Marie is a massage therapist and energy worker based in New Mexico who has come to me for tarot readings for years. “I’m having these unusual dark thoughts,” she told me during a recent reading. “Of course, I have negative thoughts from time to time, but these are different. Invasive. And not really at all […]
Creativity Can Pull You Out of the Dark Night of the Soul
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 […]
Structuring Creative Time in 5 Easy Steps
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 […]
Finding Support as a Woman Artist
10 Hard-Won Lessons 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 […]
5 Ways to Engage the Magic of Your Inner Child
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 […]
Engage Your Past Lives to Empower Your Creative Voice
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 […]
Novel Wins Gold Visionary Award
Excited to announce that my fourth novel, WATER, has won an Indie Publisher Gold Medal for Visionary Fiction. Pearl Swinton is drowning in a dark night of the soul. In the depths, she hears a cry to purpose, but to what? A former journalist who has spent years trying to outrun her psychic visions, Pearl meets […]
Be a Nobody
So the Earth Can Be a Somebody The prevailing wisdom on social media is: Go Big or Go Home. More followers, more power, more sales. More. More. More. Take. Take. Take. I’m an “expert” they yell from memes and quotes. Follow me! Follow me! What if instead of being big, we go small. What if […]
5 Easy Steps for Breaking Through Anxiety into Creativity
Years ago, a journalist friend in Seattle came over to my apartment. She’d just returned from Afghanistan, where she was responsible for setting up a newsroom and training local journalists. When she arrived, she was so exhausted and drained to her very core, she could barely walk or talk. I knew the feeling. I’d given […]
Diary of a Psychic Artist
7 a.m. Dreams swirl around me as I roll out of bed. My dreams are a pivotal part of my creative life, informing my art, novel writing, coaching. They sink in and come out of my hands or through my voice in mysterious ways. For me, the night time is as rich as anything I […]