Hey there.

I have been a journal keeper since 1998, so for well over 25 years I’ve been showing up for myself pretty much every single day.

I’m a journaler, a writer, a Creative to my very core.

I create with words, with my camera, with prints and flowers and paper and books.

How my journaling journey began

A long time ago, when I was in a pretty dark place, when I quite literally couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel … a toxic relationship, inferiority complex, self-esteem beaten out of me, fairly new to motherhood, trying to deal with an awful lot of emotional “crap” from my childhood … one of the most confident and self-assured women I had ever met gave me a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and said to me, “I think you need this!”.

If you don’t know the Artists Way, it’s a creative recovery self-help book; lots of tasks and reading around becoming the creative person you want to be, that you’re meant to be. And I felt as if it had been written just especially for me. Never was a gift more perfectly timed.

The main tool in what Ms Cameron calls her “spiritual path to higher creativity” was a thing called Morning Pages … three pages of stream of consciousness writing every morning … basically – keeping a journal.

You show up at that blank every morning, and you write …. Three whole pages … stream of consciousness freewriting … whatever comes into your head … I know! Scary, right?!

It changed my life. I don’t mean “it made me feel a bit better”, or “it made me feel more positive” … I mean, IT TOTALLY CHANGED MY WHOLE LIFE!!!

Keeping a journal CAN do that.

By about week five, I had admitted to myself that I had ALWAYS wanted to be a writer.

By week seven, I’d written my first poem.

By week ten, I had enrolled in a local creative writing group!

By the end of the twelfth week, I had cemented a journal practice that is still going strong, two and a half decades later!

And I mean WHOLE life Changing.

The poetry, the creative writing, owning the truth that I had always wanted to be a writer … that’s just how it changed my “creative” life!

Journaling also allowed me to delve deep into my own psyche, to dive beneath the surface, to begin to face my darkest thoughts, to accept my feelings and ultimately to accept myself. (That last bit took a long time, and is in fact, still a work in progress!)

Writing allowed me to right my life!

And writing set me free.

Journaling has saved my life on more than one occasion.

For a long time, I used to think that I would only journal in the bad times, in the times when I had serious shit to sort out. But I have made an amazing discovery … journaling can be just as powerful when I’m in a good place.

And believe me, I am in a VERY good place. I love my life. I am married to the love of my life. I live in a beautiful part of the world. I am creative every single day. Basically, I am living my own wildest dreams!

The Inner Work IS My Life’s Work

And now, I am working with my Gene Keys, (I’m going through my Activation Sequence for the third time at the moment with a group of incredible women) and since I started on this golden path, the most incredible things are happening to me, inside me. I’m digging deeper than ever before, I’m looking at my whole life, my whole self, through the lens of the Gene Keys, and I am seeing things in a whole new and exciting way. It’s as if the Gene Keys were written specifically FOR me.

You see, writing and language are so important to me. When I am writing, I feel more real, more whole. When I am writing, I am soothed, I do my thinking on the page, and I am able to untangle my thoughts. And working with Hayley Curtis as my Guide, as my interpreter, has opened me up to so many new facets of mySelf, because she has given me the language to understand myself fully.

I think the reason the Gene Keys “work” for me is that their essence is captured by the most perfect words. Not only does Richard Rudd express himself so beautifully, so poetically, Hayley then wraps her words of interpretation and guidance around the Gene Keys’ text, and I feel as if I am held in a web of words.

And then I write, and it is as if all of our words are woven into the most exquisite tapestry that is my life.

I am a word weaver … I take Richard’s words and Hayley’s, and I weave my own threads of words through them to create the life I am destined to live.

I have no idea what the cloth will turn into, I am simply content to weave my words in my journals.