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.