My Story
“Don’t go anywhere I beg you … the moon you are searching for is inside you.” ~ Rumi
Are you there God? It’s Me, Janet
When my friend Melitta died at age 35, I was filled with grief, confusion and questions. We had been on a shared path for many years, questing for spiritual understanding and deeper self-knowing. We’d come a long way together, and then she was gone.
At the time I was a busy working mother with two young daughters, desperately trying to balance motherhood, marriage and a career. Though I was living an outwardly full life, I had a deep sense that something essential was missing. As full as my life appeared, I felt exhausted and empty on the inside. Fueled primarily by caffeine and adrenaline, I was living on a treadmill, running and rushing from one drop off and pick up to the next. Melitta’s death literally stopped me in my tracks.
I knew I would need to go inward before I could go onward.
The longing that had been silently tugging on my sleeve—begging me to slow down, to get quiet and still—now had a quality of urgency. Unable to ignore the call from within, I took a leave of absence from my part-time teaching job and called it a sabbatical, which literally means “to rest and to worship.” For the first time in my life I consciously created solitude.
Spending time alone was not something with which I was familiar or all that comfortable, yet the craving I had for silence and stillness guided my journey.
Each morning after I dropped my daughters off at preschool I drove to the beach and took a long, barefoot walk along the shore.
My new, unhurried pace seemed to offer me unlimited, expanded time, and I would often spend what felt like hours, just sitting and looking out at the ocean. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I wanted some kind of a sign, something that would show me or tell me the answers to my deepest questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my life’s purpose?
I will admit, my greatest hope was to see something extraordinary—a giant cross, a luminous angel, the face of God, whatever it was, and I wasn’t feeling very picky.
Then one day it happened, but not as I had imagined ...
While sitting on a bluff watching the sun sparkle on the sea, I heard a voice, speaking directly and clearly to me. It wasn’t a man’s deep baritone, or the voice of some foreign entity. It was the faint sound of my own true voice, speaking with a clear and gentle wisdom I had never heard before. I opened my journal and began writing.
In luminous words, inspiration and ideas flowed easily across the pages, as if from a “divine ink,” illuminating my new path and purpose.
Finally, over a few devoted months, I had a clear calling and vision.
“I want to be a writer, and to write from the source within me,” I wrote in my journal one day. “And I want to inspire other women to find their inner source, too.” That was twenty-five years ago.
“Divine Ink” is an infinite source of guidance and wisdom, ideas and inspiration. “Divine Ink” sparked the vision for my first business, “Women’s Creative Network, ” and was the divine inspiration for each of my books.
"Divine Ink" is the formula I created to facilitate women's weekly writing circles and retreats.
I share all of this here with you in the INSPIRATIONS, OFFERINGS, and COURSES. I trust they will guide and facilitate your own explorations and discoveries through this “Portal of Possibilities.” Thank you for joining me on this fascinating journey. Please come back often!
With love,
Janet