by Heather Plett | Jan 11, 2012 | Uncategorized
One of the great blessings of this past year has been the many opportunities I’ve had to partner with other people and to contribute to some beautiful products. Here’s some news about a few products I’ve contributed to, and a few other things you might like to know about:
I’m honoured to be a contributor to Shahrzad Arasteh‘s lovely book Nourish Your Career. Shahrzad is a holistic career counselor and a beautiful person who’s been gracious enough to share her wisdom with the students in my communication classes a couple of times. Her book is full of great tips not only about your career but about your life. One of the fun things I love about it is that she asked contributors to share career tips AND a favourite recipe, so you get lots of good advice, and then you get to nourish yourself with great food. You can order it on her website or on Amazon.
I was thrilled when Ariane Hunter (a talented photographer and lovely person) invited me to contribute to this beautiful free e-book. It’s full of inspiration and insight that began with the question, “What is the key ingredient to living an inspired, purpose-driven life?” My contribution is about two of my favourite things, mandalas and questions. You can download it for free here.
As many of you know, I walked 100 km. with Cath Duncan, largely because we became bonded through our shared grief stories. Cath and I have had a lot of conversations about the journey through grief and about how we can help other people through their own unique journeys. Together with Kara Jones, Cath has created the Creative Grief Coaching Certification and I’m thrilled to be one of their faculty members. I’ll be sharing a lesson on body art journaling and will be interviewed about some of the creative processes that I’ve developed for walking through grief. If you work in any helping professions (coaching, healthcare, therapy, chaplaincy, etc.), I’m sure this course will be immensely helpful for you.
I’ve been streamlining my products a little and decided to offer all of my e-books for the same low price ($15), or $35 for all three of them as a package deal. All three books are labours of love and I’m quite proud of them. Click “shop” to check them out. (And… please let me know if you have any trouble with the purchasing process. The first person who made a purchase after I made the changes found a few glitches – I hope they’ve been worked out.)
I’d really love to have a few more people sign up for my upcoming creative discovery class, so if you’re in Winnipeg and you need a creative boost, some life-changing self-discovery, and a whole lot of fun, come join us.
I put together a list of all of the topics I’ve developed workshops, classes and keynote speeches for, and the length of the list was a surprise even for me. If you’re planning an event, retreat, conference, etc. and you’d like to include any of these topics (or anything else I write about on my blog), I’d love to talk to you about how I can be of service to you.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Teach Now is one of the best investments I’ve ever made. The wisdom I gained from it is put to use every time I teach (and I’ve been teaching quite a lot since I first took the course). The people behind it (Jen Louden and Michele Lisenbury Christensen) are some of the most beautiful, authentic people you’ll find online. I like the course (and the people) so much, in fact, that I signed up twice and then was a teaching guide the third time it was offered. It’s being offered again, and if you do any teaching, or dream of doing any, I’d encourage you to check it out.
by Heather Plett | Dec 22, 2011 | Uncategorized
On January 1, 2011, I finally started writing the memoir that had been percolating in my head for a few years. It’s about loss, growth, spiritual transformation, grief, pain, and the everyday beauty of life. I finished the first draft some time in the summer, and last month I decided that I wanted to finish the re-write before the end of the year. Yesterday, I finished it!
You know what else? That’s only one of the many things I’ve done this year. When I look back, I realize that I’ve done a LOT!
– I wrote a guest post for Magpie Girl, Rachelle Mee-Chapman (which helped inspire the thread for my book).
– I took a painting class and learned to use acrylics.
– I taught 5 classes and 1 seminar in the University of Winnipeg’s Professional Development program. I marked a lot of papers and exams. (And I just signed another 6 contracts for the next few months.)
– I worked as a story midwife for three people bringing books into the world.
– I created an art journaling workshop for the Spring edition of Connie Hozvicka’s 21 Secrets.
– I went on a solitary writing retreat.
– I spoke to a local business club about creative leadership.
– I produced a free e-book, Sophia Rises, with contributions from 21 wise friends.
– I launched my monthly newsletter in March and have sent out an edition each month since. (Sign up in that box on the right if you’re not already a subscriber.)
– I hosted an interview series called “Let go of the ground” about surrender and transformation, and interviewed Jen Louden, Desiree Adaway, Julie Daley, Barbara Winter, Cath Duncan, Chris Zydel, Tara Sophia Mohr, Amy Oscar, Christine Claire Reed and Connie Hozvicka.
– I created an e-workbook and course called How to Lead with Your Paint Clothes on and I led a circle of emerging leaders through the first offering of the course.
– I facilitated a workshop at a local leadership learning institute about How to Lead with Your Paint Clothes On.
– I interviewed 14 ALIA faculty members and created videos about what three words they believe contribute to change for good.
– On my 45th birthday, I launched an e-course called A Path for Wanderers and Edge-walkers. While I wrote the weekly emails and gathered interview responses, I did a lot of wandering.
– I attended ALIA Summer Institute in Columbus, Ohio, participated in their harvest team, did some graphic facilitation and story hosting, and was inspired in my leadership journey.
– I did some freelance writing for a variety of clients.
– I led a couple of leadership workshops for the Prairie Leadership Development Network, including one on community building vs. team building.
– I volunteered for a young feminists gathering.
– I went on a canoe trip with an amazing group of women.
– I created a free e-book full of tips from 26 writers on writing to impact change.
– I wrote a guest post about the benefits of walking for Dumb Little Man.
– I walked 100 km. on the Kidney March with Cath Duncan and Christina Greenway. I helped raise a lot of money for the Kidney Foundation.
– I was featured on the front page of our community newspaper in a story about the 100 km. walk.
– I taught an 8 week course in Creative Writing for Self Discovery.
– I created an e-book on Meaningful & Mindful Engagement in Social Media and helped a few clients expand their social media circles.
– I wrote a guest post for Oh These Wild Women: Stories from the Tribe on Roots of She.
– I taught a workshop on Emotional and Social Intelligence.
– I attended a workshop on Narrative Coaching with Dr. David Drake.
– I launched Global Listeners together with Desiree Adaway and together we hosted two learning calls about deep and soulful listening and community-building.
– I visited Occupy Toronto and was very moved by the experience.
– I started making mandalas more regularly and developed a process for question mandalas.
– I served on the board of UNPAC, a local organization committed to women’s equality and empowerment. I designed their annual report.
– I gathered a circle of local creative women entrepreneurs.
– I contributed to three books (two e-books and one hard copy – due out early in the new year).
– I became a faculty member for the Creative Grief Coaching Certificate program.
– I wrote 162 blog posts.
– I cooked a lot of meals, comforted crying children, went to a lot of sporting events, worked on keeping my marriage alive, spent a lot of time with friends, sat by my mom’s bed while she recovered from cancer surgery, went on a vacation to the beach, walked all over the city, washed a lot of laundry, connected with new friends, took a lot of photos, and did all of those other ordinary, beautiful things one gets to do in this one wild, precious life.
One of my challenges in the full time jobs I’ve had in the past is that I couldn’t always find enough variety to satisfy my curious, wandering, passionate heart.
Judging by this vast list of interesting things I’ve done this year, I’ve found the right path for me. More to come in 2012!
by Heather Plett | Dec 15, 2011 | Uncategorized
The past couple of weeks, my energy has been consumed mostly with the two effective written communication classes I’m teaching at the university. That path has taken me through some interesting terrain lately, with a lot of ups and downs.
Discovering plagiarism… DOWN.
Having to create and administer an exam when I’m not convinced exams have value for this kind of learning… DOWN.
Spending nine hours marking that exam… DOWN.
Listening to students make their final presentations about pieces of writing that impacted them… UP.
Witnessing the courage of some of the students when they spoke closer to their hearts than they’re used to speaking in class… UP.
Seeing the looks of disappointment on the faces of international students who struggle in English when their exam marks were lower than they’d hoped… DOWN.
Receiving genuine apologies for the plagiarism… UP.
Hearing several students say “I’m glad you’ll be teaching us another class after Christmas.”… UP.
Yesterday was a particularly interesting day that saw both ups and downs within the span of a few hours.
After lunch (of a full day class), I walked into a classroom full of angry, frustrated students. They’d just received some bad news about their program and the certification many of them hope to apply for after graduation. I’d planned to spend the afternoon playing a lighthearted game that fit with the day’s topic on writing persuasively, but with so much negative energy in the room, I knew there wasn’t much point… DOWN.
I set aside my plans for the afternoon, and offered the students the space and time to work through some of their frustration. Some strong words and a lot of emotion (including some tears) showed up in the room. I let it surface, and then (playing the role of facilitator rather than teacher) I tried to gently guide them in the direction of some positive action. They talked about how they could use the persuasive writing skills we’d talked about just that morning to try to change the situation they were in.
In a little over half an hour, they seemed ready to move on. Knowing it was a risk to move into a game with so much raw emotion in the room, and yet believing that it might be just the right thing to help diffuse the situation, I introduced the game. It was a version of the Dragon’s Den, where teams of 4 were each given a brown paper bag with a random item in it. They had to come up with creative ideas and persuasive language to convince the panel of “dragons” that they should invest in bringing that item to market. (I have my daughter Julie to thank for the idea.)
The game was more successful than I could have imagined. We laughed – a LOT. One group turned a seashell into an all-natural shaver. Another group had a frog business card holder that doubled as a cookie maker. A third group had a bag of incense that could calm your holiday stress and work as an aphrodisiac once the stress was gone. Another group had a small wooden container that worked as a weight loss device called “Fit it and eat it” – whatever you could fit into the container, you could eat. The last group had a toy that worked as a top, a stress reliever, or a hair accessory… UP
By the end of the day, students were leaving the class laughing and full of new resolve and maybe even a little bit of hope. One thanked me publicly for the afternoon, and several thanked me privately as they left the classroom.
It was one of those days that helped me remember what a privilege it is to be in a classroom with people as they learn and grow. I have no doubt that they learned more from the conversation that took place and the game that was played than they could have possibly learned from any lecture I might have done. (And certainly more than any exam they’ll write.) I also have no doubt that the group has become a stronger community than they were before.
The experience helped solidify my core values as a teacher. I value outside-the-box thinking. I value conversation. I value integrity. I value play. I value community. I value wholeheartedness. I value laughter. I value stories. I value transformative learning. I value risk-taking. I value collaboration. I value the unique wisdom and journey of each person in the room.
Though I sometimes resist the program restrictions placed on me, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to create space for the kind of learning and growth I believe in. It is an honour and a privilege to serve as a guide for the students who come to learn in my classroom.
by Heather Plett | Dec 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
mementos left at a common grave for stillborn babies
I have become an intimate friend of grief.
As a young child, watching my grandfather die on the front lawn, I first came to know grief as the jagged, breathless song on my grandmother’s lips.
I have carried death in my womb and laboured with great sobs of agony while I birthed a child named Matthew and his siamese twin named Grief.
I have raced frantically across the prairies, a newly fatherless daughter, holding fresh grief like a dagger in my chest.
In the ditch where a storm washed away the blood of my father, I have fallen to my knees and cried out to a distant God who came to me only as Grief incarnate.
I have worn grief as my garment to three funerals in as many months – father, grandmother, uncle.
I have thrown rocks at grief when it threatened to suffocate me both times my beloved’s life hung on the thread he’d attempted to sever.
Grief has come to me as anger, as agony, as fear, as guilt, as a tender companion, as the milk in my unsuckled breasts, as colours on a canvas, as a poem, and as a collection of story threads in my overflowing basket. Grief is both wildly unpredictable and comfortably reliable. Grief pokes its head into my life when I least expect it or when it’s the most inconvenient and then goes into hiding when I’m sure it will be present.
Grief is not one emotion or one experience but many, many emotions, experiences, thoughts, waves, daggers, and physical manifestations.
Grief has been my enemy, my compass, my friend, my lover, my teacher, my poem, my muse, my dance partner, my task-master, and my spiritual director.
Grief is also my paintbrush, my pen, and my musical accompaniment. I have painted my grief, danced my grief, walked with my grief, made mandalas of my grief, painted grief on my body, photographed my grief, made collages out of the things that brought grief to my life, and found almost every creative way possible to metabolize and give shape and form to my grief. Grief is always near at hand when I am most honest in whatever art form I engage in.
Grief does not give us easy journeys. Grief throws rocks in our paths and takes away all the guideposts and maps. It refuses to show up in well-ordered stages along a straight path. Instead, it welcomes us to a tumultuous, chaotic dance.
Without a roadmap for our grief, sometimes the best thing we can reach for is a trusted guide… someone who understands the dance of grief and knows that no two dance partners are the same. Someone who will help us find the practices that will best strengthen and encourage us along our own unique paths.
This past year, I have had many conversations about grief with my trusted friend, Cath Duncan. She is a student of grief, in the best possible way. She understands it on a deep cellular level and has walked the path of it as a true and honest pilgrim. She has studied it like a grief archeologist and scholar, determined to find meaning in what she unearths.
The same can be said about Kara Jones, whose creative work around grief is both breath-taking and challenging.
Together, Kara and Cath have developed a beautiful new program called Creative Grief Coaching Certification, where people in helping professions can learn more about how to support people in grief. I believe in this program wholeheartedly and am thrilled to be one of the guest lecturers who will help participants learn more about how to equip people with creative processes to engage with along the grief journey.
Cath and Kara understand the complexity and nuances of grief. They also understand the importance of seeing grief as a creative process that will transform us if we invite it in. I believe they are just the right people to be offering this beautiful gift to the world.
If you want to learn more about grief, and you believe you have a gift for serving as a creative grief coach, please check it out.
by Heather Plett | Nov 28, 2011 | Uncategorized
Growing up on the farm, a brand was a mark that was put on a cow to let outsiders know whose farm the animal came from.
In high school, a brand was what the richer kids wore to prove that they were important, while I wore hand-me-downs or whatever my mom could get with her cheap-clothing-store-that-shall-remain-nameless employee discount.
When I worked in public relations, a brand was what we talked a lot about when we needed to make our product or service stand out in crowded spaces or the evening news.
Now that I’m self-employed, people who tout themselves as self-employment experts are trying to tell me I have to brand MYSELF.
Really? Like a cow who runs the risk of wandering away from the herd? Like a teenager who’s afraid she won’t fit in? Like a product that gets lost on a crowded supermarket shelf?
I’ll be honest… I don’t want to be a brand. I don’t want to be a cow, I don’t want to be a product, and I certainly don’t want to be something an insecure teenager wraps around her shoulders to try to impress her peers.
I’m tired of consumer and industrial language that compares us to products and our brains to well-oiled machines. Let’s move on, shall we? We’ve already established that our consumer-driven mentality is getting the world into a whole lot of trouble with over-consumption and the destruction of our natural resources. That language is not serving us anymore. Let’s stop diminishing our capacity and our imagination by using it.
We are much too complex to be machines or brands or products. Let’s shift the paradigm by shifting the language.
Let’s not be consumers. Let’s be citizens and community members instead.
Let’s not brand ourselves. Let’s tell stories instead.
The next time you’re considering what it is you and/or your business is offering the world, ask yourself “What’s my story?” instead of “What’s my brand?”
Your story has complex nuances that can’t fit into a simple brand.
Your story is shifting and changing as you grow.
Your story has potential for much greater impact than any product could ever have.
Your story is a tapestry made up of all of the beautiful threads you’ve picked up along the journey of your life. It’s the grade 3 teacher who gave you a special prize when you won the spelling bee. It’s your best friend who picked you up off the ground when you fell off a horse. It’s your brother who sacrificed the income from his first job so that you could go on a school trip. It’s the times your dad smiled that special “I’m proud of you” smile. It’s the university instructor who told you one of your plays was good enough to be on the radio. It’s the boss who promoted you to your first leadership position. It’s the first time you spoke in public. It’s those times when you know you are doing your best work.
Those things don’t fit into a brand. They’re not products you can box and put on a shelf. They are your threads and they make you more beautiful than any product on a supermarket shelf.
Don’t diminish yourself to a brand. You’re worth so much more.
You might make more money if you brand yourself (and this is why I’m not a self-employment guru), but you’ll have a greater impact if you share your story.
What’s your story?
Stop trying to box it or brand it and just get busy sharing it.
To bring about a paradigm shift in the culture that will change assumptions and attitudes, a critical number of us have to tell the stories of our personal revelations and transformations.” – Jean Shinoda Bolen
by Heather Plett | Nov 24, 2011 | Uncategorized
1. Take a deep dive into your own heart. Dare to feel the depths of your emotions. Let joy wash over you like a tsunami wave. Let grief ooze out of every pore of your body. Be passionate and don’t apologize for your passion. Don’t be satisfied with life at the surface. Feel it, live it, be it.
2. Forgive more and forget more. You made a blunder and embarrassed yourself at a family dinner party? Forgive yourself. Forget it. Your partner overlooked your last anniversary? Forgive and then forget. Let go of the baggage that’s weighing you down.
3. Find someone you can trust and then lean in and trust them. Share the things that hurt you, whisper the deep and secret wishes of your heart, and let them see glimpses of your shadow and your brightest light. Trust that in their presence, you will not be judged.
4. Dare to be trustworthy. Be honourable for everyone you meet, but for a few select people (just enough not to burn you out with the giving), offer a place of great safety. Serve as a shelter for them, where vulnerability is welcome and weakness is handled tenderly. Be their lighthouse on a stormy ocean.
5. Tell more stories. Sit with your neighbours. Curl up on the couch with your best friend. Hang out in coffee shops. Talk to your taxi driver. Ask people to tell you the stories of their childhood, and then tell them yours. Create openings for storytelling in the most unlikely of places. Listen deeply and let the stories blossom under your care.
6. Live in community. Serve people and let them serve you. Dare to need people and let them know what you need. Be interdependent. Sit in circle and create spaces of trust and sharing.
7. Buy fewer things and give more away. Don’t listen to the advertisers who tell you that you can’t be happy without this year’s model. Make a choice to continue to take great delight in last year’s model. Give away the things you don’t need anymore. Live with less clutter and less attachment to material possessions.
8. Ask more questions. Be curious about the world. Stare in wonder. Let the questions take you down paths you didn’t expect to take. Don’t rush to find the answers. Let the questions lead to more questions and more opportunities to exercise your curiosity.
9. Go for more walks. Experience your neighbourhood. Get lost in the woods. Stare at intricate leaf patterns. Stretch your muscles. Feel your body move down the path. Notice the sun on your face. Be present, be mindful.
10. Find practices that bring you delight and then do them regularly. Paint. Dance. Take photo walks. Run. Swim. Pray. Meditate. Knit. Visit bookstores. Go to the theatre. Travel. Do it, delight in it, and savour every minute.
