SoulDog Journey Project
Kerouac lives on through this project. She is alive in me. She is alive in this art. She is alive in the stories I share of our life together.
The new version of SoulDog Journey Project is open for enrollment, and access to the course and community begins on June 21st, 2024. I made this video to share what I've been experiencing while beginning my personal SoulDog Journey Project as a retrospective of my life with Kerouac.
Watch this video to hear me speak the words written in this post.
Kerouac was my soulmate. My Soul Dog.
We had a great life together.
Fifteen and a half years of wildness and our own kind of adventure.
We didn’t do anything super epic like big hikes in the wilderness or cross-country road trips - although, that would have been awesome. There’s a lot I wish we would have done together, but I’m still so grateful for the life we had.
A life of sweet adventures walking through our neighborhoods, taking morning and afternoon naps on the back deck, zooming and pouncing and digging in the backyard, eating lots of delicious snacks, making a lot of beautiful art, snuggling, howling, and loving every moment of this life that filled us with joy and wonder.
We lived our journey with our whole hearts all the way to the end of her time here on earth.
Kerouac died on August 12, 2021.
And I’ve been learning to live without her ever since.
The lessons haven’t been easy, but they’ve been, in their own ways, beautiful.
Lessons like:
How to go out in the world with a broken heart and find my way to joy again.
How to come home from anywhere to a house where she isn’t waiting for me.
How to continue to pick up my camera to tell the stories of dogs and the people who love them.
How to keep her memory alive through the next parts of my journey.
Honestly, I haven’t figured out all these things… I’m still learning.
Where I’m at right now, though, is exploring how I stay connected to her memory and our life together. What I’ve discovered is that all of it is inspiration for the rest of my life.
Lately, I’ve been making art inspired by our journey.
A few months after Kerouac died, I had this idea to create a year’s worth of weekly photo and story prompts to help people document their journeys with their dogs - so they’d have something beautiful to remember their life together.
I made this for people to be able to create with their dogs, but I also intended to use the prompts as inspiration for a retrospective project of my journey with Kerouac. But I wasn’t ready then. It was too soon after her death, and I needed more time to learn some things about who I was becoming in this world she no longer lived in.
I’m ready now, so I’m making art that begins with a photo, a moment, a memory, of our life together. And then, I just play.
Kerouac lives on through this project.
She is alive in me. She is alive in this art. She is alive in the stories I share of our life together.
The hope is that in taking time to remember our life, using my hands to make art inspired by it, writing and speaking our stories into a new form of existence will allow me to be in my joy, my grief, my wonder, and lead me to a deeper connection to my heart and healing.
When I’m making this art, I feel Kerouac come to life through the photos, pencils, paint, words, whatever creative medium I’m exploring. I am bringing her back to me through this work, and when I’m in it, I’m overcome with childlike joy and enthusiasm.
What a feeling it is to be here in this moment, connected in this way.
I’m not worried about making perfect, great, or even good art. Because this isn’t about that. It’s about what is happening as I make this art. The joy, the wonder, the creative flow, and the reconnection to our beautiful life.
At the end of it all, I want to look at what I’ve made, hold it in my hands, and feel alive and wild and deeply connected to the journey with my girl, my love, my Soul Dog.
In December 2021, I created The Soul Dog Journey Project course (consisting of 52 weekly prompts to help you capture your journey with the dog you love), and I've recently reimagined the course.
With the new edition of the SoulDog Journey Project, I’m also launching my online community, SoulDog Wonder Collective where we will be able to explore our creativity, share our stories, and connect through our journeys with the dogs we love.
All of this is beginning in June 21st, but you can sign up anytime before or after that date.
Over the next year, I will be working through my SoulDog Journey Project inside the SoulDog Wonder Collective community, and I will be sharing my art publicly here at SoulDog Wonder Journal.
If you think you'd like to join me, go ahead and visit the SoulDog Journey Project enrollment page. If you're not ready to decide yet, that's okay. Enrollment will stay open so you can begin whenever it feels right for you.
If you previously purchased the original version of the course, you will receive complimentary access to this new version of SoulDog Journey Project, so keep an eye out for an invitation via email!
I'm looking forward to this new journey, together!
SoulDog Wonder Journal is a reader-supported space. Your paid subscription helps me make more art and tell more stories inspired by Soul Dogs and the places we love. If you'd like to become a paying subscriber, you can upgrade your membership here.
About the artist
Marika Moffitt is an artist and storyteller focused on expressing the spirit of dogs through photography. As the owner of SoulDog Creative in Washington state, Marika helps clients throughout the Pacific Northwest to honor their journeys with their Soul Dogs with one-of-a-kind artwork. Full of life and movement, Marika’s photographs touch deep within the heart of what it means to live the journey with the dogs we love.
Learn more