Welcome to a Little Bit Much! Lots of new subscribers here over the past few weeks. Welcome! Thanks for diving in with me. This is a subscriber-supported publication. If you have the means and would like to support this work financially, I would really appreciate it! If not, please know that your attention and engagement with this work are so valuable and deeply respected. All are welcome.
Welcome to Share & Tell! A monthly feature where I SHARE about people I know doing rad work, playing to their genius and contributing to collective goodness and why I dig ‘em!
Then I TELL you about what’s really going on. I tell you about my strategies and personal process in the pursuit of new dreams while modelling the very thing I’ve been working with clients on for over 15 years: Meeting your Calling. Spoiler: I’m a bit of a mess right now.
My work world was pretty simple when my Calling was to help others meet their Calling. Little peas in a pod of pursuit. Now my Calling has morphed. It’s gotten daunting but enlivening. It kicks up feelings of who the hell am I to do this while simultaneously feeling like every existential thread I’ve pulled has been leading right here.
The SHARE is for everyone. The TELL is SUPPOSED to be for paid subscribers. But one of the things I’m wrestling with is why I even have things paywalled here. Like, is that necessary? I don’t know. I kinda wanna just share everything with everyone. I have called the paywall a privacy wall but the truth is I’m not a very private person, so c’mon!
I’m curious…does paywalled content inspire you to want to subscribe? It seems like most of my paid subscribers do so to support this work, not to get things. I like that. And I kind of want this to be a place where I’m not always selling something, where I lean into faith that I will be provided for in various ways as I make my art and share my work. So…no paywall today while I continue to muse. And if you have thoughts about this, please share in the comments!
who shall we highlight this month!??!?!
First up is my friend and long-time client Rachael Maddox’s Business Witchery.
I’ve been reaching out to friends to coven up with me, maybe you want to join us? (I’m an affiliate of this program and participating in it) I’m stoked about the spirit of this offering. I keep saying “I just want to write shows and books”. I hesitate saying that publicly because it’s not how I make my living and I don’t want to anger the law of attraction gods and have my business revenue all dry up. Or have people not hire me or join my stuff because they think my heart’s not it in. My heart is and always will be with people who are laying their hearts on the line to grow into the life’s work they’re most called to do. I’m still here for it. And I have art to make. Both. And.
I’m leaning into so many new edges with my service, expression and art and I want to go all in. This longing shakes foundations that have kept my life and family stable for a very long time (more on that in my Tell below). I know from holding others through these kinds of transitions and doing it myself, that identities hold strong and need some help to release. I don’t need any more how-to’s or learning, I’ve got strategy and capacity coming out of my pores. What I need right now is my full witch. I need a coven of powerful, uncensored magic makers. Fierce love that won’t stand for bullshit. I want ritual and ceremony and to fall back, arms spread into the mystery. If that stirs a yes in your bones, come with me!
Continuing with the theme of the WILD, meet Liz Hardwick.
Liz is a fellow Integral Coach™ and one of the Mentors in my program Lead your Self. She leads transformational wilderness expeditions which I am so determined to get myself to. If you are in a life transition and want to turn off the incessant noise so you can hear the call of your soul, check out these offerings! Part of what draws me to these expeditions is the way Liz relates to wild places, with sacred reverence, with a respect for our interdependence with and as nature and deep regard for the indigenous people who’ve been stewarding the lands for generations.
Brooke MacNamara is offering a soulfully rich group writing experience for mothers.
Write to the Heart of Motherhood is for mamas to unleash and harness their holiest and messiest feelings, exercise and nourish their voices and bond deeply with other amazing women on the ride of motherhood. I took this course a couple of years ago, and it was so nourishing! To ride that line of feeling so tapped as a mother of young ones, but in deep need of creative space to connect deeply and write. Brooke weaves the sacred through everything she does and the spaces she holds are so easy and relieving to drop into.
Brian Dean Williams is helping men ask better questions with Ask Her.
Brian was the couples therapist my husband and I worked with while navigating one of the most fraught times in our marriage. Brian is offering a course and practice space for men. Brian started this course after 15 years as a clinical counsellor when the #1 complaint he heard in his practice by the partners of men was that they didn’t seem interested in or curious about their lives and could ask better questions.
Our patriarchal culture and dominant media repeatedly reinforce that women are not interesting and don’t need to be listened to. Even well-meaning and loving men have been raised with the messages that men are the experts to listen to and the ones with interesting and noteworthy lives. So where does this leave their female partners' lives and inner and outer worlds?
I feel blessed (smart? savvy?) to be married to a wholehearted feminist. A man who shares the responsibilities so fully in our domestic life, he calls me out when I try to saddle him with too many ‘man jobs’. You know how to use a drill, he’ll say. He’s deeply curious about my experience as a woman and offers safety and friendship as I continue to heal from patriarchal wounding, while navigating his own, like all the ways our culture assumes fathers play a backseat role. He was outraged by the lack of change tables in public men’s washrooms. How are we supposed to step in fully as fathers with this antiquated infrastructure? My husband was a hell yes to taking Brian’s course because he recognizes that growing in partnership never ends and let me tell you, the kinds of conversations he initiated after being in this practice space were awesome!
Know a man who is committed to meeting his partner in deeper and more nuanced ways? Have him reach out to Brian at connect@briandeanwilliams.com. Ask Her is a four-week online program, starting Sunday, April 7. The $350 fee can be claimed by extended medical for those in BC.
…Okay folks, here’s the update…
UUGGGGHHHH.
That is how this moment feels.
UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH.
It’s the first week of spring break and I’ve already stumbled into a pit of self-recrimination and overwhelm wondering how my attention is going to handle the complete dissolution of routine for another whole week. I want to be footloose and fancy-free about it. I want to be all - it’s all good! I planned for this! I totes prioritized my work around this!
But I did not.
2024 has come in like waves breaking and crashing the shoreline. It’s hard to keep my footing but there’s seemingly some rhythmic wisdom in the chaos. Not a single week has resembled the last, each day a dynamic juggle. So much happening while nothing seems to get done.
One part of me craves wide swaths of time to drop into deep productive work, undisturbed by all the things of life that I choose and hold dear while another part of me recognizes I may be in the new Shangri La of sustainable pacing where productivity is slow, life is full and I feel more human than ever.
If I widen my attention enough I remember crashing waves mean I’m on a beach at the water's edge and who can complain about that? But if my attention narrows too much I’m being pummeled by crashing change, asking the receding salt water to be a stable rock to stand on, my ankles wobbling and disoriented.
Disoriented is a good word. I’ve been disoriented.
I feel pulled in too many directions as I try in earnest to pare down, but I’ve always deeply sucked at that.
The speed at which my children are growing up is freaking me out. And if anyone out there has kind words of a soothing balm to help me navigate the excruciating hellscape that is parenting a teenager, please help! It’s asking for some rapid personal transformation as I try to be okay with making mistakes while it all feels horrendously high stakes. And in the midst of that, I don’t want to miss a moment with my 5-year-old because people always said it goes fast but I didn’t believe them but I now I know it really does. Eye blinking speed and all that. But also, I have so many interests and priorities beyond parenting, so waaaaaaaaaaaa.
On the work front, I’m in the midst of a bunch of back-end systems and automation projects in my business that my future self will thank me for but my present self is clawing her eyes out trying to make space for. It’s part of setting up the infrastructure that will help me more easily show up and serve the people who hire me and join my programs. I’ve always leaned more on high touch, manual ways of doing things which is just professionally irresponsible at this point, but oh so boring to think through and implement even though I have a team doing all the techy tech things that make me feel like I’m five hundred years old.
This is the year I intend to get the show I wrote onto the stage. By and large, I feel great about it. I’m proud of this show. I can now see how to flesh it out into a book and I’m even having dreams where new shows/books come to me. There’s something so true and right about this path for me, I can see it with utter clarity. This is what I’m called to now…shows and books.
I often yearn for the financial circumstances that could allow me to just pursue this without also having to maintain my business. But at the same time, I really get so much joy and satisfaction from working with the people I’m working with and I’m not just saying that because they read this newsletter. Really, truly I love the people in my field right now. Entrepreneurs, practitioners and creatives who are so wise and talented and care so deeply about our world and what they’re bringing to it. I receive a lot of energy and satisfaction from that work.
But it means that my creative pursuits feel slower than my energy around them wants to move. The immersion I’m craving feels mostly held back by resources. I want to just go and produce a whole tour of this show right here and right now. I want to take two weeks of silent retreat to dive head first into the book proposal. But I don’t have the time and investment capital to do that and sustain my life. I guess this is the age-old rub of trying to be a professional artist. Even though I don’t really care about making a living from the art specifically so long as I make a living. So I’m in that territory where I parse my energy and focus as strategically and regeneratively as possible.
It’s a pretty powerful feeling to be sauntering through my 40s and have a bone-deep knowing that I have the talent and discipline to pull off this emerging new path. I have internal and external evidence that not only does this kind of creation and offering feel wildly joyful to pursue, but I also know I have a voice of insight and experience to contribute to many intersecting conversations and art forms.
I feel faith in myself and faith in the mystery as I follow this call. But simultaneously there’s this voice wondering if I’m delusional. If this is some idealistic fantasy I’m leaning on to escape the sheer pain of existing in a war-fraught, ecologically collapsing world where art is being smothered by capitalism and AI. I wonder if I’m too old and too fat and too boring and too white and too privileged to contribute something worthwhile.
Last week I read one of the monologues from my show to a friend and watching her reactions touched something so deeply in me, encouraging me to keep going. At the end, she said “Quit everything and go do this. It’s going to work.”
I know it doesn’t suck. But what if I suck? What if I burn out before lighting it up, you know?
I just heard that a theatre I was planning to do a co-production with doesn’t have the resources to do it when I was hoping we could. It’s not a big blow, we could do it later or I could just rent the theatre. But I still find myself in a discouraging dip, but I guess I need to grow some thick skin around that. I’ve been so used to just funding my own projects, but the time and resources it takes to fund this all (or seek out funding) takes away from running a whole ass business. So that’s the wrestle I’m in. Time. Money. Capacity. I mean, who isn’t?
And that’s my main inspiration to do these monthly features of Share and Tell. Behind every piece of art and offering and small business is a human who has been wrestling to bring their work into the world. One of the transitions I help people with is the very thing I’m trying to do now- leap into the great unknown because the soul says you must, but how the heck to do that when you’ve built a whole life around an existing personal and professional identity that is the very ground of your security. Big stuff. I’m here for it.
Mind blown. All of this resonates so much. Grateful for an inspired by you. ❤️
Hi Chela, great to catch this update. I'm literally driving in the middle of nowhere on our way to Big Bend National Park with our three teenagers, quite cognizant of the fleeting nature of these remaining trips as a family. 💛😭
I have no solid advice on the teen front except to say I'm with you. Just trying to not f*ck them up too badly. I sometimes wonder what they might have to process via therapy down the road. Lol Thankfully, I've got an amazing husband with a good head on his shoulders who routinely keeps me grounded.
Funny you ask about the paywall, when you put it up, I was slightly put off because I feel similarly about wanting to share freely and subscribe to more than a few substacks simply because I want to support the work. Need to rein that habit in, actually. I've subscribed to several to access paywalled content, but then found I didn't read them as much, which led me to question whether I was getting enough "value" from the purchase. I really just want to read cool shit and support folks when I can.
My two cents! ♥️
By the way, also feel similar in the whole - try to figure out where to put my energy in the big picture of life, only I'm 52 and it feels even more URGENT and anxiety provoking despite my best attempts to simply keep showing up and trust that things will unfold in time and in the best way possible. ✨️