Painting by Christie Oades It was a day full of delicious creative, collaborative meetings. The first with my writing sisters, with whom I am co-authoring a book called Women Writing Alone Together. We have been meeting like this for over 5 years, writing and reading...
Loving Inquiry is a practice that invites us on a journey of creative exploration and spiritual contemplation. As we reflect on our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, desires, challenges and creative visions, in words, we learn about who we are and what matters to...
A few years ago my husband and I travelled from our home on Salt Spring Island to South East Asia, for our first visit to this intriguing place. After a few days in Bangkok, acclimatizing to our new environment, we flew to the UNESCO heritage city of Hoi An, in South...
It’s a special time of year: twinkling lights, harmonies of holiday music and the cultural delicacies we have waited for all year-long. A unique time to pause and be grateful for just this breath, this moment’s presence, the gift of this life with its...
A wondrous dream realized. This joy of being. Playful, mysterious and miraculous. A process of gestating, midwifing and birthing creativity in community. This exhibit allows women artists to devote ourselves to our creative gifts, while offering these precious...
The performance of a new story or role can transform a person’s life, but only if the story is performed for the correct audience… a person arrives at a sense of authenticity in life through the performance of his or her stories to an appreciative audience, with a...
3rd Annual Art Exhibit by students and alumni of Loving Inquiry. Showing the creative process of ten Island women: Adele Storm, Linda Underwood, Selena Barwin, Norma Hoeppner, Helen Hinchliff, Sam Barlow, Charlene Wolff, Jane Mackenzie, Premilla Pillay and Dr. Ahava...
Experience writing as a catalyst for personal growth, creative self-expression and mutual support. Discover a place of connection and belonging in a circle of creative inspiration and compassionate witness. Through the four practices of Writing Alone Together, you...
Whatever takes us to our edge, to our outer limits, leads us to the heart of life’s mystery, and there we find faith. Sharon Salzberg I want to say I have never felt this much pain before this past year, but I would be lying. I have felt pain before. Physical pain,...
Love is Like This is 20 tracks of poetry from the heart. Here’s the video poem for track 18 – Clouds & Mozart. Love is Like This evokes the dance of relationship. From the intimacy of first crush to sweet and sour memories of kisses, the joy of conjugal seduction...
A gate, I step up to, try to move the eye out of the hook and it doesn’t budge. I pause, and try again. Same thing happens. I grow impatient, wonder if I am even meant to go through this gate right now, but the composte bucket is full and needs to be emptied. If I...
Poetry has been a tool for me to slow down, reflect on my experience, recognize and honour the fears and discover new ways of being with myself and others. It has helped me to develop trust in my creative process. Space One arm twisted behind my back stopping...
One of the greatest gifts that you can bring to your journal writing is your own inward permission to write freely.~Stephanie Dowrick As I sit here and start to write these words, I feel a knot of tension in my solar plexus, and nudges of anxiety in my lower belly....
The five performers on the Artspring Stage Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. —Clarissa Pinkola Estes I sit here in my studio, a few days after taking down...
As I was poring through some old journals recently, I stumbled upon this entry from journal #16. October 21, 1992 Such a hesitancy to start again. How long has it actually been since I’ve been here. It seems like forever. How quickly I forget the path, when I stray...
The Creativity Play and Possibilities Retreat is done and I loved every second of it. We gathered in my studio on Butterstone Farm for 2 1/2 days of artful and soulful ceremony. We were dancers, writers, artists, healers, musicians and sacred storytellers. We laughed,...
Learning to love a landscape, like learning to love anything, means learning its details and noticing the way in which one’s involvement with those details is interesting and influential. Davis, Luce-Kapler & Sumara I awoke from a dream in which the world...
Stuff goes into the writer, a whole lot of stuff, not notes in a notebook but everything seen and heard and felt all day every day, a lot of garbage, leftovers, dead leaves, eyes of potatoes, artichoke stems, forests, streets, rooms in slums, mountain ranges,...
We live in a world that is as complex as it is dynamic. Our interdependence with others and the world beyond ourselves is a fact, not an option. We are surrounded by other people and countless nonhuman species, by made and natural objects of the most extraordinary...
Last Sunday the playful and compassionate writer, Tess Wlxted nominated me for a One Lovely Blog Award. Read all about it at her blog. What a gift to open my emails and find someone writing to me, saying, in essence, ‘I like what you have to say, and I like how how...
Are you a writer wanting support to free your unique expression? I'd love to hear from you. Contact me to book a one-on-one session by phone, Skype, or in person.