Creative Warrior Ventures

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.”