Making Lemonade

A creative community for those of us who want to squeeze the most out of this thing we call life, lemons and all.

Hey! I'm Cassie.

I’m a writer, creative mentor, recovering wanderer, long-distance caregiver, cat and coffee lover, and barefoot table-sitting journaler.

This is Making Lemonade, a place to land for creative and curious internal and external explorers, dreamers, and humans looking for connection, community, and bright stars to help lead the way on dark nights.

While it touches on some big topics, including being human, grief, loss, death, and dementia, Making Lemonade is also an ode to creativity, seeing the light, truth, and wisdom in all our stories, and exploring what into what it means to be who we want to be in the world today.

I’m so glad you’re here.

What is Making Lemonade?

Born as a creative experiment from the ashes of a real tough time, Making Lemonade is a weekly newsletter about love, life, and lemons - and how we can learn to love the lemons life gives us.

After spending 15 years working as freelance writer for big publications, I realised there was something big missing: connection.

I wanted to be able to actually talk to my readers; not just feel like there was this big insurmountable wall between us. Especially when we're going to hard places or going through hard times.

Having been on a wild journey myself these past few years, I've realised that's when we need each other most: even if it's just a reminder we're not alone.

This life can be tough and bitter - but in the same breath, beautiful and sweet; just like lemons and lemonade.

I've also found through my work as a creative mentor that we often already have a lot of the answers we seek inside ourselves. Sometimes we just need to find the right key - or question - to unlock them.

Making Lemonade is my little way of bridging that gap, sharing the stories, asking the questions, and building a creative community full of incredible folks from all walks of life and all over the planet.

I do this by sending out weekly(ish) posts and inviting those who want to journey deeper into their own writing and creativity the option to upgrade and join us for monthly co-writing/co-creating calls.

Read more about Making Lemonade.

Why subscribe?

Every week (or so), I send a free post from my little bush home in Western Australia straight to your inbox. These posts are on a variety of topics, but tend to weave together personal updates and essays, BTS business things, and other fun insights.

If you want to share what comes up, you are always welcome to join the conversation in the comments. I love the ways we can all see snippets of our own lives in one another's stories and how we can use that to learn and grow together.

Of course, if you don’t want to share publicly, that’s fine too - I still love to hear from you. Just hit “reply” on your email and you’ll find your way to me, too!

At the moment, most of my posts are free. However, they take a long time to write and put together, and so I am very grateful to my paid subscribers for supporting me and my work and helping me show up week after week. You are incredible.

Paid subscriptions

I love the community element of writing and gathering together, so I’ve turned this space behind-the-paywall into a writing club and creative community, where we get to gather together once a month - or more.

For now, this looks like monthly cowriting sessions, along with paid posts about more personal topics or things I’m still figuring out. I also have a chat channel where you can ask me anything.

One of my favourite things about being a creative mentor is how I can share all the random knowledge I’ve picked up over the years, and I love being able to share that with my subscribers, too.

I also offer seasonal creative writing and sharing circles to my founding members. These are wonderfully supportive sessions where we write in community and can share our words, if we feel called. I’m currently enrolled in circle facilitator training and I absolutely adore running these spaces.

Upgrade to paid

About me

I'm a freelance writer-turned-creative mentor and workshop facilitator, currently based on the outskirts of Perth in Western Australia.

After spending nearly seven years living on the road, I flipped a coin and ended up here in 2019, just before my world - and the world - fell apart.

Within weeks, I lost my travel writing career and the identity I’d spent years honing, and ended up stuck on the other side of the world from all my family and friends, forced to watch my mum descend into the depths of young-onset Alzheimer’s via Zoom.

Since then, I've been on a very different kind of journey. One where I've learned a lot about myself, people, nature, and the human mind, and found ways to align all the chapters of my past with my present, and find joy and hope and love amongst it all.

While it hasn't been an easy ride, it has taught me a lot about life, love, loss, and all the different ways we can turn lemons into lemonade.

Now, I'm here to share those insights and write the words I wish I'd been able to read back then.

Creative mentoring

After spending the last 12+ years building a creative career - and learning pretty much every single lesson the hard way - I started up a creative mentoring practice designed to help people get through the sticky, icky stuff and turn it all into lemonade.

If you’re building a creative business or practice, and/or trying to navigate a tough time in your life, I’d love to help. For more info, check out my website.

You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and sign up here for updates.

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