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.

What Kind Magic Are We Making with the #7MagicWords Challenge?

If you spend more than five minutes with me, there’s a great chance you’ll hear me use the word “magic.”

I use it to describe moments of wonder: “Look, girls, the way the light is coming through the trees… I think we stepped into a realm of magic.”

I use this to describe moments of domestic joy: “The kitchen is clean! Someone made magic!” (That someone is always my husband… don’t let them tell you that electrical engineers aren’t mystical creatures!)

I use “magic” to describe any act of creativity and vision made manifest. Sometimes my writing coaching clients may look at me a little quizzically when I exclaim that they performed magic on their latest blog post. Before they get to know me, they may be thinking that the are merely writing and re-writing, not doing alchemy, but trust me… that time and attention is exactly what sets the stage for magic.

OK, time to define magic…

"Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will."

This line is credited to the psychotherapist turned occultist and fantasy novelist Dion Fortune. She dedicated her life in the first half of the twentieth century to the study and creation of magic, and I think there’s much inspiration to draw from this idea.

Let’s unpack this phrase a little bit and think about how it can guide the #7MagicWords Challenge that begins next week.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, #7MagicWords is a weeklong community project. Sign up (it’s free) and you’ll be sent a prompt each day and invited to come up with your own magic word.

The goal is to create space for personal illumination, but it would be wonderful to spread the light wider too. Create an image with your word and perhaps share a piece of the story behind it and then post the image on your favorite social media platform (I’ve been at it all through 2017).

There’s also a Magic Words Facebook group where we’ll be talking about the process and how a daily magic word can help you set a daily intention and/or make time for nightly reflection.

So, back to Ms. Fortune and "Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will."

In the #7MagicWords challenge, let’s make art, invite change, expand consciousness, and exercise will.

Art: If you’ve been following my 2017 journey with #365magicwords, you’ll notice that the art is key to the process. Sometimes, the word finds me and I search Unsplash or my own phone for the image that might compliment it. Other days, the act of take a photograph or doodling in the margins will lead me to the word.

Someday quite soon, I hope to find the perfect word to help me understand why I had to take a dozen shots of this fungus colony. Certainly these little ‘shrooms offered unexpected beauty, but someday, I think they’ll help me understand something about community.

Change: How much will shift between day one and day seven for you? You may have a creative breakthrough that will shift the story you’re writing or the offer you’re making to your clients. Or, you may need to peer closely to catch some subtle shift in the way you look at the world and feel the words as they roll off your tongue.

Transformation in any form is something that magicians and creatives and healers seek and welcome, yes?

Consciousness: This is a big delicious word that holds everything from the state of being awake to something profoundly metaphysical.

Whether tuning into yourself and your surroundings simply makes you feel more aware and alive or whether it connects you to something much greater than yourself, you’re doing it right.

Will: It does take commitment to get from “oh that sounds cool” and entering your email address to actually pausing and finding the words and potentially creating a piece of inspiring art from them seven (or more!) times.

This project is an invitation to show up for yourself and your own creative insights. Commit yourself to show up for seven days and open yourself to the wonderful and unexpected things that will emerge along the journey.

Please join us for the sweet, simple project that begins on the first day of summer

I do hope you’ll join the community of magic makers that is growing as the Summer Solstice draws near. Let me know that you’re in and I’ll instantly send over the brand new e-booklet I put together, Find Your Magic Words: Discover the Words that Help You Tell the Stories that Matter.

Are you dreaming the dream or doing the dream?

It's Friday, and that means I am breaking a rule by breaking out of my writing bubble, but I trust that it's ok to give myself permission to do that.

My current work in progress describes how the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess guides women through the transitions of modern life. Why write a book about crowning the queen within if you can't rewrite a few rules along the way? Especially when I'm taking these moments to write to you and the rest of my beloved community of healers, writers, and creatives.

Right now, I have a candle burning on one side of the laptop and my open journal on the other. I just got up from the meditation cushion and the beautiful clutter of sacred stones and tarot cards that surround it. Before I shut my eyes to dream into the work, I had scribbled several pages of notes that just might make it to the typed page.

My little one is home with me today, and it might make more sense to hit the grocery store and put away all that laundry so I can empty the baskets and start the whole process again. But, instead, I'm giving myself permission to let her watch Moana for the twelfth time and I am using this stolen hour to do the dream.This is new for me. Until just a few weeks ago, I'd never allow myself to sit down and work on my creative projects before the kids' bedtime. It seems the Sovereignty Goddess is whispering: it's time.

Dreaming Time and Doing Time

This life I lead, as a mother and a creative entrepreneur, it offers ample time for dreaming.

Driving the kids around, throwing together yet another soup, dealing with all that laundry... When the girls amuse one another and when I remind myself that it's ok to turn off NPR (the madness in Washington will go on whether I listen to every news report or not), I find new vast new territories within my own mind.

Yes, this life with small children may give me time to dream, but it often leaves very little time to do. I have time for my clients, of course. I have time to co-create the podcast. But time to actually do my own writing? That has often seemed impossible...

But then, this book project awoke within me. Re-awoke, I might say, but I am not 100% sure that's a word.

With the spring rains, with the rising tides of my own life, and the churning waters of these tumultuous times in the collective, the Sovereignty Goddess rose out of the earth, out of the past, and out of my own past studies and told me it was time. (Get a taste of her magic here.)

And so, the S.G. gets my creative doing time every Friday, and she gets lots of dreamtime in between. And I feel more alive than I have in long, long time.

Out of the Barren Territory of "Just a Dream"

I'm realizing how much effort I have put into dreaming the dream, and how little I devoted to doing the dream. This long time habit has left me feeling barren and lost... I was terribly accustomed to the bitter cycle of feeling inspired and then feeling disappointed as all those ideas just faded into the ethers.

What about you... are you able to dream the dream but just don't have the time and space to do the dream?

I'd love to talk with you about how I can help you capture that creative energy and turn it into words on a page that touch the hearts of your readers and potential clients.

Book a 15 minute session and we'll talk about how writing coaching can support your creative practice and transform your professional practice.