The Four C’s: How Wholeness Became My Compass
The Four C’s didn’t come to me as a brand or a plan. They came through grief, through unknowing, and through a single question that quietly changed everything. While I was in the Trauma, Grief, and Renewal Certificate Program class recently at Southwestern College, one of my teachers shared something his own mentor had once given him. He talked about how loss often shatters our spiritual frameworks. When that happens, his mentor had told him, we’re not left with better answers, we’re left with a better question:
What do you actually turn toward now? What truly grounds you?
His mentor had given him a simple assignment, and he passed it on to us. Choose four words. Not beliefs. Not doctrines. Four words you return to when everything else falls away. Four words you reach for when you need guidance, steadiness, or orientation. He said: This is your higher power. And this is also your work. When I did the exercise, the words that came weren’t new at all:
Creativity. Compassion. Connection. Coherence.
I realized I wasn’t inventing anything. I was remembering. I also finally understood why I had been painting women for so many years, often with words, naming emotions, feelings, longings. Long before I could explain it, something in me was already trying to give form to what heals, what guides, and what brings us back to ourselves. I was giving myself what I most needed: creativity, compassion, connection…which leads to coherence as presence, alignment, integration.
For years, those watercolor paintings were my morning meditation practice. I would paint and share them on my Instagram, not to be perfect, but to practice showing up. To release perfection. To listen. To let something move before my mind took over.
For years, I also chose one word at New Year’s as a compass for the coming year. This year, no single word came and then. these four came together…as a set after listening to this teacher: as an orientation to guide my life in 2026…and maybe forever.
For my life
For my art
For my work
For how I try to be with others
To be clear, I am not perfect at any of these. I fail at them regularly. The Four C’s are not who I am. They are a direction, a set of guideposts for who I’m trying to become and how I hope to show up.
To me, they describe a living kind of wholeness:
Creativity — Doing, the courage to feel and give form to what is alive inside us.
Compassion — Being, the practice of staying kind, especially with ourselves.
Connection — Witnessing, finding support in others and connecting to our own inner world.
Coherence — Presence, Alignment, Integration, when all the parts of us belong to one whole.
Coherence, for me, is when I am here, not split inside myself, not fighting what I feel, when what I sense, know, and do are moving in the same direction.
This was a very fun activity to me, to clarify my direction, my higher power, my work. It even gave me the formula to write my official manifesto for Soul Journey Arts! You can see that on my MANIFESTO page.
Recently, my son created a beautiful video bringing my paintings of women to life and set to a song I wrote using Suno. Watching them move felt like seeing something that had lived in me for years finally step into the world. I’ve also turned these images into oracle and what if cards, which are available for purchase. To see the video or cards, see my PRODUCTS page.
I’ll leave you with the question that inspired this blog post:
What are the four words you turn toward when everything else falls away?
Because whatever they are:
That is your higher power
And that is also your work
From my soul journey to yours,
Maria
