We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shelly Francis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shelly below.
Shelly, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Do we find purpose or does our purpose find us through the things and people we love? I recently realized that my finding my purpose has deep roots in the 1920’s fairy tale books my grandmother read to me. I felt something magical in the way the blue linen cover held the most amazing illustrations you could practically step into, and the nourishment of sitting on her lap listening to the rhythm of her telling the tales. So many stories seemed to be about young people facing loss or hard times, then setting off on a journey to seek a solution and finding their inner strength. Of course, I couldn’t have named any of that at the time! But I was inspired. I answered an ad in Highlights magazine seeking children’s book authors (because who else better than an 8-year-old to write books for kids, I thought). I wrote, illustrated and self-published my first set of books in second grade, about Timmy the Turtle and Sammy the Worm. While they’re long lost, I still remember sewing the pages together with thick pink crochet thread.
There’s a poem by William Stafford called “The Way It Is” about “the thread you follow” throughout life’s changes, but it doesn’t change. He says “People wonder about what you are pursuing. / You have to explain about the thread.” I’d say my thread of purpose is being a writer who tries to make meaning of life when it changes and supporting others to do the same. I follow my thread through story-catching, storytelling, and publishing.
Another clue to that thread is that I wrote a book report in sixth grade about an adult nonfiction book called “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” by Bruno Bettelheim. Somehow it was so important to me that I refused to return the library book (I admit I still have it). Supposing we could find our purpose by mining our past for what felt important to our wise younger selves, before puberty and peer pressure made us forget?
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Sure. I’m an author, author coach, photographer, and publisher living in the orchard and vineyard country of western Colorado, on the other side of the Rocky Mountains from Denver, where I grew up. What I’m doing now has a lot do with my previous work, so I’ll go backwards.
Before this I lived in Seattle for six years where I was the Marketing Director for a nonprofit called the Center for Courage & Renewal and wrote “The Courage Way: Leading and Living with Integrity” (published in 2018). I was lucky to learn so much about leadership, courage and trust-building, especially specific practices from a group practice called the Circle of Trust approach. When that job came to its natural conclusion, and after living on an island for years, I was ready for new horizons. A colleague observed that I was now meant to live into the ideas I wrote about in my book, and how many people get to say that!
In 2019, I gave myself a four-month sabbatical that I called my “free-range road trip” where I drove coast to coast to decide what I wanted to do next and where I would live. By the time I got home to Colorado (just before the pandemic), I had talked with dozens of aspiring authors, more than any normal person would run into, and worked with several in-depth. One of my author friends asked me, “Shelly, what’s it going to take to say yes to the universe?” That’s when I decided to take the leap of faith and form my own company not only publishing but doing developmental editing and author coaching.
I founded (ha! “founded” like finding purpose) my tiny publishing company in 2020 called Creative Courage Press. I say my mission is “creating more courage for the complexity of being human.” From interviewing over 120 people for “The Courage Way” and now working with some of those same leaders to write and publish their own books, I’ve seen how various forms of courage arise, from physical, moral and social, to creative and collective courage. But it’s the idea of creative courage as a form of self-care that resonates with me the most. Hence my company name!
The first book was “Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being,” by Dr. Mukta Panda, her memoir that launched only weeks before COVID when physicians would need help more than ever to stay resilient! (Mukta was also featured in “The Courage Way” chapter on the courage to care for true self, the last chapter I wrote and the only one where I shared a bit of my own story.) I feel lucky to be collaborating with her and other remarkable authors who have refreshing ideas about self-caring, healing generational patterns, aging in loving relationships, and more.
As an author and photographer myself, I always wanted to publish more of my own work, too, which is becoming more of my focus now. My photography (I call it “metaphor-tography”) goes way back to 2003 when I was struggling with cancer-caregiving burnout (my husband then had survived brain cancer, my son was in elementary school, and I had my own website design company).
One day, as part of my “artist date” assignments from reading “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, I bought myself a wooden art manikin, overcoming imposter syndrome of not seeing myself as an artist. My son and I started making decorations for it and playing with other friends. I started posing it for photos. I bought more. It was kindling my creativity and setting good emotions in motion again. I named this art manikin the Emotikin (a.k.a., my Inner Artist).
In all my cancer caregiving, I’d forgotten how to play and feel carefree; I needed that creative self-expression to bring me back to life. After-work and weekend photoshoots and under-the-radar blogging became my favorite soul sustenance (or call it art therapy). Fast-forward 21 years and thousands of photos later. I’m finally sharing the Emotikin’s adventures to encourage others to find their own creative courage and meaning. One of my best friends said what I hadn’t yet articulated for myself, “How cool that you’re taking something you’ve been passionate about for its own sake, for your own self-care, and now you’re ready to try making a living by sharing it broadly.”
The Emotikin is featured in my first children’s book called “Eleven Brave Pinecones: A True Tale of Possibilities” and a 63-card oracle deck called “Supposing: Reflections for Accessing Your Wise Inner Artist.” The card deck is both in print and digitally on a cool new app called Deckible (it’s like Audible for card decks with over 600 decks in the store). Overall, I’m excited about finding purpose through new ways of being creative, such as speaking engagements, 1:1 coaching, retreats, speaking, publishing more books and decks, and doing more with my podcast called Creative Courage Live.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I’d say the three skills that have been most impactful in my journey are embracing change, practicing paradox, and daily introspection. You might think I’d say creativity, courage and resilience, but those are the outcome or benefits of my practices.
I was once interviewed by a young leader who asked about my strategy for career growth. My pattern had been to work for a company for six years, then be an entrepreneur for another six, until I was ready to go back to an organization. What I realized in that conversation was I had little strategy but big life changes, like moving, or cancer in my family, or job layoffs. Events I couldn’t control had given me opportunities to do something different, learn new things, meet new people. Learning to face and embrace life when it changes is mix of curiosity, hope, optimism that we can grow from challenges.
Practicing paradox is one of my favorite “skills” because it means trusting in the both/and of life, seeing that two true things can coexist, such as fear & courage, love & loss, grief & gratitude, shadow & light. Paradox is everywhere! When you move past either/or, the many tensions of polar opposites, you start to feel the wholeness of life instead. One way to begin is by noticing how your inner life is connected to your outer life, each informing the other. Allow both to be vital to your well-being instead of compartmentalized.
Daily introspection through journaling is the one habit I can’t live without. Not just because I’m a writer, but because it’s the best way of accessing my own inner wisdom and processing the ups & downs of life. Call them “morning pages” or jot down your dreams before you reach for your phone in the morning. There are more ways than journaling to be introspective, like having good conversations with trustworthy friends. I love when we agree to ask each other open, honest questions rather than fixing or advising, each other. These are two of the eleven “touchstones” I learned from the Circle of Trust approach that I wrote about in The Courage Way. Here’s an example:
“Supposing you had a backpack for your Bold Journey? What essential items would it contain to fortify you on a soul level?”
Daily introspection is the basis of my card deck, Supposing, which offers a few questions on each card to ponder and journal with, maybe living into the answers over the day or a week. Each card also has a photograph so you can get creative putting yourself in the picture of living your life fully, plus a word that suggests a way of being (not just doing). So maybe the third skill or quality is more about creating time for playing each day!
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
I’m all for leveraging our strengths, and being aware of what our strengths really are, so we can put our best foot forward and advocate for our place at the table. But supposing our real strength as a human comes from knowing our shadow side, being in daily conversation with it as needed? Maybe that’s where “humility” comes from: recognizing that our human shadow is part of our bright light. That’s about wholeness, or whole-heartedness, which is another way of saying courage.
One day while waiting for my ferry commute, I saw a toddler who seemed to have just realized her shadow was stuck to her feet. She kept lifting her feet, seeing the shadow move too. She couldn’t escape it, but she could play with it. Her parents didn’t notice her newfound awareness, and that just speaks to how as grown-ups we can so easily ignore our own shadows (literally and figuratively).
Around that same time, I was frustrated during a conversation with my boss about some proverbial elephants in the room (like all organizations have), and the F-bomb dropped from my lips. We kinda laughed and called it a day, yet I felt mortified. On my walk to the ferry that evening, I passed by an art gallery and saw a life-size painting of an elephant. It struck me about my impatient, misplaced cussing: “I was the elephant in the room today!” That was my shadow side. It’s the unconscious, unexamined side of ourselves but it’s not the bad guy.
Letting your frustration out inappropriately isn’t the only kind of shadow. I can be a people-pleaser or peace-at-any-pricer who doesn’t speak up until she blows up (I’m growing out of this). Shadows can also look like strengths gone awry, like being so enthusiastic that you drive people crazy with too many ideas to implement, or being so driven by detail you miss the big picture, or having so much zest for work but you don’t balance your life with other fun. We all have character traits that left unchecked can lead to problems, but we can choose to be aware of them and not use them to excuse bad behavior. Integrating our shadows means having the courage to name and address them but we have to have self-compassion, too!
I believe strength-based leadership can look like admitting your mistakes, owning your shadows, having humility not just chutzpah, asking for help or more time, honoring the many different ways and speeds of processing we all bring to our projects, even knowing when your strengths are not the gifts an organization needs most now so it’s time to move on.
Have you heard of the ancient parable of the blind men describing an elephant for the first time? They each describe it differently, touching the ears “it’s like a fan”, or “it’s like a snake” by touching the tail, or “it’s like a spear” from touching the tusk. I love this story because to me it describes wholeness: we can’t really know the elephant unless we touch the whole animal! Wholeness! This means our strengths AND our shadows. (This is one reason why an elephant is my logo for Creative Courage Press.)
Supposing you asked yourself this, “When is a time you were the elephant in the room? How have you learned to care for this elephant?”
What if finding your purpose came from finding out not only what you’re good at doing, but by accepting your limitations? Living “on purpose” and “finding your purpose” happen when we make time to know ourselves inside and out, and having compassion and love for who we are (and who others are, too). That’s how we can create a life of meaning. All that takes practice! And courage!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://creativecouragepress.com and https://emotikin.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shellylfrancis/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shellylfrancis
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellyfrancis1/
- Youtube: https://bit.ly/CCLonYT
- Other: Deckible: https://bit.ly/SpzingDk
Image Credits
Shelly Francis, Rebbeca Ferren, DD Haeg
