the magic of community

week seven: life as a creative process

If you’re new here, paid subscribers receive Story Work exercises every Sunday night at 8 pm et. Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative is the name of my new book which is forthcoming from Broadleaf in November 2025. The term describes my signature process of reflecting, reclaiming, and reimagining the stories of our lives. It involves looking at your life experiences as creative material that you have the power to shape. For the next eight weeks, our story work series is focused on life as a creative process.

Today’s post is about community which reminds me to highlight a few sessions we have coming up for free and paid subscribers.

Open to paid subscribers:

• February 26. Connective Threads: Core Values Through a Creative Lens (part two) // 6 pm - 8 pm et

• March 1. The Practice: Group Journaling Session #19 w/ Yetti Ajayi-Obe // 11 - 12:30 pm et

Open to free subscribers:

• March 14. Free Writing the Layers Monthly Workshop // 7 - 8 pm et

  (Please note that the free monthly workshop is on the second Friday of the month just for March)

Register for my workshop with The Writer’s Center:

• March 16. Vulnerability in Personal Storytelling // 3 - 6 pm et

don’t struggle alone:

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Humans are wired for connection. There’s something magical about creative community and connecting with other humans who have similar interests, gifts, passions + challenges.

Finding this kind of connection isn’t always easy, is it? Some of us spend our whole lives feeling like we don’t quite belong, like there are parts of ourselves that we can’t find a home for. Do you know what it’s like to feel lonely even within your family and friendships, even when you’re surrounded by people who love you? There are parts of ourselves that are yearning to be seen and heard, expressions we have held back due to lack of the right environment.

My friends and family support me but don’t necessarily share my creative interests and passions, and that’s okay. When I started my writing career over ten years ago, I discovered the importance of building connections with other bloggers and creatives. They understood the nuances of the work in a way that my loved ones did not.

If you are just joining us, our current story work theme is life as a creative process. A self-study in connecting with your inner artist and staying connected through the different seasons and experiences that shape your life.

Here is what we’ve done so far:

• Introduction - A reintroduction and review of my creative journey.

• Week One: Soulful Intentions - Instead of fixating on specific outcomes, soulful intentions focus on how we want to feel and the values we want to embody. Soulful intentions are about progress, not perfection. They allow you to adjust your expectations through life’s changes and evolutions. They allow us to incorporate habits that don’t just check off boxes but truly enrich our lives.

• Week Two: The Deeper Why - If we want to align our actions with our soulful intentions, we need to integrate all parts of ourselves and consider their motivations. Getting clear on your why - and the different factors that affect it - will give you the courage and conviction to make choices and develop habits that align your parts to cooperate with your values.

• Week Three: Creative Embodiment - Soulful intentions are not to be rushed. They are not to be determined by an intellectual strategy and then executed. They are seeds that need daily attention and nurturing in order to bloom. They need slow, devoted love. Soulful intentions need to inhabit our whole essence, not just our minds, but also our bodies.

• Week Four: The Power of Vulnerability - We are all creative beings and our willingness to be vulnerable and honest about who we are fuels are creative callings. The action steps you choose to align with your intentions create ripple effects across all areas of your life. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for the soul-baring steps you will take as you follow your heart? By avoiding vulnerability, we suppress our creative power.

• Week Five: The Power of Habit - Now that we have nurtured the energy of our intentions on the inside, it’s time to take action and give it shape on the outside. This is how we show Life that we are ready for what we are calling in. This involves establishing sustainable creative practices that nurture us mind, body, and soul. Having a trusted creative process — that is built on life-affirming habits — will give you the courage to act in alignment with your intentions and build a creatively fulfilling life.

• Week Six: The Art of Self-Observation - It’s time to observe yourself and take stock of what’s working and what’s not. Self-observation might just be the most important step as we are changing our relationship with failure. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach that doesn’t leave room for error, we take the creative approach of setting intentions and observing our efforts to craft a life that is not defined by limitations, but by our capacity to learn and grow. With this mindset, progress is inevitable.

We’ve been walking through a slow, intentional approach to setting goals that don’t just check off boxes but authentically empower our creative callings and enrich our lives.

This week I am reminding you that while writing (or whatever form your creative expression takes) may be a solitary act, you don’t have to do it alone. One of the best ways you can nurture your creative practice is to involve yourself in communities where you connect with people who have similar values and goals.

Community. Fellowship. Belonging. Support. Are these things missing from your creative practice?

Studies by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) show that we are more likely to stay true to our goals when we have a partner or community to hold us accountable. source

Here is the soulful shift that really brings this home for me:

Creative communities are magical when they hold us accountable to the process—not just one specific goal.

Hear me out. There are times when it’s appropriate to focus on quantifiable, bottom-line results. This series is not about that. Here we are talking about an approach to creative living where the result is the process, the lifestyle, and the relationships that empower our most fully expressed selves.

This is what I was missing early in my writing journey.

I remember keeping many of my creative struggles to myself because I was more concerned with being perceived as capable than I was with actually being vulnerable about the support I needed. If I told someone a goal and didn’t meet it, then I’d feel ashamed and this led me to isolate myself more than I needed to.

Have you ever been in a partnership, group, or community where the energy was more competitive than collaborative?