Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™
Certified Guides
Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides is a formation and training pathway for spiritual directors, creativity coaches, professors, therapists, pastors, and other thoughtful people who feel called to companion writers, artists, and creative souls as they attend to the life of the spirit in the midst of everyday life.
This offering grows out of my broader Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ framework, which holds together my work in spiritual direction, creativity, belonging, nourishment, and flourishing anyway. If Spiritual Direction for Writers® Certified Guides is one focused expression of this work for writers, Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides is a wider training ground for those who want to support creative people with care, depth, and integrity.
Training is offered through online resources, six customized one-on-one sessions, and individualized coursework shaped around each participant’s goals and preferred offerings. Email me at charlotte@charlottedonlon.com to learn more and begin the application process.
What This Training Is
The Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides pathway is a guided experience of formation, learning, and practice for those who want to offer spiritual direction rooted in attention, compassion, curiosity, and care for the creative life.
This is not a quick certification or a one-size-fits-all training. It is a spacious, serious process of learning how to accompany other people well.
Participants will engage the Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ framework through teaching, reflection, practice, and supervised growth. Together, we will explore what it means to companion people who are creating, discerning, grieving, beginning again, tending others, and trying to flourish anyway in the realities of ordinary life.
Who This Is For
This Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides training may be a good fit for you if you are:
A spiritual director who wants to work more intentionally with creative people.
A writer, artist, or creative practitioner who senses a call to companion others.
A pastor, therapist, chaplain, professor, teacher, or caregiver who wants to deepen your contemplative listening.
A thoughtful person who wants to integrate spirituality, creativity, and soul care in a more formal way.
Someone drawn to helping others notice the movements of their inner life, creative life, and spiritual life.
You do not need to be an expert in every art form. You do need to be willing to listen well, reflect honestly, and continue tending your own life as you learn how to accompany others.
Who This Is Not For
This pathway is not a replacement for basic spiritual direction training, therapy, or crisis care. It assumes some existing spiritual grounding and, ideally, some experience in spiritual direction or related soul-tending work. If you’re brand new to spiritual direction and are looking for an introductory spiritual direction program, a more general spiritual direction training may be a better first step.
What Participants Receive
Participants in the Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides pathway can expect:
Teaching on the Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ framework.
Formation in contemplative listening and discernment.
Guidance for accompanying writers, artists, and other creative souls.
Opportunities to reflect on creativity, calling, resistance, grief, joy, and growth.
Practice-based learning that helps translate concepts into real accompaniment.
Support in discerning whether and how this work fits your own calling.
A clearer sense of specific offerings you can provide to creative souls in ways that are grounded, ethical, and nourishing.
My hope is that participants will not only learn how to hold space for others, but also become more rooted in their own life with the divine, their own creative process, and their own capacity to flourish anyway.
The Heart of the Work
At the center of this training is a simple conviction: the creative life and the spiritual life are deeply connected.
People who create and care, who make and tend, who long and question, often need spaces where they can bring the whole of their experience—not just their productivity, not just their success, not just their polished selves. They need spaces where their interior life matters.
Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides are trained to help create that kind of space.
What Makes This Different
This pathway is shaped by my years of work as a spiritual director, writer, teacher, and guide, as well as my experience building Spiritual Direction for Writers® and developing offerings for creative people who want sustainable, nourishing, spiritually attentive lives. The framework is broad enough to hold many kinds of creative callings while staying grounded in a clear philosophy of soul care, belonging, discernment, and flourishing anyway.
Rather than treating creativity as a side topic, this training assumes that creativity is one of the places where people encounter longing, vocation, resistance, delight, grief, and transformation.
What Certification Means
Certification indicates that a participant has completed the training process and met the expectations of the Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides pathway.
That process is shaped by formation, participation, practice, reflection, and demonstrated readiness. I equip Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides with a shared framework, a clear sense of their role, and a deep respect for the people they will companion.
This work matters. People deserve guides who are thoughtful, trustworthy, attentive, and well formed.
A Note About Spiritual Direction for Writers®
Spiritual Direction for Writers® remains a focused offering for writers who want to tend the relationship between their soul and their writing life. Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ is the broader framework that can hold writers and many others whose lives are shaped by creativity, care, meaning-making, and spiritual longing.
Some participants in this pathway may already be rooted in the Spiritual Direction for Writers® world. Others may come from different kinds of creative or helping vocations. All are welcome.
How It Works
Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides is designed as a 1:1, customized training pathway. While the specifics will vary for each person, here’s the general flow:
1. Initial conversation (no obligation)
We begin with a 30-minute conversation to get to know each other, learn about your context, and discern whether this pathway is a good fit. We’ll talk about your current work, your sense of calling, and what you hope to offer once you’ve completed the training.
2. Shared discernment and customized plan
If we decide to move forward, we’ll co-create a training plan that fits your life and goals. This plan will include six 60-75-minute customized training sessions, a final project plan, a general timeline, and the kinds of offerings you’d like to be prepared to offer (spiritual direction, coaching, small groups, retreats, courses, etc.).
3. 1:1 formation and training sessions
Participants train with me twice per month for 60-75 minutes over a span of three months. In those six sessions, we’ll work through the Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ framework, reflect on your own life and practice, and explore how to companion creative souls with depth and care. All sessions take place online (usually via Zoom), so you can participate from wherever you live.
4. Individualized readings and coursework
Between sessions, you’ll have customized readings, reflections, and practices based on your background and goals. Instead of a standardized syllabus, you’ll receive assignments that make sense for your context—whether you’re already a spiritual director, a therapist, a pastor, a creativity coach, or a professor.
5. Practice, reflection, and support
As you begin to experiment with providing your offerings to others, you’ll have space to reflect on what you’re noticing, what feels life-giving, and where you need more support. We’ll adjust the training plan as needed to help you grow in ways that are sustainable and honest. We will have weekly 15-minute check-in calls.
6. Final project
In addition to your agreed-upon training and demonstrated readiness for the work, you will complete all requirements for your final project that you will work towards throughout your training. Completion of your final project may extend beyond the initial three-month training timeframe. Examples of a final project include a workshop, a course, a 1:1 offering for a specific client, or a group experience.
7. Completion and next steps
When you’ve completed the agreed-upon training plan—including your final project—and demonstrated readiness for the work, you’ll be recognized as a Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guide. We’ll also talk about next steps: how you might offer this work in your own context, what boundaries and supports you need, and how to keep tending your own flourishing anyway.
Investment
Three monthly payments of $999 or a one-time payment of $2700 ($297 savings)
Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides training is offered as a 1:1 process with a monthly investment of $999/month that includes two training sessions per month (six total over three months), weekly 15-minute check-in calls (12 total over three months), additional online courses and resources, and weekly customized coursework support and feedback.
How to Begin
If you sense that Spiritual Direction for Creative Souls™ Certified Guides might be part of your calling, email me at charlotte@charlottedonlon.com with a brief introduction, your current context (spiritual director, therapist, pastor, writer, artist, etc.), and what draws you to companion creative souls. I’ll follow up to schedule our initial 30-minute conversation.
About Charlotte Donlon
Charlotte Donlon is a writer, spiritual director, creativity coach, and gatherer whose work has woven together themes of belonging, art, and soul exploration for more than 25 years. With a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing (2015-2018), a certificate in spiritual direction (2018-2020), and a life coach certification (2026), Charlotte guides individuals and communities in fostering sanctuaries of acceptance and connection—her approach warmly welcomes people from all backgrounds, regardless of faith tradition or spiritual inclinations.
Her essays have been featured in prominent publications such as The Washington Post, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, and The Millions, among others. A new essay about art conservation, Joan Mitchell, and mystery is forthcoming with Image.
She is the author of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (Broadleaf Books, 2020) and the forthcoming Spiritual Direction for Writers (Eerdmans, September 2026), as well as the founder of initiatives like Spiritual Direction for Writers®, Take More Retreats, Belonging through Art™, and Parenting with Art®.
Flourish Anyway® is an online hub for Charlotte’s writing, spiritual direction, and special projects that nurture creative flourishing and belonging, providing compassionate, practical, and artful resources to her readers, clients, and broader audience. Subscribe to Charlotte’s primary email newsletter here.
