Every Little Thing She Does: Magic through the Eyes of the Princess, Queen, and Wise Woman

🎵🎶 Every Little Thing
She Does Is Magic 🎶🎵

You know that song by The Police? It’s still one of my favorites. I was stunned to learn it came out when I was two years old, but then it feels right: this song just feels like part of life’s soundtrack. 

It’s a song that has grown with me. It’s a song that the Princess, the Queen, and the Wise Woman in me still sings. Even if all the lyrics don’t exactly suit every age and stage, it’s a song that holds all the magic.

It’s time to roll the windows down and blast our favorite songs. And, because there’s a 7 Magic Words Challenge coming up on June 1, I have magic on the mind. 

Before we go on, have you met the Princess, the Queen, and the Wise Woman? The Archetypes of The Sovereignty Knot live inside of us, throughout our lives. Learn about the qualities of each Sovereignty Archetype here. 

The Faces of Magic: Princess, Queen, and Wise Woman

Let’s explore how the Princess, the Queen, and the Wise Woman experience, embody, and make magic.

When you think of how the different aspects of you experience magic, you’ll begin to see all the ways that magic is working its way through your life right now. 

The Princess Believes In Her Magic When Someone Else Sees It

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who desperately wanted a man to see the magic in her. She knew she shined with a special something, but she spent a lot of time hoping the right guy would see it and tell her that she turned him on.

Ok, so this “young woman” was me. 

I was a quintessential romantic who really wanted a slightly younger version of Sting to be her boyfriend. Though I was smart and brave and talked a great feminist game, I also longed for someone to sing this song to me. 

I thought I would be a little more real if I saw my magic reflected in someone else’s eyes.

Oh, the heartbreaks that came from that need to be seen. Oh, the wild nights and love stories, too.

And because that Princess part of me is still allowed - and invited - to live and thrive, I admit that I still seek out that spark in my marriage. I cannot begin to imagine that my husband thinks every little thing I do is magic, especially when I wander the house, unable to find my car keys or one of my six pairs of glasses, but our relationship is about seeing the magic  -- in each other. 

When I’m standing in the healthy princess-aspect of myself, I allow myself to believe in romance without the desperation, to ask to be adored by my partner without living for his devotion. 

The princess can get excited to conjure up magic with the dress she wears, the way she does her hair, and the unexpected wonders she’ll find along the way.

The Queen Sings the Magic Into the World

Now that I am living the life of the Queen in so many ways, taking care of the family, the castle (such as it is), and managing all the things (except the whereabouts of my glasses), I hear the song in a new way. 

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” sounds more like the love I have for my children and the love they had for me when they were very small. It’s an intoxicating, fleeting kind of closeness that comes with the new romance of being alive, welcoming someone into this world, and raising them into the person they’ll become.

My girls are a little older now, and while we are still madly in love with each other, the first blush of babyhood is far behind us. I have raised strong, healthy girls who feel safe enough to despise me from time to time. 

And though my love for them is stronger than ever, we’ve all gotten to the place of “I love you to the moon and back, but I wish you would spend the weekend there so we could all have a break.”

When my Princess is satisfied, when she can see herself for all of her magic and possibility, the Queen in me can step forward and see the magic in other people.

(This, by the way, is the essence of Sovereignty. As I say in the book: The mark of a true Sovereign is what she does to maintain her own energy even as she pays it forward, passing on her gifts in order to empower others to set out on their own path to Sovereignty.)

And even as the Queen offers her care and attention to others, she keeps on believing in the generative power of her own delicious magic. She knows that the magic isn’t in being seen and celebrated, but in the joy of creation.

The Wise Woman Sees Magic In Everyone and Everything

My Sovereignty work is all knotted up with my spiritual work, just as my life stories are all knotted up with my journeys to Ireland and my mythical reference points are all knotted up in Celtic lore.

The Wise Woman is the one who sees the interconnected nature of all things, from the cell to the soul, from the individual heart to the great collective heartbeat of the universe. 

The Wise Woman knows magic. She knows she is magic, and she always has been throughout life.

And when she hums “every little thing she does is magic” she just may be singing of the muse, of Mother Earth, of the great divine feminine force that births us all into being.

… And, of course, this is only the beginning of the Princess, Queen, and Wise Women’s Stories 

The Princess isn’t just a lovestruck teenager waiting to be someone’s muse. This adventurer can take off to distant lands all on her own without a care for anyone’s approval or appreciative eye.

The Queen isn’t just a nurturer. This make-it-happen powerhouse can sing the magic to the multitudes, trading motherhood of a few humans to be mother of a movement or head of a company.

The Wise Woman… Well, she knows that magic belongs at the beginning, middle, and ending of every story and she is always going to spy it everywhere (even when she’s telling you that she’s been baked into pragmatism after a long life of struggle and love).

Want more magic in your life? Join the 7 Magic Words Challenge, the free creativity project that begins on June 1!

Want to explore The Sovereignty Knot? Get the book and sign up to receive the exclusive meditations about the Princess, Queen, and Wise Woman.

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.

Do you know how to describe the “real magic” you offer your clients?

There’s a part of what you do that’s beyond, beneath, and before the bounds of language.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

As a healer, you know that the color, the sensation, the texture of an event or an emotion carries meaning that the English language often can’t begin to touch.

And, if you’re a therapist whose work is based on talking through thoughts and problems, you know there’s something you do that transcends words. It’s in the holding of the space. It’s in the silences. It’s in the invisible bonds of relationship that allows the healing to happen.

Here’s a secret… it’s that unutterable something that makes your work so unique, so vital, and so uncommonly necessary.

This is the place where you truly want to dwell and it’s the work you truly want to do. It’s the deep, subtle, sensitive work your clients crave.  It’s also the hardest to describe and the easiest to undervalue.

When we’re talking about describing the “real magic” we’re talking about writing down the ephemeral stuff that you wouldn’t begin to know how to put on a webpage. We’re talking about it because that is exactly what will bring the right people to your door.

I know, that’s completely annoying and maddening to hear.

(Marisa, you want me to build my practice and reach more people by writing about the indescribable???)  

Yep.

At least, I’d very much like  you to try.  Your power as a healer and transformation professional depends on understanding the depths of you magic. And because it’s going to be more rewarding than any other marketing gimmick you could try.

My own kind of “indescribable” magic

At our house, all I need to say is “it’s for a unicorn client” and my husband knows instantly that it’s not business as usual. This is the work that my better angels don’t want to put off. These are the writing coaching and healing clients whose stories will get my attention at 9 pm on a Friday - even if that glass of wine seems awfully tempting.

Before I go on about “my unicorns,” I will say that I have a sense of deep respect for all of my clients. After seven rocky years of entrepreneurship I have finally discovered to trust my gut and I will either refuse to take or will gently release anyone who will de-center me from my sense of worth. I work with caring, curious souls who do meaningful work and are open to words like “magic.”

It’s just that the unicorns are different.

These are the people to whom I can offer the fullness of my magic. These are the clients who seem to be able to see through the website copy that describes what I’ll do as their “writing coach” and recognize that it’s a full-life healing journey we’re on together. The words will anchor our work, will be a touchstone to keep us coming back and diving deeper and seeing things anew, but the healing, changing, and meaning-making doesn’t end when the next article is published.

Here’s the thing: though I have written about aspects of this work - check out my Sovereignty Sessions page -  I’ve worked harder on making the copy sound right than I have worked on getting to the essence of what this unspeakably magical work actually is.  It’s easy to put that off since, as I said, it all seems to transcend words, but that’s just an excuse, really…

If you have the power to change lives, you have the power to say how

Photo by Milos Tonchevski on Unsplash

We are creatures of story, of language. The unknown and the ineffable are true aspects of the human experience, but to say “the real magic I do cannot be spoken” is to diminish its real world power you have to change lives.

Truth time: I am fantastically guilty of dodging this particular writing assignment. My first draft of this blog, longhand in my oversized “professional visions” journal was seven pages long and at three different points I caught myself saying “I am still not describing the real magic of my work.”

I kept slipping into telling you, dear reader, how to do it but I refused to engage the question myself.

In fact, when I was going through the final edit of this post I realized I still hadn’t really answered this question for myself. I’d written around it so many times that I’d created some sort of energetic groove in the paper between me and the fullest truth.

I stepped away from the desk and closed the computer. I curled up on the couch and pulled out the journal and I scrawled into the question until my hand ached/  At this point, I have a set of answers I can work with. (I’ll share them soon!) The process needs to be ongoing, but I can tell you I have learned more about the “why” of my work and just what’s makes me exclaim to myself “damn, I love my work” at the end of a call.

How do you describe your magic?

That’s easy… you start by trying. As I can say from experience, all you can do at first is try. You’ll probably do a lot of resisting and avoiding and writing about everything else but the question at hand until you get to the truth that lingers beneath the "unspeakable."

To make the process a little easier, I invite you to try the prompt I offered the Sovereign Writers Circle during our writing practice this week:

There’s a part of your work that’s, well, magic…

You see it in the moments when it’s so clear the transformation happening. You see it when you feel giddy that you get to do this work for a living. You may see the magic in the longing for such moments, knowing that so much more is possible.

It may feel like this magic transcends words. Try anyway. Flow with this energy, this unspeakable possibility now. Ask it to make sense to other people later.

Now, grab your journal or close all the windows on your computer and open a blank doc. Set a timer and give yourself at least ten minutes to write into that idea. I would love, love, love to hear what comes up for you… In the comments, tell me what you did (or didn’t!) discover about the real magic of your work.

This is far from the end of this journey… We’ll keep exploring how to describe your real magic throughout this series. And, I’m always here to help.

The Sovereign Writers Circle is welcoming new members through March 1.

And, I’m always available for individual healing & consulting through the Sovereignty Sessions.

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.

No matter what your 2018 intention, these two words will help you embody it

This new year is breathing down our necks with the icy whisper of a frigid New York winter.

On the other hand, this is a great big world with all kinds of weather… The new year just might be caressing your skin with the sweetness of a Carribean breeze.

No matter what, the new year tends to bring chills of anticipation.

We can count the hours until we can sit down with sparkling new, soul-defining day planners. We’re so close to cracking open these wonderful books that we entrepreneurs SO love to buy and creating a fresh 365-day collection of plans and affirmations and visions and promises and appointments that will make this year different…

If you’re anything like me, you’re shifting back and forth between “yes, finally!” and “no, I’m not ready!” as the sands of time drain from the 2017 hourglass… There’s all of excitement for a fresh start mingled with the worries that a new calendar won’t necessarily make for a whole new you. 

Do you do the “word-of-the-year” thing?

We’ve just wrapped up the latest #7MagicWords Challenge, so the potency of a single word is abundantly clear right now.

#7MagicWords takes place at the turn of each season, and, as this is first time we’ve run challenge in the winter, it’s the first time we could use it to help us find a word of the year. Just about every invitation to join the project included: “You can find magic in a word and it can light your way - day by day and throughout the year to come.” And as the last magic words appear in the Facebook group and on Instagram, it’s clear that the challenge fulfilled its promise for so many of the participants.

The #7MagicWords Challenge is always 8 days long (because, why not?) and the eighth prompt is always the same: a word that integrates. Though I hadn’t intended my integration word to be my guiding light for 2018, it seems that it is. It has to be.

Drum roll for something so obvious it’s just gotta be true… 

My word of the year is “writing.”

You could say that every year is about writing for me, but now, as I continue to grow as a writer and as a guide for other writers, I see the word coming into fresh, undeniable focus. And, as I look at my own big, thick 2018 planner full of endless unwritten possibility, I know that I will write my way into just about every accomplishment.

A word of the year or any magic word is special because it's multifaceted and can hold your evolution in many ways. I know my word is the right one because... 

• It’s about writing my Sovereign Story and unpacking what I really mean by my beloved motto “Free the Princess. Crown the Queen. Embrace the Wise Woman.” I know this is the story I must write and tell.
   
• It’s about writing into the fantasy novel that wants my attention and will satisfy my truest truth… I’ve always wanted to write vast sweeping stories like my favorite authors do. 

• It’s about continuing to write the everyday-sized stories because they’re how I connect and serve and teach.
   
• And, it’s about supporting others’ writing, continuing to deepen my story healing practices and finding new ways to support healers who wish to develop their own writing practices. 

How about you… what’s your word of the year, #7MagicWords inspired or otherwise?

No matter what your intention for the new year is, two words can help you embody it

“If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.” One of my favorite poets, Seamus Heaney, said that. I always keep it on my desk as a reminder.

Here are two words I know can help you find the most direct way to your truth and your intention: writing and community. 

That last item on that word-of-the-year list? That promise to support writers in new ways? That’s why I am launching the Sovereign Writers Circle on January 2. 

In this group of therapists, coaches, and transformation professionals, you’ll have the community encouragement to do what can feel like a very lonely thing - writing your blog, your website, your info product, or your book.

Yes, we’ll think about publishing and using writing to build a business, but we’ll also focus on the healing power of writing. You’ll be invited to use the blank page to discover what it is you really want and what you truly know about your own Sovereign Story.

Learn more about the group including the schedule for our 6 monthly calls and other benefits of joining the SWC.

If you commit to a three-month membership before midnight on December 31 you’ll also receive a free 60-minute writing coaching and story healing session with me. (That's a $150 value!)

Could “writing” be your word of the year?

There are new stories to tell, stories you and I have been hoarding and neglecting and allowing to wither away while we were busy striving and coping and growing and losing track of who we really are... Writing is how we find ourselves again and build the stamina to keep ourselves from losing track of what's really important now and in the future. 

I invite you to write with me.  I promise words and magic. I promise to dive deep into the mystery, to help you find the stories that hide within and write the stories that must be shared.

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.

What if you found the magic words you were yearning for?

The yearning…

It’s what gets us to buy books, to join challenges, to hire coaches, and see healers. In that yearning, we reach and stretch and search. We grow, we transform, we evolve.

And, all too often, we crash against the rocks of our own disappointment, berating ourselves for failing to reach the perfect shore. We set sail again, making new promises, gathering new resources, and hoping that the next journey will take us to that ultimate destination, to the place on the other side of the yearning.

When do you get to slow down and tune into what’s beneath the yearning?

There’s a little patch of Cape Cod filled with tall pines that grow right up to the edge of the dunes. It’s a place outside of time, where the biggest question generally is “what’s going on with the tide this morning?”

Every summer, in the midst of all the sweet family chaos, I find myself with more time to think than my year-round life usually offers.

When there’s nothing that needs to be done besides watch the girls gather crabs on the tidal flats,  I become most aware of the yearning and all of the probing questions that come with it:  Where was I last summer? What do I wish to change about my life when I get home? What's still missing?

A map to the heart of the yearning

I often carry a battered copy of Danielle LaPorte’s The Desire Map to the beach.

Now that this book has become my summer bible, Danielle’s question “How do you want to feel?” seems like an obvious one, but I remember how it was a revelation a few years ago. She gave me a new way to reckon with my yearning. I understood it was less about crossing stuff off the to do lists and more about the quest to inhabit an emotional world that feels plain old good.

Armed with all that inspirational prose and all those gorgeous words, I assumed it would be relatively easy to find the feelings and plan accordingly.

Words like “vibrant” and “connected” and “enough” seemed like powerful guides. They certainly seemed like the right words for an entrepreneurial mama dedicated to earthly love and divine wisdom, but, it turns out, they only fueled me for a little while.

I kept finding myself carting the book on family vacations, desperate to find the perfect words and the tailor made feelings that would help me fill the empty spaces so I could get out of yearning and into being, but I was forgetting something really important...

Find your own tools to find your own perfect words

Early this July, I sat on the swing set tucked in the pines. My daughters ran up and down the same slide over and over, finding the magic in the simplicity of “playful.”

As I stared at 150+ words that describe positive feelings and considered all the usual suspects - accomplished, nourished, alive -  I realized I wasn’t going to think my way into the feelings I yearned to cultivate.

I wasn’t going to should my way or will my way into them either. Pushing wasn’t ever going to land me in a graceful, positive state of mind.

Then it dawned on me... This was just past the halfway point of the year. That meant I had found nearly 200 magic words to describe each day thanks to my #365MagicWords Project. As I struggled with Danielle’s great list of possibilities, I lost track of my own experience, my own mastery, my own magic.

And so, I quit trying to force it and I tuned into what I had learned over six months of magic word seeking - a different way of knowing, of hoping and reflecting and inhabiting each day. Instead of leaning on the usual shoulds, I pulled on the spiritual, intuitive, and, yes, mystical resources at my disposal.

The words I got were most surprising and, as it turned out, more powerful than any others I had played with before:

Relaxed and receptive.

These soft words were impossible… and perfect.

They were the antithesis of the “Do. Push. Prove. Get noticed. Make an impact.” energy that I thought would lead me to a full and remarkable life.

These words won't carry me through the rest of forever - my old friend yearning will undoubtedly come to call again. But next time, I'll remember that I have the resources I need to find them.

The Spirit of #7MagicWords: Relaxed. Receptive. And Ready.

The next #7MagicWords Challenge, the weeklong project that helps us set intentions for the season ahead begins on the Autumn Equinox on September 22 (or the Spring Equinox for my south of the equator friends!)

This time around, we are focusing on freeing ourselves from magical thinking so we can be free to do some real magic making. This means we’re looking for the words we want, but also opening ourselves to the words we need.

I promise that opening yourself and letting a magic word find you each day invites some real integrative magic into your life. I can't tell you exactly how to do it, but I can promise you that deciding to try to invite that magic in is your first powerful, magical act.

And how do you want to feel when you prepare to make real integrative magic?

Relaxed. Receptive. Ready.

(That last word came through to me at CampGLP because I realized the more I settle into myself, the more I am prepared to take the right action and welcome the most brave and delicious kind of transformation.)

It took me years to find the words I yearned for. What if it only took you a week?

This project offers a series of prompts that are designed to help you find the sparkly words that make you smile, and then, go deeper... We call it a challenge for a reason, after all! ;)

Will you join us for the challenge? There’s no fee to join this community event. All it takes is a willingness to pause and invite yourself to see the magic that lingers in your everyday language.

Sign up here and get set for the first prompt that will arrive in your inbox and on your favorite social media platform on 9/22!

Do I Really Need to Sing in Front of 400 People to Feel Free?

What if I…
What if I missed my chance?
What if I am leaving an important part of myself behind every time I entered a room?
What if there are second chances?

It’s August of 2016. Before I arrived at Camp GLP, a gathering of creative, entrepreneurial, big-hearted souls who want to make connections and change the world, I’d heard about the epic talent show.

I admit, I was a bit “meh” about the show. I was leaving my husband alone with the girls for the first time. It hadn’t been a great year for cashflow. Music and comedy were great and all, but they seemed kind of… frivolous. This grown-up summer camp thing was supposed to be about networking and learning from the experts.

By the time Saturday night rolled around, I understood that every moment of Camp was about so much more than the bottom line. As the talent show began, I watched my fellow campers get up there and pour themselves into poems and songs and passionate stories. Some were clearly in their element. Others performed bravely through their fears.  

Act after act reminded me of a truth I’d forgotten more than half a lifetime ago: the stage had once been a vital part of who I was. 

I promised myself I would get up there myself in 2017.

But real life takes precedence. Again. (Sigh)

Life at home wasn’t set up to remind me of the power of live performance. Being mama, modulating my voice to fit a shared podcast, holding space for others’ stories… I was doing the work and rarely allowing myself the breathing room to ask if it was the right work or if all that work was really mine to do.

I certainly didn’t allow myself to wonder about all the work - and play - I was refusing to invite into my life.

Are you really good at ignoring the tiny whispers of intuition too?

Throughout the year, whenever my mind wandered to the late August oasis that is Camp GLP, I was always sure I’d find the time to write the monologue worth listening to. The story that needed to be told would tap me on the shoulder. It would explode with universal meaning that made it worth 3 minutes of 400 people’s attention.

That never happened, but I told myself I could find a way to be ok with that.

Another year and a whole new energy

Arriving at camp this year, I knew I was crossing an important threshold. I was in mid-stride. My first foot was through - the collaborative project that had taken so much energy and imagination over the past year and more had drawn to a close. Now, it was time to arrive more fully in my transformation.

Despite months of yearning, being on stage seemed like a “wouldn’t that be nice” sort of thing. I was fully focused on on chatting, learning, hugging, and writing my way into the next chapter of my Sovereign Story. Striding onto a stage at Camp GLP 2017 didn’t have to have anything to do with that.

But then intuition sends messengers too wise and kind to ignore

It was the morning of the talent show and I was scribbling in my journal between workshops. This guy kind of tripped over me as he tried to slide by my seat on the aisle. Because it’s camp, we paused and took a moment greet each other instead of simply mumbling apologies and resuming the mission at hand.

We recognized one another from the year before - he remembered my eyes and I remembered that he was on stage with a guitar a lot. That opened a conversation about the girl I once was - the one who had been in dance recitals since kindergarten, who was in the band and chorus, who pretty much lived in the theater, and eventually landed the lead in the high school play.

And I told this virtual stranger how I’d lost all of that… We didn’t get into the reasons, but I know it was a mix of prioritizing boys over creativity and a fear that I was not good enough to keep at any of that performing stuff in college when there were so many people with “real talent.”

By the time I finished grad school, I had been completely colonized by the seriousness of the written word and the slog of “self-improvement.” My sad little story was emerging: the stage was for kids and the grown-up “chosen ones.”

My new friend Mike has these incredible compassionate eyes of his own, and I just felt SEEN. He saw me and I think he saw right through my story (though he was too kind to say). He told me that there’s always a little jam session after the talent show and he asked to sing my song for him. I promised, he walked away, and I wept tears I had no idea I needed to shed.

Because Camp is fueled by tears and hugs, one invariably follows the other. A stranger swooped in to hold me as I sobbed. In that moment, she was the flesh and bones my mother borrowed to remind me that she still believed in me, even though my stage career had languished for twenty years and she’d been gone for seven.

Later, I’d realize that this woman, Jennifer, had the voice of a badassed soulful angel and she was a mama with a heart as big as her voice.

All my mascara cried away, I joined a Kirtan session and sang through the lump that still lingered in my throat. A yogi who often dresses up as a unicorn, also known as KC,  led us through a couple chants in English:

“This is what it feels like to be free"

"You only get to choose what you hold onto"

The words I could understand were perfect, and I had a feeling the Sanskrit words I didn’t know were just right too. Maybe it wasn’t about being up on a stage. Maybe it was just about lifting up my voice, joining in with the group while I reveled in the private act of creating sound.

All That You Can’t Leave Behind

After the sun set, we all gathered in the theater again. First, Zen priest and activist who is changing the conversation about race, Rev. angel Kyodo williams returned to a question she’d posed to the entire group earlier that day: “When you enter a room, what do you leave behind?”

This deeply personal question is intended to reveal much wider truths.

When you cut yourself off from aspects of yourself, you alienate yourself from your core sense of humanity. When we lose track of our humanness we cannot see our fellow humans in all of their beauty, power, and suffering. We buy into false constructs like race.

A black woman was leading a very white audience through a conversation that, by very deliberate design, was intended NOT to be an “I feel bad about my privilege” session. Instead, this was a chance to look within.

When you understand yourself, you free yourself. Liberated from self-denial, you can truly love others. And this, in turn, will dissolve the myth of separation that has stratified and divided this country in particular.

By this point, it was abundantly clear that I needed to reckon with what it meant to leave behind the performer, the singer, the woman who made her words come alive somewhere other than the page.

It’s not clear what this realization has to do with my own relationship with this weird collective story of whiteness that swept me up from the moment of my birth, but it's all relevant to my story. I trust Rev. angel on that one. In time, it will make sense and help me become part of the solution instead of the silent majority that perpetuates the problem.

Right now, I trust that freeing my own passions from the cave of “used to” and “not me” and “maybe someday” can free me up to be someone who changes the world. For real.

But really, this is A story about a talent show

My second row seat for Rev. angel became a second row seat for a talent show that spanned nearly four hours. I was proud that I felt more love than envy, but I promised myself I would  remember the sense of regret and emptiness that lingered even as I clapped and sang along from the audience.

It was so late after the last standing ovation had faded away, I never reconnected with Mike the guitarist. It turns out that that jam session didn’t materialize on that unusually chilly New York night. I didn’t know that as I lay in my bunk at 2 am, sleepless and exhausted and  wrestling with my habitual lack of courage, my tendency to play it small.

I forced myself into sleep, deciding that the repeating mantra “next year” had to be good enough for now…

Or maybe, I still had chance to rewrite the story’s ending

As it does, time pulled us through to the end of a weekend that could never be long enough. At the last all-camp gathering, the man behind the Good Life Project, Jonathan Fields returned to a question he’d invited us to explore on the very first day. “What if I…?”

He invited a few campers he knew well to share moving stories of transformation, and then he made space for a few members of the crowd to take the mic.

Pulled by some magnetic force - my palms are sweaty even as I type this now, two days later - I asked to take my turn.

I don’t think my voice shook as I sat across from Jonathan on the stage and said “What if I missed my chance…?”

As briefly as I could, I told the group this story about watching two years of talent shows with such admiration. I told them that I had an answer to Rev. angel’s question and I realized exactly what I had left behind. And I told this crowd of four hundred friends that I had a song I was afraid to sing.

And then, I heard myself asking if I could share just a little bit of it.

If I had actually prepared to perform, all I would have done was tell the story of the song I was too scared to share. I would have described the lullaby I had been writing over years and years of bedtimes. I’d always dreamed it would reach beyond two little girls’ bunk bed, but performing it was as much a fantasy as the song itself which described the journey to a mythical island full of unicorns and mermaids aboard a ship called the Cardinal Star.

But I wasn’t prepared to tell that story. All I had was the song itself. All I had was my unadorned truth.

And the next thing I knew, I arrived back on the stage after a twenty year detour and I heard my own voice rise with words I’d added to that old tune “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral.”

When my voice cracked, people shouted encouragement. When I was done, I’m pretty sure there was a whole lot of applause, but all I remember was stomping my feet in celebration and grinning so much I could barely see.

Just reading that paragraph to myself sparks a quivery feeling in my chest, a smile that almost makes my jaw hurt, and a desire to hold on to this moment because it was pure magic.

What happens when you re-member all you are?

So, what does it matter that this writing coach-copywriter-story healer-magic maker got to relive her high school glory days?

By recovering part of my story, giving myself the time to write into it and mine it for meaning, I’m expanding my inner world.

By removing one more “shoulda” I am opening my heart to hold your stories and your moments of triumph.

By finding my voice in a way that I assumed was not really for me, I clear a channel to help you find your voice in a new way.

What happens when you finally say "yes" to the call?

This most recent season of life has offered lesson after lesson in Sovereignty. To grow even a little bit, I’ve been compelled to see how I have been crouching and hiding and hoping someone would recognize all my untapped potential.

I was trying to work magic in the glow a tiny fairy lantern when, the truth is, I live in a big messy world that needs great lamps that light the human heart and bonfires that draw together the human community.

As a writer, as an entrepreneur, as a being who wants to create change in this world, I need to gather all the illumination I can. When we illuminate the caverns of the inner world where dreams are born (and so many die), we're able to light the way for all beings we're here to love and serve.  

Now what?

Will I sing in public again sometime soon? I really freaking hope so. It’s a direct conduit to the magic I was put here to create and I’m too grateful to shut it down again.

But, in the meantime… there’s everyday magic to do.

There are countless paths that led me to this moment, but one of them is my unfolding Magic Words practice. Finding a word each day to live into or a word that helps me reflect on all that happened has been profound. It has set me up to see the stories I was telling, to see the truth behind the illusions, and to tune into all that I didn’t have the courage to say.

I invite you to join the next #7MagicWords challenge that launches on the first day of the northern hemisphere’s autumn, September 22. It’s a free online series with daily prompts that help you discover the magic words that support the transformative work that’s yours to do in the season to come.

Image credit: Mike Kimlicko from his seat on the stage.