Ep #211: How to Harvest Your Creative Potential

In our modern culture with its fast pace and driving relentless demands, if we have a conversation, introduce the topic of unlocking one’s potential, of self-actualizing, of realizing one’s dreams, then thoughts and conversations almost immediately turn to, what do we need to do yet? What’s lacking? Where can we shore up shortcomings? Where can we work harder and extract more?

I have a different paradigm to offer you today. In the unlocking of your creative potential, there is an opportunity to experience depth and richness in your life, within yourself, that will astonish you. This is achieved not through achievement solely, but through nourishment, through radical nurture.

I’m recording this episode for you the week before Thanksgiving here in the States, a time of feasting and giving thanks. I think it’s so important in our modern-day world that we give ourselves back these rituals, these rituals that stir something ancient within us, that awaken something that’s been longing to be recognized, met, and nurtured so that it can rise.

What I want to offer you today is a ritual of Thanksgiving, of harvesting, an opportunity to pause and feast on your life. So, to usher that in, I wanted to begin with a masterpiece of soul making by Nobel Laureate award-winning poet Derek Walcott.

Poetry itself is soul making, as is making any art. And so, this poem is very meta. Just listening to the poem, just taking it in will expand and fill your soul. It also gives instructions on how to make soul. The title of the poem is Love After Love.

“The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the others’ welcome and say, sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. It is an utterly enchanting winter morning here in Michigan. The snow has been falling for a few days. It’s thick on the trees. There’s a blanket also of deep silence and stillness. And from that place, I am coming to you with a very special episode.

So, whether or not you are in the United States, and hello, I love you to all my listeners who are around the world. I am extending to all of you my deep, heartfelt gratitude for you listening, for being a part of this community, for being the reason that I do this.

And I am also offering, extending an invitation to join me in this Thanksgiving, in a harvesting ritual. This is beautiful, deep work to do on one’s own. and I know that in doing it together and in community, the effects are amplified. The ability to integrate and celebrate and just the energy received is amplified.

I mean, think about a feast. It’s always a party, right? You can have a party for one. But too, there is deeply embedded within us something communal, that when we come together, that communal aspect of our being is nourished, as are our individual selves and lives. And nourished individuals who are nourished together in community go back out and have a deep understanding of then our oneness, our relatedness, and then they nourish and give health and healing from that understanding that we are one.

So, before I forget and get carried away with this episode, I am offering a free open call, open Art School call. You can come to coach, to just sit in the energy. A lot of people say it feels like spiritual, creative, chiropractic work. It feels like energetic chiropractic work. I just feel more myself again and I feel on track and like I can channel and do the work.

So, you can just come and bask in that. And you can also come with any questions you have, any thoughts, and particularly o this episode where I’m going to be offering you a lot of opportunities for self-inquiry and for prompts. You can bring those. You can bring your questions about those. You can bring the places you have momentum and want to celebrate. You can bring the places where you’re stuck.

Also on this call, I will be reserving time for any questions you might have about the Art School or the Art School Mastermind, what you can expect. They could be housekeeping questions about structure. I am offering the potential for this three-month program to actually be a six-month program.

You only pay for the original three-month program, but I’m offering an opportunity to dive in working with me right away. So, you could start working with me and be in the community as soon as January, and then I’m offering support all the way through June.

The official start and end time of the Art School is February and then goes March and then we wrap up, technically, in April. But again, I’m going to offer ongoing support and you will also have access to all of the materials for the entire rest of 2023.

So, with my support, again, through June, and then also you’re part of the Art School Alumni community, which has ongoing benefits, both close in that I offer, and then also, obviously, through that network and beautiful, incredible, constructive, supportive community.

So, I am inviting you to come to our Friendsgiving feast after Thanksgiving. And again, that is on Tuesday November 29^th, 1:30PM Eastern, and if you sign up for my newsletter and you already have it, you’ll receive the invitation in the link. And if you haven’t signed up yet for my newsletter and you want to attend, be sure to sign up for my newsletter. That is the only way to register or enroll for this. It’s free. There’s no cost. That Zoom link will be sent out via email.

The last several calls we’ve had in this community have been outstanding, both the free calls, and also I started the Secret Door calls. The first one kicked off, alchemical, amazing. One woman even said, “Oh my gosh, I have had a complete full-circle life moment.” And it was really beautiful and profound to witness. And the energy and the flow of this community and the openness that people bring, for the shifts that can happen, for the growth, and their openness too, the magic, just straight-up magic is also wonderful.

And if you are new to my work or even listening to the podcast and you are still not sure about what the Art School is or what the mastermind is, what the differences are, what happens there, what the culture or the community is like, this will be an excellent call to attend.

Just briefly now, an introduction – this would be the way I would describe it. It’s a description you’ll find on the landing page and maybe one of the most succinct ways I have of describing these programs which are really not only programs. They’re containers, which are really not only containers. They’re experiences, all aimed at nurturing your creative genius and making possible all of those things that you have always wanted to do but felt maybe out of reach or too hard or that you’d have to struggle and grind and sacrifice.

No, what I want for you simply from the Art School is first coming into this new knowing of yourself, perhaps like you’ve never known yourself before. It will astonish you.

And then, it’s humble and it’s sublime at the same time, this feeling of, “I can do this. This is who I am.” Once all these layers of conditioning and all this psychic baggage drops away, the blocks, the things that have just crystalized your life and your soul and kept it on deep lockdown, kept your potential, kept your true essence on deep lockdown, once those begin to fall away, truly an innate genius is a natural genius.

And obviously, there’s always craft and there is what we gain through the pursuit and the love of our craft. And there’s also this tapping into your innate, singular genius.

So, this is the way that I have described it on the landing page and I think, again, it’s a very succinct way of describing really a transformational, life-changing, life-enhancing experience.

Informed by neuroscience, poetic, and artistic thought and ways of being, ancient wisdom, somatic intelligence, modern psychology, your own innate creative genius processes, intuition, and some other really rad stuff that feels like straight-up magic, the Art School and the Art School Mastermind evoke and radically nurture the creative genius within, fostering the deepest most profound of transformations, the ones that help you become the artist you’ve always known you could be, living the extraordinary life you’ve always dreamed of.

So, that is what is possible and it comes with a hefty dose of, “No, this is not pie in the sky.” So much change is available for you. So much change. If you have been tolerating stagnation or feeling like you’re in a never-ending struggle, you will want to get yourself into the Art School. And if that’s too much of a leap, get yours3elf first to these classes.

You can do so much with all of the free resources that I offer. So, I would love to see you there. Again, it’s Tuesday November 29^th at 1:30PM Eastern. Also, feel free to email me with any of your questions, coaching or just Q&A logistical related to support@leahcb.com and I will make sure that I answer everyone’s question, that everyone is met and seen.

Okay, so that was a longer introductory piece than usual. And now, let’s dive into today’s episode. A harvest ritual, a Thanksgiving feasting ritual. This is something that I offered in both the free workshop I started, we dipped our toes in this. I’ve gone deeper with the mastermind.

And what I want to set you up for first is success. So, not just doing this on the fly, but when I envision this Thanksgiving harvest ritual episode going out, knowing that yes, in the States, we have a longer weekend. Maybe those of you not celebrating Thanksgiving can set up your own longer weekend, your own personal retreat, your own space for ritual.

Because in order for this to take hold, in order for this to be transformational and really make a difference in your life, you have to do something that our culture really resists, which is carve out time. Not just check it off your list, but it could be you carve out a little time and you start to reflect on this.

But in the silence of your own heart or perhaps in community with kindred spirits, you do make a ritual, a sacred ritual out of this. You do bring the fullness of your presence to this because this is a soul-making activity. Activity is too small of a word. It makes it sound like kindergarten table.

It is soul making work and you deserve that, and your life deserves that. And I think the fact that many times people’s first layer of resistance is, “That’s so indulgent,” is also a great key and insight into this activity because so often, the things that we are saying are indulgent are precisely the things that would help us create soul, help us create our lives, help us to create richness within that flows without.

I think, so often, the places where we judge or are judged or have internalized systems of oppression that judge reflection and contemplation and depth and going slower and going deeper, and that say, “That’s selfish. What a privilege. What indulgence.”

And I will say, yes, yes, and yes. Because those are precisely the things required to make soul. And you deserve it. Your life deserves it.

And so, years ago, I decided upon this harvest ritual, probably of course partly stemming, flowing from, growing from my agrarian roots, growing up on a farm, being the daughter of farmers, coming from a long line of farmers. And harvest is a part of the cycle of life, when you live on a farm.

And more than just being a job, I think that fact that farming is you’re close to nature touched something deep within me that extends back further than just my life or generations of family. Something then that it nourished in a way that, yes, this is a cycle, and seeing over and over again through this cycle of the year that you sow seeds, that you tend to them, that you weed, you take care of weeds, you watch the weather.

You cultivate that crop throughout the year and then you never leave it in the field. That would be the ruining of your family, of your livelihood. That would be also an assault on the soul. It would be a waste. If a farmer even gets sick and his crop is in the field, neighbors will come and harvest it for that farmer, for that family.

Because everyone knows deeply yes, the economic reality of that, I am not denying that. That is absolutely a driver. And then, there is also again something that would offend the heart and soul to see a year’s work and to see that richness, that fruit left in the field.

So, farmers always harvest and it is like a holiday season, but where you work around the clock to beat the weather. And you bring the grain in, either to bins or market.

When I was really young, we still had a barn, before it burnt down, and we’d fill it with hay and straw bales. And I can remember being in the house on a snowy, blizzardy night and the light was on out in the barn in the haymow. And I remember my dad saying, “There’s nothing in the world that feels quite the way that having a haymow,” that’s the top of the barn, “Full of hay and straw going into winter.”

Ad I got that, even though I think in my child mind, I thought, “Yeah, because the baby kitties that are all born out in the hay bales. That’s for them, and that’s a place where we play on rope swings and build forts all winter long.”

But I also got that there was something about that gathering in, knowing you’re cared for, and knowing the fruits of your year’s work are out there for you.

And again, that is not something that, in our secular culture, often we’re so far removed from nature, really has. But it is important to the psyche, particularly the psyche that is interested in conscious evolution, conscious creativity, and drawn to soul making, and we want to scurry over it and, again, shame ourselves for having this primal need and say it’s indulgent when I don’t think indulgent is a bad word.

I want to un-bastardize that word, as well as selfish. I don’t want to try to convince you that it’s not indulgent or not selfish. I want you to integrate those aspects of yourself that advocate for the nourishment of your being, that yes, the soul needs to be indulged. Your being needs to be indulged. Yes, that selfish drive is to nourish and care for you, so that you have that well within you filled up.

I don’t want to live in a world where people are not indulging, not giving themselves nourishment and beauty, and not doing the soul making work, this harvesting work which I’m going to talk about more.

So, the essence of what I want to offer you, it’s going to be a series of prompts, self-inquiry. Because to know thyself, that is one of our highest callings. That’s one of the primary activities of self-actualization, a shamanic journey, a journey of becoming, of creating anything then that is also filled with an element of something extra, something special, some sort of life force.

So, there will be a series of prompts, so this whole episode is a coach with me. The first one is, what do you want to gather in from the last year? Because you’ve been sowing incredible seeds, cultivating beautiful dreams and ways of being, and lives. And you’ve also been creating mounds of failure along the way. You also deserve to have a life where you get to feast on your heartbreak, on your disappointment, on failures, where you get to have a life, you are deserving of a life that is expansive enough so that you can really be alive, that is expansive enough to make room, spaciousness for failures and the wisdom and the wizening that comes from that, the deepening, the enrichment. You deserve to know that you can survive your failures, and not only survive your failures and mistakes, but that you are so wonderfully deserving and lovable of a life where you also get to learn from them and without recrimination and devoid, free of shame.

Also, I want to make so clear, this is not an exercise in going back over your year and looking for all of the things that you’ll just do better next year, all of the places where you fell short. Because that, metaphorically speaking, I could make an analogy to a farmer who spends her, his days looking at a neighbor’s crop and being like, “Gosh, Dale Foucart’s corn sure looks good this year. Man, I wish I had Dale Foucart’s corn and yields.”

Farmers do that. They don’t sit and do that. They actually then get back to the work and are fully engaged with the work of bringing in their own crop, their own harvest. You must focus on what is yours to harvest and love your harvest because to not do so is to neglect your harvest and neglect ad reject your life and is essentially like leaving it out in the field where it will get snowed on, rained on and it will rot and waste.

And you can go about planning what you’re going to do better next year, but in the meantime, you’re without that income. You’re without that nourishment and support. So, again, this is not about looking for places where you can beat yourself up about the last year, and also in the sneaky way that our brain is like, “Well, I didn’t get it this year, so next year I’m going to do better.”

No, don’t go there yet. This is about gathering in everything. The orientation is different. We’re looking at our failures, not as something that’s a broken place, to improve upon, but as a literal part of the harvest that you’re drawing in and that you can actually take in, ingest into your being, and that will nourish you.

So, the overall theme is gathering things in from the last year. And again, I invite you to carve our time, immediately, over the next couple of weeks, sanctuaries of stillness and quiet where you can reflect and gather in the fruits of wisdom, meaning, small changes, profound transformations, work you’ve done, enchantment you’ve experienced or created, awe, delight, love, peace, healing that has been yours or you’ve been a part of, heartache that has opened you, cracked you open, disappointment, despair that has allowed you to surrender, rest, places where you’ve exhibited courage, where you’ve had fun, where there’s been beauty, where you’ve sensed things coming into your life, coming through you, where you’ve come more deeply to know your intuition, or perhaps where you’ve dismissed it, but then in retrospect you recognize it, which is also cultivating a deeper relationship to it.

Places where you’ve deepened, looking for how you have evolved your experience of things, looking for all of the soul-making that you have been so magnificently tending to over the last several months. And so again, you can do this on your own, and that is for sure one way to do a part of it.

Light a candle or a fire. That ancient element is so helpful. Cozy up, get something warm to drink that puts you into parasympathetic state, and then write your heart out. You can also do this in a journaling community, or organize an extracurricular Art School magic circle.

And again, approaching this as a very open-ended way to contemplate. Prompts are portals to self-inquiry. Once again, self-inquiry raises our awareness and guides us along this journey of self-actualization. So some additional prompts are how are you different because of the last several months and year? What have you learned? What have you gained? What have you lost? What have you released?

How have you surrendered? How have you been the beneficiary of squeezes and tight moments that perhaps benevolently force you into surrendering or changing? What reckonings have you experienced? What realizations have dawned on you or are dawning? What have you grown? What have you given your attention to? What have you nurtured? What has nurtured you?

How do you want to be shaped as a result of everything you’ve done and learned this year? Who do you want to be more of? Less of? More expansive, tolerating of loving as a result of everything you’ve done and learned this year?

And again, what do you want to gather in? What is yours? This feast of your life, sit as Derek Walcott says, sit. Meet yourself. Greet the stranger you’ve been. I love how he says the stranger because that is also why I started doing this harvest ritual. I felt I was dismissing myself, a me, a deep aspect of me that had been with me and loving me all of the way, and I felt that to not harvest, all of a sudden it dawned on me, it was this deep rejection of this aspect of me that was always with me, always with me.

So this is sitting down and meeting that you. Also, if you need additional encouragement for why to do this, Jung said something along the lines of essentially what we don’t celebrate, we don’t integrate. So if there are things that you’ve been trying to create in your life and also patterns you’ve been trying to disrupt and create new patterns, changes, transformations, work that you’ve been trying to realize, but you don’t look back and harvest what you have done, you then don’t integrate those things and you keep yourself in the same position as you were.

You don’t allow yourself the full nourishment or the nurturing that will absolutely support that actualization, that realization of what you are seeking. And when we harvest, we also awaken again to our potential as conscious creators. You will feel it deep within when you do. You will feel this meeting up with this deep self.

Because we can either just let life happen and pass us by, speed-skating along at the quotidian breakneck pace on the surface of things, or we can plumb the depths. We can harvest. We can participate, co-collaborate, co-create in this process of our own evolution, of the making of our souls, ourselves, our lives, and by extension, the world.

So I was talking a few weeks ago with a dear friend who was saying she felt stuck and disappointed and like the last big transformation she had in her life, which was epic, was nearly 20 years ago. And I listened and I totally understood too her disappointment and not creating a transformation in these certain areas that she was really focused on.

And then also, I just remembered and shared that she has created some really incredible transformations in areas of her life that I know are of deepest value and importance to her, and in such a courageous, heart-opening, moving past the ego into the deep self way, truly a process of individuation, of wisening, of self-actualization, really of metamorphosis.

Going through the fire, talk about alchemy. Going through the fire and not even at the point where the gold is quite there because she wasn’t seeing it until I said. And she’s like, “Oh my god, yes, that’s right.” And so my point in sharing this story is that this is a very self-aware, loving, compassionate, wise person intent on deliberately creating her life, and it’s just how our brains are wired to wipe away, to diminish, to not see, to eclipse the places where our lives are so rich, where we do have fruit to harvest, that will nourish us the way it nourished her when she realized and brought it in.

There was silence for a while because you can feel it, you can feel it when somebody has a realization that there has actually been this thing that they’ve been seeking for, they’ve been longing for, and that pause, that feasting moment where you can feel it, like a communion moment. You’re taking it in to your being.

It is so easy to forget, to just rush on to the next thing, particularly in the hubbub of this time of year, and to not notice what is there for you. It’s so easy to leave standing out in the field unharvested, wasted even, what we have been cultivating. Our souls, ourselves, our lives, our moments, our growth, our evolution, our dear, precious hearts.

And the simple ritual of self-inquiry, reflection, of harvesting and celebrating, honoring, being grateful for, and then feasting on our lives can nourish us like nothing else can. It is particularly formulated what we have created with our lives, what we have sown ourselves is particularly formulated to feed ourselves, and when we feel malnourished, then we feel empty, and we leave ourselves.

We go out in the world and we scroll and we consume and we overwork and we overdo. We have dependencies on things to flee from this understandably uncomfortable gnawing hunger. But what we’re hungry for is the return of ourselves. What we’re hungry for is the sustenance, the fruits of our own soul-making, of our own lives, including the difficult parts, including the failures, and including dreams not yet realized, including desires.

This harvesting can sustain us through darkness and cold. It can leave us fertile, nourished, strong, and ready for the next season. It can also simply, wonderfully, profoundly feel like a life well lived, well loved, abundant, generous, generative, not a moment wasted.

There’s a line from Mary Oliver in one of her poems where she says – and I thought this was such a brilliant, bold, audacious, and perfect line, where she has not wasted a year. You can decide to be like that. You can decide to live like a poet like that. And so when I shared with this with the Art School Mastermind, I came back and added this in.

Another way to think about what you don’t celebrate you don’t integrate is again, oftentimes, we leave our harvest standing in the field, meaning what we sought to grow is out there. It is out there. And you have to go and bring it in. And I love particularly, I’ve mentioned that this next round of the Art School and the mastermind, we are going to be dedicating so much of the real estate and attention to the unconscious.

And there is this line in one of David Eagleman’s books, Incognito, where he said, the subconscious mind will have conceived of an idea, written a manuscript, written a final draft, had it submitted, and had it published. In about that time, the conscious mind will be like, you know what, I have an idea. Because the conscious mind, the brain is often the last to know.

And so doing this harvest work is also a way of working with the unconscious, working with the deep psyche. So again, oftentimes we’re leaving what we have created, what we have sown, cultivated, our harvest, standing out in the field. It’s out there and then we actually have to go and bring it in. Not just think about it, including that just journal it.

I’m going to get to this. This is an important point, this physical aspect. And then we also have to feast on it. It’s not enough to say, “Yeah, yeah,” you also have to actually participate in the celebration, the processing. Ingesting something, being nourished by it, it’s a physical process.

So your deep transformations, your changes, your shifts, your losses, your hardships, your gifts were there this year. To complete them though, bring them in. How will you do that? How will you do that is the prompt. Sometimes it is a useful point of entry to say, to inquire, what do you usually do instead?

Do you usually overlook, diminish, downplay? Look again to the future only to it being better, to you being better or different, and then be very aware. How exactly does that play out? What thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviors, patterns?

I’ll often have clients do a pictogram, I have them draw this out like a map. What their process is, the way that they do life, draw it out like a map and draw in these cartoon bubble-like things to narrate thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviors. It’s a simple tool, it’s an incredible awareness and transformation tool.

So then once you do this, this process of inquiry about how will you do that, how do you usually do it? You can then begin to think of how you could accept and then disrupt that pattern. So how will you do that is the question, the central question. How will you harvest is the creative prompt.

It’s prompting you to create, to soul-make, and is more than just journaling and reflection, or talking about it, or writing alone. Ask yourself, is there another way, are there other ways, deep transformation, the gift, the fruit is looking to be brought in, anchored in, feasted upon, taken in fully? Ways it is wanting to become integrated as food as when we feast. It becomes part of our body and our nourishment energizes our lives.

So there can be frivolous examples and trust them, and trust your heart, and go for them. When I sold my first painting, I bought a beautiful bracelet I had wanted for a long time. It seemed frivolous and extravagant to my rational mind, but it absolutely delighted the me that loves pretty things and beauty. And it was good for my heart.

It anchored something into my soul. It might not have meant anything to anyone else, but I could feel the click. I could feel that yes, that was the thing. And when we finished our house, our dream house that we built, that was a long time coming, I bought the baby grand piano that I had wanted since I was a little girl. And I bought it intentionally with money that came solely from painting sales.

Because now, every time when I look at that beautiful instrument, when I play it, or when I hear someone else playing the piano, I’m reminded that my dream, my child’s dream of having this beautiful object and instrument of art brought forth art, brought forth my art, and then my art then in turn fed and created the very literal income necessary to bring to life another life-long dream of having art in my home, having music in my home.

So I bring up these examples because again, a lot of people are like, “That’s so indulgent, that’s so superficial.” Your psyche does not care for being irrational or altruistic, and your psyche is running the show. They say 95% of our thoughts, actions, behaviors, we think we’re making conscious decisions but it has been primed. It’s in us unconsciously and that 95% is a  conservative estimate of what we do, who we think we are, what we create, and the lives that we live.

And that aspect of us, again, is mysterious, is wily, is non-rational, extra-rational. And so this harvesting work is the work of serving the non-rational that makes our lives so rich, that makes our art rich, that makes life worth living. These harvesting rituals are about nurturing the numinous.

Another aspect of or example of anchoring something could be in drawing a physical line in the sand, doing something in your life that is a true difference. Making a new decision, a new choice, a new commitment, and then making it real by taking action on it.

But overall, you will know, something will rise and occur to you. Just be ready to notice it, honor it, and take action on it. That’s the rising spirit in you speaking to you. Comes up, and grab it, listen to it before the rational mind waves it away, just dismissing it as aberration, dismissing it as nothing, as smoke, as frivolous, as indulgent.

Meet yourself. Feast on your life. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you have enjoyed these episodes, if they have satisfied your holy curiosity, if they’ve felt like they’ve stretched or enriched your life, helped you move the needle and create transformation in meaningful ways, I am so grateful. Then I’ve hit the mark and I want to do more of that.

And I would love your help in doing so. I would love your help in growing this audience and having it reach more and more people. The best ways to do that are to share, to share far and wide. Social media shout-outs are help. I love connecting with you that way. My Instagram handle is @leahcb1.

I love hearing from you, email us, support@leahcb.com. Also, just easily, casually sharing with friends, sharing with five friends, subscribing, and then also the iTunes reviews are so helpful. That basically is the equivalent of if I wrote a book, it’s on the shelf in the bookstore, it would be the equivalent of pulling the book out and putting it on the editor’s choice table, reader’s choice table.

That’s how reviews really work when people go to search. And I know I’ve heard from people who have found me and said, “I read this review and it just seemed like exactly the person who wrote it was reflecting something that I really needed in my life, so I took the time to listen to an episode.” And that means a lot to me.

Your time is limited. Life is full and so the fact that you do allow The Art School Podcast to be part of your podcast library, oh my gosh, dream come true. I am harvesting that and again, giving thanks to all of you for listening.

If you want to take this work deeper, if you want to be immersed in a container, in an energy, in an experience, and receive the sort of radical nurturing and support that truly will change everything, will blow your mind and astonish you at what’s been inside you all along, and truly, with the knowing realization of what you’re capable of.

And also that just sacred ground, humble feeling of this is not beyond me. I can do this. I know how to do this, I know paradoxically how to dance with the mystery, and I know that these dreams I’ve had are not just there to torture me. They are there to nurture me, and for me to nurture them.

If you want that to be day in, day out your experience, an enchanted life, a life that you create from the inside out, there is no better place to learn how to do that, to become the person, the artist you’ve longed to be, that you’ve known you’re meant to be, then the Art School and the Art School Mastermind.

So again, I’d love to have you join us on the next free call, November 29th, Tuesday, November 29th. Email us with any questions, check out our website and make sure to sign up for our newsletter. Because oftentimes I will decide last minute to hold a call, or to offer something, including I’ve offered free one-on-one coaching.

So it really pays to be in that close-knit community that I communicate with via email. And again, you’ll find that link to sign up in the show notes or by going to our website. So to close, I want to offer you my prayer and my intention that this episode supports your own deep nourishing, your own ritual and practice of feasting on your life because it’s so beautiful in itself is a feast, and truly soul food.

I want to read again the poem – besides, who doesn’t love being read to? I love being read to. Love After Love by Derek Walcott. “The time will come when with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the others welcome. And say, sit here, eat, you will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, who you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit, feast on your life.”

I know you all have magnificent lives on which to feast. All of it. All of it is worthy of a feast, just like Mr. Walcott made a poem, all of your lives are worthy of art. More than that, you’re the stuff, the making of your soul. Feast on your life, my friends. Have a beautiful nourished week and I look forward to talking with you next time.