Some years ago, after separating from my husband and living by myself, I created a series of 13 large watercolor paintings, each of a single rose. They explored the theme of the attitudes we take towards our lives as women and how we connect with ourselves in that context.

I named the series "Single Rose," or “Single Women," in recognition of the importance of that internal connection, and with gratitude for the freedom that living alone had given me to follow my own rhythms to the discoveries I made.

Later, when I was around 50, I found myself living alone once more. I was in that painful crucible of aloneness which however finally yielded real discoveries about what I am like when no one is watching, when I am not pleasing anyone or compromising for the benefit of the relationship. Gradually, I felt my way into what was most important and most nourishing for me.

As I rediscovered on a deeper level that wonderful place of solitude and self-sufficiency, I began to understand for the first time the degree to which tradition and cultural stereotypes can rob women of this delicious freedom.

When I designed this website, I went back to that "Single Woman" series of paintings, 5 of which had since been made into large prints. The website is based on a detail of the rose painting entitled “Yes!”

UnconventionalWoman.com reflects my lifelong interest in self-development outside the prescriptions of ideology. It is aimed at women who are curious and open-minded, women who want to explore new ideas and find and act on the solutions for our lives that will maximize our opportunities and help us deal with the difficulties we face now.

More and more it becomes clear that we exacerbate many of these difficulties by relying on our creaky but astonishingly solid belief systems. Inherited from our parents or whoever raised us, given a veneer of morality by religion, based on decisions we made about what was safe as a very young child, or cystallized around painful experiences later in life, these beliefs now form the bars of our prison. Escaping from our personal prisons into a larger reality is what this site is about.

Originally the site was aimed at single women because we have more cultural rules to overcome, and it is imperitive that we stay well-connected with others. We also generally  have more freedom to grow and expand in our own directions, if we choose to take it. Later on, it became clear that the issues are essentially the same for all women, and I decided not to limit the focus. I unequivocally champion constructive partner relationships, but I do not see them as a solution to the challenge we each privately face of understanding and developing ourselves, and actvating our individual purposes.

Happily, our single or our partnered status is no longer a life-sentence. We all move in and out of intimacy in relationships with partners, friends, family, animals. There are much-needed lessons to be learned wherever we are, once we embrace our situation and begin to look inward instead of outward for the answers.

Women in first-world countries are extraordinarily fortunate to have the opportunities available to us to support ourselves, and freedom to define our life paths. Many women in the rest of the world are still trapped in extreme poverty and/or in blatantly and sometimes violently sexist societies. It is becoming clear to many of us that the world has suffered enormously from the repression of feminine energy, and that it is up to all of us reclaim that resource and put it to use.

For me, basic good health is fundamental for an active, productive, and even an introspective life. My failure to find help in conventional medicine for health problems fueled a large amount of research into all kinds of alternative health options. I have been interested in holistic health since I read Adelle Davis' Eat Right to Keep Fit when I was 20, and I've been actively researching holistic approaches and newer developments since 2004. I solved the physical problems - but more important, I emerged with a whole new paradigm of what is possible for healing, which is reflected in the Resources on the site.

I have no commercial bias in selecting the information presented here and I have resisted advice to pack the site with ads. Nor am I affiliated with any religion. Art is my vocation, and I have run my own business as an artist and as a graphic artist and web designer, for the last 25 years. In 2008, moving toward what deeply nourishes me, I began a practice in energy psychology. Emotional Freedom Technique, a Meridian Tapping Technique, is one of my favorites of the energy therapies, and I will be providing access for site members to facilitated teleseminars with experts where you can learn to resolve the issues that are holding you back. 

My goal is to create a safe and stimulating place where you can find the resources you need and join the community and strategize and collaborate with other women. There are many dozens of free articles available, and I am always adding new resources on the member website, which are avalable to you when you join.

Many thanks to the people who have helped me make this website a reality: the many women who have given me feedback on UnconventionalWoman.com, my business Mastermind group, 360 On Demand Web technicians, and especially my client  Fred Garcia of Logos Consulting Group, who arranged my work for him in such a way that I was able to spend the years necessary to develop this website. 

I hope you find the ideas stimulating, and I look forward to your contributions to the site in the future!

Lisa Wagner

Yes!