About Allison
-->
What's your story?
Here's me and mine, the long and the short.
Photo by Johnny Grace
Writing prompt #1:
My journey to creativity in 7 sentences (the short story)...
1. Born to a creative family, but not everyone believed in themselves
2. Filled journals, diaries and birthday cards with my stories & feelings
3. Confidence crushed when my writing was graded harshly in junior high
4. Stopped writing for fun, became a dietitian, found myself writing about only scientific things. Didn't know I had a creative cell in my body.
5. Talked to an intuitive counselor and woke up to my long, lost desire to write creatively
6. Nothing can keep me away from my new found passions--My pen, journals, my guitar, my paintbrush, my dancing feet...and more to come...
7. I want to share this joy with others--Writing Circles/Pen Parties are born!
Writing prompt #2:
My journey to creativity in 7 paragraphs (the long story)...
I was born to write. Looking back now, I see all the signs—I skipped recess to finish my stories in second grade…I own a musty collection of diaries and journals from age eight onward…I tend to fill every inch of blank space on birthday cards…
And yet, I never thought of myself as a “real” writer. I partly blame my seventh grade English teacher for first crushing my writing spirit. On my very first paper that year, I was shocked to see a glowing D+. Ouch. That was proof to me that I had no talent.
From junior high until my 35th birthday, I didn't give up on writing, but only things I could back up with a detailed bibliography--scientific things. Hence my first book: The Health Professional’s Guide to Popular Dietary Supplements—a comprehensive reference on the safety and efficacy of vitamins, herbs and such. While I am proud of this book, it happens to be the most boring thing I’ve ever written.
In 2007, as a New Year’s gift to myself, I made an appointment with an intuitive healer. This part of the conversation stands out:
She said: “Allison, you are not doing the work you came into this world to do.”
I responded: “Okay, so what is my work then?”
She said: “I don’t know, you need to figure that out for yourself.”
Damn, she wasn’t going to make it easy for me.
I let her words percolate for four months. Then one day I was sitting in a café trying to write a story for my daughter's birthday. I had been inspired to write because several butterflies had landed in the palm of her hand that summer. At that sticky table, I began the first creative story I’d penned in 25 years. As the words dripped on the page, so did my tears. This was it—my pen, my long lost friend, my magic wand on paper—connecting me to a part of myself that I had almost erased.
That is the early story of my reconnection with CREATIVITY. Since then, I’ve entered into my own personal “school” of writing, art, music and magic. I no longer write about nutrition, now I work on my picture book stories for children, hold writing circles, write songs, practice guitar and piano, paint, dance, and lead circles for women and girls. I also, and most importantly, learn mountain-fuls about being creative from my son and daughter.
As I've reclaimed my passion, I feel it is my personal duty to help others reconnect with their exiled creative selves. I believe that everyone has a story to write, a song to sing, a painting to paint, a poem to craft, a dance to twirl…And it doesn’t have to be perfect or professional—it just has to be an expression of YOU.
