explains that my artistic blocks and stomach problems are related to this past life. Understanding this past life can help me resolve both issues.

“You were enraged and you were filled with grief. A lovely combination of emotions, guilt, terror, rage and grief.” She explains that my family’s land was confiscated when I was thrown in the dungeon. My family was ruined by my art. “Snake went up inside you,” she demonstrates by moving her hand in front of her up the center of her body, “and ate the resonance from this past life, the emotional leftovers from your chakra system.”

Resonances from past lives affect us all. Many people spend years in therapy over a particular sticky issue and nothing shifts. That’s because the residuals from the trauma are not from this lifetime.

Judith continues explaining the journey. She was brought to my current lifetime, to my childhood.

“You didn’t feel safe. Not feeling safe as a child cemented that earlier life lesson — you couldn’t do art and feel safe. You couldn’t be yourself and feel safe.

“Your guides want you to know that the only way to feel safe and for you to fully be who you are as an artist is to prove to yourself that you are safe. You cannot wait until you feel safe and then put your art out there. You will have to show yourself how safe you are by putting your art out there.”

She continues: “Once your work is out there and the world sees it and they don’t throw you in a dungeon, you will know, oh, I’m safe this lifetime to be an artist!”

Judith and I spend more time processing and chatting. I know from experience this will take a few days to sink in. I need to go home and do my own past-life regression to talk to the me in the earlier life.

Over the next week, an explosion of art happens around me. I find artist after artist who inspire me. Image after image after image — it feels like eating delicious soul-filling food. I feel a crazy passion to paint and paint and paint. I see a shift in my stomach issues, and I commit to finding a herbalist to help me rebalance my gut health. I begin to explore how to get my art out there in a bigger way.

Exploring our past lives is an incredible way to own our creative power. I believe every person is a creative powerhouse, and all we have to do is remove the psychological obstacles that hinder our natural brilliance. Sometimes those blocks are not about the difficulties of this life time. Sometimes they hark back to centuries past.

If you’re struggling with issues that block your creative power, if therapy isn’t shifting it, consider a past-life approach. Dr. Brian Weiss’ books on past life regression and future life progression are a good place to start.

As a coach, I'm seeing more and more people going through a spiritual awakening. Here I explore the signs, symptoms, and solutions to dealing with such an awakening, using my own experiences. My journey is detailed in my fourth novel, WaterWATER. Even though it's part of a series, the book can be read as a stand-alone novel.

1. Sudden opening
Not all but many people going through a spiritual awakening experience a sudden psychic opening. They know and see things they've never seen before. It feels like a lightning strike. For me, I went through a divorce and was at the Financial Times in London when the strike hit me -- I could hear everyone's thoughts. Not just thoughts, but their spirits. Even the trees began speaking to me. It's at this stage that many people end up in psychiatrist's office for a diagnosis. For me, I knew what was happening was important and I didn't want to be labeled as sick. I knew it was a spiritual perceptual shift. For more on the debate over spiritual awakening vs psychosis, watch the TedX talk by Phil Borges.

2. Spiritual Depression
What worked before no longer works for you. Marriage, work, friendships -- they aren't aligned with who you're becoming. How can you tell the difference between spiritual depression and regular depression? With regular depression, you can find your way again to loving the things you loved before. With spiritual depression, there is a great call to find a new way. When the lightning strike came at the FT for me, I just knew in my gut I could no longer be a journalist. There was simply no question. But oh how much I didn't want to give up my jet-setting journalism life. WATER, my fourth novel, opens with the dark night of the soul I suffered on my journey. The transformation can be very emotionally difficult -- for me it was like my skin was being ripped from my body.

3. The Call
You'll feel called to something but you won't know what. I spent three years trying to figure out what I was being called to do.

4. The Walkabout
You'll need to spend some time just experimenting with new spiritual modalities. There is no other way. Take any online or in-person course that sparks you. For me, first it was doing a religious walkabout where every Sunday I went to a different religious service -- from Presbyterian, to Unitarian, to Quaker meetings. Then it was classes in tarot and reiki and shamanism. At the time, I'd been a journalist and all of these alternative metaphysical modalities seemed so whack to me. So weird. But the despair was so great, I felt pushed into finding answers.

5. Rejection of the Call
At some point, you will reject this new calling, probably in a spectacular fashion. I went back to journalism, to the Seattle PI to be specific. Within months my arms gave out (thoracic outlet syndrome). You'll try to go backwards, and the consequences will be swift and brutal.

6. Spiritual Illness
Many many people I've coached, including myself, went through an illness as part of their call. Our bodies scream at us that we need to change. Our illnesses themselves are the impetus that thrust us upon our spiritual quests.

7. Old Rules do not Apply
You'll find on this new journey that old hierarchical rules do not apply. You'll try to get a "promotion" or "climb a business ladder" and it just won't work. The new spiritual life isn't about climbing up and being "above" others. It's a spiral of spiritual growth that you'll spend the rest of your life deepening into. Accepting this can save you a whole boat-load of pain.

8. Others Will Not Understand
Already it's tough enough on this new path as you veer between depression and giddy enlightenment (sometimes for years) and on top of that people will think you've gone stark-raving bonkers. You might have folks make fun of you. You might lose friends. Such is the journey of the spiritual warrior. I know some of my old journalist friends thought I was crazy.

9. You May Be Alone for a Phase
To really hear what's being said to you by spirit, to really ascertain what this new calling is all about, you'll probably have a phase of being alone. Many many many people do. Own it. Use it. Love it. You're being called to help save the world in a deeper way than others living "normal" lives will every understand. The calling is sacred and important.

10. Spiritual and Creative Volcano
What most people find behind Door No. 1 is a whole playground of spiritual healing power and sublime creativity. I was a hard-partying wild-child expat, and could not believe I was being called to become a metaphysical coach to help heal people. I truly could not believe I was being chosen for such a spiritual path. Me? Me? I found I could channel and speak to spirits in a way most people couldn't. Then there are the latent artistic talents that explode from just below the surface. This has happened with every client I've coached. As a book coach, I work with someone on a novel for a few years, and suddenly they find their voice and become a professional singer or actress or dancer. It's shocking and beautiful to me how much creativity we have just waiting to get out.

If you're going through a spiritual awakening, it can feel like you're losing your mind. You ARE! The mind has been molded by a toxic society and it must be lost so the true soul can be found.

The greatest part of the work I do as a coach is to help people excavate their authentic creative voices.
The biggest issue I see is that we've been taught for so many years to use our brains and our wills to create that we've lost the ability to just "be" on the page or on the canvas.
Answer these questions:
Who are you?
What do you love?
What inspires you?
What juices you?
What brings you deep peace?
What brings you hope for humanity?
Then put yourself daily around the answers to the above questions. Do this for three months, and watch your world and your writing/art transform.
Let yourself create from the center of your being.
I'm working on a middle grade novel formerly called Maisie Grace, now called Blue. It's about a deeply empathic girl named Maisie whose best friend is a tree named Blue. Maisie and the tree are psychic. The novel also explores art and bullying and death and connection.
It's a novel about reconnecting with nature, one tree at a time. Our disconnection from nature and each other didn't just start with the pandemic. Our reconnection must be a conscious act.

Surrender
I'm sure the writers reading this know about how the characters can take over and tell the story, as if you, the writer, has no control. Well this seems to be happening with this novel. Not only are they writing it, they came in my dreams and asked to be painted. As I create their images in acrylic ink, marker, and acrylic paint, even here they won't let me have the control. They paint themselves through my hands.
In many Eastern spiritual traditions they speak of "surrender". Surrendering to a higher power is the hardest possible thing for the Western independent in-control mind to accept. Many of us were given religious training that didn't sit well with us, so the concept of spiritual surrender feels like surrendering to a white male vengeful god. I get it. I was there, too.
Spiritual surrender, though, will give you everything, absolutely everything, you want out of life. We align our wills with a higher creative power and nothing can stop us.
For any type of artist, surrendering is the most powerful turning point in your creative career. Surrendering spiritually is just the same as channeling the muse.
When you let go into this higher creative force, what you create is far beyond your personal gifts and talents and skillsets. Your art becomes greater than the sum of its parts. What you create becomes magical and full of spirit.
Caroline Allen, author of the award-winning Elemental Journey series.

Last Friday, like hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, my electricity went out. It was 19 degrees Fahrenheit and little did I know at the time I was in for six days of this. The roads were so icy, no one was going anywhere. 

In two pair of long johns, two pair of trousers, three shirts, a fleece jacket, coat, socks, boots, hat and fingerless gloves I sat down to do some art.  

Why? 

Why not hunker beneath six blankets on the bed? 

Because these crises are not going away. Because I want my soul to sing no matter what's going on. Because I know there are many reasons why my creative voice is needed now more than ever.

Here are 5 reasons to keep doing your creative work no matter what's going on in the world. Pandemics, protests, politics, climate chaos -- oh there are so many reasons to hunker down and do nothing. Here are important reasons to do SOMETHING:

Creativity keeps your spirits up 
I don't know about you, but with all of the crises, from pandemics to wildfires, it's easy to get down. Way down. Doing your creative work is scientifically shown to fire certain chemicals in the brain that keeps you happier, and better able to weather the weather whatever the weather.

Creativity keeps your mind active and flexible
What better way to be able to handle crises than a flexible, well-honed, creative mind? Rigidity is the thing of the past. We must adapt. And adapt. And adapt. A creative practice keeps your adaptability muscle strong.

Your creative voice inspires others
I promise you that when you post a painting or a poem, when you write a book and others read it, you're inspiring others to keep going in these unprecedented times. Creativity inspires, provokes, engages, connects, and motivates! You're art and writing are your activism. Get to work. 

What else are you going to do?
Sit around and worry, fret, scream at others on social media, panic? Drink and smoke too much? Eat too much? Your creativity provides you with a healthy outlet that can help keep you aligned with a healthy mental state. You need all of your marbles to manage the current paradigm. Engage and activate them. I know from all the coaching and teaching that I do, that every person is a powerhouse of creative passion. If we could unleash 1/10th of that we could and we will change the world and make it a more exciting place. 

Creativity is Diversity
You personally are a seething cauldron of diverse creative expression. What you know of your creativity is the tip of the iceberg of your potential. Now, add to this, the diversity of expression among different people of different races and ethnicities and cultures, and what an exciting delicious world we live in. How many times have you gone onto social media and seen a work of art from a far away country and your jaw has dropped. It happens to me daily. Creativity is the very essence of diversity -- add your voice to the diverse pool. It's important.
What creative project can you dive back into today, or start right now? What are you putting off? Dust yourself off and get to work. The world needs you.