Spirited Woman Bloggers

SPIRITED WOMAN BLOGGER TEAM

GREAT NEWS! Our blogger team just keeps on becoming more popular. We now have 10 talented inspired women "covering the beat" for Spirited Woman everywhere - on everything from entertainment, travel, fashion, food, humor, inspiration, health & well-being to being a Spirited Kid. Meet them. They're fantabulous! Plus, we have an array of top guest bloggers, too!

ALLISON BLANKENSHIP

Allison Blankenship is an advocate of living an unexpected life since her own journey includes surprising twists and turns. After being laid off, then downsized and surviving Stage 4 cancer, Allison found her soul mate in Southwest Florida. She moved more than 1,000 miles away from her family and inherited two young children in her new marriage.

As the co-author of four books, Allison is a popular speaker with an empowering message of resilience, life-balance and reinvention. She divides her time between Florida and Alabama with her husband, young adult children and two spoiled cats.

Allison looks forward to hearing stories from other Spirited Women; her email is Allison@AllisonSpeaks.com or visit her website @ www.AllisonSpeaks.com.

ALLISON'S BEAT: INSPIRATION

NANCY ADAIR

Nancy Adair is a spirited traveler. After living in diplomatic communities on four continents and traveling to 65 countries, she is ready to share her knowledge and discoveries.

She has skied everywhere from British Columbia to Europe to New Zealand, snorkeled with stingrays and communed with gorillas in the mist, visited heads of state and been visited by burglars and thieves, trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company and sung Mozart’s Requiem at the memorial for Jordan’s 2005 hotel bombings.

Her approach to travel is depth not breadth. Like Julia Child, another diplomatic spouse, Nancy moves to a new country, plants roots quickly and finds a means to grow her passion.  She connects with the community by monitoring human rights projects or teaching at international schools, where she excels in the field trip. Whether rafting the Ganges, rescuing sea turtles, or picking cocoa beans to make chocolate brownies from scratch, she takes her students deep into the land and the history.

Now residing in the U.S., Nancy pours herself into her first novel, After Me, the Flood, a fictionalized account of her time in the Congo during the last years of Mobutu’s dictatorship.  Nancy can be reached at: nancyadair2002@yahoo.com.

NANCY'S BEAT: TRAVEL

MICHELE HEBERT

Michele Hébert is a visionary in women’s health and spirituality. She is a Raja Yoga and meditation teacher, fitness expert, natural nutritionist and author.   One of her great life chapters was spending four years training with a great spiritual teacher in the jungles of El Salvador during the revolution. Michele sees a clear difference between discipline and committment. “Many people tend to cringe at the word discipline. But when something inspires us and we are passionate about it, comittment flows naturally.”

Her home base is San Diego, California, when she and her husband, Dr. Mehrad Nazari are not leading retreats in exotic locations around the world. Her new book, The Tenth Door: An Adventure Through the Jungles of Enlightenment is the winner of the prestigious 2011 Silver Nautilus Book Award, given to books that are changing the world and the winner of the National Indie Excellence Award for Spirituality. Most recently, the book won the San Diego Book Award.

Michele blends her background in wellness, yoga, meditation and nutrition to guide others in achieving higher levels of health and spiritual awareness and her work has been a transformative factor in the lives of thousands. Check out her website for retreats and products to awaken within you higher levels of health and well-being. www.rajayogis.net.

MICHELE'S BEAT: HEALTH & WELL-BEING 

SHILOH SOPHIA McCLOUD

Shiloh Sophia McCloud is a visionary artist author and teacher as well as a revolutionary entrepreneur and publisher. As a leader in the intentional creativity movement Shiloh champions the importance of self expression for every person and lives her philosophy - that all art forms are tools for individual, social and spiritual transformation.

For over twelve years, Shiloh has owned galleries. Her original paintings are collected internationally and her product line including her books and journals are represented at galleries and fine shops throughout the United States.

Shiloh is the founder of Cosmic Cowgirls, a member run woman and girl owned university and publishing house, actively manifesting her lifelong mission to inspire a creativity movement and provide a platform for voices for transformation to be expressed and shared, promoting a vision of wellness, compassion and empowerment for women and girls. The emphasis of Shiloh’s teachings reside in creativity as a healing tool, the activation of right brain left brain, the cultivation of self honor, self expression, and the work of exploring identity.

What you might like to know about her is that she loves red cowgirl boots and to have long conversations over a cup of tea. That she is passionate about people learning to think for themselves and is a revolutionary at heart!

Her work in both image and word are the perfect companion for delivering Spirit Shots in the Spirited Woman community because Shiloh's work emphasizes a moment in a woman's life - when her possibilities are open to her and are limitless.

SHILOH'S BEAT: SPIRIT SHOTS

DAWN Z BOURNAND

Dawn Z Bournand is a Spirited American Woman living in Paris, France. Founder of Fabulously Successful, a motivational company helping women around the world create success their way, Dawn is a published author, success mentor and international speaker. She has lived in the city of lights for eleven years and is a proud mother of three Franco-American boys.  As a former photographer who studied in France, she has been able to learn about French style first hand. Her website is www.fabulouslysuccessful.com  and e-mail: dawn@fabulouslysuccessful.com.

Dawn looks forward to sharing her enthusiasm for spirited style and Spirited Woman profiles, with you, through her regular Spirited Woman blog posts.

DAWN'S BEAT: SPIRITED WOMAN PROFILES, EX-PAT IN PARIS

Listen to Dawn Z Bournard in a 5-min. audio clip

ALICE

Not all kids stop to think about others every day, but that is only a small part of what makes 13-year-old Alice unique. Alice truly tries to help other people and animals every day. In 2nd grade, she used her entrepreneurial and creative spirit to start a business that generates funds to make this possible. With some help from her web designer mom, she started selling decorated flip flops at www.froufrouflipflops.com to make money for charities.

To keep her imagination in tip-top shape, Alice enjoys running, reading, writing, acting, playing the clarinet and beading jewelry. She’s in 7th grade. Her hero is Dr. Seuss.

ALICE'S BEAT: SPIRITED KID

Listen to ALICE in a 5-min. audio clip

VICKY DECOSTER

Award-winning humor writer Vicky DeCoster has over 25 years of writing experience including humor columns in two magazines. She is the author of Husbands, Hot Flashes, and All That Hullabaloo! and The Wacky World of Womanhood: Essays on Girlhood, Dating, Motherhood, and the Loss of Matching Underwear. Her work has been published in over 60 magazines, books, and on several web sites. This new-age Erma Bombeck is a spirited woman in heart, soul, and body and loves telling a funny story more than anything in the world.

Vicky lives in Nebraska with her husband and two children. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, cycling, running, and of course, laughing at herself. Visit her web site at www.wackywomanhood.com.

VICKY'S BEAT: HUMOR

Listen to Vicky DeCoster in a 5-min. audio clip

MINGMEI YIP

When she was a child, Mingmei Yip made up stories like “how the moon reached to slap the sun” and “how the dim sum on my plate suddenly got up to tango.”

At fifteen, she was thrilled that not only her article got published but she was paid ten dollars for it. Now Mingmei is a best-selling novelist and children’s book writer and illustrator. Her debut novel Peach Blossom Pavilion is the story of the last Chinese Geisha and her new novel Petals from the Sky, is a poignant Buddhist love story.

Mingmei is accomplished in many other fields. A professional player on the Guqin, an ancient Chinese stringed instrument for over 30 years, she was recently invited by Carnegie Hall to perform in “A Festival Celebrating Chinese Culture” in a program with cellist Yo Yo Ma and pianist Lang Lang. She had her solo Goddess of Compassion painting exhibition at the New York Open Center Gallery to great acclaim, taught calligraphy at the City University of New York, and Taichi at the International Women’s Writing Guild.

Mingmei has also lectured extensively on Chinese art and culture at venues including Oxford University, Columbia University, Beijing University, University of Paris, Amsterdam University, Vassar College  and Williams College.

Now on the Spirited Woman’s blogger team, she is thrilled to share her experiences on creative arts with other enthusiasts. Visit her at www.mingmeiyip.com to learn about her books, music, illustrations, paintings and calligraphy. Mingmei would love to hear from you, please email her at mingmeiyip@aol.com.

 MINGMEI'S BEAT: CREATIVE ARTS

LINDA JAY GELDENS

Linda Jay Geldens is delightfully surprised by her life. Happily married, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and works with authors all over the U.S. and in other countries as a book manuscript copyeditor. In the past two years, Linda has completed more than 60 manuscripts, on topics ranging from business to science fiction to novels to memoirs. She is also a promotional writer, and works with clients on Web site text, brochures, newsletters, and articles.

Linda survived a huge “personal earthquake.” She was married for 25 years to a multimedia pioneer, who died unexpectedly in 1994. The following year, Linda moved from Silicon Valley to Marin County, kept working, traveled, made new friends, dated when she was 55 to 60, met her new husband in 1999, and remarried in 2001. The couple went to Paris on their honeymoon!

Linda loves jazz and classical music, visiting art galleries, and meeting new people. She looks forward to hearing from her blog readers.  Her e-mail address is: LindaJay@aol.com, and her website is: www.LindaJayGeldens.com. 

LINDA'S BEAT: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Listen to Linda Jay in a 6-min. audio clip