Your Personal, Creative, and Spiritual Sovereignty

And then there comes a day when you can no longer say "someday" and you laugh into the fresh spring air and tell the singing birds, the blossoming trees, and anyone who will listen: it's TODAY.

Every creative being has a soul-deep passion, some kind of unique magic that is just waiting to be expressed.

It might be art on a canvas or words on a page. It might be the way you fill a home with good smells and even better energy. It might be an idea, a lived philosophy that you long to embody and share with the world.

For me, it's this whole idea of personal, creative, and spiritual sovereignty. It's the desire to empower other women to say "I am the one I have been waiting for. I choose myself. The time is now. I am here to make the world more beautiful, bearable, and bold. I do this by first grounding into myself and then into the earth and then reaching out my arms to heal, help, and start a revolution."

Want to find you magic? Want to discover how to free your princess, crown your queen, and embrace the wise woman within you?

The new nine-week workshop series, Your Sovereign Awakening begins Monday, May 13. Will you join us?

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.

It's Time to Walk, to Write, to Heal

This has been a time for me to write, to walk, to mother my children, and support dear friends as they mother their own. I'm feeling both immensely rooted in my real life and a bit outside of it all... ⁣
⁣
For so many years, I've equated both my potential and my success with how well I do at showing up online, doing the work, and focusing on my business. ⁣
⁣
It’s time to shift the focus and the pressure. (And perhaps start to learn to live without putting any pressure on myself at all.)

I need to write the book, hike the woods, love on theses daughters of ours, and strengthen this community I've already built. ⁣
⁣
I need to remember that a Hudson Valley trail just miles from my house offers hidden treasures and old stone walls. I don't need to run to Ireland to meet the fairies or speak with the ancestors. I just need to breathe deep and remember to play outside. ⁣
⁣
It's time to keep rooting into my reality. It's time to trust the present, trust the land, trust the circle I've already gathered close.

It’s time to embrace this as a time of healing and becoming right here in the world that I have crafted for myself. And it is time to whisper prayers of gratitude into the warming wind so my voice mingles with the returning birds and the awakening earth.

And it’s time to for me to offer my healing work to a broader community too…

I’d love to help you awaken with this new spring energy and root into what’s most important to you. Learn more and book a Story Healing Session.

(Note: I’m going to be making some changes in my business model - and by that, I mean how I’m of service to my clients and their creative magic. I won’t be offering single sessions for much longer, so now is the time to book!)

Barefoot Beside the Snow: A Walking Poem

A poem for all of us emerging from the cocoon of winter, from beneath the eaves of grief, from the hinterlands of self-loathing, from the wicked seas of despair.

What if we walked our prayers into the earth and trusted that Great Mother has been holding us all along? What if we dared to speak them out loud?

What if, just for today, I decided to let go of all the limitations
of all the old stories,
of all the beliefs that you can't
possibly
walk outside barefoot when there's snow on the ground?

What if I realized that my feet are tougher
than I have been led to believe?

What if I realize that the Sun
is stronger than snow?

What if I remembered
that squish of a bare foot on wet ground
and heard it as some sort of
prayer from the earth?

What if I remembered,
as cold as that water is,
I can come back to higher ground
and be warmed
by the sun’s rays?

What if all of my past mistakes
all of my failings
everything that I tried
but did not do or could not do
or was too afraid to make manifest…

What if instead of looking back on my
past and saying:
If I were here to build a mountain
every day with my experiences
and my accomplishments
my mountain is too small?

What if I instead realized alI was ever here to do was
create compost?

Everything that I've done and experienced
that I've lost that I've tried and failed at
that I've loved and reveled in
wasn't meant to create some
great mountain beneath my feet

Everything was always just intended
to seed a garden.

What if I look back on a past that is fertile and
rich and beautiful
and got me to exactly
where I am now
a season when the Sun is getting stronger
and so very soon it will be
time to plant the seeds?

What if I…
What if...

What if you were free to root into the earth, in your own creativity, into your own words and start shaping the poetry and the prose that you long to share with the world? Join us in the Sovereign Writers Circle where we make this sort of magic all the time…

When Mercury Retrograde Magic Exposes Your Biggest Business Mistakes

Every once in a while, when you’re not cursing the tech issues and the travel delays, Mercury Retrograde offers near unimaginable gifts.

You might not be familiar with the planetary event that’s something like an astrological starter drug because its effect is so clear and ubiquitous that it turns skeptics into believers. Here are the basics: about three times a year for over three weeks at a time the planet that rules communication and travel, Mercury, appears to be going backwards in the sky. This latest round runs from March 5 - 28, but some say you can feel the echoes for weeks before and after.

During Mercury Retrograde all sorts of misunderstandings can happen if you’re not extra impeccable with your word. Some say you should never launch a new venture or sign a contract during this period. It’s also that time of the year when a certain type of people (my people) say things like “of course Instagram and Facebook are down.”

Mercury Retrograde is also a time to review, revise, and re-envision choices you’ve made. (This is when the magic comes in.)

This particular Retrograde has been a cruel one in many ways, but I also am hearing powerful stories of looking back in order to look forward. I have my own “turn back to move forward” story for you, and I am almost certain it’s going to have a happy ending.

Let’s Consider the Progress Paradox

Transformation. Evolution. Growth.

These are powerful potent words. These are especially potent truths for us Transformation Professionals - the healers, coaches, and therapists who are here to support individual (and, by extension collective) growth.

And yet, we know that night always follows day, death always follows birth, and even planets move backwards from time to time. Perpetual forward motion isn’t actually a thing supported by the laws of the universe.

Plus, we know that this obsession with progress and the blind need to constantly expand can have dire consequences.

Think of the environmental degradation caused by the perpetual quest for cheap fossil fuels. Think of what we know about burst economic bubbles and the inevitability of recession (even if we’ve been taught to be terrified of it). Think of the stories of burn-out, anxiety, depression, and collapse you hear from entrepreneurs who felt they could never stop playing the game.

The constant need to push to adopt the next innovation and to hit the next income bracket has untold costs.

But it’s all so seductive…

Spiritual and emotional growth feel so good! It’s so easy to think we must translate our own internal evolutionary processes into “I need to share this with the world! Right now.”

But let me get back to my own story of accidental over-evolution

A Sovereign Tangle of Change, Growth, and Passion

Last year was a year of intense and gorgeous growth for me. (It’s nothing compared to the terrible beauty that is emerging in 2019, but that story is still being lived right now and isn’t quite ready to be told.)

In 2018, I launched the Sovereign Writers Circle. This same year I finally manifested the freedom to go back to visit Ireland for the first time in fourteen years. The relationship that’s most fundamental to my sense of happiness and security - my marriage - got stronger and more sure. My business felt more real and sustainable than it ever had.

All the while, I was working on my book about personal and creative Sovereignty. I was learning to use that word in conversation and how to live in as I moved through the world.

Everything seemed to be showing me that I need to consciously grow toward putting Sovereignty at the heart of all my work. Lots of wise people who know more about scaling businesses and being brave encouraged me to lead with the stuff that I talked about with such fire and passion.

So I rode the swells of Sovereignty as far as I could.

For a Few Months, The Sovereign Writers Circle Went By Another Name

Sometime in November I decided to change the name of my beloved online membership community from The Sovereign Writer Circle to The Sovereignty Circle.

The decision must have been a long time coming for me, but it emerged in a unilateral sort of rush. Sovereign businesswoman that I am, there’s no authority to ask for approval, of course, but I never even thought to call on the insight of the nearly twenty group members who had helped co-create this magical space.

Since I was keeping our powerful, effective structure the same (four writing practice sessions, one guest expert workshop, and one writing coaching and story healing call per month), the change wasn’t all that big of a deal.

Or was it?

Personal Growth Is Supposed to Become Professional Growth, Right?

Membership growth in the Circle essentially ground to a halt.

Why? I hadn’t let up on my marketing efforts or my passion for the group. In fact, I was throwing myself into the new year with big goals. I was wall papering Instagram with all kinds of magical sovereign awesome. I was spreading my seasonal 7MagicWords Challenge everywhere. I was offering free community writing practice sessions. I was shouting about the Sovereignty Circle from the digital rooftops.

And… crickets. (Ok, so it was the middle of a New York winter. Let’s say it was as silent as a nighttime snowfall in my new member applicants in box.)

But I kept going telling myself it was a temporary lull… This was growth. This was evolution. This was paying my dues to the gods of change.  This was also exhaustion, confusion, and an entrepreneurial breakdown to breakthrough bound to happen.

Of course, it doesn’t take divine omniscience to know why the group had virtually stopped growing. It just required some perspectacles that weren’t clouded with the dust from the road name “I Must Evolve, Grow, and Change Right Now In a Very Public Way.”

Along with the name, I also adjusted the group’s sales page considerably, bringing in new images and talking to slightly different clients in a whole new way.  

Without realizing it, I revamped the invitation a group that meets once a week to write, that uses writing as our primary discovery tool and medium to be seen in the world, and I didn’t actually say the word “writing” until about halfway through.

And, instead of talking to the people I know I am born to support - the healers, coaches, and therapists who have been the vast majority of my clients for years - I just started talking to a general woman wandering through her middle years in search of sovereignty.

I was so preoccupied with trying to embody and convey my new messages about sovereignty that I forgot to stand sovereign in the very thing that I’m known for, the very thing that I most wanted to offer to people, the very thing that people are asking me to provide.

The Biggest Mistake: I Accidentally Stole My Beloved Writers’ Collective Identity

One of the most powerful affirmations that guides my work in these days is “May I have the heart of a servant and the vision of a leader.” Creating space for the healer-writers in this online group of mine has been the single greatest privilege of my professional life.

But when I shifted the name of their group without even a casual “whatcha think?” to my members, I showed I was neither a confident nor a conscious leader. I was too busy leading us in a new direction to see how I was being called to serve.

Only when I started to look at the first quarter of the year and all the growth that hadn’t manifested the way I’d imagined did I realize I might have made a mistake when I renamed the group.

That’s when I asked my members how they’d feel about reverting back to the original name.

They were unanimous. In their hearts, this always was and always would be The Sovereign Writers Circle.

I’d accidentally taken something important from them when I deleted “writing” from our name.

As one member says, “I describe this group to people I know as: "my writing group for therapists who have their own story to tell.’”

And So, Thanks to Mercury Retrograde, Retrospection, and the Courage to Ask for Input… The Sovereign Writers Circle is BACK. (And stronger than ever.)

Right now I’m accepting applications from transformation professionals who are ready to write and live and more powerful story and who want to learn and grow with a like-hearted community of writer-healers.

Are you ready to discover more about yourself, your work, and the people you’re here to serve and finally put that into words with the help of a fabulous community and a leader who learns from her mistakes? We’re accepting new members through April 1.