Book Launch Day!

I’ve waited six months for the publication date of the book I’m in! Today’s the day! I’m so excited to share the book with 35 other storytellers and to have my personal experience with whales be included.

Adair Heitmann on book launch day!

You can see and hear me reading a section of my story, page 133, “Overcoming Fear with Help From the Whales” on the video here.

The book is Animals: Personal Tales of Encounters with Spirit Animals by Dr. Steven Farmer, is published by Sacred Stories Publishing. Available from online booksellers worldwide and at https://bit.ly/cs_animals

Creativity and wellness message for today: Never give up on your dreams! Keep submitting! Keep having your deep and authentic experiences in life and with nature. Don’t let anyone try to take them away from you.

Creativity is the Mother of Reinvention

PechaKucha Night Bridgeport, CT. Photo credit: Arne Heitmann

Have you ever wanted to reinvent yourself? I’ve done it many times and I’ve lived to tell the tales!

I know first-hand what it’s like to outgrow your job and how the creative process isn’t always linear. I also know how art and writing and expressing myself have saved me time and time again. And how being in the creative flow makes me feel alive. Taking leaps and willingness to walk into the unknown are beacons in my life.

“Creativity is the Mother of Reinvention” is my visual storytelling about life continuously being about retooling and reinventing. I shared it at the PechaKucha Night Vol. 12 “Reinvention + Discovery” at the Bijou Theatre in Bridgeport, Connecticut as a part of the 13th annual Bridgeport Art Trail. It’s 6 minutes/40 seconds with 20 fast-paced inspiring slides. I welcome you to take a look and a listen!

https://www.pechakucha.com/presentations/creativity-is-the-mother-of-reinvention

Putting Your Best Face Forward

Do you think you don’t have time or creativity to market yourself? Think again! This week I learned three key tips during a Facebook Live workshop: Glow Up to Show Up by Gina Tassanelli at stylishlybranding.

1. It’s more about your audience then it is about you.
2. Offer a solution to a problem.
3. Put a little authentic pizzazz into it.

Thank you to the other amazing female entrepreneurs and innovators in the workshop and to #GlowUpToShowUp

Creativity & wellness message for today: Just show up and do it — keep it simple, add some style, and remember to smile.

Inspiration for 2020

Spontaneous Inspiration by (c) Adair Heitmann

“The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.”
―Josiyah Martin

Words to live by in 2020. Happy New Year everyone!

Creativity and wellness message for today: Allow serendipity to guide your way.

Allowing Hope to Enter

(c) Adair W. Heitmann

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”
– Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton OCSO was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion.

Creativity and wellness message for today: Be like the spring crocuses pushing through the damp soil — reach for the light and allow nature’s balance to unfold.

Hope

Shell by Adair Heitmann

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

-Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

Creativity and wellness message for today: Delight in hidden messages and the blessings of small things.

Sharing Your Stories

Jubilate @ UVA

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. So when stories come to you, you must take good care of them, as well. Learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs your story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put our stories in each other’s memories. This is how people care for themselves.
-Barry Lopez

Creativity and wellness message for today: SYS

Transformation and Adventure

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it, you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
– William Stafford

Creativity and wellness message for today: Let change purify you.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Photograph by Adair Heitmann (c)

Keep close to Nature’s heart . . . and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
– John Muir

The Power of Hope

One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver writes:
“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.”

For myself, as an exhibiting artist with a full-time communications job, and as a devoted mother and (fabulous) wife, plus as a writer and daughter and volunteer, my wonderful and full life currently doesn’t provide the time I seek, yet I deeply crave the power of privacy to create!

Santa, if you are listening . . . delight me with more private time to create in 2017!

Creativity and wellness message for today: Ask and ye shall receive.