✦ Karen Spies ✦
The women you used to be isn’t blocked.
She’s been buried.
A conversation about what it actually costs to keep the creative self waiting, and why the midlife artist is the most underestimated voice in the room.
Listen First
A few recent appearances
What We’ll Talk About
Conversations that open doors your audience didn’t know were closed
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Am I Still That Person?
The question midlife women ask themselves at 2am, and why the answer has nothing to do with starting over.
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The Masks Became the Toolbox
Why the practical choices that buried the creative self weren’t failures, and how to stop treating them like confession.
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Via Negativa: The Philosophy of Emptying
What the spiritual tradition of subtraction teaches us about creative blocks, and why filling yourself up keeps making it worse.
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Why Pavarotti Stopped Italy
A red nose, a tenor, and a culture that knew what mastery was worth,and what it costs when ours doesn’t get that at all.
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The Precious Handmade Artifacts Economy
87% of Etsy sellers are women. The demand for handmade goods is so great that Amazon is trying to get into the game, to the detriment of every small maker everywhere. And the platforms designed to help them (like Etsy) are now working against them.
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What Alchemical Transformation Actually Means
Not becoming someone new. Recovering who you always were, and learning to charge for the value she brings.
What Others Say
The work in their words
This is a space for testimonials from clients, podcast hosts, or event organizers. Replace with real reflections as they come in.
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The framing here is: not a testimonial but a reflection. In their own words, on what surfaced. That distinction is intentional.
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A third reflection from someone who experienced the talk, the session, or the program. Something specific. Something true.
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For Podcast Hosts
Questions that open the conversation
- 01 You’ve described this moment that many women reach, the “am I still that person?” question. What are they actually asking?
- 02 What’s the difference between creative block and what you call a meaning crisis, and why does that distinction matter?
- 03 You spent twelve years as a silversmith, then lost the work to injury. What did that loss teach you about the relationship between the body and creative identity?
- 04 Your approach is rooted in via negativa, subtraction rather than addition. Why is that the opposite of what most creative coaching offers?
- 05 Tell us about the Pavarotti moment. You were in a red nose clown workshop when Italy stopped for a tenor. What shifted in you?
- 06 You talk about the masks a woman wears becoming her toolbox, not her prison. What has to change in her for that re-frame to actually land?
- 07 You work at the intersection of alchemy, Buddhist philosophy, and the very practical realities of the handmade economy. How did that combination come together?
- 08 What do you wish more women had confidence to say out loud about the creative self they’ve been manuvering around?
About Karen
Photo here
Format
Remote · Zoom · Phone
Ideal Length
45 – 75 minutes
Also Available As
Keynote · Virtual Summit Speaker
Karen Spies is the founder of The Alquemie, a contemplative coaching practice for women who lost their creative selves on purpose, because the world rewarded them for it.
She spent twelve years as a working silversmith before a repetitive motion injury ended that practice. What followed was a curriculum of pragmatic reinvention: graduate study in Buddhist philosophy, a career in web development and tech consulting, a stint at Stanford Research Institute, work supporting arts organizations, and training in commedia dell’arte based red nose clown work — the archetypal kind, not the party kind.
She is the host of Second Wind Women, a podcast for entrepreneurial women in the middle of a creative or professional pivot, and the founder of the soon to be released Modern Artifacts Collection, a curated marketplace for artisan makers in the metaphysical and handmade economy.
Her coaching is rooted in via negativa — the philosophical tradition of subtraction, of emptying rather than adding — and draws on alchemy, Buddhist philosophy, Jungian psychology, and twelve years of knowing what it means to work with your hands making unique, imperfect, magical adornments .
She is based in Kansas City and will not be asking you to follow your bliss. She will be asking what you buried, and whether it’s time to let it back in the room.