My mission is to inspire excellence in people, to facilitate growth and the discovery of giftedness, and to serve as a catalyst for positive change.

It's hard to say when the journey began.  Somewhere deep in childhood, I suspect, gently guided by a creative mother, a thinking father, a challenging high school English teacher, a quirky college drama teacher, friends who've nudged, books, music and art that have inspired... a myriad of signposts and guiding hands along the way.  The start that I remember, though, is much more recent than that.

It had a lot to do with maternity leaves. After birthing babies, something else was birthed in me.  On my second maternity leave, I wrote a novel while my babies napped in the afternoons.  It was never published, but it reawakened my love of writing that had lain dormant while I'd built my marriage and my career.   My third maternity leave was short (I'd had a stillborn son, so only had 3 months of leave).  I didn't have enough time for any major creative projects, but it was around that time that, after learning to embrace grief and the shortness of life, the world unraveled a bit and I knew I couldn't put it back together in the same formation.  There emerged a deep sense of calling for something different - something deeper.

A few years later, I was on maternity leave with my third and final daughter.  Away from my full time career for a year, I had more time to wrestle with the calling that beckoned around the time my son had come and gone.

It was on a walk along a riverbank that the idea started to take shape.  My spiritual community was beginning a series of eight week sessions where a potluck meal was followed with a time of learning and connecting.  They were looking for people to facilitate different learning groups that would enrich the participants but also enrich the community.  I knew what I wanted to teach - something that had become a passion of mine - creativity.

That eight week session changed my life.  Before starting the workshop, I spent weeks devouring every book I could find on creativity, talking to anyone whose creative ideas had inspired me, and eating, breathing, and dreaming creativity day in and day out.

Follow the rest of Heather's journey at her What Are You Giving Away web site!