by Heather Plett | Nov 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
I am excited to be able to introduce you to my new baby!
After months of dreaming, gestating, and creating, I’m ready to birth Pathfinder: A creative journal for finding your way.
This journal is a culmination of a whole lot of the work that I’ve done in the last three years (and more). It brings together a lot of ideas that I’ve developed for workshops, coaching sessions, creative writing classes, and blog posts.
One of the commonalities that I notice again and again in the people who come to my workshops or who hire me as a coach is a desire to find a more clear path toward an authentic, wholehearted, and purposeful life. Many of the people who are drawn to my work find themselves searching for more in life – more joy, more ways to use their gifts, more authenticity, more vibrancy, more community, and more spirituality.
I love working with these people. They are all truth-seekers who are already striving to make a difference in the world, and simply need a little guidance and support to help them step even closer to their true calling. Coming alongside them and helping them find this path is one of my greatest joys in life.
I want this kind of support to be available to even more people – people who can’t afford coaching, don’t have access to workshops or classes, or want to do some personal work on their own before they’re ready to be vulnerable among other people. For that reason I have created Pathfinder: A creative journal for finding your way.
Pathfinder is 118 pages of juicy content, thought-provoking journal prompts, and inspirational creative exercises.
Pathfinder is meant for anyone who needs more clarity in the direction their life is moving. Whether you are profoundly lost and feel like you’re floundering in the woods, or you simply feel a restlessness for a deeper purpose, you’ll find value in working through this journal.
In one of the exercises in the journal, you’ll explore what your core values are. I have pretty strong core values around and fairness and equality, and so I’ve decided to make Pathfinder as affordable as possible. Having worked with incredible people all over the world who are making a difference while living on the edges of the financial economy, I really wanted to create something that was accessible to as many people as possible. Much of what is created in the personal development world is accessible only to those with privilege, and that doesn’t fit with the way I want to work in the world.
For only $22, you’ll get access to a lot of the wisdom I have shared with clients who have paid hundreds of dollars for workshops, retreats, and coaching sessions.
You’ll also have the option of purchasing the journal along with a coaching session for only $85.
I sincerely hope that this will be a meaningful resource for you in your search for your unique path. It is the work of my heart and I would be delighted to know that it touched yours.
You can purchase Pathfinder at this link.
I would be deeply grateful if you would share this with anyone else who might be seeking their path. If you’d like to buy it as a gift for someone, there’s an option to do that on the sales page.
by Heather Plett | Nov 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
I’ve been giving some thought to what kind of presence I want to have online, and I realize it’s not much different from the presence I want to have everywhere I go. (Feel free to share if you want to adopt this as your manifesto too.)
by Heather Plett | Nov 12, 2013 | Beauty
I sat on the shores of the lake, watching the birds float and fly past. A cormorant stood on a post, its wings spread wide to the sunshine. The lake is a wildlife sanctuary. In that space, the birds are safe to do what is truest to their natures. No predators can harm them there.
Sanctuary. A place to be safe.
Wildlife sanctuary. A place to be safe in your wildness.
Near the lake was a church. I wandered inside. It was beautiful, polished, and serene. A sanctuary.
And yet… it wasn’t a wildlife sanctuary. My wildness did not feel safe in that place. I wanted it to – longed for a real sanctuary where my wildness was honoured – but I didn’t trust the immaculateness. I couldn’t feel safe revealing all of myself in that space. Too much of me had been judged in spaces like that in the past.
“What if I DID feel safe in this space?” I thought. “How would church be different if it were more like a wildlife sanctuary? If it were the kind of place where we could be totally free to be our wild selves without feeling the pressure to conform? Without having to protect ourselves from predators? What if it truly represented the wild way that God loves?”
As though to test my question, I took off my shoes and stepped into the baptismal font. The water was cool and sweet against my skin. It felt good – a baptism of my wildness. But it didn’t feel safe. I kept an eye on the door, expecting a stern priest to walk in and send me away for defiling the church. All I dared to reveal was my feet. I stepped out quickly and tried not to leave footprints.
I went back outside to the lake. There I felt safe. With the birds and the trees. I took of my shoes again and didn’t worry about footprints.
A week later, at another lake, giggling in the dark with a small tribe of friends, I tripped through the woods and stepped into the lake. Tentatively, we inched our way into the dark water. It held us and invited us further in. We gave ourselves to it. Bathing suits came off and we let ourselves be baptized in our wildness. For long lazy moments, we floated – just a little bit fearful and yet fully wild and fully alive.
This was our wildlife sanctuary. Here we were safe to reveal all that we were. Here we were wholly loved – by the water, by each other, by the gods of our understanding.
From the moment we step away from the safety of our parents’ arms, we are each on a lifelong quest for that place of sanctuary – that place were we can dare to let ourselves be fully wild, fully naked, and fully baptized. Sometimes (far too rarely) we find it in a church, sometimes we find it in the woods with a circle of friends. Sometimes we only find tiny whispers of it that make us long for more.
Once we find it, we know that we need more of it and we know that we need to commit our lives to co-creating it for others. Because there is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that we are fully loved and accepted in our nakedness. There is nothing that makes us feel more alive and beautiful.
Together, those of us who have learned to reveal our wounds and our nakedness to each other, become co-creators of circles of grace. We are wildlife sanctuary keepers. We are witnesses of the kind of God/dess who longs to help us create REAL sanctuaries, not artificial polished spaces where only those who have washed first can step into the baptismal font.
Because living truthfully in our wildness is the only way to fully be alive.
If you are longing for more of your wildness to be revealed, step into the sanctuary of Lead with Your Wild Heart. You are safe here.
by Heather Plett | Nov 8, 2013 | Uncategorized
Three days ago, I hosted my Creative Writing for Self-Discovery circle, and was delighted when the conversation deepened and the participants started to open up in new ways, tentatively sharing the kinds of stories that only get offered in a place of trust and mutual vulnerability.
Two days ago, I went to see Brené Brown talk and was reminded that vulnerability creates resilience against shame, and that hosting each other’s vulnerability (without offering advice, platitudes, shame or resistance) is the way we create real community.
Yesterday, I worked on a timeline of my life for Christina Baldwin‘s Re-storying Your Life e-course, and found myself broken open once again by grief and memory and love (remembering losing Mom one year ago, plus mapping out all of the losses and stories of love in my life).
Today I am trying to make meaning of all of this, trying to weave the threads together and tell a story of how my life feels cracked open once again. A few more layers of shame, fear, and resistance have been peeled away, a little more clarity about my place in the world has arrived, and it all feels big and important and worth sharing. But so far the words are illusive and the blog post I’d planned to write isn’t showing up.
So I will turn to art instead, and try to paint meaning into the wordless spaces in my head and heart.
For now, I know these simple things to be true:
- Vulnerability is essential for meaningful relationships.
- Deep healing and growth comes when we host our grief well.
- Co-creating circles of grace opens the door to transformation.
- I don’t want to live any other way than authentically.
