HeartSong HealingArts

"The creative path is often a circuitous route that can be mapped only in hindsight. It requires faith in the process itself if we are to continue."  - Oriah Mountan Dreamer.

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My name is Sarah Soltow, and I am looking at my path in hindsight, and with faith in the process.  I was raised in a small WV town, married, and raised children in a different small WV town.  The year 2001 marked the beginning of some serious changes in my life which included difficult mental, physical, and spiritual housecleaning. 

During this time, i encounted the power of dreams... the kind of dreams that tell you what's really going on in your life. They offered me guidance. In one dream, I was painting dragonflies on pieces of slate... so I did that. In nother dream, I saw the difficult issues of my chldhood as squirmy creatures dwelling in my basement... so I set about to heal them. I studied, explored, and emraced the Divine Feminine. I worked through anger issues, I found Reiki and began to practice. I learned how to swim and how to play the guitar. I continued to push the boundaries of whatever limitations I felt bound by. 

Now, more than 20 years later, my husband and I live on 15 acres of previously neglected wooded land near Richmond, VA. As we spend our days and months restoring the land, I find healing resonance with all that we do. We cleared the old trash dump-by-the-creek, and it has become the Heart Garden. We dug the Sacral Pond out of a small mucked-up puddle. One area is called the Dancing Field, and I do. That land speaks to me and I respond. The land heals, and so do I. The abundance of the land surprises me with sweetgrass, blackberries, mildweek, acorns, and the presence of an indigenous and endangered Long-Leaf Pine tree. From this abundance, I create pine needle baskets as an incredibly grounding and personally fulfilling art form.

The creative spiritual path has called to me since I was a child. It was buried within for a long time. Now, as an Elder, I embrace it as fully, as openly, and as joyfully as I am able. I do so knowing that there is always more... more fullness and joy to be experienced on the path to one's true self. The spiritual path is creative; the creative path is spiritual. And so it is... and so it has always been. 

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