Alive Wire

20/04/2026

Hello there🙋‍♀️

The really good news is that there is more to celebrate. With the Alive Wire Academy launched, it's time to bring back the Alive Wire Wisdom Circle. I am so happy about this! Yes, it is time!

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

To be transparent, Alive Wire Wisdom Circle went into "sleep mode" for quite a long time. Now it's time for a revival.

Instead of meeting once a week, as we did during the pandemic years, we will be meeting on the last Sunday of the month.

The Alive Wire Wisdom Circle is my gift. In other words, there is no cost whatsoever.

Alive Wire Wisdom Circle
This Sunday 26 April at 6pm (SAST)
Online gathering exploring a specific wisdom theme each and every month, together.

You will need to register in order for me to email you the ZOOM LINK.

Come along..... the wisdom theme is always a surprise!

The back story:

As you know, the Alive Wire Academy launched on Sunday a week ago. It was a wonderful, engaging, insightful, participatory, one-off event. Thank you so much, again, to all who attended.

We were a full house and, together, we explored the nature of celebration, what has been hollowed out from the way we celebrate and the cost of this. We discussed the relational aspect of celebration, the original function of celebration and then we learned through "doing" celebration. Witnessing, acknowledging, reflecting, pausing.

We experienced for ourselves how celebration is a conscious, communal act of marking an experience as significant; stopping to say, in the presence of others...
..this happened, this mattered, and we are changed by it.

We talked about the elephant in the room - which I named as a reluctance to celebrate in dark and turbulent times and we unpacked and "made sense" of this.

I asked a number of questions and there was space for individuals to speak with absolutely no pressure on those who preferred not to speak.

Actually, the lauch gave people who attended and taste of an Alive Wire Wisdom Circle.

Read what others have said about the Wisdom Circle and don't forget to register!

https://alivewireacademy.com/wisdom-circle/

16/04/2026

Alive Wire Academy is officially launched and I am super excited to announce that the Alive Wire Wisdom Circle is back!

We will be gathering on the LAST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH. The first circle is this month. Yes April. In a couple of weeks! Please diarise Sunday 26 April 6.00 pm (SAST) and don't forget to register if you haven't already so that you can receive the Zoom link.

Something happened last Sunday that I'm still sitting with. Over 30 of us gathered for the Alive Wire Academy Launch and Wisdom Party.

The theme for the evening was the wisdom of celebration. We explored this wisdom theme from a number of perspectives: relational, foundational, actual, cultural and counter-cultural.

What unfolded through the questions, in the sharing, in the witnessing and the acknowledging, reminded me exactly why I do this work.

What we did, together, was see how celebration, at it's core, is a kind of marking, noting or highlighting. Celebration happens when we take the time in the busyness of our ordinary lives to say: “Something happened that mattered, and we are going to acknowledge that it matters, together, before we move on.”

When we celebrate we mark a moment in time as significant. And without this, life becomes a blur of activity with little chance to make meaning or digest (integrate) experience.

When something is acknowledged, and witnessed, and digested, it becomes real.

Celebration requires us to stop, pause, reflect, slow down and to look back into order to look forward. The problem is - pausing isn't productive. In our largely Western culture, time paused is time wasted. So we say, "I'll celebrate when the work is done." But the work is rarely done. The finish line keeps moving and we keep moving on to the next thing.

This means we miss out on the chance to embed learning, make meaning, create shared memories and communal coherence, to re-synchronise, bond and reinforce belonging.

We miss the chance to stop and say: “This happened. This mattered. I am changed. We are here. We made it through.”

Remember, the gold is for sharing.

True celebration says: “I am enough. This was enough. This moment is complete." This then closes the open tabs and allows for completion and integration, new energy and movement.

We examined what was beneath the noise and the tinsel. What celebration does when it's real. And what it costs us when it's absent or hollow or rushed past. We didn't shy away from the elephant in the room and talked openly about the very real reluctance to celebrate during dark times and the discernment required to hold the tension between joy and sorrow.

One woman at the launch spoke of returning her father's ashes to Russia after two years of effort and how this was something she had never properly marked. Then there was a PhD completed but never truly witnessed. A life begun again after divorce. A community-hour led through pain and received without pity.

I told my own story. Imperfectly. Honestly. I crossed a threshold - right there, in that room, witnessed by all who attended.

Now the Wisdom Circle is back. Woo Hoo!!

The first one is this Sunday, 26 April.

Come if you can. Bring someone if you like. The more the merrier.
→ Sign up and details here:
https://alivewireacademy.com/wisdom-circle/
See you Sunday. 🌀

Blessings and love,
Gwendolen

Courses and Coaching in Spiritual Maturity, Soul Growth and Self-Leadership Alive Wire Academy is home to a series of transformational courses and coaching programs designed to help you grow and evolve. Alive WireWisdom Circle A free monthly gathering dedicated to cultivating clarity and coherence,....

09/04/2026

We are counting down the days 🗼🗼🗼

The Alive Wire Wisdom Party and Launch is now 3 days away ☀

We will gather on Sunday April 12 at 6pm (SAST) for 1.5 hours 🕰️

The specific theme for the launch is the wisdom of celebration 🎶

I am so excited to be hosting this gathering and really look forward to seeing you there, IF you can make it and IF you feel moved to attend. If you are keen, click below for the Zoom link 🎁

This is going to a time to reflect and celebrate 🔸

It is going to be heart-opening, thought-provoking, insightful and super interactive 🔷

You will need to sign up to get the Zoom link which will then be emailed to you. Link in comments 🎈🎏🎊🎉

ALSO ....
..just letting you know that the ⭕️ALIVE WIRE WISDOM CIRCLE ⭕️ is back!! We gathering will be on 26 APRIL 2026 at 6PM (SAST). Note this is a separate event to the launch.
From now on Alive Wire Wisdom Circle will be meeting on the last Sunday of the month. 💛

02/04/2026

We are counting down the days 🗼🗼🗼

The Alive Wire Wisdom Party and Launch is now 11 days away ☀

We will gather on Sunday April 12 at 6pm (SAST) for 1.5 hours 🕰️

The specific theme for the launch is the wisdom of celebration 🎶

I am so excited to be hosting this gathering and really look forward to seeing you there, if you can make it and if you feel moved to attend. If you are keen, click below for the Zoom link 🎁

This is going to a time to reflect and celebrate 🔸 It is going to super thought-provoking and insightful and very interactive 🔷

Also, this celebration launch will mark the re-opening of the Alive Wire Wisdom Circle which will now be meeting on the last Sunday of the month ⭕️

Here's the link 🎈🎏🎊🎉

Alive Wire Launch Party is a free, one-off, online, celebratory gathering - highlighting wisdom. You are invited!

05/11/2024

My family and I saw this amazing sculpture when we took mum to the Watts Gallery and Artists Village in Compton for her birthday. George Frederick Watts worked in plaster although I seem to remember that, later, this piece was cast in bronze.

I assume Watts saw the beauty of this equestrian image in the plaster from the onset. He would have had to remove the plaster that kept the beauty of the form from appearing.

This is what we do when we do spiritual work.

We don't suddenly become loving, compassionate, joyful beings. We do the work. We desire to change. We use our intentions. We see our powerlessness. We reach out for help. Our teachers appear as we are ready. We become more aware. Slowly, slowly over time, we see ourselves changing, transforming and evolving. And with awareness we make more conscious choices.

We expose and then removed the plaster - all the falsities and misperceptions.

As we do this, the beauty of the soul starts to shine through.
It's a life-long pursuit but, in time, there is more form. One becomes clearer, more humble, more forgiving, expansive and loving.

I think it was Gary Zukov that said this process allows the energy of your soul to move through you like the breath of a musician through a flute. Eventually you cannot tell where your personality leaves and your soul begins.

The soul and the personality align.

Only we can do this work. We are the artist of our soul's growth. We have to keep chipping away; exposing, intending, purifying and seeking the Divine as we go.

The promise is, as we do this, as we "do the work", that we will transform. A beautiful horse and rider appears through the plaster. A David appears through the marble. And as we transform, so the collectives in which we participate also transform. Conversely, there is no way we can participate in the transformation of any collective unless we are in a process of transformation.

So let's start at home. Building the bridge between our heads and our hearts. Let's mind our own business and get on with our own business of creating beauty and truth and goodness here and now. As we hold the vision for change in the world, let's continue, quietly, to make traction and change in ourselves, finding the beauty (in the darkness) within.

15/10/2024

When "i" is replaced by "we" even illness becomes wellness

14/10/2024

Did you know the word LISTEN contains the word SILENT?

Settle
Quieten
Listen

04/03/2024

I am reminded of a coaching seminar I attended as part of my coach training back in 2010, given by Dumisani Magadlela. He referred to Njabulo Ndebele, former Vice-President of UCT (University of Cape Town), who said

"The future of South Africa will be multi-dimensional."

Barbara Nussbaum in her book "Personal Growth African Style" talks about inspiring leadership through reclaiming wholeness as a human being, as an African, as a South African and as a global citizen.

As I continue to learn to love my human, embrace being alive at this time, in this place, in this body and grow my faith in and relationship with the invisible realms (call it God if you will), I am better able to be a bridge between the human and the divine knowing this divine is not outside us or above us but a divine spark contained within us. In essence, it is our true nature.

I sense the time is ripe for this re-interpretation and re-experience, this re-membering of our individual and collective multi-layered fullness. Our multi-dimensionality. A "reality" we have been heavily programed to bypass, ignore and even ridicule.

In times when we trust less and less what is real, finding the ground of our being and being open to direct experience of what is real and true (albeit for you) becomes increasingly compelling.

Be great to hear your thoughts...

15/09/2023

Here’s the thing, we have been so caught up on our healing journey - yoga, juicing, trips to Bali, ayahuasca and plant medicine journeys, trying to find our place and purpose, our vision and mission, finding our our tribe; looking for happiness.

All fab and part of the healing and awakening journey.

But… are you asking the million dollar question of yourself?

WHO ARE YOU?

Until we get radically clear on our True Identity, we keep repeating the patterns and cycles of the past.

I love questions. I make a living out of asking questions. I have packaged seven of my most powerful questions to ask into a “Deep Dive wIth Gwendolen” (a one-off 3 hr coaching session).

My worst question is the classic

What do you doooooo?

I’ve learnt to be ok with it but in my youth, in my insecurity, I felt I was being pigeon-holed and judged by this question.

What do you want? What do you truly desire?

These are two favourites. But even these questions don’t quite cut it.

WHO ARE YOU? Now there’s a question!

Most people answer with some attachment to identity.
I am (name)… I come from…. I am a …. I do…..

But the question lends itself to go deeper.

Who are you?

🩵💙🤍

08/07/2023

Be the custodian of your own integrity.

It's OK to say I don't know. It's OK to change your mind. It's OK to pause, be still, do nothing. At the same time, show up and keep showing up. Have a sense of humour. Balance productivity and presence.

03/07/2023

An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.