The Journaling Muse

The Journaling Muse – Issue #31 Emotional Rest A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. Hi, Dear Reader, Have you ever walked in a place that made you feel both small and completely alive? I just returned from Adršpach in Czechia, where I wandered around an enchanting lake and into the sandstone rocks made famous in The Chronicles of Narnia. Tall stone shapes rose from the fields like giant cups and towers, as if witches and wizards still lived among them. Some paths led...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #30 What's Ending? What's Beginning? A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. My intention is to help you slow down and soothe your nervous system — through colour, texture, and expressive journaling that speaks gently to your inner world. Hi, Dear Reader, August always feels like a turning point. We’re still wrapped in summer’s warmth, but there’s a shift in the light, a softening in the evenings, and—if we listen closely—a whisper that change...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #28 – The Stories in Our Hands This is a space for softness, reflection, and gentle making.Each letter is an invitation to pause, breathe, and listen to what’s stirring inside—using art and journaling to meet yourself with kindness. Dear Reader}, I usually write my Journaling Muse letters to a smaller circle of creative souls. Today, I wanted to share this one with all of you — because it’s about something we all have: our hands. What they hold.What they long to...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #28 – The Mirror of Beauty A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. My intention is to help you slow down and soothe your nervous system — through colour, texture, and expressive journaling that speaks gently to your inner world. Hi, Dear Reader, I paused under the sycamore, overstimulated and adrift in the clammy air, when a shaft of light fell across the path. Leaves were moving like gold leaves. For that heartbeat, everything stilled—my...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #27 Soft Rituals in a Hard World A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. My intention is to help you slow down and soothe your nervous system — through colour, texture, and expressive journaling that speaks gently to your inner world. Hi, Dear Reader, Some mornings, I wake up already carrying the weight of old thoughts—shaped by years of habit and belief. That’s why I begin each day with something different. A whisper of gratitude. A quiet...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #25Art as Sanctuary A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. Hi, Dear Reader, "When despair for the world grows in meAnd I wake in the night at the least soundIn fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakeRests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds." —Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things Sometimes, the world feels like too much. The news.The noise.The long list of things that hurt...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #24 The Art of Being Here A short midsummer practice for presence, peace, and creative flow. Hi, Dear Reader, A few years ago, I was painting in Jennifer Tan’s studio in Kuala Lumpur.The hours would disappear.I’d forget my coffee. Forget to drink water.I’d paint with my beautiful long brushes—and sometimes unknowingly with my hair.That’s what presence feels like: full immersion. No past. No future. Just now. And in that now, I always felt lighter. More alive.It...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #23 Midsummer Light and Shadow A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. Opening Reflection: A Midsummer-night Dream Midsummer is a special time for me.It’s when I met my husband—so for me, it’s always been woven with romance and playfulness, like a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s poetic.It’s soft and sunlit.But midsummer isn’t only made of golden light.This solstice, I honour the fullness of my being—light and shadow,...

The Journaling Muse – Issue #21 From Limiting Beliefs to Empowering Affirmations A soft space to reflect, reconnect, and create with feeling. Dear Reader, I’ve been painting for over a decade—yet for years, I hesitated to call myself an artist. Why? Because deep down, I carried quiet but powerful beliefs about what it means to be one. Maybe you’ve felt this too—uncertain whether you’re “allowed” to claim a title, a dream, or a truth that feels real inside but fragile in the world outside....