#204 Express the Soul of Your Work (Rebranding & Photoshoot)
After a season of following the sparks of inspiration, my creative fire was rekindled. I was finally ready to create again. Exploring what this work artistically and creatively wanted to become turned into a many-month process.
We often get advice but wonder how to apply it, especially as quiet leaders that don’t see that many leaders out there like us.
Episode 204 of Quiet Messenger is packed with the how. I share exactly what I did – thought processes, exercises, and all!
I share:
Why I had to burn things down before I got the spark of what to create
How I answered the question — What’s my quiet way of being counter-culture, non-conforming?
Why writing the story of my ancestors brought understanding of my own leadership
The vulnerability of coming out of the broom closet & weaving my spiritual practice into my work
grab the (free) “Rekindle Map”
Mentioned in the episode
Quiet Messenger 201: My Year-Long Sabbatical to Unhook From Biz Culture & Rekindle My Work
Quiet Messenger 202: Rekindle Part 1: Stability Before Creativity
Quiet Messenger 203: Rekindle Part 2: Follow the Sparks
Azalea Moen & Wilder Ones Studio
Kelly Diels article
The free Rekindle Map to unhook from biz culture, reclaim your creativity & rekindle your work
To create something truly new, I needed to be free of what had been.
I needed a blank slate before I could add back in what I truly wanted. So me and Azalea Moen of Wilder Ones Studio, my co-creative partner in this visual process, burned down what existed. We spent an hour naming what I was letting go of, writing each statement on a piece of paper, burning it into a clay jar, letting the flames send it back to earth.
It was an emotional process. Trance-like. Spiritual.
I noticed a theme for when the strongest tears and deep emotion came up: when I spoke of ancestors and roots.
And I knew that this influence couldn’t be ignored or hidden any longer, that it’s something I wanted, needed, to express as a core part of myself.
That meant coming out of the broom closet, acknowledging my spirituality, my witchiness and passion for folkways, my practices and rituals for connection with ancestors – and how that’s become interwoven with my work.
I didn’t know how I would connect those dots or bring my existing audience & people along for this. I just trusted I would – or not. And either would be okay because this is where the work was being called to go.
Finally, the words flooded out of me. I was channeling in this raw earthy way, and adding back in what truly mattered to me and to my work.
I realized that if I were starting from a totally blank canvas, what I know to be true is:
This work is deep, ancestral work. I’m here to heal parts of myself and in so doing heal my ancestral line and let the work heal others and ripple out to their lineages.
The world needs more leaders who are slow, thoughtful and empathic in order to stay the course for the challenges our world faces. We need the outspoken, fast, loud activists but we can’t do it without also having the medicine of the quiet ones.
There is power in connecting with our lineage and those who have come before to anchor into our own depth and cultivate the courage to speak our truth.
I recognized that there was a richness, an earthy ancestral, bones, roots, hands-in-soil depth, that hadn’t yet been expressed in my work or brand.
It was time to release the polish.
Exploring what this work artistically and creatively wanted to become turned into a many-month co-creative process that organically led to:
Writing the story of my ancestors & developing the symbology around my work
Deep analysis for what a photoshoot that unhooks brand imagery from systems of oppression looks like (revisiting the work of Kelly Diels)
Curating a TON of pinterest boards that helped me stay out of my head & connected to the soul of my work
Intentionally reimagining my existing Messenger Archetypes to bring them into this new visual expression
Branding from the ground up, letting it reveal itself to me, rather than just slapping some new colors & fonts on
All of this made me SO excited to look at my work, breathed fire into what I was doing, and brought direction for where to move next. More in this episode!
xoxo
p.s. If you want a written & visual guide through this process to evolve your work when you’ve lost that fire, I recommend grabbing The Rekindle Map (it’s free).
