“Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace
the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.”
~*~ Caroline Myss ~*~
PLEASE READ THIS ONE STATEMENT IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE! Before you turn away because you think you are not a writer or an artist, and you don’t want to be, know this — you don’t have to be. A stick figure and a few simple words are enough. This process is about shifting something in your brain and in your heart so that your life can be transformed, so that you can heal, so that you can find and live the life you have dreamed of and hoped for. Let me explain…
When I was 9 years old I learned, though I wouldn’t have known how to express it, that writing would save my life. I was being sexually abused and I was terrified. I would flee to a stand of forsythia bushes where I would hide and scribble fast and furious with a Bic pen in a little red spiral notebook. I wrote stories and poems and I used my little notebooks as diaries. By 20 I was publishing my work in newspapers and magazines, and from 20 until 59 kept publishing, had 3 small presses, worked as part of a magazine staff and taught journal-keeping classes for 40 years. For the last decade I have been blogging as if it were the only thing that tethered me to the earth. Writing continued to heal me and I clung to it fiercely but something was always missing.
Writing saved my life, it can save yours too…
In the winter of 2013 I tentatively picked up a pastel and started drawing. I had no outcome in mind other than the pure pleasure of the pastels gliding across the pages of my 8×8″ sketchbook. I was surprised to find myself pleased with what I was drawing. A doodler all my life I had no confidence in myself as an artist at all.
We want to express ourselves. When you take the weight off of having to produce something ‘that matters,’ ‘that can make money,’ etc., you free yourself up to simply enjoy the pure pleasure of creating.
We are born creators…
In first grade I was a dizzy little dreamer and when we were coloring pictures one Friday afternoon our teacher, a nun, grabbed my little picture out of my hands and shouted angrily at me, “You’ll never be an artist! Just LOOK at this!” I had colored the tree trunks purple and the leaves magenta and pink and the grass was lemon yellow, the sky, seagreen. She held it up in front of the class laughing and as all of my classmates laughed along with her she tore up the picture, letting the pieces fall to the floor. Something in me died in that moment. It would be 53 years before I tried to draw again and when I did something happened that I could never have imagined. Crazy, happy, sad, funny, blissy, goofy ladies started showing up on the pages of my sketchbooks and as they did they would tell me their stories. The 100 Ladies Project was born.
What early experiences are holding you back? If someone did something to hurt you, to cause you to lose confidence in your abilities, to make you lose faith in yourself it is time to let it go. If you don’t, they win. You don’t want to lie on your death bed with regrets. What is it that you have been longing to do? The Spontaneous Art Project can help you uncover and recover these lost parts of yourself. If not, why not? If not now, when?
For months I drew one lady after the next and wrote her stories. I was working with the incredible SARK who was mentoring me and started sending her chapters of the book and she loved them. We were both very excited about them but somewhere along the line my writing shifted back to what felt like more comfortable ground, more serious writing. Still the ladies were in my heart and I loved to draw them.
It’s okay to backslide, there is no shame in it, as long as you keep moving forward in any way that you can, always knowing that the things that you long for are there on the horizon when you ready, you will be just fine. In the Circle we are here to support you, to listen to you, to bear witness to your process and your journey, to help you through the hard times, and to celebrate with you all the tiny steps along the way as you inch forward toward your heart’s true desire…
On February 5 this year my beloved Dragonfly Cottage burned to the ground. I learned, through this nightmare turned amazing life lesson, what I have long known and taught but on a deeper level, that living in the present moment is all that we have and after so much tragedy and loss and sadness in my life I thought enough was just goshdarned enough, and I needed to heal what needed healing and get on with it. As a Reiki Master, a Shamballa Master Healer, a midwife, an ordained minister and more, that my whole life had been about healing and I had worked with people for decades in person and for a decade online. As I was about to turn 60 I wanted to weave everything that I have done in my life together and create a way to help other women fully embrace, love, and celebrate all of who they are. Already the work has shape-shifted, had different names, and yet almost twenty women have already signed up and what is happening in the Circle is just amazing. Women of different ages, backgrounds, and life experiences are coming together, sharing their stories, supporting one another, and opening up in ways they have heretofore been unable to. In a very short time, in this safe and sacred space, women are beginning to move forward, to make changes, to see their lives in a new way, or at least they are beginning to have inklings of what their lives might be.
Changing the name from “Women’s Wisdom School” to “The Spontaneous Art Project” was scary because I went to that “What will people think?” place, but when we are always worrying about what other people think we don’t do our truest, deepest, most authentic work. When we stand up fully in what we believe to be the best and most powerful thing for ourselves we become a beacon of light for others to show them that to grow is to allow the process to shape-shift along with us. In this program we accept all of who you are and every step, forward or back, changes or not, tumbling, laughing, crying, uncertainty, and all the HELL YEAH’S you can muster all along the way. We are right there with you cheering you on!
At first I had thought to call the school a Women’s Wisdom School but after much thought and consideration I decided to go with the process that saved my life, what I have called Spontaneous Art reminiscent of the journal classes I taught for 4 decades where we used timed writing, what came up in the moment was what mattered with no judgment, you just kept writing until the time was up. Through this process my students found that through the heat and pressure of timed writing, writing without stopping to think and edit through the fast moving stream of words coming faster than the mind could process, amazing truths would surface. Sometimes when we went around the room to read people cried, they’d had no idea what they’d written until they read it. In 10 minutes something that they could not consciously reach surfaced and the first steps to understanding or healing could begin. It was as Virginia Woolf wrote about writing in her diary, “I note however that this diary writing does not count as writing, since I have just re-read my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles. Still if it were not written rather faster than the fastest type-writing, if I stopped and took thought, it would never be written at all; and the advantage of the method is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.” And so it is.
When we think back over our lives often we get caught up in remembering the hard times, often very painful, the people who hurt us, and maybe still are today, but it is important to find and recover those diamonds, and they are there…
When I first started drawing over a year ago I found that when I stopped worrying if it was “good” or “bad” and just “let it rip” and drew a lady without stopping I felt such a sense of freedom and joy that I realized that art was the missing link. That drawing was what I needed to accompany the writing to round out what needed to healed. I long ago discovered that if I kept writing for long periods of time on a book or large piece of writing my head would get all screwed up tight, I would become frustrated, blocked, nearly crazy with anxiety, and more. I learned that if I stopped right there and moved from my head to my hands something shifted. I started keeping my fiber work next to me and I would perhaps put on music, or just sit in the silence and weave or knit or crochet, or maybe even go out into the garden, and when I would let the writing go almost certainly the answer that I had been seeking, the next piece of writing would float up from the bottom of my mind when I was relaxed and not trying to write. From then on to this day I have made a process of shifting back and forth between head and hands. This process is at the heart of The Spontaneous Art Project.
I want to make it clear that one doesn’t need to consider oneself a “writer” or an “artist” to benefit by doing this process, no one will see it but you unless you choose to share it, and what might come in a 10 minute timed drawing may startle or delight, surprise or give ease to the heart, but the heart will be opening.
We are visual people as well as verbal people and using one discipline will always lack the balance needed to find the answers that we seek. We are all artists. We were born artists with the ability to see the world in an amazing way, without judgment. And further, our lives are the greatest works of art that we will ever create.
WHAT DO YOU GET AND HOW DOES THIS WORK?
I have thought long and hard about how I wanted this project to work. At 60 I have taken and taught all manner of courses, been part of many groups and communities. For the most part I loved them and certainly learned a lot but there was one thing I learned that I feel is key to creating a year long journey that will work and be of service to you in this process of discovery and change and that is to not inundate you with too much at once but to produce a steady stream of material at a gentle pace, never too much at once, that will come in PDF’s every other week. You can save the PDF’s, print them out, do them as they come or save them until later, peruse them and see if that week’s material is right for you where you are, and really customize your own learning experience. You might say that this is a Beta year for both of us..
I do not want anyone to feel pressured at all. There is no pressure here.
In this circle you can come and talk about the material, share what you have done if you are moved to do so, talk about what came up for you, and also just generally discuss anything. Also you can shift the material around when you receive the PDF if you find it helpful but feel slightly changing something to fit your life situation will work better for you. There is no one right way to do anything. I will tell you how I do it, how I have taught it successfully to students, perhaps give you ideas about other ways to approach it, but as long as you are working with the material if you need to make a few shifts to fit you have enough confidence in yourself to do so. I completely support you in that.
The Women’s Circle is your community. It is a private, members only community. It is safe and sacred space. I am not a teacher who sends material out each week and you never see me or talk to me personally. I am present in the Circle every day.
THE DAILY PODCASTS
In addition to the PDF’s you will receive every other week I will be doing a daily podcast 5 days a week. A mini podcast, very brief, 5-10 minutes. I will talk about my life, and living mindfully. If people send me questions I will answer them. I will be spontaneous and in the moment, a gentle guide, and a woman sharing her journey. I want you to feel as though you are not alone, to know that as I share the simple moments of my life that the simple moments of your life matter too. Only members of this project and Circle will receive these podcasts and you will receive an email each day with a link to that day’s podcast as well as access to the archives as they grow.
LIVE CALLS & EVENTS
I am very excited to use 2 different platforms that can give us a chance to communicate live. One is Maestro Conference where you can call in to a number and we will have a live call where all members will have the opportunity to speak to me live, or to ask questions. I will have given an introduction and then open it up for questions.
Next is Spreecast where you can see me and while I talk you can write in on a live moving chat to ask me questions and talk to one another in real time. This is something I an indeed very excited about and will work out the logistics along the way.
THE BETA YEAR
This first year is a Beta year because in addition to everything I have described about, which form the basic framework of this program, I will be offering other things for fun, for women to try to see how they feel about it and if it is helpful and beneficial, and I will be creating special material for the women in the community based on their needs as expressed in discussions we will have. I am very excited about this. I want this to be a fluid process where we grow together and where you know that the material is not all set in stone and if you have things that are really important to you and convey this to me we will work together along the way. It will be a very exciting year. I am just over-the-moon about it all.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MAKE YOUR PAYMENT & WHEN DOES THE SCHOOL BEGIN?
After you make your payment you will receive the information to access the password protected download page and you will have immediate access to all of the eBooks back to the first one, then you will be invited into The Women’s Circle. It is a beautiful community, the women are warm, wonderful, supportive, just really lovely. In this way you can start to get to know the other women and have a community to come to for anything that you need support with. After a PDF/eBook is sent out I will start a an ongoing thread for that bi-weekly material so that anyone can come and share and comment or whatever they would like to until the next PDF is sent out when it will take it’s place. The previous week’s thread will still be floating in the room somewhere — it is a private FB group — so you can still go back and respond there but the new week’s material will go up at the top.
IF YOU HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS?
If you have any other questions please feel free to contact me using the form on this website and I will get back to you asap.
THE PRICE IS $99 FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR. STARTING MAY 1 2015 IT WILL BE $199 A YEAR. YOU KEEP THE PRICE FOREVER THAT YOU PAY TO JOIN AS LONG AS YOU STAY A MEMBER.
$99 THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2014 
I can’t wait to meet you. We are all anxiously awaiting your arrival.
Much love to you dear sister, I hope you will join us!
