The Blog
Learn to recognize, release, and realign your energy so you can show up as your most authentic self.
Orange Aura Energy: How Creativity Helps You Heal, Move, and Reconnect With Yourself
Explore orange aura energy, creativity, emotional healing, and sacral chakra flow in this inspiring episode about movement, intuition, and self-expression.
When Your Creativity Feels Like Too Much (And What It’s Trying to Show You)
Explore magenta energy and what it means for your creativity, intuition, and self-expression. Learn how to move through creative overwhelm, release guilt, and reconnect with your natural flow.
You Haven’t Lost Your Creativity—You’ve Just Lost Connection
A gentle guide to reconnecting with your creativity through seven supportive pillars. Explore how to move beyond self-doubt, perfectionism, and disconnection to rediscover your natural creative flow.
Trusting Your Inner Compass: How Following Intuition Leads to Healing and Personal Transformation
Learn how trusting your intuition can lead to healing, self-discovery, and profound personal transformation. Discover why your inner compass may be guiding you toward a more aligned life.
The Hidden Gift of Perimenopause: Reconnecting with Who You Truly Are
Reclaim your energy, intuition, and power with Kym Stewart. Discover rituals, Reiki, and sacred circles to embrace your authentic self.
How Other Artists Can Unlock Your Creativity
Artists don’t develop their voice in isolation. We grow by observing, experimenting, asking questions,
and allowing inspiration to guide us toward something new.
What Happens When Leaders Choose Creativity and Compassion Over Control
Discover how creative leadership builds workplaces rooted in trust, belonging, and psychological safety. In this episode of Creative by Nature, Brett Umbenhouer shares how leaders can help people feel seen, heard, and loved—unlocking creativity, connection, and authentic collaboration in classrooms, teams, and communities.
How to Reconnect With Your Inner Magick Through Creativity and Everyday Rituals
Discover how creativity and everyday rituals can help you reconnect with your intuition, reclaim your personal power, and awaken your inner magick. Learn practical ways to use creative expression, presence, and intentional practices to rediscover yourself and create a more aligned, empowered life.
Aura Colors Meaning: A Friendly Guide to Understanding Your Energy and Chakras
Discover what your aura colors reveal about you!
How Coming Home to Yourself Changes Everything
Discover how healing begins in the body, not the mind. Learn how embodiment, creativity, and inner safety lead to clarity, emotional balance, and self-trust — inspired by a powerful conversation on the Creative by Nature podcast.
5 Signs You Need to Clear Your Energy (Especially If You’re Creative, Intuitive, or Highly Sensitive)
Feeling drained, foggy, or emotionally overwhelmed? Discover 5 signs you need to clear your energy—especially if you’re a creative, empath, or highly sensitive person. Learn practical aura cleansing tools, emotional boundary tips, and simple grounding practices to feel lighter, clearer, and more like yourself again.
How Art Helps You Make Sense of Life’s Hardest Moments
Discover how art helps you make sense of life’s hardest moments. Learn how creative expression supports healing, emotional processing, and self-connection.
Creativity Is Not Something You Force — It’s Something You Learn to Receive
Discover how creativity connects you to intuition, inner wisdom, and deeper guidance. Learn why creativity isn’t something you force, but something you receive—and how practices like storytelling and automatic writing can help you access clarity, alignment, and authentic self-expression.
Returning to Yourself Through Soul Work & Creativity
Reconnect with yourself through creativity. This post explores how intuitive expression, beginner’s mind, and soul-led creative work help you rediscover purpose, inner wisdom, and meaning—especially during seasons of burnout, transition, or self-discovery.
Creativity, Identity, and the Courage to Come Home to Yourself: 5 Lessons on Trust, Stillness, and Creative Flow
Creativity is not something you force—it’s something you remember. In Creativity, Identity, and the Courage to Come Home to Yourself, explore five grounded lessons on trusting your voice, creating stillness, and reconnecting with your creative flow. Drawing from spiritual insight and real-life creative practice, this reflection invites you to release fear, honor your inner truth, and begin creating from a place of authenticity and self-trust.
3 Proven Ways to Add More Creativity to Your Day Without Extra Time
When time feels scarce, creativity often feels impossible. But what if your creative spark didn’t need more hours — just more presence? Have you ever felt like creativity only happens when you finally have time — when your to-do list is done, the house is quiet, and...
5 Powerful Ways to Stop Comparing and Start Creating
Have you ever sat in a room full of people creating something amazing… and instead of feeling inspired, you just froze? You wanted to start, but every time you looked around, you convinced yourself you weren’t good enough—like everyone else was ahead, and you were...
When a Conversation Confirms What Your Soul Already Knows
A reflective story about healing, creativity, and identity shifts—this post explores how grief, intuition, and creative expression can guide you back to alignment, purpose, and trust in your multifaceted self.
Parenting with Spiritual Awareness: 4 Tips for Open, Fear-Free Conversations
Discover how to navigate spiritual parenting with ease. In Parenting with Spiritual Awareness: 4 Tips for Open, Fear-Free Conversations, you’ll learn practical ways to introduce energy, intuition, and spirit to your children while fostering trust, connection, and emotional safety.
I was Scared of Your Judgment, but I’m No Longer Afraid
I was scared of your judgment, but I’m no longer afraid. What does that actually mean? It’s time to be unapologetically me.
What is Reiki and How Does it Work?
If you’ve been dealing with toxic energy or past traumas, Reiki can be a gentle yet powerful tool to help release and clear those energies.
3 Ways to Strengthen Your Intuitive Muscles
In your journey to understand and harness the power of intuition, it’s essential to recognize that it’s not just some mystical concept reserved for a select few, like psychic mediums.
Intuition 101: Your Intuition is Talking to You and Here’s How to Listen
Listening to your inner voice, when all you’ve ever done is ask others for answers, can be tricky. You may already tap into your intuition, inviting it to guide your life, confidently making decisions without giving a second thought. But for some of you, navigating your inner guidance system may be challenging.
Transforming Trauma Into Empowerment
In a world where the echoes of trauma can reverberate through generations, Verna Lisa stands as a beacon of resilience and transformation.
Unleashing Inner Peace: 10 Toxic Family Patterns Women, Specifically Moms, Can Start Breaking Today
Discover how breaking free from generational family patterns leads to self-discovery and empowerment. Challenge toxic behaviors, take control of your healing, and pave the way for a healthier family legacy. Start the conversation today!
Breaking Free: Guideposts to Empowerment and Transformation Beyond Generational Cycles
If you're tired of living with guilt, shame, and embarrassment, if you're ready to break away from limiting beliefs and toxic family patterns, then this is your invitation to stand up for yourself, and say “Enough is enough! The cycle stops with me!” You know, as a...
Forget New Year’s Resolutions! It’s Time for Something More Powerful to Move You Out of the Classroom
Are you one of the 80% who lose motivation just months after declaring your New Year’s Resolutions? For educators whose goal is a career transition, you can’t afford to be included in that failure rate. Times have passed when teachers leaving the classroom because of...
The REAL meaning behind the phrase: “I’m Just a Teacher” and How to Tap Into the Inner Badass You Truly Are
It surfaced again. That critic you’ve been hearing in the quiet of your mind. It’s hard to ignore because it’s getting louder and more frequent. Every time you consider what else you could do with your teaching degree, it takes over your thoughts. “I’m JUST a...
Embracing the Journey: A Teacher’s Compass to Navigating Career and Purpose
By guest writer: Kiana Porter-Isom Each morning a teacher steps into a classroom and carries with them the potential to shape futures, influence young minds, and leave an everlasting mark on the generations to come. However, amid the daily rigors and relentless...
Teachers, You Are Meant For More…So What’s Holding You Back From Leaving the Classroom?
Transitioning out of the classroom is much more than a job change. Yes, having an exit plan with action steps is important. Narrowing your career options down to 1-3 roles may be challenging, but necessary. You need to know how to revise your teaching resume with...
20 Powerful Ways Transitioning Teachers Can Care For Themselves When Burnout Creeps In
Combating burnout is essential for teachers like you to maintain your well-being and find balance between school, your transition, and home life. Once fall arrives, back to school overwhelm decreases, and the push towards the holiday season begins. Before you know it,...
An Open Love Letter to Every Educator Thinking of Leaving the Classroom
Dear Educators, Another school year has begun, and you’re wondering what’s next for you. Chances are, you’re reading this letter because the question has crossed your mind before: Should I leave education or should I stay? It’s completely normal to question if the...
What to do When the Words “I’m Okay” And “I’m Fine” Just Cover Up What’s Bubbling Underneath The Surface
You’ve said them before. My guess is they’re a staple in your vernacular. Every time they escape your lips, you wonder if someone will pick up on what you’re really saying. A clue. An invitation to ask again, but this time, give you a chance to let your walls down....
Your Summertime Guide to Find Balance and Rediscover Yourself
Summer is in full swing, and you are taking time to rest, catch up on projects around your home, and relaxing with some much needed vacation time! You may also be taking graduate courses, professional development training, or revising how you want to switch things up at work when fall arrives. Sometimes we lose ourselves in school or our work, developing strong career-focused identities we just can’t break away from, even if we’re physically not at work. Whatever you’re doing with your summer, it’s essential to take time to find balance and rediscover yourself, and summer is the perfect time to do it!
How to Care for Your Body’s Energy Centers or Chakras
You may be well aware of caring for your body’s needs. After all, it’s the physical vessel giving you life on earth. You nurture and care for it with proper nutrition, movement and exercise, rest, regular visits with your healthcare team, and probably some pampering, too. Beyond your natural body, your energetic body surrounds what you can physically sense and feel. You may have heard it called the auric field or human energy body.
Why You Should Practice Gratitude and 3 Simple Steps to Get Started With a Gratitude Blitz Today
Do you have a gratitude practice in place? Not to confuse this with saying thank you every time a door is held open for you, or when your kids finally clean up their room after you’ve told them to do it a million times already. Well, actually, yes – appreciate those moments, too! But what I really mean is…
The Final Letter to My Grandmother
Dear Grammy, As we packed up your home, there were reminders sprinkled everywhere of your dedication to the love you had for your family, as well as challenges in your overall well-being that put love to the test. It was therapeutic to take care of your...
4 Ways to Stop Faking Happy and Gain Control of Your Anxiety
When I battled anxiety, it showed up like a wrecking ball. If you experience it, you know this scene all too well. Just when you think you have escaped, the heaviness comes barreling down after you until it crashes right into your body, taking you on a ride you don't...
Diaries of a #transitioningteacher: Sometimes I Wonder if…
Dear Diary, There’s a recurring scene in the movie “Soul” where all of the souls who have earned all their badges get to jump into their lives. Before the jump, they’ve explored, tried out new things, learned a lot, and then finally, the last badge appears. It’s only...
Diaries of a #transitioningteacher: You Might Think I’m Crazy…
When a loved one passes away, it can leave you feeling a rollercoaster of grief. The permanency of death weighs on you like you're holding up a brick wall while crumbling pieces fall around you, despite your efforts to hold it all together. You know if you move,...
Diaries of a #transitioningteacher: I feel guilty that I feel bored teaching.
Dear Diary, There. I said it. I'm bored. As an art teacher, I feel bored. I'm teaching everyone else how to be creative throughout the day and it leaves no time for my own creativity. Creatively speaking, I'm bored. That's just the beginning. And you know what? I have...
Facing Myself in the Mirror: Week Three
The final week has arrived. I feel more comfortable with myself when I look in the mirror. I talk with myself in the mirror more than I did before starting the mirror work, and in a positive way. I am excited to finish the mirror work and move into more of the...
Facing Myself in the Mirror: Week Two
The time has come to heal my inner child. I pulled out photographs when I was very young. Photographs my mom had collected over the years and decided I should have for myself several years ago. Sometimes I take them out to show my kids what I looked like at their...
Facing Myself in the Mirror: Week One
Today I began Mirror Work. 21 days of intense exploration and affirmations to heal my inner child and learn to love myself. As I walk this path toward healing, I will journal openly and honestly. I will share my thoughts, my feelings, and my progress. I will expose my...
A Wave of Relief After Her Passing
I couldn't even mutter the words. How did she get inside my head? What did I say that gave away my secrets? I burst into tears because I knew what was coming. I've thought those words. I covered my face, ashamed that breaking down revealed what I had thought many...
How to Return to a Place of Trauma When the Place May be Your Job
My role in education has been deeply rooted in my self-worth for as long as I can remember. When my parents divorced, I was very young, and that was the beginning of the seeds sprouting into a false sense of value. As my world changed around me, I looked to my...
The Apology You’ll Never Get
Sometimes your inner pain feels never-ending like there’s no way out of it. Something triggers you to relive a time you don’t want to revisit. Thoughts consume you. Feelings take over, leaving you raw with emotions once again. You might be holding onto resentments...
Tackling Resentments Before They Turn Into Regrets
When you were born, you came into this world pure and beautiful. Your family welcomed you and brought you home to teach you how to navigate life. Those lessons were infused with everything that your family learned in their lives and thought you needed to know, too....
It’s Time to Let go of My Regret: I Didn’t Get to Tell Her That I Forgive Her
It was the morning of November 5, 2021. My first day back to school after a stressful and long quarantine period for myself. On this Friday, my husband was in charge of the at-home virtual schooling of our still-quarantined children while I returned to school to...
How I Knew I Hit Rock Bottom and What I Did About It
It was a Friday morning, late winter in 2018. After another emotional meltdown while I was at my job, I had enough and called off for the day. I needed a break. In all honesty, I needed more than just an extended weekend because I knew that I was at rock bottom. I was...
Stories of the Girl Who Couldn’t See It for Herself
Age 9. School. I sit in my 3rd grade classroom, front row, close to the door. My head is curled up in my arms as I hide my crying face from everything that surrounds me. Peers next to me ignore me, paying more attention to the teacher presenting her lesson in front of...
Pen Pal Letters Between Generations of Me
Dear Teenage Jess, It feels good to connect with you after all of these years, and boy did time fly! By now, you have discovered how much you love to draw and sing, and both the art room and the stage have become a second home for you. These two loves - art and music...
5 Lessons I Learned From Reading My Mother’s Diary
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com I never expected to page through my mom's diaries one day. To be honest, I didn't know how much she wrote about her life until my sister found several scripted treasures when we sorted through mom's home, looking for things...
Who am I Behind the Pain?
At birth, we enter into this world pure and beautiful, handled with care by the medical team, and then embraced by our parents' welcoming arms. Unconditional love reached into our souls long before our physical selves saw the first light of our new physical world....
The Rollercoaster Ride: Courtesy of the Stages of Grief
When I was younger, I loved riding all of the thrill rides, and at the top of my list was the rollercoaster. It didn't matter if the coaster was a small kiddie ride at a carnival, a floorless one, a twisting and turning looped coaster, or one that gave the most...
Returning to Life After Loss in 5, 4, 3, 2 – WAIT!
I tried. I made it through a day and almost an hour of a second day. I returned to work, despite a voice inside of my mind begging me to remain still. The guilt was overwhelming to pick up the pieces of my brokenness, pull up my big-girl pants, and put on a smile....
Spiritual Renewal
Week 10 Dear Diary, I imagined that when my mom passed away, I would be filled with the grief of what could have been, that could not happen on earth. In the fleeting moments after learning of her death, that was exactly what happened. Walking with care, my colleague...
How to Trust in The Process Without Losing Your Mind
Week 5 Dear Diary, I am trusting in the process, which is easier said than done. Clarity for my future has brought excitement and an eagerness to spring forward to the next chapter of my journey. To be honest, I am impatient. I am ready to add value to the lives of...
How to Start Rewriting Your Why With a Simple Strategy
Week 3 Dear Diary, Rewriting my why has been challenging. So many questions float around my mind for consideration. Should I develop a temporary why for the time being? Should the why be for my teaching career? Should it be for my personal life? Should I brainstorm my...
Crafting Your Elevator Speech
“Your excitement about learner-centered education has you envisioning yourself shouting from the rooftops”
Start Before You Are Ready
Start achieving that goal before you are ready!
Get Out of Your Own Way and Reframe Your Thoughts
Several years ago, my district adopted the Danielson Group's Framework for Teaching Evaluation. We all shuffled into our respective schools for our faculty meetings to learn about how the evaluation method would differ from years' past, view the structure of the FFT...
Validation Sets the World on Fire
Take time to recognize the ideas, hard work, and passions of others. Validation is empowering. How do you practice validation with people in your life? How can you do more of it?
Your Interpretation is not my Interpretation
It was the end of the school day, and I was wrapping up in my classroom studio before packing up my things to head home. One of the long-term subs stormed into my room, greeting me with artwork in her hands. I recognized the painting from passing it back to the artist...
