Why I Use the Word "Sovereignty" A Lot Less These Days

Have you ever considered how a knot can be both a terrible tangle of string or an intricately crafted design, like in those ancient Celtic manuscripts?

Right now, I have knots on my mind but, once upon a time, like three years ago, every story I told was woven around big idea: Sovereignty.

Sovereignty is a gloriously complicated word (as all the best words are, like love, freedom, mystic, petrichor, onomatopoeia).  As I understand the way sovereignty works in my own life, it's about personal agency, the quest for self-knowledge, and the commitment to greater wisdom. In my lived understanding, it is about channeling that power to help others find their sovereignty so the collective can become more equitable, healthy, and evolved.

When we all have access to our own sovereignty, then we can pool our strength. And when that happens, we just might have a chance of cleaning up our act and cleaning up our earth.

Of course, sovereignty has its other aspects. It's a word that describes the borders of nation states. And, it is a word that can be applied to how you wish to control the borders of your own body. Reproductive rights are a matter of deeply important body sovereignty.

When you reflect on a phrase like “body sovereignty,” it makes sense that folks who question the validity and the necessity of the Covid vaccine call on "sovereignty" as one of their reasons for resisting the shot. (Of course, sovereignty tends to get lost in the midst of all the conspiracy theories, and that is a separate yet inextricably related issue best left to other writers to explore on another day.) 

It’s important to note that by "it makes sense" I am saying that I understand that certain people who are attracted to the concept of "self-governing" choose to call their anti-vaccination position a "sovereign" stance. What doesn't make sense to me is how folks would willfully risk place even more strain on a healthcare system that is at its breaking point and further jeopardizes populations that truly can’t be vaccinated. 

That said, I'm not seeking a conversation about vaccines right now. (Really, please don't email me about what you think of the politics, science, or spirituality of the shots. That's not why I am telling you this story.)

Instead, I am writing about vaccinations and the discourse around them because I've been quietly pulling back from "sovereignty" for a while, and it felt important to tell you why.

As creatives, we fall in love with a new idea and describe its development in detail. It's all too rare that we describe why we're taking stock, pulling back, and allowing the past season's words to serve as compost for the new ideas to come.

We'll leave this part of the conversation here: back when I wrote The Sovereignty Knot, I advocated sovereignty in service to the collective because, then as now, there's no wisdom in imagining every decision you make is yours alone.

These Days, It's All About the Knot

My book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic, came out in February 2020, just as this novel coronavirus was starting to make headlines. Never could I have expected our world to be tied in such unspeakable knots and to see sovereignty come up so often in conversation. 

In light of all the individual and collective struggle of the last two years, the knot seems even more compelling–and full of creative potential–than my original concept of sovereignty.

The knot allows for the reality of the tangle and the beauty and strength of deliberate design. It lets us be who we are. The knot also allows us to do better, weave our words and actions more intentionally, and recover from past mistakes. 

The knot is about commitment and the ties that bind. The knot is about community and the support that comes with sharing ideas, asking hard questions, and living in the uncertainty together.

In Light of All This, I Am Committing to the Knot Throughout 2022

Here are three ways to join me as we spiral through the knots and work out the tangles as we go:

The Open Writers’ Knot is the first free community writing practice of the year. It's coming up next Wednesday, January 19 at noon ET.

When we write together, and form a community even for an hour, we strengthen the creative container and all gain the courage to confront the knots of narrative and ideas that may confound us when we write alone. This event is for writers and non-writers, leaders and dreamers, seekers and wisdom keepers who are ready to meet themselves on the page

As I hope you’ve heard by now, the KnotWork Podcast debuts on 2.2.22.

The new show is devoted to untangling our myths and reweaving our stories. Each episode features a story from mythology or folklore and a deep dive discussion into why that old tale still matters to us today. Please follow the show on Instagram and Facebook, and plan to subscribe to the show in a few weeks!

• Finally, the Sovereign Writers' Knot, my online community, will form again in early March for another 13-week journey.
  
  If you’re seeking a supportive community and a creative incubator to conceive or continue your writing project, this could be the ideal group for you.

It's Time to Tell Stories That Are Rooted In the Earth

Last night, I helped my dad put together a slide presentation for his condo association. He’s passionate about bringing in solar power to fuel their community energy needs.

This past weekend, my husband and I looked out on our beloved backyard and wondered together about how we could make our family’s life more sustainable. We’re thinking about changing the way we buy and use electricity, how we can change our eating habits, and what food we can grow in the years to come.

As headlines about ecological catastrophe and systemic climate change vie with the latest Covid spikes and variants at the top of every newscast, these conversations seem inevitable and necessary. 

We all need to talk about our relationship with the land, with our resources, with survival, with creating a world where our children and their someday children can thrive.

Right now, I don’t know how to tell a story that isn’t rooted in the soil, soaked in the rain, singed by the fires, and aware of the climbing temperatures.

I may not be writing about the climate directly, but I find I am always in conversation with the Mother, with the Earth, with all the unseen interactions between humans and nature.

When we were visiting Maine last week, my aunt gave me three plants. 

A white sagebrush from my mother and a periwinkle from my grandmother that grew beside the houses on Cape Cod where I grew up. Both homes have since been sold. And then, a primrose that my great aunts grew on Prince Edward Island. That place is still in the family, but it’s not possible for us to cross the border to see the Canadian cousins right now.

Three plants from forbidden gardens, from patches of land that have become inaccessible for one reason or another. 

Three living beings that I can tend and touch, cultivated by beloved gardeners I can only visit in my memories.

Three delicate root systems I can protect and pray over, that (hopefully) will help me keep my family history alive.

How’s your relationship with the plants and soil that surround you?

I find myself wandering between my flower patches right now. I talk with the trees that have been here for decades longer than our house. I check on the perennials I have planted in my time here. I welcome these new plants and celebrating the bittersweet legacy of growth and change they represent.

This sense of finding solace and purpose amongst the blooms and blossoms is new to me. I’ve tried to make the place look pretty for the thirteen years we have lived here, but I usually tend to lose interest by August. Luckily, when September rolls around I can stick a new crop of mums in the ground to cover all the worn summer blossoms.

It’s different this year, however.

My new devotion to this rocky soil and the flowers I coax from the dry earth is inspired by my increasing awareness that our global environment is in trouble, surely. There’s something more to it, though. Something more personal and even more primal. 

It was my husband who helped me see another dimension of the story. During our conversation about the future of the planet and how we can be better citizens of Earth, I marveled at how my relationship with our nearly two acres of garden, lawn, and forest had deepened over time.

“Isn’t that part of becoming the crone?” he asked. “The wise woman?” (Why yes, that guy I married has read—most of—my book.)

I write about the way we’re princess, queen, and wise woman through life in The Sovereignty Knot, of course. I write about how the concerns of the queen shift to encompass the awareness of the wise woman. The story becomes most true as you live it, however.

As my girls grow older and my business matures, I find myself switching gears. I don’t have to engage in constant mothering and I’m finding I’m less concerned with being the in-control queen. At 42, though I certainly have lots of queen energy in my life (and princess energy too), I am consciously moving into the wise woman’s sense of being present and receptive, into the crone’s sense of conscious care and divine surrender.

This planet needs us all to step into our wisdom in new, beautiful, challenging ways.

We’re being called to live a bolder, wilder, more compassionate story. We need to focus on the plants outside our door as we think about the ecosystems that enable us all to breathe. We need to set down the old ways of being and open our arms wide to a new devotion to the world as-it-is.

We’re going to need to get more centered and more Sovereign than ever so we can make the choices that support the human and the non-human collective. 

As I’ve said before in many spaces, Sovereign is never meant to be a synonym for selfish. Instead, it’s an interconnected system of sovereign selves that can transform and heal this world.

Let’s be sovereign beings for the beautiful, burning sovereign world. One seed, one story, one wise act of creation at a time.

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.

A Visit to the Ancestors This Saint Patrick's Day

My family has listened to A Celtic Sojourn, a show on Boston’s GBH Radio, since I was a child. 

Because of the pandemic, my girls and I have been able to watch live streams of both their Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day concerts. These online events haven’t replaced big family gatherings or filled the gap left by my eleven year-old’s cancelled Irish dance performances, but those nights, all filled with music and dancing and poetry, glow a little brighter than all those other evenings spent on the couch over the last year. 

I love the way Celtic Sojourn host Brian O’Donovan describes this season: “It’s March, the ‘high-holidays’ for Irish culture around the world.”

This year, of course, the celebrations are all muted and permuted. 

I’m not chauffeuring my dancer to perform at corn beef and cabbage dinners all across the county, like I should be. Instead of heading to hear the local Irish-ish band, we’ll crank up the stereo, open the windows, and shiver as we raise a glass with friends on the back deck. 

And yet, bits of unexpected magic keep finding us, even without the parades and proper pours of Guinness.

Healing the Wounds of Another Year When March 17 Didn’t Happen

This morning, I had a session with a client who shares my love of Ireland. In fact, we both studied in Galway as juniors in college and missed each other by just one semester.

She originally hired me as her writing coach, copywriter, and online marketing consultant, but our relationship has shifted and grown. Now, I am her story healer, too. We begin each session with a simple question, “do you need the practical or the magical right now?”

(Actually, that is never a simple question, is it? The pragmatic “writing for work stuff” is always infused with the work of the soul, especially for healers, creative entrepreneurs, and transformation professionals who pour their hearts and souls into their work.)

Today, it was clear that she needed healing and support. She needed help detangling the knots of everyday life and this sense of being tossed from one crisis to another. Like so many, she was feeling the weight of this one year anniversary of The Great Pause. Perhaps there was a sense of mourning, of “I can’t believe we’re missing another Saint Paddy’s Day,” too.

A Whisper From the Ancestors

I called on my most trusted tarot cards - a deck that found me back in 1999 during my first year in Ireland. Following their lead, we were called to step out of the modern-day snares and endless b.s., away from the stress and the strain of keeping a business growing and a family happy in the midst of the long drawn out disruption.

We were called to visit her ancestors in a wild place just outside of Galway City. 

And so, I led her through a journey back to those rocky shores, back to the lands of her grandmother’s grandmothers. We were in search of a story, a message, a blessing.

With permission, I’ll share it with you here…

“You’re fine,” said a woman from deep in the past on a small patch of land in a place called Connemara where the Atlantic wind and waves never cease. 

That was all she had to say. And that was all this granddaughter of her heart needed to hear.

Returning from that journey across the miles and years, we talked through the layers of meaning in that simple phrase. We talked about the deep, deep blessing that this ancestral grandmother offered.

May You Have Fine Saint Patrick’s Day

We moderns have weaponized “fine” into shorthand for “not good enough.” If someone asks you how you have been and you say “fine,” that answer offers something between “absolutely terrible” and “you don’t really want to know.” 

“Fine” implies merely surviving in a world that declares you’re not really living if you’re not thriving.

What if we could liberate “fine” from all that judgement and disappointment and the sense that things should be better?

What if we remembered that fine wine, fine art, and finely-woven cloth are to be cherished and prized? 

What if we could hear the voice of the ancestors as they took in a deep breath of sunshine and salt air and sighed “‘Tis a fine day”?

There was a message, a blessing in this for my client, a woman who strives to care for all the people, the animals, and the details as she strives to care for herself, too.

There’s a message and a blessing here for all of us, I think.

Perhaps it’s the gift of perspective. (When we strip away all the 21st century stuff and focus instead on the people, the land, and the animals in our lives, wouldn’t life be the right kind of fine?)

Perhaps it’s the permission not to endlessly quest for the epic and the awesome. (Which isn’t sustainable anyway… we’re not meant to live in a constant state of peak experience and we really don’t want every day to be a holiday because that too would run thin.)

Perhaps it’s simply a blessing.

You’re a fine one. Have a fine day. Sure, if the sun rises, it will be fine tomorrow.

Let yourself be fine, just for a moment, and then see if you’d like to be fine for just a minute more. When you hold this sense of “fine” within yourself, might it become just a little easier to face the next crisis and embrace the next moment of ecstatic joy?

Can I help you unlock the stories and untangle the knots? During a Story Illumination Session we can follow the calls of the ancestors or wherever the energy wants to take us.

Want more stories of Ireland? Get a copy of The Sovereignty Knot today. Order  from your preferred bookseller or get a signed copy from me!

For Those In Need of Rest: A Formula, A Prayer, A Spell

I just want to go back to the womb cave and listen to endless drumming until I feel stars inside my skin.

…This sentence came through when I was texting a friend this week.

Her response — “THAT” — made it clear that I am not alone in this longing. 

So many of us feel the urge to curl back into some vision of The Mother. Exhausted by all the doing, worrying, and waiting, we just want to get quiet and be held by an elemental heartbeat. We long to devote ourselves to beingness. 

What would it be like, we wonder, if we simply feel like we were part of creation? What if we didn’t have to please, prove, make, and strive our way to worthiness?

What if, just for a little while, you could go back to the womb cave and listen to endless drumming until you felt stars inside your skin?

But… is it OK to want to turn inward and just be nourished right now?

It feels crazy to want to keep incubating and hibernating after all these months of social distancing. 

It feels selfish to long for some sort of spiritual safety when so many are perpetually unsafe due to the color of their skin, the economic losses from the pandemic, or the host of other monsters that keep people from feeling healthy and secure. 

When there are so many things to fix in the world and so many things to achieve, nattering on about starry skin just seems tone deaf.

Crazy. Selfish. Tone deaf.

That self-judgment (paired with occasional bursts of public shaming) is exactly why that womb cave is calling. I think we all need to pause, to tune into how the body, the nervous system, and the soul are straight up weary and need an intergalactic kind of break. 

Even if you can count your blessings and tally your various privileges, that urge to set it all down and curl up for a nice long time is real. And it’s necessary.

It’s ok to admit you’re tired — even if you “shouldn’t” be so tired. You’re tired because layering the shoulds and shouldn’ts over your own experience is exhausting in itself. You’re tired because honesty is exhausting and because being dishonest about your wants and needs brings on even more fatigue.

A Writing Prompt About the Authentic Need to Rest

Perhaps you’re on the upswing right now. Your creativity is flowing. Your activism is aligned with your intentions. Your relationships are strong and you’re able to both give and receive.

That’s awesome. You can imagine what it’s like to crave a trip to the womb cave.

If you’ve gotten this far, however, I think you feel a bone-deep listlessness and you’d like to book a cozy spot in the cave, too.

Even better? Use your sensual imagination to describe exactly what you need right now.

You’re invited to describe what it is you really long for. This is an invitation to authenticity. This is a chance to speak the truth that always exists beneath the obligations and the “ought-to’s.”

Where do you long to be right now?

What do you long to hear?

What do you long to feel?

Think of it as writing a formula. A prayer. A spell.

You might be called to answer each question with one magic word. Perhaps you’ll write a page in response to each question.

No matter what, write about something you truly want. (No one is watching. This isn’t about proving how hard you’ve been studying or how much your willing to sacrifice for the greater good.)

Maybe you want to be on a cliff in Ireland with the song of the mermaids in your ears and the salt kiss of the north Atlantic on your face. 

Maybe you want to be in a beach cabana listening to the laughter of your children back when they were small enough to curl up in your lap. 

Maybe you just don’t know right now and you’ll borrow my vision until you have the strength to imagine your own healing haven. 

There’s room in the womb cave. The Mother’s arms can carry us all and that heartbeat is never going to stop. There, we’ll realize that we’re truly loved to the stars and back, no matter what. And sometimes, that’s just what we need.

Rest in this space you’ve imagined. Stay a little while. Stay longer than you think you can.

The world will be waiting when you return. The good fight will still need to be fought. The kids will still need to be fed. The deadlines will still need to be met.

Trust yourself to imagine solace and healing. Trust yourself to come back when you’re ready. When you’re something closer to whole.

Are you looking for a writing community that explores ideas like these each week?

Get your copy today.

A New Moon Ritual for Sovereignty Seekers

There’s a section in The Sovereignty Knot called Dark Moon Love.

It describes one of the loneliest, most important moments in my marriage:

One dark night, years after the vows were said and the babies born, I stood alone, pressing my face against the bathroom window, looking up and hoping for the impossible. It was a new moon night. There was nothing to see, but I longed to find some measure of comfort in the light I knew I wouldn’t find. I sought confirmation in the shadow…

That particular new moon happened several Aprils ago. Now, our marriage is strong and I know a lot more about what it is to stand Sovereign in a relationship.

On this new moon night in April 2020, the entire world seems to be staring up to the empty sky, hoping to find truth and solace in the shadow.

Here’s the thing… there is confirmation and solace to be found in shadow. We are called to find our way in the dark, to trust our footing, to hold hands, to remember that the sun will rise and the moon will grow full.

And, we’re called to remember that once we get through this dark stretch and come out on the other side and reenter the light, the sun will inevitably set and the moon will invariable wane again.

Dark Moon Wisdom

Elsewhere in the book, I tell the story of encountering the Celtic goddess Morrígan. If ever there was a new moon goddess, this phantom warrior queen of the underworld is one of them.

I was in an Irish cave when, “the Morrígan whispered to me that she knew I had spent a life enamored by the light, with appearances, with the demands of seeing and being seen. She needed me to become as comfortable and nimble in the depths of the otherworld as I was in the spotlight of the everyday.”

My wish for you, sweet Sovereignty seeker, is that you find comfort in the shadows as well as the sunshine. I hope that you can learn to sway beneath an empty sky as surely as you know how to howl to a full harvest moon.

And so, I offer this new moon meditation to you.

We’re called to stand strong under the glory of the sun, taking the throne and wearing the crown, yes, but it’s just as important to lay quietly in the dark, calling in the guides and quietly releasing all that does not serve.

Deepest gratitude to my mentor and teacher, Eleanora Amendolara, the founder of the Sacred Center Mystery School who taught me a version of this meditation many years ago.

And thanks to my clients and members of the Sovereign Writers Circle who inspired me to pull this practice out of my own interior spiritual archives.

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.

Forget World-Changing, We Need World-Renewing

Once upon the time, I used to use phrases like “world-changing” and “change the world” with wild abandon. 

In a 2018 blog post I dared to say: 

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, in The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic, published just two months ago, the chapter called “Crown the Queen” includes this passage:

As you come to believe in your own inherent power and get to know the archetypes that dwell within, you’ll realize that talking to goddesses and focusing energy on changing your own consciousness in order to change the world is more potent than sheer practicality and planning alone ever could be. The magic that lets us manipulate time and space might not quite look like stepping through the standing stones and entering another century like they do in Outlander, but it looks everything like the life I crave. Real life is full of real magic and it’s available to all of us who dare to look for it, treasure it, and conjure it. 

It’s not right to look back at words written in a simpler time and allow yourself to be filled with regret. Instead, I try to look back on these passages with kindness and understanding. (And maybe a little nostalgia.)

Now, we all know so much more about what “world-changing” really means.

We know that reality can change in the blink of an eye because we’ve collectively watched “normal” as we’ve grown to love it (and hate it) vanish in a matter of weeks.

Now, we know that “world-changing” means utter disruption at every level, from school routines to yoga classes, from presidential primary elections to global supply chains. It means massive spikes in unemployment. It means a terrifying increase in domestic violence. It means death.

The World Gives Us Change, We Give It Renewal

I’ll always remember the final time I used the phrase “world-changing” without feeling the crushing weight of such an idea. 

In February, I announced a new online storytelling program, Stand In Your Sovereign Story. The subtitle came out long, but doable enough: Learn how to use the healing power of storytelling to discover your truth, share your authentic message, and build your world-changing business.

Even though there are lots of opinions about whether it’s OK to sell anything in a time like this, I have come to understand that the course is more necessary than ever. (Seeing people sign up even in the midst of this crisis solidified that belief.) 

I’m leading the first session on April 14. The content we cover and the stories we uncover will focus on the work of healing and rebirthing that needs to happen in order to get us through and then thriving on the other side of this pandemic.

We’re going to learn about storytelling, truth, and how to share an authentic message and we’ll talk about how to use all those to build a world-renewing business.

The Story At the Heart of this Offering (and At the Heart of My Belief in Renewal)

This program (and all my work) relies on the story of Sovereignty, and what it takes for women to stand in their full  personal, creative, and spiritual power. My quest is to help all women (and all who identify as women) figure out how to balance and be all three archetypes of Sovereignty.

Free the princess
Crown the Queen
Embrace the Wise Woman

We are called to give ourselves permission to embody the princess, maintaining our innocence, optimism, and sense of adventure. 

We are called to allow ourselves the courage to embody the queen, building our confidence, competence, and compassion. 

We are called to allow ourselves the grace to embody the wise woman, surrendering to stillness, presence, and intuition.

We are called to be princess, queen, and wise woman throughout our lives. We are called to be all three before, during, and after the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The book offers a path for women to trace this Sovereignty magic in their own lives.

The course is designed to help creative entrepreneurs and transformation professionals use the archetypes to access and use their stories to create connections and build a livelihood.

Learn more about Stand In Your Sovereign Story, the online program that begins on 4/14.

On Being an Overcommitted Queen During Quarantine

On Saturday night, thirty-five readers gathered together for The Sovereignty Knot online book launch. Watch it here!

It was magical. And it feels like it happened last year some time.

Since then, the inner journey has been long and hard. The scenery hasn't changed since then, of course, but things look and feel different inside my mind and heart.

For the past few weeks, I've been pushing myself at just about every level. You've seen those social media posts about how it's not essential to use a pandemic to be remarkably productive? I saw them and kept going, certain that those ideas applied to everyone else but me.

My queen was on overdrive, you see. 

She saw those boxes of books in the hallway.

She thought about the storytelling course that begins April 14.

She thought about all the uncertainty in the world and how she needed to work harder to control what little she could.

Fortunately, I realized that my queen needed a time out before I totally burned out.

This week, I got back to my journal, to books I've longed to read, to being with the kids rather than managing them in between self-imposed deadlines. I cancelled any commitments I didn't have to keep.

I really didn't have a choice. My people (including my family in this house and accessible by Facetime, my friends on text, and my community of clients on Zoom) need me healthy and whole, not ragged and striving.

Getting my queen to share the burden (and the blessings) with my princess and my wise woman is a lifelong process, but I'm getting a little better at it every time I catch myself overpromising and overcommitting.

I become a little bit more Sovereign every time I say no, every time I limit the size of my realm.

During the book launch I promised a new webinar about using the archetypes of Sovereignty to tell your own stories.

Reality check: that's just too much for me right now.

Instead, I’ve called together a collection of resources that just might nurture you overcommitted soul as they have nurtured mine.

Good Read

During the book launch, I took you into the cave featured in chapter 2 of The Sovereignty Knot.

Briefly, I spoke of Mór, also known as the goddess Morrigan, and how she’s been a guide for me, particularly during these crazy time of disruption and fear. I’ve been staying close to her by reading Courtney Weber’s new book, The Morrigan: Celtic Goddess of Magick and Might. There’s nothing particularly “productive” about reading about Celtic deities right now. And that’s exactly what we need in order to get stronger and more connected to what matters - now, and in the new normal that’s waiting on the other side.

Good Listen

Goddess bless our public library systems with their extensive audiobook archives. When yet another spell of middle-of-the-night sleeplessness hits, I’ve been turning to The Magician’s Assistant by Anne Patchett. Written in 1998 and recorded back in the day when everyone listened on CD. There’s some terrible smooth jazz every hour or so and I imagine being a sophomore in college, driving between summer jobs, scratched discs all over the floor of my Ford Taurus.

An Invitation

There’s another reason I need to give my overcommitted queen a rest… there’s something big coming up in just 10 days. I am teaching Stand In Your Sovereign Story, an eight-week program designed to help creative entrepreneurs and transformation professionals tell stories that matter to them and to their marketing.

In some ways, it feels crazy to launch this right now, but it also seems like the perfect timing. If this feels like a time to focus on the stories you really need to tell and how to express them to the world, let's talk.

Initially, I conceived of this class as a way to "use the healing power of storytelling to discover your truth, share your authentic message, and build your world-changing business." Now, I see this course as existing to help us build world-renewing businesses. 

The Tension Between Keeping It Light and Keeping it REAL

I come from a long line of women who firmly believed in “keeping it light” - at least on the outside.

They even had theme songs.

My Nanna would tap her fingers and sing “Bingle, bangle, bungle, we’re so happy in the jungle.” (This one was especially useful when my sister and I were fighting.)

My Mom was a fan of “Don’t Worry Be Happy” and tended to give me her best Bobby McFerrin whenever my teenaged angst hit fever pitch.

Of course, they drove me nuts at the time. I wanted permission to have my rage and my despair.

Both of them are gone now, but I know they would have tried to meet this pandemic with outward optimism. They would have tried to keep everyone cheerful - even if they were anxious as all hell on the inside.

Today, I’m putting the finishing touches on the material I’ll offer up during my virtual book launch on March 28.

I’m thinking of my Mom and Nanna as I plan an event called Sovereignty When the World Is In Knots: Personal Power & Collective Magic In a Time of Uncertainty.

It’s happening on a Saturday night in the midst of one of the toughest periods in living memory. With all the worry and the weight, shouldn’t I focus on keeping things fun and light?

Well yes, and…

And I also need to focus on keeping it REAL.

I want to create an online space for people that acknowledges the desire for some ease in the midst of the stress, but also give everyone a chance to look at what’s underneath. (If there’s one gift I wish I could give to the women who raised me it would be the permission to explore the whole spectrum of feelings.)

This is just one more way to walk the talk and live the book.

The kind of magic I talk about in The Sovereignty Knot isn’t about escaping reality or creating your own reality. Instead, it’s about seeing the world as it is and recognizing that you have the power to respond.

When we gather for some storytelling, meditation, and conversation, there’s going to be room for all the real feelings, from the longing for light to the truth of the shadow.

We’ll find room for big grins and deep sighs as we explore how the archetypes of Sovereignty - the Princess, Queen, and Wise Woman - can help us navigate the inner world and the outer world.

Will you join us? Will you invite your friends to join us for an evening that promises to help you find your way through the light and the shade?

Come as you are, wearing your jammies and sipping your favorite beverage. Don’t worry, Netflix will be there when you get back, but you may find you prefer to curl up with a good book when you’re done.

How to Access Your Inner Sisterhood of Sovereignty

At this moment, we need Sovereignty like we never have before

Set aside all those political connotations you may have for this word. 

Your Sovereignty is your sacred sense of self.

Your Sovereignty is your sense of agency and your ability to exert a healthy measure of control over your thoughts, your actions, and your destiny. Your Sovereignty is your inviolable right to physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom. 

Hmm… is it possible to feel “free” in a time like this, when state after state and country after country goes into lock down?

Yes. My vision of Sovereignty has never had anything to do with that so-called American ideal of “rugged individualism.”

Your Sovereignty is at the root of your commitment to the collective.

In The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic I write…

Sovereign isn’t a synonym for solitary. It’s got nothing to do with isolationism. Though Sovereignty does have everything to do with independence, it has just as much to do with interdependence, too. Sovereignty is about relationships. Just remember that personal Sovereignty is an inside job and your relationship with yourself comes first. Always. Everything they say about “put on your oxygen mask first” and “you can’t pour from an empty cup” is true. The Sovereign woman does not lose herself in servitude when she serves others. Neither does she seek to rule in order to amplify her own glory. She does not do this work to get drunk with power. 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 yes, Sovereignty is more important than ever in this moment when one-third of Americans and one-fifth of the global population has been asked (or ordered) to stay home.

By submitting to the “control” of the state, and choosing to limit your own movements, you are embodying Sovereignty in a profound, necessary way.  You are using your power to root into where you are, supporting your community’s physical well-being in the only way you can if you’re not a first responder.

And what about your own well-being during this time of pandemic and isolation? How do you stay sane, strong, and focused in a time like this? How do you connect to those visions and ideals that were so important to you before so much of the world closed down?

(Because even though nothing will ever be the same, your dedication to bring more beauty and healing to this world remains unchanged.)

You commit to your own Sovereignty like you never have before.

You look to the Sisterhood of Sovereignty that always thrives within you.

In my book, The Sovereignty Knot, we “do” Sovereignty by understanding that we have the power to be the three archetypes of Sovereignty - the princess, the queen, and the wise woman. No matter how old you are, or how much you have achieved, you have all three of these forces within you. 

As I developed my ideas, I saw these parts of the self as part of a continuum, like the points of a trinity knot. These energies were present throughout my life and were part of my everyday. I grew to recognize when I was really embodying one energy or another or when I was unable to access the optimism of the princess, the power of the queen, or the peace of the wise woman.

In conversation with readers, especially during my visit to Michal Spiegelman’s Beacons of Change Community, it became clear that women saw the princess, queen, and wise woman as a Sovereignty Sisterhood.

And now, as we’re separated from our real-life sisters and the women who are like sisters who make up our lives - in the office, at the yoga studio, at school pick up - we look to this internal sisterhood to see us through…

The Sovereignty Sisterhood In the Face of Crisis

Three weeks ago when this Coronavirus was an abstract fear, I offered ideas about how to use the archetypes of Sovereignty to stand strong against the waves of fear that were washing against our shores.

Now that we’re in the midst of social distancing (with so much social media to fill in the gaps), we need to see the archetypes of Sovereignty in relationship to this changing landscape - both across our world and inside our own hearts.

The princess is hope. She is innovation.

The princess energy thrives in those who will come up with novel solutions to the shortages of medical equipment or disruptions in the food supply.

You are moving forward with your princess when you find new ways to serve and keep your business afloat in this economic crisis. Call on her to keep making beautiful things and moments despite the gloomy, discombobulated atmosphere.

The queen is leadership. She is managing the crisis.

The queen energy thrives in those who take to the podium and offer humility and useful information, even when so many of the details are still unclear.

You are leading with your queen when you get the supplies your family needs (but no more). Call on her as you you create a daily routine that sustains your household - at the body, heart, mind, and soul level.

The wise woman is calm. She is equilibrium.

The wise woman energy thrives in those who speak truth and offer counsel that rises above the noise.

You are emerging with your wise woman when you pause before you speak, even when you have cabin fever. Call on her as you you prioritize your own inner peace over obsessively listening to the latest news report or chilling statistic.

Let’s Make Sovereignty Real

Join me for a deep dive into the Sovereignty Sisterhood on Saturday, March 28 at 7 PM on Zoom.

This date was supposed to be the night of my first big book event in my hometown, but like everything else, that’s been postponed for the duration. And so, I get to invite the whole world to join me!

I’ll share some stories from the book help you embody your own archetypes of Sovereignty in this tangled time. I’ll be signing books and will ship them right out to you.

An Alternative Story for 2020's Very Strange St. Patrick's Day

This St. Patrick’s Day, when the pubs of Ireland, Boston, and New York are closed, travel from Europe is suspended, and the whole world is gripped in a terrible kind of uncertainty, I need to tell a story about the day I worked a magic spell while driving a tiny car down the left side of the road.

This story is proof that magic and Sovereignty are all around us, even when pandemic has disrupted life as we know it and we’re on the couch with a can of Guinness, wishing we were out at the pub with friends or taking a flight on Aer Lingus.

---

It was an indifferent sort of Irish morning, a bit of gray sweater weather that didn’t necessarily promise sunshine or rain. It was enough for us. We were tourists with a warm, dry car who’d just had a full breakfast, complete with black pudding, fried up for us in a big house in County Mayo. The hospitality was a blessing to be sure, but we needed to be in Roscommon by noon. I wanted to get out of this twenty-first century castle and into the wilds. Someone was waiting for us, and he promised to show us a place that was at once the birthplace of the goddess and the gateway to hell.

When my aunt, my twenty-something cousin, and my eight-year- old daughter finally got into the car, I was tight lipped and silent. Every part of me was on the move—except my actual body that had to sit in the driver’s seat as everyone wedged their American luggage into a European car. With about four days of experience driving on the left side of narrow roads, I was finally ready to drive the speed limit—and exceed it. But with all the twists and turns and crowded main streets that stretched between us and the village of Tulsk, I realized that no amount of white-knuckle speeding (and “Oh, Jesus, Marisa, that was close!” comments) could get us there on time.

There was nothing to do but practice some magic.

I’d tried this before when I was back home in the Hudson Valley. Then, I’d wanted to save my daughter from that dreaded feeling of being the last one left at the curb. Do you remember the waves of rage and fear of abandonment that used to wash over you before you had a concept of traffic or understood that your mother had more to do than wait for you to be done with school? Those kid fears still burn in me, and I’d do a lot to save my girls from such experiences, but my worries about their righteous indignation was nothing compared to what I was feeling here on the N60 road. We were speeding to the place I was most eager and most afraid to explore, and I couldn’t stand to miss it just because my family needed to graze a table heavy with bacon and eggs and have just one more cup of tea.

And so, I started working on the underside of time.

My hands were on the steering wheel, but my fingers were actually wrapped around the knots of energy that lay beneath the surface of the earth. I was trying to find the strands of time and space that are layered beneath our understanding of the moment. I was tugging at the fabric of the universe, and though I had no idea what I was doing, somehow I understood exactly how it had to be done. Clearly, I was messing with something bigger than me, something that would have consequences. Though I’ve long been someone who likes to talk about magic, I have rarely gathered the courage or the focus to risk the doing of it. That’s the tricky thing about believing in magic—you’re also wise enough to be a little bit afraid of it, or at least in awe of it. If “magic is the art of changing consciousness at will,” I need to admit that I’m both excited and terrified of change and the mystery of consciousness. But then, Sovereignty relies on recognizing your own power to shift your experience by shifting your perceptions. The real trick of magic (and Sovereignty) is simply in believing you know how and then giving it a try.

Was I actually altering the space-time continuum as we sped to County Roscommon? Was there any risk of changing the distant future or somehow shortening my own life as I attempted to stretch and fold time on this particular April morning? Or was I just soothing my own frustrations with fantasies that I could use the power of my intentions to slow the clock or move the ponderous truck to the shoulder of the road?

All I know is that it worked.

Moira at Rathcroghan in Co. Roscommon, April 2018

Because I focused less on worry and more on magic, my family was spared the nasty sounding “hurry up” that welled in my throat. Added bonus: I felt like a sorceress (and proved myself to be a badass “wrong side of the road” driver). Most importantly, we ended up beating our guide to the meeting point and we were set for a day that would change my consciousness in powerful, lasting ways.

If you want to credit our peaceful, timely arrival to my self-control, luck, and coincidence, be my guest, but honestly, I think you get more out of calling it magic. This “what you see is what you get” perspective on the world never explains all the miracles, synchronicities, and sacred experiences we witness every blessed day. Stubborn pragmatism labels these moments of wonder and connection as mere whimsy, delusion, or child’s play, but that approach robs us of the best parts of being alive. Sovereignty is about rooting into real life and transforming suffering, division, and oppression. Sovereignty, as I choose to define and embody it, is also about conspiring with your imagination to reach spiritual depths and mysteries unseen.

As you come to believe in your own inherent power and get to know the Sovereignty archetypes that dwell within, you’ll realize that talking to goddesses and focusing energy on changing your own consciousness in order to change the world is more potent than sheer practicality and planning alone ever could be. The magic that lets us manipulate time and space might not quite look like stepping through the standing stones and entering another century like they do in Outlander, but it looks everything like the life I crave. Real life is full of real magic and it’s available to all of us who dare to look for it, treasure it, and conjure it.

Want to find out where those Irish country roads took us? Get a copy of The Sovereignty Knot today.

This is an except from The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic.

You can get the ebook from Amazon.

Or, please consider supporting your local bookshop by asking them to order you a copy. You can buy The Sovereignty Knot from my local store, Inquiring Minds of New Paltz by calling 845-255-8300. (They’re offering free shipping through the US while they’re closed due to the Coronavirus).

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.

Forget Your Deadlines, We're On Sovereign Time

Time.

It is what it is, right? Relentless and uncaring. Immutable and inevitable.

We can lose ourselves in time travel fantasies. (Who else is an Outlander fan?)

We can agree that time flies when you’re having fun and that it crawls when you’re stuck with a task that you dislike. 

But really, we just have twenty four hours in a day and the calendar pages will constantly flip and we’ll all be another year older when May 2 comes around once again.

And yet… Is this all there is? Could there be an alternative? What if we didn’t need to buy into the relentless progression of time and those killer deadlines we live (and die) by?

Our Life-and-Death (Mis)Understanding of Time

Funny that we’ve all signed on to honor our deadlines - especially since none of us were soldiers in the American Civil War.

What was a deadline exactly?  “A line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot.”

The folks at Merriam Webster are certain of the 19th century bloody origins of “deadline,” but they’re pretty vague about how, over the next one hundred years, we collectively agreed that this term was about time management rather than inmate management. The dictionary doesn't say much about why we went on to co-opt this dire word to describe all sorts of mundane tasks either.

But then it makes perfect sense that “deadline” emerges from the language of war. We’re constantly in a battle with time, right?

Let's End Our Punishing Relationship With Time

Presumably, the men in those prison camps who were hellbent on survival would do everything they could to distance themselves from that line in the turf, but here we are, planning our lives around deadlines every damn day.  

Honestly, what is up with that?

There really is another way.

I recently rediscovered a French philosopher I studied in grad school named Julia Kristeva. She coined the term “Women’s Time.” It's a powerful, viable alternative to the relentless linear nature of time that rules our culture has completely capture my attention. In Kristeva's essay, Women's Time is about syncing ourselves to the cycles of nature and the sweep of eternity. 

I agree. And, for me, I take Women's Time further into being about creativity, flexibility, and giving ourselves permission to grow and connect in a way that's nurturing, not punishing. I want time to be about the moments we spend living, not a countdown for dying.

Let’s think about what it means to move according to Sovereign Time

These ideas are magical. And they're tricky too. We still want to live and serve in the real world, we still want to make commitments that count and be there to support those who need us. And yet we want the freedom to breathe and dream and let things unfold naturally. 

I'm dancing with all this. I'm weaving the contradictions into my book-in-progress, The Sovereignty Knot, every time I sit down to write.

And - here's what's even more exciting right now: these ideas about Women's Time and Sovereign Time are already influencing the way that I work, coach, and teach.

Last month, I conceived and launched a brand new program based on my forthcoming book. I did it in record time because it just seemed right. (At the time.)

But then I realized that my rush to plan and promote and launch wasn’t necessarily divinely inspired. Instead, it was inspired by the stuff of deadlines and chronic overcommitment.

The good news? I didn’t need to cancel the whole thing and call it a huge, embarrassing mistake. Instead, I just needed to pause and breathe and give the project and the people who are excited to join it a little bit of space.

I’ve given us all the gift of time. I’ve pushed the start date for Your Sovereign Awakening back to May 13.

Why did I make the change? Because Women's Time. Because Sovereign Time. Because the "deadline" I set was too tight both for me and for the women who needed to work out childcare and move evening meetings to be there. Because we don't have to always live and die according the calendar. Because it's ok to be vulnerable and admit the initial timing wasn't right.

You Still Have Time to Join Your Sovereign Awakening

The program empowers you to free the princess, crown the queen, embrace the wise woman, and establish a totally new relationship with time. We'll meet on five Monday evenings from 7 - 9 PM beginning May 13. 

Can you shape your time and your schedule and be there with us?

Kiss Me, I'm an Irish Sovereignty Goddess

Ah, Saint Patrick’s Day… The day when everyone gets to be Irish and you remember you never actually liked corned beef or cabbage.

You know all about St, P., right? He’s the fellow who drove out the snakes out of Ireland (though there never actually were any there in the first place).  He’s the one who taught the poor, ignorant natives about the holy trinity with the use of local flora. He’s the bloke who gave people across the world a reason to spill beer on people on March 17.

For as long as the modern pub-going can set can remember, these stories of snakes and shamrocks have served well enough over the requisite round (or six) of Guinness. And yet, I wonder… 

We live in an age when we’re called to question the relentless progress of colonization, to consider indigenous rights and stories, and to ask whether the representatives of the church were always acting on righteous authority.

This St. Paddy’s Day, what if raise our glasses to a different Irish story?

In our complicated times, the simple savior myths rarely meet the diverse needs of the collective. When history looks more like a Celtic knot than an upright cross, we might need to drink to stories that are a little more… serpentine.

Four Brothers and a Goddess

Once upon a time (or “fadó fadó” as they say as Gaeilge), four royal brothers were out hunting in the wildest, most remote part of Ireland. The stag they chased took them deeper into the wilderness than they’d ever been before. As night fell and they sought shelter in the forest, there was no food nor water nor comfort to be found.

Oh, what luck! They came across a well. But, just as the eldest brother was about to reach down and take a drink, a loathsome hag appeared. Hairy chin, pocked face, milky eye… the full nightmare of the aging feminine stood before them. 

“I am the guardian of this sacred well,” she announced. “Ye can drink all that you like, but first… a kiss.”

This particular young man was accustomed to the pretty young things who hung about the castle. He’d rather die of thirst than give himself to such a wizened crone. He told her so and went off to sulk and lick his own dry lips. 

Picture a similar scene with the next two brothers. Thirsty, arrogant lads and an old woman who stands her ground, wrapped not in an embrace, but in a lonely passion for her work. Youthful stubbornness and ancient dedication, side by side. 

But then, the youngest brother, Niall, made his way to the well. For the fourth time, the guardian makes her offer, “You can drink all that you like, but you must kiss me first.”

Cynics might say that Niall was just terribly parched. Romantics might say he saw something in that ancient creature’s eye. Students of myth might say that he’d heard this one before and knew there was more than a tumbler of water in his future if he accepted her offer.

He kissed the crone, the cailleach.

The old woman was transformed into a siren who would give any modern fantasy heroine a run for her money, and the two didn’t stop when they hit first base.  Not too long after, thanks to her aid, Niall would become king and this magical being from the well would be his queen.

The old woman, of course, was the Sovereignty Goddess in disguise.

According to Celtic mythology, not only is she the keeper of sacred waters, but she embodies the sanctity of the land as well. The Sovereignty Goddess bestows kingship on the man who is worthy of her, the country, and its people. For at least part of the story, she’s the real force behind the throne.

When we tell different stories we find a new way forward

Perhaps you feel like you’re on a divine mission to drive out ignorance and spread your version of revelation. If you’re that certain of your path and you see St. Patrick as an archetype who empowers you to keep on keepin’ on, slaying demons, and spreading your almighty vision, fair play to you. Let us know how that goes.

I myself must admit I’m not all that excited to jump into the conversion game.

Let’s drink to transformation, a different kind of power, and seeing past a woman’s looks, shall we?

I’ve got my ideas and passions, sure, and I do believe I can help people change themselves and the world for the better, but I can see my story reflected more clearly in the waters of a sacred well than in a saint’s nationwide anti-reptile campaign. 

When I have my chance to show off my knowledge of Irish lore this St. Paddy’s Day, I’m going to tell this story. I’ll tell it because I want to remind folks that no one is too old to kissed (with consent) and because the straightforward, easy narrative is rarely true or satisfying.

3 Lessons from the Sovereignty Goddess (that just may help you before, during, and after a pub crawl)

1) This Sovereignty Goddess, she models what it means to know your value and worth, even if the average member of a stag party couldn’t see it. She wasn’t going to give her power away for free and she wasn’t going to lavish her gifts on anyone who would demean or disrespect her.

2) The Sovereignty Goddess teaches us how to embody the magic rebirth and reinvention. Sure, life may have been hard, and she may have lost a bit of her sparkle and shine along the way. She might have chosen to hide from the world until she’d gathered her strength. But, when the time was right, she could reclaim her energy and reemerge into the world.   

3) Finally, the Sovereignty Goddess shows us how to be the source and catalyst for others’ transformation. She gave Niall the chance to show he wasn’t the shallow cad his brothers were. Thanks to her guidance and support, he would achieve what would have seemed impossible for a youngest son: the crown.

And, the goddess gave the land and its people what it needed at that time: a just leader who respected women and natural resources and could see beyond his own ego.

A note on being a different kind of hero

Let’s not forget Niall here. He’s got plenty to teach us as we plan a St. Patrick’s Day fueled by a new set of stories.

Niall was a man could look past first appearances, meet a challenge, accept a gift when offered, make his own decisions, and see wisdom and possibility where others saw a person to be discarded. He was surrounded by the testosterone surges of his brothers, but he saw the truth and potential of the feminine. Put simply, in this story, he ditched the toxic masculinity and he did the right thing.

The messages in the story of Niall and the Sovereignty Goddess are varied, conflicting, and multi-layered. You might be inspired by goddess’s shapeshifting abilities or the way age is nothing but a number. You might find the magic in the sacred relationship that begins in an unexpected way. Perhaps you just need a break from the old narrative that tells us that snakes are bad and that every sacred well needs to be re-christened in the name of a saint. 

No matter how you read and retell this story: accept the invitation, know your own power, be kind, and drink deep.

Want more of the Sovereignty Goddess and the lessons she can teach us modern beings?

My book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Collection of Thirteen Beginnings is coming in October, 2019. Join my launch team to get a free advance copy and other bonuses!