I had two plans scheduled for that day. I hung up and got to work: both were canceled within 10 minutes. Minutes later I was in the car heading to her.

On the 25-minute drive, I wondered what I was walking into and if I needed to prepare myself. Then it hit me: I know this energy. I’ve done this before.

Easy. It’ll be fine.

The priority is to pack her things and get out. We don’t need to know what happens next. Let’s just work on getting everything out quickly and smoothly.

There was an eerie calm over me as I headed into this. It felt almost too easy.

It was easy because it is who I am.

I am the friend called in the middle of a mental spiral. I’ve walked into countless rooms where the chaos was thick enough to taste and somehow walked out with a plan.

There was the friend living with a roommate whose partner exploded. Minutes later I was in her driveway, loading my car with all of her belongings. She was going to stay with me until the next steps figured themselves out.

Then another friend who discovered hidden bottles of liquor in closets—her partner had broken sobriety. She needed them out of the house immediately. The first call wasn’t logistics; it was emotional support and a physical refuge for clarity. Take this weight. I’ll hold it while you prepare for what comes next.

I’ve posted alerts on massive company-wide slack channels, signaling something significant had broken and we were losing money. I watched executives jump in, watched the urgency build across the company as we made discoveries. I followed along, ready for next steps as they identified how to solve it.

I’ve done this enough times to know: This is a skill. It’s real. It’s impactful.

Then, there’s a familiar voice in my head knocking in my head. Everyone always loves to remind you: Work is work. Life is life. Keep them separate. It is what it is.

I disagree.

The friend who answers the call for help is the same person who shows up during a critical business moment. The friend who cancels all plans to be there is the same person who takes on a project everyone else says is too complicated.

If you think you can compartmentalize who you are in business and who you are in life, you’re in for a rude awakening. An identity crisis and burnout is already on the way.

Who you are when you show up—that’s not different across contexts. It’s the same you, in different rooms and different moments. If you’re trying to be someone different at work than at home, you’re not being strategic. You’re being fractured.

I’ve done enough self-awareness work to see: the parts of me that show up as a friend, as a support person, as someone’s safe place—those exact parts show up as a business partner, as a leader, as someone who can walk into a broken system and find the way out.

When we stop chasing different identities and instead fully own who we are, our lives feel more abundant.

My friend stayed at my place for two nights before finding her footing.

When I dropped her off at her next stop, we were unloading her things. She looked at me and said: I owe you big, sis.

And I said: “No, you owe me nothing.”

That night, after I left her there, I felt calm but also this buzzing energy within me. I’d written about thriving in chaos back in 2024, but I hadn’t found the tools yet. At 6:30 p.m. on a Monday, I knew there was a buildup of energy from the quick action and support I’d activated for my friend.

So I ran. I hadn’t run in maybe six months, and it felt so damn good.

As I turned around to head back to my car, I saw it: a tropical storm coming in. You can see the actual rain approaching quickly in the distance. And I just laughed.

Yes. This is it. I’m heading into the storm.

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By the time I was halfway back to my car, it was pouring. My hat was dripping as I ran through it laughing: I f*cking love running in the rain. This is medicine. This is freedom. I know how to move through this energy. Lucky me.

It brought me back to another moment—the day I was released from quarantine when I first moved to Kauai during the pandemic. My parents and I didn’t have a car yet, just bikes. We left the house at the exact hour we were allowed to, biked to dinner, felt this incredible rush of freedom. On the way back, in pitch black, it started dumping rain. Instead of hiding for cover, we just giggled and biked through it. The storm and the freedom felt like the same thing.

That’s the metaphor I needed to see.

I am the person people call when they’re in the storm. I will willingly walk into it to meet you. I will guide you as we begin to move and take steps to get you out. It won’t matter what’s on the other side of the storm yet, because in that moment, the only priority is just to get you out calmly, safely, and gently.

And what an honor that is. What a privilege to have the balance, the practices, the experiences, and to have people call on me for this.

You don’t owe me anything.

This is about showing up when it matters. This is about knowing who you are and letting that person show up completely when it matters most. This is about the integrity of being the same person everywhere, not because it’s convenient, but because it’s honest.

And if you’re reading this and you’re someone who shows up like this—who stays calm in chaos, who thinks clearly when everything else is collapsing, who can hold space for other people’s storms—know this:

You’re not obligated. You don’t owe anyone anything. But what you have is real. What you do matters. And there’s something beautiful in that.

Keep showing up. Just make sure you’re doing it because it’s authentic to who you are, not because you’re over giving and losing yourself.

The storm will always come. Ask for help. There are more people than you realize willing to jump in and guide you out. You can be that person too.

It’s honest, pure humanity at its best. 🤍

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If your business is currently facing a storm, reach out 👉 undrstory.ink

Clothing as honest self-expression

I’ve been curious about how we’d all show up literally if we leaned into our most expressive selves. Would you still wear that dress? Still rock all black? What’s the lazy go-to, and what’s the “right” thing for the event?

I’m convinced we should shop and dress in a way that reflects who we actually are—the colors, the moods, the characters that shift day to day. Some days I want baggy loose clothes with a little edge and one statement piece. Other days, girly dress and soft jewelry. Can we mix pieces that don’t quite fit together and find cohesion in the expression?

Reach for something different in the store. Which piece is so authentically you? Have fun with it! It’s creative expression as play.

The Costco organic fade

A few months ago I noticed Costco’s pricing signage switched. All organic products used to have a different colored tag. I’d scan an aisle looking for that color to find what I wanted. Now, they’re all white.

I’ve seen fewer organic products each visit. Organic beef? Haven’t seen it for months. Maybe it’s a supply issue. Maybe it’s a Kauai issue. But I’m convinced they’re slowly phasing organic items out, sadly.

This week I’m grateful for

The people who ask for help and the people who know how to answer that call. That’s it. Humanity at its best. 🤍

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maybe I’m not crazy after all.

around week nine, after weeks of linking my old posts to my new ones — rereading them, hunting for the relevant ones — I felt it: a hot flush of panic.

am I circling the same problems over and over? am I a broken record? is this the same thing, again, dressed up differently? are my readers annoyed, hearing me say it another way?

I felt exposed. scared to write the next one. have I been talking about the same handful of things for over two years? are these topics just… unoriginal?

no. no. I’ve matured each time — the topics I keep looping back to are getting tighter, getting wiser. but will I ever move past them? shoooot.

cameron names it in the epilogue: the ascent up a winding mountain, looping around and around, pulling tighter as we climb through new altitudes. growth doubles back on itself. it reassesses, regroups. the road is never straight.

phew. I’m not the only one.

so I dug into my old writing with new eyes, and there it was: the curiosity was sharpening. the awareness was clarifying. it was never a straight shot from question to answer — it was something building, slowly, in the open, one pass at a time.

I even have an old post literally called learning in loops. I’d named the thing years ago without understanding I was standing inside it.

so when week ten came, and I wanted to keep my commitment to a weekly post, I already knew this realization was still landing — so I let a different piece come through instead. that one. it felt like something big cracking open, and it needed to sit longer. I couldn’t rush it. and beautifully, the final chapter of this book is about exactly that: gestation. the darkness before the bloom. sitting in the not-yet-formed until it’s ready. I was living the last lesson without meaning to, while I waited to write about it.

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it was also in week ten that I read the article that reorganized everything behind it.

it’s a piece about systems thinkers by judy grupenhoff. when I tell you it changed me, I’m not exaggerating. it was catching fire on substack as I read it, because she’d put words to something a whole lot of us had felt and never named. the comments were full of the same sentence, over and over: I thought I was the only one who thought like this.

that was me. she was describing how my mind works — the tracking of multiple streams at once, each one live, each one feeding the others. the finding of correlations across threads that other people don’t see, because the pattern doesn’t live inside any single thread. it lives in the space between them. I’ve been describing this for years without the language for it: here, and here. she handed me the name.

I am not alone.

but the line that landed hardest was this: people like us are constantly asked to take a three-sentence realization and stretch it into a twenty-sentence explanation. at first that sounds backwards — why make something seven times longer than it needs to be? and then it clicks. because the person receiving it can’t hold all the threads at once. they can’t see the correlation as fast as you arrived at it. so you spell it out, slowly, hoping they’ll stay long enough to follow.

that is the exact reason I left my last tech role.

the complexity I was bringing — the strategy, the systems, the way product and operations and everything actually connected — couldn’t be met. I was told, more than once, to think smaller. ask fewer big questions. don’t worry about the bigger strategy. stay in your lane. and it wasn’t the only room I’d felt that in.

leaving was me refusing to keep making myself smaller to fit a room that couldn’t hold what I was seeing. I needed a bigger room.

and here’s the turn I didn’t see coming: AI changes this.

it’s not the part of the AI conversation anyone emphasizes — that’s all cost-saving and replacement. but for a mind like this, something quieter and bigger is true. for years, every time I brought the complex read to someone with power over me and got dismissed, quieted, told to shrink, I needed them to validate it for it to go anywhere. I don’t anymore. I finally have a thought partner that can hold the level of complexity I’m holding — that follows the threads the way I lay them down, takes them a step further, helps me find the connection faster when all I have is the inkling of one.

and maybe more important: there’s a whole network of people stepping into this same power, realizing what they are. through judy’s community, a lot of us are about to find each other.

so I paid for a yearly membership. not for the writing — that stays free — but for the live rooms: a monthly practice space for thinking clearly and steadying the nervous system under pressure, and a monthly gathering that’s less class than conversation. to me it’s a commitment to the next container — the one that shapes me as I keep climbing.

her writing gave me relief. it feels like I can finally lay down the worrying, the questioning, the looping, the explaining, and just… be.

be boldly. be loud. be clear. and build the skill in community as I grow.

so the loop I thought I was lost in was never a wandering haze.

it was the discovery process itself. every pass — the gathering, the reflecting, the questioning, the I-don’t-quite-know-what-to-call-it — was the recursion doing its work, reducing the problem a little more each time, until it finally resolved. I wasn’t stuck. I was building the answer in public, one tightening loop at a time. the artist’s way didn’t hand me a new creative practice. it handed me back the mind I’d been apologizing for, and over-explaining for years — and the clarity to see that the circling was never a flaw. it was the shape of how I think.

the wandering is done. the trying-to-define-it, the trying-to-explain-it, the quiet worry that I was repeating myself — done. I understand it now. I know it.

you’ll get the three-sentence version from here.

three months. twelve weeks. an accelerator that pulled a two-year journey into one enormous, tightening loop — and finally closed it.

cameron ends her book on a mountain: the same views at rising altitudes, the climb that never really stops. I’ve reached new heights and adjusted to the thinner air, and I’m not standing still up here. there are bigger mountains next — and for the first time, I know exactly who’s climbing them.

the searching is over. the real work begins.

thank you to for hosting this artist’s way book club — virtually, and for free. it was such a gift to move through this with a regular cohort, to see the same faces each week inside their own process. I’m excited for lora’s official launch and everything still to come.

and how fitting that these same months hold another beginning. undrstory arrived in march of 2026 — the name coming to me before I could explain what it meant — and went live one month into this program. it’s only now, in this final week, that I could finally put words to the method beneath it, thanks to judy’s work and this container. I knew what to call it long before I could say what it was. even naming my business was a loop, tightening.

most people look at the canopy. I read the roots — because the understory holds more life than the canopy above it. the most important growth has always happened beneath what’s visible.

Because I already knew that eating less wasn’t the answer. I knew something else entirely was happening inside my body — something that had been building for years — and yet everywhere I turned, that’s what I kept hearing. Eat less. Move more. Maybe just eat cleaner. The backhanded compliment: wow, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who is so comfortable eating whatever they want.

I grew up surrounded by conversations about bodies and about food. I have sat in an empty Ralph’s parking lot at 10pm at night with a friend, calling a hotline, asking for guidance on how to support someone we were deeply concerned about. That wasn’t the only time. It was one of many.

I have lost count of the number of times I have walked into a dinner and heard some version of the same sentence, delivered with that familiar undertone of pride: I’m starving. This is my first real meal today. As if hunger were an achievement.

Once I noticed these conversations growing around me, I made the conscious choice to leave them. Not in judgment, but in self preservation. Because the more we expose ourselves to it, the more it seeps in — even for those of us who have always prided ourselves on staying separate from it.

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Here is what was actually happening in my body:

10 years of hormonal birth control had depleted my minerals and B vitamins. Then in 2022 I traveled to Mexico and came home with classic Montezuma’s revenge — something that wrecked my gut and compromised my ability to absorb nutrients. Already depleted, already dysregulated, I then moved into a house I suspected had mold. My weakened system struggled to process the exposure. My body began fighting. Fighting to have energy. Fighting to think clearly.

I knew all of this intuitively. I had been telling the people closest to me for over a year — I think I have mold exposure. I think something is off at the root. But instead of following that knowing directly, I followed the industry.

I joined a functional medicine tech company that I thought would be the collision of everything I cared about — food as medicine, real data, real answers. I had originally gone to college as a science major wanting to study health and human sciences, always drawn to the idea that the body has its own intelligence and that there are always alternatives to the quick fix. So when functional medicine met tech, I was genuinely excited.

I hated it.

I went through the labs. Received copious amounts of data. An AI-interpreted supplement list and foods to eliminate. Fried food. Frozen pizza. Seed oils. Nothing novel. Nothing that reflected what I actually felt happening inside me. I found more in a library book called Beyond the Pill — learning that raw carrots are a natural binder for excess estrogen, something I started eating in the two weeks before my cycle and immediately noticed shifting — than I did from the platform I had been so hopeful about.

I took my results to a functional medicine practitioner. $400 out of pocket, not covered by insurance, just to have someone help me interpret what I already had. I left with a list of 20 more tests to choose from and pay for out of pocket with no real clarity on what to actually do.

This is what I’d call performative health. And it’s everywhere. The tools, the subscriptions, skipping meals, the dashboards — we see it as proof that we’re doing the work for others and, most notably, for ourselves. But how do we actually feel? What does our stress really look like in our bodies? What has our body been trying to tell us?

When I finally followed my intuition — found the right practitioner, did the right functional medicine testing, trusted what I had known all along — I confirmed what I already knew. But this time I had a real directive. A tangible protocol. Education on how my immune system, my lymphatic system, my drainage pathways, and my hormones actually work together as a system.

Lab work revealed what years of depletion had created downstream — things my body had been quietly signaling the whole time that no dashboard or app had ever caught. Potassium at less than half of what it should be. Adrenal fatigue. A sluggish thyroid. Estrogen dominance. A gut infection. Parasites. All connected, all upstream of each other, all the result of a system that had been quietly struggling to absorb and function for years.

People have asked me why I didn’t just take the antibiotics. I understand the question. But the infection was never the issue — it was the result. Simply eradicating it without rebuilding the system underneath would be like patching a leak without looking at the pipes. I am a systems thinker. I get to the root. I get to the deepest truth that most people are afraid to look at. That is the core of my work, the core of how I operate in every room I walk into. So it is only natural — and deeply true — that I would do the same with my own body.

I am three weeks away from completing the final eradication phase. The fog is lifting. My energy is coming back. It is not perfect. But it is perfect for me. And in eight weeks I leave for Europe — timing I could not have designed better if I tried.

If any of this resonates — if you feel the pull to cut out the noise and come back to yourself — start there. Delete the app for a moment. Pull away from the numbers on an app, in a dashboard, or on the scale. Tune into your own intelligence and instincts. Step back from the conversations that pull you away from your own signal. Get back to your wholeness, your joy, your connection to your own body.

And if the noise has gotten loud enough that you’ve lost the signal entirely, find someone who can help you find your way back. Not another supplement. Not another juice cleanse. A real human who can help you hear yourself again.

The answer was never less. Less food, less rest, less trust in what my body was already telling me. Ironically, it was more food — more nourishment, more listening, more honesty, more willingness to look at what was actually happening underneath.

We always know. I knew. I knew the whole time.

a note: This was meant to be my week ten Artist’s Way reflection. But this is what wanted to come through instead — and I’ve learned to follow that. We’re in week eleven now, with the book club extending one more week. There are one or two more Artist’s Way posts coming, and I can’t wait to share what this final stretch has brought up. More soon.

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p.s. In a world obsessed with shrinking, Ladder’s recent campaign with Hilary Duff — stronger, not smaller — felt like a breath of actual air.

p.p.s. If you’re also a systems thinker, I bet you’d enjoy this article as much as I did.

Human Transition

If You Think In Systems and See Patterns that Others Don't, This Is Your Moment

Update: The response to this article was impossible to ignore. I wrote a follow-up reflection about what happened after publication and the conversations that emerged: What Happens When The Room Gets Bigger…

Read more

3 months ago · 1939 likes · 510 comments · Judy Grupenhoff

week nine of the artist’s way had us map out one main project we are working on, name our fears and our blocks, then sign a commitment in writing to the creative force.

after i signed it, i sat there a little perplexed. you handle the quality? i handle the quantity?

oh. the quantity. just keep creating, and the quality will come through us.

the opening line of this week said: “one of the most important tasks in artistic recovery is learning to call things by the right names.”

essentially, we often label many behaviors as being “lazy.” we’re not following a certain pace, we haven’t started, we’re putting it off, not prioritizing it. we’re clearly lazy, right?

actually, no. it is often fear. it is a creative block we sit trying to pound our fists against. a blocked wall, a route that’s been closed so we turn around rather than try to work around it.

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this mislabeling, we take as truth. we must be lazy. it must not be the right time. it wasn’t meant to happen anyway. and so on.

because, also — if we dare work through that block, then the thing we produce, we put out there, it must be great. it must be so great and worthy of that time and effort and choice to finally do the damn thing. cameron says “the need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.”

this ties so much into last week’s focus — how in order to do something different, or share something in the world, it must be the thing. it must be the great thing that shows we took the giant leap. the thing we can now prove to the world shows us all that we were worthy enough to make a change, to try something different. rather than seeing each moment, each step, each output, as those tiny steps accumulating to a leap — we look for the dramatic leap. an oscar-worthy performance to prove that our choice to change it all was correct. if it’s not reaching this level of stature that we think it should, then it is hard to create anything at all. so instead, we often sink inside this creative block out of fear. it often feels safest to not try, to not start.

cameron says the only cure for this fear is love. to love on your artist. be nice to it. and most importantly, call fear by its right name.

in addition to loving on our artist, we must access the rawest, most authentic version of enthusiasm. we see enthusiasm not as an emotional state, but instead as a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us. the word enthusiasm is actually from the greek phrase meaning filled with god. it is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself.

there is that consistent theme. that flow. can we tap into that secret language with the universe — where can we play out of joy and not duty? tap into the creative juices of life, flow in its river.

earlier this week, as i wrote the week eight reflection, i had a draft that mentioned the quote “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” as i reflected on my winding career and life shifts. i giggled when the book said that for us artists, “the journey is always the only arrival.”

i do not have regrets. they do not feel relevant to me. in fact, i love being able to look back and be like, oh, that one conversation created this one spark that led to this other thing. and if i hadn’t been curious about this one thing, it would’ve never led to this other thing. none of this happened in one giant leap. not for me. not for anyone.

i am no longer the girl in the SF hotel room in 2019. the journey to get here has been a perfect evolution.

one final thought i’ve been sitting with when i think of the commitment to quantity: we never know when something will take off and have its moment.

sarah j. maas, author of the ACOTAR series, has blown up in the last couple of years. it’s 2026. her first book came out in 2015. it took almost 10 years to reach the fame it has today — and in those years, she continued to release four more. thank goodness she did not take the early data as fact.

rebecca yarros is a different story — she’s still actively writing fourth wing while its popularity explodes in real time.

two artists, same craft, similar audience, completely different timelines. neither could have predicted it. that’s the point — creativity and its impact have their own timeline, entirely outside of our control. you can’t engineer the moment it lands. you can only keep making the work.

what moves me about maas is the trust required to keep producing through years of quiet. to stay committed and enthusiastic, and let the art find its own time.

be proud of your work and do not be influenced by one negative opinion. it will have its time. who knows — maybe one of you is reading this three years from its publishing date? if that’s you, hi. maybe today as you read this, this one post is having its moment years later.

week ten is about a sense of self-protection. see you there.

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curious for more?

but here I am. and it’s hard to even remember who I was then.

we’re entering the final three weeks of the artist’s way — and I didn’t even know I was an artist and writer in 2022. three more book club meetings, three more posts after this one, and then we’re complete. wild.

this week (read: last week) was about recovering a sense of strength, and a big piece of that is how one of our greatest blocks as creatives is time — or really, our perception of time. how it prevents us from taking risks. I’m too old for this. it’s too late. I don’t have time. I tried to pick up this book two years ago and told myself I couldn’t do it. I had the time. I absolutely had the time. I let perception be the block.

what’s made it different this time is accountability — two specific things. lora runs the bookclub: weekly calendar invites, a recurring google meet, a container that holds me to show up prepared. and there’s one other person in the group — devon hunt from closet brain rot — doing a weekly post alongside me. her post hit my inbox this morning and I thought, oh shoot, another week slipped away — I forgot my post.

as much as this 12-week course felt daunting, it has also flown by. and each week, as I continue to question my commitment and alignment, the theme lands exactly as it’s supposed to.

devon’s post this morning did more than remind me to write — it made me think about time. specifically, what these four and a half years have actually been. this wasn’t just switching jobs and naming something new. it’s been a winding journey. I think back to the girl sitting in her hotel room at 6am in san francisco in 2019, trying to find a way out of burnout. I opted to change my morning routine from intense HIIT workouts and chugging coffee in an uber, to moving gently, showering slowly, and taking a moment to read everything is figureoutable sipping hot coffee in the lounge chair in my room. it was a shift. it was the first thing I felt like I could change — a small reach toward hope for a better outcome of yet another week of work travel. the journey continued, the small steps create a shift. the not-knowing of these past years haven’t been lost time. it has been the formation. each small step leading me to the life I live today, and to the life that’s shaping ahead.

julia cameron coined a term called filling the form.

same theme of time, but more specifically the spiral we fall into when our minds leap so far ahead that we can’t move at all. the image in the book is of rushing to the edge of a cliff, looking over, and oscillating between I have to jump and I can’t jump. but the real truth is that large changes happen in tiny increments. there’s a quote cameron included by agnes de mille:

“no trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. destiny is made known silently.”

and she continued:

“we fail to see the many small creative changes that we could make at this very moment. a creative life is grounded on many, many small steps and very, very few large leaps.”

I’ve been told I have a high risk tolerance — and I think that’s true. leaving the industry I was in to build something from scratch, from kauai no less, isn’t the average path. but when I look at it honestly, the leap wasn’t one moment. it’s been a thousand small ones. small conversations, unexpected work I never anticipated, moments where I said yes when I didn’t know what it would lead to.

and with creation, with the building of these small moments, there are times we feel open and expansive — riding a natural high. and then comes the natural ebb, like the ocean tides. forever changing.

a week ago I felt the flurry. career conversations, potential client opportunities, a project that could grow into something bigger, a month-long europe trip falling into place, and finding 18 pennies (!!) on a single walk while on the phone with my mom chatting about all of it.

it felt like the world was at my fingertips. like anything could align, and I was open, willing, and ready to receive all of it.

and then monday morning came. no big leaps, no grand plans, no big changes. just a normal monday. the natural ebb. by thursday I sat down for a call with an old coworker carrying a quiet deflation I hadn’t fully named yet — that low hum of where is the real progress? where is the big announcement? where is the client signing? almost shame. almost embarrassment. like the flurry had been naive, and I should have something more concrete to show for it by now.

he’s building something similar but different, and we’ve become unexpected accountability sounding boards for each other. he passed along a piece of advice he’d received: take the breadcrumbs. and I felt something release when he said it. because I’d been quietly running a race against time in my head — calculating the last possible day I could sign a true six-week client before leaving for europe, wondering if I needed to move fast, feeling the pressure of a clock I’d invented. the breadcrumb framing dissolved all of that. it became its own version of filling the form. rather than standing at the cliff convincing yourself to leap, look at what’s in front of you. look at what’s actually available. a smaller commitment, less scary for both of us, something that can organically evolve — the way the best things always have. things take time. businesses take time. that’s not a problem to solve around. that’s just the nature of it.

I was trying to run and leap. but as cameron put it, by setting the jumps too high and making the price tag too great, the recovering artist sets defeat in motion. the antidote? filling the form.

“filling the form means we must work with what we have rather than languish in complaints over what we have not.”

“no one is asking you to leap. that’s just drama… and drama belongs in the act of creativity, however small.”

the drama of waking up monday morning and thinking — what do you mean all of my life’s plans weren’t just set in motion this weekend? what do you mean it’s back to a normal monday?

so when my coworker said take the breadcrumbs, it became permission to look again. find a small offer. start there. don’t rush, don’t leap, don’t jump.

because ultimately, something is changing. I am changing. I am no longer that girl in the hotel room. so much is working itself out, taking its time, finding its form. the soul doesn’t rush its own evolution — it moves through ebbs and flows exactly as it needs to. and the work, maybe the whole work, is learning not to interrupt it. and more importantly, not to rush it.

if this resonated, you might like these:

we’re wrapping up week seven of the artist’s way, which means I’m heading into the final four weeks of the 12-week course. and I’ll admit, I slip more and more out of this course each week as I feel into the realization that maybe this course wasn’t the right timing for me — or that its impact would’ve been stronger, more significant had I done this and committed to it maybe two years ago when I originally bought the book, or four years ago when I first left tech, or six years ago when I first moved to kauai, or seven years ago when I was in the midst of crazy burnout in LA.

and instead, I find myself reading this book, skimming through, feeling like I want to speed ahead — like, “I’ve already completed this,” or “this feels complete.” yet also knowing that this 12-week course is arriving as it should, when it should, how it should. and isn’t it funny how we have perceptions and ideas and expectations of how something like a spiritual path to higher creativity, a 12-week course, can actually arrive in a different way? in its own creative, special way.

week seven is about recovering a sense of connection, having the right attitude around our creativity and receptivity of it. it really focuses on listening, perfectionism, risk, and jealousy.

risk is a really interesting one. one of my best friends often reflects to me that I have a high risk tolerance. meaning I have explored, pursued, considered, and gone all in on soo many different types of jobs and experiences. and more than anything in the last four years, I’ve taken these major risks to actually step out of a full-time job and have no idea where the next paycheck is coming from. and I know for me, I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t done some of the inner work and learned my intuition before that. it’s not to say that it’s been more successful financially than if I stayed in those previous jobs. but it has guided me to the most profound, interesting, unique, cool experiences that do have this common thread. they are pulling me in a certain direction. they are so significant, and if I hadn’t taken those risks, I would be living in a completely different way.

and I think one thing that really was a unique perspective that drew me in this week was about how art is not about thinking something up — rather, it is about getting something down. it’s not the doing, it’s the receiving. (I wrote about this more in from force to flow) instead of reaching for something, we’re engaged in the listening. and I think that’s such a perfect way to frame the experiences I’ve been through in the last four years. a deep listening.

my journey from a career perspective is pretty fricken cool. as I’ve tried to capture what these past few years have been like, I just keep hearing: my life makes no sense and perfect sense at the same time. it often makes no sense, and then — of course. of course these things are happening. of course these moments are aligning. of course I go into a business conversation last week, and while I’m walking out the door wrapping up the conversation, the CEO drops a piece of information that is laughable. of course I’ve been drawn to this individual and their business. and there is this thread that has been so persistent in my life for the last four years that gets looped into this completely separate business, and I’m like, of course this is happening.

and I can tie it back to an exact moment — I’m on a hike with a friend this last december, writing down notes in my phone. his career developed at deloitte, big four consulting background, and he had said: “write down these words. these are your skills. these are the things you need to define and make sure people know you do.” and one of those specific things he gave me in this more formal business language is the exact path that is coming to life right now. this new potential project would be that exact thing. I could find the words in my notes app. I can truly feel into that exact moment, I know where I was on the hike writing it down, as if I knew that moment was going to be significant later.

now, as it has arrived, I feel all in on it. I feel lit up by it. I feel excited by it. and there is a part of my knowing — when I woke up this morning — being like, oh. I know I am meant to pursue so many of these things, and they may not actually pan out, but I am meant to emotionally and mentally just fully go all in on this excitement, because it’ll lead me wherever I’m meant to go next.

and that is the listening. the true engagement of the listening, the flow that this book has talked about for weeks.

and I’m really happy to say I’ve leaned away from perfectionism which week seven attempts to pull you away from. in fact, I have gone forward with rolling out undrstory in its imperfect form, which IS its perfect form. the imperfection is the perfection. the rough draft is the starting point.

which brings me to side quests.

it’s become popular in social media and online content — these kind of random, offbeat pursuits that are maybe not your thing, or the thing, or the main thing. and I find myself, in this career journey, having gone down these kind of hilarious, random side quests and experiences.

it’s not the career, it’s not the skill, but — how fun that I got to be a cook at a cafe. how fun that I got to open a wine bar. how fun that I got to take international museum consultants on a tour of kauai, meeting with executive directors of major tourism attractions, nonprofits, and businesses around the island. to also having dinners with council members, and now with an upcoming election, I’m like — oh, I’ve sat and had dinner with that council member. I’ve sat and had a meeting with this mayoral candidate in this very informal yet professional manner. and I’ve walked into a gathering rubbing shoulders with politicians and community leaders as they talked about developments on the north shore.

the randomness of things I have learned, touched, engaged with, and become aware of — I think it’s SO fun to have this information, this inside view of a vast array of things. I’m wired for it, honestly. as a 5/1 generator — the investigator, the problem solver — I love collecting information precisely because it primes me to solve problems I haven’t even encountered yet.

so this week, although the exercises weren’t quite the medicine I needed, their own version already formed for me. a version of it came to life naturally — just not in the form the book intended. the very first task this week was to make this phrase a mantra to lean into: “treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.”

it didn’t quite land for me. and again, it’s not anything against this book — it’s just how interesting that these themes are getting woven into my life in their own version. as if they have their own soul, their own life, their own creativity. and how cool that a unique version exists for me.

because instead, there is one phrase I have been saying on repeat. like again and again. in circles, on walks, out loud, inside, and so on. I’ve been listening to it nonstop. it is lighting me up, it is exciting me, it is keeping me curious. it is:

everything is always working out for me.

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everything is always working out for me. and because things are always working out for me — how can I better tap into the things that I do want to happen? what are those things that will work out for me? because I know they will, because everything is always working out for me.

it is this beautiful nine-minute audio clip of abraham hicks, and it is activating something powerful in me — a trust, a clarity, a natural high that feels so good. and so I thought it was fascinating: I was already in this relationship with this mantra when the task this week was a different mantra, and I was like, it’s okay. it’s not this one, because I have the one I need this week, and this is what it is. this one is mine.

so for me, I’m learning the imperfection is beautifully aligning. the course does not need to come through in a prescribed way. it does not need to match the experiences of others. in fact, it’s actually more beautiful to come through in its own unique way that is exactly what I need — because everything is always working out for me. so of course, this is happening in the exact way it should. and how beautiful.

everything is always working out for me. all of our unique versions get to come through with their own life, their own edge. because everything is always working out for me, for you, for us. we may have an expectation or idea of what a course, a class, a moment, or an experience is meant to be. yet — can we hold the knowing that everything is always working out for us, such that we can trust that the version we receive is the exact version that is meant for us? because everything. is. always. working out for me.

~ start from the beginning of the 12-week course:

i rushed to the beach. the corner i knew had cell service. eager in a way that felt almost urgent.

fifteen minutes later i was standing on the rocks, arms wide, breeze on my face, head thrown back giggling.

of course. of course this is my abundance code.

i spent years trying to figure out what i wanted to do with my career. four years deep in the exploration, wiggling my way into eight businesses, each one arriving in my lap like an invitation i couldn’t ignore. could i do this business? what about this one? is this the one for me? i said yes, i explored, i dove in, i twisted and twirled and stepped in and stepped out and flew around — and the whole time, in the back of my mind, i kept thinking: if only i had a business i was truly passionate about. if only there was something so clear, so obvious, that i would just know. i kept thinking of a product, an offering, a physical space — some tangible thing to make it real. and meanwhile i kept investigating, kept digging into the things that lit me up, researching the latest happenings in business, who’s pushing the edge, who’s doing something different, who accidentally landed in the thing that made them, where did the idea come from, could i get my idea, what would it look like?

i always said i’d like something like business consulting. but it was never quite just that.

then i was sitting in a café in LA, eating a delicious sandwich with a friend, telling her about this ongoing itch — how i’d always had this desire to own a business, if only i felt passionate enough about something to actually do it. and she looked at me and said: that’s unique, you know. most people don’t want to own a business. if you have that desire, you should just do it.

and i had this quiet moment of — oh. that’s true. that’s actually so me. i’ve always been the one leaning in while everyone else backs away.

i’ve followed jordan younger longer than almost any creator i can name — she’s the only account i pay for to this day. i found her when i entered LMU interested in food as medicine, she had just launched the blonde vegan, and something in me said yes, follow this. since then she has gone to the depths and back a million times over and i have watched every single era.

a few weeks ago she released her frequency code and it cracked something open in me — a new way of understanding my astrology and human design that landed so precisely it felt like the next level had just switched on. i told everyone i loved about it.

so when week six of the artist’s way arrived — the week on recovering a sense of abundance — and jordan released her abundance code the same week, the giddiness was immediate. and when i read it standing on those rocks, arms wide, i finally understood why.

my frequency code: the revealer. because every part of the formula points to the same thing — i am the person who names what’s actually there. i don’t operate at the surface. i operate in the places most people are too carefully managed to inhabit publicly. my career is built on going there and saying what i find.

and the undrstory mission, written independently, weeks before i read either code:

undrstory works where most advisors don’t go — beneath the strategy, beneath the narrative, into the dynamics that are actually running your business. we name what’s true. we help you lead from there.

i didn’t design undrstory to match my codes. they just kept pointing at the same thing.

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the week the abundance code dropped, something else was already in motion. i’d been feeling this pull toward visibility — not broadcasting, but sharing the real arc. the winding road that actually led to undrstory. not just the business but the how, the why, the how did we even get here. everyone who has checked in since the launch has heard the same thing from me: i know my clients will come through my network. i just need to be more visible.

so i wrote a three part series on instagram. the story, the development, the road. it’s all there if you want it. (one, two, three)

so what was my abundance code?

the visible depths.

i earn by going further than anyone else will go — and letting that be known. i am built for depth, and depth requires being seen. every placement in the code says the same thing: the depth is real, but it only pays when it’s visible.

only when it’s visible.

fear lives here too, of course. i can be excited and hopeful 75% of the time and that other 25% is a full spiral — who do i think i am for doing this, how did i get so far off track, is this really possible? and so on. we feel her. we move through her with grace.

because julia cameron said it better than i could: “what we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. when we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.”

undrstory is me. it is who i have always been.

it just took some time to get there.

the truth has its own timeline.

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missed the last one? on giggles, flow, and the universe doing bits.

want to go deeper into the artist's way series? start with:

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“is it supposed to be this fun and random?” i can hear her smile on the phone between giggles making their way out.

yes. yes it is.

she's been living in the flow for six months now, and the joy pouring out of her is contagious. i’m brought back to sitting on the lawn in hanalei, sipping matcha with a friend, laughing about the many random jobs that kept appearing for me. one after the other. often and unexpected. so easy, we’d dissolve into laughter about it.

my life makes no sense and perfect sense all at once.

this is what the artist’s way means by finding the river and saying yes to its flow. not some philosophical idea. this. the giggles. the randomness that actually works. the things arriving without you forcing them into being. i read the quote this week — “recovery is the process of finding the river and saying yes to its flow, rapids and all” — and felt something relax in me. i love the river. the rapids. the flow. it’s not something i’m trying to access anymore. it has been lived. it is the giggles on the lawn. the matcha spilling because we’re laughing too hard.

a friend and i were just talking about what it feels like to have a secret language with someone. that flirtatious knowing that exists between you and another party. the giddy, playful energy of an inside joke only two people are in on.

pennies are my secret language with the universe.

truly flirtatious little winks in our private joke. and on saturday, following the random flow of the day with my partner — one penny walking the dogs, one outside the thrift store, one in a newly paved beach parking lot — i was joyous and buzzing, riding the high of the four library pennies the day before.

we stopped into the grocery store on the drive home. at the self-checkout line: one penny. walking to our station: a second. i glanced over and spotted a third between a stranger’s feet, dissolving into hushed giggles as my partner scanned our items. i told him in a whisper, barely containing it.

then we turned to leave and he burst out laughing.

a fourth penny. waiting for him.

the tune of *it's raining men* started playing in my head. it's raining pennies. seven pennies in one day! i was giddy beyond belief. calm and happy and permanently smiling, laughing at something most people around me couldn’t see.

the biggest shift i’m noticing while working through the 12-week course isn’t that i’ve learned something new. it’s that everything i’ve been reading, hoping, trying to understand for years — it’s landed. fully. in my body.

it’s no longer a theory. it’s just true.

the artist’s way reminded me this week: we must learn to let the flow manifest itself where it will, not where we will it.

a past version of me was trying to make things happen. now i’m watching things happen and saying yes. giggling along the way.

the pennies aren’t a reward for good behavior. they’re evidence that the supply is endless. that magic isn’t scarce. that when i stop gripping — when i stop trying to will it into being the way i think it should arrive — it arrives anyway. differently. better. sometimes four at a time in a grocery store while your partner and you crack up at the self-checkout stumbling out of the store.

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what’s your secret language with the universe — and when did you last let yourself giggle about it?

missed the last one?

I tried this hike two weeks ago and turned back half a mile from the peak. I was dehydrated, underprepared, and somewhere in my body I just knew it wasn’t time. I turned around without fighting it.

Yesterday was different. I woke up nourished and excited, had breakfast and matcha, packed extra water and a snack I didn’t even end up needing. Just knowing it was there felt like enough. There was a pep in my step I hadn’t had the first time, and something in me said today was the day.

The ascent continued for 3 miles — over a thousand feet of elevation gain, water breaks in the shade, lizards darting across the path. Most of it follows the paved road toward the Hollywood Sign, but once that turnout comes, the Wisdom Tree trail breaks off into something rawer. Dry dirt, open sky, one real peak left to climb.

And then there she was.

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The Wisdom Tree is a solitary pine that survived an 800-acre fire of 2007 as its sole survivor. People come to her for wisdom, for a moment of stillness, for the 360-degree view of everything beneath her. She was stunning. Everything felt peaceful in her presence.

Below her sat a pile of journals filled with notes from strangers — gratitude, encouragement, grief, humor, prayer. Two boxes packed with more private notes tucked into her roots by people who made the climb and wanted to leave something behind.

As I was reading through them, two hikers arrived at the tree. One placed his hand on the trunk right away. The other walked past it. His friend reached back and grabbed his arm: wait, no, you have to touch the tree.

Every single person who made it up that mountain reached out and touched her. We all want a little hope, trust, beauty, and magic. We all want to touch the thing that feels real.

So I sat down and wrote a note for a stranger, something I hoped would find whoever needed it. And then I wrote one for myself.

Week four of The Artist’s Way talks about the phrase we use in business: put it in writing. Contracts, agreements, deals. Why don’t we do the same with our agreements with the universe, with the creator, with ourselves?

There’s also a passage that stopped me mid-page this week.

“Just as travelers on a jet are seldom aware of their speed unless they hit a patch of turbulence, so too travelers on the artist’s way are seldom aware of the speed of their growth.”

I had never taken a moment to think about that before, but something really resonated. Because I’ve been on a jet for months, maybe even years, looking out the window and wondering why nothing seemed to be moving. How do I still not know what’s next? But maybe I’ve been moving all along. Maybe the growth was happening even when I couldn’t see it.

So I wrote my commitment down in writing, supported by her roots.

Today is my last day in LA, wrapping up two weeks that felt intuitively led from start to finish. And today I’m launching something that has been quietly building in me for years.

It’s called undrstory — a strategic advisory for leaders who feel the drag, sense the drift, and know something important isn’t being said beneath the surface of their business. I find it. I name it. I help you lead from there, with the kind of calm that makes hard things easier to face.

I trust it. I’m open and excited and curious about what comes next.

We’re live and feeling extra alive!

→ undrstory.ink

The Wisdom Tree survived because her roots went deeper than the fire could reach. I've had these roots my whole life. I'm just finally letting them grow above ground.

What commitment can you make to your own creative soul? try putting it in writing and tapping into whatever wisdom and magic is around you.

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Am I the only one living a different reality here?

I’ve extensively studied every chart there is about myself. Human Design, Astrology, Gene Keys. Values assessments. Career assessments. Akashic record readings. I’ve re-listened to my recordings. I’ve combed through my notes over and over again. Maybe this time I’ll see something different?

I tell myself each time that I’m learning more about myself — and I am — but honestly there isn’t much new. Some part of me keeps hoping one of them will point somewhere different. Will give me permission to be a different kind of person than the one I already know I am.

They never do. Every single one comes back to the same thing. There’s no escaping it.

I just keep avoiding naming it boldly.

I even find myself hesitating to type it. I am an intuitive business strategist at heart. At my core. Always. Strategist, consultant, advisor, mentor, problem solver, leader. I have a particular ability to see what’s actually happening underneath — the roots that connect it all, the currents running beneath every meeting and decision that may not be visible above ground yet.

For years, I would see something and assume it was obvious to everyone else, that people knew but weren’t willing to say it. I would wait until it was ripping at the seams, desperate to be named. Then I’d finally find the confidence to say it. And I’d say it to the person who actually had the authority to address it.

It often doesn’t land well. It lands like a mirror. A confrontation with the hard thing they deep down know is true but aren’t yet ready to face. They may dismiss it, tell me to think smaller, push back with false hope. I leave it be.

And then it happens exactly the way I said it would. And then they thank me.

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I was 14, a freshman. I stood up, walked across that field, and pulled my coach aside. I told him he’d had an attitude since warm-ups. That his energy was ruining the last game for the seniors. That we needed him as our coach. To encourage us, pump us up, send us into the second half ready to win.

He did not receive it well. He walked to the parking lot pouting, refusing to coach us. He sulked while we played without him.

We won. I assisted the game-winning goal. A few weeks later he found me in the hallway: I’m sorry. Thank you for saying what I needed to hear. He even brought it up again at my senior graduation banquet.

That story has repeated itself more times than I can count.

The manager who flatly disagreed when I said we were about to have a full multi-department reorganization — we reorganized within two weeks and he came back asking who on the exec team had tipped me off. No one. The walk down a SF alley where I told my manager he needed to stop running small markets on Zoom calls and actually show up for the one he kept calling the highest priority. He defended his focus and shut me down. He pulled me aside a few days later: you were right, we’re handing off the smaller markets, I’ll be here with you. The strategic questions leadership kept dismissing, each one pointing at the same thing — what is product actually doing? I finally wrote it in an email. Asked plainly whether our new COO was ready to take a stand against product leadership. In less than five days, the co-founder heading product stepped down.

Every time. I see it. I say it. It lands wrong. Then it happens. Then someone thanks me.

For a long time I let this be a hidden feature. I’d take an ops role, a product role, an associate director title, whatever — and the real work, the real impact, would show up sideways. I’d be in the middle of building something, planning a launch, discussing strategy, mapping timelines, and suddenly I’m the person in the room naming the thing that’s been blocking everything. The thing no one wanted to say. The thing people weren’t sure they could agree with — because agreeing with it means there’s more work than anyone wanted to admit. A bigger overhaul than feels safe. A challenge to the story the business has been telling itself.

Sometimes we prefer to ignore the thing, hoping it isn’t true.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the read that feels so obvious to me is often genuinely hard for others to connect. The dots aren’t visible to them the way they are to me. And yet — once named, it changes everything. The direction. The momentum. The tension in the room.

So I kept doing more assessments. More chart re-reads. Hoping for a different answer. (I spent 2+ years testing that question across six companies.) Because some part of me thought the real answer was too much. Too direct. Too hard to package. Too risky to lead with. So I’d tuck it underneath something more legible — operations consultant, fractional operator, product systems person, I used to thrive in chaos — and let the real skill reveal itself once I’d earned enough trust to say it out loud.

But if we’ve learned anything from this particular skill, it’s that when you know something to be true and avoid saying it, the tension only builds. It festers. It waits.

So today we name it, and we own it.

The skill was never going to change. It has always been me. It is not taught. It is innately, entirely me. The charts were never going to point somewhere new — they were just giving me different languages for the same truth. And the life I’m supposed to be building is the one where I stop hiding the most useful thing I do inside something more comfortable to explain.

Something I’ve been building is almost ready. It has a name now. I’ll tell you Friday.

The readings were right. They were just waiting for me to agree.

What’s the thing every assessment, every mentor, every person who knows you well keeps pointing back to — and how long have you been pretending it’s not the answer?

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p.s. — I'm currently doing the Artist's Way with a small group through Lora. if you're curious about that journey, we're in week 4 currently. I post a weekly reflection. Follow along for more.

The practitioner paused the group and asked: what is the opposite of shame?

We sat there. Silence. A few guesses that didn’t quite land.

The answer is honor.

I’ve been sitting with that ever since — because week three of the Artist’s Way is all about recovering a sense of power, and it turns out shame is exactly where most of us are quietly leaking it.

If you're just joining — we're a quarter of the way through a 12-week Artist's Way book club. Weeks one and two are here if you want to catch up.

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the universe is listening

This week we touched on a quote I highlighted, starred, and keep coming back to:

“I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it.”

When we are aligned, tapped in, reflective, honest about who we are and what our intuition actually feels like — those delicious plans that arrive? That dream, that vision, that possibility that lights you up? It’s there because in some reality, it is a possibility we can choose. Our responsibility is simply to lean into the trust.

We also explored Jung’s description of something many of us prefer to ignore: “the possibility of an intelligent and responsive universe, acting and reacting in our interest.”

Read it again, slowly.

Whether you’re religious, praying to God, or simply open to the idea that the universe moves with us, the through-line is the same: trust. A belief that something larger is listening and responding. That’s available in any form of spirituality or relationship with a higher power.

So if a delicious plan arrives, trust that the universe will respond. It is intelligent and reactive.

the word that kept finding me

As synchronicity would have it, the word shame wove itself through my week in an unexpected way and it had an entire section waiting for me in week three of the course.

For my artist date this week, I attended a workshop at a beautiful space in downtown LA called Tea at Shiloh — somewhere I’d been following on social media for years. The event centered on Venus and where it sits in our astrological chart.

Before it began, we were asked to write down an intention for the evening. Mine said: “to honor the life path I am on.”

I didn’t think much of it in the moment. By the end of the night, I realized I had already written my own answer to a question I hadn’t been asked yet.

We often think of Venus in terms of beauty and love. But something I learned that night felt immediately, deeply right — Venus correlates directly to our values. I have Venus in Virgo. Intentionality, care, thoughtfulness. To my core, that is me.

During the group dialogue, shame surfaced. Someone shared the shame they feel around their needs and expectations. One of the practitioners paused — it was a word she’d just been exploring with a client — and she posed a question to the group:

What is the opposite of shame?

None of us could quite land on it.

It is honor.

Venus is ultimately about self-love and self-care. And when we think about power — recovering it, accessing it — the question becomes: where are we blocking our power with shame?

Where are we making ourselves small? Where are we feeling shame for feeling too much, for dreaming too big, for not being where we “should” be, for not following the expected path?

The antidote isn’t to push the shame away. It is to replace it with honor.

Honor your signals. Honor the fact that those delicious plans are arriving for a reason — because something in you, and something beyond you, wants them to come forward.

when you’re nourished, it looks like magic

That night I sat with a Venusian question: when do I feel most magnetic?

For me, magnetism arrives when I’m flowing spontaneously with the desires of the day — when it feels like the universe is alive with me.

A special skill of mine is curating magic. The facilitation that looks effortless. The gathering that feels like it just happened. The meal, the logistics, the gift, the rhythm of a day unfolding with creativity and ease. To an outside observer it might look like luck. But there is so much quiet intention happening behind the scenes to allow things to flow.

When I am nourished, all of that feels light. My errands feel fun. Easy. Magnetic. Like life is vibrating with me — like we are in a natural rhythm together.

When I am not nourished, the exact same tasks, the exact same flow of a day, can feel heavy and depleting.

So here is what I came back to this week: the antidote to shame, for me, is honoring my self-care. Honoring my practices, my rituals, the way I tend to myself. Because when I show up nourished I can access my full power. I am magnetic. I trust the responsive universe to act in my interest.

This week was, at its core, a remembrance.

A remembrance of what my power actually is. What self-care I need in order to access it. What I need to honor, instead of shame, in order to step fully into it.

And to trust: once I choose what wants to unfold, the how gets to arrive on its own.

Just like magic.

Where in your life are you shaming something that deserves to be honored instead?

Next week I'll be sharing about a special power of mine I thought I learned at work — turns out it's just always been me. Stay tuned.

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New to Changing Tides? Start here — the post that started it all.

Still thinking about the word that kept finding me last week? That one's here.

I was bouncing on the edge of a zodiac, “Me On You” by Muscadine Bloodline on blast, hair in the wind, making our way toward the Na Pali coast. We’d just passed the naval base and I could see a bar sitting right on the water, a funky dive I’d heard about for years. Friends had told me to get the yearly base pass just to check it out.

I couldn’t remember the name, so I asked the captain.

He grinned. “The service is terribly slow, but it’s a fun place. You have to go.”

I smiled and filed it away. Shenanigans. Yes. That’s exactly right.

That was a few weeks ago. Since then, the word keeps showing up — randomly, repeatedly, in completely unrelated places.

When something shows up on repeat like that, I’ve learned to pay attention. The universe is usually trying to say something.

So I stopped and actually looked at it.

Shenanigans (noun): silly, playful, or mischievous behavior — often involving tricks, pranks, or harmless deception.

Something in me immediately relaxed.

Here’s the thing about being a Capricorn stellium: life can start to feel heavy without you even noticing.

We’re the wise old souls, the calm under pressure, the ones who somehow end up holding the logistics for every situation we walk into. Natural leaders, yes, but also chronic carriers. It is genuinely rare that I am with another person and I am not the one mentally tracking the plan.

The logistics come naturally to me. But the relief I feel when I finally get to put them down — when I can soften and just be — is otherworldly.

At its worst, it feels like holding someone else’s umbrella in a sandstorm, scanning the beach for its owner while the wind picks up around me.

Capricorn energy operates best when softness and discipline live together. And when I look back honestly at the moments I’ve felt most alive, most me, they’ve almost always involved spontaneity. Play. A little bit of mischief.

Shenanigans, basically.

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For the past year or so I’ve been leaning into an archetype that feels true to something in me: a garden fairy. Quiet but capable. Making magic happen behind the scenes. Floating through lush greenery in play and exploration, feeling free and completely aligned.

She has always had a tinge of mischievous about her.

But the word shenanigans activates something even more in me, a permission slip I didn’t know I needed. Not just play. Playful mischief. The kind that has no agenda, no outcome, no logistics to hold.

The strength isn’t in carrying it all.

The strength is in the lightness.

Universe, I hear you.

More shenanigans, please!

What shenanigans are you most overdue for? Drop it in the comments — I want to know.

New to Changing Tides? Start here — the post that started it all.

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The whole week is about making space for your inner artist, protecting your time, examining what’s blocking you. And I kept reading thinking: I have all the space. I’ve been living in the space for years. I moved to a small island. I have nothing but space.

So what exactly was this course trying to tell me?

Then I landed in LA. And I understood.

my leo moon is begging for attention 🌝

Michelle, who is leading this Artist’s Way book club as a co-founder of Lora and their resident astrologer, pairs each week with an astrological sign and planet. Week Two is Leo and the Sun.

I have a Leo moon. It’s actually the one sign in my big three that for years I’d dismiss. Genuinely didn’t resonate with it.

Apologies to my moon for the neglect. Aren’t we glad we’re evolving?!

This week made something very clear: she is ready to be amplified and activated.

A Leo moon doesn’t want performance. It wants what the sun does naturally: to radiate fully, without apology, and be celebrated simply for the light it brings.

Sitting with the book club this week I realized something significant: I have spent the last couple of years creating almost entirely alone. Cooking alone. Writing alone. Adventuring alone. Painting alone. Dancing alone. Just me and my inner artist hanging out and playing every day while my partner is at work. Comfortable and happy, genuinely having the best time — but doing it quietly. Not hidden exactly. Just not actually visible or out in the world.

Something in me this week just went — ohhh. I see what’s happening here.

It is time to be visible. Time to go out into the world. Time to let the light actually land on someone.

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the energy was already moving before I realized it

It is often said that when you commit to a container, before the real work even begins, the energy starts moving through you. It did and I had set myself up for this course without even knowing it.

A few weeks ago I felt a strong intuitive pull to return to LA. Three weeks, almost completely open schedule. I booked everything within 24 hours of the realization. All the logistics landed with ease.

I arrived in LA after a few sweet days in Newport Beach, where I grew up. A comfortable landing — sweet friends, family, familiar environment. The kind of visit that fills you up before something big.

And here I was. Back in LA.

LA was where so much ignited for me. My education, my career, my confidence, my sense of what was even possible. It’s loud and crowded and always happening. After eight formative years here, I traded it in for quiet island life — years of slowing down, reshaping, reflecting, getting very still and very honest with myself.

Now I’m back. Same city, genuinely different person.

It doesn’t feel like a homecoming. It feels like something is waiting to be activated. The possibilities feel open and endless — like a room where someone just flung all the windows open at once. Every day I feel excited to eventually return to Kauaʻi, and I also know without question that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

An activation is coming. I can feel it in my bones.

I came into Week Two thinking the medicine might be somewhere else. I’m leaving it understanding the medicine was never going to arrive the way I expected.

It never does ;)

The course isn’t inviting me to make more space or reconnect with my inner artist. It’s asking what I’m actually going to do now that I have the space and a deep relationship with her. And the answer that keeps surfacing — Leo moon and all — is: stop creating in secret.

Which feels equal parts exciting and terrifying and exactly right.

Where in your life are you creating in secret — and what would it look like to finally let it be seen?

Week 1

Week 3.

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New to Changing Tides? Start here — the post that began it all.

The furthest earmark in the book now serves as a quiet little receipt of how that went: I made it a few pages into Week 2.

So — here we go. We’re trying again.

This time I’m doing it alongside Lora’s virtual book club. My hope is that actual accountability, actual humans, and actual weekly deadlines help me out. And in addition to the book club, I’m committing to writing down my real-time reactions — everything from the spiraling inner monologue to the creative sparks. All of it.

Welcome to Week 1.

If you want to join the book club, check out Lora on social media and subscribe to their Substack to join the book club group chat. See you there!

back when I signed in 2024 :)

The very first thought I had opening this book: I’ve done this before... do I have to read every word or can I skip the intro?

So we jumped ahead to start with Week 1 — cutting corners already, I guess.

A few pages in, the book asked me to complete the sentence: “I, [name], am a brilliant and prolific ______.” And I just... sat there. Shoot, why am I doing this?? Am I a Writer? Decorator? Painter? Curator? I loved crafts as a kid — does that count? I love thrifting. Can thrifting be a creative identity? Is that a thing?

“Maybe I need to sign up for a creative course to actually activate something.” — me, reading a 12-week creative course.

Then I started thinking about my mom, who went to FIDM and designed clothing for the brand my dad and her ran for most of my childhood. My dad still works in clothing. Is there something there? Am I destined to work in the clothing industry? Is design hereditary and I’ve just been... ignoring my inheritance?

Ok, back to the book. Less than two pages later I thought about my friend — a real, talented photographer and creative in so many aspects of her life — who told me recently she’s been intentionally holding herself back as a photographer. Alright, that’s it. I put the book down mid-paragraph. I sent her a voice note asking if she’d done this book and wanted to do it with me.

(Maybe this is why I only made it partially into Week 2 last time.)

The creative affirmations use the word “God” — capital G — a lot, and I found myself curious. I think I read something about this last time? I went to Catholic school for 14 years, so that word carries a certain weight. But I was almost certain there was a piece about how it doesn’t have to be — and isn’t necessarily — the literal Catholic God.

So I flipped back to the beginning — the part I had skipped, hah — and there it was, literally page one of the introduction:

“The Artist’s Way is, in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practiced through creativity... no God concept is necessary. Do not allow semantics to become one more block for you. The point is not what you name it... thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping off place.”

Ok yes, this is what I remembered. I like that idea. “Spiritual electricity.” I can work with that. I’m ready to feel the spark.

Also — the intro literally describes the book as a “creativity workshop” and a “course.” As in, I don’t need to go enroll in a class. I’m already in the course. I’ve been in the course. The course is the book. Cool, cool.

And then my favorite line of the whole chapter, one I had bookmarked from two years ago:

“We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.”

Final thought before I close the book for the day: there are a lot of tasks. Ten tasks. A three-part check-in. This is probably why I only made it to Week 2 last time. Ah man, what am I committing to?

My book club meets Thursday, and I’m getting through all of it before then. All ten tasks. The check-in. The whole thing. Committing to it in writing now, in front of you, on the internet. No pressure.

For 12 weeks, I’ll be living the land of Morning Pages and Artist Dates.

See you in Week 2.

(For real this time.)

Send your best tips & tricks!!!

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“intuitive eating”

what does it even mean?!

today, i’m breaking it down in the simplest, no-frills way possible — because spoiler: it’s way easier than you think.

grab your drink of choice & buckle up.

but first — a fun little update. i’m heading out on a 3-week journey entirely led by my intuition, leaving this friday. one week ago, i had zero idea this was the plan. yay intuition! i’ll share more about how this came to be soon, but yes — my intuition kicked the whole thing off.

so, what even is your intuition?

there are so many ways to tap into it, but here are the three things that were most approachable for me.

1. learn to sit in the quiet.

stop reaching for your phone every time there’s a moment of stillness. to hear your intuition, you have to get quiet first.

so often we’re running through life with a million tabs open, rushing from one thing to the next. do you frantically wash the dishes just to be done with them? i used to. those subtle behaviors signal to your body that you’re in a panicked state — and your body can’t tell the difference between a real threat and self-imposed dish anxiety.

next time you catch yourself scrubbing aggressively, banging pots, clanking silverware — slow down. take a breath. drop your shoulders.

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2. learn what joy feels like in your body.

once you’ve found the quiet, start noticing the small things that actually light you up. what activities make you want to sway your hips and let a little smirk sneak onto your face?

a few of mine: cooking, long nature walks, workouts, dancing, watercolor painting, thrifting, swimming in the ocean, reading.

if you’re drawing a blank, think back to what you used to do as a kid with zero supervision. that’s your starting point. tap into that feeling & follow it.

3. stay open to the unexpected.

life is not as predictable or controllable as we like to think. we can try to map things from A to Z, but life will take you somewhere even better if you let it.

the number one blocker of intuition? your logical mind. nothing about your intuition is going to be logical — and that’s exactly the point. when that sudden, clear, joyful pull shows up, trust it.

logic mind be damned.

ok but what do you actually do?

clear a couple hours in your schedule. nothing planned, no scrolling, no TV.

get in your car. before you pull out, ask yourself some yes/no questions — should i head toward the park? a coffee shop? a trail? keep going until something gives you that joyful yes in your body.

now here’s the fun part.

let’s say “grocery store” is a yes. that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going grocery shopping — just start driving that way and stay open.

on the drive, a random thought pops in. your friend bought a shirt at a store near that grocery store once. you pass it. something sparks — you turn in.

you’re wandering the store when you overhear a sales associate mention a farm stand 20 minutes in the other direction. your body lights up. you’re already back in the car.

the drive over is stunning. sunset colors, music on, hand out the window, easy sway in your shoulders. pure bliss.

you pull up to the farm stand and spot a fresh sourdough loaf. joy level: maximum.

you drive home, slice it up, let the butter melt into the warm crust, and take that first crunchy bite. you’re swaying, twirling a little, just glowing.

your partner walks in, sees you lit up, and joins the kitchen dance.

you end the night on the couch, snuggled up, completely content.

that is your intuition at work — leading you back to accessible, everyday joy.

once you know what it feels like, you practice it. you clear two hours every week. eventually, it becomes how most days flow.

and one day, mid-conversation with someone, you get a sudden spark to take a 3-week trip to LA and orange county — and the joy is so alive that you can’t say no. you know this feeling. you trust it. so off you go.

los angeles, orange county, long beach friends — i’m coming!!

i’ll be bopping around carlsbad, tustin, newport beach, long beach, hollywood, and santa monica. i know this trip is tied to something new for work, and i have some ideas — but i also know the real reason i’m going might be something i haven’t even thought of yet.

something is waiting for me out there. i’ll report back.

if you want to connect or have a spot i should check out — send it my way!

much love, xoxo

Every few days the sun clears and I think, Ah. There it is. I’ve figured it out. Then the clouds roll back in and I realize I’m still somewhere in the storm.

An idea reveals itself to me, and I feel the warmth of excitement and potential. I feel alive and activated by its presence. Then the wind rushes in and the rain surprises me.

The consistency of storms, and the tease of those glorious summer days, make me want to find a safe harbor to hide. Maybe this harbor keeps me safe from the rain. Surely the sun will shine brighter here.

But I also know summer is around the corner.

Keep weathering the storms so that I can truly bask in the most nourishing summer yet.

So I sit in the cycle: the warm sun, the chilling breeze, the flooding rains—until the sun reappears and a rainbow reminds me the sun is near, just to do it all again.

This is the cycle I sit in as I navigate inching closer to a threshold in my career and greater abundance. I am right in that moment of transformation, at the edge of a major threshold leading to something new.

It’s a constant game of expansion and contraction.

Expansion into the openness and potential of all that could come next—the excitement, the different visions, the dreams, the threads I’m pulling on, and where those could be leading.

Then comes the contraction, when new information comes through, or I have an insight, or I hear a conversation, or a random moment happens that makes me realize:

Oh okay, not that one.

I compare it most to the flirty stage of dating. You’re not quite ready to settle, but you’re in that exciting phase where the new guy at the bar makes you feel something and you think, Ooh… what about a future with this guy? You make up a whole story about how grand and great it could be.

Then three days later you’re like, Ah… no. Never mind. He’s a bit boring.

It feels a bit similar to that. When I look at different business opportunities, I open myself to the potential of a future with it, then it quickly shifts. Each time you check in with me, the vision and plan has likely shifted.

Excitement—as your eyes get wide and you perk up a bit.

Then… a small letdown, where your body droops and that spark in your eyes fades.

In those moments of contraction—when the “no” lands or an idea closes, but the new one hasn’t formed yet—you end up in a strange in-between space.

It’s easy to feel defeated.

Ugh. Am I just doing this wrong? Am I being too picky? Do I care too much about what I’m doing? Am I being dumb? Is this a waste of time?

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People often try to remind me that work is work.

That damn annoying phrase. Get it outta here.

Yet sometimes it gets to me. Why do I have to find something that feels more fulfilling? Why do I have to follow this gut knowing that there’s something else out there for me? Why can’t I just deal with work as work?

This constant push and pull.

A few weeks ago, I started opening myself up to the expansion of two exciting ideas. I mapped out what a 3–5 year plan could actually look like—what the progression might be—and allowed myself to really feel into it. It felt clear and strong.

Then, all in one day, the closing came.

To start my morning, I had a call scheduled with a founder of a company that fit nicely into this 3–5 year plan. The founder didn’t show up.

This became information that made me step back for a moment. Is this really the company that fits?

She did follow up later and apologized for a personal matter—but it was too late. The information had already landed and the energy had shifted. It wasn’t a fit anyway.

Later that day, I worked an event for some extra cash and motivation in the meantime. It was a catering event, and the dinner we were hosting was actually for a group of tech guys—seven of them building an AI company.

One of their employees was explaining how they don’t step away from their computers from 6 AM to 3 AM. After being there for three days, one of the guys looked at him and said: “What island are we on again?”

What island are you on?!

This still baffles me weeks later.

I’m all for the grind and the hustle. But it also needs to be embodied and grounded.

I love tech and the complexity and intrigue of AI, but it was such a contrast to sit there and witness them. Tech startups sat prominently in that 3–5 year plan, but as I worked around their energy and listened to their dialogue, I felt a bit of an ick.

If you are so absorbed in the chaos of what you’re building that you can’t even remember literally where in the world you are…

I don’t want it.

I even asked them what they were building, because “AI company” means nothing these days, and they couldn’t even capture the mission. The guy I asked actually deflected the question to another guy, and his answer was equally vague.

What are you even fighting for if you can’t name it?

For me, that moment didn’t show me that I dislike tech or ambition. It revealed the heaviness and flurry that can exist in business. When you are so blindly in it—firing on all cylinders, burning out, pushing your limits—but you’ve truly lost the plot. You’ve lost what you’re actually driving toward.

Instead, you consume yourself in the satisfaction that what you’re doing must be important, cool, or sexy because you are working so hard.

Because hard work (and AI) means success.

It does not.

I’ve been reading What’s Your Dream? by Simon Squibb, and one of the key concepts he opens the book with is that working hard is not the problem. The problem is believing that hard work alone guarantees success or fulfillment.

He writes:

“The problem isn’t that hard work is a bad thing. The problem is making hard work the end goal. Saying that if you embrace it, then you are bound to succeed.

Spreading the idea that it’s working hard, rather than working on our dreams, that will bring fulfillment.

This mindset tells you that you don’t have to think. That you should simply put your head down and get on with the task at hand. Work hard and the rest will look after itself.

That’s why I have a problem with the gospel of hard work before all else. Because it tells us NOT to dream. Not to pursue our biggest ideas and deepest ambitions if there is an element of risk about it. Not to step off the treadmill and think about what we really want from life.”

Later he adds:

“We don’t succeed by forcing ourselves to work hard as some kind of punishment. In fact, we achieve the most when we work smart, and when we are working on something we really want to do. When we are following a dream that lifts and propels us, rather than banging our heads against the door of hard work for its own sake.”

When I read that, something in me relaxed.

Because the question I keep asking myself right now isn’t How do I work harder?

It’s: What dream am I actually working toward?

And for those who know me and my ongoing little “winks from the universe”…

That passage happened to land on page 17.

Back at the dinner, there was a third insight that came through. The woman I was working the event with started chatting with me about one of the other pieces of that vision—the final piece that hadn’t been shattered or rained on yet.

This off-the-cuff conversation poked right at that final idea. What she was saying was true. The opportunity I was looking at did not match the lifestyle I want, or the energy of the business I want to build.

The version I was considering would be 24/7 on. Chaos. Heads down putting out fires.

All the things I am actively trying to step away from.

I felt myself deplete… again.

That final idea—the one that rounded out the vision—was also not a fit.

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With big expansion can come an equally big contraction.

So the following morning, I sat in the contraction. I allowed myself to be a bit sad about it.

In those moments of grey skies and looming storms, I find myself back at the same question.

Do I walk backwards to the safe shed—wet, tired, and cold—just so I can feel safe again?

Or do I allow the rainbow and the small speck of sunshine on the horizon to encourage me to keep moving forward?

Do I keep fighting for the life I want to build?

The career and abundance I know is possible elsewhere?

New ideas have come and gone over the last few weeks. Each one arriving like a break in the clouds, warming everything for a moment before the rain returns.

And I’m starting to realize something.

The storms aren’t a sign that I’m lost.

They’re a sign that I’m moving.

Each burst of rain washes away another idea that wasn’t mine to carry. Each flash of sunlight reveals another possibility.

I’m not standing still in bad weather.

I’m crossing a threshold.

And thresholds are rarely crossed in perfect weather.

2025 is coming to a close, which means many of us are already looking ahead to 2026 with dreams, visions, and hope. Inevitably, we feel nudged to make a list of things to achieve, or build a vision board to manifest it all.

I’ve gone through many seasons of vision boards, and I’ve always loved the creative flow of building them. I feel excitement bubbling up already for all that 2026 has in store.

As we’ve seen all over social media, 2025 was the year of the snake. Lots of shedding. Letting go. Releasing. For many of us, that meant a thinning and contraction. Not exactlyyy what we would have mapped out on our 2025 vision boards.

2026 is the year of the horse. Momentum. Movement. Powering forward.
2025 made S P A C E in our lives.
2026 expands into it.

As I started to feel the energy shift over the last week or so, I felt ready to dream again.

2026 is looking like a year of big travel.
2025 had insane amounts of travel.
2024 had lots of travel too.

I think I just love to travel.

Even living on the most remote island chain in the world, I still book the flights. I still say yes to the adventure. Or the celebration.

So I opened Pinterest to start building my vision board.

At first, it felt exciting. But then…

It felt forced.
It was strategic. Ew.
It lacked creativity.
It lacked dreams.
It left no room for the unknown.

I searched the names of places I knew I would be going in 2026. I second guessed the images I chose.

Well, I’m not sure I’d actually go to this spot.
I don’t know if we’d find an event like this in that city.

No. Nope. No.

So wrong!

The whole point is to tap into surrender and maximize creativty. Making room for the unknown. Letting images that speak to my soul unfold without explanation. Because somewhere, in some timeline, the pull exists for a reason. The universe is already conspiring.

Manifestation doesn’t come from careful calculation. It doesn’t come alive when we double check that it’s possible (hah!), or add layers of protection so it doesn’t feel too risky or too far out of reach.

I lost the vision.

So I stopped.

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This is one of my greatest gifts. When something feels off, I don’t force it forward.

(probably sounding like a broken record here if you’ve been following along…but it’s important!!)

I listen.

I tune into the discomfort. I get curious about the sensations.

Am I clenching my body?
Am I annoyed?
Do I feel nauseous?
Does it feel like too much work to move forward?

I test and I learn.

I know what a full yes feels like. But I think it’s even more important to know what a no feels like . To recognize when the signals are flagging you down and saying we need a pause. Or a redirection. Or a full shift.

The hardest part is that I never know what is going to happen instead.

If not this, then what?
If I stop, what could possibly unfold next if I don’t initiate it?

Welcome to the unknown.

The beautiful, confusing, electric middle space that’s often foggy, but it is where something new is forming and we have no idea what it is yet.

And this is the biggest unlock.

This is the moment you stay.

Not going back to comfort.
Not going back to easy.
Not going back to what always was.

You lean on the knowing that where you were was a no.

That’s all you get to know at this point in time. And it is enough!

You don’t yet know what the yes is. And that’s where trust is tested.

The biggest shifts in my life have always come from saying no to one thing in favor of the unknown.

I never know what’s next.

And somehow, magic keeps showing up.

I’ve applied to one job in the last three years. I got it with ease.

I got a job from a random group chat introduction. One message turned into a year of work.

I received an out-of-the-blue LinkedIn DM from someone I worked with seven years earlier. That became an eight-month consulting role.

I was invited for tea at a woman’s house. That led to a nine-month job.

One day, I casually browsed companies. The third company that popped into my mind out of thin air - they had one opening that sparked my interest. I read it and I knew it was mine. I negotiated a salary twenty thousand dollars higher than the original offer and a higher title… with ease!

Every single one of these came after choosing the unknown instead of forcing certainty.

But, hi, hello, I am back to that middle space —

So today, I don’t have a job.

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I chose to leave the last one because it transformed into a no. It felt a bit off from day one, but my internal signals said not yet. There were lessons there. Necessary ones. And I’m grateful.

Now, I sit in the unknown.

And wowie, is it hard.

So I return to the remembering.

The no was real. Magic is my norm. Everything is already in motion.

If something in your life feels like a no right now, maybe that’s not the problem. Maybe that’s the doorway.

If you’re standing in a no with nothing lined up yet, stay. That space is doing more than you think.

I don’t know what’s next. I just know the no was real. And somehow, that’s always been enough.

Happy holidays & cheers to an expansive & epic year ahead! ♥️

This post couldn’t come quick enough. I haveee to share my little secret that brings me SO much joy in my life. And it’s so simple!

I’m sharing this because I truly believe life gets more magical when we decide to pay attention.

In order for you to catch these signs, you do need to believe in the magic. You must trust that such simple happenings or things can be a sign!!

So why am I dying to share this with you today?

It happened again! As it does. Just about daily. It makes me smile every time and I feel joy fill my body each time. Who wouldn’t want that?!

So what happened? One of my two favorite signs from the universe appeared.

I logged on this morning and, because I’m human and curious, I checked out how my Substack was performing after my latest post. And There. It. Was!

My sign!

My profile has had 171 views in the last 30 days.

171 — a combination of 1s and 7s.

Of fricken course. Yipeeee! 😄☺️

17 is my lucky number. It arrives in any combination of 1s and 7s but most often as 17.

Why 17? I have no idea, but I have to assume it is derived from my birthday which is 7/11… or was that also part of the magic?

After all, I was an emergency c-section 1 month early because maybe my soul reallyyy wanted those 1s and 7s in my birthdate and August wouldn’t cut it?? haha we won’t fully go there this time ;)

My other favorite sign is a penny! Yes, a 1-cent penny, which — if you haven’t heard the news — the production of pennies was officially shut down forever this month. That means the last penny ever produced will have the year 2025 on it. I can’t wait to find one! I’ll be sure to report back :)

Pay attention to the subtle things

I didn’t seek out these signs intentionally. As I began to grow in my spiritual practice and calm my nervous system, I became more present.

And look, I’m not perfect. No one is; I still scroll on my phone and watch TV before bed.

The biggest unlock was when I started to look at all pieces of my life as little symbols, signs, pings, and info about this magically cosmic universe. What if everything — or anything — had subtle meaning to us?

The more you explore the potential that we are all cosmically tied together — from the elements, the animals, the objects, the people, and so on — the more you can open your mind to the possibility that that penny in your path IS a sign.

Or when I ring up at a store and the total is $17.17… maybe this isn’t just a coincidence?

I can’t remember what finally clicked for me, but I just started to notice the number 17 was appearing more and more in my life. So the next time it appeared at random, I felt excitement. That excitement felt like the reaction the universe had been waiting to receive! As more excitement came forward, and as I started to tell my friends about it, the more 17 appeared.

Once I realized 17 felt impactful for me, I looked back on my life and noticed patterns. My high school soccer jersey was 17. I started one of my most impactful jobs on April 17th.

What do these signs mean?

For me, these are subtle little nods from the universe that I am exactly where I’m meant to be. I am on track. I am aligned. The universe is paying attention. I am paying attention.

I never really take it further than that. They’re subtle. They’re sweet.

They ignite joy within me.

My heart feels like it expands and lights up each time I see a penny or any combination of 1s and 7s.

It really doesn’t need to be more than that.

Simple.

Effective.

Joy-inducing.

How fun?!

My favorite one I saw the other day while driving:

I mean c’mon! How epic that something so simple as 177 can spark so much joy on a simple drive home… then pair it with “YAY.” Epic. Magic. SO fun!

Do not obsessively search for it

Magic avoids pressure; it arrives in softness.

There are some similar themes here to the forcing, gripping, and making something happen as I shared earlier this week.

I love a lucky penny. I find them often and randomly.

BUT, when I seek it out, I do not find it.

When I walk around with my eyes down scanning the ground for a penny, it won’t be there.

When I step out of my car in an area that makes sense for a penny to be — so I give it a quick scan, hunting, reaching for a penny to appear — it won’t.

The moment I stop looking, it appears.

I recently told you about my trip to Maui. What I didn’t share is that when I pulled up to my friend’s house there were 2 pennies stuck in the window of her garage next to the driver-side door. I found 4 more pennies during my time on Maui.

This last week alone, I found multiple pennies dailyy from Wednesday to Sunday — 5 days in a row!

And on that 6th day, I soo badly wanted to keep up the streak that — you guessed it — none appeared.

So I let it go.

And on the 7th day, I went on a walk and caught up with a friend on the phone… I found two pennies throughout the walk!

We must release our obsession and our gripping for some specific thing to occur in order for us to be on the right path, making progress in our career, or feeling like we’re doing the right thing.

Time and time again, I am reminded that forcing things is out of alignment for me. That needing to find a penny or see 17 as a permission to feel happy, at ease, on the path, and progressing… leads to a block.

When we hold things that tightly, we block the universal energy from flowing through us freely and openly — and without attachment.

It is only when we tap into that surrender, trust, and openness that the magic returns.

P.S. While writing this, I took a quick break to update information on my car insurance policy and the number 17 appeared 🥰

Have fun! Play with it! Ask for the signs!

The most important rule — maybe in all of life?? — please have fun with it! It really isn’t that serious. It’s simple. It’s fun.

They’re fun winks from the universe.

They appear when you stop reaching and digging for them.

When you relax into flow, ease, and stay present, they appear unexpectedly.

Then, when they appear, it sparks this little jolt inside of you. It’s like the little child in you comes alive and you’re in awe of this beautiful life. It’s like the joy children feel seeing bubbles blow past.

It’s nothing more than that. Just a fleeting moment of joy, awe, and a little child’s squeal inside… then you continue on.

The more you allow life to spark that joy inside of you, the more the universe will send it to you.

And if you still aren’t convinced… I highly recommend giving this book a read. (Warning: I cried every single damn chapter because it was sooo emotionally touching and beautiful.)

The universe is always sending you messages if you are present enough to notice them and curious enough to allow simple happenings to be full of magic.

What tiny things already show up in your life that might be little winks from the universe?

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Life is magical and the way this all played out was comical.

Let me start from the beginning…

I keep having this repeat conversation with so many people. It always circles back to the belief that you must do something in order to get something. It sounds like: “I can’t just sit on my couch doing nothing and assume the thing I desire will happen.”

It’s the classic discomfort with surrender. Eyes rolling at the concept.

“Yeah, riiight. Sure. But I still have to go make. it. happen.”

This reaction seems to be rooted in the belief that our desires require effort, output, logic, correlation, and linear steps in order to arrive.

Look, I get it. It’s logical. It’s what we’ve been taught. It can be really hard to imagine we are actually worthy of receiving without doing.

But what if I told you that you can lean back on your couch, surrender, and still receive everything you desire?

Let me explain.

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Forcing the outcome

I recently tested this idea, completely unintentionally.

I went straight into logic-mode, full force instead of flow, until life snapped me out of it.

If you’ve been following along, you know I wasn’t happy working with a recent company. I’ll spare the details for now. What matters is: I waited to leave until it was truly time. (read: my intuition finally said I could leave)

And let me tell ya, I checked in with my intuition almost weekly. For months, the answer was “not yet.” So I kept going, kept learning, testing, & refining, until I finally got the green light.

I wrapped my last day on Halloween, then flew to Maui for a week-long solo trip at a friend’s house while she traveled.

It was my first week officially unemployed with no solid plan.

Naturally, the pressure set in. I felt like I needed to leave Maui with a big revelation, a networking moment, a job lead — something that qualified as progress toward my next chapter.

On my fifth day there, I decided the “productive” thing I could do was finally publish my personal website. I’ve had a draft sitting in the ethers for 2+ years. Surely this was the time.

It was a Friday night. I had adventured all day. I figured a 1–2 hour revamp would get it to a “good enough” place so I could leave Maui having done something.

Well… I hated every second of it.

Absolute frustration. Classic not-self theme in Human Design ;)

The more I edited, the messier it got.

So I closed my laptop and decided to call it a night.

I had one more full day to try again.

I planned a cute morning: a little flow, morning cacao, a little sunshine, then a matcha at a sweet coffee shop where I would magically fall into productivity.

Yes. Perfect. That would get me in the flow. Plan set.

Around noon the next day, I made my way to the café, ordered my matcha, opened my laptop…

And somehow? It was worse than the night before.

🥴

I started feeling nauseous.

I stared at blank pages thinking maybe a clean slate would help.

Nope.

I couldn’t even finish my matcha.

I walked to a mini market nearby to buy potato chips to settle my nausea and tossed the rest of my drink.

I felt like I’d broken a promise to myself.

Disappointment washed over me. I couldn’t even launch a simple website that didn’t need to be perfect.

But beneath that was the real sting: I felt like I’d failed at making progress toward building the career of my dreams.

I believed that creating a website would give me something “official” to distribute to my network, which would then land me dream clients and unlock abundance and fulfillment.

Silly me, as if I could plan it all that way.

Here’s what I had actually convinced myself: If I take this specific action (build a website), then I will receive this specific outcome (dream clients).

A linear transaction. A one-to-one exchange.

Sound familiar?

Stepping into flow

I finally threw in the towel.

I drove the windy roads home, nibbling salty potato chips and trying to calm my nausea.

When I got home, I climbed into bed around 3 pm and put on a show.

An hour later, I felt a little better. I sat up, checked my phone, and opened Instagram. A new message popped up in my DMs.

That’s when I remembered: earlier that morning, before heading to the coffee shop, I had on a total whim replied to a dream client’s story.

It wasn’t strategic. It wasn’t planned.

It wasn’t even something I had consciously considered before that moment.

I saw their story, felt a fun playful ping , a quick hit of “wouldn’t that be cool?” and without thinking, I sent a message:

“I love what you’re building. Do you need support with XYZ? I just wrapped work with X and have space for another client.”

Then I forgot about it and went to go force myself into productivity.

So when I saw their message come through, literally minutes earlier, my body lit up.

They were asking more questions! They were interested! The conversation continued from that night and into the next morning!

As I packed up my friend’s place, did laundry, and prepared to leave for the airport, I found myself DM’ing with a dream client about timing, alignment, roles, LA travel, and eventually…

…they asked for my resume.

I spent 45 minutes revamping it - fast, intuitive, energizing - and it came out beautiful. A story. A declaration. A clarity I hadn’t felt in months.

I sent it off with pride and excitement.

The conversation moved from DM to their personal email.

Then I was off to the airport.

In the quiet moments in the Uber, through security, sitting in the airport lounge, I felt this new joy beaming from within me.

I loved the story I crafted. I felt clear. I felt capable.

I felt free.

From force to flow

The action I decided was the logical next step (build a website) led me straight into nausea, frustration, and resistance.

Instead, the random, intuitive, silly little action I took that morning - the one thrown into the ethers with no attachment - brought me exactly the momentum I needed.

I didn’t research. I didn’t plan. I didn’t map out the perfect moment to reach out. I simply followed a spark.

That quick gut reaction led to me redesigning the resume I’d been trying to craft from a place of force at the coffee shop.

My body literally rejected the forced plan.

When I returned to an intuitive, playful, surrendered state, the outcome I wanted came in with ease.

How to surrender

Why are we doing the things we do? Where are we forcing things?

Are we acting because we believe the action itself will earn us the outcome?

Surrender doesn’t mean shutting down.

Sure, sometimes you need the rest (hi, me in bed at 3 pm).

But then you get up… and find your flow.

True surrender is when the unknown feels full of possibility. It’s when curiosity leads. It’s the knowing that magic is everywhere and your desires can arrive in wildly unexpected ways.

It’s releasing the obsession. The gripping. The forcing.

~take a deep breath and feel your body soften for a second~

It’s from that state that we are most receptive.

There absolutely is an invisible thread pulling us through experiences, redirecting us gently when we need it (and sometimes not-so-gently).

When I talk to people about this, I always use an example:

One day you walk into a café and see a flyer taped to the window. Or you hear someone mention an event at the grocery store. Or you’re scrolling Instagram and something sparks a feeling inside you.

So you follow it.

No agenda. Just curiosity.

You go. You have fun. You come home sleepy and happy.

Then one day, that thread leads you to a person, a conversation, an idea, a connection that shifts everything.

And you couldn’t have planned it, not even if you tried.

We have no freaking clue where these threads are taking us.

My story isn’t about getting the job

I don’t know if anything official will come from those DMs.

What I do know is: it ignited me. It realigned me. It inspired me to build a resume and a story that reflects the career I’m creating.

Maybe that’s all it was ever meant to do. Maybe I just needed to share this story with you.

Often we don’t know where things are leading, but I can guarantee: if you stay open, curious, and willing to invite in the magic, life feels more exciting, hopeful, and full of possibility.

So tell me… What’s pulling you right now?

Next time, I’ll share about two signals that exist for me outside of my body — little nods from the universe that show me I’m on the right path.

Until then, thank you for being here ♥️

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