I didn’t set out to build a body of work.
I followed a whisper.
A quiet longing I could barely name —
to feel connected again
to something true,
to honor my story instead of hiding it,
to create not just for show,
but for soul.

In every season of your life, there’s a quiet guide walking beside you.
They know your story, your struggles, your dreams.
They hold the wisdom you’ve been gathering layer by layer, brushstroke by brushstroke.

I call them the Story Keepers—soulful archetypes who help you navigate your creative journey and keep the truth of who you are alive and well.

Whether you’re standing in the shadows, gathering glimmers of light, or fully stepping into your creative radiance, there is a Story Keeper for you.
And now, you can meet yours.

The Rhythm of the Four Pillars in The Soulful Journey

There is a quiet order to the way we grow.
An inner unfolding that doesn’t follow timelines or formulas, but something more organic—like moon cycles, or the way wildflowers lean toward light.

Your light doesn’t have to be loud.
But it does deserve to be seen.

To share your light doesn’t mean broadcasting everything.
It means offering what feels real and ready—to you—with reverence, not performance.

In this tender final pillar of The Soulful Journey, we explore the art of soulful sharing. Not the kind that seeks to impress or go viral, but the kind that says:

This is me. I was here.

For years, I have been teaching how to make art journals — how to layer paper and paint, add texture, play with color, and follow your curiosity across the page.
I still love those things. The rustle of torn paper. The quiet magic of collage. The joy of making something simply because it feels good in your hands.

What if the turning point isn’t a grand decision or bold move… but a quiet moment of presence?

This week on the blog, I explore how the simple act of listening—truly listening to your inner rhythm, your soul’s pacing, your layered truth—can soften the old stories and invite in the new.
It’s not about fixing. It’s not about knowing. It’s about making space.

The train pulled away from Milan just as the afternoon light began to soften the city’s hard edges. She sat by the window, fingers wrapped around a small paper cup of espresso gone cold, watching her reflection flicker over the blur of olive trees and ochre villas.

She was traveling alone. For the first time in years.

The choice had felt quiet but certain. A slow rising from within. Not a dramatic escape, not a reinvention—just a soft instinct to go somewhere beautiful and let the stillness catch up with her.

There Are Seasons for Quiet, and Seasons for Becoming
Listening to the rhythm of your soul

We live in a culture that glorifies constant motion, always urging us to do more, be more, show more. But the soul? The soul moves differently.

The soul is seasonal.

And just like the natural world cycles through winter’s hush and spring’s unfurling, so too do we.

She arrived in Périgord under a pale afternoon sky, the kind that made the stone villages glow as if lit from within. The taxi wound through fields of sunflowers and rows of lavender, each bend in the road feeling like an exhale. She hadn’t known exactly why she came—only that something within her had stirred in recent months. A soft tug. A need to shift, to shed, to listen.

She’d signed up for a month-long artist’s retreat at the edge of a small village, a quiet cluster of shutters and slate roofs perched above the Dordogne. Her room overlooked a garden filled with rosemary, thyme, and soft yellow roses. Mornings were for tea and journaling beneath the fig tree. Afternoons were spent in a stone barn-turned-studio, where others painted or wrote or wandered in thoughtful silence.

I Am Returning to Something True

There are moments when the path forward doesn’t feel like a grand leap or a brand new chapter.

Instead, it feels like a quiet remembering.
A soft turning inward.
A return.

She arrived in Paris on a drizzly Wednesday, her suitcase wheels clicking over the wet cobblestones like a heartbeat. She had rented a small apartment in Montmartre, just above a florist’s shop where the scent of eucalyptus and garden roses drifted up to her window each morning. It had been forty years since she first walked these streets as a wide-eyed college student with a sketchbook in her satchel and dreams blooming like spring.

Now, at 59, she had returned—older, quieter, carrying a longing she couldn’t quite name. A soft pull toward beauty. Toward remembering.

A Soul Truth From the Quiet Places

Last fall, I sat at a retreat tucked away in the stillness of the season—leaves loosening, light softening. I hadn’t come with a plan, only the ache of needing space. Space from the noise. Space from the narrative. Space to listen.

Somewhere between the silent mornings and shared circles, it arrived—not with thunder, but with a whisper that felt older than me:

“I am being revealed to myself.”

There wasn’t a single moment of revelation.

No lightning bolt. No sky-splitting “aha.” Just a slow, quiet unfolding—a soft rhythm of noticing, creating, retreating, returning.

I used to think my path had to make sense in hindsight. That all the creative experiments, the shifting seasons of my life, the pauses and pivots, would eventually lead to a singular destination. A place where I could say, “Here I am. This is what I do. This is who I am.”

But the truth? That place never quite arrived.

Beginning can feel like the hardest part.

Whether you’re returning to your creativity after a long pause or standing on the edge of something entirely new, it’s easy to get stuck in the swirl of “Where do I start?” and “What if I get it wrong?”

I’ve been there, too. More than once.

There’s something that happens when you pause long enough to hear yourself.

Not the to-do list voice. Not the self-doubt voice. Not the echo of all the things you think you should have accomplished by now.

But the voice underneath. The one that says,
This is where I am.
This is what’s stirring.
This is what wants to become.

You don’t always call it art.
Sometimes it’s the way you tear the edge of a receipt and tuck it into your notebook.
The way you pause at a faded photo in a thrift store bin, feeling its weight even before you know why.
The way you arrange your day around a sliver of light that only enters your studio at 3 p.m.

You are already creating.

You don’t need permission to begin.
You’ve already begun—in whispered ways, in gentle acts of noticing, in the quiet gathering of a thousand small things.

Some days, beginning is the bravest thing we can do.
Not because the act of creating is hard—but because we are carrying so much tenderness.

Tenderness around time, energy, confidence.
Tenderness around “getting it right” or “not wasting it.”
Tenderness around wanting it to mean something.

And sometimes what we really need… is a permission slip.

Your story is layered.

It holds threads of joy and ache, growth and unraveling, silence and song.
It isn’t linear or tidy—and it was never meant to be.

But it is yours—and within it lives a kind of radiant wisdom that cannot be taught, only lived.

There’s something sacred about the moment you sit down to create—not to produce or perfect, but simply to be with your own creative unfolding. In a world that moves fast and praises output, choosing to tend your creativity with gentleness is a quiet act of resistance. And a radical act of self-trust.

In a world that prizes output and urgency, soul-tending can feel radical. But here, within the rhythm of The Soulful Journey, it is essential.

To nurture your soul is to honor your inner landscape as sacred.
It’s to slow down long enough to hear what your heart is whispering.
It’s to understand that the quiet moments—the tea breaks, the morning pages, the walks without purpose—are not distractions from your art.

They are the art.