This is my latest content creation,  an email offering my one:one mentoring program  I am making this month.  Thank you for reading.

In the complexity of this modern life, it's easy to lose sight of what is meaningful.. We grow distant from the source of our aliveness, from our connection to our divine nature, from each other. 

“Self-love is an ocean and your heart is a vessel. Make it full, and any excess will spill over into the lives of the people you hold dear. But you must come first.”- Beau Taplinl 

It's not always east to put ourselves first. To fill ourselves up. To nurture and nourish ourselves back into our aliveness. Tonight, on this strawberry full moon, I have something new I'd like to share with you. I'm releasing a deep dive mentorship program, and with a deep exhale, she's ready for her first cohort.  

 Because she's new, I'm looking for a (very) limited number of students to take on this maiden journey.  This first cohort will be a special one, and If this has sparked something in you, please read on.. 

The Radiance Way Solstice to Solstice 6 Month Private Coaching Curriculum is for new beginnings, providing a beautifully held personal mentoring space designed to restore, to reawaken you to your inner light, your inner radiance, your exquisite magnificence. And because life has turbulence, we get busy and we get lost, and because we forget… Together, we will walk the path of your Remembering. 

So Beautiful One..

If you have lost your connection to yourself, to your dreams and desires, 

If you are unsure of your purpose, 

If you are sick of telling yourself the same old story, 

and you are tired of trying to find a way through on your own,

I promise you - all of that can change.

If you are ready

to take a journey 

to reawaken 

and embody

your divine inner radiance,

to feel more alive

to know yourself in your exquisite magnificence, 

come onto a call with me, 

to determine your next steps on your journey.  

 As many of you know, I trained and honed my skills as a coach back in the day, combining my business experience and intuition to help people both in person and as far away as Australia develop or re-orient their businesses. Since then, I've reconnected and rekindled my passion for spiritual development and the arts, both in the fine art space and in conscious movement. 

Now, I'm working with people on a personal and deeper level to integrate their experiences of life, and to re-awaken their awareness of their divine and radiant nature.   

Curious?  Questions? Just hit reply if you'd like to know more. 

You have this one beautiful life, let's make sure you are fully alive and fully embodied in it.  

all my love, Marli

@Michael Williams

"Staying on the bus" is a reference to a rather well known art lecture given by Arno Rafael Mikkinen at the commencement of

the New England School of Photography in 2004. His talk is titled The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in Photography."

Here's a link to the original: https://www.fotocommunity.d...

And here's a synopsis:

The Helsinki bus station provides a metaphor for artists determining their individual and unique path in art.

At the beginning of an artist's career, the artist is making work that can be compared to the work of others, and may, in fact, be nearly similar to the work of others. If this is pointed out to the new artist, rather than staying on the current path, the artist starts over, abandoning the ideas that they may have worked on for a few years, and choosing a different path that doesn't look like that of other artists. The process repeats - after working on the new path for a while, the artist is dismayed by the comparisons of their work to other's work and heads back to the starting point (the bus station) to choose another path (bus route).

What the artist doesn't realize - and what happens with the bus routes in Helsinki - is that only the beginning of the route is shared by several buses (artists) and each bus (artist) soon splits off to pursue their own route (unique variation on the theme). As Mikkinen points out, 

"It’s the separation that makes all the difference, and once you start to see that difference in your work from the work you so admire (that’s why you chose that platform after all), it’s time to look for your breakthrough."

If you stay on the route you originally chose, you will eventually have truly individualistic work that has had time to develop. When you reach the end of the route, you can look back and see all the ups and downs that route took - the quasi-imitations, the breakthroughs, the masterpieces. But only if you stay on the bus.

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Staying on the bus this is really difficult for me.  I don't like the idea of narrowing my options, committing to one idea, or closing doors - all ways of saying the same thing. 

Many years ago my mother labeled me an "expander" - I take in too much, ask a lot of "what if?" questions, and overwhelm myself with lots of ideas - not all of which can be good...or can only be good ideas if fully tested. This way of looking at the world can, of course, have its good points.  But often, I find myself latching on to new ideas and never executing or leaving an idea before it's been explored.

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I'm currently working on a series of works.  Only because I signed myself up for a course on "working in series" am I not following my usual inclinations to take "new buses" that go off on different routes. The instructor asked us to define our series and then close all the other doors.  In other words, acknowledge, maybe even record the other notions that occur to us, but don't follow those paths....right now. 

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Here's my series definition is "It's about layering, layering as a way of capturing past moment. The layers will be transparent. Each layer may contain different imaging or marks.  Sometimes the layers may be successive moments of a gesture. The layers might be compressed, separated or cut through. The content of the layers might be collected, photographed, or drawn by me."

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I've actually drawn a box around this definition in my sketchbook.  That box helps me remember that these are the boundaries within which I can explore...for now. 

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As you might expect, as I complete an artwork each week, lots of ideas are popping up.  "Wouldn't it be great to actually stitch on top of these printed images?"  "What if I cast plaster hands and added them to the artwork?" You can see that these ideas do not fit within the box!  So I record a note somewhere in my sketchbook and keep going on the bus route I've chosen. It's difficult for me and feels foreign and kind of uncomfortable.  But I'm committed to staying on this bus route for the duration of the course - 8 weeks.  I hope I'll stay on the bus route longer and see where it goes!

Not sure if this interview response qualifies, but I used the principle of 'working lightly' to create my answers for this interview.  Also, I faced resistance and I got it done anyway.  It seems like such an easy question, but it brings up a lot of vulnerability.

This is a portion of the interview for Shoutout Arizona.  

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

In both my work as an artist and as a facilitator, I'm continually seeking the truest form of expression. Just like our written signature, we each have an energetic signature that infuses everything we do. Just as in creating a painting, there is a unique way you make marks on a canvas; and just as in life, there is a unique set of energies that you carry and express. No one is exactly like you, no one will create exactly like you, and no one has your unique signature.

Living the life of an artist is the embodiment of creating your life as you go. It means learning to understand who you are and then learning to embrace and embody all of who you are. This is your purpose, your unique expression. And you- in all your magnificence – are nothing short of a masterpiece.

I believe that knowing and understanding your unique signature creates an environment for your purpose to emerge and that your true purpose is to be yourself, fully and freely. I infuse these principles in all of my work, and take others through their own process in my program The Radiance Way.

@Michael Williams

Hello, it's my first time posting here.  I wrote and edited a blog for January, accompanied by one of my paintings.  Comments are always welcome here or over on my FB page. 

Recently I had a video project to do on my computer. I’m not a techie, but I have some basic knowledge. I thought I could solve the problem but there was no end to the technical difficulties. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster from one tech challenge to the next. 

I tried one thing after another. Changed the computer settings, used different equipment, enlisted my busy husband to be my tech support, searched online for solutions, I even left the house on that rainy cold day to buy a new microphone. Spoiler alert, the new mic didn’t solve the problem. 

I was stressed out. I was starting to think about booking an appointment with my massage therapist when something caught my eye. An older woman, a Russian immigrant, was heading for the door. She was wearing a raincoat and a scarf and pulling a small hand cart, probably full of groceries. She paused at the door and adjusted her scarf. 

I saw the opportunity to help. 

Car keys in hand, I approached the woman. I asked her if she lived in my town and wanted a ride home. Hebrew as our common language. She responded in the few words she knew. She didn’t need a ride. I tried again. I was thinking, maybe she is being polite or doesn’t want to accept help for some reason. “I don’t mind,” I said, “I’m happy to take you.” She smiled and tried to explain that she was going to visit a friend and then will go home from there. Her warm eyes and smile expressed a great deal of gratitude for the gesture. 

She walked through the door and suddenly my tech saga melted away. I was absorbed in the spiritual bliss of the divine plan. Maybe this was the reason, or one of them, why I needed to come to the shopping mall. To offer help and get out of my personal problems. To shine some light where no one else was going to shine theirs. 

And I went home, knowing that my project would be completed in divine timing, whenever that might be.  @Winnie Sher