How (and Why) to Combine Creativity with Kindness
Sherry Richert Belul on creating "pinpricks of light"
“I don’t say I am a creative person. Instead, I say I have a lot of practices that open the door to whatever wants to come.” —Sherry Richert Belul, founding member of “The Faeirie Lights” singing group, founder of Simply Celebrate, Author of Say it Now, and co-spy master of Secret Agents of Change
Preview: Emerging Form Episode 133 with Sherry Richert Belul
It was depression that helped Sherry Richert Belul see what she deeply wanted for her own life—”a seamless life, with no delineation between work and play.” In this open-throated, authentic interview, we speak with Sherry about how creative practice is so much more than a pastime, it can be the foundation of a lifetime. We talk about how she created her career as a “Joy Ambassador” by just doing it—doing it for the joy of it until one day she was offered a job as the “Director of Joy,” to do what she most loves to do—help other people see “pinpricks of light.” We talk, too, about connecting with strangers, imagining (and living into) the life we most want, Secret Agents of Change (a kindness project she cohosts with Rosemerry), and how to steward the creative ideas that “drop in.”
Sherry Richert Belul, founder of Simply Celebrate, helps people find creative, intentional, and impactful ways to celebrate life and to express love for family and friends. As a certified life coach, Sherry supports people in living their best lives, full of joy, success, engagement, and meaningful relationships. She is the author of Say it Now: 33 Creative Ways to Say I LOVE YOU to the Most Important People in Your Life, cohost of the Heart Wisdom Author Panel with Mango Publishing, and co-founder of The Secret Agents of Change kindness project. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Town + Country, and The Wall Street Journal.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
At the turn of the last century, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote one of the most profound, open-hearted love poems I’ve ever read. He was a well-educated black man whose parents had both been enslaved in Kentucky prior to emancipation. He was internationally renowned in his lifetime, even though he died at 33 of tuberculosis. His story is so inspiring and heartbreaking for the ways he was held back by racism and how he continued to find a way to bring his voice to the world. I also recommend this short article about his life.
What is the relationship between prayer and poetry? How can poems help scrub the dust from our eyes and help us really feel into our lives? I love this week’s installment of the “Ordinary Plots” substack by Devin Kelly. Kelly introduces me in this writing to poet Michael Burkard, who I am now mildly obsessed with—who seems to have a talent for telling it like it is and waking us up to the life we are in. And Kelly does a great job of exploring other poets who do this … such a radical invitation into our very own lives.
Christie:
I’m about 80% of the way through Samantha Harvey’s beautiful novel, Orbital, and I feel like when I’m done I’ll just go back to page 1 and read again. The novel takes place over one day as six astronauts orbit around our planet on a space station. The gorgeous writing describes what it’s like to observe the Earth from above, and how six American, Russian, Italian, British, and Japanese astronauts navigate life away from their home planet. As much as it’s about space travel, it’s even more about Earth.
“I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalized in a certain party’s political discourse is at once infuriating and terrifying.” This 2017 piece by
Kayla Chadwick recently turned up in one of my chat groups, and it feels so appropriate for this moment in history. “I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye,” she writes. “I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.”
Secret Agents
for Sherry Richert Belul
With a LOVE stamp, the woman I’ve never met
mailed me five dollars, “to be a reminder
that abundance can come unexpectedly,”
she wrote, and sitting with her letter in my lap,
I thought of last night’s snow—
five white inches that fell after midnight
and softened the whole hard world.
And I thought of the orchid on my mantle
that sprouted a new stem of purple buds
even as the other stem continued to bloom.
And I thought of my office mate bringing in
nine tins of exotic teas to share. And my daughter
sending me a text to say she loved me “soooo much.”
And I thought of a woman in a town a thousand
miles away, a woman I have never met,
who thought, “I think I’ll send five dollars
to someone who brought abundance into my life.”
How simple it is to manifest unforeseen joy.
How clear the invitation to extend gratitude,
to spread good will, to remind each other
how the world will offer itself, will open
and open and open, how we, ourselves,
are the agents of the world.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Starting this month, only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support.
This week, Sherry talks with us about how meditation can be a solid and generative foundation for a creative practice, why audio recordings of her day inspire her many years into the future, the importance of being creative about how we say I love you, and the true “rocket fuel” for all of life. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com, or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
How has your creative practice saved your life?
What is a “pinprick of light” you created for yourself or someone else in a recent dark time?
Emerging Form is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Love your poem to and for Sherry! You two are doing marvelous acts of kindness (and encouraging so many of us to do them, too) in the world. Fabulous, both of you!