Today we’d like to introduce you to Gaffney Taylor.
Hi Gaffney, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hello beautiful souls! I am Gaffney Taylor, the founder of Here There Be Earth Angels, a wellness business that focuses on using creativity and intuition to heal your emotional wellbeing through various offerings as an ICF- Certified FLOW Expressive Arts Coach, MFA creative writer, experienced photographer, Intuitive Energy Healer, and Artist. Something I rarely talk about is my experience as a child, but I believe it is important for both children and adults to be aware of what it means to lose touch with your imagination and know how to return to this state when needed, for children know more than anyone else what it means to have a vivid and free mind, only to have such marvelous ideas shoved to the ground like dust balls moving slowly across an empty field to conform to society’s standards and “grow up.” Our imaginations are gold.
Throughout my 30 years on this planet, I’ve always held on to a sense of stubbornness that I’ve combined with observation over my time through education, looking for the nooks and crannies in my life that need mending, while standing up for what I need. At times, this method has caused issues, but it has also taught me that time is non-linear and that if you allow yourself to take a stand away from silence and advoctae for yourself from a mindful place of good intent for yourself and others, you might just stumble down a rabbit hole that leads you somewhere beautiful.
In 2018, I almost didn’t graduate from college, facing burnout and struggling with addiction issues, undiagnosed ADHD, PTSD, OCD, and diagnosed Bipolar Disorder. Through the help of friends, family, and my great medical team, I managed to graduate. After that, I went back to school for a fashion photography certificate, and halfway through that degree my mother passed away from a 6 year battle with ovarian cancer. My whole world shattered. I “got in my own way” mentally as numerous people said at the time, struggling to keep up with the work load, but looking back, I needed more support for the heightened state of trauma and grief I found myself in. I worked in the field of fashion photography for a year. I was discouraged from applying for an MFA in creative writing by some people in my life, but I stuck to what I knew I needed subconsciously at the time and had faith in the people who believed in me. I needed to think. to dream about ideas. And through daydreaming and intentional action steps for ideas around my sense of identity and relationships, I’ve healed so many personal wounds and understood my life story and path profoundly to help others. Since then, I’ve enjoyed viewing life like a fun experiment.
I’ve wondered why so many of us as youth and adults struggle to just sit with our own thoughts in silence and be ok with what surfaces. We’ve lost sense of our purest desires, the “good stuff,” the positive potential and joy for what we actually want our life to look like and not just the bare minimum; the necessities to survive. Food, Shelter, and Connection. There are three ways I’ve gotten back in touch with child-like imagination to continue to never give up on my dreams.
1. I am always inventing new ideas as a ficiton writer. I have fun with the healing process by pretending to go on experimental adventures as pirates or a wolf running free in the forest, or a detective solving mysteries at the local library archives, I just love the idea of “make believing” with the help of research. There’s so much joy to be found in being silly, and the result lead to pride in creating something original. It makes life a little bit less mundane.
2. Giving my troubles and disorders names and context by learning about why things went wrong in my past to prevent the same thing from happening in the future has been tremendously insightful. Topics that scared me away from understanding myself now cause me to become a lifelong pursuer of knowledge and an aspiring healer, expanding my worldview to make room for attracting better times into my life for myself and others. Don’t run away from the information that will make you more keen on enriching your life.
3. No matter your background, allow yourself to feel gratitude for self care and release guilt and shame from your nervous system for prioritizing yourself. Tell me dear earth angels: Can you allow yourself to answer the classic question– “If money were not an issue, what would you do with your life?” Would you be a world traveler? Would you go to graduate school? Would you run your own business? are good questions….But wait… let me take it a step further. “If your basic needs and rights as a human being were provided for in every way possible and you could feel that safety in your body and mind on a daily basis, what would you focus on next? Would you attend an improv show that makes you laugh so hard you couldn’t breathe from happiness and everyone complimented your laugh but it didn”t matter because YOU already love yourself? Who would you want to spend your time with after 10 years apart of no contact? When it rains outside, are you annoyed or would you feel the sensation of the raindrops hitting your skin and smile, knowing that you’re alive? Do you hug a pillow at night when you don’t have another living being to hold you? How do you take care of yourself? This is the essence of imaginative problem solving. Try silly things. Try serious things. But above all, take action in alignment with what works for YOUR goals at YOUR stage of life. Everyone is on their own journey. Just never forget your inner child. They are inside your heart center, ready to be acknowledged and running barefoot on soft grass, the morning sun always returning over the horizon of the earth to light the way every time night shadows the path ahead. Eventually, with time, your inner child will know the moon will illuminate the night, so it’s not scary.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As I briefly stated, I’ve struggled with multiple diagnoses throughout my life. Each phase of my life still feels like a new lifetime that teaches me a new lesson. I was a thorned rose with too many seasons to rebloom, but I met the right people at the right time to put me on the path to become my best self, compassionate gardeners who shed my thorn-like tough barriers for a sensitive, compassionate new personality every 3 years the more I matured and gained new observational, stubborn insights on life. I navigated tough life lessons on the nature of relationships, finances, sanity vs. insanity, grief and hope, dreams and nightmares like a flower bending helplessly under the weight of a heavy rain storm, and then decided I was done with that notion and became a butterfly, flying free, instead of something to be picked pretty and left to memory like the nature of losing people we care about or despise or later regret letting go, although those times are meaningful in their own unique ways. We all have what we need inside of us, and our desires for life are different for each of us. And that’s ok.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I blend creativity and intuitive insight to guide clients gently and honestly through the process of letting go of what no longer serves their best interests. With a positive and knowledgeable mindset of seeing the potential in people for change, my goal is to help you feel the most seen, heard, and healed for who you aspire to be by your terms. We all grow up and lose touch with such basic needs like laughter, joy, freedom, and happiness, and it can become so easy to allude us, that we wonder where we are in our lives.
But let me tell you, I have a few answers up my sleeve for you. My expressive arts coaching certification taught me that each of us has what we already need inside of us, we just tend to be unaware of how to make our subconscious conscious, or in other terms, bringing to our awareness to the things we repress in the back of our minds that need acklowedgement. Therefore, I help others bridge the gap between their subconscious and conscious by incorporating quiet time with art and a de-briefing afterwards for better self-awareness of the client. I help others connect with their divine feminine and masculine energies tha all of us have and are often stifled one way or another. I help others achieve balance. We need to normalize as a society that it’s ok for men to be sensitive and it’s ok for women to have a sense of power in their lives and confidence.
I help others break down mental blocks and experience breakthroughs through their own unique creative, intutive expression because I think more so now that ever people feel divided in so many ways (with each other and themselves), and a better understanding of the dualities of life that are thrown at us (for a not-so-fun spi) is important for making a wider impact for ourselves and others. It’s all about removing the stagnant energy in your life and trasmuting it into a beautiful flow of life force energy that feels effortless. I include a short meditation in my sessions in the beginning to set a calm tone for clear thinking, one-to-one coaching, and workshops to own your power as a unique individual worthy of your time. I love bringing a lot of personality, fun, and storytelling to the table when running my business to bring light-hearted peace, but enlightened growth in my clients.
Above all, I run my business like a trusted friendship, where you know you will be unconditionally accepted for who you are despite your struggles, and integrity is important to how I run my business. What is said during worskhops and sessions stays in those sessions, only reopened the next time you come back in.
As a writer, I have goals to publish my fiction and teach others how to think about writing in a way that can help them grow as a person without ego destruction and find the joy in life again. There are so many times I hold back laughter in coffee shops at the things I’m writing about. I can’t wait to share my work soon with the world. And to build community to spread healing. Do the things that bring you full body joy, always. We’re going down the misty road of life for the long haul not the short term earth angels, so I know there are rainbows along the way for us to marvel at and a hot cup of tea in a pretty forest castle waiting for us at each milestone we achieve for you.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
The most important lesson I’ve learned along my journey is to never forget the worth of my voice. Staying silent will not save me from the struggles of my life, and being brave enough to speak for the rights of myself and others is so important for change. We need new voices in the world with original ideas and opinions. We need healthy, educated communities that thrive on positivity and co-collaboration. What goes in tangent with using our voices is knowing that we cannot please everyone in the entire world and that sometimes, people will misunderstand us when they are not as healed.
Picking and choosing who to keep in your life can make relationships more meaningful through letting go of the trauma knots that keep you stuck, and attracting into your life the opportunitines that matter. It’s funny how as an adult, you look back at your younger self and see the many lives you’ve lived, each one like a peg in the heart that healed or destroyed you, but ultimately taught you how to heal humanity. That has been my insight. I do not wish ill-will on anyone, including people who have hurt me in the past. I simply wish to live a life where I will make a difference for others in my own unique, creative way.
Pricing:
- I’m currently volunteering my time with free 3 package sessions for potential clients to have a sample of working with me. Please email me at gaffneytaylorcreative@gmail.com
- I’m also currently planning workshops to host. Keep an eye out on my instagram for updates.
Contact Info:
