An art journal is never just paper and paint. It is a sanctuary. A container for memory, imagination, and possibility.

Maybe you’ve felt the tug to begin an art journal but aren’t sure where to start…

You’re not alone. So many women I meet feel that quiet pull — to gather scraps of paper, to dip into paint, to lay their hearts down on the page — but they hesitate. They wonder if it has to be beautiful, if it’s only for “real artists,” or if they even have anything worth expressing. Let me offer this: an art journal isn’t about creating a polished masterpiece. It’s about discovery. It’s about giving shape to what you feel, to what you can’t yet say, to the parts of your story that need a safe, colorful container.

There is a rhythm to becoming—one that does not rush, one that cannot be forced. It moves through shadow, glimmers, thresholds, and light, carrying us deeper into ourselves with every step.

This is what I call The Soulful Journey.

Every story we carry is layered — woven of memory, meaning, and the quiet truths that rise only when we pause long enough to listen. Keeper of My Story was born from that pause.

The Soulful Journey wasn’t something I dreamed up at a desk—it was something that rose up to meet me when I needed it most.

I was standing in a season of questions. A season of shadow, of uncertainty, of searching for words that didn’t yet exist. I longed for a way to make sense of the silence, to find meaning in the waiting, to see beauty even in the ache.

Holding Space for What Is Not Yet Language, but Already Truth

You feel it before you can name it — a quiet shift, almost imperceptible, that hums beneath the surface of your day.
It might be the way your breath catches at a half-remembered dream.
The way a certain color stirs something you can’t explain.
The ache that has no name, yet feels entirely real.

If I’m being honest, when The Soulful Journey first came to me, I thought my art and my guiding work were two separate parts of my life — one playful and personal, the other purposeful and meant to serve.

But the more morning pages I wrote and art journal pages I filled, the more I began to see it: they were never separate.

Every brushstroke, every torn scrap of paper, every mark made in my journals has been part of the same unfolding. The art I make and the truths I share are simply two ways of telling the same story — my Soulful Journey, lived in color and in words.

This morning, I sat in my studio with an empty page staring back at me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure where to begin. Then I remembered—I’d just created all this juicy goodness for the launch of The Soulful Journey.

I reached for my own copy of The Soulful Journey Begins, the little mini-journal I made to help hold tender beginnings. Settling into the comfy chair with a view out the window, I pulled this prompt:

What new stories might I be ready to begin shaping now?

Then, I began to write…

I have to tell you something.
This launch… it feels different.
Tender. Wide‑eyed. Brave.
A little like stepping out onto a stage in a room where the lights are just bright enough to see the faces in the crowd — and my knees are a little wobbly.

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.