We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michelle Kaisersatt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michelle below.
Hi Michelle, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resiliency is about looking life in the face, with all its tragedies and traumas, joys and euphoric moments, and knowing that these are only fragments in time. They are snippets that are then fused together to create a life experience. We know that no two are alike. However, many are similar. The question is “What did you create with those experiences?”. Are you living it out as a victim? Or are you taking these lessons and putting them into your life basket, filling it with rich colors and exquisite textures?
As we fill our basket, sometimes there are repeated finds. Like patterns trying to tell us we didn’t fully get the picture the first time. Or the second time. Maybe there is a deeply buried event or experience that needs to be brought back into focus and looked at more closely. Do we have generational stories that need to be acknowledged and retold, and then blessed and released?
This is what resiliency has been for me. Holding that basket, filled with vast life experiences, and realizing they have been brought forth as gifts to me. Gifts that are transformed into an energy I carry, and radiate, as I continue to step into life’s story.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I was raised on a small family farm in southern Minnesota. My dad tinkered and fixed things to make them functional and my mom created beauty out of the discarded. This was my world. As I grew up I wanted to make things beautiful, and I did. I am an interior designer, sculptural clay artist, author, and now I am traveling a new path that is more of an extension of my life experiences.
Those repeat patterns that I talked about earlier?
They began for me at the tender age of four, when I saw my father giving my eighteen-month-old sister mouth-to-mouth. I looked death in the face and began to discover that ‘just maybe’ death isn’t permanent. This was the theme that would play out repeatedly in my life, and it has shaped me, in all its hues and qualities.
It’s not like my life was filled with ‘death’—however—it did color my world. I became comfortable with the conversation of loss and grief, and in an uncanny way, it all fused together into this rich tapestry of where I am today. The thread that holds it all together, is LIFE!
Bringing beauty to every experience may seem like a challenge that is inconceivable.
But if you add compassion into the mix, this is indeed how I have created my life.
Transforming wheel-thrown clay into sculptural vessels was where my journey joined with my young self. My heart and soul were infused into each vessel as I hand-carved them, and my wish was that that connection would be felt by others. This is when I began creating cremation urns. Connecting one spirit to another.
The Soul Remains became ‘live’ when I began selling my work on-line in the early years of websites. However, not only did I include my art, I also wrote. Reflecting on it all, I had journaled a lot in my lifetime, knowing that I had to release my feelings instead of carrying them. So, I took the risk and began blogging. Maybe someone would resonate, even though I felt like I was my only audience. I knew my art and my writing was what would keep me alive spiritually. Yes, I put myself out there.
Many years later, I took another risk. In the not-too-distant past, I had a conversation with my beloved. He, in the spirit world. I in a park, sitting on a bench. I, asking him—through my sketch book/journal, what his message would be for our second grandson who was to be born within the next couple of weeks.
His message transformed my world. It stayed in my journal and in my heart for five years. Then I realized, it was time to share his message. Which is when I became a self-published author of Dear One A Message of Love About Grief, Loss and the Art of Healing. His message has been carried all over the world.
Today, I take scraps of organic cotton that used to go into the dumpster and bring them back to life as artistic Circle of Life blankets. Embraced and used while living, these coverings become the comfort we are tenderly swaddled in, when our bodies are placed gently back into the earth.
Yes, those repeated patterns. They are what brought me to this place of my tapestry, lovingly held by that life basket. Sewn together to create a beautiful life, inclusive of the stones; gems of wounds, scars, joys, and dancing, all mixed together.
This. Is what resiliency looks like.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Follow your dream – If your passion fills you – that energy will radiate into something marvelous!
Everything helps Everything — look for the patterns and lessons, and embrace them richly.
Be present in the here and now. Nothing is forever.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Expanding into a bigger basket!
Today, you will find me sharing the compassion and teachings that I have been gifted. Not only through my art, but by sending out musings and reflections. I engage with people in thought-provoking conversations, offering the opportunity to be curious. Asking questions we might not be willing or ready to approach about our growth.
I also have become more involved with a monthly gathering of women and men hospice nurses, death doulas and compassionate community members we call Sacred Circle. We share wisdom and experiences to help others and ourselves better prepare for the last breath taken.
This is my sacred life in all its shapes and forms. Thank you for allowing me to share it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thesoulremains.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoulremains/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesoulremains
