I’m performing on Wednesday, September 1st….Not as my one woman persona (Gumboot Lollipop) but as Dolly Hopkins the storyteller.
Come out for a night of short stories with a few laughs or maybe even some tears at the:
Cottage Bistro
4470 Main St., at 29th
The evening starts at 7pm sharp and the house fills up quickly so arrive before 7pm for the Early Dinner Special.
See you there!
Hi all!
This weekly interview highlights some really amazing women who are shaking things up and making a difference through creativity and bold endeavors. They have been chosen because I’m inspired by their powerfully persuasive spirit and their tenacity to make things happen. They are sisters in their creative ingenuity, building a legacy for others through their actions and venturesome spirit. If you haven’t already checked out the previous women featured, starting with Mercedes Baines, scroll down to read all about them as well.
Also, be sure to see what inspires Pat Camozzi, he’s featured as July’s Man of the Month.
Presenting:
Michelle is a full-time devotee to her almost four year old daughter and a consultant to the Arts and Health Project, a pioneering community-engaged arts coalition for vulnerable seniors. While tending the hearth these past few years, Michelle has also facilitated a group with Mama Renew, served on the Executive at Happy Corner Parent Participation Preschool, and initiated a monthly meeting of Catholic women with deep faith and big questions. Michelle is continuously striving to integrate and simultaneously express the fullness of who she be – Mama, woman, and global citizen; social worker, entrepreneur, and hotshot relish maker. It’s been a wild ride with stops along the way for youth work in inner city Dublin, marketing with the Westcoast Sacred Music Festival, social work studies in Montreal (BSW, McGill), a social responsibility research project with the Caledon Institute in Ottawa, business school in Toronto (MBA York), a product launch with VanCity Credit Union, professional development programming at the Urban Development Institute, and business development, advising and coaching with visionary entrepreneurs. Michelle is proud to be one of the founders of the InterSpiritual Centre of Vancouver Society.
And here’s how she answered my 6 questions about creativity:
What does it mean to you to be creative?
Being creative connotes openness to me; an openness to change, to innovation, to difference, to new life, new ways of being and doing, and to the end of things whether they are quiet deaths or fiery exits.
What inspires your creativity?
The belief that beauty is ever present.
Yoga, yoga and more yoga.
My husband’s commitment to being himself.
A passion for transforming, for makings things better, for innovating. If its a new product, project or approach, count me in.
A sense of spacious, in my physical space and in my days; both of which are sorely lacking at the moment!
What keeps you moving forward in making things happen?
The drive to manifest potential in myself, in others, in our collective ways of being and doing, and in our efforts to heal ourselves and our planet.
The desire to have the next 40 be as interesting as the past 40.
Curiosity about myself.
Compassion for others.
Gratitude.
What’s the wildest journey your venturesome spirit has taken you on?
Mamahood has been my wildest journey to date. Despite yearning for this role my entire life, I had no real concept of how profoundly it would affect every element of my life. Mamahood is an ever evolving, relentless journey of humility and power, love and loss, anger and awe, exhilaration and exhaustion, heartache and healing. I still can’t believe that motherhood is not headline news everyday and that I’m not making $150 grand a year.
Irish stone and moss
What’s the boldest, most provocative statement you are willing to make?
Living with dying, being with grieving and holistic death care are the next frontier ripe for transformation. Count me in.
What’s next for you?
Making pickles, relish and strawberry applesauce.
A family vacation to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
Volunteering with the Family Grief Group offered by the Vancouver Hospice Society.
Continuing with my Healing Touch practitioner training.
Training to become a spiritual director
Becoming a funeral director or a farmer … or maybe both!
And here’s some of the dreamers and doers that inspire Michelle’s creativity:
Family creativity, baking and knitting www.soulemama.com
Healing and dying www.callanish.org
Thoughtful, beautiful spaces www.chestermanproperties.com
A path to world peace www.interfaithcenter.org
Thank you Michelle, grateful for your curiosity, compassion, and strawberry applesauce.
Here’s a little bit about her:
I spent over 20 years exploring life as an independent theatre artist. That meant that I spent a lot of time being creative about how I expressed my creativity!!! I wrote, performed, directed, produced, taught & ran a theatre company. I did the artist multi task for many years and then I looked around at all my busyness and wondered what it all means. Why was I doing what I was doing? I decided that I wanted to work at a deeper level, and that the work I do becomes more process driven, more focus on the whole person, focus on healing. So, I am now in graduate school pursuing a master’s in counseling psychology. There are many things in common between counseling and theatre! I am looking for synthesis: a way that my creative and my healing work will come together. I await the emerging landscape…at present I am between two places where I have been and where I am going. It is an uncomfortable place at times…
And here’s how she answered my 6 questions about creativity:
What does it mean to you to be creative?
Self awareness, vitality, presence, seeking, listening inwardly and outwardly, flow…
What inspires your creativity?
The beauty of the daily, the common and wondrous colour of a flower, the sound that a million leaves make in the trees when the wind blows, the bend of the neck of an elderly woman as she listens to her friend at the bus stop, the intake of breath with surprise, the exhale of desire…
What keeps you moving forward in making things happen?
Finding meaning in my life before I die !!! No, really, I think that may be it.
What’s the wildest journey your venturesome spirit has taken you on?
I am on it, it’s called grad school. I would not call it wild, but I DO call it vast, intense, dense…But prior to that, early on in my writing and performing career, I struck my core, and found a raw place and wrote from there. It felt vulnerable, a bit dangerous but it seemed important at the time.
What’s the boldest, most provocative statement you are willing to make about yourself, your business or the industry that you are in?
I think that being a creative person requires all of you. It can be a devouring beast. It can demand your insides be revealed, laid bare and I think this may not always be spiritually, physically, psychologically sustainable. And I think that is why a lot of creative expression is banal because that deep place is scary, intolerable and yet, to touch it generates a fiery creativity that draws one in. I think what is sustainable is finding the flow within ourselves, balance if you will- experiencing creative acts like breathing, they can be a simple as baking , finding words for someone who is grieving, sitting in silence or as profound as THAT GREAT work that I/we aspire to or at least has the power to move, communicate to more than just myself.
What’s next for you?
I have a few weeks off from school and I want to do some collage journaling…find some balance with all the academic writing I have been doing.
And here’s two things that inspire Mercedes creativity…the first is a quote and the second is a story Mercedes wrote a couple of years ago:
“On a day when the wind is perfect the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty Today is such a day.” by Rumi.
The Secret Life of Cubicle 4 By Mercedes Baines…a story about transformation and moving through life following your deep desire.
Love your daily beauty Mercedes, thank you!
