Friday Interviews: Zev Levinson, Author

Friday Interviews: Zev Levinson, Author

Today I am excited to bring to you an interview with friend and author, Zev Levinson. Zev and I were introduced through my friend Jen Rand, and through them I found my way to the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. I have had the joy of getting to know Zev as a person, a poet and a writer. His writings are eloquent and colorful. He brings images to life in his poetry, especially in his new book that walks the reader through the  beauty and history of Humboldt county. His book, Song of Six Rivers, is a delightful epic poem to read and a visual experience with pictures from the archives of Humboldt State University. His writing comes from a deep connection with the Humboldt region through his working and teaching.  Zev is also a teacher of poetry working with California Poets in the Schools and works with the Redwood Writing Project.

1) Please introduce yourself to us. Tell us about your work with California Poets in the Schools as well as the Redwood Writing Project.

I have been with California Poets in the Schools since 1998. It’s one of the largest writers-in-residence programs in the country. We go into schools, hospitals, juvenile halls. I get students to read and write a lot of poetry. I’m in a classroom or several classrooms for a week at a time. Since I mostly do this for my living, as well as being an editor, I sometimes stay a week at a time in places far enough away from home to preclude commuting.
I’ve been with the Redwood Writing Project [RWP] since 2001, which is part of the National Writing Project. When I joined, its two main objectives, as I understood, were teachers teaching teachers about writing; and also that if you teach writing, you should be a practicing writer. With the RWP I have been teaching the Young Writers Camp since summer 2003, and the main poetry teacher for their Young Writers Conference which is a separate event. When I teach in the schools, I always advertise RWP’s Young Writers Programs, so we get a lot of crossover signups for these events.

2) What drives your passion to stay involved with these projects?

[Laughs] I don’t know what else I would do. I was on the path to become a professor and that didn’t work out. Teaching kids was going to be a side project. I received so much positive feedback from teachers, principals and parents that I kept teaching. I keep my calendar filled with teaching nearly every week during the school year. I have seen thousands of young minds light up when I present poetry and love the interchange that happens. All kids are ready to be poets if they aren’t already, whereas adults have walls up. Even when I walk into a place with reluctance and resistance, I try to break the ice really quickly and blow their minds really quickly. Most of the time, one hundred percent of the students get on board pretty rapidly. It’s been impossible to want to turn away.

3) Let’s talk about your new book. Tell me about the title of your epic poem, Song of Six Rivers.

It’s about the area I live, Humboldt County, in the far north of California. With the title, I had some guidance from Jim Dodge, a great local author. He encouraged me to settle on a title that didn’t specify a politically mandated name like “Humboldt County.” The area where I live is called the Six Rivers region or the Humboldt Bay region. We have the Six Rivers National Forest, emphasizing six main watersheds. It sounds good and people know the area. It’s a bioregional name. The poem is an ode to the region as well as to Guy Kuttner, who is its muse. When I was searching for the right title, Bob Sizoo, former codirector of the RWP, suggested it.

4) What are your connections to Humboldt County and what does that bring to your writing?

I haven’t lived here my whole life: less than thirty years. But I am deeply connected to this place. I moved away, and came back, and never want to leave again. Humboldt is a special place. It has very beautiful natural surroundings, rural, with a small population. We’re on the ocean; we have the mountains and the forests. There’s a strong sense of community with people helping each other a lot. I bonded with the place quickly. When I moved here I became Dan the Flower Man, selling flowers in Arcata and Eureka. That’s how people knew me. Then I kept morphing into one thing or another, mostly a teacher and writer.

5) Can you tell my readers about Guy Kuttner and what is his significance to your poem? What is your dad’s influence in the poem?

Guy passed away about seven years ago. He was an educator, naturalist, peace activist, and one of the founders of the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. Bob Sizoo originally created the retreat through RWP, mainly for teachers. When funding dried up, a group of us turned it into a retreat for writers with published authors presenting workshops. It was a lot of work and we had to charge campers much more than we do now. We would have meetings in Guy and Cindy’s living room [Cindy was Guy’s wife]. Guy kept saying that if this was too much work, we should just rent Camp Mattole by ourselves and let it be a collective with our own workshops.

The year we decided to change it to a collective, he died suddenly. He was stricken with a rare disease and within a few weeks he was gone. He was a really powerful presence. Several hundred people came to his memorial. He was uncompromising in his beliefs, kind, loving, gentle, and changed our community. He had a big personality. When I began to write the poem, I was nearing fifty, wondering about my own legacy and what I would leave behind when I go. In the poem, I am asking why am I here, what am I doing, is my teaching in the schools enough? Guy responds by speaking to me from the beyond and instructing me to sing of these lands that we both love. He was a mentor figure to me as well as somewhat of a father figure, being twenty years my senior.

My father was also a community leader, a professor, a cantor in a synagogue, and he died when I was fourteen. He was in a car accident, then a coma for four months, then died. A thousand people were at his funeral. So that has always been a part of my psyche. He was my role model who left behind this legacy. He was also a published author, and there is still a Robert Levinson Memorial Lecture every year at San Jose State University where he taught, as well as a library named after him. There is all of this legacy in my life. As I was working on the poem, I was asked to work on the third edition of his book, The Jews in the California Gold Rush. The first edition was published while he was alive, the second one after he passed. Now a third edition was requested by the Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks in the West.

It was the first time that the text was digitally scanned, which caused a whole riot of errors and I had to go in and correct them, comparing one text to another, all the while working with an editor from someplace else through email. It turned out to be a complicated process. The book took four years to put together. While I was writing the poem, I was very present with my father as well. You might say that editing his book was my first collaboration with him ever. It was a deep process to read his words over and over.

It had taken me decades to read his book in the first place, telling myself I wasn’t too interested because it was dry history. Of course I was in denial, not wanting to get that close to him after he was gone, open up the wound. When I finally read it, I could hear his voice speaking every sentence and it was as though he was talking to me. So I read it very, very slowly and savored that. Then he unintentionally walked into the poem. He is not as present as Guy, but the two books came out around the same time.

6) What inspired you to take on the project of writing an epic poem about Humboldt?

I was wanting to leave something memorable behind. I didn’t know it was going to be as long as it was, but I did want it to be somewhat epic in scale, to honor the land. The poem spontaneously formed as I continued to work on it. I didn’t always know where it was going. The more I went with it, the more I realized it was a sweeping view of the Humboldt area. In order to name so many places here, and to honor the Native Americans living here now and the ones who were decimated, it was going to take a lot of lines. I guess it was two things: I was going for something big, and the epic suited itself to my needs. And it was also fed by my love of British Romantic poets who wrote epic poetry. I was also inspired as a teenager by progressive rock, musicians who created great epic songs. I felt I was working in a true vein. When I was younger, before I was serious about or schooled in poetry, that kind of poem would come to me. The musicality of meter and rhyme works well for me.

7) How does teaching influence your writing?

I’m inspired by the natural beauty of the places where I teach. And teaching and writing feed each other. I couldn’t have written Song of Six Rivers without the teaching aspect. Since I go all over the county to teach, and sometimes stay for a week at a time in faraway communities, I take walks every day, asking the locals about good places to explore and what secrets I ought to know. I get invited into people’s homes for dinner, and get to know the communities intimately.

Although my poetry isn’t always inspired by teaching, I am grateful that poetry has become the main focus of my life. As I’ve gotten older, poems have come less spontaneously to me; so one of the benefits of teaching is that during writing time in the classroom, sometimes I can work on my poems while students are writing theirs. I might chip away at a poem for years while working in schools.

8) Tell me about your writing routine. What was your process in writing this poem?

My routine is not as rigorous as I wish it were. This is mostly because I’m a self-employed freelancer who spends a lot of time organizing my work. Being an editor and a teacher means that often I don’t have time for my own writing. When writing an epic poem, you can’t just go back to it a day at a time because there is so much to read through, to recall, to mull over. I need chunks of time, and that’s what’s so valuable about the Lost Coast Writers Retreat and having some summer vacation. It gives me time to reorient myself and remember what I was trying to say.

I started working on Song of Six Rivers at Camp Mattole [Lost Coast Writers Retreat] because it has become a sacred place for all of us who knew Guy. Cindy even had us release some of Guy’s ashes at our favorite swimming hole. That’s where I began working on the poem. I finished half of it by the time the retreat ended. I wrote the other half over the rest of the summer. I made myself keep working on it. It was such a challenging process and I wanted to run it by someone like Jim Dodge, who has such a keen eye and ear.

He tore it apart. He’s kindhearted but an unforgiving critic. He didn’t finish reading it, as other things had come up in his life. He said he’d read the rest if I wanted, but I was trying to be generous and I regrettably told him that I got the overall gist of his comments. I wish I had had him continue with detailed critique. Besides some helpful ideas regarding logic, he pointed out weaknesses in the meter and rhyme scheme and stanza structure. So I ended up rewriting the whole thing. The first draft was around four hundred and fifty lines but I tightened up the meter, changed the rhyme scheme and the stanza structure. It took another year to finish it.

9) How did you discover that writing was your path?

Writers always say that it’s something they can’t help but do. The hard-core ones say they would rather not be alive than not write. I’m not so extreme. When I was younger I was inspired more by music. Music was probably more important to me than poetry. Then a shift came and I didn’t care about the labels: musician, writer, etc. When I was a teenager, poems would just come to me, and that continued into my twenties and beyond. As for a career, I wasn’t sure. I always loved reading and writing, so I chose the path of becoming a teacher of writing. The writing grew over time. I think I would have written some book on my own—and I have put together unpublished collections over time—but I was lucky and discovered the Redwood Writing Project which led to the Lost Coast Writers Retreat. Without those, the epic poem, the book, wouldn’t have happened. Now that it’s out in the world, I feel more that being an author is a possible career, enjoying working hard to get other books into the world.

10) What is the most difficult aspect of writing?

Getting the words perfect. A writer wants to share inspiring ideas. It’s not hard to share these, but to share them in a powerful and intriguing way . . . that is the great challenge. And poetry has to be musical as well. It has to sound good or history won’t remember it. I like to push language. I like to make it unique, sometimes verging on language poetry, where the emphasis is on the sound and normal channels of meaning are not always accessible.

11) Did you plan on Song of Six Rivers to also be such a visual book?

No. I was only thinking of the poem. When I presented it to Kyle Morgan at Humboldt State University Press, he liked the project. But he also saw it as a visual book, with accompanying archival photos from the library’s Special Collections. I said yes, even though I thought the poem stood on its own. I was pretty naïve about that, since many people buy the book for its visual appeal. There was a team at HSU that put the book together. CM Phillips and Ashley Schumann went through over twelve thousand photos that the public mostly hadn’t seen before, and matched photos with the text. In the end, forty-something archival photos were used, as well as four contemporary photos from local photographers. My partner, Jennifer Rand, also helped with the design a bit. Now it is this beautiful book to look at. Pharmacies even buy it because it’s not just a poem about the area; folks can look at it and see the pictures too. I am now much more open to books being visual.

12) Are you working on another project?

Well, I can’t talk about the subject of the current project. I’m one of those people for whom talking about it lets the air out of the balloon, takes away the magic of creation. However, I am working on something that is twice as long as the last one. I learned so much about the process of creating an epic poem that I am happier as I put this one together. I don’t know if I’m going to keep writing epic poetry, because a thousand-line poem takes years to put together. One- to two-page poems still pop up from time to time, when they want to. I also have a couple of other writing projects that aren’t poetry: books on different topics.

It was a pleasure to interview Zev, and to share his writing with you. Here are the links to purchase his book. If you want to support and independent book store you can request the book through IndieBound.org or you can purchase through Amazon, Song of Six Rivers. Visit him at his website: www.zevlev.com

Jim Steinberg: Following the Scent of Story

On a writing retreat a year and a half ago in a place called the Lost Coast, on the Mattole River, I met writer, Jim Steinberg, author of two short story collections and the novel, Boundaries. Jim is a quiet man with a friendly disposition. He is warm and welcoming and was always up early writing away, drinking coffee with one or two of us early birds. This last year at the retreat,
as we were chatting while I was laying out all the breakfast stuff, he said to me that he was just going to have his coffee. “Breakfast is a social affair,” he told me.
That to me, sums him up well; friendly, thoughtful of others around him, and when writing, his nose is to the keyboard, following the scent of his story line by line, scene by scene.
Why do YOU write? What motivates or inspires you to write?

I write to scratch itches. I feel the impulse rising from within, wanting attention, so I want to scratch it. I follow impulses telling me there is a story that is waiting.
In my writing, I follow the words of Richard Ford, author of Independence Day, “I want everything I write to be useful.” My writing is serious fiction; I want to say something useful to my readers. I want to connect to them.

Writing is how I communicate with the world, like a long-term conversation between writer and reader. In writing, it is my hopes that I may also inspire others to have the grist to be creative and find their story.

As a teacher, I was getting by but knew it would to learn more about storytelling. I enrolled in a summer institute at Humboldt State University: the Redwood Writing project for teachers who teach writing.

During the course, I fell in love with writing stories. Eventually I turned one assignment into a work of fiction that now appears in my second short story collection: Last Night At The Vista Cafe, Stories.

2) In discussing “the genesis of a story” you said it is something “seeking a place of greater repose?”

a) What does this mean to you?
b) How do you begin?
c) What is it to “follow your nose?”

When I am responding to an impulse, it is a chance to visit, or revisit, memories. In this way, I settle them. I put them to rest within me, in a better relationship, making my peace with whatever emotional or psychological aspect that came to the surface. I pull the essence of the failed marriage or relationships, childhood experiences, or from mediation experiences, to spring into the fictional story. It never looks the same as the real experience, and the fiction does not rely on the actual account, but the greater truth that needed to be settled, is allowed to be expressed and peace made.

Let me give an example of “following my nose.” In my short story collection Filling up in Cumby and Other Stories, there is one titled “Highway 47.” It began as a story of a man unhappy in his marriage about to get stuck on a highway in a snowstorm. Inside a cafe, a young boy sets the table for the man. His mother owns the restaurant. The mother reluctantly offers up her hide-a-bed, and the story turns toward two strangers deciding whether they are going to have an affair. However, the story takes a turn when he begins talking to the child, who had no father, during the evening. The friendship that develops between the man and the child, rather than the dreamed about affair, becomes more important for the man than what he was dreaming of.

Character, setting, a conflicted situation, or the emotions from real life become a springboard into entirely fictional people and storylines. I want to give free rein to my imagination. A once famous writer, I forget who, said “write your stories as if everyone has been dead for one hundred years. Good advice for discovering the emotional truth of a story. I find the emotional truth by pulling the fiction from my imagination.
This is what I mean by following my nose. I allow the characters to determine and change the path of the story. It’s their story.

If you ask how I begin, I sit at the keyboard with my impulse, start writing and see what comes. I don’t outline, write a synopsis or do character sketches. I give the story the room to breath as it needs to.

My novel Boundaries is a blending of two stories that decided they needed to be the same book. They are incidents from from two different experiences. The first was a law case I had when practicing law in the 1970’s in Colorado Springs, working for a legal service that served impoverished clients. The second was a chance encounter I with a woman I met in a restaurant on the north coast of California during unusual circumstances in the 1980’s. The client in the first experience was very powerful and influenced me greatly in the case and in my practice. The woman in the restaurant really got my attention. I combined them into a single character. In doing so, I created a story about a lawyer and a client having a very unusual relationship.

3) Please tell me a bit about your video series on your blog. 

There are twelve videos in total. Ideally one comes out each week but son has graciously been helping me during his free time, so we do our best to get them out. They are conversations between myself and poet Bob Davis. They are conversations on what it means to be human, meant to bring the writer and reader together on the same conversation. We talk about the genesis of story, writing to explore the story, revision, and allowing the story to happen. Here is the list of topics:

1. Genesis Of A Story
2. More On Genesis Of A Story
3. Take A Ride On Your Work
4. I Love The Exploration
5. A Theme Discovered: “Highway 47” – (a short story)
6. A Theme Discovered: “Uncle Eno’s Bad Day” – (a short story)
7. Always Fiction, Always True: “An Apple Totem” (a short story)
8. Genesis Again: “Boundaries,” A Novel
9. A Crystal Memory
10. Revision
11. Reading Stories Aloud
12. Writing Or Reading? What Do You Prefer?
4) What kind of conversations would you ideally like to have with writers and readers?
What are your favorite topics of discussion with other writers and with readers?

I want to create a virtual salon or cafe for writers and readers to discuss fiction in the same way you may sit in a coffee shop with a writers group or a readers group and discuss topics related to story. Writers and readers are all storytellers, and we can give and take from one another in a conversation that includes both. I want conversations about the flesh and bones and bumps and scars that I think serious stories should include.

5) What is it for the story to have “real flesh and bones with bumps and scars?”

It is to examine what really hurts people. I write about characters who struggle with misfortune and difficult experiences. For example, characters who dwell on a moral edge, making the wrong choices for perhaps honorable reasons. I stay away from stereotypes, writing instead from the perspective that not everything is pretty. I want to expose their wounds to the reader, allowing them to watch how the character deals with them. It is my hope that readers will see the characters with an “unconditional positive regard”, keeping them open to compassion and empathy towards the character.

6) Tell me a bit a you next novel, Third Floor.

Third Floor is the story of fraternal twins, Rachel and Joseph. It begins when they are seven years old. There are issues between the two parents, and in an effort to escape the nighttime fights, Rachel creates a retreat on the third floor. One night Joseph joins her when he discovers she isn’t in her room. They continue to hide out there. Rachel is very strong, and Joseph relies on her strength. I am hoping to tell it in seven-year increments, but in following my nose, that may change. Eventually the twins will be separated and will come together when their father is ill. At least that’s what I expect thus far. I never know for sure! To know the rest, you will have to wait until it is published next year.

7) What is your favorite, no holding back meal, and where is one place in the world you would like to travel to?

Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and molasses and green beans. That’s comfort food for me.

Once I wanted to travel to Kiev or Lithuania where my family is from, but now I want to go to the Scottish Highlands. It’s a landscape with a history that fascinates me.

 

coffee with Jim on the SquareJim Steinberg has been a lawyer, blacksmith, middle school teacher of English and Social Studies, college teacher of Criminal Justice, hippie, and director of basic law enforcement training at a community college. He now divides most of his time between his loved work as a mediator (thirteen years in a small private practice in his home and in tribal courts in Northern California) and his greatest love of the last two decades, writing fiction. He has published one novel, “Boundaries,” and two short story collections: “Filling Up In Cumby And Other Stories,” and “Last Night At The Vista Cafe, Stories.” His current project is a second novel – “The Third Floor,” a story about twins, a brother and a sister.

Jim’s stories have appeared in Clapboard House, The Greensboro Review, The New Renaissance, Sensations Magazine, Cities and Roads, The Lone Wolf Review, The Bishop’s House Review, Voices From Home – A North Carolina Prose Anthology, and Best Of Clapboard House. He writes his stories to scratch the itches that rise up from within him, to answer the impulses that ask him to visit and lay them in greater repose. When these impulses arise, he finds himself at the beginnings of trails he knows he will follow with minimal planning and no synopsis, plot, timeline, or character description. He jumps right in and finds the stories, making each a discovery for him, the first reader.

Jim is a Fellow of the Redwood Writing Project of Humboldt State University and a founding member of the Lost Coast Writers’ Retreat, a week-long gathering on the Mattole River on the remote Northcoast of California. For the last fourteen years he has described this time in a close knit writers’ community as his best week of every year. He believes that writing stories is the best way he can get his hands around experience. He believes that the world would be a better place if everyone wrote stories because they all have them, and they are all worth passing on.

You can talk with Jim about writing stories on his blog: “Follow Your Nose Fiction, A Blog About Writing By A Guy Who Writes.”

Debra Clark: Bowl-me-Over with Kindness

I met Debra of Bowl-Me-Over about two years ago online during a Facebook page exchange. We quickly discovered we are nearly neighbors, love cooking and writing. Debra’s heart is as generous as her cooking style. She often contributes time to causes that involves her love of animals and supports the cause of her friends and family. When I met her in person about a year ago, at a Christmas party, she was involved with her friend to donate clean washcloths and towels to St. Johns Program for Real Change, a women’s shelter. Before moving to Fresno, she was on the board of CCHAT, a school that helps deaf children to listen and talk, where she organized an annual wine tasting fundraiser for the school…and of course, she provided delicious food! In Fresno, she volunteers for Elder Paws Senior Rescue. Her commitment to community as well as great food are a natural part of her generous spirit.
Her recipes are an expression of her excitement about good tasting food. Her writing style brings her enthusiasm for tasty dishes alive on the page. Every dish has a story, a connection to friends or family. Often, they too are included her musings, as are some of her adventures through beautiful California.

1) What inspires your passion for cooking?
Cooking and sharing food makes me feel good inside.  I love to cook and watch people enjoy a great meal. What inspires my passion for food – well I’d have to say it’s in my blood!  My Grandparents – Maternal and Paternal were both fabulous cooks and I’d like to think I take after both those great women!

Food has brought me such passion in life – I’m from the Pacific Northwest and living in Oregon it was fresh fabulous seafood and delicious salmon. When I moved to Washington DC, soft-shelled crabs. Southern California brought a whole new cuisine and moving to the midwest was quite the experience. I moved from So Cal to Green Bay Wisconsin on Super Bowl Sunday, when I got on the plane it was 70 degrees, when I got off the plane 30 below zero! Whew!! But in Green Bay I learned tailgating and all of the wonderful food that went with that! Now here in California produce is abundant and we enjoy all that the Central Valley has to offer. Food to me is not just substance, but life and experiences! I share my love with food.
2) How long has cooking been a creative outlet for you?

Although I’ve been cooking for years, I’ve really only used it as a creative outlet for the last couple of years.

3) How did you decide to go from part time to full time food blogger? What else do you talk about on your blog?
I’m in a very good spot in life and I have the opportunity to grow my business from the ground up.  My husband suggested that I devote my time to blogging full-time and really take the time to learn and grow my blog; I jumped at the chance!
I also talk a lot about family & friends. I think your support system is the most important thing in life and I like to share when applicable.

4) What are some of your other passions?
I love dogs and cats! My husband and I married just over two years ago -(matched up on eharmony).  He had three dogs – I had three dogs and a cat (I’ve always secretly suspected that’s why they matched us, LOL!) So we are now the Brady bunch, except with dogs!  I volunteer for Elder Paws Senior Dog Rescue in Fresno.  Giving back to the community is important to me.

5) What do you bring to the food blogger community?
Lots of life experiences.  I’ve lived all over the United States so lots of different types of food – funny how a story for me always relates back to food, LOL!

6) Do you have any advice to bloggers that want to make the jump from part time to full time blogging?
When you choose the focus for your blog it needs to be something you’re passionate about because it will show in your writing.  Blogging isn’t easy, it’s something you really need to work at.

7) What are some of your favorite types of recipes to share with people?
As you may have guessed by by the name of my blog, Bowl Me Over – I share a lot of soups – especially during the winter months.  As I like to say – Soup is good food!

8) Do you have any advice for the novice cook?
Yes!  Try new recipes, the best recipes are simple ones and don’t be too hard on yourself – have fun with it!

9) What are your favorite recipes to cook?
Simple ones using fresh local ingredients.

10) What is your favorite all out no holding back meal?
Paella – with all kinds of wonderful meats & seafood; clams, crabs, shrimp, chicken & pork – so fabulous!

11) Where is one place that you would love to travel to?
In the United States New Orleans – my brother just visited and shared so many wonderful pictures of all the food – they ate their way from one side of the city to the other and outside the US – I’d love to take a food tour of Italy, that’s been a dream for years!

Check out four of Debra’s delicious recipes. Click the link below the pictures to see the recipes.

Crunchy_Thai_Wrap_3

Red Rice Thai Wrap

fall harvest salad

Fall Harvest Salad 

twisted peanut butter sandwich

Twisted PB and J

broccoli and cheese soup

Broccoli and Cheese Soup

debra clarkWelcome! My name is Debra and I love all things food! Known as the go-to girl in our family for years. I’ve catered weddings and anniversary parties and in the summer help cook mountains of food for our family reunions. Often times things I create end up in a bowl, hence the name Bowl-Me-Over! I strive for good health, but food has to be full of flavor. A calorie is a calorie, but it’s more satisfying to eat when the food is delicious.

Lamisha: A Life Once Dreamt

Lamisha: A Life Once Dreamt

It’sFriday! Here is the second of my six week series of interviews.

Today, I have Lamisha Serf- Walls of Life Once Dreamt coaching.

Lamisha is in LOVE with helping women pursue and accomplish their business and life goals. I mentioned her here in another blog post of people who have great blueprints to follow. She has a vibrant and positive energy that she brings to each conversation. I totally believe she is smiling, even in serious conversation, when she speaks due to her of passion of helping others.

Limit has helped me a few times with getting unstuck about some of my artwork goals. She was able to get directly to what needed to be focused on and gave clear ideas on how to do it. Her excellent intuition and organizational skills reach to the core of an issue and help someone become “unstuck” and move forward with their goals and dreams. Your “Life Once Dreamt” works to become a thing of the past as she leads you to your dreams. Lamisha is no stranger to taking the leap from the daily 9-5 world and plunging into her dreams. SHE HAS DONE IT. She is living it. Her passion is to help you do it too.

1) What was your “Ah-ah” moment that turned your path?

Everything changed for me when I realized I had been waiting to begin doing the thing I absolutely knew I was meant to do for about 2 years.  I had a phone call with a co-worker at the time and she said “Sometimes you just have to take the leap.” and shortly after I did just that!  I started a blog and trusted that my path would be laid out before me and it absolutely has!

2) You talk about taking a “leap”, what did that mean for you? Can I you tell me a few specifics about what it meant to take that leap?

My leap was essentially a leap of faith into my work.  It meant that I would finally stop waiting for the ‘right’ time to start coaching (which at the time I was delaying because I wanted to get into a coaching program first and could never find the right one), and just begin.  I had no expectation of what would happen or how it might work out when I took on my first guinea pig client, but I can say now looking back, it was exactly what I needed to do to begin.

3) Though your path was laid out when you took the leap, did you run into any bumps along the way? How did you handle them?

I’ve run into TONS of ‘bumps’!  This road is full of opportunities for learning more about myself and they usually come in the form of a bump.  For example, for about 5 months in 2014, I really questioned if I was cut out to run a ‘business’.  I wasn’t making much money, had been laid off of my FT job months before and was struggling to find clients.  I KNEW I was meant to do this work so I kept going.  I kept learning, reaching, dreaming, and taking inspired action which eventually led to getting help from someone who was much better at the business side of things and things started to take a turn for the better.  The best way I’ve come to handle the bumps is to listen to the message within them.  There’s always a message (even if I’m trying to ignore it) and then surrender.  When I surrender, things start to move forward again, and the path smooths out a bit.

4) What kind of support did you have when you decide it was time to switch career paths and follow your dream?

I had the moral support of my wife for sure.  When I started my business I was still working full-time, but within about 2 weeks of ‘launching’ (and by launch I mean email my friends and family members letting them know I was taking clients), I found out my position was going to be eliminated within a few months.  The Universe had big plans for me that I wasn’t even sure I was ready for.  Since then, I’ve been working in my business full-time and if it wasn’t for my wife I wouldn’t have made it this far.

5) In coaching women, what do you focus on in trying to get them “unstuck”?
It’s usually mindset.  Everything we experience in our lives is in some way of our own making so when we are feeling stuck, I like to get into the mindset of it all.  I have this sort of super power that allows me to see very clearly what is blocking a client from their highest potential and I am generally guided to ask questions that lead us to the very thought pattern or issue that is holding them back.  From that point it’s all about setting new mental pathways to build positive life-affirming believes etc.

6) “From that point it’s all about setting new mental pathways to build positive life-affirming beliefs” How do you work with a client to do this? Can you give a brief description of your coaching style and what someone may get when working with you.

When we start building new beliefs we might do that by using affirmations, mantras, or developing what I call a ‘high vibe practice’ that literally raises your vibration and shifts your mindset.  Depending on the client we might do something like repetitive visualizations or continually talk through the new beliefs to get a bit more practice and really develop those new pathways.

My work isn’t a one-size fits all approach and the ‘programs’ I use with clients aren’t necessarily designed ahead of time.  My work is highly intuitive so I trust the messages, insights, and ideas that come to me in regards to working with a client.  My goal is to empower women and to give them tools and tips they can use long after our work has stopped.  I don’t want to necessarily have to work with a client for 6 or 12 months (though I’m happy to if they choose), because I really want clients to feel the support and power I offer and move forward armed with the tools they need to continue to fly.  Since everything is specific to the client, each client may get a mix of things like affirmations, recorded calls, videos, and other tools along with our coaching calls.  It really just depends on what they are after.

6) What led you to choose to work (usually) with women?
I think I’ve just always felt more comfortable working with women.  My strategy is very feminine and gentle and while I’ve worked with some men, it seems women respond better to how I work and it just sort of organically happened.  With that said, if I felt like we were a good fit, I’d never turn down a male client just because of his gender.  I’m an equal opportunity coach 😉

7) What is your best piece of advice for someone who is “missing something” from their current working/life situation?

Get back to what you love.  Make a list and start there.  When we start doing more of what we love in whatever capacity or shape that takes, it changes everything.  Doors open, people reach out and before you know it-it seems you’ve got all the pieces you want and you are much happier for it.

8)  I know you have a love of writing as well; Does the writing influence coaching or coaching influence your writing? What other type of writing do you enjoy?
I’ve always been a writer.  I can remember writing a letter to a local newspaper editor when I was in school about divorce and feeling really passionate about the topic.  I’d say the coaching and writing typically go hand-in-hand.  When I’m working with clients, I tend to get inspired to write articles based on situations they are going through and then occasionally I’ll remember something I wrote about in an article and pass that info along to my clients.  Before I started my coaching business, I began submitting inspirational poetry to be considered for greeting cards.  I’ve had several greeting cards published with Blue Mountain Arts and some poems in a few anthologies with them as well. Poetry is a big one for me.  I hope to write a book or a few someday soon too.

9) How do you unplug? Coaching and writing require a lot of energy from a person, so what is your preferred method of recharging in this hectic world?

I try my hardest not to work on weekends.  I don’t work with clients at all during the weekend, but I have to be very conscious about not checking my phone 100 times a day or logging onto Facebook.  I really enjoy getting outside and spending time with my wife and son.  That is really what brings me joy.

10)  Who is one of your biggest influences/inspirations? why?

Oh wow, there are so many.  I follow a lot of spiritual teachers like Abraham Hicks, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and people like Louise Hay, but I have to say the book that really changed my life my first year in business was by Tama Kieves called Inspired & Unstoppable.  It’s a book that described everything I was going through and gave me hope and inspiration when I wasn’t sure what to do to move forward.  I love that book!

Tell us about your coaching services and programs. 
I like to set up various ways for clients to work with me.  I have 2 1:1 programs and a membership program that offers group style coaching for women.  I want my work to be as accessible as possible to the people who need it most so I have created a few different options.  If anyone is interested in learning more about how I can help them, they can sign up for a free 30-minute consultation here: https://lifeoncedreamt.acuityscheduling.com/

FUN Questions:

What is your fave, all out, nothing held back meal?

Pizza!!! I love carbs, cheese and veggies so it’s the perfect combination. 🙂

Where is one place that you really want to go?

Australia!  I’ve worked with some amazing people in Australia and I’d love to visit or host a workshop there one day.

headshot2Lamisha Serf-Walls is a life coach for women who are ready to live an amazing life on their own terms, but feel held-back and frustrated in how to make that happen. Her mission is to create a community of empowered, free flowing, lovers of life who live a life of freedom with ease and inspire others to do the same. You can learn more about Lamisha and what she offers by joining her free community, visiting her Online, on Facebook, or Twitter or grab her free audio 5 Ways to Break Free From Stuck.

Life Once Dreamt Life Coaching
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                                  (Online scheduler) https://lifeoncedreamt.acuityscheduling.com/

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