Happy Halloween

Sharon Barnes Creative Coping, Creative Healing, Grief and loss, Holiday Advice, Inspiration, Jungian psychology, Overcoming Adversity, Self-Acceptance, Soul Care Leave a Comment

Today is Halloween – the one day in the year that we dress up in costumes, put on masks and . . . . well, we pay attention and even homage to parts of ourselves that we hide and put away the rest of the year. Psychologically speaking, this is a very healthy and an even necessary thing, especially for highly sensitive people, which, of course, includes many creative and gifted people as well. For it is when we repress, or pretend that we don’t have darkness within ourselves, that it goes underground. Pretending that we have no darkness inside …

Valentine’s Day can be painful for CASIGYs with Broken, Hurting Hearts

Sharon Barnes Creative Healing, Holiday Advice Leave a Comment

Many CASIGYs feel lost in the Sea of Despair on Valentine’s Day.    Valentine’s Day can be painful for CASIGYs (Creative, Alert-Aware, Super-Sensitive, Intense, and/or Gifted You-s) with broken, hurting hearts. When we have lost a loved one, when our marriage or love relationship is in trouble or has broken up, when we despair of ever finding someone to love and truly love us back, our deep pain can be magnified even more than usual during this time when the whole world seems to focus on romantic love. It can also be tough for us when we have financial challenges 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 …

LifeStick

Sharon Barnes Creative Healing, Overcoming Adversity Leave a Comment

When we make things with our hands that represent our inner process, the practice of making them helps us grasp that lasting healing, growth and change don’t happen in an instant. They take time, creativity and action, the same as crafting our symbolic objects does.   ScrapLady Sharon

How to Transform as You Come Back From Adversity

Sharon Barnes Creative Healing, Grief and loss, Overcoming Adversity, quotations Leave a Comment

Hannah, a doll made from a stray sock, is quite a helpless creature. Hannah sometimes has days with her face in the dirt, like a caterpillar.     When she can’t take any more of life’s dirt, she creates a cocoon for herself, Where she can heal, rejuvenate and recreate herself. But eventually the cocoon becomes a prison, and she finds a way to break out. As she emerges, she discovers that while cocooning, she has been transformed. Hannah is helpless no longer; she can fly wherever she pleases. Helpless Hannah has become the Comeback Queen! By following Hannah’s process …