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.

What Story Is Mine to Tell Right Now?

Whenever I find myself spinning in circles and I have the urge to write,  I ask myself:

What story is mine to tell right now?

This is the essential question, whether my mind happens to be looping with anxiety or leaping with inspiration. 

(Have you noticed how they both tend to buzz at the same frequency? The nerves of worry and the nerviness of creativity are easily confused. When I ask this question, there’s a better chance of moving toward healing and productive cross pollination. That’s when the words finally start to flow.)

So Much To Say, So Hard to Find the Words

From my experience, “what story is mine to tell right now?” is the only place to begin when you feel the pressure to put words on the page and feel wordless at the very same time.

Here’s something we tend to forget when we’re overwhelmed and there is so much to say, either because the brain is swirling too fast with worry or soaring with new ideas: we writers can only set down one word at a time. 

“One word at a time” is the blessed miracle and the maddening flaw of language. 

We are forced to condense the immense and the ineffable into clusters of letters, limiting it all down to discrete, interconnected units of ideas. With time and focus, we spool a narrative. We can throw ourselves wide open to the expanse of sentences, stanzas, and stories. 

Here’s what might happen when you dare to ask, “what story is mine to tell right now?”

When I ask myself this question, I am almost always surprised. 

Sometimes, I need my journal and quiet hour. I must fill the page with rhetorical questions, nonsense sentences, and magnificent, revelatory errors of all kinds.

(When I wrote into this prompt yesterday, I definitely scrawled “when I know when I must right…” Cringe! But look what was revealed in that misspelling! Oh, my obsession with being correct, even on the uncensored pages of my own little green book)

Sometimes, the words take me to fairy glens and eighteenth century drawing rooms.

(Ok, so the novel got stalled in the transition between the endless 18-month summer and the uncertain fall, but there’s a book brewing, and it’s the story I was born to tell. When I give myself the freedom to describe a sacred well made of starlight and sphagnum moss or invent a whispered conversation between the countess and the peddler down the lane, I trust that I am making magic. You transform the very fabric of the world when you conjure and describe you own visions, stitch by stitch and word by word.)

Sometimes, the words come out seeking their place in the marketplace, issuing invitations to come play. 

(I’ll be the first to say that the “real writer” in me rolls her eyes at this naked display of capitalism, but then I remember that we live in a both/and universe. As the Irish poet Rita Ann Higgins says, “poetry doesn’t pay,” but the mortgage still comes due. And so, I ask my words, as they emerge one letter at time, to call in the writers, the healers, the dreamers, and the sovereignty seekers who will hear my song and use these ideas to add to their own. So, next time you see my images on Instagram, do read the captions, too. They’re lovingly crafted by a writer trusting the story that wants to be told.)

Sometimes the story is a text to a friend. Sometimes it’s an email to my grandpa. Sometimes it’s a note I stick in the lunch box in case second grade feels hard today. 

And sometimes the story that is mine to tell must be silently pounded into the pavement or held by the trunk of a beloved tree. Sometimes the story that is yours to tell is not yet speech ripe and will not come no matter how fine the pen, how quiet the room, how inspirational the view.

Trust the story. Trust the moment. Trust yourself.

The words will come in their own time, as they always do: one at a time, in a jumble or a flow. They will carry you onward to the story you must tell.

“What story is mine to tell right now?” is just one of many questions I pose to the dreamers, healers, and seekers who long to build a writing practice and birth their stories into the world.

In the Sovereign Writers’ Knot, the newest incarnation of my online writing community, you can find the the space, time, and company that will help you bring your words into the world.

We are welcoming new members through September 29. Learn more and apply now.

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.

Make Your Writing Desk a Sacred Space

In the early 1980s, a woman drove north from Massachusetts, crossing the Canadian border and continuing on until the little red Datsun reached the ferry terminal. She and her parents and her small daughter, only a toddler, boarded the boat to Prince Edward Island.

This family, always growing, shrinking, and changing according to the dictates of time, had been driving up to the Maritimes to go “home” to see the relatives since the first generation emigrated to Boston in 1949. We still do (or rather, we will as soon as the word reopens).

I always miss the Island, just as I miss my mom, my grandparents, and the great aunts and uncle we used to visit every summer. Usually, those feelings intensify once June rolls around and I can sense, even from hundreds of miles away, that the lupines are filling the ditches and the water in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence is almost warm enough for swimming.

Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash

Right now, though, my PEI memory cup is overflowing. I’m imagining one particular road trip when I would have been in a car seat and mom purchased “the desk.”

The desk was - and is - a converted organ that was bought at an auction or some cattle barn that was converted into an antique shop when the farmers stopped working the land and corporate agriculture came in. This lovely old thing sat at the bottom of the formal staircase at my aunt and uncle’s 19th century farm house for two decades. 

It was always “Jeanine’s desk” even though this wasn’t her home and it seemed like she’d never claim it. Finally, Mom and I rented the perfect sized minivan and brought it back with us the summer I got my first apartment.

That was seventeen years ago. 

This desk has moved with me a few times. It has moved around our current house, too. Though I love it, it’s far from ergonomically sound, so it has become something of a storage chest and dumping ground.

But then, I started a new project. 

My new novel is set in the Ireland of two thousand years ago, in the time of the druids, with bits of 18th century Dublin woven into the story, too. As I begin what is bound to be a mammoth undertaking, I’m digging through college lecture notes, combing through genealogical records and ordering scandalously heavy boxes of new books. 

The past feels more present than ever before.

And, even if my new writing project doesn’t involve my ancestors in particular, I am feeling the presence of thrice great grandmothers I have never met as surely as I am feeling my own beloved, more recently departed relations.

We Are Called to Create Our Own Sacred Spaces

Rather than spending the Easter holidays at mass as all my Catholic forebears would have, we devoted our days to shifting furniture and sorting family papers. I have emptied my office, my shelves, my altar, and am still in the long, slow process of putting it all together.

I wasn’t called to find holy sanctuary in a church. I never really have felt that call. Nature has always been my cathedral. And now, I am re-sacralizing my own office as my sanctuary.

It feels so natural, and yet, so new.

Unconsciously, I had always understood this as a sacred creative and healing space. Whether I am working on my own fiction, pulling tarot cards for a client who is trying to find her creative direction, or helping an entrepreneur find the words to describe their own sacred healing work, something special happens when I close the door and devote myself to this kind of writing and conversation.

Now, I realize that I need to create my creative workspace in a deliberate, sacred way.

After this year when our workplaces have changed so much, when we’ve lost access to the libraries and coffee shops that once were our intellectual and creative refuge, it’s more important than ever that we have our own sacred spaces to draft and craft and brith something new.

How Will You Create Your Own Sacred Creative Space?

How will you create your own sacred creative space? I have no idea! I do hope you’ll send me a note or tag me when you share photos of the place where you’re currently making magic or will soon be making the next wonderful thing.

Here are a few ideas that may help you get started...

1. Keep it simple. The goal is to find clarity and inspiration and then start making something magical, NOT to get distracted by the endless details of redecorating. (Making a space beautiful and liveable is a deeply creative act, of course. Just be aware of whether you’re using “I need to make this the perfect sacred space” as an excuse that keeps you from getting to the page and spinning out your stories.)

2. Consider what direction you’ll face. Factor in the light and the warmth of the room, as comfort is an essential part of the sacred creative experience. Also think about whether you’re someone who writes in the morning or at the end of the day. Do you want to face the rising sun (even if you can’t see it)? Is it important that the full moon would shine on your desk at a certain point each month?

3. Make re-sacralizing easy. If you use this space for many activities, from paying bills to doing work for clients, can you shift the energy in the space to call in that certain sacred, creative energy that the most personal projects require? Maybe you light a certain candle or purposefully clear the space of the detritus of the day before you begin.

4. Be comfortable. The reason I was really able to bring this storied desk back into my office and work at it full time? There has been a revolution in home office supplies and I had a million options to choose from when it came to adding a keyboard tray to this piece of furniture that used to be a musical instrument. When I had tried to use this as a desk ten years ago my husband rigged something from scrap wood. There was so much love in those rough boards, but damn, was it ugly! When you (re)create your space, value comfort as much as you value sentiment. 

5. Listen for guidance and look for signs. Part of my quest involved suggestions from an ancestral healing session. My grandmothers from Limerick and Mayo wanted me to call in the family heirlooms as I set the scene for my next book. Your guidance may come from the ancestors, your spirit guides, or the call of the birds. Dare to tune in and heed your intuition.

We Can Write Together, Each In Our Own Sacred Space

In the Sovereign Wisdom Circle, the online community for healers who write and writers who heal, we gather to write together twice per month. We also gather to learn and laugh and share and explore.

Through April 7, we’re welcoming new members to the group. If you’ve been looking for a community that can support you as a healer, a writer, and an entrepreneur, this is the group you’ve been hoping to find.

Come On, Let's Play

Heyyyyy you guyssss!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s What’s True

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

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

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

How Do You Know You’re Living Your Sovereign Story?

If someone asked you "what were you born to do?" would you have an answer?

For a long time, I thought I did. It’s all about the writing, I'd say.

I would count myself lucky to be so sure. Some people take years to figure it out, and some may never know it all.  I was one of those kids who understood why I was here, and all it took was putting words on paper.

"Writing" was the first answer and the easy answer. Sometimes we need to stick with the original impulse. Sometimes we need to celebrate that things really can be easy.

But, sometimes, we need to keep searching and honor the complexity that urges us to go deeper.

Writer is a tidy word to claim, so compact and understandable. (It can be a long journey to claim it, I know, but we'll get to that.) 

It was harder to get my head - and my words - around the greater truth:

Writing itself wasn't ever the end goal. The act of writing didn't define or even fulfill me. It was about everything that writing made possible within me. 

Ultimately, writing has always been about discovering what I really cared about, worried about, and wondered about. Writing is there to help me talk to the divine, to figure out my stand on social and political issues, and to help me sort through my feelings.

Writing is the sailboat, the sexy car, the horse drawn carriage. It's the vehicle that takes us where we long to go. This vehicle may offer great joy, but the whole experience is about so much more than the thing that transports us there.

But this “writing vehicle” certainly has carried me a long, glorious way

Last January, the Sovereign Writers Circle was formed. This was the digital gathering place where healers who loved to write discovered how they could use their words to heal others. We’ve gotten together to write every week in 2018. And it has been awesome.

But that's not all we did.

We laughed and cried. We shared stories that we'd barely ever spoken aloud. We talked about business strategy and what it really meant to care for and nurture ourselves. We explored spiritual beliefs the weight of our ancestral line. 

We have always used writing to get us to the place of sovereignty.

Writing is our vehicle. Sovereignty is our destination. (And the most important part of the sovereignty journey is realizing we've already arrived in so many ways. There's never one destination anyway, we realize.  We'll never fully arrive until this life journey reaches its end, and it likely keeps going on well after that too.)

The more complex, hard won answer to "what were you born to do?"

When the words flow through you like they’re being channeled from some cosmic source, it’s never as sudden as it seems. Something powerful has been incubating within, disguised by doubt and anguish and all the feelings of “everyone else has this figured out but not me.”

This fall when I recorded The Sovereignty Manifesto while driving to pick up my little one from preschool, I was a little stunned when I named myself “Word Witch, Story Healer, Priestess of Sovereignty.”

The first title was fun to say. I’d been playing with the second title for a long time after long study in energy medicine. The last thing? The whole “Priestess of Sovereignty” thing? That was as surprising as it was natural and inevitable.

Leading this group changed me. Leading this group named me.

Holding space for so many brilliant women who wanted to make writing a tool for personal discovery, professional growth, and deep, meaningful evolution helped me see my own evolution more fully.

And so, the group has been renamed too.

The Sovereignty Circle is here

This group is intended to help you write your way into “what is it you were born to do?”

To engage with this question is to begin to write your Sovereign Story. When healers, coaches, and creatives know and embody their sovereignty, the world begins to shift.

Really.

As I said, the Sovereignty Circle is built on a the strong foundations of the vibrant community we have built over the last year. The best aspects of the group remain unchanged. We still meet for weekly writing practice dates (Wednesdays at noon ET) with new prompts each time. We still gather for monthly writing coaching & story healing sessions. We still bring in guest experts each month who talk about self care, publishing, marketing, the spiritual journey, and more.

Now, the title is simply more honest and more complete. To call this group of brave, brilliant souls The Sovereignty Circle conveys the truth of what the mother of writing practice Natalie Goldberg once said:

To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.

And so, I invite you to consider joining us for the next season or the next half year.

The details about the group are all here, along with kind words from many of our members.

We’re closing the doors at midnight ET on January 1 because our first meeting of 2019 is on Wednesday, January 2, so don’t wait to apply!

Your Sovereign Story is a Cardinal in the Snow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Oh, and poetry.

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

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

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

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

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

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

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

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

What to Say to the Forces and Fears that Keep You From Writing

To every secret shame that silences you, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every overscheduled day that squeezes out your writing time, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every messy relationship that is too in-the-middle to describe, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every stomachache and sniffle and trip to the ER with the kids, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every fear that it has all been done before, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every Netflix drama whose plot line supersedes yours, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every shred of doubt that these words aren’t worth the effort, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every story that you’re living too fiercely and fully to pin to the page, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

To every whisper that you’re not clever enough or unique enough or creative enough, say: “Thank you. I see you.”

Our writing gets lost in the forest of shoulds.

Our writing gets drowned in the river of comparison.

Our writing gets scorched in the desert of distraction.

Our writing gets blown away by the winds of everyone else’s agenda.

You are responsible - deliriously, deliciously responsible - for your own stories and your own writing practice.

Your mission as an agent of transformation and a force for good is to share your ideas, your experiences, and your dreams with the readers who need your message. You need to reach out with your stories and welcome those potential clients who yearn for the wisdom and support only you can provide.

It’s time to (re)claim your right to tell and explore your stories

Now is the time stand sovereign at the center of your own stories. All the shameful and the messy ones. All the half-formed and the crazy ones. All the commonplace and mystical ones.

Now is the time to stand up for the time and energy it takes to dream and draft and craft those stories into insights that help someone else.

Now. Now is time to claim the time it takes to do all this righteous writerly reclaiming.

And, it’s time to make the space for the words that want to come through you

Tell every excuse, valid or otherwise, that you understand it has its place, but it exists on the other side of the door to your sacred writing space.

Wait, do you have a your sacred writing space?

It may be a room. It may only be a journal and a pen and an intention to find a chair where you can rest and think without interruption.

Your sacred writing space is a space in time as much as it is a place you can pin on a map. It’s the space when your heart spills open and your mind reorders chaos and your brilliance bashes up against your most foolish beliefs.

In order to find yourself in that space, in order to create that space for yourself, you must first unburden yourself.

Say: “Thank you. I see you,” to every item on the litany of resistance that pulls you away from that sacred appointment with your creativity. Ask all of those shoulds, comparison games, distractions, and demands to sit aside while you do the work that you must do.

This is how you create sacred writing space

Try it. Make your own list of the forces that pull the pen from your hand and slam the laptop on your fingers the moment you try to write into your truth. Can you say “Thank you. I see you” to those forces and politely ask them to wait until you’re done drafting into a piece of writing that matters to you?

You may need to do this exercise again and again. And you might find you need support to keep bravely staring down the hobgoblins of writer’s block…

That’s why I've created the Sovereign Writers Circle.

Learn more about the online writing group for healers, therapists, and transformation professionals. This is how you're doing develop the writing practice that supports you, your creativity, and the brilliant work you’re here to do.

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

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

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

The Ritual of Remembering

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

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

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

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

Write.
 

Writing Holds the Realization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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