Christine Will: The Resilience of Her Becoming

The balance and steadiness of moving through life do not mean there are no challenges. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, those uncomfortable circumstances are the most clarifying and expansive opportunities to experience a fuller sense of love, divine, and appreciation for ourselves and others. This also does not mean that we have to stay for too long in these situations but to softly shift our attention in the direction of the solution. We start to recognize how much strength and the inner power we innately have as we look back in retrospect, from a wider and open perspective.

Christie Will (Wolf) is an artist whose mind leads her to create imaginary worlds that she then turns into scripts and stories she directs. As said by Christine Will, “I’m a loving and protective single mom. I’m also a fun and loving friend and partner, a survivor of life circumstances, kind of overcoming some obstacles that most people don’t have to. I’m definitely an old soul, and I feel that I’ve lived this world before.”

Regardless of the number of our identities, such as being a parent, partner, friend, or even our profession, we will live each experience to its fullest when we move and transition through those identities moment by moment, being present within each of them.

Christie says, “As I have grown older, I feel like I’ve tried not to run from who I am. I think that in my younger years, I tried to hide pieces of myself. Now I strive to embrace all of myself within each role that I take, so I can still be on set and be a director and a mom. I can still take that FaceTime call and return to the people around me—that’s who I am. So, I’ve just decided that they need to accept that fact about me. And I think that if I’m truer to myself and a full being and happy, then I think that’s where your work shows, right?”

As we celebrate more physical years, we gain more tools that bring us to be more energized, vitalized, and fuller in every aspect of our lives. When we tune into taking care of ourselves first, we are not only ready to give to others, but we are also ready to invite everything and everyone around us to join us in this state.

“In the years that I’ve been in the career, there have been lots of conversations in Hollywood about women in film and supporting them as well. But as a female director, I came up at a time when there weren’t so many. So, in my early years as a director, I remember being pregnant and hiding my pregnancy—it really was such a white boys club. I felt like I couldn’t do it otherwise, and I had to be the part of a little bit of a tough exterior. And then I was like, ‘Oh, I kind of have to be that now. Whatever. I’m not going to do that. I’ll just be me.’ Now I can put on makeup on set, and I can put on clothes that I want to wear. I can be a woman and be sexy and be a director,” shares Christie.

There are a lot of contextual beliefs we hold on to, and we keep them as our reality as long as we continue focusing on them. But we always have a choice, and that choice always starts thinking different thoughts, which makes up how we contemplate a situation. We all want to live a life we consider beautiful. So let’s be ready to open the doors to all of the infinite possibilities of our continual becoming.

“I feel like there have been things I’ve wished for my whole life from when I was younger until now, but it normally always comes back to happiness. So, even with my work, I recall thinking in the toughest times, ‘I want to have a career, and I want to be respected.’ And now I am, and I still want more. I think that in life, you have the next step and not another goal. But what I’ve come to realize is that I’m so blessed right now. If Christie looked at where she was now ten or twenty years ago, she would have said, ‘this is where I wanted to be. This is the person that I wanted to be.’ I believe that my core values and integrity have shaped me into that person because, like all of us, we have qualities that we aren’t so proud of sometimes. But I feel like I’ve done a lot of personal work. Any door that opened, I walked through. And there are many shut doors and there continue to be shut doors. But what I tried to do now is put my energy into finding another open door. You can unlock anything if you want to. I firmly believe that anything is possible,” Christie affirms.

Change is inevitable; evolution is part of our natural expansion. We live in a diverse world, and variety is all around us. This dance of energies that create worlds, this life-force expressing itself through everyone and everything is always all-inclusive. About the entertainment industry evolving, Christie says, “I feel like there’s a movement happening right now, and I think that the world is on the brink of a revolution. I believe it has to do with diversity and inclusion. Everybody has a voice now, and people are tired of being on the sidelines; it’s like we are one, and we’re all moving forward now. Obviously, for my field as a director, I’m passionate about telling more of those stories. I do a lot of comedy, there’s so much comedy with diversity and inclusion—the world is more interesting with everybody included.”

Christie’s mantra for writing and producing the award-winning short film Her Coming was “resilience.” The storylines are based on her own life experiences, a profound self-reflection encapsulated in an art piece in the form of a film. “In a nutshell, I’d say it’s definitely a passion project. I feel like I almost ‘vomited’ and made a movie. The story there was just about where I’ve been and my resilience against all obstacles—like a flower that can bloom in a snowstorm and against all the environment around. So, that movie is really about being a survivor.”

Christie started her career as an actor before becoming a director. She says, “I get so much gratification being a director because I get to shape all my stories. I’m the master, and you get to go in and adjust performances. So your personality comes out within the actors half the time, especially because I work with a lot of the same people. So, they get to know my sense of humor and drama.” In 2020, despite the ongoing global events that have affected the entire world, Christie created and directed more films than any female or male director.

One of her most recent films, Chasing Waterfalls, is a romantic comedy that aired on the Hallmark channel with around 2.3 million views—and more movies are coming out soon. Presently, Christie is creating and writing a new TV comedy series, Fishing For Men. “It’s about this woman who is divorced. She is a film director. Her crew on set, her best friend, all the people she works with are pushing her out to go dating in the real-life world.” Christie makes these kinds of Hallmark movies for a living, and she says, “So, that’s what I’m most excited about because it covers the content that can go on for days. I’m writing what I know, and I’m kind of circling back to how I got my first movie off the ground, so I can get my first TV series off the ground.”

Christie went through a rough divorce, but her resilience got her to experience abundance in all aspects of her life; being a wonderful mom, a successful director, and also having a wonderful relationship with her life partner. About herself, Christie shares, “Funny enough, I had so much chaos when I was young. Interestingly, I’ve discovered that I love men, love sex, and am sexual. I’m becoming myself now, and I’m comfortable. I believe that if you begin to love and support yourself for who you are, you will have the self-confidence and self-love to close those doors and tune out those who are dismissive of you. So, that’s what I’ve discovered about myself: I’m a decent person, I have good qualities, I’m lovable, and I feel like I’m not projecting that to people as much as I used to, and instead, I’m only enjoying life more.”

We tend to expect others to adjust in order for us to be satisfied. But that is surrendering our strength, and it is failing to recognize the inherent love we all possess. So, as Christie does, we can all tune in to our own worthiness at any moment because it’s not in anyone else but in ourselves, and it’s always there available for us. Sometimes, we might still deviate from our sense of worthiness, but our awareness that we are always worthy, loving and lovable, will rather quickly bring us back to that fuller sense of love.

And, indeed, perhaps the most important relationship we can build is with ourselves.

Cover Photography // Rhonda Dent

Connect with Christie on Instagram