Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelan Harkin.
Hi Chelan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
At the end of this last September, 2024, my book, The Prophetess, The Return of The Prophet from The Voice of The Divine Feminine was published by a branch of Penguin Random House. This book is framed as a contemporary continuation of Kahlil Gibran’s classic, The Prophet. All of this has been a dream come true!
At the end of 2020, four years prior, I had stacks and stacks of poetry that had been pouring through me for about a decade but I hadn’t yet published any of it. In early November of that year, my marriage of about ten years began breaking down and something began breaking open in my soul. Something felt like it needed to express or emerge through me and I realized I needed to publish a book of my poetry. I decided to self-publish as I had no contacts in the marketing world or the publishing world at the time.
Before my first book, Susceptible to Light, went out into the world, I tried an unusual thing. I decided each night before publishing my book I would try a prayer experiment. This consisted of me walking around my block and asking my favorite dead poets for exactly what I most wanted—And what I wanted was marketing support for my book!
The two main poets on my Dead Poets Society were Hafiz, a world-famous mystical poet from the 1700’s and Kahlil Gibran, the globally celebrated author of The Prophet. Shortly after putting my book into the world I got an email out of the blue from Daniel Ladinsky, the man who has done the renderings of Hafiz poetry that has made Hafiz something of a superstar to the western world. He said he wasn’t really sure why he was writing to me but that he saw my book on Amazon and felt a strange nudge to reach out. This was perhaps the most amazing moment of my life.
Daniel and I developed a friendship through email, sharing inspired poetry back and forth. It turned out, amazingly, that he’d also written the foreword to an extended edition of The Prophet. As one of the most successful living poets, Daniel has connections with the major publishing houses of the world. Less than a month into our correspondence, he endorsed me to all of the biggies in the most extraordinary way.
About a year and a half following, a sort of lightening bolt of inspiration hit me that basically said, “It’s time to write The Prophetess and you’re the one to do it.” The flow of inspiration that poured forth on the heels of that was so great that most of the book was completed in only two months. I sent a proposal off to Hay House Publishing that they accepted and as soon as I turned in my manuscript, Hay House was bought by Penguin Random House. Daniel Ladinsky has now also written the foreword to my book.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Well, I would say both that nothing has ever been more fiery or more graceful than these last 4 years that have included my publishing journey. So what do I mean by that? My commitment to publishing was my commitment to the path of surrender. By that I mean, rather than forcing my will to get closer to my creative goals, rather than pushing and stressing and fretting and forcing, I decided to feel through any uncomfortable emotions that would arise rather than flee them. When stress would arise about my publishing journey, I would sit in the fire of that emotion until it dissolved and became anew. When scarcity or insecurity arose, same thing. Whatever it was—embarrassment, heartbreak, fear, shame, I decided not to avoid it and to feel it to its core. Extraordinarily, what I’ve found again and again is that fear, or really any uncomfortable emotional, when felt to its root, becomes inspired fuel that propels us forward. In this four year period I experienced the most extraordinary anguish: the man I was still married to and the father of my kids started a relationship with my oldest, closest friend who moved in with him into a house I still co-owned and thus, she lived with my two, small kids half time. She is soon to give birth to my ex-husband’s baby, my children’s half-sibling. A man I fell hopelessly in love with in the aftermath of my marriage left me for another woman amidst all of this. All of this happened at once and was the deepest heartbreak I have known. I was re-establishing my finances, single-mothering, grieving only being with my kids half time, and totally shattered by all the rest, but holding to the commitment to feel through it all, I have transformed my life, phoenix-like, in short order, my creative life and profession has soared and all the energy that could have been stopped up in resentment, grudge-holding, loss, lack and scorn that would have totally derailed my life has alchemized into the engine that is powering my soul into all it can be.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a mystical poet and author. I’ve published four books, Susceptible to Light, Let Us Dance, The Stumble and Whirl with The Beloved, Wild Grace and The Prophetess, The Return of The Prophet from The Voice of The Divine Feminine. I am proud of listening to my intuition on this journey and courageously following it. I’m proud of my courage to be different and be seen and for my long journey of coming to relate to my differences as strengths, gifts and assets rather than liabilities. I am proud to be doing what I’m here to do—To share my bold, creative voice and vision in the name of love, truth and liberation to inspire others to open and bring themselves forth.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Yes!
Mostly this: Many of our limiting assumptions are not truths. For example, before publishing I feared I might need an impressive degree with letters after my name to be validated: not true. I worried my style of poetry wouldn’t be understood or widely received: not true. I worried that people weren’t interested in poetry in general: not true. I feared people would judge me as childish or even selfish for prioritizing the thing that I most wanted to do: not true!
When untested our fears and limiting assumptions can hold us back. It is scary to confront them and move forward with what we most want in spite of them, but when we do we often find that what we feared was never true and we are so much more liberated, empowered and broader in our perspective for realizing that.
And also this: We need a new metric for valuing the worth of what we offer. Rather than worrying if what you have to offer will be good enough, if it’s already been done etc., ask yourself if you sharing your gift might bring more light to the world, if it might touch, empower, motivate or inspire any other heart. If the answer to that even might be yes, then it is essential that you do it. And when we share with this as our motivation, we share in a way that is infinitely more brave, beautiful and true.
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