The universe buries strange jewels within each of us, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels - that’s creative living.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
I don’t know what I think until I write about it.
— Joan Didion
 
 
 

I wildly weave narratives that push edges and inspire curiosity.

I don't shy away from exploring the gray areas of life.

I find home in the awkward and comfort in the unanswered questions.

Keri Shee Photo.jpg

It all started when...

I began creating at a young age.  My friend's dad worked for a paper company and brought home boxes of blank yellow notebooks.  I began writing in them during sleepovers, convincing my friend out of games of truth or dare to write stories with me instead.  Through elementary and middle school, I wrote and illustrated the tablet stories along with The Whipporwill Gazette (a neighborhood newspaper), a fifteen-page story about an American Indian girl, a piece on the Holocaust, a set of short stories inspired by the beloved movie Sliding Doors and countless other creations, (all of which ended up charred after our house was struck by lightening).  

My senior year of high school, my English teacher accused me of plagiarizing my term paper on her favorite novel, The Awakening.  My boyfriend at the time stayed up late with me to fix some of the problems which were mainly citation formatting issues.  I resubmitted the paper and graduated to attend college majoring in occupational therapy.  I slogged through biology, anatomy, physiology, kinesiology and blissed out in my liberal arts requirements.  My American literature professor wrote on one of my little blue exam booklets: You should have been an English major!  In response, I clicked my heels together in a little happy dance. Someone saw my passion for writing!

I began to paint in addition to write.  I painted and painted and wrote and wrote.  I created during the gaps of time I wasn't studying the names of muscles and bones.  Even when I was studying the names of muscles and bones, I wrote poems to help me remember them. (Did you know that there are 52 bones in human feet? 25% of the bones in the human body, now isn't that neat?)  After college, I created art with mental health clients and children then attended graduate school to be that English major my professor saw in me.  I taught middle school language arts and created with adolescents, and let me tell you how these kids moved me.  Their voices are tremendous.  Listen to them.

I created two awesome humans in my womb and birthed and breastfed them and had body art to commemorate our journeys.  Then I birthed Bolder Writers, LLC., creating with young people outside of the classroom environment and wrote some of my favorite pieces of flash fiction here.  I explored the death of my father through writing, and these young people held a space so rich and so powerful.  Weaving my way through a yoga certification, gobs of writing exploring core aspects of my identity, my place in the world, and my past, present, and future poured out of me.  It was like a floodgate opened and woke me from a dead sleep, and my creating was the only way to integrate this newfound awakened state and make any sense of it at all.

Creating has pulled me out of periods of depression, anxiety, and trauma.  It has been my go-to drug of choice, and my hummingbird energy will flit, flit, flit to any project that calls out to me and feels relevant and alive.  I express myself through words, art, characters' inner conflicts, and the way maple leaves quiver on a branch against a gray sky.  My inspiration comes from my life, a life I live with the greatest attempt to seek adventure and growth, to work toward an open heart, and to push edges if it means I get to live my truth.  It comes from nature, yoga, spirituality, my kids, my relationships and little bits of daily goodness like an elderly couple having dinner together after he's silently given her all the cucumbers off his salad.

I believe a story that pushes edges, inspires curiosity, and delves into the gray can truly change the world. I am creative. Uninhibited. 

 
 

For my latest musings on travel, spirituality, parenthood, creating, and everything in between:

 
 
 
We are filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of the Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.”
— Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves