12 years ago I was living in Southern Oregon. My home was spacious and light-filled. My community was connected, my spiritual practice was full, and my relationship with the land was deep.
Yet things didn't feel quite right, and I kept getting whispers that it was time to leave. I pushed those aside, until one day my life just fell apart. I walked to the mailbox to check the mail, and found a letter waiting that dropped the ground out from beneath my feet.
My life was forever changed. I was scared and unsure of what to do.
Over the course of the next month, I quit my job, left my home, gave away many of my things, packed the rest into my subaru, and hit the road.
My partner and I spent the next year living out of that car and traveling all around the country, mostly in California and the SW.
My life was now spacious and expansive, but what I wanted more than anything was direction and purpose.
When I moved to Ashland 3 years prior, I had quit Waldorf teacher training in order to dive deep into my spiritual community. Now I had neither of those things and I felt lost.
I wanted to give my gifts in the world and I really wasn't sure how to go forward.
So... I picked up a copy of the Artist's Way, and went on that 12 week journey, with my mother as my accountability partner.
I can tell you that it truly changed my life.
12 weeks of daily writing, weekly reading and answering playful prompts, weekly artist's dates and checkins...
It sounds simple and it is, yet it is also deeply profound, healing, and powerful.
Over the course of those 12 weeks, I found my direction.
I knew that my work was to help women and children find health and vibrancy, and I knew that I would work in multiple modalities.
I got clear on my next steps:
- Find a place to settle down and sink in roots
- Start nutrition school and gain certification as a holistic nutritionist
- Finish Waldorf teacher training
- Train to do therapeutic work with young children, using Waldorf methodology
And then it all came to pass. Over the course of the next five years, the best trainings presented themselves to me, mostly through synchronistic connections. Funding came forward unexpectedly. Places to stay offered themselves to me. My dream job snatched me up. My income went way up and I found myself with more money than I had ever had in my life.
Life stepped forward to answer my prayers.
In the midst of that process, I was now living in Portland and teaching at a big Waldorf school. I had finished Waldorf teacher training, I was in my third year of nutrition school, and I was about to start a training to work therapeutically with young children.
And I was holding a new dream very close to my heart: to marry, live on land, and have children.
But… I was leaving a relationship that I had hoped would be all that but turned out not to be. At all. I was heartbroken, and I was afraid I would never get to live that dream. That I was 32 and that was too late.
So, again I picked up my copy of the Artist’s Way. And again I went on that 12 week journey.
And again it changed my life.
I let myself dream that dream, of marriage, land, and children, down to the smallest details.
And here I am 7 years later, fully living all that I wished for. I have the most wonderful husband, and we are parents to a delightful, wild, funny, brilliant little three-year-old boy. We live on beautiful land in Southwestern Washington, with cows, horses, and chickens. I’ve been slowly building my dream garden, and as I sit and write, hummingbirds are zooming around from flower to flower. My husband and I put up a yurt in our forest a couple years ago - the very yurt that I sketched into all the drawings of my dream home with my dream family, while doing the Artist’s Way. The yurt is our ceremony space, and I’ve held several beautiful women’s circles in there.
The Artist’s Way is powerful and I am filled with gratitude.
Two years ago I was guided to lead a group of women through the Artist’s Way journey, and 16 beautiful women heeded that call. And for those who truly put themselves into the process, the results were life changing.
One morning this summer, I woke again feeling the call to lead a group of women through the Artist’s Way. I know it will be a beautiful journey for those who step forward to claim their dreams.