My Turn, Your Turn, Our Turn at Sovereignty

It’s my turn.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come On, Let's Play

Heyyyyy you guyssss!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s What’s True

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

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

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

Trust the Cycles. Trust Yourself. Trust the Words.

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

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

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

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

So You Dream of Creating “A Writing Life”…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Division and Illusion On a Grand Scale

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

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

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

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

Division and Illusion on the Individual Scale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Dev on Unsplash

Sovereignty.

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

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

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

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

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

• fully accept and inhabit my own worthiness

• connect with and own my creative power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Real Magic Means Real Change, Are You Ready?

There’s “real magic” in the air

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

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

What do we really mean by “magic”?

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

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

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

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

The magic we love… and fear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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