ABOUT ME

I am an author, educator, artist, and activist. I am offering you to join me on my journey as a Creative Warrior! My creativity evolved from a time where my identity as a continuation school teacher in Long Beach, California, and as a husband and father who provided for my family’s needs came to a screeching halt due to the diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor. Once I was able to return from the immediate and focus on the future, I knew that I needed to develop resources to support and navigate others on their journeys. This resulted in the creation of authored works, hosting of transformational workshops, sharing of inter-resource tools and sharing these with you via my website.  

MY MISSION

Providing Transformational Healing Through Creativity, Connectivity, and Service. Together, we can clear the path on your journey to realize your goals and dreams.

HOW THE JOURNEY BEGAN

The ideas behind this curriculum began on April 13th, 2005, when doctors rushed me into emergency brain surgery.  When I woke up, they had removed a cancerous brain tumor. Two weeks after the surgery, the neurosurgeon who saved my life told me I had six to eighteen months to live.  Once the wounds on my skull healed, I began seven weeks of brain radiation. I had lost the person I had thought I was and felt nothing but uncertainty in my life. The radiation treatments made my body hot and sweaty. I bolted awake about eight times a night, changed my drenched t-shirt, and moved to the living room to avoid waking my wife. I began writing and in those moments, I forgot my worries! Sometimes, I even got back to sleep.

Artists of all kinds call the experience of forgetting everything else and just enjoying creativity “flow.” Being in flow is like being a kid, lost in coloring with crayons. All of us can do this as we grow older, but we forget it’s there. Yet we need it more than ever as we deal with the stresses of being teens and adults. This class offers you many opportunities to experience flow. Enjoy, and try to remember it’s there for you when the course is over! During radiation therapy, I became friends with numerous seriously ill patients. As we compared experiences and supported each other, I began sharing my poems. The words that healed me started helping others. I began to feel I had a purpose again. Being of service was at least as healing as creativity had been for me. I had discovered the two other foundations of “Dreamsmithing—Healing Through Connectivity and Healing through Service.”

“DREAMSMITHING: A CREATIVE WARRIOR’S JOURNEY”

I authored a social and emotional learning curriculum, entitled “Dreamsmithing A Creative Warrior’s Journey”. View my welcome message. This curriculum focuses on 8 core topic areas, accompanied by a glossary, rubrics and the content standards overview. This curriculum could be employed within classes focused on language building, health or personal development. You can take a virtual tour of the curriculum to assess how this may serve your needs.

“20 POEMS 20 PAINTINGS: A CREATIVE WARRIOR’S JOURNAL”

I recognized more value in sharing the experiential processes that inspired my creative products, and the social-emotional connections they encouraged vs. the poems and paintings on their own. I envisioned people exploring their healing through creativity, connectivity, and service, while co-creating “20 Poems 20 Paintings A Creative Warrior’s Journal”. I set up the book so the poems and paintings would scaffold their learning.

“A Note to Cancer” is my signature empowerment poem. It moves people. “Chemo Brain” is a crowd-pleaser because of the humorous way it describes the brain fog of chemo.  “Cancer Gets Served” was one of the most satisfying images to paint. And it came out pretty bad-ass!  “Lesson 1”shows a human figure below water. It was the most challenging to create. It felt great to see how that turned out.  I love all of the paintings and poems. Each improved my quality of life (QOL) when I most needed it. Since then, I have seen them help thousands of people improve theirs as well.  Medical research has proven that QOL improvements make cancer patients happier, they are life-extending, and maybe even life-saving. What’s not to love?

You may purchase a copy on Amazon available in paperback and Kindle versions.

THE LANGUAGE OF HOPE AND EMPOWERMENT

I have experienced an immense sense of gratitude by hearing from others, how what I developed, the language of hope and empowerment, has transformed their processing abilities and enabled them to realize a community and greater sense of self. 

Learn more about the Creative Warrior Journey Workshops

CONTACT

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