Welcome to my NEWsletter
I've made the move to Substack! This is my free newsletter/blog but I invite you to support the arts and upgrade to paid if you find value in my writing and teachings. Thank you for your support!
1. Why Substack, why now?
Over the last year I have written a weekly newsletter each Wednesday. The process of writing consistently has illuminated a few things to me:
I love writing. A core childhood memory of being “seen” by a teacher was in 7th grade English class when my teacher handed me back a piece of creative writing, looked me in the eye and said, “I can tell you love this…keep writing.” My heart fluttered, I felt so seen and supported. Substack is for writers, this feels like the right home with room to collaborate with and uplift other writers.
My readers read my writing. I had a 80% read rate over the course of the year. 80%! Thank you for seeing me and reading me and I only want to go deeper and continue to serve and provide value to those enjoying and listening.
In an effort to walk my walk and talk my talk, writing is an activity of pleasure for me. I like doing it. It brings me clarity, it reinforces a few core values including creativity, service and integration. There are many “have-tos” in adulting life and writing is a “get to” and it evokes joy and relaxation in my body and mind and I want more of that. Don’t you? It’s good for the soul and the nervous system.
2. Creating a community that values curiosity and process
Many, including me, are healing and de-conditioning from toxic social conditioning and coping strategies like perfectionism, striving and control. There’s no quick fix for anything in life. There’s life and all its uncertainty and there’s us humans who spend a whole lot of time trying to avoid discomfort, pain, emotions and the real truth that nothing is certain. We simply have what is available to us: our strengths, our limitations, our energy. All we can do is prepare and manage our energy, double down on trust and faith, be committed to learning and curiosity as opposed to attaching to the outcome and striving for perfection, and keep going. This space is a co-creation of a culture steeped in appreciation, trust and allowing, curiosity, and self-compassion. As we collectively transform, letting outdated structures crumble and die within us and outside of us, this is a space of trackng that process and offering validation and support for how hard it is sometimes. I’ll be your cheerleader and your sage.
3. What you can expect
I’m keeping my writing schedule the same. I publish Wednesdays because it is Mercury’s day, the God of communication and exchange. I will include personal anecdotes and stories to connect to our shared collective stories. There is always a teaching component. I’ll bridge the spiritual with the material, for example highlighting contemplative and neuroscience practices to help change your brain and grow inner resources and strengths. I teach through my writing, I include meditations and grounding practices, somatic coping skills, neuroscience-informed practices and resources galore to help you on your healing journey and remind you that you are not alone, support is available to you, and when in doubt, you can always open this newsletter up and maybe find what you needed to make a shift, and feel better. I encourage you to upgrade to paid to access increasing supplementary resources.
4. If you want more, you can have more
Paid subscribers get the satisfaction of supporting my creative efforts and exchanging a little value for a little-lotta value. Art is needed in our world. Imagination is the starting point of all healing. If you want to manifest, you start by visualizing and imagining and feeling that future state in your body. By sharing my art with you through my words, I commit to the process of living with a courageous, open heart that knows that vulnerability is true strength and that each of us yearns for the courage to authentically express ourselves, to feel safe and maybe even to enjoy that mixed bag of a process. No matter if you “upgrade to paid” or not, I write this to plant seeds of imagining what is possible, of healing and potential and to embody unconditional love through service to others. And to write, because JOY.
5. Thank you for your grace
I’m new to Substack so I may fumble. I am open to your feedback and like everything in life will be in a constant process of making tweaks here and there to improve. Thank you for your grace and also for your forthrightness if something isn’t working. There will be another email from me later this week with updates and offerings and what to expect with my forthcoming series on the 7 days of the week and how to sync your outfits and energy with the planetary energies of the days of the week. I call this Planning with the Planets and paid subscribers get first access to my guidebook of the same name. Color therapy, energetic living and syncing and structure for creative, squiggly-brain folks who need structure and routine but struggle to do so. This makes structure fun! More to come. For now I end with a beautiful poem…
from her collection of poems All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living.
Dive into the present moment
letting Light guide
your way.
You will certainly
face unknowns,
but you will not
face them alone.
All around you,
there are people
facing many of the same fears,
and many hide it,
without realizing it,
behind how are you’s
and I am fine’s.
And you can hone a listening ear
for the words beneath the words
the thoughts beneath the phrases
the feelings that do not reach their faces,
as you slowly begin to wake up
to the honest voice
inside of you
beginning to sing
with clarity and transparency
for yourself
and those around you.