We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jaleesa Chambers a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jaleesa, thanks for joining us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

As a mother, creative, and entrepreneur legacy is a constant topic of interest and theme within the work I strive to do. Legacy for the generations of family I will leave behind, the new class of creatives that have yet to be inspired, and the legacy of a lasting and impactful business. As a creative resilience coach, writer, and product developer my goal is to help women make their dreams a priority. To not give up on what they want to create because they are overwhelmed with the daily demands of life, but to see a bright and bountiful future for themselves beyond their social norms. This directly correlates with the legacy we envision leaving behind.

The most important thought when considering legacy is for my kids and family to remember me for pushing beyond the circumstances of life. Redefining the limits typically given to people in my family stating we can only do a certain type of work. My father spent a lot of time away from home working hard labor to provide for his family. He is my hero and his hard work and sacrifice is something that my brother and I never tire of thanking him for. I am so grateful to my dad for everything he has done and his hard work inspires me to build a new legacy for our family. A legacy that shows our passions can provide for our lives, and we can balance our work with our lives. My hope is for people to remember me for finding ways to create a life and a business exactly as I envision. My children must see that creating a life from their own eyes is possible because it will instill in them the belief that they have options, and they have opportunities beyond what their surroundings might lead them to believe.

The legacy is to create a life worth living and to live a holistic life as opposed to working my way through life. In weaving this legacy, I hope to show that it’s not just possible but profoundly transformative to live in alignment with our dreams and values. It becomes a testament to future generations that fulfillment doesn’t demand sacrifice of what matters most—it’s about designing a life where ambition and presence coexist, and where the heart of creativity fuels both our work and our love.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Absolutely! My name is Jaleesa “TheMuse” formerly known as Jaleesa “TheBlerd” or PrettyLittleBlerd. I am a writer, creative, manufacturer of magical things, and creative resilience mindset coach for working women. My creative craft is specifically geared towards writing and creating items for inspiration. My items for inspiration include my Pocket Affirmations Book, a small pocket book filled with powerful affirmations you can take with you everywhere. As well as the different products that are currently in development including affirmation notebooks for busy women, affirmation magnets, office and productivity supplies, and much more!

My work as a coach is a beautiful blend of soul-work, creative expression, and cultivating a resilient mindset. I work with clients in multiple ways including one-on-one coaching, group programs, masterminds, as well as live events and workshops for public and private groups. My joy is holding space by hosting/co-hosting events for groups of women, other coaching communities and organizations focused on creative energy, expression, and resilience. I have always been a writer from a very early age, but have also always had a love for lifting up others and bringing them motivation. I started my journey with the study of Psychology and grew to realize that my focus included a blended use of spirituality, street-smarts, and profound empathy that is beyond the scope of typical therapy. I accepted my calling as a coach and began coaching other women to pursue their dreams. I quit my stressful Corporate America position to pursue entrepreneurship and found out a few months later that I was pregnant with my son. Needless to say, that was a miracle I was not expecting so soon into entrepreneurship.

The birth of my son, Notin, and the challenges that followed evolved my work. Becoming a mother changes the very fabric of who you are as a woman, but the challenges I experienced afterwards truly redefined me as a person. A few months after our son was born, his dad, my beloved, was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure due to a genetic disorder he was unaware of. At the age of 31, he would need a kidney transplant in order to survive. The same disorder that affected him also affected our son, and we were forced to make the tough decision to remove one of his kidneys just 7 months after he was born. We had our son’s surgery in February of 2023, and just a few months later in May of 2023 we received the call that we needed to relocate to Colorado for his dad’s kidney transplant for a few months.

It was a challenging time for my family, a time we are still recovering from to this day. These struggles showed me just how important encouragement for creation is needed. So often we are faced with difficulties and challenges that make us want to give up on our work, and when we leave our creative expression behind we leave part of ourselves behind as well. Creative Resilience is about pushing past the struggles of life (when life is just life’n too much) to see the importance of your creative dream, not just for you, but for the people who will enjoy it. As a coach, I relate to my hard-working women dreamers/communities because I have been there! I understand exactly how it feels to work a full-time job while trying to pursue full-time dreams, what it’s like to balance family and the demands of being a caretaker, and how difficult it is to wear so many hats and still have the magic inside to create. I know this separates me from the everyday “flashy” coach because I have a realism that can only come from experiencing what my clients are going through firsthand. My joy in life is being able to inspire others to continue to create, and to continue to shine, even when darkness tries to overcome their dreams.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience…has shown up constantly in my story. I have faced many challenges along my journey that have shown me my power. Growing up supporting my family as we dealt with challenging health conditions, overcoming the heartbreak of divorce, a failed engagement, as well as faced a mental health battle that led me to self-publish my first book. I realized actually earlier this year that resilience has been a constant companion on my journey, it reminds me of my strength and the grace I have been shown throughout my life.

I mentioned my son’s and beloved’s diagnosis and briefly touched on the call for his transplant. The story of our time in Colorado is one of faith, miracles, and profound resilience that I can look back on and truly be in awe of the blessings life can bring. While I cannot hope to share the full story here, I would like to briefly mention how these challenges helped me to own my resilience. My family and I live in Texas, however, upon receiving my beloved’s diagnosis it was recommended to us to try different states for better chances of treatment. We were accepted at a hospital in Colorado and at the evaluation we were given approximately two years to prepare for the call to move our family to Colorado for a few months in order for his transplant and post-transplant care. In this two-year time frame we would be responsible for building savings, virtual work, and alternative streams of income in order to pay for transitioning to a new state, the housing expenses while living there, and maintaining our home back in Texas. A month after his evaluation, we received the call that they had found a donor, and just like that the two-year preparation was cut short to just a month.

Needless to say, we were unprepared. My beloved went on disability and with my part-time entrepreneur income, we moved to Colorado for the surgery and treatment after the surgery. The next few months would be filled with emotional hospital visits and relocating from hotel rooms to Airbnb’s and vice versa. During this time I was working as a coach, but also working a virtual assistant. I was caretaking for my beloved, as well as caring for our one-year old. I was away from our home and comfort while trying to build a coaching business and work as a virtual assistant. It was one of the most challenging times of my life and in the life of our family.

We received tremendous help from our family back home and I was able to write an essay for a grant through my beloveds former employer that helped during our time in Colorado. I am proud to say that throughout it all, I never gave up on my dreams as a coach and as an entrepreneur. I had to make shifts, adjustments, and sacrifices, but I have continued to hold on to my dream and the importance of my work. This challenging time led me to lean more into the niche of creative resilience, and further deepen into the importance of receiving inspiration when building creative goals. There are so many dreams that are lost to the struggles that we face. Perhaps with the right amount of encouragement and guidance, we will all find what we need to create the magic we are meant to create.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Adjusting to pivots in life is proving to be a recurring event in the life of an entrepreneur. I can speak of a recent pivot happening in my life presently causing major adjustments. I spoke of the news of my beloved’s transplant, as well as the balance of relocating from place to place during our time in Colorado, more recently we have had to make adjustments in the way we work being back at home. Previously, my beloved has worked in pretty demanding environments such as working at an oil company melting metals in order to build their tools. Unfortunately, after his diagnosis and transplant working in those extreme environments has become impossible and simply bad for his health.

With his health in mind as top priority, we made the adjustments to him temporarily working part-time and staying home with our son, and me working virtually full-time as well as managing my business. This pivot could have easily pushed me to place my goals as a creative and entrepreneur on the backburner, however, I am focusing on doing the exact opposite. My work centers around building resilience for your creative dreams, and I consider it an honor to not only preach resilience but walk in it every day. I feel this new chapter in life will allow me to connect with my dreamers on a deeper level, showing them that pursuing their dreams is not only necessary it is absolutely possible.

I have had to shift around the way that I work on my business, working on business needs primarily early mornings and weekends in adjustment to my new schedule. As well as make adjustments to how I balance my family and personal life. This sort of creative-life-balance is exactly what I strive to help my clients and communities with. Building a creative lifestyle so that they can continue to work on their dreams even with life making all the moves around them. I promote a nature of progress over perfection, every single step, no matter how small gets us closer to our dreams. I am proud to walk those steps with my clients and the communities I serve each and every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/thecreativesmuse?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=c9fb7b39-fbd9-4720-87fe-40529ecd7cb6
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/da_queen_of_dreams/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075618256847
• Other: [email protected]; temporary info page – https://museforcreatives.my.canva.site/

Image Credits

“Badass Coach of the Week” pic – Punch Drunk Soul, LLC
All other images are original images personally created and owned by me.