Diamonds in the Sky with Lucy: visual gratitude

"I arise at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving."
--Kahlil Gibran

2014 Reading List

She Can Run - Melinda Leigh
Time Was Soft There - Jeremy Mercer
Hidden - Catherine McKenzie
Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum
Orange is the New Black - Piper Kerman
The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty
Three Wishes - Liane Moriarty
The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
Dusk & Other Stories - James Salter *
The Authentic Swing - Steven Pressfield
And the Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki
Quiet: The Power of Introverts - Susan Cain
Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert

2013 Reading List

A Visit from the Good Squad - Jennifer Egan
A Week in Winter - Maeve BInchy
ACT Made Simple - Russ Harris
All the Summer Girls - Meg Donohue
Bossy Pants - Tina Fey
Cooked - Michael Pollan
Crossfire Trilogy - Sylvia Day
Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Dr. Blair's French in No Time - Robert Blair
Edge of the Earth - Christina Schwartz
Fear of the Abyss - Aleta Edwards
Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver
Girls in White Dresses - Jennifer Close
How to Eat a Cupcake - Meg Donohue
Lessons in French: A Novel - Hilary Reyl
Listening to Your Life - Frederick Buechner
Malarky - Anakana Schofield
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Openhearted & Brave - WayPo
Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
Pilgrim - David Whyte
Proof of Heaven - Eben Alexander
Secret: A Novel - L. Marie Adeline
Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra
Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga - Deepak Chopra
Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick
The Art of Possibility - Rosamund & Ben Zander
The Final Piece - Maggi Myers
The Good Earth - Pearl S Buck
The Keep - Jennifer Egan
The Round House - Louise Erdich
The Storyteller - Jodi Picoult
The Weary Motel - Mark Spencer
The Woman Upstairs - Claire Messud
This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz
Tiny Beautiful Things - Cheryl Strayed
Twelve Tribes of Hattie - Ayana Mathis
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce
Vanishing Acts - Jodi Picoult
When I Found You - Catherine Hyde

Who is Lucy?

Lucy is the alter ego of Me, Kayce S. Hughlett—life coach, creative muse, speaker and author. She is the boldest part of my voice. Lucy is all that irritates me and a reminder of all that inspires me. She is playful, cynical, carefree, serious, a helper and a loner. She reminds me to get over myself and not take Me so seriously—to put my hair up, don my crown with flowers and just be—glistening and glowing; clear-headed and free; light as the clouds not dark as a thunderhead; playful and joyous not mean and controlling; a cartoon; a caricature; a vision of life; my soul mate; my companion; my friend. She is with me always. She brings me balance. She inspires me to create. She stretches me and makes me laugh. She reminds me where complaining and controlling take me and when it’s time to stop being complacent—to move—to get past myself and don my pigtails or take up my pen.

diamonds in the sky is our playground. if you're interested in the more "professional me," check out diamonds in the soul where i play for pay. you can explore the tools i offer to help you find your own personal "lucy."

lucy lives. lucy creates. lucy inspires.

What I'm Reading in 2012

The Artist's Rule - Christine V. Paintner*
Seating Arrangements - Maggie Shipstead
Who In This Room - Katherine Malmo
No Plot? No Problem! - Chris Baty
Openhearted and Brave - Rose Regier/Ellen Garbarion
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? - Maria Semple
The Busy Writer's One Hour Plot - Marg McAlister
Steal Like An Artist - Austin Kleon
When Women Were Birds - Terry Tempest Williams*
Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses
Yes - Tim Pieraccini
84 Asanas, Level 1 - Tony Sanchez
Our Husband - Stephanie Bond
Beautiful Ruins - Jess Walter
The Red House - Mark Haddon
The Hypnotist's Love Story - Liane Moriarty
flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
Let's Pretend This Never Happened - Jenny Lawson
A Dog's Purpose - W. Bruce Cameron
Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Turning the Mind into an Ally - Sakyong Miphan Rinpoche
Change your Mind, Change your Life - Wayne Dyer
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Run - Ann Patchett
11/22/63 - Stephen King
The Witness - Nora Roberts
The Lucky One- Nicholas Sparks
Fifty Shades Trilogy - EL James (warning: contains explicit sexual content)
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Some Assembly Required - Anne Lamott
The Light Shines in the Darkness - Stephanie Davis
The Healer - Jonathan Odell
An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin
The Valkyries - Paulo Coelho
Finding Your Way in a Wild New World - Martha Beck*
The Naked Buddha - Adrienne Howley
Glittering Images - Susan Howatch
Comfortable with Uncertainty - Pema Chodron*
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
*in process

Favorite Quotes

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be." Shel Silverstein
"Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning." Gloria Steinem
"One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out. . . ." C.S. Lewis
"Life is not a path of coincidence, happenstance, and luck, but rather an unexplainable, meticulously charted course for one to touch the lives of others and make a difference in the world." Barbara Dillinham
"You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection." Buddha
"If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning. The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living." - Marion Woodman
"All your longings know where to go, but you have to tell them to open their eyes." poet Nick Piombin
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." --Goethe
"Make plans but don't plan results." - Lianne Cordes
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
“We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.” - Jean Vanier
"See how far the little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." -- Wm Shakespeare
"Simplicity and greatness go together." - Monty Cralley
"Mindfulness is neither difficult nor complex: Remembering to be mindful is the great challenge." - Christina Feldman
"Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place." - Henri Nouwen
"Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen
"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery." - Dr. Joyce Brothers
" There are 3 rules to writing a novel, unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maughm
"Bathed in morning light, pray that the lantern of your life move gently this day into all those places where light is needed." -- Macrina Wiederkehr (sevensacredpauses)
"May images come to draw things together for you and bloom juiciness within your soul like sweet oranges in winter." - Christine V. Paintner
"I write to discover what I know."--Flannery O'Connor
“feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal…”--Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed." --Sebastian R.N. Chamfort
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." --Buddah
"There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds." -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full of paradox and contradiction. It's only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast." -- Madeliene L'Engle
"To love beauty is to see light." -- Victor Hugo
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." --Frederick Buechner (on vocation)
"The winds of grace are blowing all the time, you only have to raise your sail."--Sri Ramakrishna
"Laughter is carbonated holiness." (Plan B)--Anne Lamott
"The Divine Voice is not always expressed in words. It is made known as a heart-consciousness." from God Calling
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."--Mother Teresa
"Without the warming & mellowing that good friendship brings into life, we invariably lose gratitude and joy." --Ronald Rolheiser
"it takes courage to become who you really are." e.e. cummings.
"Come to the edge, He said. They said: we are afraid. Come to the edge, He said. They came. He pushed them, and they flew..." Guillaume Apollinaire.
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. ~ James M. Barrie