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

Are you ready to make some magic?

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

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

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

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

The word I couldn't call "magical"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will you join us March 14 - 21?

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

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

Your Sovereign Story is a Cardinal in the Snow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Daria Shevtsova on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sovereignty Lessons: The Antidote to Dreaming Medium & Playing Small

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting schooled by my own magic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wake up time.

Day by day, the MagicWords are becoming Sovereignty Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sovereignty Lessons are a message from your own Creative Source

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

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

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

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

Are you tending to your own Sovereigny?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, and poetry.

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

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

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

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

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

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

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

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

Returning to the Elements of Writing After Long Silence

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

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

The Ritual of Remembering

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

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

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

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

Write.
 

Writing Holds the Realization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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