Welcome to your

Creative Return

Ever felt like you’ve disappeared

inside your own ambition?

This isn’t a challenge. It’s the beginning.

There comes a moment—quiet but undeniable—when the version of success you’ve built no longer fits the shape of your soul.

You’re showing up. Saying the right things. Hitting the marks. But inside, there’s a tug. Maybe it’s a whisper. Maybe it’s a full-on slap in the face. Either way, it’s telling you something’s off.

That inner knowing isn’t failure. It’s a sign that you need a Creative Return.

I know this space well. But I also know there’s a way through. For me it started in the quietness of my bathroom looking at my self in the mirror and with the deep exhale of someone who could finally admitted: this isn’t sustainable.

I was caught in implicatory denial—a form of self-abandonment that’s easy to miss. It is when your values ask for pause, but your calendar screams, “prove!” When your body begs for rest, but hustle culture says, “keep going.” You might feel off, stretched thin, or strangely invisible to yourself but you still keep pushing.

That’s the trap of implicatory denial: you know something isn’t right, but you keep performing anyway.

I didn’t know how to stop, I just kept pushing harder but really, I just wanted to disappear.

I believe it’s one of the most suffocating places we can live. But being able to name implicatory denial, it opened my eyes to an alternative to the inevitable burnout I was heading toward:

Creative Adaptive Intelligence

It’s where we creatively use regenerative leadership strategies to bring us back to ourselves. And to adapt means giving ourselves permission to reclaim our boundaries with an intelligence that’s already within us. A way to navigate uncertainty.

It’s not a mindset. It’s not a self-help trick.

Creative Adaptive Intelligence is how we lead without abandoning ourselves in these four ways:

  1. Clarifies what matters.

  2. Adapts to real-time capacity.

  3. Builds sustainable momentum.

  4. Roots decisions in values—not pressure.

My Creative Return Didn’t Start with a Plan
It Started with a Pause

In 2020, when the world shut down, I didn’t pivot. I paused. It might have been a WTF pause but none-the-less I was still.

What came next wasn’t a hustle—it was a response. A quiet moment turned into a call I couldn’t ignore. That call became the Front Porch Project in Baton Rouge: a grassroots, pay-it-forward photography movement that captured over 4,000 families and helped circulate more than $1.2 million back into our local economy in just three months. It wasn’t about doing more. It was about doing what mattered—rooted in presence, not pressure.

This is what a Creative Adaptive Intelligence response looks like—not forced or flashy, but regenerative. Leadership that nourishes from the inside out. Action that multiplies without demand. Alignment that moves at the pace of purpose, not pressure.

The Front Porch Project wasn’t about doing more—even though a lot was being done. It was about syncing up with what truly mattered: clarity, care, and community. It became a Creative Return not just for me, but for my entire city.

But I didn’t arrive here with a perfect strategy.

Creative Adaptive Intelligence wasn’t always my way.

Just three months before it all began, I walked away from something I loved. Something I was good at—guiding other people’s creative returns. I had the polished site, the online courses, the weekly lives, the podcast… the performance of success.

But behind the scenes, I was burnt out and blurred. I kept creating from that place because I didn’t know how to stop. I was living in implicatory denial, smothered by a cloud of imposter syndrome smoke, trying to keep everyone else’s fire lit while mine was quietly going out.

Eventually, I couldn’t fake it anymore. I poured the last half-full glass on my dwindling spark and disappeared into the smoke.

But that quiet exit? It made room.

It made space for something else to root.

That pause opened the door for Creative Adaptive Intelligence to land—and it asked me to stop performing… and start living.

🌿 Ready to Go Deeper? This is Your Invitation 🌿

The Creative Return

A Self-Guided Practice for Rooting Into What’s True

✔️ Reconnect with your clarity
✔️ Compost perfectionism into progress
✔️ Shift from urgency into aligned momentum
✔️ Adapt without abandoning yourself

It’s not a mindset. It’snot a self help trick.

It’s a quiet, powerful return to your own Creative Adaptive Intelligence.

This is not:

  • A rigid plan or step-by-step system

  • A productivity sprint disguised as self-care

  • Another thing to keep up with

  • A performance of purpose

This is:

  • A self-paced, regenerative guide to reconnecting with your clarity

  • A grounded practice to help you realign with what matters

  • A series of invitations—not instructions—for returning to yourself

  • A way to move with life instead of pushing against it

Inside the Creative Return, you’ll explore:

Seeing the Unseen
Explore the subtle patterns of self-doubt, delay, and overwhelm that quietly convince you that change isn’t possible—even when your heart knows it is. Learn to spot the habits that stall your momentum, not because you don’t care, but because the cost of change feels unclear or too big to bear. These are the moments where clarity hides in plain sight—where we feel the nudge to move forward, but logic or fear talks us out of it. You’ll learn to recognize where you’ve been maintaining instead of transforming, and begin reconnecting to your inner knowing. Awareness is the first bloom.

Meeting the Inner Resistance with Intelligence
Learn how to meet resistance not as failure—but as sacred feedback. In this Creative Return, you'll explore a regenerative framework rooted in Creative Adaptive Intelligence. It’s a guide designed to help you adapt without abandoning yourself—to make room for change while staying loyal to your values, your rhythm, and your truth. The moment we stop fighting resistance and start listening to it, we compost self-doubt into wisdom and clarity. Compost resistance into clarity.

Practicing the Return
Discover the power of micro-returns, aligned momentum, and reclaiming your pace. You don’t have to start over—you just have to come back. In this section, you’ll learn what’s needed not just to return—but to re-engage your motivation in a way that feels authentic and sustainable. You’ll uncover how to tend your creative energy like a garden: by feeding what’s growing, pruning what’s draining, and basking in the light of clarity when it finally breaks through. Let the sunlight of self-awareness nourish the next right step.

Bonus Tools to Deepen and Support Your Growth

The Acceptance Bridge
A guided practice that helps you move from inner resistance into self-acceptance and aligned action. It bridges the gap between surface-level affirmations and deeper truth, using clarity, compassion, and presence to create sustainable momentum. This is where real change begins—not by forcing something new, but by facing what’s already true. Look for invitations to use this bridge throughout the guide whenever stuck energy or self-doubt shows up.

Your Genius Return Companion
A reflection-rich guide designed to help you recognize your Genius Zone, navigate resistance, and root into rhythms that feel like you. This isn’t a workbook to finish—it’s a compass for coming home to the version of you that creates with clarity, moves with ease, and trusts your unique pace. Use it to track insights, name your Upper Limiting Patterns, and practice the C.A.L.M. Framework in real life. You’ll find prompts to pull this companion close during moments of self-reconnection.

You’ll Also Receive:

  • 🌿 Reflection prompts that ground instead of overwhelm

  • 🌿 Creative practices to soften perfectionism

  • 🌿 Rituals and integration pauses that help clarity land

  • 🌿 Lifetime access—you can pick it back up any time, at any stage

  • 🌿 Guided Meditation to help you regulate your nervous system, and ground your awareness

Want to Go Even Deeper?

Pair the Creative Return with the ThrivFOCUS Tool—your personal clarity system for turning insights into grounded, aligned action. It’s more than a planner—it’s a companion. 

A flexible framework to help you:

  • Map your goals without pressure

  • Track your energy, momentum, and micro-returns

  • Reflect, reframe, and recenter weekly

  • Stay connected to your bigger picture, even when life gets messy

Whether you’re just beginning or beginning again...

This guide meets you in your real life. Your clarity is still here. Your vision is still valid. Your energy is still sacred.

The return is waiting. And it starts when you say yes.