I Never Knew Writing My Story Could Heal This Hurt

Right now, I am looking back on the years of writing that went into The Sovereignty Knot because I'm talking with the Sovereign Writers Circle about the long process of writing, editing, and rewriting that goes into a book.

I’m going through years of files, looking at all the free writes and false starts. (This process of reviewing and revisiting is the perfect Mercury Retrograde activity, by the way.)

There were so many words needed to be written but did not need to be in the book. These were the stories I needed to heal.

And since it's the new moon and my body bleeds when the sky is dark, I find myself in that place of tender rawness, that place of being so empty and so full all at once. In this state, it is possible to open up and hold space for these old stories, this old pain. I can root my feet into the earth and turn my face to the sun and let my womb drain and let these old wounds matter until they too can dry and heal.

Yes, it’s the perfect day to fall into this web of “old words and old wounds.” Not to get stuck, but because it's important to visit the spaces within that have been healed. It's an inner galaxy that feels intimately true, but, at the same time, it’s as if all these pages were written some ancient ancestor.

The five year process of writing The Sovereignty Knot (which actually began as an attempt to write a trilogy of fantasy novels) changed me.

It changed me so much that the passage I’m about to share no longer describes my reality. And yet, the pain I described is still an important element of the story I’ve lived. I share this bit from my archives here to honor my own healing process and because I know there’s a woman out there who needs to hear them.

Someone needs to watch a sister write her way through the old pain because there is hope on the other side.

It’s hard to put an exact date on this writing, but I am guessing it’s from at least two years ago. Like I said, it feels like they came through in another lifetime, written by a version of me who yearned for Sovereignty, but who couldn’t quite believe Sovereignty was meant for her...

A Story that Cried Out for Healing

I left my body.

Not on my deathbed, the operating table, or even in a moment of horrific trauma. No, I left my body in a thousand little moments…

The first kiss that felt so icky and just seemed to go on forever. 

That time my dance teacher ordered me an extra large costume, and it hung off me so I felt like a baby elephant wearing her mother's skin while all the other tiny ballerinas looked like tropical birds.

The days I just had to ignore the searing pain in my cervical spine as I scooped up a toddler and just tried to keep moving despite the agony.

If I get back into my body, I might start screaming and never stop.

I might find a rage there that burns so bright I will burst into flames from the inside.

I might remember all the slobbering kisses, sour with beer and the lack of any actual human regard.

I might remember the scattering of times I put my finger down my own throat and how I almost envied the girls with the strength to do that again and again and again.

I might remember what it was to love so much and give so much and feel so depleted as I tried to fill little hands that always, always, always reached out for more.

Living in a body. Really living in a body. I don’t have any idea how.

But I used to be a dancer. And today, I danced around my office.

And I felt phenomenal. And nauseated. And like I was doing something I had denied myself for so, so long. 

And I want to be dancing right now, but I am also so grateful that I am trapped in a car waiting for my girls (who, of course, are at their own dance class) so that I can only write about dancing. I can ignore that there’s no good way to wedge a laptop between myself and the steering wheel if I want any freedom to type. I can think about having a body and all of the ways I left if so that I do not have to do the dangerous, deadly work of getting back inside this skin of mine.

Looking Back from the Other Side of a Healed Story

It’s easy to forget the sad old stories once they’ve been healed.

Now, I can look up from these old pages, held frozen in time on my hard drive, and I can see how much has shifted for me.

I can be deeply grateful for how much more free and powerful I feel than I did just a few years ago. I can marvel that getting back into my own body was gradual and gentle, not dangerous or deadly. I can see that this change wasn’t the result of forcing myself into an exercise routine, but by being honest about the stories I was telling about my own experience of being embodied.

So much was healed in the writing of The Sovereignty Knot. This happens whenever you give yourself the time, space, and permission to write something true. Birthing this book allowed me to truly become Sovereign in my own body and in my own life.

It’s important to note that I barely talk about “body stuff” in the book. It’s there on the edges as I talk about my reproductive story, mention my home birth, and remark that the whole idea of Body Sovereignty that deserves a book of its own. Instead, I dive deep into spirituality and grief and marriage. These are the parts of my life I had healed enough to explore in depth. The issues with body image and shame and chronic depletion… Those wounds only began to heal through the writing process and I am only just now able to speak about them on the public page and in the public gaze.

And I have proof.

At the end of book launch week, I was still dancing. I danced around my living room. I danced like I remembered all the steps and like I was completely at home in my skin. I danced and I posted it online because I needed my readers to see that Sovereignty is about being brave and delighting in music and movement that frees the soul. I needed to show the world that I was bringing my whole body into this process, and that was possible because I had spent so much time in my own head writing The Sovereignty Knot.

I didn’t know that I needed to write a book so I could dance again, but here on the other side, it seems perfect and inevitable. 

Finding your Sovereign Story has a way of healing the past and, yes freeing the princess, so that you can fully embody your magic.

Can I help you dive deep and tell your Sovereign Story?

Learn more about the new 8-week group program that will help you heal, discover, and share the story you must tell.

Want to continue the conversation? Join The Sovereignty Knot Readers’ Community where we’re exploring 40 Days of Sovereignty together.

Liminal Spaces For Celts and Creatives

The Celtic people speak of the thin places, the liminal spaces, the times and locations when the veil between the worlds is the most permeable.

This could mean the time around Samhain (what you might call Halloween). It could mean the area surrounding a sacred site, like a holy well, a stone circle, or a fairy tree. 

Over the last few months, I’ve come to understand a thin place as the time and space an author must occupy between when her book is deemed “complete” and when it is birthed into the world.

Finally, The Waiting Is (Almost) Over

The sun rose into a peach pearl of a morning and convinced the sky to try blue. The snowy ground stretched beneath the last glimmer of a crescent moon. Warm and snug by my bedroom window, I held The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic in my lap. 

I held my book in my lap. 

After a year and a half of writing and decades of dreaming, I was holding a book that has my title emblazoned on the cover, my name stretched up the spine, and my world imprinted upon each page.

Those years of writing and dreaming were long and hard, but, somehow, the three months of waiting to share this book with the world often felt longer and harder than anything that came before. 

For me, a lover of Celtic myth and Irish folklore, liminal spaces have always sound so alluring and mysterious. I’ve always wanted more chances to wander in the mist and hear the Otherworldly voices. It has been disappointing to realize that the liminal space between the creation and release of something as big and meaningful as a book is both fragile and clumsy. 

Waiting for that link to go live on Amazon (launch day is 2/4/20!) is at once too damn lonely and quiet and too bloody noisy with shoulds and doubts and fears.

How I Navigated the Post-Book Slump

Turns out, the post-book blahs are normal.

My mentor, the wise, seasoned writer Elizabeth Cunningham who has written many books, including The Maeve Chronicles (and also the foreword to The Sovereignty Knot) described this as the “postpartum period.” As she watched me wrestle with anxiety and depletion and the sense that I was endlessly called to do something even though I could barely get off the couch, Elizabeth offered me the exact guidance I needed:

Ask the book what she wants.

It took me a while to quiet the ego and release my need to control everything and take this advice, but when I did, I could breathe again. I could see again. I could trust myself again.

The book reminded me that I was tired. It was the hard earned kind of tired that you recover from with the help of long walks, long novels, and a long break from the screen. 

Ever so gently, the book also pointed out that I was scared of what might come next (or what might not come next) once it was out in the world.

And, the book reminded me that I needed to ask for support from forces that are much more powerful and enduring than a collection of printed pages. To get through the liminal space between the book’s private formation and public birth. I needed to rely on the forces that helped me write it all in the first place: 

My goddess guides. 

The trinity of Celtic goddesses who speak to me and through me are imprinted into every line, but you’ll really get to meet them when you get to Chapter 12 of The Sovereignty Knot. 

Telling their story is another step on my lifelong spiritual journey. Ever since I found the section of the bookstore that offered me Celtic spirituality and the secret of the sacred feminine, I have been seeking out these goddesses, begging them to come closer, and learning how to dance with them in the dark. 

More often than I have wanted to admit, however, I’d lose track of their divine presence. In the face of all that divine yearning, I couldn’t recognize that my goddess guides were always right there waiting to be noticed the moment I stopped fretting about why I didn’t feel divinely inspired.

To get through this weird period between “I wrote the last word!” and “Come buy a copy!” I needed, to quote my coach KC Carter, to “double down on the spiritual practice.”

I needed to get quiet, to listen closely, to open my heart wide. I needed to remember that I wasn’t supposed to get through this all by myself. I was never supposed to figure it out all by myself. I needed to talk to them.

Brigid, The Goddess of Liminal Spaces 

In my book, you’ll get to know Brigid, the Irish goddess turned saint who has been my guide since I was a fourteen year-old trying to get through my confirmation so I could finally escape the Catholic Church.

Though I have had a relationship with Brigid for more than half my life, I need to admit that I have long been afraid to fully enter into a relationship with her. Somehow, I was always waiting to be worthy of her, to feel chosen by her, to have her appear more fully in my life. 

(Maybe, foolishly, I thought Brigid needed me to publish a book before I was enough of an “expert” to get her attention. Hot Tip: Goddesses don’t operate that way, and no human being worth knowing operates that way either.)

She is the goddess guide who has been waiting in this particular liminal space with me, holding the torch that guides the way. All along, she has forgiven me for covering my eyes, for being unable to see her in my quest to hide from the unknown. Brigid trusted that I would eventually look up and stand tall when it was time to enter through the doorway into authorship.

“Brigid lived her life in the liminal space between Heaven and Earth. The Celts perceived liminal spaces as “thin places” where the supernatural world and the visible world could meet, allowing beings to pass back and forth from one to the other. Throughout Brigid’s life, she held a thin place within her own self. She was rooted in the practical everyday world, but she could also see the world of angels and spirits. Her life was lived on the threshold.”

— Kenneth McIntosh in Brigid’s Mantle: A Celtic Dialogue Between Pagan and Christian

Now that I can hear her and feel her presence in my life again, I can trust that she is guiding me and she is guiding this book into the world. 

It’s no accident, of course. I deliberately chose the book’s release date to coincide with the energy of Brigid’s Day, of the Imbolc festival and her saint’s day, that happen over February 1 and 2.

Over the next couple of weeks as the book launch week (February 4 - 8) approaches, you’ll hear a lot more from me about Brigid, about why this goddess of fire and water, of poetry and family, of smithcraft and even beer is a guide for Sovereignty seekers like us. 

We need her to help us navigate these liminal spaces as creatives, as caregivers, as beings who need more self-care. 

And, considering I am an American who calls her energy to me all the way across a vast ocean, I think there’s something to say about how she can help us as we navigate these liminal spaces as a country and a global community, too.

Be sure to follow me on Facebook to dive deep into Brigid’s magic.

To get email updates about the book and all the Brigid material, visit this page and leave me your address.

A Wise Woman's 2020

A Visit to the Wise Woman’s Dwelling…

This offering is inspired by my upcoming book, The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman’s Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic.

I am also grateful to Maya Luna and Sarah Robinson whose end-of-year reflections offered me so much to consider and integrate.

How to use this meditation & the accompanying prompts

First, listen to the meditation that will open you to receive all three gifts from your Wise Woman self: the gift of desire, the gift of support, and the gift of a plan.

Then, try the writing prompts to dive deeper into everything you saw and all that you hope to manifest in 2020.

Writing Prompts

The Gift of Desire

What do you desire in 2020?

Oh desire is a powerful, tricky, heavy word. There are so many ways to frame - and to feel - desire. Today, we’re not going to be able to crack the code of desire - it’s so contradictory and complex.

You may not necessarily feel ready to complete a list of the three things you most desire in life or even in 2020. Release the need for such certainty.

But when you go back to the meditation and consider what you found inside that box in the wise woman’s dwelling, there’s a good chance you will feel more comfortable wandering in the spectrum of desire. You don’t need to be certain. You just need to begin.

• First, what do you know about your story of desire?

• Describe what you saw in that box. It doesn’t need to be the perfect answer. It just needs to be the beginning of an answer that you will live into throughout this new year and beyond.

• What showed up for you when the Wise Woman gave you the gift of desire?

• How can you set the table for that which you want to make manifest in the year to come? Consider your desire from the perspective of the feminine rather than the masculine. How can you be as welcoming as the wise woman’s little cottage and call in that which you desire? How can you be with your desires, not in the energy of pursuit but with the spirit of sacred, safe surrender?

The Gift of Support

• What tools do you have? Make a list of your assets including but not limited to your personal abilities, connections with others, material assets, and spiritual and physical practices.

• What tools do you need? Be honest with what’s lacking… and be even more honest about what kind of support you need in 2020 to make up for any perceived deficits. 

The Gift of a Plan 

The gift you received in the wise woman’s dwelling is a real one, but it’s not something you can use until you put it on paper. First, just write into what you saw when you opened that box…

Now, begin to break it down…

1. Sketch out what you know is coming in 2020. What big events, both personal and professional, are part of your year? What big offerings do you know belong on the calendar. Break your year into months or seasons  and fill it in accordingly.

2. List out the things that you want to do/hope to do/imagine you might do. Dream big here, but also keep in mind whatever message came through in the wise woman’s gift… Your goal is to craft a plan that is both magical and practical. Check in with what you know of your own desires as you go.

3. Explore the “how” of these dreams with particular attention focused on what you understand of the gift of desire and support, and also based on the 2020 calendar.

4. Set a date. This is only the beginning of formulating a plan… Come back to this in a few days (perhaps Thursday, 1/2 and Monday, 1/6 would be good days to set aside 30 minutes to keep working the plan?).

5. Plan the micro. We close our session with a specific focus on your daily and weekly writing practice…. What will you commit to in the first quarter of 2020: how often will you sit down to meet yourself on the page? 

What’s Next?

I pray that you have a year that is marked by freedom, empowerment, love, and magic.

Want to talk more about how you can make writing and the Wise Woman’s Way part of your new year? Let’s set up a quick chat about how I can support your creative journey.

This meditation is part of a 90-minute coaching session I led for the Sovereign Writers Circle.

We’re currently welcoming new members!

You have until 1/7/20 to apply to be a member of the online community for healers who write and writers who heal.

Blessings from a Goddess in Peach

I don't remember this goddess or why I needed to paint her.

About seven years ago, she was birthed onto a toothy paper page in a blaze of acrylic glory. I cannot guess what season brought her to life, but regardless of whether it was sweltering or frigid, it would have felt like a more painful and more peaceful time.

I was a new mother who stayed up long after bedtime, finding a remedy for grief and loneliness and confusion in the mixing of colors and the creation of icons, heroines, and guardians. 

My world felt rough and narrow and impossibly sweet. Those were the days when I was mourning my mom’s death, figuring out how to build a business, and learning how to raise up a little girl.

And yet, when I look back, it seems like a simpler time.

Way back in 2012, politicians seemed sane, cultural divisions seemed manageable, and the environmental catastrophe seemed far off and avoidable. (Of course, “seemed” is the operative word since our society, our democracy, and our infrastructure was built on foundations that would prove to be all too vulnerable and flawed, but such is the nature of innocence before its inevitable collision with reality.)

The Goddess Chooses Her Time

As our world was changing, our family was growing, and I was awakening to new realities and healing old hurts, this mysterious goddess was there waiting in the darkness.

She was waiting to be needed, waiting to be found.

That little baby of mine is ten years old now. Yesterday, she spent her snow day making holiday gifts for her circle of best friends, so I pulled my abandoned craft bag from the basement in search of some special art supplies.

And there she was, a dark-skinned, green-eyed creation tucked amidst the carefully hoarded paint tubes and ink pads that had long since dried up.

My girls weren’t nearly as awe-struck as I was, and they were rather disappointed that the paint was useless, but what can you expect from children who haven’t yet learned what it’s like not to make art daily?

This goddess didn’t appear for these children who are insulated from the headlines and free of all the economic, existential, civic worry that comes with being an adult in America today.

In the middle of this darkest week of the year, wrapped in a cloak of yellow-orange beneath a kaleidoscope sky, this goddess appeared for me.

She appears for all of us grown-ups who watch the news and feel more and more devastated each day. She’s here for all of us who barely have time to throw on a jacket before heading into a world that often feels unjust, uncertain, and just plain cruel.

She appears for all of us who know that the first day of winter is just a few days away but who know we’ve been in a long, cold political winter for years now.

Where Will You Find Your Light In the Darkness?

The painting is propped against my computer monitor now.

For a while, I tried to figure out who she was supposed to be and what I needed from her all those years ago. I wondered if she answered those now-forgotten prayers of mine, but then I realized…

I uncovered a goddess in peach colored robes the day before the House impeachment vote.

I realize that I just might have painted her all those years ago because I would need a source of light on this unimaginable day when abuse of power is real, lies are currency, and the American dream has worn pitifully thin..

For now, I’m calling her Lady Peach, and this is what I’ve figured out so far…

She speaks to every activist who is exhausted by their work for voting rights, for reproductive rights, for LGBTQ rights, and on behalf of the children in cages and knows that every victory takes them only an inch closer to the end of the marathon.

She speaks to every creative who worries that their words and brush strokes are not enough in a world that’s broken and burning.

She speaks to all of us who want to keep making love, making art, and believing in magic but who want to heal the brutal realities we live in, too.

She whispers to all of us that there is light in the darkness, and that even when we forget, she’ll keep shining and waiting.

Lady Peach Offers Her Blessings

Happy Solstice, beloveds. Here’s to another run around the sun and to the one thing we can always count on: the return of the light.

And here’s to strength in the face of all the bullshit and the bluster coming out of Washington. Here’s to all the courage and patriotism, too.

Here’s to hope and here’s to the vote and here’s to a belief that we’ll rise from the ashes of all this with more clarity and compassion and a whole lot less of the white supremacist patriarchal control.

---

The #7MagicWords Challenge returns 1/7/20!

Things may look bleak as all hell right now (because even if we’ve been fighting to get this guy out of office from day one, we never, ever wanted to be in this mess in the first place), but I have some medicine for that…

#7MagicWords is the the free online challenge that inspires your creativity and invites you to uncover the power of your words. It just might inspire your activism too…

Rest, Heal, Rearrange

My well - of energy, of words, of vision - has been running dry for weeks. I've tried to fake it, and from time to time, I pulled it off. Inside, I have been feeling parched, barren, and exhausted.⁣

This week, I started over.⁣⁣

I've been living in the in-between place that comes after a great big project is completed and before the next push really begins. It's a hard place to be, all full of self-recrimination about how I "should" be planning more, earning more, speaking more. ⁣⁣

Ultimately, I knew I needed this trough after the huge wave of energy and creativity that was the final sprint to finish my book, but it was hard to settle into that truth. I'm too well programmed to equate the push with success. I'm too accustomed to beating myself up for being lazy and playing small.⁣

I finally got the physical and spiritual support I needed to figure out why I've been feeling so drained and depressed. (Thank you, Eleanora Amendolara of the Sacred Center Mystery School for your healing wisdom! Thank you for seeing that the problem was my thyroid and my adrenals as well as a struggle to step through the portal into a new phase of spiritual expansion.)⁣

With that wisdom (and some powerful herbs and nutritional supplements), I gave myself permission to stay quiet for a few more days. I watched those phenomenally impressive Americans speak truth to Congress. I read ⁣Meggan Watterson’s book about Mary Magdalene and reconnected with one of the most powerful spiritual foremothers. ⁣

And then, I started moving all the furniture around.⁣

I needed my space to reflect that my spiritual furniture has been completely rearranged by the writing of The Sovereignty Knot: A Woman's Way to Freedom, Power, Love, and Magic. I needed this room where I do my work to look like an author's study rather than a mompreneur's cluttered office. ⁣

It's still in process, but there's a new flow to this space. This room feels like it wants to hold the mystery, the growth, and the new connections I'll be making in this next phase of personal, professional, creative, spiritual becoming.⁣⁣

Where are you right now?

Are you riding the wave, doing the work, and making it happen?
Are you sliding down into the doldrums because you need to give into gravity for a little while?
Are you struggling, thinking you should be riding or resting in a different way?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture on the inside and do the healing work?
Are you ready to rearrange the furniture in the office because you're ready for a new phase?⁣

Wherever you are, I invite you to pause, to look around, and to take some notes. Capture this moment on the page so you know what it's like to feel wildly free or in gentle recovery or in the dark place in between.⁣

And if you need help along the way as you try to sort out just where you are and what to do next, call on me. ⁣

Book a Tarot & Intuitive Healing Session or join The Sovereign Writers Circle.

⁣