Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Allen

Hi Caroline, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

It was 2018 when I receive the call that changes everything.

It’s my landlord. He’s calling to tell me loggers are coming to cut down half the forest around my house.

I rent a house on nearly 80 acres in rural Oregon. After a life living in the world’s major cities– Tokyo, London, Seattle, Boston — I’d moved to Oregon to live around nature again, to reconnect with the earth. When I found the rental house surrounded by forests, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

I become upset. I’m nearly in tears. I’ve grown to deeply love the forest here; the trees are my friends and confidants. Over the next few months, I can’t hide how I feel.

Finally, the landlord says, “You know how this works. This is logging land. Of course we’re going to log. You knew that when you took this place.”

Did I? Did I know that? I’ve come from city life. I don’t know anything about logging land.

One of my favorite trees is deep in the part of the forest being logged. I speak to it every day. She speaks back. She’s full of wisdom. I don’t tell this to the landlord, who is old school and won’t understand this weird tenant who has friendships with trees.

From this event, a novel is born. Over the next few years, I will build a story of a mystic 11-year-old whose best friend is a tree named BLUE.

Maisie-Grace is a tree-talker, a mystic, and she has dreams and visions that come true.

She has to learn to hide her gifts from everyone, and by the end of the book, she has to decide — will she be herself and talk about what she sees and knows? They’re cutting down the forest, will she let them cut her down too?

The book is about being different, about accepting our own inner natures as a way to honor the natural world.

Blue is available for pre-order at most online retailers and launches in January 2025.
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Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

BLUE took about four years to write, and it was an emotional roller coaster.

Because I didn’t have a nurturing childhood, I wanted to convey a mystic child who had a mother who was positive and loving about her little girl’s unique gifts.

But that’s not what happened in the writing of the book. When writing a novel, you have to let go of control. You have to let your characters take you where they want to go. If you try to control them, your book will stall, you’ll become stuck.

In the end, the character of the mother did not go the way I thought she would. In fear, she does not accept her child’s mystic gifts. Maisie-Grace learns to hide her truth from her mother, pushes down who she really is, and tries to be “normal”.

As I was writing, I felt like I was the mother character in this book, reparenting my inner mystic child. But now my mother character wasn’t nurturing her child. I was beyond frustrated.

Over time, this challenge became a lesson in deep compassion for the mother, who was only trying to protect her daughter. She didn’t want Maisie-Grace to see so much and know so much at such a young age. She was frightened for her. Throughout the book, we watch as the mother has to come to terms with her own fear. Accepting her daughter for who she really is will help the mother accept herself, too.

I learned a lot of compassion for parents in the process.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I’m a visual artist, novelist, and book coach. I have a yurt art/writing studio in the woods in rural Oregon.

As a novelist, I have four literary novels out, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. They follow one protagonist around the world as she comes to terms with being a mystic amid a planet rocked by climate change. I’m working on Ether, which is a memoir, showing how a modern mystic lives, loves, and works living in two worlds — the normal world, and the world beyond the veil.

As a visual artist, I’m working on a series called the Bruised Goddess: Honoring the Feminine by Acknowledging the Bruises. I use mixed media on paper and canvas to convey themes like Hunger, Silence, Dreams, and more.

As a book coach, I work with clients all over the world on memoir, self-help, and fiction. The subjects range from spiritual memoir to dystopian novels about a world on the brink of climate chaos.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?

I love the creative process. When I’m writing, I feel embodied, authentic. With visual art, I dance with color and texture and feel wild and untamed. When I’m coaching, I love seeing my clients open soulfully and emotionally. I love watching the process of their unfoldment. I love how the creative arts nurture our souls.

I love nature, the smells, textures, the pouring rain, the mud, the call of the wild.

My frustrations lie mostly with a system that doesn’t allow the soul of a person to flourish, doesn’t nurture our authentic selves.

I’m frustrated with a focus on buying and selling instead of the health of the land, the oceans, the skies.

I’m frustrated with at birth how we’re thrust into restrictive roles that do not allow our souls to flourish.

What kind of world could we manifest if we were all fully embodied in our creative power? Imagine!

Pricing:

• 15.95

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.carolineallen.com
• Instagram: @carolineallenartist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/empoweredcreative
• Yelp: https://www.youtube.com/@121063carrie