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Create a Mantra for your Most Creative Year Ever

Are you looking ahead to the new year and wondering how to stay focused and connected to what you want most? At this time of renewal and reinvention, the power of mantras can be a transformative tool. In this article, I explore what a mantra is, why creating a mantra for the year is beneficial, and how to craft a personal mantra that resonates with your unique spirit.

While it can be challenging to find a moment of stillness in this busy season, making time for deep reflection and clarity i…

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Create a Gratitude Art Journal

I’ve been thinking lately about why we focus so much on gratitude every November when we should be practicing gratitude every day of the year. Like any other habit, it can be hard to remember to make gratitude part of a daily ritual, especially when we get busy or when things aren’t going our way.

Having a whole month of the year focused on gratitude is a great thing for a few different reasons. 

  1. I believe the collective focus on gratitude helps lift all of us up. 
  2. I know that if y…

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Midlife Magic: 7 Humorous Tips for Building Strong Relationships

Hey there, fabulous ladies in the midlife club! Who says your journey of building strong relationships has to be all serious and solemn? I'm here to sprinkle some laughter and joy into this adventure. So, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, sit back, and let's dive into 7 humorous tips for nurturing connections in midlife! Your life will be so much better for having strong friendships with other women.

  1. Master the Art of Virtual Hangouts: Gone are the days of awkward video calls with you…

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5 Creative Ways to Calm Your Busy Mind

Ever feel like your thoughts are all competing in a relay race but you never actually manage to hand off the baton from one to the next? Instead you keep dropping the baton and going back to pick up another? This busyness can be caused be an excess of creative ideas, an overly long to-do list, the crush of worry and anxiety about anything and everything or just the sheer flood of information that comes your way every day.

I have found 5 activities centered around creative expression that ca…

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Art journaling tips: How working small can support your creative practice

At the beginning of the year I started a new livestream series on YouTube called Painting in your PJs with Minette. 3 to 4 mornings a week I make art live and share what I'm thinking about, reading or working on. I frequently work in handmade art journals and I enjoy all kinds of mixed media art, especially intuitive collage.

For the summer I wanted a project that would be simple and sweet and not take hours to complete. I happened to see that Michael's was having a buy one get one 50% off …

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Draw Like a Kindergartner and Other Ways to Bring More Creativity into your Day

About 10 years ago, I got really serious about my creative practice. I started to explore painting and mixed media. I've always been a writer and adding the visual arts to my regular creative practice changed my life.

For the past decade I have been using visual and verbal arts as a means of self-discovery and a powerful tool for personal growth. I've learned so much about myself on this journey. A few years ago I asked myself what might be possible if I put art at the center of my life ins…

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5 Benefits of a Consistent Creative practice for navigating midlife

Something interesting and predictable tends to happen to women in midlife. You find yourself yearning to reconnect to your creativity. In fact, this longing is so common that it is essential to one of the stages of the Heroine's Journey as described by Maureen Murdock in her popular book The Heroine's Journey: A Woman's Quest for Wholeness. She calls this stage an "urgent yearning to return to the feminine" which includes reconnecting to our desire for authentic creative expression.

While t…

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7 Ways to Unleash Creativity and Tap into Your Artistic Side in Midlife

Tapping into my own creativity over the last decade has changed my life in more ways than I can count. It has shifted the focus on my life's work and brought me hours of fun, connection and adventure. Now I have regular daily creative practice that nourishes and sustains me. I call it my MAAP process and I will share more about that in another post. Suffice it to say that I cannot encourage you enough to explore a variety of creative outlets and see what sticks.

Below you will find 7 of my …

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Rediscovering Passion: How to Reignite Your Dreams in Midlife

Ah, midlife! The time when we women find ourselves at the intersection of wisdom and fine lines. It's a phase that comes with its fair share of challenges, from juggling career and family to contemplating the mysteries of gravity and wrinkle creams. But fear not, my creative friends! In the midst of this delightful chaos, there lies an opportunity to reignite our dreams and rediscover our passion.

First and foremost, let's address the elephant in the room—our ever-evolving bodies. Yes, we m…

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3 Essential Qualities of a Midlife Renaissance

This is part 3 of a 3-part series on the 9 essential qualities of a midlife renaissance. You can find part one here and part two here.

The final 3 qualities are vitality, spiritual life and visions and goals.

When you combine all 9 of these qualities and take time to review your level of fulfillment in each area, then you are living a midlife renaissance instead of being caught in a midlife crisis or even worse the icky, soupy messy middle after a crisis and before you have clarity on wh…

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Part 2: 9 Essential Qualities of a Midlife Renaissance

In part one of this 3 part series, I shared the first 3 qualities that are essential to a midlife renaissance: creativity, adventure and connection.

Today is July 4 here in the United States, a day to celebrate freedom and independence. I think these are two qualities we are seeking to recover in our midlives and why a renaissance is necessary. Midlife is a period of life, especially post 50 years of age, when many women find themselves seeking reinvention and reconnection to their authenti…

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9 Essential Qualities for a Midlife Renaissance

I've been thinking a lot about midlife recently and wondering what would most help others to go from midlife crisis to midlife renaissance. I have come up with 9 essential qualities for a midlife renaissance and will share them over the next few days so there's not one overly long wordy post. I'm wordy enough as it is!

When we feel completely fulfilled in each of these 9 areas of life, we will find ourselves enjoying a midlife renaissance. Below you will find a description of the first thre…

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