Today we’d like to introduce you to Rhiannon Vaughn.
Hi Rhiannon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am obsessed with stories. They are my passion, and naturally, I’ve made them my life’s work. Ironically, questions like this are so hard for me because I feel like my story, especially at this point in my life, has so many layers and plot lines that all feed into each other that I never know where to begin.
But I will begin in grad school. I walked away from a pretty successful career in Business Banking to follow this creative pull that had been calling me all my life. I had always put on shows as a child, and then as an adult I would spend my evenings after work in screenwriting classes and acting classes and around as much standup comedy as I could, I loved the magic of having an idea and then collaborating to make it manifest. Usually, though, I was helping other people bring *their* stories to life. Grad school was this massive permission slip to explore my own stories and connect with my own voice and perspective. I could spend all day getting lost in worlds with interesting characters and interesting questions about life and my perceptions of reality. It felt more like a spiritual pursuit than an academic endeavor, and I was surrounded by so many incredible writers and playwrights that it was an inspirational time.
And then I became a mother.
Motherhood arrived just as I was discovering my voice and passion, which is a wild journey because you add this whole other layer that makes it next to impossible to center yourself. My brain was mush (which I learned was pruning to make it better equipped to handle more life, but goodbye names!), and I was essentially food for a few years. I was in a writing group for moms that kept me creative and really helped me get back to myself as this new, more complex identity. I got deeper into spirituality as I navigated this new unknown territory, and that’s when I decided to launch a workshop to fuse my passions. The Hero Journey Through the Chakras is a 7-week writing workshop that uses writing craft and spiritual wisdom to release blocks and go deeper while we develop Treatments for a story using the Hero’s Journey framework. I loved putting on the workshop so much that I had to do it again. And then the pandemic happened.
The detour of the pandemic sent me further into energy work and spiritual practices. Isolation with two toddlers was the closest I would probably get to a monastic lifestyle; it made sense to pursue it. It was a lot of meditation and cleaning floors. And while my physical reality was limited by the constraints of the pandemic, my spiritual world was unlimited. Energy work could take me beyond time and space to explore the deeper stories of the universe. What’s fun is that my style of energy work ended up using a lot of symbols and storylines that take me and my clients on a journey with obstacles and lessons. I recently started a podcast called A Kind of Meadow, where you can hear some of these journeys and perhaps get some healing in the same way we get lessons and healing from stories.
And then my kids started climbing.
That’s when it got harder and harder to write. If I got lost in a world to capture a scene, there was a chance something or someone would break. But I still had lots of ideas and this intense pull to create, and while I had a hard time writing scenes, I had plenty of creative energy to brainstorm and outline and do all the work leading up to writing a scene. My notes would end up scattered or never building up to anything that felt like progress, and I needed a way to organize my thoughts and move my stories along in the crevices of parenting. I tried a lot of services, but it never really worked so I decided to build something.
I had already been learning Python for fun and had made a cute little witch Twitter as my hobby project. I decided to try to make what I was looking for just for me and my husband to use at home. He was a writer developing several ideas for TV and Film and had a hard time managing all of them too. The first iteration of Cibola Story Studio was very specific to our needs. I realized that I could use the platform to complement my writing workshop, Hero Journey Through the Chakras since the final project was a Treatment, so the next iteration was branded for that.
And then we got evicted from our home.
It happens in a hot real estate market. Our landlords put the house up for sale and we needed to move, and we decided to pack it all up and try Atlanta. This is where everything changed. Atlanta is so magical. When we first arrived, I was mostly focused on parenting, but I kept building the platform in the crevices of time. One night, I watched WeCrashed on AppleTV, where they talked nonstop about manifesting a unicorn, and I realized, “Hey! I can manifest things. I want to manifest that too!” I had a product already that solved a problem I experienced but didn’t know how to make it more than that. I ended up googling something about a Startup and found a free workshop in Atlanta called The Ignite Ideas workshop, hosted by The Farm and Invest Atlanta. That one door seemed to open many more, and I went from wading in completely unknown territory to being incredibly resourced in a span of a few months.
My startup, Cibola Story Studio, was selected for the It Takes a Village pre-accelerator through Atlanta Tech Village, which introduced me to so many people (and new friends!) who are so incredibly smart, helpful, and creative. I was asked questions that would guide me down different paths that led me to more brilliant people, and by the end of the accelerator, I had an actual Go-To-Market strategy and even tripled the number of users on the platform! It went from being this little tool for me and my husband to something that I think can actually solve a problem. Pursuing this path has felt like finding a little sliver of thread and letting my curiosity tug at it, only to have the road unravel before me. I’m learning so much from this process, but mostly I’m discovering how much I already know. I get to put into practice so many different aspects of myself that I thought had to exist separately, like the Business Banker and the creative writer.
It’s been that magical experience where something went from being just a spark of an idea in my mind to become manifest with the help and collaboration of the Atlanta Tech ecosystem.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
You’ve caught me at an interesting time. On the one hand, this is an interesting financial environment for us, especially since my husband spent most of the year on strike with the WGA and then SAG.
But on the more important hand, I am working on a practice of Following My Excitement, and it has made it feel like this journey has been inevitable, warts and all. Each turn has been a new opportunity to discover myself and discover what Cibola Story Studio is meant to become. The challenges have allowed me to be creative and resourceful, or, better yet, have forced me to ask for help from people. I’ve become more connected because of it, and really, many of the obstacles I’ve encountered are the reason this platform exists at all.
Ultimately, I’m building Cibola Story Studio because it excites me, so the stakes feel different. My mantra has been, “I’ll walk through any door you open,” and this journey has been so fun and surprising. I’m still at the very beginning, so I’m moving forward with hopeful anticipation for the future.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am, at my core, a spiritual storyteller. My greatest passions are writing and energy work and I believe that both share the goal of connecting us to both our humanity and divinity. I am certified as a Holy Fire Reiki practitioner and Reiki Angelic Alchemy Healer and love using stories to expand our connection to the truth of who we are. I offer 1on1 Healing Sessions, which I love because you really can’t write this stuff. Each session is a magical journey, and I’m so grateful to all the people who trust me with their stories. I’m excited to share that I’ll be offering my 7-week writing intensive again in 2024. We go deep into spiritual ideas and screenwriting craft, so it ends up being part of the writing journey and part personal healing journey. We use reiki and magic along the way for extra fun.
My plays and films tend to explore the power of perception and its impact on our lives through my specific lens as a Mother and Latina. My short play “Wine Night” was a Region 8 finalist at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and has been produced at the InspiraTO Festival (Toronto) and The Scribes Stages Playwright Showcase at the Moving Arts Theatre (Los Angeles). My play “A Lovely Day Outside” was selected as a Top 5 Play at the 2019 Living on the Edge Festival, and my play “Gifted*” was a finalist for the 2019 Kennedy Center/NNPN MFA Workshop. “Persistence of Memory,” the fictional podcast I co-created, was featured at Gotham Week and was named Best Podcast at TIFF64; all of these projects are about women who feel at odds with who they know themselves to be and who they are expected to be, which gets more apparent at a life-changing juncture.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Atlanta has such a welcoming, collaborative spirit. I love it! I love collaboration, and at every turn, I meet someone who is happy to chat or open a door or play along with me. It’s collaborative in any aspect I want to explore myself too whether that’s creatively, spiritually, or entrepreneurially. A huge reason Cibola Story Studio even exists in the way that it does is because of one little free workshop that encouraged me to not just dream about my idea, but imagine how I can bring it to the customers who need it. There’s just so much momentum here in Atlanta, and I believe it’s because everyone really feels like they’re building together.
What I like least: Driving here is wild. Everyone is collaborative until they hit the road!
Pricing:
- Cibola Story Studio – First Idea Free. $9/mo for unlimited
- Soulful Alignment Sessions – $255 for two healing sessions
- Hero Journey Through the Chakras – $700 for a 7-week Journey
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rhiannonvaughn.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/iamwritingwithspirit
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rhiannon-vaughn
- Other: www.cibolastory.studio
