I call people like Abrah Griggs “Creative Facilitators,” they help people like me, and perhaps you, connect the creative forces within us to the world outside of us, she is one of those rare and very gifted people who are themselves intensely creative but who have also mastered the varied new technologies that help us take the great leap of faith and put our ideas out in the world.

In a sense, Steve Jobs was the inventor of this kind of creative angel, he made the tools that make it possible for me to be an author and photograph, and share, store and distribute my work. I know little of how these tools work, but I know they are the path for me, and for my future.

Abrah is an artist and illustrator who is also a book compositor, e-book designer and blogger, she connects people to the online sites – like Create Space –  that can show and share their work and find an audience. Her new blog In My Nature, is a poignant and beautiful testament to her creativity and her promise.

I believe Abrah and people like her are the future of the new creativity, combining writing, artistry, design and other traditional arts with people – like me – who need them and want them – but struggle to keep up these wonderful new ways of community.

This is the future for people who once needed big publishing houses and galleries to sell their work, but who can now make a living embracing change and new ways of thinking about creativity and technology. We don’t need middlemen to approve our stories and voices, we can put them out in the world now by ourselves and make our own destiny. That is the story of my blog.

We can rot and get moldy and lament the lost good old days, which were never that good, or move forward.

Abrah Griggs is a warrior for this kind of change. Her art is wonderful as well, and when she is not creating e-books and designing books and cards and  catalogues, she is out in nature, observing and writing about it. The future is right here, and creative people do not have to wait months and years to be rejected by editors, academics, publishers and galleries – they can put their good work right out in the world and reach countless numbers of people.

I met Abrah in the most interesting way, I went on a local website to defend a friend and myself from the kinds of cowardly and snarky attacks that are a sad but inevitable part of the Internet now, and I replied to one of the anonymous posters. A day or so later, I got a message from Abrah, she was one of those posters, that kind of thing, she said, was not really her and she didn’t want to be on that site any longer.

She joined the Creative Group At Bedlam Farm and is moving ahead with her brilliant skills. I met Abrah in October when she came to our Open House. She was impressive, shy, gifted, profoundly connected to the natural world, and the new world of personal publishing. I had the sense she was a bit uncomfortable meeting me, that happens a lot, but we will get passed it. Perhaps we already did.

I thought it was one of the classiest messages I have ever received. It reaffirmed my belief that human connections often prevail over the raging hostility that passes for dialogue in the minds of many people, and once we see one another as humans, and not as labels or stereotypes, we can permit ourselves to be human.

When I saw Abrah’s original and surprising work – she loves to draw idiosyncratic spiders and bugs –  I knew she was absolutely correct about herself, her creative spark was revealed.It is a great joy to spread the word about someone like Abrah, she is the real deal, she will go as far as she wishes to go.

She is on the right path, cranking out wonderful work almost daily and helping to connect creatives with the new tools of the wider world. And if you have creative work inside of you, as I believe everyone does, think about setting it free, with Abrah or anyone else who can help you do it.

I highly recommend checking out her ideas, her art and her new blog, In My Nature. There, you’ll find a wonderful sketch on her Musings page, it is of a dragonfly with the caption that reads “If You Rest In The Sunshine, Long Enough, You’ll Fly Again…” and above it, the heading, “I’ve Rested Long Enough…”

I love that sentiment and commend it highly.  Me, too, I thought before I changed my life.  I hope she will sell this piece to me. Abrah has rested long enough, she is flying now. You can see her blog and work here.