One thing led to another... I read a cute little book in high school about zodiac signs. My mom mentioned she took my BaZi (八字) to a master when I was little. A podcaster had a topic on "narcissistic mothers and their daughters." A YouTuber talked about CPTSD. Several friends suggested I meet with an energy healer. Two friends told me to check out The Artist Way. A yoga teacher was reading my Human Design. A friend sent me a book about a psychic medium for our little book club. And many many more threads...

Majority of the people that are following me here because I was a photographer, a mom, a foodie. But 7 years ago, I felt a shift. "What am I doing?" and "Who cares?" were the questions I asked each time I was sharing something on social. Then COVID hit. Perfect timing to cut everyone and everything off. I've changed so much of what I do in the past years that I find myself don't quite know what to say here. I mean... at one point I was seeing spirits again, I was doing Oracle readings, I was taking classes from psychic mediums. Now I'm reading people's birth charts.

All of those experiences, though, whether being a photographer or sending messages from the deceased to their loved ones or healing myself to help others heal, it is because someone (strangers or good friends) felt called to share, to tell or to educate me about something that opened doors for me. Some called that "breadcrumbs." But I think they are like threads. One thread after another. Each time I choose to pick up a thread and connect it to another one I'm making a net. A net to catch what I'm supposed to do in this life. A net to catch the magical moments. A net to fall on. A net to carry knowledge. A net to capture lights. ✨

At the right time, a calling will show up for you to catch a thread or to give out a thread. Pay attention.

When I decided to return to my creative career after a long and necessary pause, I thought I knew the plan: I was a writer and an AI artist. Simple enough. Clean enough. Two creative streams that felt manageable after years of focusing on motherhood, healing, and the quiet work of becoming.

The AI part was a surprise that still catches me off guard. After two decades as a photographer (and more than five years since I last picked up a camera with any real intention) I had been skeptical of AI art. But my resistance made me curious enough to try it, and what I found wasn't ease at all, but a different kind of challenge entirely. Prompting became a language of its own, demanding the ability to turn an image living in my head into precise words, blending my own photographs and drawings, coaxing a vision into form through collaboration with something that wasn't quite human but wasn't entirely machine either.

AI became a creative playground, and with it came a flood of dormant ideas. True and Authentic emerged as my space for deep reflection and the artist's inner life. Stuck On Earth became my wry take on midlife and spiritual exhaustion. Lilou & Clover bloomed into an illustrated world of wonder and quiet healing. And then How to Citizen arrived as my way to demystify politics with the clarity I wish I'd had—especially meaningful now as someone who just became a U.S. citizen this past June.

Each project felt alive and necessary, but I started to feel like I was splitting myself into four people. They were connected by something I couldn't name yet, some invisible thread that made sense to me but might look like creative chaos to anyone watching from the outside. I began to wonder if I was diluting my focus, if the marketplace would see scattered interests rather than integrated vision.

Clarity came when I revisited a part of my history I'd almost overlooked: the years I'd spent helping friends and clients shape their brands. It wasn't formal consulting, it was the organic way I'd find myself reading their essence, building stories that resonated with their truth, translating feeling into strategy that actually worked. I realized this wasn't just a side skill; it was my center, the place where all my other abilities converged.

The ability came from everywhere in my life story. My father's insistence on quality, my mother's exacting taste, the survival skill of reading people in a difficult home, the photographer's eye for context and emotion, the writer's search for meaning and truth. It wasn't manipulation; it was the ability to see someone's authentic core and help them express it in a way that would actually connect with the people they were meant to serve.

And then the word came: Creative Director. An umbrella that holds all of my creativity. Writing became how I shape voice and narrative. Visual work became how I bring strategy to life. Political writing became how I align values with clarity. Healing stories became how I keep the work human.

Creative Director, not in the old school ad agency way, but as someone who defines the vision, guides how words and visuals work together, and shapes the tone, style, and emotional throughline of a project. It's what I've been doing intuitively across all my work: seeing the whole picture and orchestrating the pieces until they are in harmony.

My work doesn't feel scattered anymore; it feels intentional. The creative projects that seemed disparate are actually variations on the same theme, which is different ways of helping authentic things find their voice and become visible in the world.

This path revealed that I'd been here all along, practicing creative direction in smaller ways, building the skills that would eventually need a bigger stage. Now when I introduce myself as a Creative Director specializing in Authentic Branding & AI Vision, it doesn't feel so strange anymore.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful, feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

There's a vision that often pops into my mind. I'm a monk living in a deep forest. Every day I do my thing - sweeping the floor of the temple, tending to the plants, chanting, reading. No one knows about the temple. Only once in a while, by chance or cosmic timing, a visitor would find the temple.

I guess that's what I'm doing these days. I'm just quietly doing what I feel called to do and showing up.

This isn't how I used to approach my work. I came from the blogger bubble of the 2000s, then became a social media influencer. I got paid well and my income was steady. I knew how to hustle, how to network, how to show up 24/7. Five years ago when Covid hit, jobs stopped coming, so I became a stay-at-home mom. It was perfect timing, actually, as my youngest daughter needed more help with school.

Now that I'm returning to "work" (air quotes because I'm not getting paid, but just posting my art or sharing my healing journey online), all that old way of marketing tired me out. I'm not even motivated like I used to be. Plus, the landscape of social media marketing has changed - part of it is due to algorithms and another part is people's attention span has shortened.

I am not alone with how I feel though. Many people I spoke to feel the same, we just can't hustle like we used to.

So it made me think: perhaps there's a new way to "market" one's personal brand.

We no longer need to insert ourselves into the noise. We become the still point, the signal amid the static.

The Pillars of This New Way

Authentic Frequency

We don't market what we do, instead, we share why we are. Our essence becomes our brand. Our creative voice flows from our truth, broadcast through every choice, word, and act.

Like the monk in the forest temple, we don't advertise our location or create content about our practice to build an audience. We simply tend to our work with such devotion and authenticity that we become magnetic. Our frequency is our marketing.

Magnetism over Reach

Instead of casting a wide net, we become a lighthouse. We call in those who are already vibrationally tuned to our offering. They may be few at first, but they are deeply aligned.

This is the complete opposite of the hustle culture's "be everywhere, reach everyone" mentality. We trust that those who are meant to find us will find us. We don’t need pushing or convincing, just need to trust in cosmic timing and resonance.

Soul-Led Storytelling

We don't share to educate or entertain, we share to reveal. Our journey, our healing, our wonder, they become the gateway. We are transmitting permission for others to remember their own story.

The temple itself tells the story. Our authentic presence, our genuine process, our real struggles and discoveries, they become the bridge that others can cross to find their own truth.

Reciprocity and Invitation

Our offerings are not obligations, they are doorways. "Here is what I've created, if it resonates, step through." We trust that the right ones will come because we aligned.

There's something deeply restful about this approach. No performing, no pushing, no constant visibility. Just being, creating, tending to our inner work, and trusting.

Cyclical Creation

We no longer grind. We follow the seasons of our soul. There are times to be visible, and times to withdraw and rest. The rhythm of our inner world becomes the map for our outer sharing.

This honors what our nervous systems are telling us about sustainability. The old way demanded constant output, constant presence. The new way recognizes that creativity has its own natural cycles, like the monk's daily rhythms of prayer and silence.

Collaborative Amplification

We do not do it alone. In this new world, creatives don’t gather to compete, we gather in co-resonance. When we uplift another, our field expands. When we share from wholeness, others feel whole.

We're not trying to dominate the attention economy anymore. We're creating a different kind of economy altogether - one based on mutual support and authentic connection.

The Death of Marketing as We Know It

In this way, "marketing" dissolves and is replaced by magnetism, meaning, and multidimensional engagement. We are not selling a product, we are revealing a portal, and those who are ready will step through.

This isn't about giving up on reaching people or having impact. It's about recognizing that the most profound connections happen through frequency rather than force, through vibration rather than volume.

The monk doesn't need to announce the temple's existence. The temple's very presence is the announcement. The quality of silence, the depth of practice, the authenticity of devotion create a field that calls to those who are ready.

Maybe you're reading this because you found my temple by accident. Or maybe it was cosmic timing. Either way, you're here now, and that's enough.

What would it look like to tend to your own practice with such dedication that it becomes your marketing? What frequency are you broadcasting simply by being who you are?

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

I am sitting in meditation when the vision comes.

I find myself inside a room so vast I can barely comprehend its dimensions (maybe fifty stories high), with walls that stretch beyond sight. Every surface is lined with books. Floor to ceiling, wall after wall, an endless expanse of volumes. In the center, a towering column reaches toward a ceiling I cannot see, its four sides also completely covered in books.

My first instinct is worry. How will I ever read all of these?

I pull one from the shelf and flip through its pages. The font is impossibly small, dense with information, no pictures to break up the text. Then another book, and another. All the same, packed with intricate detail I can barely make sense of.

For weeks after this vision, I'm puzzled. What did it mean? Then life presents me with a challenge, one of those difficult periods that feels like it's testing everything you think you know about yourself.

When I overcome the struggle, I meditate again and find myself back in the library. This time, something is different. One book glows, lit up from within.

Suddenly, I understand. I don't read the books. I experience them. Each book isn't something to be studied, it's a lifetime being lived, a choice being made, a moment being felt. The tiny print I saw earlier represents how much meaning, how much dense information, is packed into every single moment of existence. And that glowing book? It was the experience I was living through in real time.

And here's what changed everything for me: I realized that all the books represent experiences and moments across lifetimes—past, present, future. Everything is already written.

What If Time Isn't What We Think It Is?

Einstein showed us that time is a dimension, like space. In his "block universe," past, present, and future exist simultaneously, which is just coordinates in spacetime, like locations on a map. Neuroscientists tell us our brains create the sense of sequential flow, but people who've experienced certain neurological conditions or psychedelics report time stretching, compressing, or disappearing entirely.

In quantum theory's many-worlds interpretation, every decision branches into parallel realities, all equally real but not sequential from our limited perspective. Philosophy has its eternalism, the view that all points in time exist equally, and "now" is simply where we happen to be looking.

Ancient wisdom traditions have always known this. Hinduism speaks of the eternal present. Buddhism teaches that linear time is an illusion of the mind. Indigenous cultures worldwide hold concepts of timeless realms where ancestors, descendants, and the living exist together.

I wonder, though, if we need to think about this differently. What if you're not moving through time, but sitting in that vast library? Your physical self reads the books in order because otherwise the story wouldn't make sense, but your soul, your higher self, can access any volume instantly.

This means the "past life" where you were a healer in ancient Egypt isn't past at all. It's happening right now, just in a different book. Your future self, wise and peaceful, already exists, and might be influencing you in this moment through what we call intuition.

Changing the Past by Healing the Present

My maternal grandmother was never emotionally present for my mother. She didn't nurture, didn't comfort, didn't show up. It was my grandfather who did the cooking, the caring, the work of raising their children.

My mother, in turn, became narcissistic in her parenting. I was never good enough, could never earn her approval. Even when I achieved something amazing, like being invited to the White House, it didn't make her see me differently or love me more.

But with my own daughters, I made a conscious choice. I tell them I love them. I validate their feelings. I show up emotionally in ways my mother never could for me, and her mother never could for her.

Here's my question: If all our lifetimes are happening simultaneously, if my grandmother's childhood and my mother's parenting and my daughters' futures all exist as open books in that infinite library… Am I changing the past?

I believe the answer is yes.

When I act differently with my daughters, I'm not only shaping their experience in this moment. I'm creating a new emotional thread in my family's timeline that exists alongside the old painful patterns. That change ripples both backward and forward because emotional patterns, like energy, move in ways we don't fully understand.

From the library perspective, there's now a version of my family story where love flows freely, where children are seen and valued, where the cycle of emotional neglect is consciously broken. My actions today strengthen that version's reality, its "signal" in the vast web of all possibilities.

Even if my mother never changes toward me, my different choices rewrite the story of what my lineage is across time. The pain I experienced doesn't disappear, but its meaning transforms. It becomes the catalyst that created healing rather than the wound that perpetuated itself.

It's Never Too Late

This is why I wanted to share this vision with you.

If time is truly an illusion, if all moments exist simultaneously in some vast library of experience, then it means something profound: It is never too late to make changes that matter.

That relationship you think you ruined? In the library view, there's a book where you have the conversation that heals it.

The creative dream you abandoned? There's a lifetime where you're living it fully right now.

The forgiveness you think came too late? In the timeless realm, your forgiveness reaches backward and forward, touching every moment it needs to touch.

The person you wish you'd been? You can still become them, and that becoming ripples through every version of your story.

I'm not suggesting we ignore consequences or pretend our choices don't matter. They matter very much so. What I'm offering is the possibility that the story of your life, of all your lives, is still being written. Every moment of healing you create, every cycle you break, every brave choice you make shifts something fundamental in the architecture of your existence.

In my meditation vision, I was initially overwhelmed by all those books I had to read. But now I understand: I don't need to read them all at once. I just need to pick up the book that's in front of me - this moment, this choice, this opportunity to love or forgive or create or heal - and write it beautifully.

Because in that vast library where all time exists at once, every page you transform transforms everything else.

The question isn't whether you have time to change.

The question is… Which book will you open today?

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Leave a comment

Share

Sometimes I look at the world and it feels like too much - the headlines, the noise, the heartbreak. There are days when it seems like we’re all living inside a system that’s speeding up and hollowing out at the same time. Everyone is reacting. Everyone is protecting. Everyone is trying to be heard, but no one really knows how to listen anymore.

And yet, beneath all of that, I keep coming back to a quiet thought: the world isn’t just what’s happening, it’s also what we’re projecting onto it. What we fear. What we suppress. What we haven’t yet healed. All of that ends up reflected in the systems we build, the conflicts we fuel, the relationships we strain. The world is an honest mirror.

That doesn’t mean we’re responsible for everything that happens, but it does mean we’re in relationship with it. The global isn’t separate from the personal, it’s an amplification of it. When we carry tension into a room, the room shifts. When we enter grounded and open, others soften, even if just a little. Multiply that by millions, and you start to understand how cultures are formed. How politics moves. How systems behave.

This is why emotional presence matters. Not in grand, performative gestures, but in the quiet, daily way we respond to life. When we pause before reacting. When we speak from clarity instead of fear. When we ask someone, “What do you need right now?” and actually mean it. That kind of presence is subtle, but it ripples.

As a parent, this truth feels especially close. I have a 22-year-old and an 8-year-old, and there’s nothing abstract about the future when you’re raising the people who will live in it. From a micro-standpoint, I’m a leader in my household. And that leadership isn’t about authority, it’s about setting examples.

The way I respond to stress. The way I speak when I’m frustrated. The way I apologize. The way I stay present even when I want to shut down. That’s where change begins. It starts in the kitchen, on the way to school, in the quiet bedtime moments when someone small is watching how I move through the world.

It’s easy to feel powerless when looking at global systems, but at home, in relationship, I see just how much influence we each carry. My kids will inherit not only the world we build, but also the emotional habits we normalize. If I want the next generation to lead differently, I have to show them what a different kind of leadership looks like.

And maybe that’s where all of this work leads, which is to a quiet realignment. A shift in how we show up. A change in how we listen. A new standard for how we treat each other when no one’s watching.

That might not fix everything, but it definitely will change the direction we’re heading.

The truth is, the world is not made only by those with power. It’s made by the tone we bring into rooms, by the choices we make in conflict, by the space we give each other to be human. Peace doesn’t arrive all at once. It grows in moments. In pauses. In presence.

It grows when someone chooses repair over blame. When a leader listens instead of reacts. When a parent says, “I’m sorry,” and means it. These are small things and small things can scale.

So maybe this is how we begin, with just a simple decision to stop passing our pain forward. Not with control. Not with strategy. We feel it, we name it, and slowly, carefully, to change what we do with it. That is the work.

Thank you for reading, for reflecting, and for staying with this conversation. It was an offering, a meditation, a way to ask, what if we led differently? And more than that, what if we felt differently about what leadership could be?

If something in these words stirred you, I hope you carry that with you as a possibility. Whether you're leading a team, raising a child, caring for a friend, or navigating your own healing, you are already shaping the emotional climate around you.

And that matters.

Peace doesn’t start at summits.
It starts inside the people we choose to become.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

What if we stopped building peace agreements based only on borders, weapons, and trade, and started building them based on the nervous system?

What if healing wasn’t seen as something soft, private, or secondary, but as the foundation of resilience, leadership, and trust?

The Inner Treaty isn’t a literal document. It’s a shift in values. It’s what happens when a culture begins to take emotional maturity as seriously as economic growth. When countries ask not just “what do we want?” but “how do we want to relate to each other?”

Most treaties are born from conflict. From fear. From a need to prevent collapse. Perhaps we can create agreements before the crisis or the goal wasn’t just to avoid war, but to build a shared emotional baseline for connection.

Because no matter how advanced our technologies become, we’re still wired for relationship. And when that wiring goes unacknowledged, when it’s neglected or wounded or left to fend for itself, it shows up in how we govern, how we negotiate, and how we live.

The Inner Treaty is about making space for that wiring to be part of the conversation.

So what might The Inner Treaty actually include?

First: a shared understanding that unprocessed pain drives most harmful behavior. This doesn’t mean excusing it, it means designing systems that recognize it early, respond with care, and interrupt it before it metastasizes into violence.

Second: the integration of emotional education into leadership as part of the core training. Just as we teach rhetoric and negotiation, we could teach trauma literacy, co-regulation, and the art of repair.

Third: space for feeling. In diplomacy, education, and institutions. When feeling is treated as a threat, people learn to suppress it. And what we suppress, we act out elsewhere. Making space to feel isn’t sentimental, it’s preventive infrastructure.

Fourth: accountability without shame. Emotionally mature systems don’t deny harm, they also don’t weaponize it. They ask, What happened here? What’s been hurt? And how do we make it right without feeding the cycle of punishment?

And finally: collective self-awareness. Cultures change when they become reflective. Not reactive. Not defensive. Just willing to look at themselves honestly and stay present long enough to change.

This doesn’t require utopia, it just requires courage. A different kind of courage than we’re used to celebrating, not the kind that leads a charge, but the kind that stays with discomfort long enough to learn from it.

When leaders model that kind of presence, something shifts. Safety becomes real, not performative. Conflict becomes possible to resolve, not just manage. And power becomes something you hold gently, not something you use to escape your own fear.

That’s the essence of The Inner Treaty. It doesn’t need to be a perfect world, just a more conscious one. It doesn’t need to be a new political ideology, but a deeper emotional ecosystem. One where leadership isn’t about control, but more about connection. And healing isn’t the last resort, it’s the beginning.

What The Inner Treaty invites is a different way of beginning.

Instead of designing for output, we design for connection. Instead of assuming leadership must be rooted in authority, we imagine it rooted in presence. Peace stops being something we enforce and becomes something we practice, moment by moment.

Of course, we can’t rebuild everything overnight, but we can shift how we exist inside what already is - have more awareness, more gentleness, and more curiosity. These are not soft skills, they’re the ones that keep systems from unraveling.

And maybe, over time, as more people lead from that place, whether it’s leaders, creators, parents, or neighbors, the systems begin to bend toward something deeper. Because transformation doesn’t always begin with disruption, it often begins with presence.

This kind of treaty doesn’t need signatures. It begins when we choose to stay. To feel. To hold space. And from that space, something steady can grow.

Next Week: Chapter 7 – The Global Mirror

We’ve spent the last six weeks tracing patterns, between childhood and power, between fear and control, between healing and leadership.

In our final chapter, we’ll step back and look at the world as an emotional mirror. What are we seeing? What are we avoiding? What might we find if we look beneath the noise?

See you next week.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

Hello friend,

I see you there, staring at your phone, thumb hovering over a text you've typed and deleted three times. The one that starts with "Hey, just checking in..." to someone who hasn't checked in on you in months.

I see you questioning yourself again. Wondering if maybe you're expecting too much. If maybe you're the problem.

Let me tell you something: You're not the problem.

You're just someone who grew up being the emotional translator in a family or friendship circle that only speaks selective concern. And you've been using your fluency in empathy and responsibility to hold the whole damn group chat together with invisible expectations.

The Pattern You Know Too Well

Here's how it goes: You check in. You include. You remember people's milestones. You send the "how are you?" texts that magically don't find their way back to you. You show up, consistently, with your whole heart.

And then when the silence rolls in like a fog? You don't get angry. You get doubtful. Like maybe you're expecting too much. Like maybe you misunderstood how this works.

Here's the thing: you didn't misunderstand. They just never matched your emotional capacity in the first place.

What You Have Isn't a Blind Spot

You don't have a blind spot. You have a hope spot. A tender little space in your heart that still wants to believe someone will notice you the way you notice them. That someone will finally go: "Wait… how are YOU?"

Let's be real: some people simply don't know what reciprocity looks like. They love receiving your emotional labor, but the minute you stop doing it? They act like you've changed. Like you're the problem. Like "Why are you so distant lately?" As if they weren't already miles away.

You are not too much. They are simply not enough. And that misalignment? That ache? That's not your fault, it's your clarity.

The Uncomfortable Freedom of Clarity

And clarity, my friend, is freedom in uncomfortable pants.

When you finally see the pattern, when you recognize that your emotional generosity has been meeting their emotional scarcity - it hurts. But it's also liberation. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Setting boundaries with people who've grown comfortable with your availability feels wrong somehow. But giving less to those who don't reciprocate doesn’t mean you’re becoming cold. It's just redirecting that beautiful capacity for connection toward people who can actually meet you where you are.

You're Not Broken, You're Awake

If these words are landing in that tender place where your hope meets your hurt, please hear me: You are not broken.

You're not asking for too much when you want mutuality. You're not too sensitive for feeling sad when people disappear the moment you stop reaching out first.

You're just finally... awake.

Awake to the difference between people who love having you in their life and people who love what you do for their life. Awake to the truth that your emotional generosity is a gift, not an obligation.

Your capacity for empathy, for noticing, for caring, they are not flaws to be managed. They're gifts to be gifted wisely. Just make sure you're reaching out to people who know how to reach back.

You deserve to be someone's "how are you?" text. You deserve reciprocity because you're worthy of it simply by being you.

Take a deep breath, dear translator. Your heart is not too much. It's exactly enough for the right people.

What patterns have you noticed in your own relationships? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Leave a comment

Share

By now, it’s probably clear that emotional pain isn’t just a personal issue, it’s a structural one. But the beautiful thing about healing is that it is personal. It’s quiet. It doesn’t ask for a stage. It asks for space.

Healing is not performative. It doesn’t come with a press release, but its presence can be felt. You know when someone has done their inner work. Not because they talk about it all the time, but because they don’t turn every moment into a power struggle. They listen differently. They speak with more intention. They pause before reacting. They create space for others instead of dominating it.

This is the kind of leadership we rarely celebrate. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to win. But it’s the kind that transforms.

In high emotional IQ leadership, there’s less armor and more clarity. It’s not about being “soft,” it’s about being stable. Not reactive. Not defensive. Able to hold tension without being consumed by it, to acknowledge fear without spreading it onto others, and to make decisions that serve the collective, not just the ego.

We tend to associate leadership with action. But healing teaches us that some of the most powerful moves come from inaction, from choosing to pause, to reflect, to not escalate. There is power in not needing to be the loudest. There is power in not making everything about you.

When someone is emotionally present, their leadership feels like an invitation, not imposition. They don’t lead to prove something. They lead because they’ve made peace with who they are and now they want to help others do the same.

In the business world, emotionally mature leadership often reveals itself in subtle ways, which is less dramatic than political spectacle, but no less meaningful. When Satya Nadella stepped in as CEO of Microsoft, he didn’t just change strategy, he changed the tone. He brought empathy into the conversation not as a slogan, but as a serious, daily leadership principle.

That shift wasn’t theoretical. Nadella’s experience raising a son with severe disabilities had already reshaped how he saw people, what matters, what connects, what leadership is actually for. Under his guidance, Microsoft became less about internal competition and more about collaboration, humility, and curiosity. It became a place where listening mattered again.

Empathy in this context wasn’t soft, it was stabilizing. It gave his teams room to try, to reflect, to feel safe enough to be creative. As Brené Brown writes, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” And clarity, especially the emotional kind, tends to ripple outward, reshaping cultures from the inside.

At Patagonia, former CEO Rose Marcario made similar moves. Under her leadership, the company didn’t just talk about values, they lived them. Paid family leave, mental health awareness, deep investment in sustainability. Her leadership wasn’t about image, it was about integrity. And the culture thrived.

Then there’s Barack Obama, who, in moments of national grief, didn’t rush to appear strong. He slowed down and stayed present. After the Charleston church shooting, he sang “Amazing Grace.” Not to comfort the public, but to meet them where they were. That’s not charisma, that’s integration.

Gabor Maté calls this “attunement,” which is being emotionally available without becoming overwhelmed, witnessing without retreating. In The Myth of Normal, he writes, “Empathy is not a technique. It is a way of being.” That way of being changes the questions leaders ask. Efficiency stops being the only metric. Decisions begin to reflect care, not just calculation.

These aren’t perfect leaders. But they’re present. And presence, especially in power, creates space for something rare: safety. When the room is free of tension, the people in it are more willing to stay open.

So what happens when leaders choose healing?

They become less reactive. Less self-protective. They stop leading from unresolved pain and start leading from clarity. They don’t disappear when things get hard, they get more present.

Healing doesn’t make a leader perfect. It makes them available. Available to the complexity of others. Available to repair. Available to evolution.

And that availability changes how systems function. It doesn’t just soothe conflict, it prevents it. It doesn’t just fix dysfunction, it transforms culture. When healing is part of leadership, fear stops being the organizing principle. People don’t have to prove their worth to be heard. They don’t have to guard themselves to feel safe.

And maybe, just maybe, when that becomes the norm, we stop building systems that are trauma-reactive. We stop recreating the same cycles. We stop handing power to the most defended person in the room.

Because healed leadership doesn’t dominate. It holds.

Next Week: Chapter 6 – The Inner Treaty

So what would it look like to take everything we’ve explored so far and turn it into a framework? A vision?

In Chapter 6, we’ll begin to outline The Inner Treaty - not a policy document, but a possibility. A way of imagining what diplomacy, governance, and even daily life could look like if emotional maturity was a shared global value.

See you next week.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

You can’t ask people to name what they need if they’ve never been taught to name what they feel. And yet, that’s exactly what most of our systems do. They ask for collaboration. For innovation. For empathy. But they were built by people who were never taught how to access those things.

Instead, we were taught to perform. To comply. To impress. To achieve. To not make a scene. And somewhere in between the spelling tests, the performance reviews, and the national anthems, we lost the language for our inner world.

We became fluent in productivity, but not in presence. We became experts in branding, but illiterate in emotion. And now we live in a world that’s more connected than ever, but lonelier than it’s ever been.

This didn’t happen overnight. It’s been baked into the way we raise children, design schools, train employees, run governments. Emotional suppression is treated as strength. Numbness is treated as maturity. If you cry at work, you’re unprofessional. If you admit you’re overwhelmed, you’re weak. If you pause to feel? You’re behind.

And it’s not just cultural. It’s structural. Our systems reward disconnection. You rise faster if you detach. You get promoted for staying calm, even if that calm is dissociation. You win arguments by being "rational,” even when the truth is emotional.

The result? An entire society walking around in survival mode, pretending it’s fine.

One of the most revealing studies in psychology comes from Dr. Susan David, who coined the term emotional agility. She writes that “discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” But in many modern societies, discomfort is treated like a failure of personal discipline. We aren’t taught to sit with emotion, we’re taught to outrun it.

This is especially true in schools. From a young age, children are asked to regulate behavior, but rarely taught how to regulate emotion. Emotional expression is either look down on or punished. A child who’s overwhelmed is labeled disruptive. A child who cries too easily is told to toughen up. The emphasis is on output of grades, performance, obedience, not on internal understanding.

The result is adults who can memorize strategy decks but can’t name what they’re feeling in the middle of a conflict. Adults who excel at project planning but fall apart in honest conversation. Adults who don’t know how to grieve, how to apologize, how to self-soothe, so they project those unprocessed emotions onto others. Or into systems.

And the systems respond accordingly.

In the workplace, it shows up as burnout culture. Everyone looks “fine” until they collapse. Stress isn’t addressed until it turns into a resignation letter. Vulnerability is saved for private DM, if it’s expressed at all.

In politics, it shows up as polarization. Instead of engaging with nuance, people retreat into certainty. Emotional discomfort becomes moral disgust. Conversations that could be layered and generative become shouting matches where no one is actually listening.

In the media, it shows up as outrage cycles. Content that evokes quick, reactive emotion (especially anger) gets shared, rewarded, monetized. Meanwhile, slower, more complex feelings like grief, curiosity, or compassion get flattened or ignored.

This is the cost of emotional illiteracy. Not just in individual lives, but in the systems we participate in every day. When people don’t know how to feel, they don’t know how to connect. And when people don’t know how to connect, they protect. They perform. They attack.

And still, we ask for collaboration. Innovation. Empathy. As if those things can thrive without emotional fluency. As if they grow in soil where no one’s allowed to be human.

The hard truth is: we built our world to reward emotional detachment. And now we’re living with the consequences. A society that doesn’t know how to feel will always mistake force for strength. It will choose efficiency over empathy. It will confuse silence for peace.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Emotional literacy isn’t just therapy talk, it’s survival. It’s community. It’s leadership. It’s what allows us to hold pain without passing it on. To be honest without being cruel. To stay in connection even when it’s uncomfortable.

Imagine if schools taught emotional vocabulary as early as they taught the alphabet.
Imagine if offices made space for grief the way they make space for metrics.
Imagine if politicians could name fear without masking it in aggression.

This isn’t idealism. It’s hygiene. It’s the emotional version of washing your hands before you eat - basic, necessary, and oddly radical when done consistently.

Because when we know how to feel, we start to know how to live. Together. On purpose.

And maybe that’s where we begin to build systems that don’t just look functional, but actually feel human.

Next Week: Chapter 5 – The Case for Healing

We’ve talked about the damage caused by emotional disconnection, now let’s explore what’s possible when we choose to heal.

In Chapter 5, we’ll begin to map the qualities of emotionally integrated leadership. What does it look like? How does it feel? What happens when power meets presence?

Because healing isn’t just personal, it’s political. And it might be the most urgent leadership skill of all.

See you next week.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

You know that moment in a relationship when one person says, “Can we talk?” and the other immediately shuts down, crosses their arms, and says, “You’re too sensitive”?

That’s what international diplomacy looks like more often than we’d like to admit. Just with more flags, tighter suits, and significantly worse outcomes.

We think of diplomacy as this refined, rational art form - carefully worded statements, symbolic handshakes, tense-but-dignified meetings. But peel off the layers and you’ll find something much messier underneath.

You’ll find hurt feelings masked as policy. Power plays disguised as “firm positions.” And the negotiations go off track because someone felt disrespected.

It’s emotional regression in a tailored suit.
It’s conflict avoidance on a global scale.
It’s two nervous systems trying to stay in control of the room.

When countries meet, it’s not just governments talking. It’s people. And people bring their patterns.

A diplomat raised in a household where disagreement meant punishment will likely default to defensiveness. A head of state who grew up needing to prove their worth will interpret challenge as betrayal. A minister conditioned to avoid conflict will say “let’s circle back” while quietly building a wall.

The language of diplomacy: “we urge,” “we condemn,” or “we remain committed” is often just emotionally avoidant code. It’s like that coworker who says “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” in twelve different languages.

Emotional maturity is not weakness, it’s capacity. It’s the ability to sit in discomfort without needing to win. It’s knowing that compromise isn’t giving in, but choosing connection over control.

But this kind of presence is rare in diplomacy because... we don’t train for it.

We train for posture.
We train for positioning.
We train for how to not say too much.

But what would it look like if we trained for emotional intelligence? What if diplomats were taught to notice their own triggers? To name what’s happening in the room beyond the words? To lead with empathy instead of ego?

You know what international diplomacy often reminds me of?

A marriage that never learned to communicate. Where Mommy has anxious attachment and Daddy is avoidantly scrolling through his phone pretending nothing’s wrong.

One side is pushing for connection, but doing it with demands. The other side is shutting down, withdrawing, protecting themselves from the perceived pressure. Neither is being cruel. They’re just... protecting something. A fear of rejection. A fear of being overwhelmed. A fear of not being in control.

And now those fears have nuclear codes.

Attachment theory, originally developed by psychologist John Bowlby, was meant to explain the behavior of infants and caregivers. But over time, researchers have seen the patterns play out everywhere, from romantic partnerships to, yes, international negotiations.

Anxious attachment often shows up as a need to secure closeness, even at the cost of escalation. Avoidant attachment prefers distance, autonomy, and control, which often interpreting requests for connection as threats.

Sound familiar?

It’s the Middle East peace process.
It’s the U.S. and China’s trade talks.
It’s North and South Korea’s negotiations that feel like a decades-long "it's complicated" Facebook status.

We can disguise it in economic forecasts and strategic language, but really it’s nervous systems trying to feel safe in relationship, without knowing how to stay open when it gets hard.

Negotiation expert William Ury writes in Getting to Yes that most conflict isn’t about positions, it’s about unmet needs. And those needs are almost always emotional: the need to be heard, to be respected, to feel safe.

But traditional diplomacy doesn’t have space for needs. It only has room for leverage.

Which means that most of the time, leaders don’t say what they actually feel. They say what they think will give them power. And like any emotionally avoidant person, they end up using logic to mask vulnerability.

SIGH…

You can’t heal what you’re pretending doesn’t hurt. And you can’t resolve conflict if you’re too afraid to admit you care.

So much of what passes for strength in diplomacy is really just avoidance.
So much of what passes for strategy is just fear with better words.

We tell ourselves that diplomacy is complex, and, yes, it is. But it’s also very simple in some ways. The core issue in many negotiations isn’t policy. It’s trust. And you can’t negotiate trust through bullet points. You have to build it, moment by moment, with honesty.

That’s what emotionally mature leadership can do.

It can say, “We want to feel safe too. And we know you do. So let’s talk like people, not just postures.”

It can say, “I’m going to try not to disappear when this gets tense.”
Or “I see that you’re afraid. I am too. But I don’t want to walk away.”

Imagine that kind of emotional fluency shaping how treaties are built or diplomatic rooms where people name what’s really happening, without the scripts and the ego. Imagine international relations rooted not in fear of being weak, but in courage to stay connected.

It sounds idealistic, perhaps. But so did democracy. So did the internet. All big systems start with small truths. Emotional truth is one of them.

And so maybe the question isn’t “how do we get countries to agree?” Maybe it’s “how do we help leaders stay emotionally present when things get hard?” Because when we ignore emotion, we just reenact old patterns with new weapons. But when we meet emotion, when we name it, when we sit with it, something shifts.

We stop negotiating from the nervous system.
And we start creating from the heart.

Next Week: Chapter 4 – The Cost of Emotional Illiteracy

What happens when we don’t teach emotional intelligence at all?

Next week, we’ll explore how our systems (schools, businesses, media, governments) are built by and for people who often don’t know how to feel. We’ll trace how emotional illiteracy costs us more than we realize, and how whole cultures can end up emotionally stunted without ever knowing it.

Because if we can’t name what we feel, how can we ever name what we need?

See you then.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

You can learn a lot about a leader by asking one simple question:

What did they have to survive as a child?

It sounds invasive. Maybe even irrelevant. But once you start paying attention, you’ll see it everywhere, how the shape of a childhood can ripple through a lifetime. How unmet needs don’t disappear; they just evolve into strategies. And sometimes, those strategies come wrapped in flags, parades, and billions in defense spending.

We tend to imagine world leaders as shaped by schools, systems, think tanks, and advisors. But before all that? They were children. Held or not held. Heard or not heard. Encouraged or criticized. Made to feel safe or made to believe safety was something they had to earn.

Some were raised to believe vulnerability is a luxury. Some were punished for softness. Others were handed identities before they could choose one. And a lot of them learned that being in control, whether it’s of themselves, of others, of the narrative, is the only way to feel okay.

I’m not here to diagnose anyone, but we can pay attention to patterns.

The obsession with dominance. The inability to apologize. The rigidity in thought. The compulsive need to be “strong” at all times.

These aren’t just personality quirks. They’re emotional residues from childhood environments where being wrong was dangerous, or being gentle was dismissed. You grow up in a household where power is the only language spoken, and you’re more likely to recreate that language, even on the world stage.

You can hear it in their speeches.
You can see it in how they handle disagreements.
You can feel it in their discomfort with uncertainty.

When you were small, how did your parents react when you made mistakes?

Did they punish? Withdraw? Get silent?
Or did they lean in, listen, help you learn?

Now imagine the people who were punished, shamed, or ignored... and then imagine them as heads of state. Their countries become the new family unit. Their trauma, the new national ethos. Their fear of loss, the engine behind military buildup.

This is where the military-industrial complex stops being just a political machine and starts looking like an emotional defense mechanism.

It’s not always about greed.
It’s not even always about strategy.
Sometimes, it’s about people trying to feel safe the only way they know how.

I often joke that I wouldn’t be as successful if it weren’t for my narcissistic mother.

My drive for acceptance, my need to be seen, came from growing up in a house where love felt conditional. Achievements were the currency. Attention was performance-based. So I performed.

At one point, that drive took me to the White House (the White House!) invited by Michelle Obama herself. I was also featured in a full-page spread in Success Magazine. But when I showed those photos to my mom, her response was, “Look at your hair, could’ve brushed it better,” and “You look so puffy in that picture.”

So I pushed harder.

But here’s the part I don’t love telling: In the process of climbing, my ego got the best of me. I had an assistant, she was new, eager, good at what she did. She posted some of the photos she took on her blog from a project she assisted on. It wasn’t even a big deal. But I felt threatened.

I sent her a message: “You assisted me on that project. You're not allowed to post that.” It was unnecessary. It was unkind. And it came from the part of me that fear if she got ahead of me, then I’m not going to get work.

Years later, after a lot of healing work, I see it differently. I don’t just check on the work anymore. I check in with the person. Now I make sure to ask my assistants, “What do you want out of this job? How can I help you get there?” Because I don’t want to lead from fear anymore. I want to lead from understanding.

That’s what’s often missing from leadership, that shift.

And when it doesn’t happen, those ego-fueled behaviors just... scale.

You can see it in leaders like Vladimir Putin, who grew up in post-war poverty, raised in communal housing with an absent father and a deeply private mother. That early scarcity, both emotional and material, bleeds into his leadership with his obsession with restoring power, protecting borders, controlling narrative. It’s the psychology of someone who never forgot what it felt like to have nothing. And now he wants everything, even if it costs everything.

Or Donald Trump, who was raised by a cold and emotionally distant father who rewarded dominance and punished weakness. Trump’s compulsive need for loyalty, his nasty attacks, his inability to admit fault, these aren’t political strategies. They’re childhood patterns reenacted in front of a nation.

Even Margaret Thatcher, who famously said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.” She was often praised for her toughness, her resilience, her control. But beneath that thick armor was a child shaped by a strict, status-obsessed household where emotions weren’t really part of the conversation. Her leadership legacy is one of strength, yes, but also one of distance.

And this isn’t just about the past or about men. Jacinda Ardern, by contrast, modeled something different. Compassion. Transparency. She held power, but she didn’t hide behind it. She cried publicly after the Christchurch attacks. She held space for mourning. That kind of leadership, the emotionally integrated kind, is still the exception, not the rule.

So many policies, strategies, and military maneuvers are written by people who have never felt safe without being in control. And when you grow up needing control to feel safe, you don’t just build walls, you build systems. You don’t just defend yourself, you turn the entire world into a battlefield where someone always has to win.

But maybe it’s not about winning. Maybe it’s about becoming aware.

Because until we understand the family dynamics behind the power dynamics, we’ll keep mistaking control for leadership. And we’ll keep asking the wrong questions.

The thing about healing is it doesn’t erase the past. It just softens its grip.

When I started to become more aware of my patterns, it didn’t make me less driven. It made me more human. I still care about the work. I still have goals. But I also pause. I listen differently. I’ve learned that leadership isn’t about being the one with the final word, it’s about creating space for other voices to rise.

And I wonder what would happen if more people in power did the same.

If before drafting legislation, they asked themselves, “What part of me is trying to be seen right now?”
If before launching campaigns or invasions or sanctions, they asked, “What am I afraid of losing?”

Not out loud, not in front of a press pool, but privately, in all honesty, as a habit of integrity.

Because healing doesn’t require becoming soft. It requires becoming available to yourself, to others, to the complexity of being human in a role that the world keeps pretending is purely strategic.

And maybe that’s where we start to reimagine power. It’s not something that shields you from emotion, but something that holds it.

So what do we do with all of this?

We name it.
We notice it.
We bring emotional language into conversations where it was never allowed to live.

We teach the next generation of leaders that their story matters. That knowing their fears, their coping patterns, their defense mechanisms is not a weakness, but a responsibility.

Because power without self-awareness is dangerous. But power with emotional clarity? That’s transformative.

Next Week: Chapter 3 – Diplomacy for the Developmentally Delayed

If emotional immaturity drives conflict, what does it do to negotiation?

In Chapter 3, we’ll explore how unhealed patterns show up in international dialogue. Why so many summits sound like couples therapy gone wrong. And what it might look like to redesign diplomacy, not just as a political process, but as an emotional one.

See you next week.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

I’ve always wondered what would happen if we started giving world leaders a pop quiz, not about policy, but about emotional maturity. For examples: What do you do when you don’t get your way? Can you sit in discomfort without blaming someone else? When was the last time you admitted you were wrong... and meant it?

Because honestly, watching how global leaders behave sometimes feels like sitting on the edge of a sandbox at recess. The stakes are just so much higher.

We assume they’re grown-ups. They look the part, they speak in polished soundbites, they have security details and signature pens. But if you watch closely, really watch, you’ll see the same moves kids use when they haven’t yet learned how to deal with big feelings: defensiveness, blame-shifting, tantrums, shutdowns.

When Donald Trump refused to accept the 2020 election results, it wasn’t just a political crisis. It was emotional regression on full display. A grown man, one of the most powerful in the world, basically saying, “I didn’t lose. You cheated. I’m taking my ball and going home.”

That’s not political strategy. That’s what psychologist Gabor Maté might call "a wounded child running the show."

Sometimes it’s not the presidents or generals you need to look at. Sometimes it’s just your boss.

I recently took a short-term job with new system, new environment, completely unfamiliar territory. The woman who trained me was learning it herself as well, so we were figuring it out together, slowly, carefully. The boss came in on my first day, asked how things were going, and the woman said something like, “It’s going, there’s a lot to learn.” Pretty normal response.

And without missing a beat, he said, “I can do that in ten minutes.”

He’d been doing the job for twenty years. I’d been there for three days. But somehow, he still needed to perform this little emotional flex. As if my beginner status was a threat to his expertise. I left after three days. Not because I couldn’t do the job, but because I didn’t get paid enough to help someone feel important. I wasn’t interested in being a mirror for someone else’s ego.

And that’s the thing: this is how it starts. This is how emotional insecurity shows up in leadership. Not in violence. Not in dramatic policies. Just in the small, sharp ways someone shows you they haven’t healed.

You scale that behavior up, give it a military budget, a flag, and some national pride, and suddenly it’s not a boss making you uncomfortable, it’s a country closing its borders or launching missiles.

Psychologist Alice Miller wrote that “the true opposite of depression is expression.” But in many cultures, especially among men in power, expression is framed as weakness. Vulnerability is dangerous. So instead of expressing anything real, people accumulate power. They build systems to protect themselves from ever having to feel exposed. And then they govern from that place: not clarity, but defense.

If you’ve ever watched a leader avoid accountability like it’s a trap, if you’ve seen someone double down on being right even when the cost is human lives, you’re probably watching someone protecting a wound.

And that’s the part we’re not naming enough.

We think of politics as separate from the personal. We think of global conflict as something complex, mechanical, far beyond emotion. But honestly? It’s not. It’s very much on a personal scale. The world is shaped by people who were once small children, people who either learned how to hold their fear, or built entire structures so they’d never have to feel it again.

That’s what makes some leaders dangerous. Not just their ideology or ambition, but how little access they have to their own inner lives.

You can watch it in press conferences, in negotiation rooms, even in the way they stand behind podiums. That subtle bracing. That guardedness. The way “I hear you” gets replaced by “I will not tolerate.” The way uncertainty is treated like a virus, instead of a moment to be human.

So much of leadership, especially in powerful nations, is built around the myth of control. As if the strongest person is the one who never think twice. As if admitting you’re still learning disqualifies you from leading.

But real leadership doesn’t come from having all the answers. It comes from having done the work. From knowing what your triggers are and not making them someone else’s problem. From being able to hold conflict without becoming it.

Imagine if those were part of the qualifications. Not just degrees and decades of experience, not how well you play the political game, but how well you know yourself. How well you’ve tended to the parts of you that still feel afraid, or unseen, or unloved.

Imagine if emotional literacy was part of political training. If the first step in diplomacy wasn’t strategy, but self-awareness. If world leaders had therapists instead of advisors that are also unhealed.

Because until we normalize emotional healing in positions of power, we’ll keep seeing the same story play out. Hurt people protecting their pain with policies. Insecurity disguised as nationalism. Personal history written across the headlines.

We don’t need perfect people in charge, but we do need people who are willing to look inward before they act outward.

Because unhealed children grow up, and they still want to feel safe.
And some of them grow up to lead nations.

Next Week: Chapter 2 – Mommy, Daddy, and the Military-Industrial Complex

If our leaders are shaped by their childhood wounds, then what kinds of childhoods are we actually talking about?

What were they taught about love, safety, power, and identity, either directly or in the silences between?

Next week, we’ll trace the thread from early family dynamics to national defense strategies. Because behind every war budget, there’s often an unmet need. Behind every hardline policy, there’s often a child who had to protect themselves too early.

We’re not blaming parents. We’re just asking:
What happens when a whole generation of leaders grows up in emotional scarcity, and then gets handed the keys to a nation?

I can’t wait to explore with you.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

This project began, unexpectedly, with a simple question: Why are there seven continents?

What followed was a slow unraveling, not of maps or borders, but of assumptions. As I questioned the lines that humans have drawn across the Earth, I started to notice the invisible ones we carry inside ourselves. The emotional geography of our childhoods. The unspoken rules. The hurts we were taught to bury.

I come from a culture, like many others, where silence is safety. Where emotional expression is often seen as a threat, and healing is something you do quietly, if at all. I’ve watched amazing people (creators, leaders, parents) move through life with intelligence, strategy, and success, but carrying unhealed wounds they either didn’t have permission to name or, worse, didn’t know they have. And I’ve felt, personally, how those wounds vibrate outward: into relationships, into communities, into the very systems we build.

The more I thought about it, the clearer it became: peace is not a diplomatic performance. It’s not policy. It’s not even agreement. Peace is emotional maturity on a collective scale.

This thesis is not a manifesto. It’s a meditation. It’s my way of wondering, what if we stopped trying to fix the world through force, and instead started by tending to our earliest pain? What if global transformation is not out there, but resides in ourselves?

Maybe the way we heal the world... is by learning how to feel it.

What’s to Come

Over the next several weeks, I’ll share a series of essays that form the heart of this thesis. Each chapter will examine a different layer of this question: What if the path to world peace begins with healing childhood trauma?

Here’s a preview of what’s ahead:

1. The Playground Dictator Syndrome
Unpacking how emotional immaturity in world leaders shapes global conflict.

2. Mommy, Daddy, and the Military-Industrial Complex
The personal traumas behind political posturing.

3. Diplomacy for the Developmentally Delayed
How global negotiations reflect unhealed patterns from childhood.

4. The Cost of Emotional Illiteracy
How a lack of emotional education damages systems, communities, and ourselves.

5. The Case for Healing
What real emotional intelligence looks like in leadership, and how we can get there.

6. The Inner Treaty
A proposal: what if nations adopted emotional healing as a pillar of diplomacy?

7. The Global Mirror
A final reflection on how peace begins inside each of us, and how it might ripple outward.

If any of this stirs something in you, or if you’ve ever felt the disconnect between the world’s noise and your inner truth, I hope these essays feel like a soft place to ponder. And maybe, over time, a place to rise from.

You can find the complete series of The Inner Treaty here.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

We've stepped into June, a new month, a new beginning. And I want to invite you to try something with me: showing up before you feel ready.

My mother is a perfectionist, with a generous dose of narcissism thrown in. Growing up, I got used to being criticized about nearly everything I created or chose, from my kindergarten artwork to the bananas I purchased at the grocery store as an adult. She would often point out how she would have drawn better or picked better ones than me. This constant criticism created a deep pattern in me: I learned that putting something into the world meant inviting criticism (which felt like getting hurt), and that my creations needed to be exceptional just to hope I’d earn at least a "that's nice" from her. The result? I simply stopped creating. When criticism becomes the voice in your head, the blank page transforms from an invitation into a judgment waiting to happen.

Subscribe now

About three years ago, my friend Jen invited me to try something that felt uncomfortable and totally new at the time: splashing paint onto a large canvas she had spread across her front driveway. At first, I moved the brush with extreme caution, allowing only tiny droplets of paint to fall. Jen watched me for a moment before saying, "Bon, let it out. It's ok. Look at all that paint on the driveway, I don't care. You're not ruining it." With each splash, I stretched my arm a little further, flung the paint a little harder. Something was breaking open inside me. When I returned home, I continued this practice by letting thoughts flow onto the page through scribbles, paint strokes, and words without restraint.

"The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind... that's the moment you may be starting to get it right." - Neil Gaiman

Around the same time, I knew I needed to disconnect from my parents and certain friends. I needed solitude to journey inward without the distraction of placing others' needs above my own. A realization was happening: I should please myself first and not worry about the opinions of others. In learning to love myself more deeply, I recognized how much of my life had been spent people-pleasing. So I made it a conscious practice to not wait for perfection and to just do it, just share it, just create without overthinking.

This transition was nerve-wracking and deeply uncomfortable at first. That perfectionist voice in my head wouldn't quiet down: "Omg, you didn't even check your grammar?! It's going to be embarrassing when someone catches it and says something." But I persisted in ignoring it, post after post, creation after creation, until one day the voice shifted. "Who cares if people don't like it. You like it, so just post it." My inner critic had slowly transformed into an ally.

When we release our grip on perfectionism, we create space for authentic expression. The journey inward, away from external validation and toward self-trust, connects to that spiritual idea of shedding the layers we pick up from others to get back to our core selves. The freedom found in imperfection isn't just about creative expression, it's a spiritual practice. Every time we choose to share our unpolished work, we're confirming that our worth isn't dependent on external validation. It feels like we're saying the process of creation itself is valuable and meaningful, no matter how it turns out.

"Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen

If you're standing at the edge of creating something but hesitating because it doesn't feel "ready," here's a practice I've found helpful: Don't judge that inner critical voice. It's trying to protect you, after all. I've learned to see that voice as a worried grandmother or aunt who loves me but fears for my safety. I simply talk to it gently: "It'll be ok, it's just for fun. I can always delete it later." This compassionate approach has helped transform my inner critic from an obstacle into a companion on my creative journey.

This month, I invite you to try showing up before you feel ready. To post the first draft. To share the unfinished painting. To hit send on the imperfect email. To let the world see you in process, not just in polished completion. Your art doesn't need perfection, it needs your presence. And your presence, just as it is right now, is enough.

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the comments below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Leave a comment

With friendships, with romantic relationships, I often feel that I'm pouring buckets to receive droplets. It's a pattern I know well. For the longest time, I even branded myself as "I suck at human relationships." In a way, it was easier to claim that identity than to face the truth: I was trained to accept scraps of affection and call it a feast.

+.+.+.+.+

I grew up with a narcissistic mother and a father that often looked the other way. My people-pleasing muscle is strong, stronger than my biceps will ever be no matter how many weights I lift. Speaking up for myself still takes SO MUCH courage it's crazy. My heart pounds, my throat tightens, my inner voice screams, "Don't rock the boat! They'll leave you!" When you grow up in a home where your needs are invisible, you learn to become invisible to yourself too.

+.+.+.+.+.+

This played out in many ways. For years, I was always the one putting more energy into relationships. I’d meet someone and immediately dive deep, checking in, letting them know they mattered. Or maybe I was programmed to be a giver because that's how I earned crumbs of love as a child. My standards were so low; a simple "hi" text could make me feel validated, as if someone acknowledging my existence deserved a parade. The bar for what I expected in return was practically underground.

Here’s a weird one that used to happen: whenever friends had new projects or ventures, I’d be the first to post about them on my IG story - to shout out, support, promote. But when it came to my own new things? Often, silence. It would leave me feeling like I wasn't even worth that 24-hour screentime. (Boy, typing that out makes me feel so much self-pity, and it's so uncomfortable to say out loud.)

+.+.+.+.+.+

I've spent years learning to see myself again, to hear the whispers of my own desires over the shouting of old conditioning. An important part of this healing journey has been learning to choose myself first. This meant making some hard decisions and cutting out friendships that consistently left me feeling depleted or unseen. I realized I needed to distance myself from those who invalidated my feelings (always making me the "sensitive one" instead of addressing hurtful behavior), those who blatantly disrespected my boundaries (like with advice for my daughter, where their entitlement stunned me, though it shouldn't have, as I’d allowed boundaries to be crossed for so long), and those who simply didn't show up for me in the ways I consistently showed up for them (like the silence when I had my hysterectomy, compared to my efforts for theirs).

+.+.+.+.+.+

This path isn't easy or straight. Some days I still find myself reaching for the phone to text someone who has never once truly checked on me. Old habits that if I just try harder, give more, they'll finally see me. But that critical inner voice, the one that used to scream, gets quieter every day.

In its place grows something unfamiliar but necessary: the understanding that I am worth reciprocity. That relationships should energize, not deplete. That my love, my attention, my support - they are valuable, not things to be poured endlessly into hands that don’t hold them carefully.

+.+.+.+.+.+

I wonder how many of us are out there: the givers, the ones who learned early that love must be earned through constant effort and self-erasure, the ones who grew up thinking friendship meant exhaustion.

If you're reading this, I want to tell you… many people in your life might have failed to give you even the bare minimum, and it's long overdue for someone to say, "You're not crazy. That hurt. You deserved better."

We're doing the heavy emotional lifting now, the work that perhaps others should have done. And it's not fair. But it's also wildly impressive that we're still here, often not bitter, not cynical, but trying. Growing. Reclaiming.

We are not meant to be buckets with holes. We are wells, deep and abundant, but deserving of being replenished. And maybe, just maybe, the first person who needs to learn how to replenish us, to truly honor our worth, is ourselves.

Leave a comment

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

I was sitting on my couch yesterday, feeling that familiar heaviness after a text exchange with a friend. That conversation where I shared a new project I've been working on and got... "cool." Just that. One word. When I'm always the first to celebrate and ask questions about all of her projects. And I caught myself doing it again, that inner dialogue of "it wasn't that important anyway" and "why do I even bother sharing?"

Then I stopped. I placed my hand on my chest and said to myself, "That hurt. What you accomplished matters. I see you."

It felt awkward. Uncomfortable. Almost silly. But also necessary.

I should clarify something first because most people think self-validation is just positive affirmations in the mirror. It's more than that.

When you grow up with parents who couldn't or wouldn't validate your experiences or emotions, you never develop that muscle. You don't know how to say to yourself, "Yes, this matters. What I feel is real." Instead, you're constantly looking outward (to friends, partners, bosses, even strangers on the internet), hoping they'll finally give you what your parents never did.

I didn't realize I was doing this until my energy healer pointed out how often I mentioned what other people thought about my decisions. "But what do YOU think about it?" she asked. I sat there in silence. I honestly didn't know.

The journey to self-validation isn't pretty. At first, it feels like talking to a wall. The words bounce back, hollow. "You did great" sounds empty when you say it to yourself after decades of training your brain to dismiss your own voice.

I started small. When I felt sad about something minor, a canceled plan, a small rejection, I'd place my hand somewhere on my body (chest, arm, wherever felt natural) and say, "It's okay to feel disappointed." Just acknowledging the feeling without trying to talk myself out of it.

Slowly, I built up to bigger things: "You have a right to be angry about how you were treated." "It makes sense that you're still affected by your childhood." "You're allowed to be proud of this, even if no one else notices."

The hand on my body part is important. When no one holds you through your childhood pain, you can literally "pet" yourself through your adult pain. Your inner child craves that physical reassurance.

I half jokingly told my husband recently that if my tendency to people-please and the belief that "I don't matter to others" are creatures, they would be these gigantic beings with the biggest muscles and emotions. These are muscles that are difficult to soften and remove.

Some days I'm better at this than others. Yesterday, after that text, I felt myself slipping into old patterns - the need to achieve more, be more interesting, maybe then I'd get the response I craved. But I caught it. I put my hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, where tension always builds, and I literally petted myself. "You're enough right now. Exactly as you are."

Is it weird to talk about petting yourself? Maybe. But when you grow up in an emotionally neglectful home, you need to learn these strange, uncomfortable new habits. The discomfort is a sign you're rewiring something deep.

I don't know who I am some days. I've spent so many years shaping myself around others' expectations and responses. But in these small moments of self-validation, I catch glimpses. Fragments of the real me, emerging when I create enough safety to exist without outside approval.

If you're reading this and it resonates, try it. Place your hand somewhere on your body and speak to yourself with the gentleness you'd offer a friend. It won't feel natural at first. That's okay too. Validation isn't just for the easy parts, it's also for the awkward journey of learning to parent yourself.

Leave a comment

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful. Feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

This space is less polished portfolio, more emotional group chat.
Less Pinterest-perfect, more “I cried folding towels and now I’m fine.”

If you’ve ever thought:

• “I’m spiritually evolved but still want to delete everything and move to the forest.”

• “My soul is ancient, but my to-do list is dumb.”

• “I’m healing, but not without side-eye.”

Then Stuck On Earth might be for you.

I’ll be posting personal essays, cosmic survival checklists, art, and whatever else gets conjured between loads of laundry. If you’ve followed my work for years—thank you. This new chapter is an extension of everything I’ve always done… just with more jokes, more soul, and fewer matching socks.

So if you want to follow along:
Subscribe. Stay a while. Let’s become together.

Still becoming,
Bonnie

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful: feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Books feel like vital companions on my journey. Each month in "From My Bookshelf," I'll share one that truly resonated – perhaps sparking reflection, offering comfort, or shifting my perspective on themes close to my heart like healing, consciousness, and creativity. Excited to share these discoveries and connect through the ideas that move us!

I've been sitting with Clarissa Pinkola Estés' book "Women Who Run With the Wolves" for weeks now. Some books you read; others read you. This one reminded me of my childhood in ways that made me feel triggered and weirdly comforted.

The Child Who Didn't Belong

Growing up, I often felt like I was born into the wrong family. My mother's narcissistic tendencies created a household where my emotions weren't just ignored but actively dismissed. "You're not smart," she'd tell me. "You'll never be successful." These weren't occasional slips in parenting, these were consistent, ingrained messages throughout my childhood.

Estés calls this the "Mistaken Zygote Syndrome," that disorienting feeling of being fundamentally different from your family. I moved slowly and thoughtfully through the world, always being told I was taking too long to eat dinner or finish my homework. They rushed impatiently through life, demanding efficiency above all. Growing up in the concrete city of Hong Kong, I wasn't drawn to literal wilderness but to the wild landscapes of my mind. I retreated into daydreams to escape reality while they remained firmly anchored in the practical world. I felt things deeply; they focused on practicality and often brushed emotions aside.

For years, I thought something was wrong with me. Now I understand that I was experiencing what Estés describes as "the exile of the unmatched child." My soul belonged elsewhere while my body remained in a home that couldn't recognize or nurture my true nature.

The Stepfamily Within

The cruelest trick of emotionally immature parenting is that eventually, you no longer need your mother to tell you you're not enough. You tell yourself. The negative messages become internalized, creating what Estés calls the "stepfamily" within the psyche.

These internal voices took up residence in my mind: You can't do it. You're not good enough. You're not bold enough. Who do you think you are? Like the stepmother and stepsisters in fairy tales, these voices insulted and ate away my self-worth, killing off my natural confidence and creativity.

My mother, unable to mother herself properly, couldn't mother me either. Estés talks about the "collapsed mother" or "unmothered mother" who, having never received nurturing herself, lacks the psychological resources to nurture her child. Understanding this hasn't excused the damage done, but it has helped me see the wounded child my mother herself once was.

The Harpy's Destructive Cry

As I moved into adulthood, I developed what Estés calls the "Harpy Syndrome," that vicious inner critic that "shits upon" every creative idea or authentic expression. When I'd try to create, the Harpy would scream: "That's not even good. No one cares about what you have to say."

This wasn't just the usual kind of self-doubt. It was the accumulated weight of years being told I wasn't smart or capable. The Harpy's voice was my mother's voice, loud and clear, pinching off my nerve to life.

Finding My Wild Pack

My hero's journey didn't begin with a dramatic escape or revelation. It began with small moments of recognition, glimpses of my true self reflected back to me by people who could see what my parents couldn't.

A mentor who praised my photography. A friend who valued my intuitive understanding. A stranger who resonated with something I'd created. These connections helped me realize that perhaps I wasn't so broken, just born into a family that couldn't recognize my kind of magic.

Estés writes that we must "spend less time on what they didn't give you and more time on finding the people you belong to." This is exactly what helped me. I began to build my "psychic family" - people who matched my personality and values, who could see and celebrate my authentic self.

The Descent and Return

Healing from childhood trauma isn't linear. My journey has included spiritual exploration, creative expression, and deep inner work. There have been dark nights of the soul when I've had to face the wounded parts of myself: the abandoned child, the self-doubting creator, the people-pleaser desperate for validation.

These periods of confronting my own shadows were necessary. Estés tells us that the wild woman archetype is often found in the "underground forest," that dark place we're afraid to go. But it's only by going down that we can come back up whole.

About fifteen years ago, I experienced one of these descents. I was in such a dark place mentally that I imagined myself falling into a bottomless hole. When I finally hit the ground, I shattered into pieces. The pain felt unbearable. But in that moment of complete brokenness, clarity emerged. Looking at my scattered self, I realized I had a choice: I could carefully choose which pieces to reclaim and which to leave behind. I could rebuild myself without the parts that no longer served me.

Just last month, another descent occurred. Old wounds I didn't even know existed suddenly surfaced, triggered by current circumstances. This time, I metaphorically entered a deep, dark cave within my inner world. But instead of being trapped there, I began decluttering. I threw out old furniture, dusted long-neglected corners, opened windows to let fresh air circulate. It was a month-long process of self-love and release. When I finally stepped back into the light, I felt a lot lighter, having left behind baggage I'd been unconsciously carrying for decades.

My spirituality has been central to this healing. Learning to trust my intuition, to listen to my inner knowing, to recognize that the same sensitivity that made me vulnerable to my parents' criticism is also my greatest gift, these realizations have turned my wounds into wisdom.

Living with Wolves Now

Today, I'm reclaiming my "wildish nature." I'm writing this Substack. I'm creating AI art that blends my original photos and drawings with digital transformation, a perfect metaphor for how I've transformed my own life story.

The negative voices still visit sometimes. Old wounds can still be triggered. But I've learned to recognize them for what they are, not truths about my worth, but just something from a childhood where I wasn't seen.

The most profound realization has been that the sensitivity that made me vulnerable to my parents' emotional immaturity is the same sensitivity that allows me to connect through writing, makes me a compassionate friend, and an intuitive artist. What was once my greatest wound has become my greatest strength.

Your Wild Soul Waits

If you recognize yourself in any part of my story, if you too felt like the odd one in your family, if you too struggle with a harsh inner critic born from childhood wounds, I want you to know that your wild soul waits for you. It's never been lost, only forgotten or suppressed.

As Estés says, "Stories are medicine." They help us recognize our own experiences in others' journeys. They remind us that we're not alone in our struggles, and that transformation is always possible.

My childhood shaped me, but it doesn't define me. I run with my own wolves now. And if you're reading this, feeling a resonance with these words, perhaps you're part of my wild pack too.

What parts of your wild nature are you reclaiming? I'd love to hear in the comments below.

Leave a comment

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful: feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Speaking of resonance, that's exactly how I discovered today's guest, Marcel Alan, who creates music as The Last Days of Our Past. I first encountered his hauntingly beautiful work online during a significant point in my own spiritual journey. Something about it called to me, and after reaching out simply to express my appreciation, I became curious to learn more about the person and the process behind the music. I'm so glad he agreed to share his thoughts with us. I hope you enjoy our conversation!

Guest: Marcel Alan (The Last Days of Our Past)

Location: Szczecin, Poland

Website / Instagram

1. Starting Out: What does the beginning of a new creative project feel like for you? Do you have any rituals that help you start?

Every new project feels exciting. It’s always a new challenge. Since my pieces are often multilayered, it’s like slowly putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t have any specific ritual, and I think 99% of my projects begin in the same way: experimenting with textures and figuring out how to tell a story through the music.

2. Materials & Space: How do your tools and environment influence your process? Does anything feel like a companion in your creation?

My main instrument is the guitar, and I know I can always rely on it to spark some new ideas. I usually work on my music late at night, and I think the silence outside might influence me as much as any synth or instrument. I guess I write music that matches that 2 a.m. quiet and stillness, and maybe that’s why most of my tracks have a kind of nostalgic and somber mood.

Another important part of this process is that I almost always have the artwork for the album cover before I even start working on the music, so the pictures end up playing a huge role in how everything comes together.

* I understand what Marcel said about the silence influencing his work; those quiet hours hold so much creative potential. I am similar in that way, when I paint or write I don’t turn on any background sounds because I want to hear/feel clearly what I’m called to create. *

3. Navigating Challenges: How do you move through moments when you feel stuck or doubtful? What helps you continue?

Whenever I get stuck, I’ve found the best thing to do is step away and try something completely different. It pushes me to experiment with new sounds, and sometimes I stumble upon an idea by accident that ends up being exactly what I needed. That’s actually how The Last Days of Our Past came to life. It started as a side project, but I quickly realized I was enjoying it more than my previous projects. I’m also a huge fan of music documentaries. I find it fascinating to see how other musicians come up with solutions to their creative challenges. I’ve probably watched “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco” at least five times!

4. Flow State: Can you describe what "flow" feels like in your work? What conditions invite that immersive state?

I record every day, even though I know not everything will get finished. For me, it’s important to keep the creative process flowing. I think by recording so regularly, I’m setting the stage for "flow" to happen naturally. In fact, It tends to come when I stop overthinking and finally come across a sound or melody that just clicks.

His New Single: Anhedonia

5. Unexpected Discoveries: What surprising things have you learned about yourself through the act of creating?

I think I’ve learned I’m a lot more patient and focused than I thought. I can spend hours with one loop, tweaking the tiniest details, chasing a specific tone.

6. The Inner Critic: How does your inner critic show up during your process? How do you relate to that voice?

Oh, that’s a nightmare! It often slows everything down. It makes me change things I shouldn’t and I waste a lot of time working on ideas that just don’t go anywhere. To be honest, It’s very frustrating, but I’ve learned not to hate it. At least, I’ve been trying not to. It’s there for a reason, right? I mean, I record a lot, and not all of it is good, so that voice helps me figure out what’s worth keeping.

* Marcel's honesty about the inner critic feels so familiar! Learning not to hate that voice, as he says, is such an important part of the journey. It reminds me that relating to our inner critics is truly an ongoing practice, not something we just 'fix' once. *

7. Deeper Meaning: Beyond the finished pieces, what nourishment does the creative process itself bring to your life?

Well, making music is my shelter. It gives me a space to slow down and make sense of things that might feel too big or overwhelming to articulate in words. It’s definitely the tool I use to explore and express emotions that might otherwise stay buried. I honestly can’t imagine not doing it.

8. Process vs. Product: How do you see the relationship between your creative journey and the final artwork?

When I’m working on something, I can spend weeks, sometimes even months on it and by the time I finish, there’s always a mix of relief and satisfaction. To be honest, more relief! All the steps, the highs, and especially the struggles in the recording and composing sessions help shape the final piece. So, I think it’s fair to say that, in my case, the journey is more important than the finalized track itself because it’s the process that gives the work its true meaning.

Listen: Reflections

9. Inspirations: Who or what feels like a "fellow traveler" that resonates with or informs your creative path?

There’s a long list of artists who influence me, honestly. Some names that come to mind are Philip Glass, The Montgolfier Brothers, Brian Eno, The Smashing Pumpkins, Yo La Tengo, João Gilberto, Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Wilco, Nala Sinephro, Hania Rani, and, of course, The Beatles. What I’ve learned from some of them is that sometimes less really is more. You don’t need to overcomplicate things to make them feel meaningful. They also made me think more about how important dynamics and silence are in music, which led me to pay more attention to the quiet and calm parts.

10. Advice: What encouragement would you offer someone finding their way on their own creative journey right now?

Well, I would say my message is pretty simple: never stop working on your art, even when it feels pointless and no one is paying attention. If it matters to you, that's more than enough reason to keep going.

Some Fun Questions--

1. Creative Fuel: What's the weirdest snack that powers your creative sessions? (Are we talking pickle-dipped Oreos, or...?)

I don’t usually eat while composing, but I drink a lot. Nothing fancy or weird though, just water, coffee or Pepsi.

2. Studio Quirks: What's the most ridiculous thing someone would catch you doing if they secretly filmed you while working? Dance moves? Talking to your laptop?

I don’t talk to my laptop. I scold it like it owes me money! Luckily, there are no cameras around, otherwise someone would probably catch me arguing with a plugin, pacing around like I’m solving a crime, or playing the same two notes (sometimes only one!) for an hour.

3. Alternate Universe: If you weren't pursuing your current creative path, what completely unrelated and surprising career would your parallel universe self be thriving in?

I think I would be a journalist, but I’m not sure if this answer would actually surprise anyone who knows me.

Reflecting on our conversation, several things Marcel shared really stayed with me. His mention of silence being an influence resonates deeply with my own need for quiet to connect with creative flow. Hearing him describe the inner critic as both a frustrating nightmare and a necessary filter is such a relatable paradox for so many of us creatives. And I especially appreciate his insight that the journey itself, with all its struggles and relief, is what ultimately gives the final work its meaning, something I often find true in my own process too.

Marcel, THANK YOU so much for sharing your time and thoughts. And thank you for agreeing to be my very first guest here! It’s a privilege to be on this creative journey with you.

Please check out Marcel's work at his website.

. . . . . . . . . .

I’m curious, how do you navigate your inner critic? Leave a comment below.

Leave a comment

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread below. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share

Seeing With New Eyes

It’s fascinating, isn't it? Making art doesn’t just shift things internally; it seems to recalibrate our external vision too. Since I began creating again more intentionally, I’ve noticed the world looks different. Ordinary moments somehow feel infused with a little more magic. There's a quiet beauty in everyday scenes that I suspect I walked right past for years. As writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch once noted, "People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." Creativity sometimes feels like it helps us remember that joy, that wonder in what's readily available.

This shift in perception might be one of the most generous gifts of a creative practice. We start to carry these "artist's eyes" with us, even when we aren't actively making something. A particular shadow stretching across a wall, the unique color of the sky just before dusk, the unexpected pattern buildings make against the clouds… these small details suddenly feel interesting, worthy of attention, even meaningful.

Art teaches us to truly look. And when we really look, when we pay attention, we naturally become more present in our own lives. Sometimes I catch myself wondering how much simple beauty slipped by unnoticed during those years I wasn't actively creating. But then I gently remind myself, it’s never too late to start seeing again. The world is always waiting with its quiet invitations.

As writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch once noted, "People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." Creativity sometimes feels like it helps us remember that joy, that wonder in what's readily available.

What Our Creativity Might Need to Grow

Like any living thing, our creativity seems to flourish under certain conditions. It has its own tender needs. While it's different for everyone, I've noticed creativity often appreciates things like:

• A little quiet time and breathing room.

• Freedom from harsh self judgment (or at least, a willingness to notice the inner critic and not always believe it).

• Permission to simply play and experiment, without needing a perfect outcome.

• Connection with fellow creative spirits who understand the journey.

• A gentle willingness to face the inner resistances or fears that hold us back.

As Dr. Brené Brown reminds us, "There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period." Giving ourselves permission to ‘fail’ without judgment feels crucial. For me, nurturing this space has involved things like meditation, taking intentional breaks from the endless scroll of social media, consciously connecting with my playful inner child, and sometimes saying 'yes' to little adventures I might have previously avoided. Spending time with other creative souls who remind me of my own inner spark has also been incredibly nourishing.

What helps your creativity feel safe enough to unfurl might look entirely different, and that's perfectly okay. Discovering what nurtures your unique creative spirit is a journey in itself, a personal exploration that unfolds over time. I know I'm still figuring it out, day by day.

Growing Alongside Our Art

Our relationship with our art isn't fixed; it breathes and evolves. What I create today quietly informs what I might feel drawn to create tomorrow. Each painting session might teach me something that leads to the next experiment. Each photograph I take might train my eye to see light or composition differently next time.

This evolving connection makes our creative practice a lifelong conversation, not just with our materials, but with ourselves. Looking back at earlier work can be revealing. We see not just the piece itself, but a reflection of who we were in that moment of creation. Changes in our style, our themes, or our process often mirror our own inner shifts and growth, like quiet rings marking time inside a tree trunk.

I can feel this unfolding in my own explorations over these past months. Looking back at the images and words I've shared here feels like watching my own creativity gently re-emerge after a long winter. It's rarely a straight path forward; there are loops, spirals, moments of feeling stuck, and times where it feels like taking a step back. And somehow, that’s all part of the living process too.

The Beautiful Give and Take

In this ongoing dance between the artist and the art, we discover something deeper than just self expression. We find a pathway to self transformation. That quote I shared last week comes back to me: "You cannot create without being created in return." This truth invites us to approach our making, whatever form it takes, with a sense of openness and wonder. What might this process show me about myself today? How might allowing these colors or shapes to emerge change how I feel?

The canvas changes us as much as we change it. The photograph reveals something in us as much as we reveal the subject. The words on the page reshape our thinking as much as we shape the narrative. Artist Georgia O'Keeffe spoke to this deep looking when she said, "To see takes time." Creativity encourages us to take that time, both to see the world and to see ourselves more clearly.

What art, what form of making, is gently calling to you today? What quiet part of yourself might be waiting to be met, understood, or transformed through the simple act of creating something? Like you, I don't have all the answers, but the questions themselves feel rich and worth sitting with.

I'm learning, slowly but surely, that being an artist isn't necessarily about producing masterpieces. It feels more about becoming more fully, tenderly human through the act of creation itself. It's about allowing ourselves to be made and remade by the very things we bring into the world. And perhaps, importantly, it involves offering ourselves grace for the times we felt we couldn't create at all.

If you've noticed ways creativity has shifted your own perception or transformed you, I'd be honored to hear your story in the comments. We truly are all figuring this out, side by side.

Leave a comment

Thank you for spending time with these thoughts today. Connection makes this space meaningful – feel free to share this post, leave a heart ❤️, or add your own perspective in the chat thread. I appreciate you being here on this journey with True and Authentic.

Share