lara simmons

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching another class in January of this year. My sister will be in town for the holidays are we are going to be co-presenting: Get GLOWING for 2012 and WRITE YOUR YEAR! An Experiential Empowerment & Intention-Setting Workshop Follow YOUR Passions! Find YOUR Purpose! Love YOUR Life! Write YOUR Year! The Den @ Mosaic Coffeehouse 4401 2nd Ave NE Seattle, WA 98105 Tuesday, January 3, 2012 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Love ♥ Offering   Email to: dearsoulsisters@gmail.com to register I hope you will plan to join us! I wish you all the JOY of the season and nothing but the best for 2012!

I am not great at promoting myself and putting the word out about what I am doing. This is something I am working on, but I have a ways to go. In that spirit, here are a few links to some publicity I have done in the past few months that I thought you might enjoy. Listen in if you are so moved and have a fabulous day!  GET GLOWING - My sister 's radio show, which airs every Friday at 8:00 AM Pacfic/11:00 AM Eastern. In September of this year my sister and I had one of our great conversations about life, love and spirit and put it on the air for all to hear. Click here to listen in. OPENING TO ECSTASY - Dear Soul Sisters was on Lynnet McKenzie's show in October of this year. Our topic was "Stop 'Shoulding' Yourself and Go Guilt-free!" We had great rapport with Lynnet and are so excited to have discovered her shining light! Click here and look in the archives for October 2011 to listen.

This week is the culmination of all of our work together over the past five weeks. This is the part where we WRITE OUR LIVES. First, a couple of my favorite quotes on manifestation: "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it...You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.” --Liz Gilbert "We are living in a dynamic, intelligent Field capable of instantaneous response to each one of us. (It may help to read that statement again.) Instead of living in a gigantic machine in which we are only a tiny cog, we have the opportunity to recognize and identify ourselves as something much more significant – something that the awesome and intelligent creative force that has created the plant kingdom, weather, human beings, this planet, and galaxies beyond, responds to.” --John Nicholl To start flexing your manifestation muscle, begin with the Radical Manifestation Worksheet from Colin Tipping (a

Who is a writer? Often we think of writing “professionally” as the only legitimate way to call yourself a writer, but looking back on my own writing life, it wasn't until I started writing “just” for myself that my writing really took off. The writing I have done because it really pleased me has been much more satisfying than the writing I have done for money. I would urge you to use this measure of your success - Does my writing please me? Am I enjoying the process? Am I satisfied with what I am  writing? - rather than how much money you make from it. And if you write, dare to call yourself a WRITER!   Here are some of my favorite quotes about writing:   "Everybody is talented original and has something important to say." --Brenda Ueland from her book " If You Want to Write ."   “...[A] writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a wri

In today's session we worked on bringing more presence to our lives and to our writing. Class began with a ten minute full body meditation . Taking a few deep breaths and then bringing awareness to each part of our body, starting with our toes. Feeling into each part of our bodies, feeling its structures, its movements, its energy. After the meditation we began to explore the concept of small stones. This exercise was created by Fiona Robyn a writer in England whose website is called Writing Our Way Home .  A small stone is "a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment." Writing small stones can help us be more present to our lives and to our writing. We read some examples of small stones from Fiona's small stones blog , her blogzine a handful of stones , as well as from my own small stones blog pebbles are small stones . Then we went out and wrote small stones of our own for 30-35 minutes before coming back together to share our

Another great session of WRITE YOUR LIFE this week. We welcomed a new member to the class (Welcome Mary!) and missed those of you who couldn't make it. Hope to see you back next week!  In this session, we started off with the idea that we all have a "story" about who we are. This is not necessarily a bad thing - it is part of being human - but sometimes our "story" no longer fits and we need to let go of it in order to write a new one. So ask yourself this question: WHAT IS MY "STORY?" and AM I READY TO LET IT GO? (Some examples might be, "I am the 'good girl,'" or "I am the 'black sheep of the family.'") As a way to let go of the part of the story that no longer fits, we did an exercise from the book, Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping . It is called The Three Letters Process. In this exercise you write three letters to someone who you feel has wronged you or in some way treated you badly. Choose someone w

Our first class was AWESOME. We have a great group of women writers - ranging in age from their twenties to their sixties - all with similar goals and aspirations TO WRITE THEIR LIVES. Would love to have you join us next week! Here's what you missed: For a bit of inspiration we read Dear Sugar's column " Write Like a Motherfucker ." Then we each wrote our own "Dear Sugar" letter, to Sugar or our favorite advice columnist, about what we felt was the main thing holding us back right now or what we needed advice on to move forward in our lives.  After a five minute head-clearing meditation "break," we came back to our journals, put on our advice columnist caps and wrote back to ourselves with some objective, kind and compassionate advice.  HOMEWORK: Write like a MOTHERFUCKER Try and Take Your Own Advice We will meet again on Friday, October 28th at 10:15 at Mosaic Coffee House . Please join us if you can!

Starting on October 21, 2011 I will be teaching a 5-week writing class in Seattle. Here are the deets: DATES: October 21, - November 18, 2011 WHEN: Friday mornings from 10:15 a.m. To Noon   WHERE: The Den at Mosaic Coffee House , 4401 2 nd Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105   COST: The class is FREE! (Please consider a donation to Mosaic for the use of their space.)   TO REGISTER: Email lara(.)g(.)simmons (at) comcast (.) net Are you feeling STUCK, unsure about what comes next? Do you love to WRITE, but never seem to find the time? Are you ready to RE-CREATE your life, but don't know how?   Join me for a 5-week writing class designed to get you writing and help you manifest the life you desire!

Welcome to larasimmons.net . I am so glad you have found me on the web. This site is my all-in-one hub/blog/website for all of my writing and spiritual activities. Here's what you will find here: the refrigerator oracle - my original personal blog where I post quotes that are meaningful to me and recount my attempts to stay in the moment and walk my spiritual talk. Dear Soul Sisters - a spiritual advice column I write with my sister . We offer intuitive, insightful and informed advice. (Think of us as Dear Abby for the new millennium!) Please write to us if there’s something you’re struggling with - we'd love to help you get free and move forward! Pebbles are Small Stones - my " small stones " blog started in July 2011 for the river of stones project. Please make yourself at home, click around and see what you can find to interest and inspire you. I am so glad you are here! Love, Lara