Fiery Muse Shelley Yampolsky

Shelley Yampolsky has been a fiery muse in my life for many years. In fact I met her when the book The Fiery Muse first came out and she took a workshop based on it. Since then we have taken other workshops together and eventually were co-presenters of the About Face workshop sponsored by the Institute for Consciousness Research.

I have learned a tremendous amount from Shelley – she is not just a woman who inspires me both creatively and spiritually, she is a shining example of a woman I would like to be more like. She brings a calm quiet joy, a love of life, and a passion for both the creative and the spiritual to everyone and everything she touches. 

But she wasn’t always like this. A deeply troubled teen, she was quite literally saved by a high school art teacher who helped her direct her angst and despair into her art. She went on to York University where she took a degree in Art and, not surprisingly, psychology. 

Although she worked in graphic design for years, she turned her back on her own art until she was forty, her sons were four and ten-years-old, and her marriage was in trouble. On a whim she signed up for week-long water-color retreat. The retreat, she says, was in many ways a disaster. She hadn’t painted in years, she’d never used water colors, she’d brought the wrong materials, the other participants were highly skilled, and the instructor was a tyrant. But there was a moment that had a profound impact. She says “I looked at the painting I was working on and thought: This painting isn’t working. My life isn’t working.” Overwhelmed by waves of emotion, she realized she needed to make changes. And she made them.



Over the ensuing years, art and the creative process have continued to see her through life’s most difficult challenges. In one of them, Shelley – who is one of the most loving, talented, generous-spirited, open-hearted women I have even known – ended up in a work situation where she was being vilified. Even though staying in the situation was emotionally intolerable, the thought of leaving was even more difficult. “This,” she says, “was clearly connected to my personal demons – failure, shame, being an outcast....”

In the end Shelley did find the courage to leave, and it did not surprise me that she did. Of all the many ways Shelley has been a fiery muse in my life, the courage she showed in making this particular change has been one of the most inspiring. What’s more, the process that led to it is a perfect example of how – as expressed in The Divine Feminine Fire and The Fiery Muse – the creative process can be a catalyst in our personal and spiritual growth.

The resolution to her difficulty began in her work with clay – a medium she favors, frequently using it to form vessels with uniquely creative designs. Often a series of these vessels will develop out of her inner exploration of a particular word or phrase. During that time of intense personal pain, she says, “I was exploring the word ‘cleave’. It is so interesting because it is a word that means the polar opposite of itself. When we cleave to someone we hold them, but when we cleave something, like with a ‘cleaver’, we split it apart.” 

As part of this exploration, she created a series of vessels. Her plan was to then to “cleave” the vessels by inserting sharp pottery shards that she had imprinted with words from some of the workplace correspondence that had vilified her. “I was working on these pieces * and ‘cleaving’ them with the shards as I was thinking about what I was ‘cleaving to’ in my life.”

During this period Shelley was also enrolled in a course in expressive arts therapy and playing around with the word ‘belong’ and thinking, she says, about “how kids want to ‘be long’; to be tall; to be bigger, but what they really want is to ‘belong’.”

She was working on her final project for the course when, in a sudden flash of insight, the concepts of cleaving and belonging came together in her mind and she realized that she was cleaving so desperately to the horrible situation, at least in part, because the desire to belong was such an ingrained part of her inner make-up. At that moment, she came to the realization that she could let the job go. “I can walk away. I will be alright.”

Since that crisis several years ago, she has remained focused on her creative spiritual quest – growing as a human being who is as compassionate to everyone around her as she is passionate about her art. And she remains one of the most inspiring women in my life.... 

Shelley’s Advice for Becoming Inspired

Shelley begins making her clay vessels by using the pinch pot technique. She recommends you try it too. She says anyone can do it. She convinced me to try it, and I found it to be one of the most deeply satisfying forms of creative expression I ever tried. Directions for “playing with clay” in this way can be found here (INSERT LINK) – or, if you have a copy of The Divine Feminine Fire, at the end of Chapter Thirteen. Even if you never make a pinch pot, the spirit in which Shelley approaches process is one you can adapt to any form of creative expression.

When she begins to make a pinch pot, she says it is like deep meditation: “I take the ball of clay and hold it in my hands. I nestle it. It is almost like I am cradling it. I slowly punch my thumb into the clay and then begin to make small pinches, rotating the ball. I am deliberate, slow, and careful. I move entirely by touch.”

Soon she says, “The clay begins to get a life of its own. It just pulls me in…. Clay is such a living thing. It contains a space, and it is like I am just pulling its skin over that space. 



After the pot gets to a certain point, she says she sets it aside. “I start to live with the piece. I might visit it a couple of times a day. I might make a couple of adjustments….I never have a preconceived idea of what the piece will look like. Essentially, it is the piece that guides my process – that and an ongoing internal ‘mantra’ that I whisper to myself, “Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.”