How I Live Like an Artist: 10 Daily Creative Rituals
I used to walk past plants without noticing. Now, I do my best to greet as many as I can by name.
That shift didn’t happen all at once. It happened over years, by slowing down, by paying attention, by letting beauty interrupt me. Living like an artist, for me, is about that kind of attention. It’s not about being productive, or profound. It’s about staying close to what’s alive.
These days, one of the things that feeds me is a daily art practice. Not just writing, but the way I move through the world with intention.
I don’t always get it right. But these are ten daily creative rituals I return to when I’m overwhelmed, I’m disconnected, or want to remember who I am.
Maybe one of them will meet you where you are. Or maybe you have your own list? I would love to hear what works for you.
1. I make art before I consume it.
I start the day with my own voice. Before I let in the noise of the world, I write. Even ten minutes of presence is enough to shift everything.
2. I honor routine as ritual.
Ritual doesn’t cage me—it roots me. Whether it’s tea before writing, a morning walk, or touching the earth, my body knows when it’s time to arrive.
3. I protect time for making.
I set boundaries around solitude and connection. I guard my creative hours like sacred appointments. I spend time with people who respect that.
4. I share my creative path.
I mark milestones. I attend to the business of art by responding to requests, saying yes to aligned collaborations, supporting other artists by engaging with and paying for their work.
5. I tell the truth on the page.
Even when it’s uncomfortable, and especially when I can’t yet say it out loud. Especially then. The more I write the truth, the more my voice becomes a home I can live in.
6. I feed my senses.
I let beauty in through my skin, my breath, my muscles. I stay close to the earth and to animals. Sunlight, scent, water, texture, these are my teachers.
7. I let rest shape me.
I no longer wait until I’m broken to pause. I rest because I am an animal, not a machine. Fallow times are fertile times, too.
8. I follow what calls me.
I stay curious. I track what keeps tugging, whether that’s images, creatures, phrases, or other obsessions. My fingerprint is found in what I can’t stop noticing.
9. I keep learning how I learn.
I read. I listen. I stay in conversation with the field. I learn from ancestors and contemporaries, not to copy, but to honor and grow inside the work.
10. I stay emotionally available.
I make art not just about emotion, but from it. I let myself soften. I stay with what’s alive, even when it aches.
Miner's lettuce often grows in cool shade after spring rain, offering one of the first wild greens of the season. I recognize them by their small green umbrellas. Tender, mild, and shaped like a heart pierced by its own stem, miner’s lettuce reminds me: nourishment often arrives quietly.
Not everything that feeds us is loud.
I am here to live a life of depth. To meet myself with the tenderness I once begged for, to pour my presence into the land, the trees, the pages, the people who reciprocate.
I am the keeper of my own wellbeing. And I am learning to love myself the way I have always longed to be loved.
What practices help you stay connected to your creative life?
We have the world to live in on the condition that we will take good care of it.
And to take good care of it, we have to know it.
And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.
—Wendell Berry
Current Offerings
Artist’s Way Summer Cohort - We just started! You don’t need permission to make art. You just need a way in. No matter how messy, you’re welcome here. Bring your tenderness. Bring your fire. I’ll walk you through the rest. Reply to this email if you’d like to join us.
Poetry for Pleasure - June 29 - 9:30-4:30 at the Maloof Foundation for the Arts and Crafts. Create your own leather-bound poetry book and soundtrack it with your favorite poems—a playlist to return to when you need to remember. Learn more or register here. Or reply to this email to request a scholarship.
Information about The Forager Wildlife Creative Retreat, Nov 6–9 in the San Bernardino Mountains is available to paid subscribers, below.
SAVE THE DATE - The Forager Wildlife Creative Retreat
Nov 6–9 | San Bernardino Mountains
Come spend four days of wild inspiration with me in a log cabin near the land where I was raised. We’ll gather around the table, walk the hills, and let the mountain quiet do its work. This is a one-time opportunity to create, rest, and remember what you came here to say. Space is limited to 5 participants. Early registration (with a $500 deposit) is now available for paid subscribers. All guests will have a private room with a queen or king bed (unless you request to share/discounted rate) and all meals are included. Choice of rooms is in the order in which each guest signs up for the retreat. Price of the retreat is $1600 per guest with a private room. Or, if you want to book the one private artist cottage (next to the main log cabin, with it’s own fireplace, bathroom and shower) the cost is $2,000 per person or $3,000 for a couple. To book a room, respond to this email and I will give you more information.
Who I Am - I'm a writer, teacher, story coach, and lifelong forager of wild truths. I was raised to survive the apocalypse. I left to learn how to live.
I’ve taught poetry in prisons, led retreats in forests, and spent my life tracking beauty through the undergrowth. My first memoir, Forager: Field Notes on Surviving a Family Cult, is a love letter to the land that raised me and the inner voice that led me out.
Now, I guide others through their own becoming—through words, rituals, and reconnection with the natural world.
Why this matters - Because storytelling is survival. Because beauty is a form of resistance. Because your voice is a compass, and the wild still remembers your name.
Where beauty is feral, truth is sacred, and the story isn’t finished yet.
I grew up in the wilds of California, raised in a cult where I learned to forage to survive. Where the body was something to conquer, and stories were tightly controlled, something in me always resisted.
I created Forager Wildlife for:
Explorers of inner and outer landscapes
Rebels with tenderness at their core
Lovers who ache for beauty that bites back
Writers, artists, and feelers who don’t fit the algorithm
Those reclaiming creativity, sensuality, and voice from systems that tried to take it
This space lives at the intersection of nature and narrative, rebellion and ritual, memory and myth. It's for those of us who’ve had to rewrite our origin stories, who are still reclaiming what it means to be soft and strong, sacred and strange.
For our Artist’s Way cohort:
The comments section below is exclusively for you. It’s designed as a way for you to share your artist way experiences this week with other members of our group.
Please answer as many of the following questions as you have time for in the comments section, and feel free to respond to one another as support in our shared journey.
How did it go for you this week?
How many days this week did you do morning pages? How do you feel about the process so far?
How was your artist date? Please share what you chose to do!
Have you created any rules for what it means for you to live as an artist? Are you willing to share it?
Have you experienced any resistance to any of the above activities? Do you know why? Tell us about how resistance manifests itself for you.
Did you do any of the tasks? If so, which one/s? Any discoveries there?
Can’t wait to see your faces on Zoom on July 5!
Thank you for being on this journey with me. I am grateful for the gift of your presence. Walking this path, knowing so many of you are walking it too, gives me hope. May we recognize our interbeing, with one another and the anima mundi, supporting each other in growth and recovery, like a mycelial network.
Happy Friday AW Cohort! Michelle, I really appreciated the notion of paying attention as a part of our artist practice. Artists always seem to capture something that most would miss and represent it in words, painting, music. I have been intentionally trying to take more notice of things as well, mainly about how I feel about moving through life. Thank you for sharing your ten practices.
I did 6/7 days of morning pages this week and even carried my journal to Catalina island (where my pen ran out of ink and a nice person gave me one so I could write each day) where I backpacked and hiked with my two sons. This was my Father’s Day gift to myself. I spent a day in a hammock reading and napping, which I’m counting as my artist date for the week. I felt, at moments, that I should be doing something more, but allowed myself to take notice of the breeze, the crash of ocean waves, and the various bird songs, which led me to adding an orange-crowned warbler to my bird sightings. Bird watching is something that I re-started a couple years ago and was a passion of my youth. I have been using the apps to identify birds and snap photos when I can. This has allowed me to take more notice of my walks and everywhere I go and notice something that others may not. It feels like a secret between me and my feathered friends. I haven’t done the challenges yet, but may try one this weekend.
Bummer, I missed morning pages today (but completed the rest of the week) – our family is visiting family in Boston, so harder to protect my time.
My Artist's date was such a gift. I attended a Poetry Slam at the Central Anaheim Library -- and the poets were downright incredible. I love our human experience brought to life through the spoken word. So powerful. They shared of their inner turmoil of people-pleasing, and anxiety, and body shame. They also shared deeply personal and honest stories of growing up in domestic violence. They mentioned Obsidian Tongue in Pomona – if you know when/where they perform, please share!
Otherwise, I am impatiently patiently waiting for my inner-child /inner-artist to really come alive and let loose (I know, I know, it's only been two weeks, lol!).