Untethered and (Dis)Connected: How to Return to Your Creative Path On Your Own Time

That crunch.

You know it. I know it. Everyone who has owned a ridiculously fragile electronic device that goes everywhere and is relied upon to do almost everything knows it.

The crunch that you hear when the screen hits the floor.

On Labor Day Monday Monday, I felt that sinking dread when my Apple Watch slipped from my fingers and fell face down on the tile.

For over two years, that little piece of wildly powerful technology has been securely fastened to my body. It’s own tracking data will show you that I would wear it for well over 12 hours per day. And, if you don’t have access to the app, you can see it in the pale strip on my arm where the freckles have faded after years under cover.

Now it’s Thursday, and though I am fully clothed, I feel naked. 

I have no idea how many calories I have burned, whether I got a text in the three minutes since I picked up my phone, or what the temperature is outside. It will take me more than two taps to figure out exactly when my next menstrual cycle begins. If you call me and I don’t have my phone on me, I will not be able to answer you by talking to my wrist like Penny in Inspector Gadget.

I am realizing the depth of my addiction to that tiny glass square. Well, the glass was just the vehicle. My real addiction was to quantifying the success of each day based on my move goals and the illusion of constant connectivity.

At this point, I am not sure if I am uncomfortable because I feel so disconnected or if I’m uncomfortable because I have to reckon with being so addicted to machine that monitored my every move.

Either way, this is not how I planned to land post-Labor Day.

I am untethered. I am lost. I am free.

Of course, I am more than my history of shattered Apple products. It’s also the first week of school. And I am suddenly realizing that after eighteen months of certain uncertainty, the prospect of five days a week of school is immensely challenging.

This return to “normal” is what we’ve been yearning for. Why is this so hard?

Sure, there’s the chance that schools will close or either of the kids could be quarantined for weeks. There’s a chance that Covid could be more than a mere inconvenience as we see infections rise in children. It’s hard to get excited about the new routine when a stray cough could bring the whole fragile arrangement crashing down.

I am so dazed and unfocused. I can’t seem to shake the “I need more tea and then some chocolate and then some pretzels before I answer this next email” state of mind.

It’s more than vicarious first day of school jitters, though. 

Instead, I realize it’s immense pressure that comes with “Psst, Mom! It’s finally quiet. Go be outrageously successful and accomplish every single one of the professional and creative things right now so you don’t fail at post-pandemic reentry!”

Back in the old days (like over the weekend), my watch could help me track when anxiety would set my heart racing. I don’t need the heart rate monitor to tell you that there are too many stress hormones in my system right now. (Oh, hey, maybe I’m already learning to live without that device!)

There are too many stress hormones in our collective emotional system right now. While we have a lot to be stressed about, some of that pressure is self-imposed and truly is optional. Like the pressure everyone puts on themselves during new beginning moments, like the end of summer and the return to school.

So, if you’re a parent and are feeling the press of “I should get my business/creative practice/self care routine up to 117% because the kids are finally back where they belong,” I see you. I feel you.

Regardless of whether we have kids in school or are going to class ourselves, September is a chance for many of us to begin again. We can all use a little more self-compassion right now since it’s far from easy to get back into the post-Labor Day routine.

I’m holding hands with all of the writers, creatives, and entrepreneurs who are staring into the next season wondering how on earth you’re going to find the energy, focus, and confidence to get out there and make the next thing.

Here’s what we’ve learned (since March of 2020 and throughout our lifetime as sovereignty seekers, word witches, and all around weirdos):

• The old rules don’t apply any more.

• The old structures cannot support us.

• The old routine can’t be revived in the same old way.

If the timepiece that used to help us make sense of the world cracks, we need to find a new way to navigate our lives. 

In this early September moment if you can’t quite find your center, find your muse, or find your pen, remember this: your lack of inspiration, motivation, or imagination is not the problem.

What if it’s the relentless press to be productive and commodify every free moment that’s the problem? What if it’s the equation of busyness and self-worth? What if we must finally, once and for all, smash the foolish belief that everything is going to feel “normal” again just because we landed on a certain date or reached some artificial milestone?

What if you didn’t have to start today, but you trusted yourself and believed that in your own time, you’d settle into a new cycle of being, making, doing, and creating?

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When it is time to set off on your own creative path — as a writer, as an entrepreneur, as a seeker looking to understand your own story in a new way — I’d love to help.

The Sovereign Writers’ Knot, the new iteration of my online writing community, opens again on September 27.

The Story Illuminations Sessions are a great 1:1 option if you’re trying to figure out just where to start and need to heal some of the old wounds that hold you back from stepping forth on your creative path.

Permission to Make Magic. Permission to BE the Magic.

“I just need to get through these practical things so I can give myself permission to market the magical stuff.”

“I have to be able to appeal to the people who want the data and the outcomes, but really, I want the people I can talk magic to.”

“I was trained to be an academic, and I know how to do the intellectual side really well. Spirituality and magic are always at the core of everything, but I am afraid to let people see that.”

These lines from three separate conversations with three different healer-writer-seeker-mytics who are certified in different forms of coaching and psychotherapy.

Each one glows with her own remarkable sovereign wisdom and each one has the ability to make deep, lasting change in the lives of the folks they work with. 

They all might define “magic” a little differently, but it has something to do with the vast unseen, the sacred unknown, and the connections that flow between All That Is. They know that their work is sourced by something greater, some universal creative force that makes the body, mind, spirit, and all of creation come alive. 

They feel all these forces at work and know it’s at the core of all they do, and yet, they often can’t trust themselves to speak it loud and clear…

Why do we hide our unique brilliance and stop ourselves from saying what really matters?

These women, like me, like just about all of us, have been raised in a patriarchal society and trained by a capitalist system. 

We’ve internalized some version of: “Lead with the facts, with the measurable results, and with the stuff that appeals to the pain points established by the marketplace. All the feelings, stories, and (god)dess talk might work for some, but what really matters is the credentials, the quantifiable, the sale.”

They - we - all hide their magic for fear it will be diminished, misunderstood, and twisted by those who would dismiss their silly, ungrounded, uncontrollable “woo woo” ideas. It’s safer and easier to lead with the easily digested steps to success, the “click now” jargon, and the peer reviewed approaches.

What if we were unafraid to lead with our passion, our truth, and our magic?

Well, that’s the sorceress’s greatest question.

If healers, sovereignty seekers, and creatives found the courage to lead with their own authentic passion, truth, and magic, the whole world would change.

That change would start with the individual. When one person stands sovereign in her power and purpose and then offers it to her readers, her clients, her family, her community… Eventually a single act sends forth ripples that shift everything. It’s just like magic.

It all sounds pretty idyllic, right?

Name your magic.
Speak it aloud.
Call in the people who speak your language.
Transform one life and keep going til you’ve bettered the universe.

But tell me again, why aren’t we doing this wonderful thing all the time?

That same patriarchal capitalist world that chains us to the practical also conspires to silence the mystery. Plus, our own human fears of being vulnerable to ridicule and judgement tend to shut us down before we even begin to explore unknown territory.

And it’s not just the societal pressures and individual fears that seal our lips and stifle our stories. Magic spells have always been bound by secrets, only to be shared with the initiated, in a moment of great need, or when the stars and moon align.

It can feel downright wrong to share our magic in the marketplace.

Modern digital life has a way of commodifying hallowed ground, and we can feel like part of the problem when we stick a “for sale” sign on the intimate, sacred truths that ground our lives and spirits.

And yet, there are brave and brilliant writers and thinkers who manage to send their magic into the world in a way that doesn’t seem icky or opportunistic. They launch their words and ideas into the ethers and touch the hearts and minds of readers and Instagram scrollers. 

As a result, the folks in the audience receive those ideas and see themselves and their world in a new way. They share the insight and the new way of being with others, and that starts new conversations that can lead to action. And this goes on and on until we start seeing real change, whether it’s in de-stigmatizing mental health issues, exposing systemic racism, or respecting people’s pronouns.

That’s how magic is made real. 

Magic flows in moments of realization, in instances of connection, in the building of relationships. In the sense of, “YES! A new way is possible! Let’s try it!”

We still need to call on our own deep powers of discernment, to decide what’s too intimate and in fact too sacred to share, of course. That’s an important topic for another day, however.

Are you longing to lead with your magic and make it real?

Those comments at the start of this piece about longing to make their magic real are part of longer, broad-reaching conversations.

Each woman wants to offer her healing work to the world and tell stories that matter, and each is going it in her own way (of those clients I quoted above, one is seeking a sustainable, satisfying approach to marketing; one is developing her website and a new framework to teach her ideas; and another is writing a book).

Though those women are working on different projects and hoping to speak to very different people, the awareness of and desire for that real but ephemeral thing called magic is the common ingredient. 

I’m offering these individual clients specific support to get them closer to anchoring into their magic and making it real. Each one is blessed by the hard-won belief in her own magic, her own medicine, her own sense that she has something to share with the world.

(Check out my writing coaching and Story Illumination Sessions if you’re interested in working one-on-one!)

Their next step is to give themselves permission to embody that magic in a way that feels authentic, safe (but not too safe), and true to the work they wish to do in the world.

That permission comes through writing practice, through honest conversation, and through a recognition that the spiritual work and the magic making is every bit as necessary and practical as getting better at crafting sales copy.

What about you? Do you believe in magic? Do you believe in your OWN magic?

On June 1, the 7 Magic Words Challenge begins.

This free, weeklong online event will help you uncover and name your own magic. It’s open to all - whether your a creative entrepreneur, a healer or coach with a private practice, or a sovereign soul in search of a new way to see the word and express your own wisdom.

Sovereign of Your Own Attention

There’s a well-used (and wonderfully wise) line: you need to live a story before you can tell it.

But then, there are times when you write a story and only start living the full truth of it once you see it on the page.

In my case, it was only once I wrote about being an Overcommitted Queen During Quarantine that I realized the depths of my exhaustion. I’d reached peak over-promising and needed to slowly come down from all those plans, intentions, and commitments.

We’re Being Called to Be More Creative Than Ever Before

Right now, every single activity (with the exception of watching TV, reading a book, or snuggling a cat) requires creativity and innovation.

Whether it’s figuring out how to make grocery shopping feel safe, managing the kids’ morning, or navigating a family’s moods and responses to anxiety, everything about domestic life that used to be second nature requires conscious engagement.

And patience. So. Much. Patience.

That means that the stuff that “should” require creativity and focused attention - like the next writing project - suddenly seems that much harder because your creative well has already been tapped (and probably overdrawn).

Then, when you think about the massive amount of bravery and imagination it takes to think about what your business or private practice is going to look like in the weeks and months to come…

Yep. Utterly and totally exhausted.

And utterly and totally committed to keeping it together and moving forward, somehow.

Sovereign of Your Realm. Sovereign of Your Attention.

In that post from a couple weeks ago I declared, “I become a little bit more Sovereign every time I say no, every time I limit the size of my realm.”

There’s more to Sovereignty (and quarantine sanity) than just saying no to invitations to meetings, however. It’s also about saying no to every website, post, and news headline that threatens to pull from your well of creativity, patience, and attention.

From Chapter 11 of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic:

The quest for Sovereignty on our own terms asks us to craft alternative versions of the oppressive stories we’ve been taught to believe. Recognize the power you have—and often squander— when it comes to holding and focusing your own attention. Allow yourself to see how your attention has been conquered and occupied, either by modern marketers and politicians or by storytellers who speak for so-called tradition and place a singular claim on the truth. Mistress of your own attention, you become Sovereign in your own mind and in your own living story. You then gather the power to change the narrative so we treat all people and animals as they should be treated, here on a planet that truly can sustain all the life that grows upon it right now.

At some level - at many levels - you know all of this, of course. You’ve always been mistress of your own attention and you’ve always had to be conscious and discerning about your information diet.

Let this merely be reminder then - a timely, necessary reminder from one overcommitted queen to another - that you are more creative than you ever have been in your life, even if you don’t write a single word or conceive a single professional offer.

Be kind to yourself.

Be careful with your most intimate, essential resources: creativity, patience, and attention.

And thanks for sharing a bit of your precious attention with me.

Liminal Spaces For Celts and Creatives

The Celtic people speak of the thin places, the liminal spaces, the times and locations when the veil between the worlds is the most permeable.

This could mean the time around Samhain (what you might call Halloween). It could mean the area surrounding a sacred site, like a holy well, a stone circle, or a fairy tree. 

Over the last few months, I’ve come to understand a thin place as the time and space an author must occupy between when her book is deemed “complete” and when it is birthed into the world.

Finally, The Waiting Is (Almost) Over

The sun rose into a peach pearl of a morning and convinced the sky to try blue. The snowy ground stretched beneath the last glimmer of a crescent moon. Warm and snug by my bedroom window, I held The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic in my lap. 

I held my book in my lap. 

After a year and a half of writing and decades of dreaming, I was holding a book that has my title emblazoned on the cover, my name stretched up the spine, and my world imprinted upon each page.

Those years of writing and dreaming were long and hard, but, somehow, the three months of waiting to share this book with the world often felt longer and harder than anything that came before. 

For me, a lover of Celtic myth and Irish folklore, liminal spaces have always sound so alluring and mysterious. I’ve always wanted more chances to wander in the mist and hear the Otherworldly voices. It has been disappointing to realize that the liminal space between the creation and release of something as big and meaningful as a book is both fragile and clumsy. 

Waiting for that link to go live on Amazon (launch day is 2/4/20!) is at once too damn lonely and quiet and too bloody noisy with shoulds and doubts and fears.

How I Navigated the Post-Book Slump

Turns out, the post-book blahs are normal.

My mentor, the wise, seasoned writer Elizabeth Cunningham who has written many books, including The Maeve Chronicles (and also the foreword to The Sovereignty Knot) described this as the “postpartum period.” As she watched me wrestle with anxiety and depletion and the sense that I was endlessly called to do something even though I could barely get off the couch, Elizabeth offered me the exact guidance I needed:

Ask the book what she wants.

It took me a while to quiet the ego and release my need to control everything and take this advice, but when I did, I could breathe again. I could see again. I could trust myself again.

The book reminded me that I was tired. It was the hard earned kind of tired that you recover from with the help of long walks, long novels, and a long break from the screen. 

Ever so gently, the book also pointed out that I was scared of what might come next (or what might not come next) once it was out in the world.

And, the book reminded me that I needed to ask for support from forces that are much more powerful and enduring than a collection of printed pages. To get through the liminal space between the book’s private formation and public birth. I needed to rely on the forces that helped me write it all in the first place: 

My goddess guides. 

The trinity of Celtic goddesses who speak to me and through me are imprinted into every line, but you’ll really get to meet them when you get to Chapter 12 of The Sovereignty Knot. 

Telling their story is another step on my lifelong spiritual journey. Ever since I found the section of the bookstore that offered me Celtic spirituality and the secret of the sacred feminine, I have been seeking out these goddesses, begging them to come closer, and learning how to dance with them in the dark. 

More often than I have wanted to admit, however, I’d lose track of their divine presence. In the face of all that divine yearning, I couldn’t recognize that my goddess guides were always right there waiting to be noticed the moment I stopped fretting about why I didn’t feel divinely inspired.

To get through this weird period between “I wrote the last word!” and “Come buy a copy!” I needed, to quote my coach KC Carter, to “double down on the spiritual practice.”

I needed to get quiet, to listen closely, to open my heart wide. I needed to remember that I wasn’t supposed to get through this all by myself. I was never supposed to figure it out all by myself. I needed to talk to them.

Brigid, The Goddess of Liminal Spaces 

In my book, you’ll get to know Brigid, the Irish goddess turned saint who has been my guide since I was a fourteen year-old trying to get through my confirmation so I could finally escape the Catholic Church.

Though I have had a relationship with Brigid for more than half my life, I need to admit that I have long been afraid to fully enter into a relationship with her. Somehow, I was always waiting to be worthy of her, to feel chosen by her, to have her appear more fully in my life. 

(Maybe, foolishly, I thought Brigid needed me to publish a book before I was enough of an “expert” to get her attention. Hot Tip: Goddesses don’t operate that way, and no human being worth knowing operates that way either.)

She is the goddess guide who has been waiting in this particular liminal space with me, holding the torch that guides the way. All along, she has forgiven me for covering my eyes, for being unable to see her in my quest to hide from the unknown. Brigid trusted that I would eventually look up and stand tall when it was time to enter through the doorway into authorship.

“Brigid lived her life in the liminal space between Heaven and Earth. The Celts perceived liminal spaces as “thin places” where the supernatural world and the visible world could meet, allowing beings to pass back and forth from one to the other. Throughout Brigid’s life, she held a thin place within her own self. She was rooted in the practical everyday world, but she could also see the world of angels and spirits. Her life was lived on the threshold.”

— Kenneth McIntosh in Brigid’s Mantle: A Celtic Dialogue Between Pagan and Christian

Now that I can hear her and feel her presence in my life again, I can trust that she is guiding me and she is guiding this book into the world. 

It’s no accident, of course. I deliberately chose the book’s release date to coincide with the energy of Brigid’s Day, of the Imbolc festival and her saint’s day, that happen over February 1 and 2.

Over the next couple of weeks as the book launch week (February 4 - 8) approaches, you’ll hear a lot more from me about Brigid, about why this goddess of fire and water, of poetry and family, of smithcraft and even beer is a guide for Sovereignty seekers like us. 

We need her to help us navigate these liminal spaces as creatives, as caregivers, as beings who need more self-care. 

And, considering I am an American who calls her energy to me all the way across a vast ocean, I think there’s something to say about how she can help us as we navigate these liminal spaces as a country and a global community, too.

Be sure to follow me on Facebook to dive deep into Brigid’s magic.

To get email updates about the book and all the Brigid material, visit this page and leave me your address.

Rest, Heal, Rearrange

My well - of energy, of words, of vision - has been running dry for weeks. I've tried to fake it, and from time to time, I pulled it off. Inside, I have been feeling parched, barren, and exhausted.⁣

This week, I started over.⁣⁣

I've been living in the in-between place that comes after a great big project is completed and before the next push really begins. It's a hard place to be, all full of self-recrimination about how I "should" be planning more, earning more, speaking more. ⁣⁣

Ultimately, I knew I needed this trough after the huge wave of energy and creativity that was the final sprint to finish my book, but it was hard to settle into that truth. I'm too well programmed to equate the push with success. I'm too accustomed to beating myself up for being lazy and playing small.⁣

I finally got the physical and spiritual support I needed to figure out why I've been feeling so drained and depressed. (Thank you, Eleanora Amendolara of the Sacred Center Mystery School for your healing wisdom! Thank you for seeing that the problem was my thyroid and my adrenals as well as a struggle to step through the portal into a new phase of spiritual expansion.)⁣

With that wisdom (and some powerful herbs and nutritional supplements), I gave myself permission to stay quiet for a few more days. I watched those phenomenally impressive Americans speak truth to Congress. I read ⁣Meggan Watterson’s book about Mary Magdalene and reconnected with one of the most powerful spiritual foremothers. ⁣

And then, I started moving all the furniture around.⁣

I needed my space to reflect that my spiritual furniture has been completely rearranged by the writing of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman's Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic. I needed this room where I do my work to look like an author's study rather than a mompreneur's cluttered office. ⁣

It's still in process, but there's a new flow to this space. This room feels like it wants to hold the mystery, the growth, and the new connections I'll be making in this next phase of personal, professional, creative, spiritual becoming.⁣⁣

Where are you right now?

Are you riding the wave, doing the work, and making it happen?
Are you sliding down into the doldrums because you need to give into gravity for a little while?
Are you struggling, thinking you should be riding or resting in a different way?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture on the inside and do the healing work?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture in the office because you're ready for a new phase?⁣

Wherever you are, I invite you to pause, to look around, and to take some notes. Capture this moment on the page so you know what it's like to feel wildly free or in gentle recovery or in the dark place in between.⁣

And if you need help along the way as you try to sort out just where you are and what to do next, call on me. ⁣

Book a Tarot & Intuitive Healing Session or join The Sovereign Writers Circle.

⁣

My Turn, Your Turn, Our Turn at Sovereignty

It’s my turn.

And when I say that, I don’t mean that I get a turn and that you don’t.

It’s my turn to spin my own wheel of fortune. (Please think tarot card and not game show. Unless Vanna White inspires you to take action and make something amazing. Personally, I find Betty White a more inspiring figure, but to each their own.)

If you’d like, we can stand back to back and set our own worlds turning. We could hold hands and turn and spin together too, each held by our own center of gravity.

The momentum of my turning will feed yours, just as yours will feed mine. We’ll share the journey, but we’ll each stay sovereign and complete unto ourselves. We’ll be moved by our own unique power, and in doing so, we’ll empower one another.  And that will prove that we love and respect each other. That will prove that we love and respect the individual pilgrim soul within that’s ours alone to tend.

As I take my turn it feels important to say something: in exactly two months, I kiss my thirties goodbye.

I’m still far from my life’s halfway mark. Did you hear that, universe? I stand in my thirty-nine years of wisdom, of passion, of foolishness. I stand in all my  selflessness, selfishness, glory, and fear and say: I’m just getting started. My own mother might have died at sixty, but I’m shooting for at least one hundred seven, and I intend to make them all count.

There’s so more magic, so more insight, so much more power within me just waiting to be unfurled. I’m thrilled that I can barely imagine the potential. Right now, it’s ok that I don’t know exactly where I’m headed. It’s somewhere glorious, and I seem to be making really good time.

None of us knows where we’re heading, of course. You take your turn not because you know the outcome and can predict the next three moves. You take your turn because you’re scared, because you’re sure, because you’ve waited this long already, and because you’ve been hurtling, inching, sliding toward this moment for your whole life.

I’m taking my turn because, after years of living just a bit outside of my own story, my own heart, my own body, I’ve finally arrived somewhere. After years of longing and searching, everything has gotten so rich and real… Finally! It only took an entire lifetime to achieve this overnight transformation.

Deep down, I always knew this was possible. Deep down, I always knew the only way to change the world was to change myself. I knew it, but I didn’t believe it until now.

Damn, this sounds like a bit delicious dreaming in the midst of the world and its chaos, right?

I dream of sovereignty. In this dream, I choose myself. I choose this bit of earth beneath my feet and this collection of my favorite people. I choose this community, this work, and these words.

Yes, it’s all so delicious. But, deep inside, there’s still this dark little urge. You know the one. It’s that urge to berate yourself for all that wasted time, energy, and opportunity. It’s the urge to hate yourself just a little bit for the lost days, weeks, or even decades. It’s the urge to laugh at the woman who is so bold and daft, who dares to believe in the instant alchemy of transformation. It’s that urge to say “who do you think you are?” with the venomous sneer of an insecure bully.

Yeah, the timid little mean girl inside me wants to scoff and hide when I make all these powerful, grown up declarations.

But then I realize that any part of me that can’t believe in my own sovereignty, in my own power, in the fact that it’s my turn is a relic from the past. Those parts of myself exist in my memory, not in my current reality. The “not me,” “not yet,” and “I couldn’t possibly” chapter has ended. I could go back and reread it and try to revert back to the old stories, but inviting that sort of misery doesn’t really seem worth the effort.

I need to take all the energy I’ve got and pay it toward the future. It’s my turn after all.

Maybe you’re like me and you’re feeling all kinds of ecstatic and all kinds of worried at this shift into “It’s my turn. I choose me. I trust myself to use my focus and my power to make magic that will make this world more beautiful, bearable, and bold.”

We’ve been conditioned to be nice kids who let the loud ones, the eager ones, and the needier ones go first. We’ve been taught to make sure everyone is pleased and comfy. We’ve been trained to be practical and responsible. We’re the smart ones. The dependable ones. We’ve gotten used to taking refuge in our fantasies but we can’t imagine seeing that fantastical stuff happen in real life.

We keep on waiting. And waiting. Until one day, it’s not about the waiting any more.

Instead, it’s about being brave and crazy, centered and compassionate, irreverent and wise and saying “it’s my turn.”

In my world, taking my turn means declaring my own personal and creative sovereignty.

Sovereignty is about freeing the princess (that’s the brave and crazy part). Sovereignty is about crowning the queen (that’s the centered and compassionate part). Sovereignty is about embracing the wise woman (that’s the irreverent and wise part).

Sovereignty is about encountering all these aspects of yourself and finding your essential self in the center of all this magic, confusion, and possibility.

It’s my turn to really  hold space for these sovereignty teachings and offer them to you. It’s your turn to start to look at what your sovereign story looks and feels like to you.

Join me for The Sovereign Awakening, the new program that will inspire you to take your turn and give you the tools to live and tell your Sovereign Story.

Come On, Let's Play

Heyyyyy you guyssss!

(Did you hear that come through in my best playground voice?)

I’m going to use that outside voice a little more often, ok? It’s not that I want to yell at you, it’s that I want to spark the kind of joy and movement all too many of us left behind on the playground.

This morning during a deep talk with a deeply insightful coach of mine, I came to realize how careful and delicate many of my communications have become.

Somewhere along the line, I traded sales pages for “invitation pages” because that felt less pushy and gross.

Somewhere along the line, I also traded the copywriter’s tricks (bold headlines and emphasizing pain points) for the gentle voice of a tea party hostess.

In many cases, my soft voiced suggestions seem to have gotten lost in the din of the digital world. With the chaos of the daily responsibilities and the worries about the wider world, it’s no wonder the people I most wanted to reach weren't hearing me.

Here’s What’s True

I am a multifaceted creature who offers up the magical and the practical, the tender and the snarky, the sacred and the mundane in equal measure. I value tears and empathy, but sometimes we all just need to laugh until it’s funny and find the way to healing with a megawatt smile.

And so, I say, come play with us, come write with us on Friday, March 1 at noon ET.

You need to make it to this free Community Writing Practice because you need to meet yourself on the page. You need to make space for the stories, the old memories, the sorrows, and the surprises too.

Trust the Cycles. Trust Yourself. Trust the Words.

It’s taken a while, but I feel like I have finally arrived in my favorite time of year, in my beloved October when we’re all invited to play in one last glorious golden stretch before the northern earth begins her winter sleep.

This new video is part of my Writing and Magic Making series. This is where we have a chance to explore creativity, sovereignty, and the art of changing consciousness at will. If you’re a healer who writes, a writer who uses words to heal, or a seeker of everyday magic and mysticism, please check this out - and subscribe!

And, as I mention in the video, we’re holding this month’s free community writing practice session at noon ET on Friday, October 19.

Register for this one hour session that includes a series of writing prompts and the chance to connect with other writers and magic makers.

So You Dream of Creating “A Writing Life”…

So many of us walk around with a secret (or not so secret) yearning for some other way to be, some other kind of life to lead.

This thing you yearn for, it’s not so far from who you are now. You’re not asking to join the circus or live on the moon. Instead, you want your own life, plus a little something more true, more authentically yours.

You find yourself reaching for some kind of life that’s perpetually almost within your grasp, but not quite. You taste it during stolen hours or weekend retreats, but it doesn’t stay. It’s like living in a constant state of “If only... but not yet.”

A creative life. A spiritual life. An artist’s life. A writing life.

What You Learn Two Decades Into “Not Quite a Writer’s Life”

For me, it was always the quest for “a writing life.” It was the quest to reclaim the life I’d had when I was too young to feel unworthy of it.

The adult me could write now and then, sure, but to have a life that placed my own writing somewhere near the center of my day and my identity? Oh, that sounds absolutely divine, thank you, but I just couldn’t possibly!

The excuses evolved through the years, but they all seemed reasonable enough at the time…

There was the relationship. My passion and my confidence about the words I put on the page dried up when I fell in love with an older guy who fancied himself a writer. I was 17. None of my girlish stories could be more important than loving a man and the creative work that he was sure were so important...

There was the inner critic. Eventually, we broke up and that guy went on to not actually become a writer, but I still couldn’t get my inspiration to conspire with my reality to create a writing habit. Though I had plenty of time throughout my 20s, I would be all full of passion and potential until I sat down and stared at a cruel blank page. No story could ever be good enough after all that time spend wishing I could be a “real” writer...

There was the mothering. Once I hit my 30s and found myself with a house and children, there was barely time to shower or even to think, never mind develop a writing practice that was nourishing and consistent. No story could be more worthy than my family and worries about our finances...

One constant belief that carried me for over 20 years: a writing life was something that other people could have.

The blessed ones. People who didn’t have to work, who didn’t have to parent, who didn’t have to sleep. People with stories more compelling, tragic, and impossible to ignore. People who were born brilliant. People born without an inner critic. People who trusted that they were here to be artists and had some sort of creative grit I just couldn’t find or fully understand.

But then I began to realize… There’s no such thing as “other people.” And I had a twisted perspective on what it meant to be “blessed” to boot.

Good news: the entire world is conspiring to help me (to help all of us) reckon with - and struggle with - these truths.

Division and Illusion On a Grand Scale

Right now, on a global scale, the waves of manufactured division are trying to erode the bedrock of human connection. Illusion is trying to flame brighter than shared truth.

There are structures in place - old, top-down power structures - that tell us we are a country checkered with two primary colors and that we are a world that’s meant to be sliced up according to our differences in politics, religion, and culture.

And yet, we’re also watching the entire spectrum of colors and identities emerge, rise up, blend, shift, and find countless new forms of expression.

It’s both painful and easy to see the contradictions, to see why this moment in history seems so overwhelming, confusing, and just so wrong… There are things we know in our bones, the basic stuff of right and wrong, but then we’re barraged by narratives of an alternate reality constantly being presented by “the other side.”

Division and Illusion on the Individual Scale

To varying degrees, we are reflections of the collective. Throughout my creative life I’d created my own private biosphere where I constantly planted hope, but the brutal storms of division and illusion always seemed wash away the seeds and destroy the immature root system.

In this world I had created, I wasn’t like the fortunate, productive people who wrote great things and boldly took in the harvest.

I couldn’t be savvy enough or brave enough to make the sacrifices to prioritize my writing. Somehow, my burden was heavier - even if it was the weight of the horrifically mundane. Those other people and their secret success sauce were meant to be followed and envied, but also avoided.

I told myself I had to push through my own workaday reality, which could never be quite as bright or full of promise as the creative reality of others. I had to take each practical project that came along to pay for the groceries and simply tell the art to wait in line. When I had all the money, marriage, and mothering figured out, then I could write.

Oh, My Heart, I Am Sick to Death of that Story

There’d be a certain amount of continuity to this tale if I told you that I came to my epiphany when I reached my 40s. But really, it’s just not necessary to wait another nine months for the revolution. The change is happening now…

I’ve quit praying for a writing life and decided that I’d better just start living in.

In part, change is rolling through because I was bored sick of the old stories, limitations, and fear. In part, it’s because time had done its work and life had started to change around me.

I started to see that my marriage (to a different guy who never considered himself a writer and who was never threatened by my creativity) wasn’t served by my playing small. My children got older. The years I had spent writing words for others seemed less like lost opportunities and more like the apprenticeship that would hold me as I grew a family.

And I just plain old outgrew the narrow life offered by my bad old friends division and illusion.

So many moments and choices brought me here, back at the page with the trust and confidence of my young, fearless self. Countless stories and words had to pile up until I could again trust my voice and declare that my life must be a writing life.  

Ultimately, though, it all comes down to one word - one enormous, magical word that I plan on spending the rest of my life teasing out…

Photo by Dev on Unsplash

Sovereignty.

It’s a word that found me long before its definition did.

Sovereignty came to me as something to do with freeing the princess, crowning the queen, and embracing the wise woman. This trinity of ideas found me during the darkest time when I was mourning my mother’s death, trying to figure how to be a mom to my newborn, and stumbling through the early days of entrepreneurship.

Sovereignty was a signal fire that shone on a distant shore, finding me in the midst of a long dark night.

And yet, for so long, sovereignty was as much of a “someday” dream as having a writing life was.

I knew I wanted to be sovereign, that I had to be sovereign in order to fully experience my own life. I knew I was meant to...

• fully accept and inhabit my own worthiness

• connect with and own my creative power

• feel whole and comfortable in my own skin, on this earth, in my relationships, and in my own story

• reckon with all that I yearned for, all that I’d been, all that I am in this moment, and all I’ve denied about myself, my reality, and our collective reality

• take on the truth of the world and be strong enough to make a difference - without sacrificing myself, body, mind and spirit.

It’s been a long, spiraling journey to get anywhere near sovereignty, to get anywhere near a writing life.

But here I am, with over 45,000 words in my Book of Sovereignty manuscript.

And here I am, founding the Sovereign Writers Circle and holding space for a phenomenal group of healers and creatives who want to bring their words and stories into the world.

I waited for my reality to change, I waited for my real life to sort itself out in order to make way for my writing life.

And then I stopped waiting and started writing and I realized that the difference between me and a real writing life, a real creative life was about 1000 words a day devoted to a passion project that integrates the most essential parts of who I am and what I know I must say.

What If the Writing Life You Long for Isn’t Really About Writing At All?

The most true advice one can offer an “aspiring writer” is to quit aspiring and start writing.

It’s also the most brutal advice, and I think I have finally sorted out why…

Writing is less about putting words on a page than it is about expressing your sovereign story - as an individual, as a creative, as someone with a story that you know in your bones is worthy of remembering, imagining, drafting, editing, and risking in the world.

And so, I invite you to lean into your longing for a writing life, but please don’t stop there. I invite you to set a goal to live a sovereign life as well.

If Real Magic Means Real Change, Are You Ready?

There’s “real magic” in the air

We’re feeling it in the breath of spring that comes through the teeth of a nor’easter. We see it in the brave voices that speak up against the corporate lobbies and the brutal blindness of the status quo. It’s shimmering through my online conversations and through the Sovereign Writers Circle as we  explore the way magic inflects and deepens our creative and professional work.

(The talk about creative magic begins with about how to describe the "real magic" of your work. You may want to read it first. As a healer and a creative, I believe that your power relies on your “real magic,” the unspeakable something that transforms lives. I think you’ll recognize your own unspoken powers in these ideas.)

What do we really mean by “magic”?

Now, it’s one thing to talk about magic. We can discuss Wrinkle in Time and trade unicorn memes and build fairy houses together. That is very, very good medicine that we all need in our overly-serious, tragically trivial world.

And it’s another thing to sense the magic. We need to admit that there’s something beyond the everyday human perception at work, both in the little domestic miracles and the glimmers of hope that spring up around the globe.

Then it’s a whole other matter to own your magic to the degree that you can describe it and actually lead with it.

My dream for you - and for everyone you help, heal, inspire, and love -  is that you will believe, perceive, and work the magic you’ve got. And I pray that you’ll keep on seeking and deepening your connection to it too.

The magic we love… and fear

Before we go on, let’s settle on a working definition of magic. I look to the psychotherapist turned occultist and fantasy novelist Dion Fortune:  “magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.”

As you’ve gathered, I’m a lover and a student of magic. Thanks to my own healing and mystery school studies and with all the writing and consulting work I have done for therapists, healers, and coaches, I’m also a student of transformation and evolution. I’ve watched all the ways I embrace and reject change. I've observed how I chase transformation and run from it too. I’ve seen my clients thrilled by the idea of the next chapter but still stand rooted in the same old story.

As a “transformation professional” yourself,  you’ve witnessed your own process, your own game of hide and seek with transformation. You’ve seen it in client after client who is hungry for things to shift yet longs for life to stay the same.

There’s so much fear mixed into the fabulously intoxicating cocktail of change. And that’s a major reason we’re as enthralled by magic as we are repelled by it.

What if leaning into your magic means a freefall into change?

Your “real magic” ripples through all aspects of your personal, creative, and professional life, but let’s think about the work side of it here…

I sort of jumped and fell into entrepreneurship all at the same time. It felt like a choiceless choice. My mother died suddenly of a heart attack that no one saw coming. I had an eight month old baby and an academic job that drained my soul. If life was this short and unpredictable, who cares if it’s hard to pay the mortgage? I need to hold my baby, comfort my dad, and chase the joy now.

And since not working didn’t seem like an option, I cobbled together a business based on something I thought was necessary (and impossible): promoting holistic health practitioners.

In truth, I wanted to start my own energy healing business, but I was afraid I’d never clients. So, in the way that entrepreneurial illogic works, I started a business to help everyone else solve a problem I didn’t know how to solve for myself.

It was a crazy miserable journey for the first couple years. It’s probably best described as grief and motherhood with occasional bouts of freelancing. I was taking all the wrong jobs and chasing all the wrong possibilities and I was replicating the wasteland I’d experienced at my safe, salaried job with a new kind of discontent that included chronic insecurity and bizarre hours.

A wise friend who had been watching my process offered me a piece of brilliant advice: “You’ve been so unhappy doing the work you’re doing, and you’re not making the money you need and the money you’re worth. What if you tried doing what you love?”

It took years (an embarrassing number of years) to finally take that advice.

Back then, I was chronically dissatisfied and stressed and I really didn’t have much to lose since the bottom had dropped out of life. (Admittedly, in some key ways, I wasn’t completely without a foundation. I was still held by a supportive husband who made just enough to pay the basic bills - but I still made choices that made me feel empty every day.)

Why couldn’t I just make the change? Why couldn’t I make room for my magic and offer that instead of doing what I thought I “should” do?

That’s a whole other story, but I tell you about my “lost years”  to let you know that I understand how radical it seems to ask you to lead with your magic if you’re actually doing pretty well, if you’re making a living at the career you trained for

What if leaning into your magic meant taking flight into transformation?

Sometimes the call to explore your “real magic” may mean quitting the soul-sucking agency job or ditching the “pays the bills” 9 to 5 in order to truly launch your soul-defining practice.

Sometimes, the real magic is being asked to be expressed within the current paradigm. It’s about tweaking the website copy to invite the clients you truly wish to work with and axing the language that sounds like it came with the graduate school materials.

Sometimes, it’s about remembering that the “real magic” is found in the project that you work on at the edges of each day. The memoir. The children’s book. The “I have no idea what it is but it comes from the caverns and mountains of my soul” project that you know will lead you somewhere.

My clients are doing all of these because just as there are countless expressions of magic there are countless ways to make it manifest.

Your magic will change you. It will change the world. That is both a promise and a warning.

In every case, you’ll need courage. And probably unicorn memes. And novels that transport you to another world from time to time. And chocolate. And movement that connects you to your body. And probably some more chocolate.

And you may find you need companions on the journey too.

The Sovereign Writers Circle is the place to connect with magical companions, the writer-healer-creatives who will journey beside you as you ride the tides of transformation. The last window on this month’s membership closes at midnight on Sunday March 4. We’ll reopen the doors to new writers on April 1.

The Sovereignty Sessions offer you the individualized support that helps you dissolve your fear of change and channel your creative magic. You can book these any time.

How you work the magic words. How the magic words work you.

Are you ready to make some magic?

On March 14, we begin another #7MagicWords adventure together. If you're new to my community, or haven't been able to make space for this free weeklong challenge in the past, here's the gist:

At the turn of each season, you're invited to find seven magic words. You'll get a prompt each morning that will help focus your attention and open yourself to the possibilities that linger in your everyday language.

It's my hope that a daily practice of "magic word seeking" will invite you to pause and notice that creative magic really is swirling about you all the time. And, at the end of the #7MW week, I hope that your words reveal patterns that help you reflect on the last season and set intentions for what's next.

Those who have been part of any of the three previous #7MagicWords Challenges will know that we talk about how the magic works in multiple ways. Every day, you realize that the magic word finds you as much as you find the magic word. And, we know that when you focus all of the thoughts, feelings, and mysteries of a day into one word, you are often inspired to tell a new story that goes deeper and takes you into unexpected territory.

The word I couldn't call "magical"

Earlier this week, I struggled to find just the right word. I knew I didn't want to go with my first instinct, so this is what I shared on social media as my daily  #365MagicWords post:

Whose earth is this anyway? Saturday's snow beside Tuesday's flip flops... We linger side by side in the afternoon sun. Peaceful coexistence between polar opposites is possible here and there after all.

But here's the thing: that wasn't the full story. It took me a while to get to that word and those brief sentences. I kept dancing with the ideas and the process itself the next morning. This is what emerged the next morning:

Yesterday's magic was so obvious. Swishing about in my favorite sleeveless dress with its full skirt and trading the boots for the flip flops during a Hudson Valley February? That is the very definition of fantastical living.

I'd have been happy with making the day's magic word a grin and a spring in my step that transcends all language, but the writing coach in me is committed to finding the words. (As Seamus Heaney says, "If you have the words, there's always a chance you'll find the way" and I know I need to keep finding the way no matter what the weather, no matter what I'm wearing.)

Last night, as I tried to pair a word with this perfect moment and the sweet little picture I'd captured, I thought about "coexist." Snow and flip flops are the perfect symbol of peacefully getting along, right? I thought of that bumper sticker that celebrates world religions. When I had that on my first car, the sentiment seemed pure and powerful. But, in 2018, I admit that coexistence seems fraught and heavy and just too much for the delicate joy of an out-of-season day to carry.

I ended up picking up my journal and writing into "coexistence." I was so grateful that this patch of heart shaped snow wanted to teach me so much.

Through my writing practice, I found "linger."It felt right to share that tender magic with a world that's in the midst of the grief, the fear, the gun debate, and the Twitter storms of the last week.

I steeped myself in the inspiration of "linger" while I took on the hardest issues of the day, while I wrestled with why it seems harder than ever to share space with difference, to respect each other despite our divides. I lingered in my own judgments, my own defenses, my own refusal to believe "us" and "them" can coexist until they change.

I lingered in the shame and fear for a while, but then I returned to the simple magic of the original moment: I remembered that I'm a human with a body that loves the warm breeze. I stepped back into the sensual surprise that is a late spring day stolen from the teeth of winter. I stepped back into the magic without disregarding the reality.

Will you join us March 14 - 21?

This is the sort of inquiry that becomes possible when you look for a single magic word to capture the power and potency of a day... And that is why we return to #7MagicWords each season.

The #7MagicWords Challenge is free and open to all who want to open themselves to possibility and renewal, one word at a time.

Your Sovereign Story is a Cardinal in the Snow

The deep northern freeze still seals the Christmas Day snow to the ground. Winter feels like it’ll be a permanent resident on this earth. We tender-skinned beasts can only huddle on the warm side of a window and try to remind one another of spring.

And yet, there are tracks in the yard. This patch of land is a crossroads for unseen hooves and paws. The squirrels are gray ghosts haunting the treetops. Whether they’re playing, trying desperately to keep their blood pumping, or searching in vain for a nut that’s not frozen through, they remind us that there is life out there in what is only a temporary tundra.

It’s worth it to keep looking, then. In truth, I’m always looking. Even when I’m not aware of it, I’m always asking for a sign and I’m always seeking their blessing. I need these tough little birds to show me that there’s spark and lift in me too -  even when the light in me just wants to hibernate and the flight in me wants to help me escape to some fantasy land of perpetual summer holidays.

Somewhere in those woods, there’s a pair of cardinals keeping each other company in the January chill. I linger at the breakfast table, hoping this will be the morning they flit by.

It’s not like wishing for hummingbirds in a hurricane, they’re out there. Constant creatures, mated for life and non-migratory even in the furthest reaches of their range, the cardinals endure. They are flashes of inspiration waiting to be detected in the white-gray winter sleep.

The cardinal speaks to us of love, equality, the true voice, and the right to be seen… The female sings as loudly and sweetly as the male. When it’s time to breed, the daddies mute their bold colors to better keep the nest safe and share in the care of the young.

The cardinal is a harbinger of creativity who sparks the inner fires. They offer you direction - a red flare to follow into your own story.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash

In the midst of the noise and the distraction, the suffering and the silencing, it can feel impossible to recognize the story that you’re here to tell. Dedicating the time to tell it and standing certain that you have the right to do so… That’s even tougher.

But this isn’t just any story you long to explore and share. This isn’t some social media status crafted to get a bunch of likes and shares or make an impact as a “sponsored post.” It’s so much more than that.

It’s your Sovereign Story, the story that you’re meant to tell. The story that you’ve lived through and struggled for and are still healing and reshaping  every day.

This Sovereign Story of yours is a cardinal in the snow. It’s unbelievable that it thrives in such weather. You just assume it’s fled like all of the other delicate creatures who need optimal conditions to thrive. But it never truly leaves. It’s lingering at the edges of your vision and daring you to catch it in its flight. It’s a beacon that shines with the same enduring strength that you’ve shown every step of your own journey.

The cardinal is still here. You’re still here. Notice that. Tell the story of how and why.

This is the way we spread light in the darkness and welcome fellow seekers to the hearth after a long trek in the cold.

Not sure where to find your cardinal or if you'd know what to do with your Sovereign Story when it finds you? Apply to join the Sovereign Writers Circle where you'll write and grow with other healers and transformation professionals on a quest to follow the signs and tell the stories that matter.

Sovereignty Lessons: The Antidote to Dreaming Medium & Playing Small

Just as every full moon is followed by the darkness of the new, and the crest of every wave is followed by the trough, so we humans must find peace in the fallow time, the quiet time during which we recover.

We might wish to defy the cycles of nature, but we always get pulled back and reminded of who we really are - creatures who ebb and flow just like the skies, the seas, and the seasons.

Since the #7MagicWords Challenge wrapped up at the end of September, I've drawn inward.

In part, I needed the rest after the great outpouring of energy required by all that collective magic making. But really, that creative magic I celebrate every day has been having its effect on me. I needed to still my public voice as I began to figure out how to integrate it all.

Quite unexpectedly, the daily Magic Words themselves have begun to take a new shape. Even as I worked my own creative magic on them, they started really working their magic on me.

(That’s how this tends to work, you know. When you put enough passion and energy into a project, it gives back to you. As you shape your creation, it shapes you too. The dance continues in an infinity loop of grace as long as you can combine commitment and surrender in their own good measure.)

Getting schooled by my own magic

As you likely know, I've traced my 2017 through the #365MagicWords project. I show up to Instagram and Facebook with a new word, image, and story just about every day. Family trips to the beach, moments of backyard beauty, and inspiration from my bedtime reading all inspired the word of the day.

The words, stories, and pictures were a reflection of daily life. They were exactly the size of my world: sweet, but kind of on the small side.

“This is me,” I seemed to say with each post. Everything safe and contained. I smile for the camera. I keep my secrets. I transmute my fears and flaws and shame into something quite compact, light, and harmless.

Not a whole lot to see here, just a nice, tiny little word for a narrow little world.

But the MagicWords needed to teach me something. Turns out, they were preparing me for something all along. Something beyond the limits of a smartphone screen. Something as big as my truth.

How deep is your cauldron? How powerful is your spell? How vast are your dreams?

There’s one question we’ve all been asked. (No, not a question about cauldrons and spells, but I do tend to use those metaphors to talk about creative energy quite a bit, so I am sure some of my story healing clients are nodding!).

Sometimes the question is posed with soul-deep sincerity and other times it comes from someone’s bone-deep aggravation: “What do you want?”

The version that really got me to stop and pay attention: “In your vastest, most inspired dreams, where are you in five years?”

Finally, this question cut through my armor and my excuses. (You know the excuses: “I’ll journal about my heart's deepest desires tomorrow, when I can find the time...”)

My most powerful WarriorGoddess-WiseWoman answer was something like “Um, I don’t really know...  but I hope to the gods I’ve written a book by then and I don’t have to worry about money or health or love.”

The painful truth was out. It feels totally devoid of magic, but quite rich in pain and regret:

Though I have been reading all the right books and listening to all the right podcasts, I have been dreaming medium, playing small, and mourning lost opportunities in a big, huge way.

“Sovereignty” is my favorite word, but I wasn’t really showing up to be the ruler of my own life. There was a huge disconnect between the way I tried to look when I walked down the street and the thoughts that were swirling in a constant loop in my head.

Wake up time.

Day by day, the MagicWords are becoming Sovereignty Lessons

For years now I have been walking around with these short, mighty sentences inside of me:

Free the Princess.
Crown the Queen.
Embrace the WiseWoman.

They are lessons I credit to the Sovereignty Goddess, a Celtic deity who embodies the spirit of the land and conferred the the right of kingship to the man who could please her. (Yes, I a do mean “please” in that sense. Read more about what the Sovereignty Goddess wants to teach you here.)

Her mythical and historical background are fascinating and inspiring, but what really matters is the way Sovereignty Goddess dwells within each of us (women and men alike because we all carry elements of the divine feminine).

To connect with your own Sovereignty, to stand Sovereign in your own life is to lay claim to the soil beneath your feet. If that soil isn’t fertile and stable enough to hold you yet, that is where you begin, tending to your wounds and loving yourself into this piece of the earth that so wants to hold you, flaws and all.

Once you trust you have a right to your patch of the planet, you begin rooting there, deep into your true identity.

Sovereignty Lessons are a message from your own Creative Source

These Sovereignty Lessons - these messages from Creative Source, from your own Higher Self  - they aren’t just meant to protect you in a rosy little reality of your own making. You anchor into yourself so that you can remember who you are and what’s important and take action from there.

When you’re grounded into truth and into your own Sovereign Story, you can enter into the great ecstatic dance of loving and serving and healing and transforming this gorgeous, bruised up world.

Even as you continue to question your own assumptions, blind spots, and the false beliefs that you’re separate from the shadows and light in our society and the suffering and the glory of our planet, you’re holding that sacred piece of turf inside you.

Sovereignty is the identity, the story, and the collection of soul-deep things you know for sure. It’s the place you build from. It’s the place you come home to when you need time to learn, to heal, to grow.

Are you tending to your own Sovereigny?

As I said, the #365MagicWords posts are evolving and shifting. Find them on Instagram or follow my Facebook page, Sovereignty and Magic Making with Marisa Goudy to see them each day. To join the conversation, remember that the door is open to you at the MagicWords FB group too.

And I invite you to think about your own relationship to Sovereignty and your Sovereign Story… Have you uncovered it yet? Is it buried under shoulds and doubts or lost inside your not-quite-the-right-size dreams?

Consider a Story Healing Session. Together, we’ll weave the practical and the magical to anchor your into yourself and give you the freedom to bravely express your truth.

Before the Business Plans and the Paragraphs... the Poetry

What's on the other side of the stuff you need to write, the marketing you gotta do, and the emails you should return?

Desire. Sleep. The passions l that aren't born of what's clearly public, profitable, or popular.

Oh, and poetry.

It was so wonderful to appear on Linda Bonney’s podcast to talk about something as delightfully subversive as poetry. She’s a brave soul on a mission, showing us how verse matters in a world obsessed with prose.

We wrote poems in the margins before we pushed quotes into the Instagram feed 

Once upon a time, phones were used to place calls and recent college grads had jobs at desks without computers. I used to fill legal pads with stanzas that never, ever rhymed.

But that was a long time ago, and I tried to dance away from Linda’s invitation to talk about the role of poetry in my life today. Though I try my best to read a poem rather than get lost in the news feed from time to time, I haven't written purposefully written a line of poetry for years.

Linda has a way of finding the poet within and inviting you to find your own poetic soul in the midst of the distraction and the full sentences.

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

I invite you to listen to our conversation, Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence. It was an honor to read aloud from a piece I wrote last month that celebrated the return of my voice. We also dive into W.B. Yeats and what it might mean to welcome poetry into the “real” work.

And tell me... where does poetry sit along your own life's journey? Is it a part of your distant past? A continuing source of inspiration and solace? A language you never quite learned to speak?

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

This year, I had promised myself, this year would be different. I wouldn’t keep looking over my shoulder as I waded through my beloved Cape Cod Bay. I wouldn’t feel like I was waiting for a bus as I sat on the shore and watched the tide spin out.

I’ve been to this beach every day for more than a week, but I’m still having trouble arriving. But finally, the moment or, should I say, the magic finds me.  I remember. I connect back with that elemental spiritual practice that centers me when I’m hundreds of miles from the ocean, when I’m trying to get work done at my desk or trying to keep from snapping at the kids over breakfast.

The Ritual of Remembering

Sending roots deep into the belly of the earth, through the wet sand beneath my feet and down to the bedrock that anchors this fierce and fragile peninsula, I trust that this land will hold the fierce and fragile me. I was born of this place. It knows me.

Reaching arms up into the limitless blue sky, through those fast-moving fair weather clouds and all those layers of protective atmosphere that hides the intensity of the stars, I trust that I glow with an invisible intensity of my own. I am made of stardust too. It illuminates me.

Steady earth and fiery star. Flowing water and swirling air. I come back to myself when I spool beyond my frenzied thoughts and my too-tight skin. I find myself when I step out of being so tragically, infernally, obsessively ME.

This is a truth I’ve heard in a hundred thousand ways. I know you have too. But how do you stay in this expansive place beyond the bounds of ego, mind, and form? What do I do right now?

Write.
 

Writing Holds the Realization

Scraping the bottom of my sand-filled backpack I find a scrap of paper and a long-neglected pen.

It’s been ages since the world disappeared and I heard the voice of my own public writer whispering in my ear. For well over six months I have been filling my journal and cranking out copy and chatting away on a podcast, but I haven’t had the focus or the drive to produce an article I’m proud of.   

Six months. Eight months. Back to sometime before the election and the launch of the Practice of Being Seen.

It took more than a week to arrive here, to get the ocean to remember me, to truly taste the salt in the wind and feel my veins thrum with the tides. I forgive myself. It has taken much, much longer to find my way back to the page.

I’m back to myself. It’s unexpected. It’s time.

There are new stories to tell, stories I have been hoarding and neglecting and allowing to wither away while I was busy striving and coping and growing and losing myself and slowly getting found again. I invite you to travel with me and write with me.

I promise words and magic. I promise to dive deep into the elements it takes to remember the stories that hide within. 

Begin here with the Magic Words Guide and discover the words that will help you tell the stories that matter.