The Woman Who Taught Me to Listen to My Heart: A Tribute to Dr. Lucia Capacchione

There are some teachers who don’t just teach, they awaken. For me, that teacher was Dr. Lucia Capacchione: the art therapist, author, and creative visionary who showed me that the answers we’re searching for aren’t out there somewhere; they’re waiting quietly inside us.

Lucia’s work forever changed how I see creativity, healing, and the power of our own inner voice. It’s the foundation of my workshops, my journaling process, and honestly, the way I live my life.

The Original Right-Brain Revolution

Long before expressive arts and vision boards were trending on Instagram, Lucia was guiding people to draw, collage, and write their way home to themselves. Through her groundbreaking books, The Creative Journal, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams, and Recovery of Your Inner Child, she invited people to use their non-dominant hand to access intuitive, emotional, right-brain wisdom. It was radical at the time. It still is. She called it creative journaling, but what she really offered was a map: a way back to the inner voice that’s so often drowned out by logic, perfectionism, and busyness.

Writing With the Hand of the Heart

Lucia taught that our non-dominant hand is the one connected to the heart, to feeling, intuition, and childlike truth. When you write or draw with that hand, it bypasses the critical mind and goes straight to the soul. It’s awkward at first, and that’s the point. The messy scrawl and the slower pace create space for honesty. You can’t perform or edit when you’re writing from your heart.

How Lucia’s Work Bloomed Through Mine

When I trained with Lucia over a decade ago, something opened in me that had been quiet for a long time: a creative current I’d always felt but hadn’t fully trusted. Her methods became the roots of what I now call Bloom Visioning, a creative, heart-centered approach to self-discovery through collage, journaling, and guided imagination. Every Vision in Bloom workshop, every Seeds–Weeds–Bloom reflection, every time I invite women to “trust their Creative Self,” it all traces back to Lucia. Her wisdom still ripples through every board, every story, and every new beginning.

Lucia’s Legacy: The Creative Self

One of Lucia’s greatest gifts was naming and nurturing the Creative Self, the part of us that knows how to heal, solve, and dream in ways logic never could. She saw creativity as divine intelligence at work in everyday life, the same energy that grows gardens, writes songs, and brings ideas to bloom. That belief continues to guide me and the women I work with. When you make art from the heart, you’re not “doing” creativity, you’re partnering with it.

A Note of Gratitude

Dear Lucia, Thank you for showing me that scissors, glue, and a few scraps of paper can open the heart. That healing can be playful. That creativity is sacred. And that every woman carries her own wisdom, if she only remembers to listen. Your work lives on in every Bloom board, in every journal entry written with the “wrong” hand, and in every woman who dares to imagine a life that feels true, and boldly plants that seed, and cultivates it until it blooms.

Bloom Reflection

“The Creative Self always knows what to do.” — Dr. Lucia Capacchione

You can explore Lucia's books here.

You're invited to Bloom with us. Workshops and more can be found here.