Kiss Me, I'm an Irish Sovereignty Goddess

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four Brothers and a Goddess

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He kissed the crone, the cailleach.

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

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

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

When we tell different stories we find a new way forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A note on being a different kind of hero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Sea of Story Within Every Healer

You hold their stories. Their hopes. Their pain.

You are steeped in words all day. Theirs may come out in torrents, but, at least in session, yours flow in a carefully tended stream.

You are there to support everyone who steps into your office or books an online session. Through your thoughtful presence, you provide a rock, a safe harbor, a nurturing place to land. You are that stronghold of safety and acceptance.

Yes, you hold all the feelings with your welcoming smile and your empathetic gaze, but you’re more than the figure in the chair… You are more than a static keeper of stories who listens and dispenses wisdom, and returns to sit and do it all again tomorrow.

You are a fully embodied creative being who has your own stories, your own vast life that comes before and after and beyond the practice of holding and healing others’ stories.

You are a port in the storm for so many, but within you, there are seas that crash against your own history. There are eddies of pain. There are waves of passion. There are rocky shores that offer no comfort. There are sweet beaches where you know you can rest from time to time.

Within you, there are journeys enjoyed, endured, and abandoned. There are voyages on the horizon and voyages relegated to the wishful “someday” dreams.

There are riptides of words that swirl around your ankles and pull against your hips. And, there are periods when the tide is out and you walk along the empty stretch of sand, wondering if you’ll ever be inspired by your own ideas again.

A collection of truths known to writers, healers, and beachcombers

When you walk the beach, you fill your pockets with pretty shells and fragments of driftwood and slivers of glass polished into roundness. There’s incomparable beauty in these random found objects.

Here’s a collection of thoughts that may seem just as random but which I believe will reveal some beautiful truths...

• The storms of life will change you and force you to hide within yourself, just as hurricanes change the beach and drive everyone indoors to watch the salt and the rain lash against the windows. You won’t know who you’ll be on the other side and you may not recognize the beach you once played on, but you know the story isn’t over yet and you will go out to explore once again.
   
• When the tide spools out and you need to walk a mile just to have a swim, it’s easy to feel disappointed. You’re trapped on vast expanse of sand when you were longing to close your eyes to the sound of crashing surf. In truth, those tidal flats are always teeming with life. The beautiful, the frightening, the icky, and the awesome all come out to play when you gaze into those pools and follow the ripples of sand.
   
• Those tides will come in again as sure as the sun will set in the west as the full moon rises in the east. Your stories and inspiration are as unpredictable as the ocean weather and yet, at the same time, they as reliable as the tides.

Come sail the sea of story with us?

It’s the middle of February and I’m hundreds of miles from the Cape Cod waves that cradled me from the day I was born. I carry that ocean with me everywhere, as surely as I carry my stories. And, as you see, the element of water helps me find my way and helps me express my message.

Today in the Sovereign Writers Circle, members will gather for our weekly writing practice. One of the two prompts is going to be an invitation to write into whatever element is asking for your attention.

I'm going to a pose a question that goes something like this: Earth, Air, Fire, Water… which one wants to be your creative ally today?

I invite you to write into that prompt yourself, and also consider joining the Sovereign Writers Circle where you can join with colleagues who are also writing their way through their professional messages and their personal stories. Together, we’re learning to ride the swells of our creativity and craft our visions into sentences and paragraphs that carry us home.

We welcome new members at the start of each month. Will you write with us?

Do you know how to describe the “real magic” you offer your clients?

There’s a part of what you do that’s beyond, beneath, and before the bounds of language.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

As a healer, you know that the color, the sensation, the texture of an event or an emotion carries meaning that the English language often can’t begin to touch.

And, if you’re a therapist whose work is based on talking through thoughts and problems, you know there’s something you do that transcends words. It’s in the holding of the space. It’s in the silences. It’s in the invisible bonds of relationship that allows the healing to happen.

Here’s a secret… it’s that unutterable something that makes your work so unique, so vital, and so uncommonly necessary.

This is the place where you truly want to dwell and it’s the work you truly want to do. It’s the deep, subtle, sensitive work your clients crave.  It’s also the hardest to describe and the easiest to undervalue.

When we’re talking about describing the “real magic” we’re talking about writing down the ephemeral stuff that you wouldn’t begin to know how to put on a webpage. We’re talking about it because that is exactly what will bring the right people to your door.

I know, that’s completely annoying and maddening to hear.

(Marisa, you want me to build my practice and reach more people by writing about the indescribable???)  

Yep.

At least, I’d very much like  you to try.  Your power as a healer and transformation professional depends on understanding the depths of you magic. And because it’s going to be more rewarding than any other marketing gimmick you could try.

My own kind of “indescribable” magic

At our house, all I need to say is “it’s for a unicorn client” and my husband knows instantly that it’s not business as usual. This is the work that my better angels don’t want to put off. These are the writing coaching and healing clients whose stories will get my attention at 9 pm on a Friday - even if that glass of wine seems awfully tempting.

Before I go on about “my unicorns,” I will say that I have a sense of deep respect for all of my clients. After seven rocky years of entrepreneurship I have finally discovered to trust my gut and I will either refuse to take or will gently release anyone who will de-center me from my sense of worth. I work with caring, curious souls who do meaningful work and are open to words like “magic.”

It’s just that the unicorns are different.

These are the people to whom I can offer the fullness of my magic. These are the clients who seem to be able to see through the website copy that describes what I’ll do as their “writing coach” and recognize that it’s a full-life healing journey we’re on together. The words will anchor our work, will be a touchstone to keep us coming back and diving deeper and seeing things anew, but the healing, changing, and meaning-making doesn’t end when the next article is published.

Here’s the thing: though I have written about aspects of this work - check out my Sovereignty Sessions page -  I’ve worked harder on making the copy sound right than I have worked on getting to the essence of what this unspeakably magical work actually is.  It’s easy to put that off since, as I said, it all seems to transcend words, but that’s just an excuse, really…

If you have the power to change lives, you have the power to say how

Photo by Milos Tonchevski on Unsplash

We are creatures of story, of language. The unknown and the ineffable are true aspects of the human experience, but to say “the real magic I do cannot be spoken” is to diminish its real world power you have to change lives.

Truth time: I am fantastically guilty of dodging this particular writing assignment. My first draft of this blog, longhand in my oversized “professional visions” journal was seven pages long and at three different points I caught myself saying “I am still not describing the real magic of my work.”

I kept slipping into telling you, dear reader, how to do it but I refused to engage the question myself.

In fact, when I was going through the final edit of this post I realized I still hadn’t really answered this question for myself. I’d written around it so many times that I’d created some sort of energetic groove in the paper between me and the fullest truth.

I stepped away from the desk and closed the computer. I curled up on the couch and pulled out the journal and I scrawled into the question until my hand ached/  At this point, I have a set of answers I can work with. (I’ll share them soon!) The process needs to be ongoing, but I can tell you I have learned more about the “why” of my work and just what’s makes me exclaim to myself “damn, I love my work” at the end of a call.

How do you describe your magic?

That’s easy… you start by trying. As I can say from experience, all you can do at first is try. You’ll probably do a lot of resisting and avoiding and writing about everything else but the question at hand until you get to the truth that lingers beneath the "unspeakable."

To make the process a little easier, I invite you to try the prompt I offered the Sovereign Writers Circle during our writing practice this week:

There’s a part of your work that’s, well, magic…

You see it in the moments when it’s so clear the transformation happening. You see it when you feel giddy that you get to do this work for a living. You may see the magic in the longing for such moments, knowing that so much more is possible.

It may feel like this magic transcends words. Try anyway. Flow with this energy, this unspeakable possibility now. Ask it to make sense to other people later.

Now, grab your journal or close all the windows on your computer and open a blank doc. Set a timer and give yourself at least ten minutes to write into that idea. I would love, love, love to hear what comes up for you… In the comments, tell me what you did (or didn’t!) discover about the real magic of your work.

This is far from the end of this journey… We’ll keep exploring how to describe your real magic throughout this series. And, I’m always here to help.

The Sovereign Writers Circle is welcoming new members through March 1.

And, I’m always available for individual healing & consulting through the Sovereignty Sessions.

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.