Janet Whitehead has long enjoyed the company of not one, but many, muses. And while muses generally aren't thought to be transferable, she is delighted to help people find the source of their own inspiration.
The well-known local potter, whose trademark work is adorned with lively little faeries (they prefer the Old English spelling), has taken up life coaching. Her North Shore home now serves as Musings and Mud Coaching Studio as well as her art studio.
This new career was a natural progression for Whitehead, who seems to have found creative solutions to the many trials and transitions she has undergone in her own life.
For almost 20 years, she worked as an arts and recreation coordinator for the City of Kamloops. Her plan was to eventually become a full-time potter. However, in the fall of 2005, an injury left her with severe physical limitations.
"It was quite a shock to me. I was limited in all I could do," she recalls.
Faced with this challenge, she chose to explore new career options.
She had some ideas, but a suggestion by her friend David Langevin helped her make the decision. He told her to ask her friends and family what they think she does well every day.
"Three things came back resoundingly and I was shocked," she recalls. The people closest to her noted her talents for supporting and encouraging people through change, for organizing great events, and for making the abnormal appear normal.
"Sometimes what people do well every day is what they should be doing," she says, adding that she often advises people to apply the same exercise to their own lives.
"You find out really nice things about yourself and you don't have to be at your own funeral."
Whitehead enrolled in life coach training through the International Coaching Academy two years ago. She is now fully certified and offers coaching in person, by telephone or Skype, an Internet-based phone system.
She's also a certified muse group leader, and conducts weekend group retreats, sometimes on her boat on Shuswap Lake. The goal is to allow participants to unleash their creativity by giving them the self-awareness and the tools to do so.
Life coaching takes many forms, but the primary vehicle is conversation.
"A good life coach should only be talking about 20 per cent of the time," she says. Most of the time she's listening, speaking only to guide the train of thought.
"Each coaching client is unique. We look at their strengths, we look at where they want to be going and the steps they can take to move forward. I'm looking for their passion - the thing that puts the sparkle in their eyes."
She also looks for the barriers that block progress - things like the fear of failure or success, or the impact of other people's expectations and opinions.
With the clients she coaches in person, Whitehead sometimes uses techniques such as creative visualization or has them paint or mold clay while they talk.
"When they're done, there's an answer in that piece, and it's amazing. The creative media triggers finding the answers that people are looking for."
Life coaching is not the same as counseling, she stresses. If she encounters a client she feels would benefit from counseling, she will refer them.
While most people tend to cope on their own, Whitehead says almost anyone can benefit from life coaching.
"It can break through barriers and help people move forward. If you want to excel at a sport, you get a coach. Why not do the same in your life?"
With Internet technology, people can seek a life coach to suit them anywhere in the world. Each coach has their own niche, and Whitehead's appears to be helping people in transition.
"They come to me because things aren't going the way they expected, they're trying to make a career change or some other radical change in their life," she says, adding that more often than not her clients are right-brain dominant thinkers trying to live in a world designed for left-brain, linear thinkers.
"They end up accessing that creative side of themselves that gives them the answers they're looking for."
And people do find the answers, as testimonials on Whitehead's Web site attest. Clients from as far away as Australia and Mexico give glowing reports on her helpfulness.
Her clients aren't the only ones who are inspired. Now recovered from her physical impairment, Whitehead is back in her pottery studio and has added painting and writing to her palette.
During the period when she was ill, she took up watercolours and has produced a growing portfolio of what she calls storypaintings.
When she works with clay, Whitehead lets the forms emerge intuitively and is rewarded with her impish faeries, each with a story to tell.
Using the same unpremeditated approach when she applies brush to paper, she was surprised to find that the resulting paintings were sketches of fanciful little houses.
"At first I had no idea what they were about," she says.
Her rambunctious faerie muses had been at work again - this time she had unwittingly channeled drawings that represent what faeries think human beings' houses look like.
These charming images illustrate another of Whitehead's new projects, a children's book based on stories the faeries tell about humans, entitled In the Land of Peoples.
She has also produced several editions of a series of workbooks for self-coaching, which are available for downloading from her website.
The first - entitled Did You Love Aliens? - instructs people to look back to their childhoods to rediscover their true talents and passions.
"Our child self really had all the answers to what our passions and gifts are. What you were drawn to as a child is what you should be doing," she says.
Whitehead also hosts periodic Creative People Gatherings at her North Shore home, social events where like-minded souls gather to share ideas and inspiration.
For more about Whitehead's various enterprises, check out her website: musingsandmud.com

2nd page- Janet fairy ring
Novel in Progress, stonewear and porcelain, 1998.

3rd page- Janet village painting
Legend of Peoples, watercolour and ink on yupo paper, 2007.

Story and Photos by Lissa Millar

Lissa Millar