Sam Brightwell | Creative Freedom

Sam Brightwell

I help introverts, empaths & HSPs recover from psychological abuse and burnout by strengthening their connection to intuition and life force energy.

Hello. My name is Sam (they/them).

I'm a shamanic practitioner, a Reiki teacher and a spiritual coach.

Come and sit by the hearth with me and talk about your dreams. Dreams and wishes are too powerful to be ignored but we spend so many years being responsible, taking care of others, and putting our dreams on the back burner that they lose their shine and we write them off as childish fancies. If you're here today, you've found me because you don't want to silence your creative whisperings any longer.

sambrightwell_uk

It’s long past time for me to introduce myself p

It’s long past time for me to introduce myself properly. #awkwardintrovertmoments #nonbinary #writersofinstagram #hedgewitch #mysticism

The soul thrives when life is simplified and slowe

The soul thrives when life is simplified and slowed down. The more you hustle, the further away you get from soul.

#simplifyyourlife #soulguidance #slowliving #shamanichealing #soulwisdom #midlifecrisis #burnoutrecovery #empathsofinstagram #hsp #mentalhealthrecovery #reikipractitioner

Slow therapy. It’s become a lunchtime practice l

Slow therapy. It’s become a lunchtime practice lately for me to arrange a page in my journal. These gorgeous scraps of paper come from @tornedgepaper - Suzi sells them as colour co-ordinated packs in her Etsy store. I shouldn’t tell you really because she never has very many in stock and I don’t want you buying them up before me 😆

Something about laying and sticking pieces of paper on a page is very soothing. Maybe it’s a neurodivergent thing? I feel my brain breathe out when the papers are aligned in the most pleasing way. A long aaaaaaahhhhhh.

I don’t want you to think I’m trying to make art. I am expressing something that can’t be said any other way and for that reason it is beautiful, as self expression always is.

The stickers are there’s gorgeous little Japanese art designs. I’ll find the tag for the store and add it in the comments.

Stay chill, Snookums 💜

#journaling #papercollage #creativeexpression #chinecolle #selfcare #arttherapy #slowdown #pause

✨ Tower Activation ✨ #oraclereadersofinstagra

✨ Tower Activation ✨

#oraclereadersofinstagram #workyourlightoracle #tarotreaders #majorarcana #solitarywitch #eclecticwitch #hedgewitch #hearth #shamanicpath #waningmoon #lettinggo #trustthepath #divineplan

I’m teaching my new course, Charting the Realm o

I’m teaching my new course, Charting the Realm of Your Inner Child, and I’m both a guide and a participant in the process. I always play along so that I have a sense of how the transformation unfolds and it is just as powerful for me.

I’m kind of moved by this course. I don’t know where it’s come from. Well, I do. Not from me. Not from my ego/conscious mind, anyway. This is stuff from the collective unconscious. It’s a shamanic journey.

We’re travelling into the Otherworld to bring back wisdom for our healing.

#journaling #shamanicjourney #shamanichealing #collectiveunconscious #jungianpsychology #innerchildhealing #innerchild #partswork #shamanic

I found my undergraduate dissertation while cleari

I found my undergraduate dissertation while clearing through stuff at my parent's house recently. Seeing it made me cringe. It wasn't a great time in my life but somehow I scraped through my English degree with a decent award (2:1) and then my strongest urge was to run away as far as I could.

I didn't get far enough away! Gah. One awful job after another and a miserable 20s trying to do what I thought I ought to do, which led to a massive mental health breakdown and years of recovery work.

But THAT'S not what this blog post is about.

This one seems appropriate for #internationalwomensday because it's about the 3 female writers who changed the course of my life in 1993/1994.

These things become such a part of what makes you who you are but kinda buried under the surface and forgotten about, you know?

I was not prepared for 2 of these writers to turn up on Substack. Thank goodness the other one of my idols is dead.

#bookworm #womenwriters #internationalwomensday2023 #feminism #margaretatwood #jeanettewinterson #virginiawoolf #nonbinary #genderfluid #lgbtq🌈 #gothicfiction #substack #mentalhealthrecovery #bipolarawareness #mentalhealthmatters #suicideawarness #writersjourney

There's powerful immediacy in opening up your hear

There's powerful immediacy in opening up your heart on the page. Remember the joy we felt as children, sharing our secrets with each other? The best kinds of writing are like that.

What do we fear more? That people will think we're stupid, immoral, irresponsible? Or that our secrets are too mundane to be interesting to anyone? I'm not sure. But I know that when we face up to the shame that enshrouds our secrets, something supernatural is released. Another piece of our soul comes home.

And I know what kind of writing I enjoy reading most. I devour well-written memoirs. Nora Ephron, Maggie O'Farrell, Julia Cameron, Diana Athill, Suleika Jaouad, Catrina Davies, Raynor Winn. These are some of the (female) memoirists who've rocked my world in the last ten years or so 🖤

This post has turned into an International Women's Day post after all! I wasn't going to do that... but it's true that I usually choose female writers over male. I would like to read more non-binary/LGBTQ memoirs so if you have any recommendations, let me know.

If you're hesitating about making your writing more vulnerable and open, book a Creativity Call with me and let's chat. Link in my bio.

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#midlifewisdom #writersofinstagram #writerscommunityofinstagram #lifewriting #memoir #internationalwomensday2023 #IWD #empaths #empathsofinstagram #courageouscreative #becourageous #noraephron #juliacameron #judyreeves #stevenspielberg #stevenspielbergquote #creativecourage #blogginglife #nonbinarywriter #lgbtqia #lgbtqartists #journaling #creativedreams #hedgewitch

It might not feel safe to speak your deepest truth

It might not feel safe to speak your deepest truth to another, to the people who hurt or harmed you at the time. Journaling can be a safe way to express your feelings and say what needs to be said so that the healer in your psyche can do its work to bring the splintered parts of you back to wholeness.

Journaling can help with clearing residual rage so that it does not go on to become a constant, if unconscious, anxiety.

We’re often unaware that we’re stuck in old rage because we think that would look like acting out, throwing fits. But it doesn’t. It looks like being tired all the time, feeling helpless and hopeless, being entrenched in cynicism or a certainty that you will lose before you open your mouth.
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There are many ways to journal for self healing. It’s cheaper than therapy! Journaling is about building a stronger relationship with the interior parts of yourself. It’s a journ-ey into your psychic landscape and one that can reveal the hidden gold in your life.
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Follow me for news of my upcoming Introduction to Journaling for Self Awakening 💕
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#empathsofinstagram #empathstruggles #introvertproblems #hsp #hspproblems #traumarecovery #narcissisticabusesurvivor #cptsdrecovery #innerchildhealing #journalingcommunity #healyourlife #healyoursoul #chronicfatiguesyndrome #chronicpainwarrior #chronicfatiguewarrior #hedgewitch #selfhealingjourney #selfhealingtools #writingtherapy

I asked my people what their goals were for 2023 a

I asked my people what their goals were for 2023 and a number of them said they want to develop a regular journaling habit. And I thought, super cool!! I do love to journal.

What’s the biggest challenge to starting your journaling habit? Or do you start but find it hard to maintain?

Here are my tips:

🌟 Don’t set yourself up for failure by committing yourself to journaling every day.
You put too much pressure on yourself that way. Like going on a diet. It becomes a chore.

🌟 Dedicate a notebook as your journal and keep all your writing there. Write by hand rather than in an online space. There is a haptic pleasure to writing by hand which reinforces the act of journaling and helps to soothe the nervous system.

🌟 Don’t spend hours on Instagram looking at other people’s perfect journals. Don’t do that. Comparison is the thief of joy and will squash your early efforts.

🌟 Make downtime for journaling and put your phone away, screen face down, volume on silent. Your inner self needs a protected space to meet you for this process.

🌟 Remember that you’re building a relationship with your journal and your inner self. It will blossom with time if you give it time.

🧡 There’s no wrong way to journal! You probably have some stories in you that have got to come out. It’s a kind of mental decluttering. You’ll give yourself more space for ideas and inspiration when you empty out some of what’s stuck up there now.

Follow me for journal tips and prompts ✨

#journalling #journalprompts #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #queerwriters #creativelife #nonbinary #healyourlife #healyoursoul #loveyourself #journaling #creativejournaling #writing #selflove #writingquotes #journalingyourway #mentalhealth #notebooktherapy #dailyhabits #innerself #innerwisdom #writingtips #writingislife #keepwriting #writingquotes #writingroom #lgbtq🌈

Conversations with other creatives are a valuable

Conversations with other creatives are a valuable way to get some perspective. Literally stepping away from the coal face and seeing the bigger picture is so helpful. It shows me when I’m spreading myself too thinly or distracted from my goals. It’s refreshing like a drink of water to my artist self.

This call had me thinking about the space we give ourselves to make our art. We don’t always have a studio or a dedicated room to make our work but we can still give ourselves the gift of space and make it sacred.

“Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

If you’d like to have a free creativity conversation with me, you can book a call by going to the link in my bio.

#writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #artistssupportingartists #creativewriting #creativepreneur #workfromhomelife #lgbtqia #nonbinary #queer #clarissapinkolaestes #empathsofinstagram #hsp #introvertlife #artistscommunity #pause #midlife #healingjourney

The doors to my new writing and creativity course,

The doors to my new writing and creativity course, Charting the Realm of Your Inner Child, are now open.

It's not too late to come and join us. Here's a flavour of what you'll get inside the course...

“Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.”
- Natalie Goldberg

I am inviting you to go back to the beginning and deeply connect with your inner child, to enter into your Imagined Realm.

Your Imagined Realm is the place where your stories about yourself come from. It is the core of your Imaginings, a place that is continually creating your life according to the blueprint you constructed, or that was partly constructed for you, during your childhood.

In an unexamined life, it's easy to accept the stories we've been telling which so often are the stories we've been told. We find that we've been authored by others. We wish to become the authors of our own hi/story and in doing so we become the true creators of our destiny.

Each week, for 5 weeks, you'll receive the coordinates to explore a different part of your Imagined Realm. Through the process of writing, journaling and artistic play, you'll uncover the keys to your creativity and find new ways to sustain it through the ups and downs of ordinary life.

If this sounds like something you would absolutely love to vibe with, to further your creative goals in 2023, DM me for the link to sign up.

I will be so thrilled and honoured if you decide to join us.

Don't underestimate the power of stories to usher your life in the direction of your dreams 💗
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#writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #writersblock #journaling #innerchildwork #creative #creativegoals #courageouscreative #artistsretreat #clarissapinkolaestes #herstory #lgbtqia #nonbinarywriter #queer #lgbtqsafespace #wildrumpus #innerjourney #ukwriters #innerchildhealing #bournemouthbusiness #empathsofinstagram #hsp #intuitive #shamanic #guidedjourney #writinginspiration #writinglife #creativefreedom

Finding the beauty in a grey day. I love this Hips

Finding the beauty in a grey day. I love this Hipstamatic setting for making moody pictures: Jane+Robusta 📸
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#southbournebeach #bournemouthbeach #greydays #lurchersofinstagram #hipstamatic #hipstamaticmagic #inspiredbynature

Do you have little rituals to help structure your

Do you have little rituals to help structure your creative time? Making space to ground myself in the ritual of making tea has become an important part of my creative work days.
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I used to find writing days at home quite lonely. I would go out to write in cafes to be around people but the quality and quantity of my work suffered. Little rituals like making myself a pot of tea made being in my own company feel special.
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What do you do to support your creativity when you’re working?
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#writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #creativepractice #tealover #sacredspace #dailyrituals #cottagecore #lgbtq #nonbinarywriter #midlife #cosyvibes

There’s an important connection between the stor

There’s an important connection between the stories we tell, our dreaming and our quality of life. Stories and dreams are soul-making activities and the art of making your soul more beautiful improves the state of your life.

“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”
- Alice Walker

You get to decide what that beauty is to you. You get to choose how to beautify your life but you must choose to do it.

It doesn’t mean you pretend everything is ok when it’s not. It doesn’t mean your wounds or your grief need to be hidden away in your shadow. That only divides your soul into further fragments.

Making your soul more beautiful is a path of embracing grief and loss but finding the beauty within it.

Making your soul might look like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold lacquer so that the damage becomes a visible and remarkable part of the new piece.

Writing your stories is another way to make beauty while highlighting the broken seams of your life.

Dreaming into your stories gives you power to define yourself as the hero of your mythic quest. Especially when you don’t feel heroic.

This is some of what we’ll be exploring in my new course, Charting the Realm of the Inner Child, which starts on Monday.
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#kintsugi #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #journaling #alicewalker #clarissapinkolaestes #nonbinarywriter #lgbtq🌈 #womenwhorunwiththewolves #soulguidance #herosjourney

🌟You can reclaim the gold hidden in your life w

🌟You can reclaim the gold hidden in your life without feeling guilty anymore. That’s what inner child work does for you. It’s putting on your oxygen mask before taking care of anyone else’s.

Besties, this is going to be so beautifully juicy 💜 We start on Monday 27th.

I’m kinda hyper in the creation zone right now which is where I love to be but I do need to force myself to sleep so just go read my other posts and checkout the link in my bio, m’k?
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#writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #journaling #innerchildwork #intuition #wildwomen #lgbtqia #nonbinarywriters #soulwisdom #creativewriting

Do you remember times you’ve held back your opin

Do you remember times you’ve held back your opinions, your thoughts and ideas? Do you remember learning to swallow your voice so that other people would think that you’re nice?

Can you recall the first few times you were shamed for expressing your ideas or opinions? When you decided it was safer to keep quiet?

If you are female, queer, or a person of colour, it probably happened when you were quite young. Others sought to define and control how you presented yourself to the world.

Sometimes they did this because they knew the world would struggle to accept your identity but sometimes it was just an expression of the dominant voices suppressing everyone else.

This isn’t a mild and harmless action. This is violence to your soul.

It shuts down your connection to your intuition, and you can’t live a whole and balanced existence without that.

We need to learn to hear our inner voice again and nourish it so as to revive our wild instinctive nature.

The best way I’ve found to do this is by journalling ♥️ If you’d like to join my 5 week guided journalling experience, Charting the Realm of the Inner Child starts on Monday.
Link in my bio for further details.
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#journalling #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #witchylife #intuition #trustyourintuition #wordpower #wordsofwisdom #clarissapinkolaestes #womenwhorunwiththewolves #queercreatives #nonbinarywriter #lgbtq🌈

🌟How the instinct-injured woman becomes the her

🌟How the instinct-injured woman becomes the hero of the story.
With it being Valentine's Day recently, I was thinking about my non-negotiables for a romantic relationship.

I am very picky about how I choose to share my space and my energy... and I'm fine with that because for years I had no boundaries around those things. I was worn out and unhappy. #empathproblems

When I was growing up we weren't taught about body autonomy or personal sovereignty and so some of us walked into abusive relationships because our intuition to guard ourselves had been shut down.

In WWRWTW, Clarissa Pinkola Estés talks about the 'instinct-injured woman' who gets into perilous situations because she doesn't see the red flags:

“The cure for both the naive woman and the instinct-injured woman is the same: Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true.”

Reclaiming your intuition is soul work. It's a process of rebuilding trust in the whisperings and nudgings that come from within. One of the best tools for doing this that I know is journalling.

Starting next week, I'm running a 5-week guided journalling course that will take you into a practice of exploring yourself as the Mythic Hero of your life.

Like all heroes, I expect there have been times when you walked in burnished sunlight with your trusty companions on the journey and everything was wonderful.

And perhaps there were times when you were cast into the unknown on a quest of unspeakable difficulty, with wild animals and monsters pursuing you along the way.

Guided journalling is a way to integrate these episodes by turning them into your heroic story to tell.

Through exploration of your inner territory, you uncover the key themes of your heroic journey in this lifetime.

Think of it like divination, or excavation. There is buried treasure to be discovered here!

Journalling will help you chart the landscape of your imagination and unleash your powerful creativity.

Want to know more? Check out the link in my bio. ✨
#journalling #soulwork #writersofinstagram #empathsofinstagram #empoweringwomen

This is Blizzard. He doesn’t live with me. He’

This is Blizzard. He doesn’t live with me. He’s my nephew-cat; the cat that saved my sister from a rough patch of stress and unhappiness, a few years ago. My sister works from home and Blizz always appears at 1pm for a lunchtime snuggle with Jo.
As cats will do, he seems to make it all about himself but secretly he knows that he’s doing important healing work.
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He doesn’t show much interest in visitors. Are cats just like that? I’m used to living with a dog who is everyone’s best friend as soon as he meets them. But recently, Blizz started bunting my hand and climbed in my lap. I felt truly blessed.
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Blizz’s top 3 things he loves:
✨ finding a battered box to sleep in
✨ roast chicken
✨ opening the window shutters himself to stare out dreamily at the world for a while

#catlife #petsofinstagram #earthangels

New blog post. Something’s shifting. I feel like

New blog post. Something’s shifting. I feel like I’ve been in the right place but not the right time, for so long. But the time now feels right. Things are aligning.

I’ve changed the way I focus on writing. I no longer treat it like something I need to do every day and beat myself up if I don’t do it or don’t seem to be meeting some pre-defined target.

That tendency got worse from being part of the Hay House Writers Community which I joined last year. The program starts with teaching you to schedule your daily writing time and make commitments to how many words you’ll write each day or each week.

I wonder how many other right-brained/intuitive members of that community are struggling or have struggled with that?

It does not work for me.

Writing, like life, should be a gentle or passionate dance with the Tao, which means surrendering yourself to the rhythm that flows through all things. It is not ours to force or control.

I know that this is going to be my year of writing. Now I’m dancing and surrendering to her. Now all my dreams are possible.

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Link in bio to read this post 🧡
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#writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #creativitycoach #substack #intuitivewriter #intuitivewriting #empaths #sensitivityisastrength ✨

I became a writer when I was 10, that is someone w

I became a writer when I was 10, that is someone who writes every day, keeps a journal, and scribbles pages of conversations with myself. None of it amounted to anything readable. My twenties journals are some of the worst things I’ve ever written. I’m contemplating burning them. A purge of the past. Anyway.

I guess I got hooked on the process of writing itself rather than concerned with the output.

“Why do you write?” … or …
“Why do you want to write?”

It soothes my nervous system.
I like words and funny things people say.
I like to record stuff.
I want to understand the world better.
I like to reflect on my journey.
I believe that self-examination supports growth.
It makes me feel empowered.
It gets things off my mind so I can forget about them.
I like writers and it seemed the best way to hang out with them. Right?

Why do you write?
or, Do you want to write?
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#writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #journalling #creativityeveryday #wordswag #witchylife #wordpower #nataliegoldberg #writingquotes

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