Kristy Sweetland is a writer, teacher and coach of transpersonal growth and transformation. She holds a master’s degree in psychology and is professionally credentialed as a transformational life coach. Kristy writes exclusively on the subjects of freeing the human spirit and healing and growth through creative expression. She considers Mother Nature to be one of her greatest teachers and utilizes ecopsychology, animism and feminine mythology in much of her work.
Kristy has a private practice in northern New Mexico where she assists others through their own spiritual transformations. When not writing, teaching or coaching, she can be found with her husband and cherished dogs, hiking the gorgeous canyons around her home, day-tripping to the glorious Sangre de Cristo mountain range, weekending to the Colorado Rockies, or scrambling around Ancestral Puebloan ruins in the Jemez Mountains. She also shares her life, if not her hiking adventures, with two magnificent indoor felines who appreciate being mentioned.
Read our review of her memoir, Stark Raving Zen, here.
BOOKS:
Stark Raving Zen: A Memoir of Coming Alive (2020)
Your biggest literary influences:
Leslie Marmon Silko, Glennon Doyle, Elizabeth Gilbert, Joy Harjo, Alice Walker, Carlos Castaneda
Last book read:
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The book that changed your life:
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawna Markova
This book changed my life because it caused an awakening within me. After watching my mother die at a young age, I suffered from a crippling fear of death. When I stumbled upon this book and devoured it in one sitting, I had a revelation that it wasn’t death I feared; it was living a life devoid of meaning. I completely changed the course of my life that day.
Your favorite literary character:
Alice (of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Alice has been walking by my side my entire life, as I’ve navigated paranormal, metaphysical, and other experiences I don’t even know how to categorize. From a very young age, seeing spirits and having unexplainable visionary experiences I was too afraid to talk about, I quietly used her as a guide. I would tell myself that if Alice could handle it, so could I.
Currently working on:
The untitled sequel to Stark Raving Zen.
Words to live by:
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman
Advice for aspiring authors:
It’s the oldest cliche: “Just sit your butt in the chair and write.” Don’t concern yourself with the quality of your first draft; they’re meant to be terrible. Just feel the freedom of your own expression, uncensored and alive. The energy generated by that momentum will create a power inside of you that will drive the process. Care nothing about “what people will think” or “how this makes you look.” Just let yourself out of the cage, and flow with it.
Articles and Reviews:
Born Viral Reviews
Readers’ Favorite
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly
