The Blessing and the Curse of “The Extraordinary”

What’s your relationship with the word “extraordinary”?

Whenever I’m feeling healthy and whole and fully sovereign in myself I would tell you that I wish to live an “extraordinary” life. 

Even in the midst of this terrible disrupted year when all we seem to have is the at-home routine, I believe I have still sought - and experienced - the extraordinary.

Does that sound like some kind of crazy humble brag? Let me tell you the story of what it took to embody and compassionately redefine the word and make “the extraordinary” into something that belongs in the everyday.

Expanding the Extraordinary In these Extra/Ordinary Times

When you look up “extraordinary” with our friends at Merriam Webster, they offer “going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary.”

This definition seems to explain a Valentine’s Day trip to Paris, graduating summa cum laude from an Ivy League school, or having quintuplets. It also can include pulling over the car to take in a particularly stunning sunset, leaving a love note in your beloved’s pocket on an average Tuesday, or taking time to ask neighbors if they need anything from the store when you make a run into town.

With this expanded definition, there are a hundred opportunities a day to go beyond the typical, even in an era when most of life is lived with a few miles of home. 

At this moment, I’m deeply grateful I’ve landed at an understanding of extraordinary that is at once more expansive and terrifically small. If I had been striving for an extraordinary life when I was twenty-one in the midst of Covid circumstances, I would have given up long ago.

“Someday, we’re going to be extraordinary.” 

In the spring of 2001, my college roommate directed Wendy Wasserstein’s play Uncommon Women and Others. The show was brilliant. To watch it in my last few weeks as an undergrad, full of all the fears of what the “real world” would bring was ridiculously (and understandably) emotional.

And, as we tend to do when absorbing good art (especially while ridiculously emotional), I pulled the show through my own prism and refracted it so it spoke directly to me.

I can still see the blond pixie girl put her arm around another actor at the end of the final act and proclaim “someday, we will be extraordinary!”

At twenty-one when the world was still wrapped in its pre-9/11 blanket, the greater part of me was all full of hope. We all had our entire rich, as-yet-to-be-written lives ahead of us. I was all about committing to this horizon reach to the extraordinary.

A hard-to-ignore part of me was also full of regret (and also the bagels and beer that had a gluten-intolerant me feeling bloody awful most of the time). Though I’d spent most of high school on the stage, I’d said goodbye to performing just as I’d said goodbye to writing fiction when I entered college. I had resigned myself to reading and commenting on other people’s words, watching other people’s plays, longing after other women’s boyfriends, and feeling generally uncomfortable in my own skin.

I had achieved so much in my four years, but I was still assigning the real goal, the extraordinary self who lived a life of passion and creativity, to that blessed someday.

The Long Dance With the (Extra)Ordinary

I held on to this line for most of the next two decades, constantly measuring whether I had achieved the almighty “extraordinary.” 

In 2008 I wrote a blog post about my quest for the “extraordinary” how I finally made some peace with that. (Eating like a grown up and no longer longing for a lover surely helped all that.)

And yet, it was still a “middle of the journey” moment. When I wrote that post at age 28, I joked about how I would be happy with myself even if I did not have my name on the spine of a book by the time I was 30. (The subtext, of course, was that I was kidding/not kidding. Without that wunderkind book on the shelf, I could be happy, but I was also aware I was not quite living up to extraordinary.)

Due to New Information, the Author Has Compelled to Alter the Story

When I started researching that book of mine that would come out earlier in 2020, right smack in the middle of my fortieth year, I finally got my hands on Wasserman’s play. The part I mis-remembered for all those years is in the very last line. Rita speaks: 

Timmy says when I get my head together, and if he gets the stocks, I’ll be able to do a little writing. I think if I make it to forty I can be pretty amazing. Holly, when we’re forty we can be pretty amazing. You too Muffy and Samantha, when we’re… forty-five we can be pretty fucking amazing.

Wait, what? I had spent all this time forcing myself to be extraordinary when all I had to do was be amazing?

And I hadn’t even remembered what would make the characters so amazing (or extraordinary): all they had to do was write. And make it to forty. 

Turns out, I nailed it. I even have four more years to land at the ultimate “pretty fucking amazing.”

And you know what that is? Extraordinary.

Extraordinary, Amazing, Magical, Sovereign, and the Power to Re-Define and Embody Those Words As We Go

Here we are in an extraordinary year that is anything but amazing (most of the time). In spite of it all, we are constantly surrounded by chances to stand sovereign in our own choices and to call in our own kind of magic when the usual ways of the world are inaccessible. 

We’re called redefine the words and rewrite the story and re-member all the pieces of life in a new way.

If I could go back and speak to my 21 year-old self about what a beautiful life might look like, I would leave extraordinary and amazing out of the conversation. Though I have come to love those words as I have lived them and re-defined them, there’s too much room for misinterpretation (and perfectionism and discontent).

Instead, I would tell me to go for magical and sovereign and trust all the rest to fall into place.

What is magic?

• Magic is having the power to seek and see wonder in the everyday.

• Magic is the ability to find hope in the shadows.

• Magic is realizing you've had the power to transform your world all along.

And what is sovereignty?

• To be sovereign in your own life is to have your feet lovingly rooted into the earth and your hair all spangled with stars as you love what is and reach for what is possible.

• To be sovereign is to know yourself and trust yourself in the midst of the ordinary and the extraordinary.

• To be sovereign is to know how to use your magic for your own highest good and for the good of all creation.

This December I have two ways for you to bring more Sovereignty and Magic into your life and redefine the way you use the words that shape your experience.

The #7MagicWords Challenge is our seasonal creativity project. This free week of prompts, community, and, of course, creative magic gives you a chance to play with and redefine the worlds that define your world.

A Sovereign Way 2021 is a half-day planning retreat for creative entrepreneurs and sovereign souls who want to envision and plan a year of personal and collective transformation.

Will you join me in the next adventure?

Lessons From a Morning After Moon

Before seven o’clock this morning I slipped out my front door. Even after twelve years in this house, I still marvel that we have a wraparound front porch and that it has a view of the mountains. 

The full moon was sinking into the clouds that clung to the western horizon. Naked branches held her for a moment before she slipped out of sight. I allowed myself the luxury of lingering, letting myself steep in the uncommon experience of taking in the miracle of the everyday. Mist rose from the boggy valley below and the neighborhood roosters vied to sing in the dawn. For once, I didn’t despise those lousy, endlessly noisy birds. 

All this silvery gray mystery and steely lavender glory… it was all playing out in my corner of the sky.

The house hummed behind me, a hive of early morning activity. At last, we’ve assumed the school day routine, even if it’s only two days per week.

In this stolen moment, I knew absolute joy, peace, and trust in my place in the world.

This is Sovereignty in action, this claiming of a few sacred moments with a cup of coffee and a quick conversation with the moon. 

This is where the quest for Sovereignty, for empowerment, for love, and for magic wants to lead. All the writing and the meditating, all the books and oracle readings, all the conversations and healing sessions with wise women and spirit guides. We walk this path and do this sacred work so we can be fully present for just a few minutes with the earth, with a poem, with a beloved’s laughter, with the feel of our own skin.

All the words I’ve worked and all the ways I’ve walked have led me to this Sovereign moment when I can be with the fullness of the moon and the fullness of a Tuesday morning and the fullness of this life.

When you can slow the pace and step out of ordinary time so you can be part of the greater sweep of time and space, you’re making room for the fundamental elements of creativity, contentment, and connection. 

We all need to wrap ourselves in a bit of dream and moonglow, but the imperfections of this moment are what makes this talk of Sovereignty and magic into something real. 

As lovely as this is, it really shouldn’t be sweater weather at dawn on December 1 in the Hudson Valley. My husband is heading off to work at a company that feels increasingly fragile, as does just about any manufacturing job right now. Though it feels wonderful to send the girls back to a classroom, the Covid numbers are rising and I know the cost of hybrid learning is that the teachers are doing twice as much and the students are learning half as much and no one really wins. 

I hold all these realities beside the reality of the breath in my lungs, the swirl of the clouds, and the recognition that all these worries are being held by something more.

These are the details of life, and though they’re essential, they’re momentary. The details will be different the next time I hold court with a morning-after-full moon. By late December, the snow might be falling, the holidays will pause whatever routine we’ve established, and we’ll all have new, as yet unimagined stories to tell.

Actually… I know what story I will be telling the morning after the next full moon, and I would love to have you there with me.

On Wednesday, December 30 at noon ET I’m leading a half-day workshop that will help you explore, embody, and describe the qualities you’d like to bring to the new year.

Join us for A Sovereign Way 2021.

The Myth of Creative Magic: Timeless Truths and Modern Lies

There’s a myth I constructed around myself. It’s personal and it’s isolating, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has inhabited a narrative like this.⁣⁣

In this story, untold creative, magical, sovereign potential is trapped within me. Like a maiden in a tower. Like a sword in a stone. Like a beauty in a beast.⁣⁣

If only, the story goes, if only I could scrabble together the time, the space, the strength, and the faith, then I could get free. Everything I am meant to conceive, craft, and share would burst forth for all to see.⁣

Someday, the myth declares, some blessed, sapphire sky day when all that art and alchemy would flow forth like droplets of goddess-spawn, pieces of art fully and perfectly formed. Finally, I would finally emerge as the mystical source I’d always known myself to be. I could thrive like I did before the curse was cast and the fabled inner spring was dammed.

But how?

Perhaps, I dreamed, I could learn some arcane emancipation spell or receive the blessing of a passing godmother on her way back to the enchanted wood. ⁣Freed like a springtime river after a long freeze, an unnameable magical force would enable me finally to express the pent up stories, power, and divine inspiration that’s been caught like a salmon trapped in a druid’s pool. ⁣

Once I possessed those magic words, I prayed, then I’d become at once creatrix and conduit. ⁣ ⁣

The myth I wove had me believing that if only I had the time, space, strength, fortune, and faith THEN I could effortlessly create something that could be held, loved, and learned from, here in our three dimensional world.⁣

Here’s the thing about myths…

If a myth is not empowering and inspiring, then you get to smash it and use the pieces to create something totally new.⁣

We can rewrite that myth of creative if onlys and somedays every time we close our eyes to dream or pick up a pen to write. You can cast a new, life-affirming myth every time you open your mouth to share what you know, what you’re learning, or what great wisdom you’ve just now channeled through.⁣

Too often, our creativity, magic, and sovereign potential get wrapped up in gossamer wishes that get hung on lucky stars, maybes, and the light of a certain phase of the moon. There’s so much limitation wrapped up in these stories of imprisonment, of waiting, of recovering some power that’s been too long buried away.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

Myths are tricky magic, of course. 

Myths have a way of reflecting our most troubling, complex needs. They also have  a way of inspiring us to undertake the quests we’re most afraid to accept.

As Karen Armstrong says in A Short History of Myth, “Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives—they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.”

Myth is part of our DNA, but these days we also use myth to connote the opposite of “fact.” In modern parlance, myth is often synonymous with “bullshit.”

So, let’s play with this story of limited creative power and possibility. What’s a timeless myth, an enduring truth out of time that reveals ancient wisdom and deepest universal desires, and what’s a modern myth, a made-up tale of personal limitation?

Someday mystical day, I’ll awake having the requisite time, space, strength, and faith to achieve my dreams… 

Oh look! A modern made-up myth concocted of a splash of “not enoughness,” a heaping dose of self pity, and a huge dash of inadequacy. There’s never going to be a particularly destined day when it all aligns and we have every super power in the cabinet, ready to be employed against the forces of evil and lack.

Where, then, is the timeless myth, the myth to live by? Simply snip away that “someday” and step into the divine reality:

At any moment, we can wake up to the truth that everything we ever need to create that next wonderful thing could all come together right… now. 

If only I were one of those lucky mortal beings chosen to be conduits of divine creativity. Then, I could tap into “the good stuff” any time I want.

Ah, another modern, made up myth of limitation crafted from a belief that we’re all part of a predestined plot contrived by an off-planet narrator.  

Is there a timeless myth, here? Something that might guide us through the next project and this momentous, evolutionary age? Of course. All of us have access to and are available to divine source.

The privileges of comfort and security can give us easier access to a creative life, but then the most awesome creations can arise from lack and adversity. The story is written breath by breath and moment by moment, and we are all invited to play and write and live our part, no matter our circumstances.

Freed from the somedays and the if onlys, there is just one myth that longs to be understood as enduring and true:

There’s a divine creative force within you,
within me,
within all of us.

It’s always within our power to
let it flow forth, freely expressed. 

Here, then, is the new myth that is older than fairytale, pantheons, and rhyme

We are at once princess, tower, and the knight who stages a rescue.  We are at once sword, stone, and the warrior who will wield it with righteous courage. We are at once beautiful, beastly, and the spark that transforms one into another.

We are made of the entire spectrum of generative magic that includes the growth of daffodil bulbs, the flight patterns of migrating geese, the swell of the tides, and warmth in a newborn’s fist.

So, as I look back on that myth of creativity that I used to tell, I commit to rewriting it every day and in every way that I can.

I will not wait, and neither will I force the moment. I will not get tangled up in the blue of longing, and neither will give up hope.

I will trust in divine timing. And that’s not about hanging it all on the next phase of the moon or holding on the line for the sybil’s next speech. It’s about recognizing that divinity and time are all part of the same sacred rhyme. 

What if you could truly believe it, too?

All timing is divine. In divinity, there is time.
All of us are chosen. Within all of us, there is the divine.
All of us are creative souls. Within all of us, there are the seeds of creation.

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Can I help guide you as you rewrite your own creative myths? The Story Illumination Sessions are for creatives, entrepreneurs, and writers who want to clear the blocks, transform imagination into reality, and make something magnificent.

Hope, Community, and Infinite Potential (Even in the Darkness)

We’re moving into the darkest part of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere. How does this time feel for you?

What if it felt like a time to pause and look inward to uncover and explore the messages and stories that you need for the year ahead?

For those who look to the Celtic calendar, these weeks between Samhain (that’s the Irish for Halloween) and the Winter Solstice is like time out of time. It’s like a breath between the ending that comes with the final harvest at the end of October and the new year that begins when the days begin to lengthen again after the solstice.

In modern times, of course, it is hard to allow that kind of “time out,” especially with all the nonsense and chaos that we’ve been told should accompany the consumerist holidays. 

Over this weekend, however, I realized how many of us hunger for this kind of sacred, late autumn pause. 

Yesterday was a new moon. Every astrologer and spiritual teacher who speaks of the stars seemed to post something emphasizing the importance of this particular new moon in Scorpio. It is a moment of deep interiority and rebirth. (And don’t worry, even though the new moon was on November 15, you can still ride its tide for the next few days.) 

As so many offered insights into the particular power of this moon it was clear that there’s not only a desire to talk about these esoteric, “woo” ideas, but there’s also a deep need for such messages.

For many of us, this is not news. Right now, it feels like there’s a marked shift away from the fear conjured by dreadful headlines and “doom scrolling” as many people move toward self-discovery and spiritual awareness.

When we can use spiritual insight not to escape reality but to manage, heal, and expand it, then we’re doing the evolutionary work.  It’s what hope looks like. It's how we can heal and renew our society and our natural world.

Evolutionary Hope in Action

My eight week Stand In Your Sovereign Story program is wrapping up this week. 

As you might imagine, a course for creative entrepreneurs and transformation professionals brings together a group of like-souled storytellers. This particular group has a remarkable number of commonalities, especially when it comes to what they are called to do: gathering women together in spiritual, healing, and consciousness communities.

It would have been all too easy for the participants in this program to look around at one another and sigh, “There are so many people running women’s groups and talking about the moon! I’m too late to the party. I should look for another idea.”

That’s not what happened, however.

Instead, this group of Sovereign women who follow the cycles of the seasons and the moon, who consult oracle decks, and rely on their intuition rather than boilerplate business advice, saw something marvelous in one another:

Infinite potential

They recognized that what they had in common was a source of strength and proof. This desire to share spiritual practices and rituals is part of a greater movement toward creating supportive, soulful communities and rebuilding our battered world.

Rather than looking at the world of coaches, healers, and teachers and seeing competition, we’re invited to see companionship and confirmation. This work of the heart is real and valued and necessary. As more and more look for this kind of guidance and healing, more of us are called to do this work.

The group was bonded by a common goal: help people connect and become more healthy and whole. And then, as individuals, they looked what’s singular, unique, and “sovereign” about their own story, approach, and offer.

We are Sovereign souls.
And, we are part of a great, collective moment and movement.

This dual truth of Sovereignty is something we know in our core, but sometimes I think we need to be reminded.

This is a good time to recommit to this, and all kinds of sacred inner knowing. As one cycle of uncertainty ends and we pause before the next begins, it’s more important than ever to ground into the essential worth of this work of the soul. 

My Own Sovereign Work of the Soul

I’m feeling this time of introspective magic working on me, too. Stay tuned for some big, beautiful changes in the way I support your your quest for Sovereignty, creative alchemy, and storytelling as form of magic and medicine.

In the meantime, I would love help you navigate this dark in-between time and help you access you story and your creative magic. Book a Story Healing session.

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Over the next few months, I will be talking less about storytelling as a means to grow and market your business and more about magic, creativity, and spiritual sovereignty.

The Stand In Your Sovereign Story, my signature program for creative entrepreneurs will return next spring. Get on the interest list to get the best price and other updates.

A New Day. Our New Story.

Four years ago, those of us on the left began to tell a story of resistance. 

We were angry and inspired. 

Inspired by General Leia and the rebels, inspired by countless warrior queens and goddesses from across time and space, inspired by all of the public figures and everyday people had come before us to stand against bigotry, division, and hate. 

We were also afraid. 

We didn’t ask to resist and dissent. Many of us would have preferred to stay in the realm of light and love, but we stood up and spoke up anyway. We were imperfect in this process. Our voices shook. When it came to those of us who possessed privilege of one kind or another, our biases showed. And yet...

Finally, here in November 2020, we can say that our resistance, in whatever form it took, was effective. Well, effective enough for the moment. There’s still so much to do. There's good trouble to make.

Still, many of us are afraid. Afraid that our win, though decisive, was not a landslide and all too many people still back a bully and a liar. Afraid about what happens as the current occupant of the White House continues to deny his defeat.

Angry. Inspired. Afraid. 

This is a heady cocktail. It can make you brave, but then it can leave you stumbling with a hangover and morning after regret. Any movement or action motivated by fear is going to be followed by a bitter aftertaste, and it’s never going to be as effective as when you’re motivated by faith.

Most of the time, I am free of fear and full of hope. But that takes daily, focused effort as I work to stay informed even as I turn down the voices of division and panic that scream from both ends of the spectrum. I return to the rhythm of the earth, to the divine source that’s so much vaster than any human political process. 

Let’s not erase the old feelings. Let’s not try to simply “poitiveify” them away. Instead, let’s acknowledge the fear and anger and treat them as what they are: the dead stalk of last season’s growth, now fortifying the next season of growth like so much emotional compost. Let's plant something new. Together.

Now, we can celebrate a new day and a new chapter in the story.

Instead of working against and hunching over in resistance and defense, we can lean into what we want to work for. 

Our work - of being anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-transphobic, anti-homophobic, anti misogynist - is not done. But now we can write the story a new way:

We are for equality, equity, justice, recognition, and repair. We can work for the recovery of the planet, the restoration of democracy, and the health of society. 

We can tell a new story… What’s your first line?

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Need help uncovering that story that long to tell? I've opened my calendar to add a few more Story Healing sessions in the next few weeks.

Samhain Snow and Other Out-Of-Season Magic

We awoke to snow on the pumpkins in the Hudson Valley.

When my six year-old ran outside, all bundled up in a motley collection of hand-me-down winter clothes, she visited every flower and plant she had made friends with over the spring and summer. 

The marigolds are still shining under their white blanket, but the morning glories will never greet another day. You can almost hear the Montauk daisies’ teeth chattering from here and the milkweed is praying the monarch butterflies have migrated far, far south. I definitely missed my chance harvesting those last green tomatoes, and, unfortunately, those mandevilla will not be brought in to safely winter indoors

And then, the eleven year-old suited up in my parka and last year’s ski pants that almost still fit and proved she hadn’t outgrown the magic of winter in autumn. The sisters built a snow witch together. Afterwards, they slurped hot cocoa while they opened their laptops for another “school day” of distance learning.

Once they were settled in again and I was left with my coffee and a quiet moment, I watched a crow soar through the still swirling snow and settle on a branch to call out to the white Samhain sky. I’m left wondering if she was screaming at this cruel weather front or celebrating the surprise.

Unseasonable Magic During the Season of Magic

It’s the day before Halloween, the holiday we Americans crafted around the original Samhain traditions that Irish immigrants brought across the water.

Samhain marks the final harvest and it’s the time when the veils between the worlds are most thin. Those costumes we wear? Those pumpkins we carve? They were originally intended to ward off those not-so-benevolent spirits that might walk in the Celtic night. (Though the Irish carved turnips instead!)

Samhain is a night to prepare a feast for the ancestors and commune with our beloved dead. It is a night to gather round the fire, consult the oracles, and peer into the Great Unknown - the future and all that’s unseen in the here and now.

Halloween is also a night to gorge on sugar and booze and forget the spirit world completely as every superhero and Disney character walks the street and we all celebrate the stranglehold that corporate culture has upon our collective imagination.

Around here, we try to fit elements of both into the same night.

This blend, this paradox, these whispers of wonder and connection in the midst of the distraction, confusion, and chaos… It all seems the very essence of this year of disruption. And it reminds me of all the hope and possibility that is being born in the midst of the numbness and pain. 

Samhain is a Time to Reflect on the Year that Was

Samhain also marks the end of Celtic year, and those of us who know that witchcraft isn’t just an October hobby consider November 1 to be our New Year’s Day. This is a time to look back to the last four seasons, including the periods of planting, growing, harvesting, and the fallow times, too.

Last winter, I was mourning all I had missed in my children’s lives. They were growing so fast and I had spent years telling them “Just give mama five more minutes to finish this paragraph!” I was trying to make peace with the passage of time, but regret kept sneaking in around the edges.

All it took was a global pandemic to solve that. All it took was a school system that never quite managed to open its doors this academic year. Suddenly, I’ve had all the time in the world to be with them. Magically, they get a chance to savor snowflakes on their tongues on the Friday morning before Halloween. 

When I’m fully entrenched in November, back to the struggle that so many parents know -- trying to figure out how to get the work done, how to get back to the writing, how to tend to the scream in my own soul -- I’m going to try to come back to this particular morning. 

I am going to remember that the sweetest fruit is that which you savor out of season. And I’m going to take off my pumpkin spice colored glasses, too. 

In this house, we can pull piles of clothes out of the closet, play outside, and then strip down to start again. We have been healthy, and have the resources to remain that way. Too many are vulnerable to the changes in the weather, in the economy, in the political storm. 

Samhain is a time to celebrate life, and it is a time to look into the shadows. It is a time to be with what’s real as well as the mystery. 

As we step into this next season, into this new year, let’s try to remember that the story is constantly seeking to be rewritten and refined. 

I am going to remember that I am an author, but also a reader and a character, too. 

I am going to remember that old line, “we cannot direct the winds, but we can adjust the sails.” This, after all, is one more way to define Sovereignty. (Though, I just realized, I never did use that line in the book.)

What about you? What do you see when you look back on the last four seasons? There’s surely a great deal of magic hiding in the midst of all that disruption, madness, and pain...

PS: Don’t forget that one of the important American stories is being written right this moment. Please vote and encourage everyone you know to get to the polls!

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Do you want to tell new stories in this new year? Do you need the time, space, and support to get the writing done? We’re welcoming new members to the Sovereign Writers Circle now. Apply to join us!

What It Takes To Put Your Healing Work Into Words

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

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

If you’re a coach, you know your clients’ success doesn't just depend on a clear to-do list. Instead, results flow out of that combination of energy, attention, and devotion that runs deeper than even the most comprehensive, well-articulated plan.

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. As you hold space in the silences between thoughts you create the invisible bonds of relationship that allows the healing to happen.

Your work transcends words, and yet is bound by words

The transformational work you do often feels impossible to describe. It has to be experienced to truly be understood.

I get that, I do. I have walked beside hundreds of transformation professionals - healers, therapists, coaches, and spiritual teachers - and there’s almost always a moment when language can’t quite express the magic you access or the ways you serve and touch the people who need what you do.

And yet...

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

So, how do we do that?

We tell stories 

Storytelling is, in itself, a magical act. 

When you tell a story, you’re taking the raw materials of your experiences, struggles, and worries and turning them into narratives that speak truth and spread wisdom. 

That’s a powerful transformation. That’s alchemy. 

And, from experience, I can tell you that turning your pain into healing stories is more valuable (and reliable) than turning lead into gold.

Join the Alchemy of Story:
A free training for transformation professionals
September 21, 2020 at 7 PM ET

Stories matter to me because I am a lover of myth and fiction. 

Stories also matter to me because I have been helping healers, therapists, and coaches promote their businesses for over a decade.

Copywriting and marketing strategy are important, but nothing is as enduring and meaningful as the stories you tell and the bigger story at the heart of your work.

Let’s explore your stories and talk about what makes a story work in the next free training I’m offering, The Alchemy of Story.

During our 90 minutes together you’ll have a chance to uncover the stories you most need to tell and learn what makes a story of transformation work.

The Alchemy of Story: Write to Heal Yourself and Your Reader

I don’t teach writing. I teach alchemy.

I don’t coach writers. I coach transformation professionals ready to make magic with their words.

Part of me rolls my eyes at what sounds like a bit of hubris and exaggeration from a writer who has taken the thesaurus too far.  

But there’s a wiser part of me that waves her wand and smiles. It’s ok to make such wild claims when they’re true. The Word Witch in me remembers that I have seen this alchemical transformation happen more often than I can count. 

What if Alchemy Isn’t Just for Fantasy Novels?

The ancient alchemists were devoted to changing base metals into gold. 

Those magician-philosopher-scientists were also interested in the transformation of the self. They were on a quest to liberate the human ego and open themselves to the limitless potential of the enlightened soul.

Since a well-written book or article that speaks to the dreams and fears of a reader can translate into new business, writing can surely be considered an alchemical act that turns passion into livelihood. Good work becomes gold. 

And, since the people I work with are in the business of healing the mind, body, and spirit, that sacred spiritual alchemy is always part of the mix, too. Words are medicine for the soul.

Creative Alchemy & the Magic of the Self-Focused First Draft

When we work on a piece of writing, we’re also performing an act of creative alchemy. 

In its simplest form, “creative alchemy” describes the movement from inspiration to manifestation. You turn a jumbled collection of ideas into a flowing, finished story. This is what you might think of when you move from what Anne Lamott calls the “shitty first draft” to a piece that you’re proud enough to publish.

I frame it differently for my Sovereign Writers. Rather than using a term that speaks to the quality of the writing, we think about the kind of feelings that get poured onto the page. We talk about the “self-focused first draft.”

The self-focused first draft describes that welter of words the writer puts on paper for herself. This draft includes your personal details, digressions, backstory, and burdens. You’d never want to publish the majority of it, but it needs to be put on the page. Think of this like the buried foundations of a house: they’ll never see the light of day, but they are utterly essential to the strength and endurance of the structure.

It’s not to say that quality isn’t important - the writing coach in me always wants to help writers make their way to clear, elegant prose. But I always want my clients to remember: when you’re in the business of transformation, “good copy” is useless if it lacks your own signature transformative magic. You might write a series of perfectly crafted sentences, but if they don’t come from the heart and soul, it’s just noise.

The Self-Focused First Draft Is More Than Just a Journal Entry

Wait, first take the “just” away. Journaling is an art unto itself and it’s vital to our becoming. We’re talking about a slightly different practice here, however.

When you’re sitting down to produce a self-focused first draft, you’re not there to unload your brain or make a written confession.

When you sit down to pen a self-focused first draft, you come with clear intention.

You’re devoted to that alchemical work of transformation. You’re on a mission to take the raw materials of your experience, including the frustration and the pain, and make some sort of lasting change. Once these raw sentences do their work—the transformative magic that heals you, the writer—then it just might be time to polish things up and press publish.

In fact, for the Sovereign writer who also happens to be a transformation professional—a healer, a therapist, a teacher, a coach—that next step into using your words becomes almost inevitable. 

You write to heal yourself and you write to heal your reader. These two goals weave round one another and inspire you to go deeper for yourself and for the people you serve.

In the midst of all the extraneous details and detours of your private story, you’ll find a whole lot of universal truth. The lessons you’ve learned. The strength you’ve gathered. The reasons you do the work that you do.

If you’re doing any public writing at all as an entrepreneur or private practice owner, this is what you want to express to your readers. This is part of the gold.

The Self-Focused First Draft Is the Foundation of Your Sovereign Story

Amidst the tangle of “small s” stories that catalog our hurts and fears and failures, there are the Sovereign Stories, the stories you must tell. 

Your Sovereign Story emerges when your own preoccupations and passions intersect with the needs and interests of your readers. And every Sovereign Story begins with a self-focused first draft.

Not every Sovereign Story is a magnum opus. You have countless stories like this within you. Your Sovereign Story does its job when it brings a smile to someone’s lips, helps them see they are not alone, or casts new light on a problem so they understand that there is a solution on the other side. 

What is a Sovereign Story?

A Sovereign Story is your truth and you share it to reveal the truth within your readers.

A Sovereign Story conveys a truth and makes a connection with a narrative that only you could weave.

A Sovereign Story is the core narrative that integrates the essential parts of who you really are. 

A Sovereign Story communicates your mission and message to people who want to work with you and grow with you. 

A Sovereign Story is a declaration of what matters to you. To tell one is a brave and beautiful act.

You Never Know What Form a Sovereign Story Might Take

I teach the structure of story and help people uncover and craft their stories in my class, Stand In Your Sovereign Story. There, we talk about website copy, blog posts, and how to be authentic (or, you might say, “how to stay gold”) on social media.

This Sovereign Storytelling work is about so much more than smart, well-constructed marketing copy though.

These days, Sovereign Stories are emerging as poems, too.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to do a 1:1 coaching session with a member of my Sovereign Writers Circle named Dawn. Each Wednesday, our online community gathers for writing practice. We do the kind of “alchemical” writing that is intended to support the work of transformation.

One writing prompt asked the circle to really examine and answer the question “how are you?” Dawn’s response came out in the form of a poem. Her self-focused first draft was from the heart and spoke to what it meant to watch her life and livelihood change due to Covid. She was fine and not fine.

The poem was honest, but that first version only kissed the surface of all Dawn had to explore and say. Shortly afterwards she brought the poem to one of our group coaching calls where we reflected what we heard and offered the sort of gentle, conscious workshopping that makes our community so special. Then, two of us revisited it in our session together. A few weeks later, she brought the piece back to the group during another SWC coaching call.

I think there was a part of Dawn that simply couldn’t believe she was still working on that collection of stanzas. The wiser part of her—the Word Witch within—who had grown accustomed to the alchemy (and the time) that’s involved in telling a Sovereign Story was there for the ride, showing up to question, to wonder, to craft and re-craft.

Dawn has been learning from herself and from her own process, seeing the depths that were held inside the common words, choosing new images that got her closer to the story she needed to unfurl, the Sovereign Story she longed to tell.

It has been an honor to hold this process and have a front row seat for the entire transformation.

Dawn is still working on her poem, asking what more it has to reveal and who most needs to hear it. She’s making choices about which elements to emphasize and all of this is helping her decide where she’ll submit this labor of love. I do hope it will be published someplace. People need to read it. I trust that she’s already experienced the alchemy, however, and her healer-poet’s pockets are already lined in gold.

 You understand that transformation professionals are writing because we want to heal ourselves first and then we want to share our stories to support others in their healing.  We want to touch the heart and soul to make a difference in the world.  It is about the process/journey,  not about performance or notoriety.  The magic and medicine you offer is the encouragement, support and challenge to venture into  new areas with our writing so we can confidently and skillfully express and communicate our work out in the world.

• Dawn Goforth-Kelly, Writer & Reiki Master

What about you? Are you an alchemist seeking the space and the support to uncover and develop your own Sovereign Stories? If you want to learn the art and practice of storytelling in order to build your world-renewing business, consider joining us for the Stand In Your Sovereign Story Program that starts on September 30.

Are you trying to build a writing practice in support of your professional practice or to get a big project into the world? We’re welcoming new members to the Sovereign Writers Circle through September 1.

A Song for the Accidental Digital Creatures Caught in the Medium

Beyond the blessed curse of connectivity
Beyond the broken codes and unwritten rules
Beyond these modern innovations too convenient to question

There exists a realm larger than the screen
Vaster than the newsfeed
Mightier than the network

Will you meet me beyond the metrics and the algorithms
In the hinterlands
Where the programmers of truth and the arbiters of worth can’t reach?

They say that “the medium is the message”
That the delivery is more important than the essence of the idea
Perhaps, once when this mediascape was new,
This phrase left room for wonder, creativity, flow

But now, we’re subdued by relentless cycles of “see me” strategy
Our voices reduced to characters
Our character distilled to brand
Our brands diluting the power of story

What if we’re called to embody rather than perform,
Generate value rather than profit,
Serve the entire spectrum rather than our addiction to one box of light?
What if we recognize, celebrate, and transcend the medium all at once?

I claim myself as medium, as storyteller, as seer. Could you?

As medium, you're here to speak what you see
Expressing what’s beautiful and terrible
In the heart, the mind, the union, the whole

At once holy witnesses and dancers in the dance
We can thrive along the edges,
Just outside the reaches of the boundaried infinity of our digital den

Channel the shadow as well as the bright
Cry out from the gut
Open lips wide and eyes even wider

Live without fear that anarchic laughter looks like a scream
That honesty looks like anger
That the sacred looks too much like the profane

Vision sharper than any camera lens
Fingers freed from their constant communicative claw
Tear your narrative from the hem of a dream cloak
Woven of the stuff more real than pixels and bytes

Remember you're here to rattle the world
And you can't always do that with a phone in your hand

---

The Story Behind the Poetry

I wrote this poem for us, for all the creatives, healers, artists, and entrepreneurs who, even after all these years, are still navigating the love-hate relationship with our digital world. O wrote this for all of us who are grateful for the connective magic that’s never more than an arm’s length away, but who also know these devices and networks are changing reality and warping the narrative.

These words flowed through when I started to gear up to once again promote and lead my Stand In Your Sovereign Story course.

At first, I was frustrated. To do online marketing “right,” I needed to show you the power of story and tell neat little tales that revealed former students’ and current clients’ results. I needed to embrace and display everything I know about captivating my readers and using the digital tools to draw new eyeballs.

Instead, I found myself spooling out lines of ambivalent verse as I pictured the “push-me-pull-you” relationship I’ve always with the internet and social media.

There’s power in this paradox, of course. Good stories rely on tension. The world I know and the material I teach is always grounded in the both/and - the real as well as the virtual, the struggle as well as the solution, the work as well as the love.

Part of my power - as writer, a healer, and a teacher - comes from being able to hold your hand as we leap between the personal and the professional. Together, we realize it’s all soul work.

The kind of storytelling I offer invokes your passion, your pain, and all you’ve learned along the way so you can create a bridge that connects you to the people who need you most.

A Sovereign Story heals the writer as well as the reader. These are the stories that transform lives and build livelihoods as they communicate, teach, and inspire something true.

Maybe it’s time for you to uncover the stories that mean the most so you can continue to build your world-renewing business. Maybe it’s time for you to stand in your Sovereign Story? I’d love to have you with us when we begin in September.

For Those In Need of Rest: A Formula, A Prayer, A Spell

I just want to go back to the womb cave and listen to endless drumming until I feel stars inside my skin.

…This sentence came through when I was texting a friend this week.

Her response — “THAT” — made it clear that I am not alone in this longing. 

So many of us feel the urge to curl back into some vision of The Mother. Exhausted by all the doing, worrying, and waiting, we just want to get quiet and be held by an elemental heartbeat. We long to devote ourselves to beingness. 

What would it be like, we wonder, if we simply feel like we were part of creation? What if we didn’t have to please, prove, make, and strive our way to worthiness?

What if, just for a little while, you could go back to the womb cave and listen to endless drumming until you felt stars inside your skin?

But… is it OK to want to turn inward and just be nourished right now?

It feels crazy to want to keep incubating and hibernating after all these months of social distancing. 

It feels selfish to long for some sort of spiritual safety when so many are perpetually unsafe due to the color of their skin, the economic losses from the pandemic, or the host of other monsters that keep people from feeling healthy and secure. 

When there are so many things to fix in the world and so many things to achieve, nattering on about starry skin just seems tone deaf.

Crazy. Selfish. Tone deaf.

That self-judgment (paired with occasional bursts of public shaming) is exactly why that womb cave is calling. I think we all need to pause, to tune into how the body, the nervous system, and the soul are straight up weary and need an intergalactic kind of break. 

Even if you can count your blessings and tally your various privileges, that urge to set it all down and curl up for a nice long time is real. And it’s necessary.

It’s ok to admit you’re tired — even if you “shouldn’t” be so tired. You’re tired because layering the shoulds and shouldn’ts over your own experience is exhausting in itself. You’re tired because honesty is exhausting and because being dishonest about your wants and needs brings on even more fatigue.

A Writing Prompt About the Authentic Need to Rest

Perhaps you’re on the upswing right now. Your creativity is flowing. Your activism is aligned with your intentions. Your relationships are strong and you’re able to both give and receive.

That’s awesome. You can imagine what it’s like to crave a trip to the womb cave.

If you’ve gotten this far, however, I think you feel a bone-deep listlessness and you’d like to book a cozy spot in the cave, too.

Even better? Use your sensual imagination to describe exactly what you need right now.

You’re invited to describe what it is you really long for. This is an invitation to authenticity. This is a chance to speak the truth that always exists beneath the obligations and the “ought-to’s.”

Where do you long to be right now?

What do you long to hear?

What do you long to feel?

Think of it as writing a formula. A prayer. A spell.

You might be called to answer each question with one magic word. Perhaps you’ll write a page in response to each question.

No matter what, write about something you truly want. (No one is watching. This isn’t about proving how hard you’ve been studying or how much your willing to sacrifice for the greater good.)

Maybe you want to be on a cliff in Ireland with the song of the mermaids in your ears and the salt kiss of the north Atlantic on your face. 

Maybe you want to be in a beach cabana listening to the laughter of your children back when they were small enough to curl up in your lap. 

Maybe you just don’t know right now and you’ll borrow my vision until you have the strength to imagine your own healing haven. 

There’s room in the womb cave. The Mother’s arms can carry us all and that heartbeat is never going to stop. There, we’ll realize that we’re truly loved to the stars and back, no matter what. And sometimes, that’s just what we need.

Rest in this space you’ve imagined. Stay a little while. Stay longer than you think you can.

The world will be waiting when you return. The good fight will still need to be fought. The kids will still need to be fed. The deadlines will still need to be met.

Trust yourself to imagine solace and healing. Trust yourself to come back when you’re ready. When you’re something closer to whole.

Are you looking for a writing community that explores ideas like these each week?

Get your copy today.

What To Say When You Have More Questions Than Answers

Like so many parents, I've been talking with friends (endlessly) about what's going to happen with school this fall. 

That’s how I started a Facebook post on my personal profile earlier this week. I accompanied the semi-lengthy post with a photo featuring the word “(re)imagine.” Not offering any answers, I described how we’re swimming in the questions, searching out ways to imagine, again and for the first time, solutions that diminish risk, offer support, and maybe even add joy to education.

But wait, this is not a post about my thoughts on reopening schools. 

Instead, it’s an exploration of what to write about and how to show up right now - particularly as a writer/entrepreneur/transformation professional who has more questions than answers. 

This post is also an invitation to decide what topics you need to write about publicly and how you want to use your voice when  you’re journeying through the great unknown. (And there are a hell of a lot of unknowns right now.)

Before I go one, in case you are wondering:  I want to see my kids back in public school, yes, but I also see the countless flaws in the system. I’m not particularly interested in fighting to seat my kids inside a crumbling, potentially contagion-filled institution (and I don’t mean our local system specifically) when our innovation and energy actually need to be spent on how we truly educate kids, support working families, and ensure that the most vulnerable are safe and fed. Again, I have no definitive answers, just a lot of wondering, worrying, researching, and trying to sort out how to be part of the solution for my own children and for this whole generation.

What do you say when you don’t have an answer, a recommendation, or even a “hot take”?

“We live in an age of uncertainty” is a cliche at this point, but it is also true.

We’re all being forced out of the comfort zone, and out of the zone of our own expertise. And that’s not an excuse for inaction or ignorance. No matter how uncomfortable and clueless we may feel, there are big, life-changing situations that we need to understand, manage, and make decisions about. Now.

We no longer have the luxury of not having an opinion and trusting we can just go with the flow.

As one friend described it, we’re all latchkey kids who realized the phone is dead and there is no one to call when things get hard. And there are so many hard things... 

Perhaps you’re a parent struggling with if/how/when to send your kids back to school. Maybe you’re trying to transform your business model in this age of closures and restrictions.  Maybe you’re a white person who wants to take what you’ve learned in your research of racism and become a true ally to BIPOC. Maybe you’re a person of color who shakes your head when you hear your wish-they-could-be allies are finding all the reading and empathizing to be so difficult.

There are so many important issues affecting your life right now, and so many of them are outside your wheelhouse. How do you know if it’s helpful and smart to sit down and write about your opinions, ideas, and perspectives?

Here are four questions to ask yourself as you wade into the online conversation about the topics of the day...

Question One: Is this topic worth my time as a writer?

If you instantly have “a topic” in mind as you read this post, it’s worth your time.

Writing down my thoughts about the school situation was definitely helpful. After much conversation and silent rumination, something shifted when I put my ideas on a page. 

When you give yourself the time, space, and permission to take the jumble of wonder and worry swarming your mind and put them into some sort of linear order, you are practicing self care and healing. (No matter how tangled your argument, that act of translating the wilds of thought into the structure of language is a powerful, worthy act in itself.) 

Question Two:  Is it worth the attention of the reader? 

This one is trickier. Writing for oneself is healing and helpful, but posting and publishing adds a whole new level of complexity. 

When we talk about being worth a reader’s attention, we’re not talking about your worth or the worth of your ideas. Instead, you’re invited to consider whether you’re able to make a contribution to the conversation right now or whether you’re better served by sticking with your journal for a while longer.

Let’s look at my example: Parents everywhere are looking for answers, for a plan, for a sense of security and normalcy. My post offers none of that. But then, as proven by friends’ and strangers’ comments, there are many who, like me, are present in the uncertainty too. 

When we’re all in an almighty wrangle with the vast unknown, it’s enough to hear that someone else is naming the struggle and living the questions. 

It’s helpful to express a message that conveys “you are not alone.” You open readers to admit their own uncertainty and that, in turns, moves more people toward new approaches and solutions.

One way to decide whether it’s time to take to the public square (AKA the FB feed): You’re not looking for anything from your audience. You’re clear and grounded in the fact that you’re simply using your platform to think out loud. And, while you don’t just need to spread “love and light,” your contribution is basically constructive, searching out a solution on the other side of the mess. 

Question Three: Is it OK to admit that I know I do not know?

For a personal Facebook post about the unknown frontiers of educating our kids myself (something I don’t pretend to know much about), I believe it hit just the right tone. I wasn’t complaining, blaming, or expecting anyone to solve a problem for me. I was using my platform to say “my friends and I don’t know what we don’t know and no one else does either.”

There’s power in asking the questions, to be willing to say “I do not know yet, I am still in the middle.”  You let your readers and your community see your humanity and your vulnerability, and that makes you interesting, approachable, and worth caring about. 

And it’s not just a strategy to attract an audience: formulating your questions in public strengthens your skills as a thinker and a communicator. The smarter your questions, the more profound your eventual wisdom will be.

Of course, you can’t always tell that world you have no freaking idea what to do next.

My friends who are teachers - who are “supposed” to know more than the average parent even in this moment of limitless unknown - feel they cannot think aloud about education. 

In the microcosm, I can understand that. In small towns, “What Ms. ____ said” can become fuel for nightmarish social media threads and endless whispers in those backyards where all the parents are stressing over September.

When you can set aside local school district politics, however, honesty and vulnerability about the real struggles, stresses, and concerns about the future are immensely helpful fuel for the broader conversation. One voice from the front lines about the questions and the worry can inspire innovation from all sorts of unexpected corners. (My own Facebook post was inspired by an article on a teacher’s blog.)

Question 4: When you’re adrift in uncertainty, can you come back to what you know for sure?

I write to inspire and to inform my readers, yes, but, really, I write in order to know what I think. I say this to remind you that writing is a tool that can help heal and restore you - especially when you’re adrift in uncertainty. 

Consider formulating and sharing your questions about the unknowns in your life, community, and industry.  And, give yourself a chance to come back to what you know for sure.

Standing sure (and Sovereign) in your area of expertise helps your mindset and builds self trust. (We all need more reasons to feel “normal” and trust ourselves.)

It’s vital to offer your audience not just your humanity, but also your expertise. If you’re a transformation professional who offers healing, teaching, or coaching services, people need to be inspired and they need the tools and information that empower them to make real, positive change.

When we seem to have no choice but to follow Rilke’s advice and go “Live the questions,” it’s nice to remember we do have some answers.

Here’s a writing prompt:

List three questions that your ideal clients are asking that you really can answer right now.

Want my quick version of three questions my community asks that I can immediately answer?

Q: How do I stop dreaming of being a writer and actually become one?

A: Commit to a regular writing practice with the help of a dedicated community and a practiced guide. Join the Sovereign Writers Circle.

Q: How do I find some clarity in this midst of this storm when there is so much to create, and yet also so much to worry about?

A: Seek out a different way of knowing. You have uncovered so much in your own writing and soul-searching, but an outside perspective can help you frame your dreams and your struggles in a new way. Book a Tarot as Intuitive Healing Session.

Q: How do I reach the people who need my services in this crowded marketplace during this crazy difficult time?

A: Tell stories. Tell your stories. Tell the stories that enable your ideal clients to say “she sees me, she gets me, she can help me.” Join the Stand In Your Sovereign Story program in September.

You saw what I did here, of course. Yes, all of these answers are a service I provide. I’m in business to solve certain problems for people who my special kind of practical magic. It’s why you’re in business, too.

We tell stories and use our voices for so many reasons - to connect, to heal, to wonder, to problem solve, to serve, to offer, to sell.

To know your “why” in the moment you’re communicating? That can make all the difference.

The Individual, the Collective, and the Toughest Cards In the Tarot

First, a question: does one tarot reading mean anything at a moment like this?

Generally speaking, a tarot reading is only interesting to the people involved. 

That said…

Tarot is a window into the vast realm of the collective unconscious, the place of the mythic imagination where symbolism is a language that everyone can understand and anything is real if it has meaning.

Tarot has a way of blending the collective and the individual, taking the universal and making it personal.

And then (here’s the magic I love best): once you make these big, timeless ideas your own, you’re ready to take that inner transformation and make it manifest so you can do your share of the work that will renew the world.

But before all that fabulous, transformative outer work, there’s someone pouring over the cards, trying to make sense of it all.

Why tarot, why now?

In the best circumstances, a tarot reading opens a series of paths and portals that are both deeply personal and speak to the entire human condition. Each of the 78 cards is a reflection of the human experience - a prism that is at once universal and yet so very intimate.

A reading offers you a map for a journey you’ve always been on, and then invites you to approach and understand in an entirely new way. The cards inspire you to look deep inside so you can make the small shifts as well as the huge changes that determine how you’ll make your mark on the world.

But, before you can do the alchemy and turn the insight into action, describing your own tarot card reading is like offering someone a magnifying glass and saying “would you like to gaze in my navel while I read the last 23 pages of my journal aloud?” 

As someone who has used the tarot cards to figure out my shit for the last twenty-five years, I get that. But bear with me. The specifics of the latest reading I did for myself don’t matter to you, but the dance between the personal and the collective and the way those two constantly flow together? That just might have some significance to you, dear reader, and to all of those you’ll touch in the wider world.

When a tarot card is more than just a tarot card

I shuffled my tarot cards (Chris-Anne’s Light Seer’s Tarot is my go-to for personal readings right now) and I did a traditional Celtic Cross spread (I’ve been cozying up with Rachel Pollack’s seminal tarot text, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, and really appreciate her approach to this well-used form).

You know the movies in which the young heroine visits the fortune teller? If it’s a rom-com, she gets The Lovers, The Sun, and the 10 of Cups all at once.

My current life is certainly full of love and occasional bouts of hilarity, but I’m definitely not playing the role of sweet young thing these days.

Plus, it’s 2020. Those happy, blessing-laden blissed out cards haven’t been removed from the deck, but they seem to be stuck in the bottom of the box because the deck got soaked in tears after the last reading. 

Instead, I’m in the kind of place in life where I pull Death, The Devil, The Tower. Then The Wheel of Fortune and The World appear, and they are both turned upside down. 

Since I’m not actually starring in a slasher film, there is clearly a hell of a lot more happening than “beware evil men who will kill you and tear your entire life asunder!” (Again, it’s 2020. There’s more than just one bad guy in this scene and this year’s plot couldn’t possibly fit into one movie anyway.)

The first question when I ask when I see all of those big, scary seeming cards, of course, is: holy hot damn, is this all about me?

Is this carefully balanced life really that precarious? Will I lose everything that I hold dear? Did I marry the wrong man? Are we going to lose the house? And wait, everything is quiet... Have the children been kidnapped?

Panic ensues. Or at least that kind of disquiet that has you wanting to reshuffle the cards and ask for a do-over since you clearly got the reading intended for an ax murderer in another dimension. 

Resisting the urge to sweep it all back into the deck, I get up from the cards and eat Nutella straight from the jar and snuggle the cat excessively until he bites me and then jumps on his brother’s head, causing the cat tower to fall down.

As with everything, it’s essential to take a deep breath and look beyond your first reaction

Yes, these cards are deeply resonant and relevant to my own unique circumstances. 

When I can pull back the lens to see the bigger picture and look at all of the cards in conversation with one another, I can get curious and find the insights that shine on the other side of reactivity.

I get to keep exploring the question of whether my marriage is destined for a huge disruption or whether all the work we’ve been doing lately is transformation-in-action. I get to ask whether I’ve compromised my values for the sake of comfort and materialism. I get to ask whether I have been talking about change but resisting it through my actions.

But then what?

Is this all about me, or is this reading all about all of it?

I hear the guides whisper “both, dear woman, it’s always BOTH.”

We’re always in a dance between the individual and the collective. Right now, that’s more obvious than ever before.

I’ve long been taught that the healing work you do for yourself or for one other person is also in service to the Greater Reality. One act of renewal or transformation always ripples forth in powerful, unseen ways to bring growth and healing to the Whole.

Of course, this can quickly become a path to self-absorption and spiritual bypassing, but it doesn’t have to. When you pair your desire for personal healing and conscious evolution with your desire to be the change you wish to see in the world, you become the sort of integrated force for good who really is open to creating collective renewal.

These ideas are at the heart of Sovereignty, too. Here’s a passage from Chapter 1 of my book The Sovereignty Knot:

Each one of us moves through the knots of Sovereignty each day. We are independent, Sovereign beings, each here on our own personal quest. And yet, we are all in this together, our fates forever bound to the fate of the collective. We constantly move between caring for the self and caring for others, balancing our own needs and desires within the great web of creation. We are Sovereign souls living one great, interconnected dream. 

Back to the reading: what are the “big cards” saying about this particular moment?

Death, The Devil, The Tower. The Wheel of Fortune and The World both appearing upside down… This is not business as usual.

To assert that we are not going through a period of massive disruption when the old systems are crumbling and the old ways are dying… That would just prove that you’re not paying attention. (In a way, you have to wonder about the veracity of any tarot reading at this moment in history that doesn’t include these big, “scary” cards.)

These cards are reflecting the truth. Immense disruption, uncertainty, and transformation are coalescing to form the strangest, cruelest, and most possibility-laden year we’ve seen in memory. If you’ve learned to take the cards at more than face value, you know that all of these explosions and implosions are there in service to peace and growth.

Just as I looked at the cards in relationship to my own life, we’re all called to see them as an invitation to look deeper, to understand where we are in relationship to internal and external change.

Remember: there’s nothing to fear in a reading full of cards like these, but the Devil is the one you need to stare down.

I read The Devil as offering a seductive invitation to go back to sleep. He offers what might look like the easier path. He’s whispering the most insidious lies: forget the racial justice movement because it’s no longer on the front page; this race conversation isn’t really about you; it’s not important to wear a mask because things “aren’t so bad” in your part of the country right now.

The Devil is one advocating for the status quo and “the bad old days.” He preys upon the sense of defeat, resignation, and disengagement that have become so endemic in our over-connected, yet ever-so-disconnected world. This guy revels in our complacency and habitual fear.

It would be his pleasure to erode your personal Sovereignty so you forget you’re meant to be part of the glorious cycles of disruption and evolution happening around us all right now.

These cards are yours, these cards are ours

Imagine this were your reading and half the cards spoke of destruction, irreversible change, and maybe even a spate of bad luck.

Breathe into that. Understand that the cards don’t necessarily predict a bleak, set future but instead reflect the energies that swirl about you right now. Understand that if this is as “bad” as things can get, you’re already stronger than you imagine. Understand that you’re a Sovereign being who can redirect these energies and be part of a great renewal.

And, understand that this collection of cards is for all of us. 

When you read between the lines of the chapter of history that’s being written right now, the chapter that describes some of the greatest changes in contemporary human history, we’re all in it. As diverse as our experiences and origins might be, we’re all walking together through this moment of falling and rising, of death and rebirth.

There’s no single way to “do transformation right” in 2020. Just keep in mind: on the other side of this (perhaps when you’re standing at the doorway to the next life since there’s no telling when this era of cataclysm and transformation will end), when someone asks you about the story of your life and how to navigated the 21st century, just be sure you’ve got more to say than “the devil made me do it.”

What’s in the cards for you? Book a Tarot As Intuitive Healing session now.

Listen Deep, Speak True: On Being a White Writer Writing About Race

It is a time to listen, and it is not a time to shut up.

It is always a time to listen. It’s never a time to shut up.

Ok, sometimes it’s a good idea to just stop talking, but let’s meet here as writers, storytellers, and people who wish to heal with their words. Let’s meet as writers who are trying to write about race.

Specifically, at this moment, I am a white writer and storyteller speaking to other white writers who want to use their words to heal the wounds, both ancient and brand new, caused by institutionalized racism and this white supremacist culture.

As a writer, it’s never the right time to mute yourself

You write to know what you think. You write to discover the deeper feelings that lie beneath your immediate reactions. You write to decode those feelings so you can dissolve emotionality and get to a truth that exists before and after your conditioning, your worry, your fear of what others think.

Damn. We need that more than ever right now.

Now is the time to keep writing, to keep delving, to keep looking for the story that informs the story you tell yourself about “the way things are.” 

That opens us to the next question… is this a time to share your words with the world?

That’s an entirely different question.

Or is it?

Right now, our country (and the world) mourns the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many Black lives, and takes to the streets to protest police violence. It is time of deep listening, deep introspection, and direct action.

You may well need to pull back, to make more room for quiet contemplation, for long reading sessions, and even longer journaling sessions.

Do those things privately, and allow this inner work to influence your public discourse.

It is not the time to fall silent, change the subject, or to utterly disappear - especially if you are someone who has an online presence and a community that is accustomed to looking to you for insight, inspiration, and information. 

(And if you’re thinking that you don’t want to mix “politics” with your professional work, I invite you to think even longer and harder about how the privilege of white identity gives you that option.)

But… I thought I was just supposed to listen?

When I talk about this urge to fall silent, change the subject, or disappear into the audience, I speak of it as a white woman who knows all too well that sense of, “I know I am going to say the wrong thing, so I am just going to shut up.”

Though I have spent the last few years reading and listening to Black writers and trying to do the work of understanding my own whiteness and interrogating the racism that was baked into me in our white supremacist culture, I have generally stayed quiet about it. 

Yes, I was afraid of doing it wrong and showing my ignorance. I admit I have been repelled by “hey, white people!” posts by white colleagues and acquaintances, and swore I wouldn’t be so awkward and sanctimonious.

(The jury is still out on that one, of course. Some of those posts might have actually been performative and legitimately obnoxious. Some surely just cut too close to the bone and caused me to put up my defenses and strike out with judgement. Silent judgement.)

Instead, I decided I would (quietly) be the change and model anti-racist thought rather than lecture and shame people into looking at themselves.

(The jury is still out on whether I have done a good job of addressing my privilege in my writing, or whether I have been avoiding tough conversations and burying the conversation about race and the need for racial equity beneath other ideas I feel more comfortable writing and talking about.)

All of this is to say, I know what it is to awaken, to be outraged, to be uncomfortable, to start thinking deeply, and then to look up and realize I have so much to say but so much trepidation about whether it’s mine to say.

But what if the only way through is through conversation?

As Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility says in an article titled “Nothing to Add: A Challenge to White Silence in Racial Discussions”:

…in practice, my silence colludes with racism and ultimately benefits me by protecting my white privilege and maintaining racial solidarity with other white people.

I understand the urge to watch and listen and tell yourself you still have too much to learn. The only way to evolve in terms of your understanding of white supremacy is to look deep within, after all. But remember… You’re not doing all that observing and learning to become some enlightened being bound by an oath of peaceful silence.

You do the work of awakening and inner (r)evolution so that you can make meaningful changes and be part of the bigger conversation.

It’s Always Both/And

Wednesday, in a town hall conversation offered by the My Brother’s Keeper organization, President Obama said: 

I've been hearing a little bit of chatter on the Internet about voting versus protest, politics and participation versus civil disobedience and direct action. This is not an 'either or' — this is a 'both and' — to bring about real change we both have to highlight a problem and make people in power uncomfortable.

Now is the time to listen. And, it is the time to speak. Even when it makes you uncomfortable. Especially because it makes those are comfortable with the white supremacist status quo uncomfortable.

To begin, speak to the pages of your own journal. Then, speak to friends who are trying to do this inner work and to change the way they move through the world.

Throughout… listen. Follow Black journalists and support Black activists, authors, and artists. (Here’s a strong collection of resources.)

Next, use your online spaces to share and amplify Black voices. (And I dare you: can you go deeper than quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Maya Angelou? Those are powerful and important, of course, but can you go on a quest to find new, lesser known lines and learn from their context?)

And, as your reading progresses and you start to turn listening into understanding, frame Black creators’ art, thoughts, and resources with a statement about why this matters and what you hope to achieve by sharing. 

Throughout… listen. Understand that you may not be praised for doing this work. You may not get likes or shares. You might get pushback and attract the trolls (both the unknown monsters and those people from high school).

Listen to your own breathing and to your own strong inner voice that knows you’re not doing this for accolades or attention. You are not doing this to build your brand, to score points in some “good white people” contest (there’s not such thing), or because you’ll say something new.

You are listening and learning and writing and putting your words out there because you must be part of the rising anti-racist tide.

Silence is complicity. Your voice has a place in this moment.

When you build the courage and the muscle to not only click share but also to speak about why this matters, why you know Black Lives Matter, you’re helping to shift the narrative.  White supremacy needs to be dismantled, brick by brick, word by word, by white people who perpetuate it and benefit from it.

Listen well and remember that hundreds of years of white silence got us here.

Dare to be part of the BLM conversation and keep getting braver about addressing systemic inequity and oppression. Not because it’s all about you and not because it’s trending, but because your voice matters and you must take the risk and be part of the mix if you’re going to part of the healing and renewal this society needs so desperately right now.

Connect With Your Creative Cycle When the World Turns Upside Down

Cycles. 

Of the moon and stars. Of the seasons. Of the calendar. Of the body.

All of these cycles influence the cycles of creativity. Some of these cycles we can rely upon. Some of the cycles we’ve grown to rely upon are so out of control that they’re utterly unrecognizable. 

I want to call you into an exploration of your own cycles. 

When the world has gone mad and time has ceased to have meaning, you need to find yourself within your own meaningful cycle.

Understanding where you are within a greater pattern will  provide you the structure to continue to be creative. It’s what will help you stay sane. It’s what will help you gather the strength to take appropriate action to put the world to rights.

But first, a bit of context... 

Each Wednesday at noon ET, the Sovereign Writers Circle gathers to write. (By the way, this reliable weekly cycle transforms “I wish I wrote more” laments into “I’m so glad I wrote today” smiles.)

We always begin with a brief meditation or visualization. Then, this community of healers who write and writers who heal begin to put words on the page.

I always offer two prompts that invite creative, emotional, practical, and magical exploration. Sometimes, the writers are asked to respond to the events of the day. Since many of our members are entrepreneurs, we occasionally explore matters of livelihood and how writing can support a business. 

We always wander into the vast territory where heart and mind and imagination meet.

Picture yourself there with the Sovereign Writers Circle this week. This is how we opened our session…

It’s the end of May. We find ourselves on a planet where a year is divided into twelve glorious months, so we get twelve remarkable chances to sum things up and plan anew. 

Leave room for that to matter. Let May - one of the longest, shortest, strangest, scariest months - to have shape and meaning. Or, leave room for another cycle to matter.

We moved through the energy of a New Moon in Gemini last week. I know my heart lifts when I see that first sliver hanging in the evening sky as I water my gardens after a long, unseasonably hot day. 

Be in the sickle cup of the moon as she moves into her first quarter. Remember what you felt when the sky was dark and when the last full moon filled the sky. Imagine what’s coming in the weeks ahead as she waxes and, inevitably, wanes again.  

Maybe the cycles of the Zodiac help shape your experience and your energy. Perhaps you want to write yourself into the stars and find guidance and illumination there. We find ourselves in the sign of the celestial twins right now. This is Gemini Season, the time of creative expression, the time to celebrate the vast, flexible power of the mind. 

It might be time for you to find yourself in the cycles of society (if you can find any that give you comfort). We marked Memorial Day just a few days ago. What does that mean when it comes to the national and social heartbeat? What does a day of remembrance and the unofficial start of summer mean in moments like this? 

Or, maybe you find yourself drawn to the tides of your own body. If you’re a woman who still bleeds, you may feel called to tune into your own menstrual cycle, but our miraculous bodies offer so many other rhythms and beats.

There’s magic in the grand and the subtle cycles constantly being enacted all around you. Be with them and flow with them.

Unless you just can’t.

Perhaps you feel like none of these cycles matter enough, none are palpable enough. It’s a great big, broken world, after all. The heavens seem too far away, the traditional calendar has been rendered meaningless during the pandemic, the social fabric is in tatters, and the murmurs of your own body seem too mundane.  

And so, when none of the existing structures hold you, you can begin at a true beginning. Offer yourself a blank slate, a clear space, a new place to create.

It can feel hard or intensely liberating to feel like you’re starting with nothing. (Maybe you feel like both are true at the same time.)

Try to inhabit the power of the author - of the authority and the Sovereign of your own life. You get to make up the chapter. (You get to acknowledge that we are all being called to start a new chapter. Knowing this early will make the transition into the new normal a wee bit easier.)

And so, as we do before we enter every writing practice (remember, you’re listening in on the prelude to the Wednesday session with the Sovereign Writers Circle), I encourage you:

Deep breath in. Spine straight, fullest extension in your writing chair.

Be in this body. Be grateful for this body and all that she does to hold you as your mind and spirit go on a great adventure. 

And now, let’s write…

Writing Prompt: Find Your Cycle, Find Yourself Within the Cycle

What cycle feels most fertile and familiar to you right now? Write with the moon, the season, the feelings in your own body.

And, if you cannot find immediate truth and solace in one of the many natural and social cycles that give shape to life, embrace that freedom. Trust yourself. Follow your own words until you draft your way into a whole new cycle of meaning and truth. 

Welcome to Gemini Season: Writers, Creatives, Magic Makers All

This, my dear, is a glorious moment.

In spite of it all. Because of it all.

Here, when the new moon is in Gemini and the Zodiac just turned to the sign of the twins, it is a remarkable time to be alive.

This time isn’t just for the lucky ones born in this glorious month that precedes the solstice that sets us in the Northern Hemisphere right at the threshold of summer. (Though truly, it’s an endless delight to be a Gemini…) 

Instead, it is an invitation for all of us to connect the power of intention, the spells we cast with words, and the ability to make magic - simply by practicing the art of changing your mind and consciously shifting your thoughts.

Thought creates action, after all, and action is what transforms your day, your life, your world.    

And, it’s a time to play.

Welcome to Gemini Season, a time of transformation in the face of all that cannot be changed

This moment feels particularly special. It’s as if we are all standing at a great threshold.

We have wandered through a long, dark spring to get here. And no one knows quite what will happen next - other than “normal” will never be the same and this crisis did little to bring the warring factions together. (Certainly there is much to be said about division and separation as we dance with the Gemini twins? Let’s look at that in another post soon…)

This threshold doesn’t bring us back to “easy,” mind you. (If anything, it reveals the illusion that life wasn’t all that easy or OK before.) We’re not crossing into a new realm  where the yucky germs have simply gone away and we can get back to business as usual just because we want it to be so.

No, magical thinking will not eradicate the virus. Acting as if it does not exist will not make it so.

Though I am a fervent believer and practitioner of magic who believes that we do have the power to change consciousness and shift reality, denial never healed anyone.

Instead, this is an invitation to take the world as it is - with all of its dangers and all its necessary precautions - and to thrive and connect and fill ourselves with wonder anyway.

This is a time of innovation and imagination even if we cannot go to the beach. Especially because we cannot celebrate the summer as we always do.

It’s Your Gemini Season, Dear Seeker, Dear Writer, Dear Maker of Magic

I’ll be honest. I need this new moon and this time in the sign of Gemini like a mermaid needs her ocean home.

In part, it’s because I am a citizen of Gemini myself. (I was born on June 17. My mother was, too. I have a unique understanding of what it means to be a twin, and I know it to be full of poignancy and power.) 

I think we all need it though. There’s nothing like a pandemic to silence you, to steal your creative flair, and to make you doubt the necessity and validity of your own voice. 

Gemini Season is the time of the writers, the creatives, the people who play with their words.

Gemini Season is the time of the sun worshippers, the strawberry pickers, and all of us who believe in the kind of magic you can only make on a warm, late spring day.

Gemini Season belongs to everyone. 

Gemini Season is when we celebrate the power of expression and the gift of the active mind. It’s when we embrace spontaneity and everything that’s possible when we look at the world in a new way. 

As my new astrology crush, Sabrina Monarch describes it, this is the time of the Poets, the Priestesses, the Magicians.

Gemini Season is the time to do #7MagicWords

Have you been part of #7MagicWords, the free weeklong challenge that inspires your creativity and invites you to play with your words?

It’s coming back on June 1, 2021.

I didn’t intend to run this challenge again, but this new moon is whispering and the tides of stars will not be denied.

This challenge (I’ve lost count… I think this is the tenth? I first offered it in June 2017) is going to offer the sweetness of strawberries right off the vine and the balm of almost-summer afternoons.

Come create with us.
Come delight with us.
Come make magic with us.

This sweet June, we all need to savor this Gemini Season together.

Something To Look Forward To

I’ve been quiet lately. Well, my mind hasn’t been quiet, but the words that have been swirling within were in the realm of the “not yet speech ripe.”⁣

(Isn't that a delectable phrase? I learned it from a client who is writing a memoir that blends his relationship with the earth, the realm of dreams, the quest for the divine, and the crazy beauty of the human condition. He received this phrase from his mentor Jeremy Taylor, a leading voice in Projective Dream Work.)
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There’s a good chance you know what I mean, right? It’s been almost impossible to find words to wrap around the enormity of our changing world. And yet, there’s an entire world of ideas to express and explore.⁣
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When everyone is occupied at home and I can give myself permission to step away from the screen with all its competing demands, I get in my car and I point it toward this ridge and I remember that the clouds are the same and the sun is the same and this blue is the same perfect blue of any bright May day.⁣
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That's when I remember: we do not love our earth any less for all that she never puts her beauty into words.⁣
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If your heart is full and your pen is still, remember to forgive yourself.

Trust that the urge will come soon and that you do have so very much to say. We’ll wait until you’re ready. We’ll hear you when it’s time to speak.⁣

Perhaps this writing prompt will help you find the words today...

Writing Prompt: Something To Look Forward To

We hear the word “uncertainty” everywhere right now. It’s attached to conversations of health and mortality. You can’t talk about the economy and livelihood without using the word several times.

It’s important to name something else that’s uncertain: how we’ll celebrate all the traditions and holidays that we “always” look forward to.

To move gracefully into this next season of “maybe we’ll see you,” you’re invited to hold all the conflicting feelings. The grief and the disappointment as well as the optimism, the flexibility, the creative energy required to find and make joy in a season that may not include gatherings and vacations.

How will you consciously create “things to look forward to” in the weeks and months to come?

I offered this writing prompt to the Sovereign Writers Circle last week. If you're seeking a wise, compassionate group of creatives and healers who can help you hold space for your own creative healing powers, please consider joining us. We welcome new members on June 1.

A Writing Prompt for Personal & Creative Integration

There are so many reasons we want to become more conscious, empowered storytellers.

As Jonathan Gottschall tells us in his book The Storytelling Animal, "stories make us human."

When we dedicate ourselves to telling our stories, we dedicate ourselves to our shared humanity.

As I work with the healers and creative entrepreneurs in my Stand In Your Sovereign Story program, I see another reason emerge...

We want to become bolder, braver, more competent storytellers because we need to integrate our gifts, ideas, and experiences.

Transformation professionals are multi-talented and multi-passionate. ("I'm a healer and a coach and an artist and a dancer and a mom, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.") We need a strong story to help us convey the unique combination of what we have to offer.

This process of integration is important when it comes to formulating a marketing story like we are in the SIYSS program, but it’s even more important for us as creative people trying to figure out how to show up and stay connected in this new strange, splintered reality.

In my other online group, the ongoing community the Sovereign Writers Circle where we focus on in-depth personal writing, I offered up this writing prompt yesterday…

Integration and Weaving the Threads

We know how to tie two threads. We know how to braid three together. Beyond that, working with four, five or more threads? That kind of knot work is beyond the usual skill set.

And yet, you are made of many threads - many passions, abilities, identities, stories.

Spend some time looking at your threads, teasing out the strands and learning which knots seem impossible. Imagine what kind of pattern you could create out of these pieces of you. Imagine that you do have the power to do this kind of weaving because, of course, you do.

Does this inspire your creativity and your desire to weave together your threads of story?

We’re welcoming new members into the Sovereign Writers Circle through May 5.

Apply to join this community of writers who heal and healers who write.

A New Moon Ritual for Sovereignty Seekers

There’s a section in The Sovereignty Knot called Dark Moon Love.

It describes one of the loneliest, most important moments in my marriage:

One dark night, years after the vows were said and the babies born, I stood alone, pressing my face against the bathroom window, looking up and hoping for the impossible. It was a new moon night. There was nothing to see, but I longed to find some measure of comfort in the light I knew I wouldn’t find. I sought confirmation in the shadow…

That particular new moon happened several Aprils ago. Now, our marriage is strong and I know a lot more about what it is to stand Sovereign in a relationship.

On this new moon night in April 2020, the entire world seems to be staring up to the empty sky, hoping to find truth and solace in the shadow.

Here’s the thing… there is confirmation and solace to be found in shadow. We are called to find our way in the dark, to trust our footing, to hold hands, to remember that the sun will rise and the moon will grow full.

And, we’re called to remember that once we get through this dark stretch and come out on the other side and reenter the light, the sun will inevitably set and the moon will invariable wane again.

Dark Moon Wisdom

Elsewhere in the book, I tell the story of encountering the Celtic goddess Morrígan. If ever there was a new moon goddess, this phantom warrior queen of the underworld is one of them.

I was in an Irish cave when, “the Morrígan whispered to me that she knew I had spent a life enamored by the light, with appearances, with the demands of seeing and being seen. She needed me to become as comfortable and nimble in the depths of the otherworld as I was in the spotlight of the everyday.”

My wish for you, sweet Sovereignty seeker, is that you find comfort in the shadows as well as the sunshine. I hope that you can learn to sway beneath an empty sky as surely as you know how to howl to a full harvest moon.

And so, I offer this new moon meditation to you.

We’re called to stand strong under the glory of the sun, taking the throne and wearing the crown, yes, but it’s just as important to lay quietly in the dark, calling in the guides and quietly releasing all that does not serve.

Deepest gratitude to my mentor and teacher, Eleanora Amendolara, the founder of the Sacred Center Mystery School who taught me a version of this meditation many years ago.

And thanks to my clients and members of the Sovereign Writers Circle who inspired me to pull this practice out of my own interior spiritual archives.

Sovereign of Your Own Attention

There’s a well-used (and wonderfully wise) line: you need to live a story before you can tell it.

But then, there are times when you write a story and only start living the full truth of it once you see it on the page.

In my case, it was only once I wrote about being an Overcommitted Queen During Quarantine that I realized the depths of my exhaustion. I’d reached peak over-promising and needed to slowly come down from all those plans, intentions, and commitments.

We’re Being Called to Be More Creative Than Ever Before

Right now, every single activity (with the exception of watching TV, reading a book, or snuggling a cat) requires creativity and innovation.

Whether it’s figuring out how to make grocery shopping feel safe, managing the kids’ morning, or navigating a family’s moods and responses to anxiety, everything about domestic life that used to be second nature requires conscious engagement.

And patience. So. Much. Patience.

That means that the stuff that “should” require creativity and focused attention - like the next writing project - suddenly seems that much harder because your creative well has already been tapped (and probably overdrawn).

Then, when you think about the massive amount of bravery and imagination it takes to think about what your business or private practice is going to look like in the weeks and months to come…

Yep. Utterly and totally exhausted.

And utterly and totally committed to keeping it together and moving forward, somehow.

Sovereign of Your Realm. Sovereign of Your Attention.

In that post from a couple weeks ago I declared, “I become a little bit more Sovereign every time I say no, every time I limit the size of my realm.”

There’s more to Sovereignty (and quarantine sanity) than just saying no to invitations to meetings, however. It’s also about saying no to every website, post, and news headline that threatens to pull from your well of creativity, patience, and attention.

From Chapter 11 of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic:

The quest for Sovereignty on our own terms asks us to craft alternative versions of the oppressive stories we’ve been taught to believe. Recognize the power you have—and often squander— when it comes to holding and focusing your own attention. Allow yourself to see how your attention has been conquered and occupied, either by modern marketers and politicians or by storytellers who speak for so-called tradition and place a singular claim on the truth. Mistress of your own attention, you become Sovereign in your own mind and in your own living story. You then gather the power to change the narrative so we treat all people and animals as they should be treated, here on a planet that truly can sustain all the life that grows upon it right now.

At some level - at many levels - you know all of this, of course. You’ve always been mistress of your own attention and you’ve always had to be conscious and discerning about your information diet.

Let this merely be reminder then - a timely, necessary reminder from one overcommitted queen to another - that you are more creative than you ever have been in your life, even if you don’t write a single word or conceive a single professional offer.

Be kind to yourself.

Be careful with your most intimate, essential resources: creativity, patience, and attention.

And thanks for sharing a bit of your precious attention with me.

Forget World-Changing, We Need World-Renewing

Once upon the time, I used to use phrases like “world-changing” and “change the world” with wild abandon. 

In a 2018 blog post I dared to say: 

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, in The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic, published just two months ago, the chapter called “Crown the Queen” includes this passage:

As you come to believe in your own inherent power and get to know the archetypes that dwell within, you’ll realize that talking to goddesses and focusing energy on changing your own consciousness in order to change the world is more potent than sheer practicality and planning alone ever could be. The magic that lets us manipulate time and space might not quite look like stepping through the standing stones and entering another century like they do in Outlander, but it looks everything like the life I crave. Real life is full of real magic and it’s available to all of us who dare to look for it, treasure it, and conjure it. 

It’s not right to look back at words written in a simpler time and allow yourself to be filled with regret. Instead, I try to look back on these passages with kindness and understanding. (And maybe a little nostalgia.)

Now, we all know so much more about what “world-changing” really means.

We know that reality can change in the blink of an eye because we’ve collectively watched “normal” as we’ve grown to love it (and hate it) vanish in a matter of weeks.

Now, we know that “world-changing” means utter disruption at every level, from school routines to yoga classes, from presidential primary elections to global supply chains. It means massive spikes in unemployment. It means a terrifying increase in domestic violence. It means death.

The World Gives Us Change, We Give It Renewal

I’ll always remember the final time I used the phrase “world-changing” without feeling the crushing weight of such an idea. 

In February, I announced a new online storytelling program, Stand In Your Sovereign Story. The subtitle came out long, but doable enough: Learn how to use the healing power of storytelling to discover your truth, share your authentic message, and build your world-changing business.

Even though there are lots of opinions about whether it’s OK to sell anything in a time like this, I have come to understand that the course is more necessary than ever. (Seeing people sign up even in the midst of this crisis solidified that belief.) 

I’m leading the first session on April 14. The content we cover and the stories we uncover will focus on the work of healing and rebirthing that needs to happen in order to get us through and then thriving on the other side of this pandemic.

We’re going to learn about storytelling, truth, and how to share an authentic message and we’ll talk about how to use all those to build a world-renewing business.

The Story At the Heart of this Offering (and At the Heart of My Belief in Renewal)

This program (and all my work) relies on the story of Sovereignty, and what it takes for women to stand in their full  personal, creative, and spiritual power. My quest is to help all women (and all who identify as women) figure out how to balance and be all three archetypes of Sovereignty.

Free the princess
Crown the Queen
Embrace the Wise Woman

We are called to give ourselves permission to embody the princess, maintaining our innocence, optimism, and sense of adventure. 

We are called to allow ourselves the courage to embody the queen, building our confidence, competence, and compassion. 

We are called to allow ourselves the grace to embody the wise woman, surrendering to stillness, presence, and intuition.

We are called to be princess, queen, and wise woman throughout our lives. We are called to be all three before, during, and after the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The book offers a path for women to trace this Sovereignty magic in their own lives.

The course is designed to help creative entrepreneurs and transformation professionals use the archetypes to access and use their stories to create connections and build a livelihood.

Learn more about Stand In Your Sovereign Story, the online program that begins on 4/14.