In France, a woman seeks space and a way to slow down and reconnect with her creative energy and many passions. Elizabeth Milligan joined the Sacred Creative Collective for community and support in getting clarity and focus on her creative spirit and projects.
Elizabeth has undertaken deep and reflective inner work in the Sacred Creative Collective. Committed to personal growth, she has worked to understand and focus her naturally expansive personality. Finding heart-centred frameworks and structure has been key to honing in how to shape and finish her creative projects.
I asked alumni from the Sacred Creative Collective to share their experiences and how group coaching contributed to self-understanding and future directions. Elizabeth took the time to reflect on her journey in life and the Sacred Creative Collective via these interview questions. I am so grateful to Elizabeth for sharing her wisdom and insights. Being a group coaching program, community and collective wisdom is an integral element of the learning and process. Elizabeth has been a passionate contributor, sharing her insights and learning to shed light on her own journey and to help others alongside her. As she does in this interview!
Enjoy the read and may it inspire your sacred creative life!
Can you please tell us a little about yourself and your transition journey? What led you to want to make a deeper, more creative shift in your life?
I’m someone who has been searching for something my whole life. I never really knew what that was so I ended up chasing new jobs, new careers, moving to new countries, learning new languages. I was generally always looking for something different, exciting, new. I was always learning and I’m still constantly learning. I’m a very curious person and this can lead to many avenues opening up for exploration. It can also become overwhelming and unsettling though, and I think this was what was happening to me. I needed to stop. To calm down, slow down and get back to my centre. To find what it was that was really important to me and put my focus there.
I took a sabbatical of sorts when I accepted a year-long house-sit for an old French farmhouse in the countryside. It was my chance to stop, slow down and centre myself. Through doing this I started to rediscover my sense of play and discovery and this came out in creative ways. Writing, blogging, photography, collage-making, painting, baking, potion-making. Living closely with nature, hiking the fields, swimming in the rivers, following the cycles of the moon and the seasons instilled in me a deep sense of calm and well-being and for the first time in a long time I was able to take a step back and assess things. I realised I had lost important parts of myself. My creative energy had been focused in other areas and I wanted to get this back, to rediscover those lost parts of myself and bring them into my daily life, whilst also letting go of the parts of myself that were not really me.
What are some of the challenges you have faced when it comes to living in alignment with your creative desires and aims?
When you choose to live more in alignment with your desires and aims there is always a certain amount of letting go that is necessary. I’ve always found it difficult to let go. I have the tendency to hold onto things “just in case” which also goes for knowledge, jobs I’ve done in the past, past experiences. I’ve found it difficult to commit to a deeper, more creative life because I’ve doubted that it would be sustainable. This has made me want to hold on to jobs or opportunities even if they’re not the best situation for me in terms of my well-being. So it’s been a case of two steps forward and one step back. However, the more I am able to commit to and trust in my creative projects and way of life, the more I am able to let go. It’s a slow process but necessary if we are to make space for those things we are more aligned with.
Another obstacle was to do with society and the culture of what constitutes “real work”. Although I’ve never gone down the conventional route, I’ve still found it hard to be supportive of my own creative desires and aims. I feel like I’ve looked at myself and judged myself through a lens that is not my own. It’s an external lens that I’ve adopted as my own and judged myself through. It’s harsh and it’s self-sabotaging so this has been an interesting challenge to overcome as I never before realised that most of the blocks I faced were self-made.
Can you please describe your focus now and how you are working more in line with what is sacred and creative for you?
My current focus is on bringing together my knowledge as a trained aromatherapist and my love of art and painting in a more sustainable way. I love creating calming rituals around essential oils and strongly believe that bringing ritual and scent together can be a beautiful healing experience and one that creates a wonderful sense of space and calm for our creative work. I’m working more in line with what is sacred and creative for me by allowing myself to work more intuitively and using my relationship with nature to inspire and guide me.
What helped you to develop your skills and new/renewed focus?
For a long time I felt kind of splattered, where I couldn’t get focus and was jumping around through different projects but not giving anything my full attention. It felt like I had to choose and I didn’t want to as everything felt important to me, but the result was a lot of procrastination and never getting anything done.
I started working with Terri last year because the idea of living a sustainable, sacred creative life was really important to me. I just had no idea where to start. Through following Terri’s programme I realised a lot about myself. I became able to accept all the parts of myself that felt they were pulling me in different directions and start to see how these parts can support each other and work together if I give myself the right framework and enough freedom to be myself.
Looking at personality type (I’m INFP), archetypes (Creator/Alchemist), tendencies (I’m a Rebel of course) and many other areas really led me on a deep journey of discovery and one that will continue over time. It allowed me to take a deep breath, lay everything out in front of me, and start to see where things could fit together and how my different types and tendencies would support me. I now feel more able to bring things together in my own way through my own unique view and experience and I now have the confidence to move forward with my ideas.
What does creative transition look like in your life now and what are you proud of?
I have more freedom to move forward with the projects I want to work on. I’m able to step out of the confines of society (and my own self-limiting beliefs) and more closely live the life I want. I’ve gathered up the lost parts of myself and welcomed them back into my life, feeling bolder and more fully able to embrace them as I move forward. I’m proud of the deep work I’ve done to get to know myself better and of all the skills I’ve learned through flexing my creative muscles – painting, photography, writing, blogging. Most of all I’m proud of not giving up on myself. Of listening to my inner voice as it softly called me and nudged me in the right direction, allowing me to find my way home.
What are your next steps?
My next steps are to finish my new website where I bring my art and aromatherapy together. There is also a survey on there for a research project I’m working on around combining ritual and scent. I’d like the website to house a working portfolio of my artwork – nothing too finished and polished but more a place for discussion and self-realisation. And towards the end of the year I hope to open up slots for online consultations to help others choose and safely use essential oils in their creative practice.
Thank you for sharing your sacred creative story with us, Elizabeth!
And for the beautiful images curated from your art and life story.
If you would like to shape your sacred creative life with the help of a coach and the camaraderie of a community, I would love to support you. You can find out more about the Sacred Creative Collective here.
The Sacred Creative Collective is current open for enrolments with an early bird opportunity until midnight Saturday 20 February 2021 AEDT.
If now is not the right time for you, get on the Waitlist to be the first to know next time. You also get Exclusive Early Bird access and save!
You can connect with Elizabeth on Instagram and her beautiful website is HERE! You can also read Elizabeth’s Wholehearted Story My wild soul is calling here.
