celebration – Sherri Jean McCulloch

I’m very excited to announce… my art, artcards, calendars, and other artful items will be with me at Thrive Festival at Silverside Farm in Cobble Hill August 26, 2018. Come visit me there and pick up some tips for how you can ‘Thrive’ along with something special for yourself.

It’s going to be a great day of music, sun, speakers, and inspiration.

Every morning I offer up a little prayer for forgiveness, gratitude, and open heartedness. (Its available on the blog) Often I’ll ask what is needed from me that day and I’m usually met with a little thought that I have come to know as wisdom from the universe.

When I find myself awakened at night, repeating my prayer through allows me to find sleep again. Essentially, instead of counting sheep I’m counting my blessings.

This is a little practice that I have created for myself based on seeking, reading, finding, trying, sifting sorting and finally, elimination. It’s a simple practice among others I utilize that helps me to thrive.

IMG_1212.JPG prayer — Joy- Available 22 1/2″ by 30″ Acrylic on Paper

Can you name the practices you engage in to maintain your best self?

Have you even thought about what your best self feels like?

I used to think I was my best self when I was exhausted…

when I’d ‘given it everything I got’ … to work and family

when I’d ‘given 110%’ … to others

when I’d ‘sucked it up’ … and pushed beyond my limits for the team

when I ‘put it behind me and kept moving forward’…for the wellbeing of others

Those mantras, the ones we are sold to motivate us to produce more and more and more… they put ‘my best self’ in harms way.

What are the mantras you have adopted to drive yourself to exhaustion?

I now know that my best self feels light, airy, spacious, as well as loving. My best self is well rested, playful, golden! My best self knows that boundaries are not just okay, but in fact, a necessity.

… Come visit me at Thrive and ask for your free gift!

IMG_1205.JPG quarry — The Quarry – Available 20″ by 26″ Acrylic on Paper

July has been an exciting month. My daughter, the first of my three to wed, created her fairytale woodland wedding on the bank of the Koksilah River at the rustically beautiful Eagle’s Nest Sanctuary. It was a misty day, perfect for pictures, perfect for fairy’s and their magic, perfect for sharing love. It was nothing short of beautiful. We laughed and we cried, we listened and spoke, we ate and we drank, we danced and we reminisced, and we remembered what romantic love for another can do.

My daughter, an ornithologist, is also an artist. She sings and plays guitar, banjo and uke. She is at her most joyous when she is creative. And so, her band, Holy Crow, played at the wedding, her new husband standing or dancing nearby. It was a joyful, super fun celebration.

In my thesis on learning communities that I wrote in 2005, I spoke about the power of music and how it brings people together and fills their soul. I stick by it.

Yesterday I saw Tony Robbins in person for the first time at Vancouver’s Power of Success conference with my husband. I’d bought him the tickets for his birthday present this year. Tony provided three hours of peak performance training. For me, it was as much fun as a rock concert, and I love a good rock concert. Hello Tom Petty in Vancouver, August 17th! Thank-you children! Here’s why, music fills my soul up and makes it flower. Tony has a great, loud, soundtrack that everyone jumps to the beat. No, I am not too old, even at 56 soon to be 57 to jump around to great music. No such thing as too old. It was another joyful super fun celebration.

And then today. Today at the Vancouver Art Gallery I breathed in Monet‘s process; his colours, his strokes, his layers, the fragrance of his garden. Amazing. An then more came…Emily Carr‘s forest paintings…their rhythm, each of them a unique symphony, an opus, of temperate rain forest green’s. I was completely immersed in celebration for the rainforest. And then, I was ready to go home. Away from the city. To my quiet corner in the forest for which I am so very grateful.

While I write this, I am again filled with gratitude for my amazing month and if you follow me here or on instagram, you know that I know gratitude is the way to joy. Here’s the next tidbit.

Joy + Creative Exploration create the conditions for Interior Light; the light that wakes us up and opens us to love for self and love for others. This deep, knowing love allows me (and you) to walk in beauty and “beauty will save the world”.

I am a creativity coach.

I help people to reconnect with joy…and begin the next leg of this wonderful journey.

And, I am an artist.

I will always dive into my colours and begin new canvases, boards, paper, whatever. As I paint, I welcome the music I listen to and I allow it to fill my soul until it is my soul that is creating. Celebration needs music. Creating is soul celebration.