Meet Yourself On the Page: Write a Thank You Note to the Shadow

Writing is healing when you dare to meet yourself on the page. All you need to do is find a way to drop your armor and hush the inner critic.

Hmm... easier said than done. But where do you begin?

This week’s invitation for healers, creatives, writers, and would-like-to-be writers: Try writing a thank you note to the shadow.

Something surprising happens when you use the well-known format of a thank you note to dive into the hardest parts of your own story. The framework holds you at first and then it frees you to say what you really need to say.

You can write a thank you letter to a person who hurt you. You’re not thanking them for their abuse, but you might be thanking them for the new ways you were able to grow as you healed.

In this latest Writing & Magic Making video I tell you a little bit about the experience of writing a thank you note to a loved one’s addiction. It was hard and it was necessary and it was the only way I could uncover what I really was feeling.

And be sure to sign up and mark your calendars for the next free community writing practice session that’s happening on Thursday, November 29 at noon ET.

Writing Prompts for Election Day: Beyond Blue and Red, the Full Spectrum of Story

On November 6, my American friends, we vote.

We have the chance to speak the not-so-simple language of “this one, not that one.”

It’s so much, and yet we fear it’s not enough. It’s all too easy for this one action to feel like a drop in an endless sea…

And yet, we do it anyway.

(Right? I couldn’t possibly have any non-voters on my list, could I? At the risk of being totally unoriginal: JUST GO VOTE.)

Ok, so after that essential act, the question then becomes: what stories do we tell next?

We know the truth of all our hopes and fears is not going to be expressed with a list of winners and losers. After all, we’re the entire spectrum, not just red or blue.

Here are three writing prompts crafted just for the 2018 midterm election.

I invite you to use the first prompt to reflect on the past (whatever you define that to be - this election season seems to have started before time began!). Use these second to anchor into the now and find YOU in the midst of the collective noise. And then, lean into the final prompt on the other side of the results.

Prompt 1: Write the story of your election season

Boldly describe all that you did, whether it was knocking on doors, starting conversations, making campaign contributions, or sharing content online.

Next, compassionately explore your feelings about what you didn’t do. Be extra gentle if you’re uncovering the “I shoulda done more” narrative and get curious rather than judgemental about your actions.

Prompt 2: Be in this moment

Anticipation. Worry. Fear. Exhaustion. If you’re at all invested in the election season and its outcome, you have been feeling all the feelings.

Give yourself a few moments to check in with your body, mind, and heart.

Describe the sensations and the recurring thoughts that you notice. Use this exercise to leave the past behind and forget tomorrow for just a moment. Be in this moment of national choice and action and see what comes up for you. (Only when you understand your own emotions and reactions can you move forward with an empathetic response.)

Prompt 3: Consider tomorrow

Whether you write this before or after the final tallies are in and regardless of whether your chosen candidates win or lose, don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

What new world are you going to create if you’re living under the leadership of an individual or party you love? What if somebody else is in power?

Perhaps you want to imagine both possible futures today. Ultimately, since there are so many different races that will affect you, you can count on a lot of waves of both winning and losing.  

No matter the outcomes, focus on “what new world are you going to create.” If you need to grieve the results, on the other side you will need to lean into another tomorrow. Trust that the next tomorrow will come.

Write tomorrow’s story so you can consciously help shape it.

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If these writing prompts speak to you be sure to sign up to join us for the free community writing practice session coming up at noon ET on Wednesday, December 5!

The Sovereignty Manifesto: Word Witch, Story Healer, Priestess of Sovereignty

A couple of weeks ago, I had trouble getting myself to the page. I was exhausted and frustrated. And the cycle just kept sweeping me up and throwing me under as I was just so exhausted by my frustration and frustrated by my exhaustion.

(This is not where a writer/writing coach needs to be.)

It turns out, the words that needed to come through me had to be spoken. And so, on the drive to pick up my younger daughter at preschool, I pressed record.

I had to declare who I am: Word Witch, Story Healer, Priestess of Sovereignty.

I had to declare what it is I am here to do: heal, create, love.

I had to state what is getting in our way and what it is we're truly here to do as a collective.

These are ideas I'd been playing with for ages, they are words I have surely spoken before. But never quite like this...

With these declaration, I found the way back. I found a way to brew my own medicine and feel the effects of my own magic.

Watch the video - and perhaps share it with friends who need the inspiration to craft their own declaration. 

The camera angle is crap, but as you listen to the Sovereignty Manifesto, I am sure you will agree that we need to quit worrying about such things and dive into the stories that tell us we need to look perfect and book a studio before we can speak.

We are more powerful and more divine than we dare to imagine. And yet, we are more frail and fallible than we dare admit.

This is my declaration of sovereignty and identity. It is my statement of all I am here to do: to heal, to create, to love. It's my invitation to every woman who is reckoning with privilege, with aging, with finding her voice, and telling her story.

These are the ideas at the heart of my work in progress, The Book of Sovereignty: Free the Princess, Crown the Queen, Embrace the WiseWoman (coming October 2019).

Want to uncover your own Sovereign Story? Join us in the Sovereignty Circle, the online community for women who want to live and write a more powerful story.

(PS: That mention of "Sheila Riske"? She's the heroine of the novels I've been working on for years... With every declaration of my own sovereignty, I am closer to being able to bring her into being.)

An October Story for the Children of the Moon and the Daughters of the Earth

On the Friday before what you and I might habitually call Columbus Day weekend, my fourth grader and I went for a hike down by the Mahicantuck. I’m quite certain you’d simply call this “river that flows two ways” the Hudson.

This river is tidal. It rises and falls twice in a day and the salt from the Atlantic can reach all the way to Poughkeepsie during drought conditions. I am an ocean girl, born and raised, and the Hudson Valley can seem so desperately land locked… I forget that the river is just a few miles from my front door. I certainly forget that it has salt in its hair and sand in its shoes.

If only my mermaid self could remember that she has always been at home here. Then, maybe I’d be able to put down roots that would help me better weather the storms - those in this New York sky and those that churn on the internet and in the ethers beyond.

My daughter was born in this place. She’s made of this river and its tributaries. She’s held by its ridges and mountains and she skips along the trail and navigates the uneven ground as naturally as a grown faun - or is she now a young doe?

She tells me what she learned about Indigenous Peoples’ Day, about the story of Taíno boy who had his doubts about the men who arrived in their great boats. We talk about the way the boy was right and how the explorers became colonizers who would destroy the native way of life. We talked about how complicated it was, to feel grateful we lived on such beautiful, sacred land while knowing that it meant the removal and destruction of those were here first.

Conversations with my daughter enliven and exhaust me sometimes, especially when we’re trying to sort through stories about our beautiful, brutal, complicated world. Trying to put things into words she can understand when I realize I don’t even have the words.... This is one more thing they forgot to teach us in parenting school.

I hadn’t had time for my morning meditation that day and was craving it, so, as we approached the river’s edge, I suggested we do a “sit spot,” a mindfulness practice she’d learned in her wilderness program.

The water was high. All this autumn rain was keeping the salt-kissed currents well south of us, but I swear I smelled the sea. Tucked between the trees and the underbrush, we found a clear boulder, a perfect place to rest, our feet dangling over the steadily moving river five feet below.

I was entwining myself with the elements, feeling the sun and the wind and filling myself with the splash of the wavelets. I needed this. I needed to arrive at a point in motherhood when my older child and I could enjoy a long moment of silence, when she could respect the dance of nature’s movement and stillness.

So much felt possible now that I had a daughter who could allow her mother some stillness. I’d spent so many years of going through the motions of mothering. I felt like I’d earned the pause.

As I let my mind fly with the gulls, my girl was quietly busy beside me, grinding a tiny stone against our rocky seat. She was making a fine pile of dust. I glanced over to see her dabbing it on the tip of her nose, her eyes crossed as she focused.

Perhaps it would have been nice to mediate a little longer, but this was a rare afternoon, just for the two of us - the first hike we’d taken alone since her sister was born four years ago.

I think it must have been her idea to paint me. I didn’t know if it crossed her mind that this is how kids have “played Indian” for hundreds of years, but I didn’t mention it because I was caught up in a different world of history and myth.

I’ve been rereading The Mists of Avalon and felt that old yearning to be amongst the priestesses with the blue crescents between their brows. This book had rewritten my relationship with the Catholicism that raised me back when I was not so much older than my daughter is now.  It was necessary to make that sacred sisterhood real in this moment with my girl, here at the rocky edge of a rushing river, so I asked her to draw the moon on my forehead. And then, with the last bit of powder, I did the same for her.

It felt necessary to put words to this sweet little act, so I suggested we speak a prayer to the moon and ask her for a blessing. My wise, huge-hearted daughter, who has been raised to see the Goddess in the earth and in the sky and question why many people think God lives only in a Church, suggested “peace and love.”

This was the end of the week when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Around the country, women in particular were holding their collective breath. We waited to see if that man would be confirmed and added the Supreme Court. I didn’t have any peace and light left in me, and the kind of love I had was the fierce kind that felt more like a hurricane than a mild October breeze.

Though I was filled with prayers that began something like “by the power of this mighty river, by this great mother earth, women must be believed,” I was doing all I could to just look like Mom on the outside. My daughter has been raised to call her a feminist and she’s more politically aware than most nine year-olds, but I’d barely mentioned the Supreme Court. She knew it as one more messy political thing that would inspire mommy and daddy to go to an event in support of our democratic congressional candidate that night.

And so, I was called to walk the edge between speaking the truth and protecting the last shreds of my daughter’s innocence yet again.  I couldn’t erase or disown my weary heart or my boiling blood - this was a prayer to the Goddess, after all, and I needed to be straight with her about what really needed on this earth right now.  

I tried to tilt the specifics of my rage and said I was thinking about justice and about protecting people who are less powerful than the guys who have been in charge for so long.

We threw stones into the water to seal our prayers. We walked back to the car with golden moon dust on our faces. Later in the day, I’d listen to Susan Collins’s long rambling speech in support of the lifetime appointee who showed himself to be anything but an impartial, even-tempered potential jurist.

And the river would keep flowing with moon blessed tides. The autumn would stretch to become more brilliant before the weather turned and the leaves would be stripped and laid winter bare.

My daughter would grow and her innocence would slip away with every conversation, newscast, and great big book.

I would hold this story in the treasure chest with those that make me a woman raising up children, a woman with her eyes widening further open day by day, a woman full of rage and hope, a woman trying to find her way home.

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In honor of my daughter's ninth birthday, I invite anyone who loves this story to book a Story Healing Session for just $109 (offer valid through November 1, 2019).

You can get all the details on what’s included in this practical, magical offering here.

Book your one-on-one session with me to talk about the story you long to tell, the story that gets stuck in your throat and needs to be healed before it can be told.

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.