Women Artists and Success: The Top 5 Challenges

Women have been trained for many centuries to keep quiet, and be the behind-the-scenes support for others. When we have any kind of personal success it’s a game-changer. When that success appears in the Arts, where we are expressing our truth, and beauty and putting our souls out into the world, then our success becomes nothing short […]

Finding Purpose: Turn Left!

I know turning left can be scary. Each time I’ve turned left, I’ve felt more out on a limb, even farther from fitting into society. The road is full of bumps and pot holes, and we may have to clear a fallen tree, and move branches blocking the way. And we sure the heck are not sure where it leads. But we do know where the old road leads…

January Literary Reading, Seattle

We may feel called to step up to the plate to create change, but how? What is an “authentic calling” in an upside-down world? Is finding such a path more difficult in this radically shifting climate? Is it more essential? What role can mysticism and spirit play in helping us align to a higher calling?

Goodreads Giveaway — Win a Signed Copy of AIR

Enter to win a free signed copy of my second novel AIR via Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/159756-air-elemental-journey-series Turbulence opens this second book in the Elemental Journey Series as Pearl Swinton, now in her twenties, uproots from the Midwest and flies to Tokyo, where she has no job, no friends, and no home, a place where she hopes to live floating above the culture. But how will she survive with her mystical visions in a country so foreign from everything she knows? Pearl lands at a Jesuit mission and is magnetized to the ethereal missionary Usui. After she is forced to leave, she finds herself thrown unprepared into the complicated world of Japanese culture, where she must learn to maneuver friendships,understand love, and handle the intensity of being a journalist at one of the city’s largest newspapers. When she stumbles upon Usui living as a homeless man, a journey begins that draws her deep into Japan’s hidden homeless underworld. Having given up any connection to civilization to “find himself,” Usui brings Pearl face to face with her own homelessness and challenges her to begin the painful journey of understanding her visions and finding herself. In the end, hope flies on the paper wings of thousands of origami cranes. Pearl is called to own her mysticism, not just for herself, but for a world where the loss of magic may well be the real threat. A fundamentally radical work of art, Air tackles core issues facing individuals coming of age in today’s world. How can anyone feel safe and at home on a planet threatened by escalating violence and devastating climate change? Where, truly, is home? Read more at http://www.carolineallen.com. AIR is available at most online booksellers!

Win a Signed Copy of AIR!

My novel, AIR, the second book in the Elemental Journey Series, is being released this Thursday, Oct. 22. Enter to win a signed copy here. “…this book brings us face to face with the niggling edges of things, with what we think defines us.” For more information or to purchase the book, go to http://www.carolineallen.com, […]

Spiritual Growth: Friends as Mirrors

Not long after I gave up a career in journalism in my 30s, I looked back and realized I had made very few close friends in the newsroom. The only real friends I made came at the very end of my career, and most of these were people who were giving up journalism just as I was. […]

Finding your Passion: The Fear of Reprisal

My first novel, Earth, is semi-autobiographical, a fictionalized version of my childhood in Missouri. I was meditating the other day on how to increase book sales and was given this message: You fear reprisals. Your fear is holding the book back. This fear is universal. It keeps many from speaking their truth. It is even deeper than that. People […]

Writer’s Block: When Abuse is Used to Stop the Voice

I am in my counselor’s office in Portland, a pretty room on the top floor of a house. The slanted ceiling reminds me of my childhood room. You know how when some therapists do inner child work, they put a chair across from you and have you talk to your inner little girl? Well, I am having […]

Art and Your Inner Wild Child

An American woman this week was killed by a lioness at a South African private animal park. Against park rules, she and her husband were driving through the park with their windows down. The lioness came up to the passenger window, attacked the woman and killed her. I was at a friend’s house when the news came on the television. […]

Tarot in Retrograde: Flavor of the Funk

A couple of days this week, I woke up after 8 hours of sleep feeling like someone took a baseball bat to the back of my head. I really cleaned up my act a few years ago, went vegetarian, then vegan, got rid of almost all chemicals like dyes and preservatives from my diet, stopped eating processed […]