Have you ever experienced a seemingly small shift in perspective that brought about massive change in your life?

Over the past year, I've been feeling... stagnant. Aspects of my life and work were not flowing easily, and I didn't know why. I had this nagging feeling of being out of touch with myself, unsure of what I wanted from life creatively and personally.

Last week, I returned to Los Angeles from a series of travels that spanned Vermont, New York and Paris. The trip, a mix of work and pleasure, was not one that I expected to change me in the ways that it did.

My trip began with a week of study, furthering my punch needle training at The Oxford Rug Hooking School in Vermont, took me through New York City where I reconnected with old friends, and ended in Paris, where I fell in love with a new city and was inspired in unexpected ways. Over a series of small experiences, conversations and coincidences, this trip reawakened something within my heart, drew an arrow from where I have been to where I am going, and allowed me to dream bigger than I had ever allowed myself to before.

I recently began the practice of writing down my dreams, and while in Paris, I had a particularly vivid dream that I have not been able to forget.

I was in class, trying to fulfill an assignment to write about myself. I stared at the page, feeling like I had nothing to say. As I looked at the few lines I had written, I suddenly realized I had been trying to force an essay, but in fact what I was writing was a poem. The teacher pointed to a phrase about a river, going with the flow, and said "This is not correct. Try something else". I realized that this comparison had been okay for autumn, but I was now in springtime, and the appropriate metaphor for the season I was in now was not a slow flowing river, but a more powerful current, gushing water, a waterfall. I completed the poem easily and felt very proud.

Since my return to Los Angeles, it feels like a dam has broken.

Like the revelations themselves, the resulting changes to my life have been small, but powerful in combination. I am waking up earlier, writing daily, enjoying the pleasure of both food and movement, seeking out new conversations and connection with others, and rediscovering parts of myself that I didn't realize I had lost. I feel lighter, more in tune with myself. There is a surrender in my creative work, a willingness to receive and follow the inspiration that flows naturally rather than forcing things.

The dream was my lightbulb moment, distilling the individual lessons I was learning into simple understanding -- If creating the essay is too difficult, perhaps it is supposed to be a poem. If the old ways of thinking and moving through life aren't working, perhaps they were meant for a season I'm no longer in.

And so I'm changing my perspective, letting the poetry flow, entering springtime, bursting forth, rushing and powerful, ready to go over the edge into the unknown.