The Power of Your Creative Ripple

One of my biggest spiritual teachers was my mother. The unfortunate thing is – she never knew it. And truthfully, neither did I – until she transitioned from the human realm to the spiritual realm.

It was this transition that magnified the power of my own teachings about life purpose legacy, helping solidify that everything does happen for a reason. As her daughter, I was able to see how her life story affected my own.

As a Life Purpose Alchemist, I’m a lover of story. I genuinely love hearing people tell their life stories. Through their words, through their laughter, through their tears – I hear threads of meaning, threads of purpose. And I have a divinely-creative gift for weaving these threads together in a way that unveils a deeper meaning.

It’s this meaning that brings the “aha” moments, the deep understanding, the desired clarity that leads to divinely-inspired actions. It’s this meaning that paves the way to choosing an authentic path of work. It’s this meaning that helps us make sense of the relationships in our lives. It’s this meaning that sparks the richness of living a life on purpose.

Even in the most difficult of times, there is light – and a deeper meaning, if we’re open to receiving it. Every part, every experience, every lesson of our life story carries significance and paves the way toward fulfillment of our life purpose.

My understanding of life purpose deepened when I received an unexpected phone call in early February 2012 with the news that my Mom had passed away in the wee hours of the morning. I remember sitting there stunned, not fully aware of whether or not I was dreaming. It was hard to imagine that a woman who had played such a big part in my life was suddenly gone.

My mother’s untimely passing opened my eyes to the reality that life could end at any moment for any of us – and when that time arrived, can we honestly say that we’ve given life everything we have?

Have we become all that we know we can BE?

Imagine for a moment a pebble thrown into a pond. It creates a ripple that goes on and on and on. I believe that creativity is a significant part of the ripple effect of humanity – that will transform the world into a more compassionate, more innovative place.

When an artist is living life with complete authenticity, she’s subconsciously giving permission for those around her to do the same. She’s truly at her best – creating powerful works of art that inspire transformational change for those who experience it. It’s all part of the ripple.

But what if something goes awry – and the ripple stems from a place of frustration, confusion, disconnect or unhappiness? How does that influence our creative ripple?

My transformational work with creative mothers and spiritual artists came out of my own experience of connecting with the moon during a really dark period in my life. Shortly after the birth of my first child, and after making some fairly significant life changes at the same time, I fell into depression – a place that felt so foreign to me, a place where I felt like I had fallen into a black hole with no way out.

It was during this time, a period that spanned over two years, that I had disconnected from everything that made me happy. Because my son suffered from chronic illnesses related to serious colds and severe ear infections, I made a very difficult choice to give up a successful career in order to care for my son full-time. I hadn’t realized until this experience how much of my identity was tied into my chosen path of work. Without it, I felt very lost and very unhappy.

No one understood the pain I felt – except my mother. She was the one person I could speak to without censoring myself – and she became my confidante from that point on.

I also found myself falling back on a great passion of mine – journal writing. And as a mom of a baby who did not have a normal sleep schedule, I found myself exhausted and emotional much of the time. So night after night, after I’d get my son settled and after my husband went to bed, I’d grab my journal and retreat to my favorite chair – beside a big bay window where I caught a glimpse of the moon. It was the moon that taught me the meaning of transition. I’d watch this beautiful lunar goddess, night after night, move in and out of her various phases. And before long, I began to connect her phases with my own emotional tides.

I noticed that the moon always began in darkness and gradually, she’d move into full light – and cycle back around again. And I noticed the contrast between dark and light – the darkness of the night sky against the beautiful full moon light. I started connecting to this – as if I was being divinely guided through my own transitions of dark and light. I began to notice the ebbs and flows of my emotions. There were good days and bad days.

So when I came to the point of writing my book, Journaling by the Moonlight: A Mother’s Path to Self-Discovery, I wanted creative mothers to realize that every human transition begins in darkness and gradually moves into light, where we get a glimpse of what is possible. And then we retreat, to ponder the many ways we can manifest these possibilities into reality. This requires deep work, where we step into our own truth and into our own power – and where we can emerge in the most authentic way possible.

This is what I call the Blue Moon phase – when we finally realize that we are here on this planet to be WHO we are, to put our personal thumbprint on the world in the most truthful, most authentic, most unique way possible – being divinely guided on our own purposeful path.

As creative individuals, we have the power to create great change in the world through our artistic endeavors. And this change has the most impact when we begin with ourselves – looking in the mirror and honoring the person who is staring back.

• WHO is this person? Do you really know her at her core? If you were to remove every label that she wears – mother, wife, partner, community leader, business owner, loyal friend, etc. – who is she?

• Pretend for a moment – that each of these labels are a blanket. Slowly remove each blanket, acknowledging the label it represents, and set it aside. Continue doing this until you have no more labels except – SELF.

• Who is SELF? Take a moment to describe SELF from the inside out. How do you feel when you’re not bombarded by what the world thinks you should be? What are your passions? What are your dreams? What makes you come alive? How does this person – from the inside out – want to show up in the world?

These are great questions to ponder in your journal, allowing yourself to answer them – truthfully and completely.

When we start chipping away at the exterior labels, what do we look like on the inside? What is our “diamond in the rough?”

Once we discover this, we’ve connected with our authentic self. And it’s from this place where purposeful, powerful, and magical masterpieces are created.

What kind of ripple are you sending out? How is it being reflected in your creative projects? Who are you touching through your artistic masterpieces?

As artists, we ALL have a life purpose legacy that’s being reflected through our creativity.

Take a look at your artistic path – and notice how your creative ripple impacts others in profound and meaningful ways.

The world needs your creativity! 🙂