For more than 30 years Kelly Richey was a touring blues artist. She shared the stage with music legends and was compared to icons Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix.

Practicing, promoting, recording, creating and performing required more time and more pressure than many corporate careers.

Still, it wasn’t her only pursuit.

Kelly’s days were also spent teaching guitar, writing and leading writing groups, and coaching others to find their own passions.

Even for someone who has ADHD, that is a heck of a work load!

Actually, she says, it was her struggles, challenges and triumphs over having severe dyslexia that gave her both an insatiable appetite for learning and a passion for inspiring others.

A transformation.

The past eight years have seen Kelly commit to sobriety, earn certification as a true purpose and a dream coach; and certification as a facilitator for Women Writing for (a) Change. She is also a spiritual director trained by Wellstreams Spirituality Network and continues to teach guitar.

But these days Kelly awakes in her downsized home and begins her morning with a cup of coffee on her back porch that is followed by a yoga routine, and reflection. She is committed to walking her 10,000 steps every day.

She gets great satisfaction from leading her newest writing series at Women Writing for (a) Change, Celebrating Our Struggles.

Oh yes, and she still does play her Blues. You can’t take that out of her! The Spearkshakers, her newest music project, includes Sherri McGee who Kelly describes as, “an amazing performer, the most musical drummer I’ve ever had the privilege of playing with. And she is one of the best friends I have ever had.”  Learn more about The Spearkshakers here.

Please read my Q and A with Kelly to learn more.

On your writing series, Celebrating Our Struggles, I bet there is a story behind how you chose that theme. Can you explain why, how personal this is to you?

After a decade of healing and personal development, I’ve learned that the gifts I have, come through the struggles I have endured. I believe that you don’t have to be a “writer” to write. For me, writing has been a form of healing, and I learned as a teen, that a piece of paper always listened.

The theme of this program has ended up centered on self-care, “radical self-care,” to be more exact! At the end of my first year of spiritual director training, I received my valuation from Sister Carol Ann. My evaluation read, “Kelly shows great promise and the art of spiritual direction, but if she’s going to succeed, she must practice RADICAL SELF-CARE!” My journey to discover what radical self-care looked like, began to unfold as “Celebrating Our Struggles” was created.

In the class, we learn the art of loving ourselves on a deeper level, and we develop daily self-care practices that work. We reflect on the narrative of our own story, and how the stories that we tell define who we are. We look at the sacred and explore what it takes to view ourselves as sacred– someone worth loving. We dare to look at our dreams, as a journey, rather than a destination. And finally, we look at the gifts we have discovered, those gifts that make us who we are, and how we might carry our gifts, as lights, into the world.

When people ask me about this program, many say, “but I’m not a writer,” and I say, “you don’t have to be a writer, to write.” They also say, “but I don’t have any real struggles currently in my life,” and I asked them, “what is your current level of self-care?” I’ve yet to find anyone who does not struggle with self-care, loving themselves, or pursuing their dreams as a journey, not a destination. For now, I’ve expanded the title to “Celebrating Our Struggles: The Power of Self-Care.” This synthesis project accurately reflected my journey. It takes all that I’ve learned and allows me to work with people and including myself, on the journey of wholeness.

How has writing helped you in your own life?

I had learning disabilities and I struggled in school. I was dyslexic, and when I graduated from high school, I read on a fourth or fifth-grade reading level. Growing up with learning disabilities had an impact on my self-esteem and self-worth. At the time in which I grew up, there was very little support for people with learning disabilities; as a result, I felt like a failure, and I felt misunderstood.

In my early teens, I learned that a piece of paper always listened, and that’s where I turned. Everything I wrote a stuffed in a milk crate and pushed under my bed. Today I have eight boxes filled with things that I’ve written, from my early teens through my mid 30s: spiral notebooks, loose-leaf paper, bar napkins, and brown paper bags. By my mid-30s, I was carrying a journal. Today I have at least 50 journals filled and stacked on my shelves. I also carried a cassette recorder with me wherever I went, capturing song ideas from lyrics to guitar riffs. I have three milk crates filled with old cassette tapes that when I transferred to digital format, they were 72 hours’ worth of material.

Whatever modality we use to capture our thoughts is of little importance. What’s important is that we capture what we feel inspired to express. I’ve read very few physical books in my life. However, thanks to books on tape from the Blind and Dyslexic program, offered by the library, CD’s, Audible, and my Kindle reader, I’ve read hundreds of books. For me, writing is a form of self-expression, and over the years, I’ve developed my skills. Currently, I use a program called Grammarly.com, and this program has changed my life. As someone who struggles with reading, spelling, and grammar, this program has empowered me to be able to write without the assistance of an editor.

When I became a writing facilitator at WWf(a)C, it was my single most significant accomplishment in life. It’s difficult to express in words what it feels like to achieve the dream that you never thought was possible and a dream that took over 40 years to complete. I’m excited by technology; it’s changed my life in many ways. Technology has given me the ability to access books that I would’ve never otherwise been able to read.

My struggle to read did not make me a writer; it made me write. I got my first computer in 1996, and thanks to email, I was forced to write. It’s taken me 20 years of writing to begin feeling confident in my skills as a writer. My struggle to learn made me a teacher— I experienced early in my life, the importance of a teacher that cared, and a teacher that would not give up on a student. I have no greater passion than teaching–it rivals any passion that I’ve ever had for playing guitar, and that’s a big statement.

What would you like to say to people about making change happen in their own lives?

Do not underestimate the power of self-care! Daily self-care practices bring about significant change. There is no magic bullet that changes our lives– it’s what we put into practice each day that makes the difference. When I got a guitar, I had to learn to play. There is no program on YouTube, that would have made me a guitar player– it was my daily practice routine that produced results. Ten years ago, I got sober, and I lost 50 pounds. My journey to help others heal has been part of my healing process, and today, I work with clients by using the 360 Wellness approach. This approach looks at every area of clients’ lives; a determines what is out of balance and what steps it takes to bring balance through daily the application of daily self-care practices.

And self-care is powerful, it’s simple, and it works!

Please visit Kelly’s website to learn more about her and her healing arts.