Post 49: Introducing Creative Living Coaching! 🆕

Hello Again!

I know it hasn’t been long since my last message, but I am really excited to share the details of my next creative chapter with you. Take a look at the video above, or read the transcript below, and if you’re interested in learning more about Creative Living Coaching, I will include a link at the bottom, as well as a 25% discount code for paid subscribers to try out the first-ever, One-Month Seed to Sprout Creative Challenge!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Friends! I’m very excited to share this message with you because I am going to tell you about the next project that I want to work on. I hinted about it in my last newsletter on Substack, but I didn’t really explain it much.

It might be a little bit of a surprise for those of you who know me only through my music (or maybe through my memoir), but I have always been a huge lover of psychology and spirituality and personal development and entrepreneurial, motivational things. I just really love growth, growth mindset, and seeing the world through a lens of values and meaning and creativity.

And so to that end, I’ve read a lot. I’ve gone to a lot of trainings. I minored in psychology in college, and then I kept reading. I’ve gone through a lot of therapy myself. I read motivational and spiritual texts pretty much daily to stay connected. It’s a really big part of who I am, and I think it’s helped me make a lot of the work I’ve created. Anchoring into “wellness” as a broad term.

However, over the years I have felt really left out of this world that I love —this personal development world — because the language around disability is often really, really negative and super ableist, and it catches you by surprise.

I think the first (and worst) time that it caught me by surprise was when I was reading a book by Wayne Dyer called “The Invisible Force”. It was a daily book with short reflections on positive thinking and positive affirmations.

And one of the affirmations, which just blew me away, was this:

“Simply refuse to think that you could be a victim of disease or disability and do not spend the precious moments of your life discussing illnesses or past injuries.”

And that really hurt, obviously. Kind of just shocked me.

I stopped reading the book after that. There was such a disdain for disability, such an othering, such a negative take on disability — that it literally excluded the disabled people like me who were reading it from positive affirmations or from shaping the trajectory of our lives because we were completely othered.

And it’s not the only time I felt that way in personal development. Very recently I went to a training and the guy teaching it was like, “I work out every day. You gotta know your why! I work out because I don’t want to have to wheel myself down the aisle at my daughter’s wedding.” And it’s like, “Oh, man!”

It was just another example of a lack of understanding and awareness.

I have come to believe that if what you say is actually true, that means it should be universal and respectful of all people. We’re missing that sense of universality in a lot of the wellness spaces, and excluding disabled people.

You know, I’ve learned a lot in these personal development spaces, but I have also had to sift through a lot of gross language and a lot of baggage. Many folks in that industry clearly, on the whole, don’t see disability as the vibrant, adaptable, creative, fun, and very generative community that I do. I see disability as a source of strength and leadership and creativity, but I just don’t think that that’s how most of the industries that I’m talking about view it.

So that’s what I want to do next. I want to build a creative community online to serve what I see as a very underserved population, which is anyone with a disability, or who is dealing with the realities of aging, or experiencing mental health issues, or — honestly — anyone who has felt left out of wellness, entrepreneurial, creative, and spiritual spaces. There seems to be this idea that, “If you’re not 20 years old and able to put in 50 hours a week and push, push, push, push, then this isn’t for you.” Or it’s a viral mentality — build, build, build — that doesn’t fit everybody’s life and doesn’t leave people feeling valued.

And so I want people to be able to better their lives by following their creative passion and deepening their sense of creative meaning (and in turn, spiritual meaning) without having to sift through a bunch of ableist language or negative bias against their identity. I want this to be a welcoming space.

Originally, I thought about making it only for disabled creatives, but I really think that we can’t silo ourselves anymore. People who are aging could be learning from disabled people, and we could be coming together and joining forces with the older population in a way that makes our needs taken more seriously for our diverse human experience to be respected for what it is.

So I’m keeping this open to anyone who feels they could benefit from a creative space that is rooted in anti-ableism and in kindness. And the real root of it all is that every person matters and everybody’s creative journey is important. That’s the baseline. The point of this program is to connect you with other creatives who may be going through similar things as you, or who want to explore creativity in a safe , nurturing, welcoming and accessible environment.

I also want us to do challenges together. So I’m starting my first challenge on August 1st. It’s called Seed to Sprout, and it’s about taking inventory of your creativity now and and planting some seeds that you can see germinate.

It might be that you have lost touch with your creative pursuits. It might be that you don’t really know what direction you want to go in next. Or perhaps you’re having trouble sifting through the different messages that our culture gives us, or that maybe we give ourselves about what we can or cannot do.

Or maybe you’re a disabled professional and you’re in the field and doing the creative work, but you feel kind of burned out or alone or disconnected.

I want us to come together and support each other in the creative process. This isn’t about going viral or getting a certain number of hits or signing a huge deal or whatever. It’s about creating and living more creatively every day.

I think that every person— if you ever saw my TEDx Talk on Enrichment — you already know that I think that every person is capable of living a more enriching life, and that is the whole foundation of Creative Living Coaching.

While I launch this program, I’m actually working on my certification for Life Coaching and then I will be doing a second certificate in Neurodivergent and ADHD Coaching. So I’m hoping to expand this platform to be also a place where people can come get creative coaching sessions from me if they want.

I’ve done a lot of things creatively from scratch and DIY, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot along the way, and I would love to help people get in touch with their creativity and then create a plan for them to follow for themselves.

I’m just really excited. So that is what is filling me up. It’s been on a bucket list since even before the book edited. I knew this was the next step of my journey.

It’s actually why I named my Substack Creative Living for Every Body, because that’s what I want to name my next book (I would like to write about this too).

So I hope that you will join me if this resonates with you — if you’ve ever felt left out by mainstream creativity and wellness and spirituality and creativity. If you’ve ever felt left out of personal development and you want to get in touch with your creative self in a space that will accept you and welcome you and celebrate you for who you are… Then his is a place you should check out!

I just added it to my website here:

There are a few different options. There’s a free option, there’s the 1-month challenge, and then there’s a monthly subscription which will include 1 hour of coaching with me a month. And so you can choose what works for you. I want to make it as accessible to as many different income levels as possible!

I also want the live events to meet people’s needs. If you need captions or ASL interpretation to participate, let me know. The replays will all have captions and transcripts. I want to be mindful of accessibility from the very beginning, even as if it’s just a tiny little baby seed right now. Hopefully it will grow into something beautiful and supportive for different kinds of creatives who have felt overlooked. So thanks for listening. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Very Truly,

Gaelynn Lea

Colorful graphic with playful font reading "Seed to Sprout Challenge!" decorated with illustrated sprouts, colorful dots, pencils, and soft pastel blob shapes in green, teal, and purple. Center features the purple “Creative Living Coaching with Gaelynn Lea” logo with an abstract white fiddlehead icon at the center.

PAID SUBSCRIBERS, GET 25% OFF THE SEED TO SPROUT CHALLENGE: