Healing Trauma in Creative, Sensitive and Gifted People

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Creativity, Gifted, Grief and loss, Highly Sensitive, trauma Leave a Comment

Healing Trauma in Creative Sensitive Gifted People: Many creative, sensitive, and gifted people are traumatized by the media coverage of the 15th anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City. Of course it’s appropriate to remember this  world-changing event and honor those who have been deeply affected by it.  So to help CASIGYs™ heal from this and other trauma, I’m republishing my article – Healing Trauma in Creative Sensitive Gifted People Six weeks before the Columbine High School shooting in April of 1999, my husband and I with our teenage sons, moved into the Columbine West …

Balancing Your CASIGY™ Life

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Gifted, Highly Sensitive, LifeCraft Events, Overcoming Adversity Leave a Comment

If You Can Balance a BIKE, You Can Balance Your LIFE!    One Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1999, I had just drifted off to take a nap when my husband Gary put his hand on the calf of my leg and gently shook it as he said these encouraging words: “What’s wrong with you? I’m worried about you. All you do is sleep. Are you depressed?” The searing bone pain that had kept me up most of the night had finally lessened enough that I could relax and sleep, and now he was waking me up. “I’m NOT …

Happy CASIGY™ Mother’s Day

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Contemplative Handwork, Creative Coping, Gifted, gifted relationships, Self-Acceptance

Happy CASIGY™ Mother’s Day! Balancing CASIGY™ Mom’s Own Needs With Your Family’s Needs Today is Mother’s Day in the United States, Australia and many other countries. It’s a day of great joy and also pain for many. If you’re having a tough time with Mothers Day, you may appreciate this post from my archives:  ‘I Hate Mother’s Day!’ When I had young children, my fantasy of the perfect Mother’s Day was for my husband to take the kids and do something fun with them and leave me alone in the house for a change. That never happened, and is not ever …

How to Prevent Holiday Meltdowns!

Sharon Barnes CASIGY, Creative Coping, Gifted, Grief and loss, Highly Sensitive, Holiday Advice, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care

Have past holidays been a nightmare due to ‘inevitable’ holiday meltdowns? Do you dread upcoming holiday family gatherings? It may not be a fun thing to admit, but there wouldn’t be so many movie and sitcom comedies about disastrous holiday family gatherings if it weren’t so common. So if you’re not looking forward to holiday family gatherings, know that you’re not alone, and that if you wish, you can let go of any guilt or shame you feel around dreading them. The perfect family does not exist on this planet, from the very first family to the First Family in …

Are You Facing Adversity

Sharon Barnes Creative Coping Leave a Comment

Are you facing adversity? That’s an interesting question. It implies first, that you’re in the midst of a tough time in your life; and second, that you’re not ignoring it or running away from it, but that you have turned your face into the storm, so to speak. So let me ask it again, are you facing adversity? I have spent much of my working life helping people who have been in the midst of many kinds of adversity and I have experienced my share of adversity. Together, these experiences have given me the opportunity to notice what helps and …

Life Lessons Learned While Quilting

Sharon Barnes Creative Coping, Creative Healing, Overcoming Adversity Leave a Comment

If it has to be done, make it fun. Look everywhere and see all there is to see, even if no one else sees it. See life through the eyes of an artist Look for life’s colors, shapes, textures, and shades of light and dark. Don’t shut down when you face problems; open up to ALL of life’s experiences. Learn the same thing as often as necessary until you know it by heart. Multi-task without multi-tasking, make what you do accomplish several things at once. Take whatever comes to you in life and transform it into a beautiful adventure. Scrap …

Creative and Contemplative Handwork Is a Deep Practice

Sharon Barnes Creative Coping, Creative Healing Leave a Comment

Creative and Contemplative Handwork is a deep creative, spiritual, emotional and emotional practice. The process of making something which tangibly demonstrates our inner state and represents our inner process reaches deep within us, taps into and brings out emotion and experience that cannot be found or expressed otherwise. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a picture that the Self creates is worth a hundred thousand words. We create something for which we have no words; we express experience and emotion for which we have no explanation. Then as we contemplate what we have made, words emerge and return …