My daughter once asked me
why I keep walking into storms.
Not with her mouth.
With her eyes.

The same eyes that watched me
carry whole houses on my back,
carry men,
carry grief,
carry grocery bags,
carry debt,
carry stories too heavy
for one woman
and call it strength.

I laughed.
Because what else
was I supposed to do?

Tell her I learned young
to read love like weather-
watch the current,
feel the tide turn,
keep the boat on an even keel
with two small hands.

And cry
in the quiet before the storm
because I already knew.

My father.
A thundercloud.
The whole courtroom.

The man who could turn
a dinner table
into a battlefield
with a single sentence.

Who taught me
that a girl’s body
was not hers to manage.

Who tossed words
like stones at a child
just beginning to bloom.

Roly-poly.
Fatty.
Too much.
Not enough.

I was ten thousand years old
before I learned
those words belonged to him,
not me.

My mother,
spill the tea woman,
tired woman,
seen-so-much-trauma woman,
anxious-to-the-bone woman,
afraid of her shadow woman,
buttered pancakes and care woman,
standing somewhere
between survival
and surrender,

teaching me softly
how a woman folds herself into his yes
one small compromise
at a time.

I became watchful.
Chameleons are like that.

I carried children.
I carried paychecks.
I carried marriages
long after the yoke was gone.

I carried churches
and melodies
Until their walls
imploded inside me.

I carried it all.
Until one day
my own soul sat down
on the side of the road
and refused
to take another step.

That was the year
the darkness came.
The year
I no longer knew
the woman in the mirror.

The year
I learned
that surviving
and living
are not the same thing.

And somewhere
between a surgeon’s knife
and a fire,
between ebony, ivory,
and a desert road,
between a mourning dove
and the open highway,
I found her.

Not the healed woman.
Not the enlightened woman.
Not the brave woman.

Just the woman.
Real.

The one underneath the fog.
Who talked to plants.
Who felt awe
in thunderstorms.

The one who packed up her life
and pointed wheels west
because something in her bones
said go.

My children think
I taught them resilience.
Maybe.
But what I hope
they remember
is that I stayed.

Not in the marriage.
Not in the religion.
Not in the cage.

I stayed with myself.
When everything else
fell away
I stayed.

When daughter broke my heart
When lovers chose me
and I stayed chosen.
When family turned strange.
When emptiness sat inside me
at midnight.

I stayed.
I did not abandon
my mother’s daughter.

Not this time.

Sometimes
I imagine the women behind me.
The silent ones.
The obedient ones.
The women who swallowed oceans
and called it grace.

I imagine them watching
as I load another box,
sell another possession,
follow another impossible dream.

Maybe they shake their heads.
Or maybe
for the first time,
they breathe.

Because one woman
finally stopped carrying
the whole damn world.

One woman
put down the burden.
One woman
walked toward the horizon
full of herself.

And all the women
buried inside her
exhaled.

Then
stood up
and walked too.

©2026 Debby Meadows Studio, LLC. All rights reserved. 

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Hello, beautiful humans.

It’s been a hot minute yet I’m not apologizing.

I’ve shared a lot on this platform. I’ve been vulnerable, and that will not change.

Since I wrote the last entry, my life has completely upended.

I am at the helm, stirring the wheel of my life!

I hinted at moving coasts on this platform, and felt the pull in my chest for months. But underneath it was so much swirling around: guilt, uncertainty, excitement, melancholy, and underneath all of that, at the root of everything: fear. What if? What if this happens? What if that happens?

When a woman entering her 60s sells almost everything she owns, packs up her little Toyota Corolla named Luna, and hits the road, driving herself from the east coast to the west with the intention of moving, it’s not conventional. An anomaly, for sure. Some people say it’s just plain weird.

Gotta tell you, that makes me laugh.

I had a cervical fusion and laminectomy (shaving of the front half of the bone) of 7 vertebrae on October 28, 2025, nine and a half months ago. This time last year, I couldn’t turn my head without a sharp, nauseating kind of pain that makes you hold your breath. My arms were going numb. My fingers wouldn’t do what I told them to, and the pain in my neck and shoulders became almost unbearable. My balance was so far off that the floor felt unreliable beneath me. I was diagnosed with cervical myelopathy, which means my vertebrae were pressing on my spinal column, almost completely cutting off the spinal fluid from circulating. I had a choice: either have the surgery, or become slowly paralyzed. Those words. I came home from that orthopedic and neurology consult, walked into my apartment and just stood there in the middle of the room in a daze. Then I lost it, breaking down and sobbing. I was scared. But what I was scared of most of all was losing creativity.

I am a visual artist, a musician, and an author. I can’t separate myself from those, because I can’t “not’ create. It’s who I am.

I chose to have the surgery. The truth is that post op recovery was hard. It was a marathon, not a sprint. But what I was completely unprepared for was the rapid personal growth that cracked open during post-op. YouTube served me someone who became a mirror of healing for me, and I fully embraced music again after seventeen years of virtually nothing. The thing that had been my lifeblood became a cage, and I couldn’t separate it from intense trauma and burnout. Seventeen years is a long time to be cut off from something that was once the language your soul spoke. It’s like cutting off an arm and still expecting to hold something like nothing ever happened.

In March of 2026, I pledged to participate in a firewalk weekend in Christiana, Tennessee, five hours from where I was living. I had no idea if I could even make the trip, let alone walk on fire. My cervical collar traveled with me, just in case.

My body showed me what she could do when I listened to her. I was sore after the weekend because my body wasn’t used to the amount of activity I’d put her through. But I learned to actually listen to her. Instead of forcing, I showed her compassion. I paid closer attention. I softened instead of forcing her to do what I wanted because I was impatient. I became present in a way I hadn’t been in years, not the bumper-sticker version of present, but the kind where you can feel the ground underneath your feet and the air going in and out of your lungs and you realize, oh, I’m here. I’m actually here. And it’s pretty wonderful.

I began to dream more and more of California. For six years, I’d put live video feeds on YouTube in my background while I worked from home, teaching for a university. I saw the ocean’s reflected light. I heard all the sounds on repeat. I saw the way the coastal fog looks in the morning. It was my ambient flow, the way I stayed tethered to something that felt like possibility, and it brought me a peace I couldn’t fully name.

A month later, I did another firewalk weekend. This time, I not only walked on two different types of fire, but I walked over broken glass. I know. That way you’re feeling from just reading that right now is exactly how I felt standing in front of both. But the decision got stripped down to its simplest form: do I stay in the uncertainty and the fear, or do I take just one step? And then another, followed by another?

I chose to step.

That’s when the snowball really started moving. I began thinking more seriously about California, tentatively telling my kids and my parents I was thinking about visiting when my condo lease was up in June. That rolled into selling Bibi, my beloved van and travel partner, along with most of my belongings. I went through everything I owned and kept only what brought me joy and what I needed to live. Everything else went. Sold or donated, released back into the world.

The second week of June, I had Luna packed and I was on my way. No destination locked in. All I knew was that my heart said, go. I’m five weeks into this new phase, and the way my life has blossomed is almost unbelievable to me. And guess what? Upon entering California after a week of driving and camping stealth, I found myself at a beach that looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized it was the SAME beach I had watched for 7 years on a consistent basis!

I’ve landed in the little oceanside town I’m supposed to be, at least for now. My roommate is quickly becoming one of my favorite people. We laugh until we’re wiping our eyes, the kind of laughing that leaves you breathless. I have been welcomed into a circle of creative, artsy, alive people. I’m exhibiting and selling my work. I’ve recorded my first single. I’m actively creating and recording songs for an album. My book is in the editing stages.

All because I said yes.

More on all of that later. But before I go, one more thing.

There’s something you want. You know exactly what it is because it just showed up the second I said that. You felt it in your chest before your brain had a chance to talk you out of it.

What would happen if you said yes to it?

Not someday. Not when things settle. Not when it makes more sense.

What would happen if you just let yourself say its name?

What Real Freedom Actually Feels Like

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything new here, and honestly, I’ve been too busy living to write about it. So let me catch you up!

Here’s the thing about expansion nobody talks about: it’s not about accumulating more stuff or more experiences. It’s about the sensation of choice, possibility and more. It’s the feeling that the door is actually open. Let me show you what I mean.

When I was 17 years old, a fresh high school graduate, I did something I hadn’t told a single soul about until a few months ago. Nobody. There was a small convenience store and gas station on the edge of the county by I-71, and it was well-known for exactly two things: it was the local Greyhound bus station, and it sold pornography. When you’ve been raised in what I can only describe as a religious cult, just being in the proximity of that possibility is enough for the fire of hell to singe your eyelashes off.

Yet, there I was. Seventeen, naive and pure, but with a wild streak that was never quite tamed. My gift for music had been lassoed by religion at age seven, and ten years later I was all in but deeply dissatisfied. It was a cage, golden bars and all, but I could only go so far with my talent before something reigned me back in. When my parents made clear there was no room in college for music or art, and that I would major in medicine so I could make respectable money, my inner Debby rebelled hard.

The very next day, I drove to town in my hot rod Baja VW, straight pipes roaring so that everyone within a two-mile radius knew I was coming. I pulled into the Hell Station, sat in my car, and broke out in a cold sweat. I cut the engine. Walked to the front door. Swung it open.

My chest was tight, my breathing shallow. I was absolutely certain the wrath of God was about to strike me dead right there on the linoleum floor next to the beef jerky display. But what happened was deeply anticlimactic. The man behind the counter had a cigarette dangling from his lip and looked completely uninterested in the trembling seventeen-year-old girl standing in front of him.

“Hi,” I said.

He actually grunted.

“Do y’all sell Greyhound tickets here?”

He almost rolled his eyes. “That’s what it says on the window, darlin’,” in the flattest voice you’ve ever heard.

And before I could think myself out of it, before my nervous system could catch up with my mouth, I blurted: “I want a one-way ticket to LA, please.”

He nodded like people said this to him every Tuesday. “Traveling a bit?”

“Yep. Something like that.”

What he didn’t know was that I had a whole plan. Pack a bag, slip out at midnight, catch the bus to Los Angeles, pursue a music career, become famous. Clean break. New life. My plan was airtight except for one small problem: when the rubber met the road, I was terrified. What if my parents found me? What would my dad do? I knew what my dad’s anger and my mother’s sarcasm could do to a person. I bought the ticket, but I just could not get on that bus. I was too scared.

I carried that Greyhound ticket in the pockets of purses and backpacks for years, until the ink wore completely off and I finally let it go.

It took me forty years to heal from what I was running away from that day, and I’m still peeling back layers. But here’s the difference between then and now: that seventeen-year-old was trying to escape. What I’m doing now is intentionally choosing.

Most of us know the vacation feeling. You land somewhere beautiful, and by day two your whole nervous system exhales. The end of the trip feels far away. You’re loose, open, fully present. Then the day before you go home hits, something tightens back up, and that first Monday back at work you’re constricted, miserable and counting down to the next getaway. We outsource our sense of possibility to circumstances that come and go. Been there, done that. Haven’t we all?

But what if the door is already open? What if choice is available right now, not after the next big thing?

That’s what genuine freedom feels like to me: not the absence of structure or responsibility, but the deep physical knowing that I’m not trapped. I did years of somatic healing work to get here, and what I found is that the body has to believe it before the mind can fully live it. Survival mode is sneaky. It convinces you that you have to control every outcome and anticipate every threat, because that’s what kept you safe once. Letting go of that grip is terrifying and then it isn’t.

In a few weeks, I’m heading to the west coast. When people ask me why, I tell them I’m following my heart. I know something is there for me; I just don’t know the exact shape of it yet. For someone who was raised to trust neither her heart nor her intuition, that sentence is enormous. My teenage self, the one who bought a bus ticket and stood on the edge of everything and turned back, would not believe it. But she’s cheering me on now.

This time, I’m not running away from anything. I’m moving toward.

I also have my first single dropping on Friday, July 3rd! It’s called “I Am The Storm,” and it’s the first track from my debut album, The Threshold. I’m writing and composing as we speak. I’m selling art consistently and I’m close to finishing Tell Me Something True: The Perry Parallax, which I cannot wait to get into your hands.

More on all of that soon. For now, go pre-save the single on Spotify and share it, please? It takes thirty seconds and it genuinely matters.

Link HERE

Thank you for being a part of my world.

Love, Debby

There is a moment in healing that nobody warns you about. It is not the breakthrough. It is not the tears or the therapy or the journal pages or the conversation that finally cracks something open. It is the quiet, almost unremarkable morning when you realize that the decision you just made, the small one, what to eat, where to drive, whether to say yes or no to something, came from inside you. Not from a rulebook. Not from fear of consequence. Not from a voice that was never yours to begin with. Just from you.

That moment is so ordinary it could slip right past you. And it is everything.

My dear friend, Genea, uses this line I love so much, I put it at the very beginning of my memoir: “Your life is a result of the decisions you’ve made.” The first time I really heard it, not just read it, I sat with it for a long time. And I didn’t want to believe it. Because what she is really saying, is that we have more power than we think. And for someone who spent decades genuinely believing that her own desires were the problem, that her instincts were suspect, and that I should always defer to a louder voice, that sentence is not a rebuke. It is an invitation. And it is responsibility.

It is the threshold door swinging wide open.

What I have learned, and am still learning, is that most of us are making decisions from a frequency we did not choose - and cannot even see. The subconscious mind is running a program installed in childhood, comparing everything happening right now to what happened before the age of twelve, and steering the ship accordingly. It is not malicious; it is protective. It is doing exactly what it learned to do when you were small and the world felt enormous. But the version of you it is protecting is not who you are anymore. You’ve grown up, right? The decisions it is making now on your behalf are keeping you inside a life-sized version of a cage you may have long since outgrown.

The healing, for me, didn’t arrive as a single lightning bolt shooting out of the sky, miraculously helping me ‘see the light’. It arrived incrementally, the way light comes into a room when someone slowly raises a blind. A little more visible. A little more possible. A little more real.

My healing gathered speed on a motorcycle. I am not even being metaphorical. I threw a leg over a Harley on a backroad in Kentucky, and something in my nervous system started to relax. The switchbacks at Deals Gap, Tennessee, on the section known as The Tail of the Dragon - the lean, the grip, and the split-second reading of the road that nobody can do for you. I stopped at a gas station on the way down from the Cherohala Skyway and caught my own reflection in the window. A slim biker chick, strong, taking up space without apology. It took me several seconds to understand I was looking at myself. That woman had been in there the whole time. My healing started right there. Baby steps, realizations, and deep somatic work to discover where those murky roots took hold and why. And more than that, the TRUTH behind the where and the why.

My decisions started shifting the same way, especially noticing how they ‘felt’ in my body. I began noticing the difference between a decision made from fear that contracted, the bracing quality of trying to prevent or control something, versus a decision made from a feeling of openness, expansion, fullness and freedom. The fear decisions feel like relief in the short term. They feel like safety. The creation decisions feel like standing at the edge of something real with no guarantee underneath. A threshold instead of a precipice. They feel completely different in the body. They don’t leave that low-grade residue of self-abandonment that I had mistaken for faithfulness for so many years.

What I am learning, in real time, right now, as I pack boxes and prepare to drive west toward California, is that sovereignty is not a destination. It is a practice. It is the daily, sometimes hourly decision to make the next choice from the truest frequency you can access.

The most surprising part of it, for me, is that the healing didn’t take away my music. It gave it back, completely unrecognizable, fuller, freer, in the best possible way. I sit beside people in hospice rooms and nursing homes now, in the last hours of their lives, and I play whatever wants to come through. There’s no set list, no performance, and no one to manage, impress, or appease. There is just music moving from my hands into a room where someone is crossing the most sacred threshold there is. This is a way I show love. I’ve come to realize that the flow, the thing that flows through artists and musicians and writers - is - love. In it’s truest form. And when it flows, I am fully present, choosing, from exactly the place this whole long arc of my life has been leading me to find.

The point is not what I choose. The point is that I finally get to. And that I’m intentionally choosing. With my whole self behind it.

That is not selfish. That is true. <3

“We believed in music, brothers to the end. Nothing stood between us, a fire burned within.” — Steve Perry, “Anyway,” 1994

It is a Tuesday night and I am tired.

I started the morning early, getting the two older girls on the bus and dropping Chloe, my youngest, off at preschool. Then I worked a ten hour day as a medical transcriptionist and tech assistant at a physical therapy office in town. By the time I pick up the girls and throw together dinner, which is usually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I have just enough time to arrive at church for praise band rehearsal. I am exhausted. But also exhilarated, because I know what is coming.

I walk into the sanctuary and the smell hits me first. Glade air freshener, someone’s coffee still warm in a styrofoam cup near the sound booth, and underneath all of it that quiet feeling of a room that has held a lot of people and a lot of prayer. The overhead lights are only half on, casting the sanctuary in a warm half-dark that feels like it’s giving us permission to relax. I throw my stuff down on one of the padded chairs hooked together side by side near the front.

Then I climb up on the stage to the sound of, “Look what the cat drug in!” I side-eye the two musicians standing there and smirk. I quip, “Yeah, well, the cat realized you can’t exactly meow your way through the bridge on Sunday. So I figured I’d show up. You’re welcome.” Everybody laughs. Tim is already beside me with his lead guitar, warming up, running an improv riff that stops me right where I’m standing. I look at him with a grin, saying, “Wow. Where did THAT come from?” He laughs as I turn on my keyboard and throws the riff back at me. My eyebrows raise. I stand at the keyboard and give him the look of Oh, you did NOT just throw that at me, and it’s on. Whatever riff he throws at me, I throw it right back. That’s just how we roll. My middle daughter, Christian, is on the drums. She whoops, clicks in immediately, and we begin to jam. The sound fills the room like something alive.

The large sanctuary is wider than it is deep, and this does something interesting to the sound. The side walls are further apart, so the sound waves take longer to reach our ears. This makes the room feel much larger and more open than a narrow room. It makes us sound bigger than we actually are. The sound we produce on stage hits the back wall and returns to us quickly. Without proper monitoring this can lead to muddiness, because the reflected sound overlaps with what we are currently playing. But our sound engineer knows exactly what every instrument and singer needs without being asked. I tell him he is a magic maker, and I mean it.

I run the singers through gentle vocal exercises first, then some scales to warm up. The voice is an instrument and the instrument is us, so careful attention is always exercised. Someone is a little hoarse tonight and we laugh about it, but I also tell them to go very easy tonight, stay well hydrated, and drink warm lemon tea with honey. We work through the proposed set list I’ve already assembled. I run the hand signals. One finger rolling means keep it going. Two fingers down means back to the chorus. Three fingers down means get ready to wrap it up. A fist means we are ending that song. Except we never really end when the song ends. When we can hear ourselves perfectly in our monitors and we are locked into a tight pocket with each other, everything deepens. And the flow begins.

The flow itself is something that we cannot fake. When a band is truly in it, it feels less like a band playing instruments and more like one single organism breathing. In the flow, I stop thinking about my fingers, the chord chart, or what I am going to sing next. It feels like the music is playing me rather than me playing the music. I know exactly where my drummer is going to hit the crash before she does, and my bass player feels like he is tucked perfectly under my left hand on the keys. It feels just like leaning back into a chair that I know will not break. Emotionally, it is an incredible high.

I catch the eye of my lead guitarist and just know it is time to push the energy. It feels like a shared secret passing between us without a word. When I decide to drop the volume to a whisper for a prophetic moment, the band does not react. They anticipate. They know exactly where I am going because they feel and sense it. It is the thrill of being perfectly understood without saying a word. And it is addictive as hell, especially when the people respond. It is a place musicians long to be, and not every musician has been there.

Between rehearsal takes, there is the witty banter, inside jokes, and roasting each other. Someone says something so spectacularly off the wall and witty that the whole room dissolves, instruments going quiet while we laugh until our eyes water. And then we run it again. These people know me. Not the version of me that I present to the world, but the actual me. They know my struggles, and still they show up on Tuesday nights, give it everything they have, and hug me goodbye before they leave. Every single time.

The sanctuary is half lit and quiet when we rehearse, but we fill it with life.

They are my people and I am theirs.

This particular Tuesday night, we play, laugh, jam, and hug goodbye, with calls of, “See you tomorrow night!”, referring to the Wednesday service. We have set lists for the next three services nailed down. I drive home with the music still ringing in my ears, my girls falling asleep in the backseat, the Kentucky night pressing soft and dark against the car windows. I am a single mother working full time, raising three daughters, living in government housing, surviving on food stamps and Medicaid with no child support. And I am pouring everything I have left over into volunteering my musical talents to a church and a praise team that has become my family. I am exhausted, yet, most days I am full with music. And I have just added a full-time college course load to the mix.

But in just seventy two hours, it will be over.

On Thursday, I meet with the pastoral staff. The purpose of the meeting is to give notice that I am stepping away from my musical responsibilities temporarily. I am in my fourth week of college, and at the age of forty, everything on my plate is kicking my butt.

I am not met with love, nor understanding. The room is cool and very still. Instead, I am met with hostility and coldness. I am told sternly that I haven’t heard from God, that college is not part of His plan for me, that I need to stop this silliness and press into God instead of pulling away from Him.

I sit in stunned silence. The air conditioning hums. I begin to speak, but I am interrupted and told, that as a single mom, they have been there for me, and if I do this, they will not be there for me anymore. I think, What does that even mean? I am told strictly to go pray for twenty four hours and come back with what I hear.

They are confident I will come to my senses. Funny. I feel like I am making perfect sense. In a last ditch effort I exclaim, “I will be able to give more money to the church!” I am met with silence and stares. The pastor’s wife opens the door and shows me out.

I have a foreboding feeling I cannot shake. On the way out the door, I grab my big file box of all the music I have hand transposed, chord charts I have composed, and set lists built from months of careful prayer and planning. The plastic corners of the big box press into my palms. Something in my gut tells me to take it, and for once I do not question it.

Twenty four hours pass. Before my college classes that day, I drive back to the church. The morning is still cool, the parking lot half empty, and the building looking exactly like it always has. The door opens just a crack. “Did you do what we told you to?”, the pastor’s wife asks. “Yes,” I say. I tell them that God has opened a door to college and I am walking through it. I am going to continue my college studies.

The pastor’s wife holds out her hand before I can even step inside. The morning light catches the gold of her watch. “Give me your key”, she demands. I slowly hand it to her. The metal is warm from my palm. Then she says, “You are hereby relieved of your duties.” Then she hisses, “Do NOT say a word to anyone, especially anyone in the praise band. Nobody. NOBODY. Do you understand? It will not go well for you if you do.” I blink. I look at her. “You don’t have a monopoly on people”, I say. She steps toward me, close enough that I can smell her perfume, something expensive, floral and sharp. “If you know what’s good for you, you will stay quiet. Understand?”

Before I know it, I step toward her and speak forcefully. “I’m done. I’m finished. Don’t call me, because I am never setting foot back in a church again. Do YOU hear ME?” She responds by slamming the door in my face. The click of the lock is the last sound I hear.

The one person I want to tell is one of my closest friends and a singer in the band. She is literally sitting twenty feet away, volunteering as the church secretary. But the only thing I can do is turn and walk away. Essentially, I disappear. And because I disappear without explanation or warning, without a goodbye or closure, the band members don’t get closure either. One day I am there, leading and playing music, loving, bantering, in the flow, and the next…I am simply gone.

I am stunned and devastated, and I blindly drive away. I don’t remember making any turns. The next thing I remember, I am sliding down the inside of my front door to the floor, sobbing so hard I can’t catch my breath. My musical family has just been ripped away from me. My biological family is an hour away, and my mother and I are on rocky terms. For the first time in my adult life, I am very alone.

What I do not know yet is just how long I will carry the trauma of what just happened in my body. I don’t realize how many years I will spend not touching a keyboard, not picking up a guitar, not singing, because every note will remind me of the people I loved, as well as the religion that controlled and manipulated me, and I cannot separate the music from the grief of losing them and the manipulative control of the church. Who wants to feel that? The pain is too big to process. So I don’t. I stuff it down as deep as possible. I survive, and I choose not to feel.

I don’t care if I ever go back to music. Honestly, I don’t intend to. The only thing that kept me there was the love of my friends and the band. The cracks in the religious facade blew up into a massive chasm that day, and my passion for music blew up right along with them.

I do not touch anything to do with music for seventeen years.

Here is the thing nobody tells you when you finally get free of something that is also hurting you:

They tell you that you should be grateful you escaped. They tell you to focus on what you gained and not what you lost. And you try. You really try. But the body does not grieve the cage. The body grieves the people who were inside it with you. The body grieves the Tuesday nights, the inside jokes, the hugs goodbye, and the sound of Tim’s guitar throwing a riff that I threw right back. The body grieves the family. And that grief does not care that the container was toxic. It does not care that leaving was the right thing. It just knows what it lost, and it carries that grief in the bones for years, sometimes decades.

Steve Perry walked away from Journey in 1987 after the Raised on Radio tour. During a more recent interview, Perry noted that the music business makes it so easy to keep busy and not feel what’s going on, acting as a distraction from his actual emotional state. He admitted he had never dealt with any of the personal stuff during the height of the band’s fame, including the death of his mother and other close relatives. He said that he simply lost his passion for something he loved and realized he couldn’t do it anymore, prompting him to jump off the mothership of Journey at the peak of their success. In his own words, he was toast.

Last week, on a random Wednesday morning, Perry’s song ‘Anyway’ came through my car speakers on shuffle. The Universe is not subtle with me! I don’t remember hearing the song previously, but the words. My God, the words. The words sunk deep into my heart, and the emotions rose. I cried as I drove. Because the lyrics were about believing in music, brothers to the end, nothing standing between them, a fire burning within. And then he sang the line about being wounded but alive, lost in his insanity, escaping to survive. At that point, I had an ugly cry.

I knew exactly what he meant, in such a deep way. Not because I have lived his life, but because I have lived that same feeling. The grief of losing the people you made music with. The real devastation of a creative family dissolving. The years of silence that follow when the music becomes too tangled up in the loss to touch.

We came from completely different worlds. He was a rock icon walking away from stadium lights. I was a single mom walking away from a church that abused and controlled my musical talent. But the grief underneath was the same shape. We both, in our own way, chose ourselves. And we both carried the weight of that choice in silence, until we intentionally began to heal.

I have forgiven them all. Completely. Stay with me here.

Forgiveness is not saying that what was done to me was acceptable. It wasn’t and it isn’t. But I came to understand that unforgiveness is like drinking poisoned water and hoping the other person will die. It doesn’t work that way. I waited years for an apology that was never coming. And when I finally understood that, I took responsibility for my own part in the whole thing. I forgave myself for not knowing any better, and for giving until there was nothing left of me. I forgave myself for staying past the point my gut was telling me to go. And I forgave myself and religion for the years of bitterness I carried like a second body. I released all of them - the ones who hurt me, as well as the institution of religion, and in doing so, I handed their actions back to them. “Here”, I said without words. “You take this back. It isn’t, and never was, mine to carry.”

I have reunited with my first love again!

For the first time in my adult life, I play and sing music simply because it makes me happy. I play for hospice patients to bring them comfort and joy. I play and sing because the music is mine again. It has been separated from the grief of losing the family. It has been separated from the cage of control. I can sit at a keyboard on a Tuesday night, or any night, and feel the joy of it without the shadow of what I lost falling across the keys or my voice. I sing during the day! I find myself humming, singing in the car, even directing an imaginary band in my living room. Sometimes Martha Munizzi’s ‘Shout Remix’ comes through my Spotify playlist, and I stand in my living room and move to it, swaying and singing the parts just like I used to, and smile. I remember the pocket we created together. The way we moved, flowed, and played as one entity. It was amazing. It still is, in the remembering. It seems like an eternity ago. But now, just like a relationship that has ended, I am able to remember the good things with fondness without longing to go back there. I don’t need to. I carry the beauty in my heart.

Sometimes, I still miss the praise band. I miss Tim and his guitar and the riff he would throw at me across the stage. I miss my daughter clicking in on the drums. I miss the singers, their harmonies so beautiful the hairs on my arms would stand straight up. I miss the sound engineer who knew exactly what I needed without being asked. Most of all, I miss being able to hug them goodbye.

I will always love them and remember the musical magic we made together.

But I do not grieve for the cage. And I am finally free enough to know the difference.

It’s 2020. I am selling courses about healing from family karma/codependent families, and I feel like a fraud. Not imposter syndrome. Not nervousness. Fraud. Because I haven’t healed anything. I am still in it, still miserable, still reaching outside myself for proof that I am okay. I am teaching people to find their way out of a room I am still locked inside.

I know there has to be a way through. I just don’t know what it is yet.

Then, my business coach says something that makes me want to flip a table. He tells me the only antidote for guilt and shame is responsibility. I am furious. And then slowly, over days, then weeks, I ponder this and realize he is right. But how? I don’t know how to take responsibility. I was traumatized, for Pete’s sake! How the hell do I take responsibility?

So I begin to do the work. Or what I think is the work. NLP. Timeline clearing. Anchors. Therapist after therapist. Years of it. I begin to accumulate therapists and knowledge the way some people accumulate degrees, because knowledge feels like progress and progress feels like healing to me. I get good at the language. I love learning, I think to myself. I’m a sapiophile. I like smart people. I write the courses, and I get really good at teaching them. I am, by every external measure, someone who has done the work.

Yet, I still attract the same people. Narcissists, with the same person in a different body; a pattern running on a loop underneath all of that carefully acquired knowledge. Nothing has actually changed except my vocabulary.

This is the thing nobody tells you about the wounded healer myth. It has a seductive logic. The idea comes from Greek mythology. Chiron, a centaur, a god, gets struck by a poisoned arrow. He cannot die and he cannot heal himself, so he spends his immortality healing others. The wound becomes the gift. The suffering becomes the purpose. It is a beautiful, clean, terrible story because it lets you stop at the wound. It makes the wound the destination. And if the wound is the destination then you never have to do the terrifying work of actually leaving it behind.

We have turned this myth into an entire industry. Coaches who are still in the chaos they’re coaching others out of. Teachers selling courses about healing they haven’t done. Writers writing about vulnerability without doing the work underneath it. I know, because I was one of them. I had the wound and I had the words and I thought that was enough. It wasn’t.

It isn’t. You cannot fake healing. The body keeps score, the patterns keep running on autopilot, and the people you attract keep showing you exactly where you still live inside the old story. It does not matter how beautifully you can describe it, it’s still stinking thinking.

The real work, when I finally find it, does not look like anything I expected.

I am in a session with my good friend who is a trauma healing facilitator, and she takes me somewhere inside myself I have never been willing to go. Suddenly, in my mind, I am sitting in the center of a rotting jail cell. Knees pulled to my chest, head down, arms wrapped around my legs. The smell of rot and isolation is everywhere. It’s dark and dank. It stinks. I’m surrounded by disappointment. Yearning. Rage. I have been sitting here for a very long time.

Then I realize the door is open.

Sunlight is pouring through it. There is a meadow on the other side, green and warm and completely available to me. I describe it to Genea, who tells me to get up and walk out.

I cannot move.

My own mind will not let me stand. The door is open, sunlight is real and I am choosing, in some way I don’t yet understand, to stay on the floor of the rotting cell. I keep telling myself - Get up and walk out. And I keep sitting there, held in place by something I cannot name, something that has been running my life for decades without my conscious permission.

Suddenly, it washes over me. A realization, so sudden, so simple, and almost embarrassingly obvious.

I have spent my entire life looking outside myself for love. I wanted people to love me, choose me, accept me. I shaped myself into whatever they needed. I betrayed myself over and over to be chosen. And in all of that reaching outward, all of that desperate external searching, I never once turned the love inward. I never loved myself. Not really. Not in the cellular, unconditional way I was out there begging other people to love me. I realize - I can be that for myself.

I begin to laugh. Because that’s what real realization feels like: A sudden collapse of something impossibly complicated into something almost ridiculous in its simplicity.

And in my mind, I stand up. And I walk out of the jail cell into the sunlight.

That is not the end of the healing.The wounded healer myth would love for me to stop there, to make that the tidy turning point, the moment everything changed and the story resolved. Healing does not work that way. It works in layers and in stages. In the exhausting, unglamorous, completely necessary work of going back into the sessions even when you know how difficult they’re going to be. Even when you have to make yourself go because you know what’s waiting on the other side of the door.

But something real shifted in that jail cell. It wasn’t knowledge or vocabulary. It was something in the body. Something that had been gripping for decades began, slowly, to release. And it was a realization. I am responsible for my own happiness and my own love. I can be that - for me!

The wounded healer is a myth we reach for because it makes suffering meaningful before we’ve done the work of transforming it. It lets us wear the wound like a credential. And I understand the appeal. I lived inside that story for years. But the wound is not the gift. The healing is the gift. And the healing only comes when you stop performing it and start doing it.

You cannot teach your way out of a room you’re still sitting in.

But you can stand up. You can walk toward the open door. And the sunlight on the other side is not a metaphor. It is waiting, specific and warm and completely real, for the moment you decide that you are worth walking toward it. We each decide.

Getting to the root is the magic. It is not pleasant. But on the other side is something nobody can hand you and nobody can take away: happy, joyful freedom that you create yourself.

If you’re a subscriber, you already know I’ve created a framework for the stages of burnout. It’s an archetypal framework that combines Carl Jung’s shadow work and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

But there’s so much more you don’t know yet.

Subscribe now

For the past several months, I’ve been quietly doing the deep work. Somatic healing and trauma processing. Individual and group sessions that have asked me to go to places I had been avoiding for a very long time. If I’m honest, I was last truly myself as a very little girl. Life happened. And it has taken me until now to find my way back to her.

It happens to so many of us. Sometimes it’s the result of being hurt by institutions, toxic relationships, or family dynamics that leave marks we don’t realize we’re carrying. The natural response is to stuff those things down, to push the emotions and experiences that are too painful to feel into the deepest places we can find, and just keep moving.

But the body keeps the score. The soul keeps the score. And eventually the work of unearthing what has been buried becomes an intentional choice for the only path forward.

When we allow those things to surface rather than resist them, something shifts. Our energetic frequency changes, affecting every other area in our lives. When the mind heals, the body follows. When the body heals, the mind follows. And how we do one thing is how we do everything.

The one thing I had stuffed down furthest, so far that I honestly didn’t care if I ever saw it or used it again, was music. I couldn’t separate it from the religious trauma I had been through. To me, they were one and the same cage. And so I walked away from it.

For seventeen years.

I am so grateful for healing.

I’m grateful for real friends and family who love and support me without condition, and most of all, for the opportunity to do this work. It is the hardest work there is, and I am not finished. Every layer I allow to surface is another opportunity to peel back a layer and become more. For the past few weeks, my daily intention has been simple: operate in love, joy, and alignment. And little by little, step after step, I kept moving forward.

Several weeks ago I attended a firewalk. Yes! I walked on fire. Real coals at 1200 degrees. I did what I thought was impossible. And something cracked open even further. More alignment. More truth. More of me living, as I can only describe it, giddy happy. Because the more in alignment we are with our true selves, the more joy, freedom, and aliveness we feel.

Right before the firewalk, I unpacked my Roland keyboard rig. I began to practice and play again. And now, some days I stand at my keyboard, riffing, improvising, flowing, and tears stream down my face because it has been so long since I was truly, fully myself.

Music is my first love. It always has been. And it has been waiting for me.

When we step forward in alignment, especially into the unknown, without a need to control the outcome, it creates room for expansion, growth, and another step toward what Paulo Coelho calls the personal legend in The Alchemist. Our destiny. It is ours to seek out like a treasure.

And the more we take steps toward our authentic selves, without apology but with love for all of who we are, the more room we make for wonderful things to come our way.

Let me tell you about the latest one!

A couple of weeks ago, on an online forum, a gentleman posted asking for a volunteer to write about the 40th anniversary of Journey’s Raised on Radio album. The memoir I am currently writing examines rock icon Steve Perry’s story of burnout alongside my own as a parallax view, so this felt like it belonged to me. I felt that gentle tug I am learning to follow, my intuition, my heart. I responded.

That one response opened a whole new vein. As it turns out, the man owns an online radio station. I became a guest blogger. I wrote a full retrospective for their platform, and then I recorded audio clips introducing several of the band’s songs from that album.

Tuesday, April 21st is the air date, which also happens to be my Dad’s 82nd birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad!

As my close friend, mentor, and trauma facilitator Genea Barnes says, “When you unleash the power of YOU, humanity evolves.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Go check out the article at HERE and tune in today to hear me in my very first DJ spot!

One step at a time. One yes at a time. One layer of healing at a time.

That’s how you find your way back to yourself. And when you do, the Universe has a way of meeting you there!

Raised on Radio: The Girl Can't Help It

You do not grieve a prison. You grieve a home.

That is the sentence I kept coming back to while writing this book. Because the hardest part of burning out - the part no one talks about cleanly, is that most of us burn out inside something we genuinely loved. Not something hollow or obviously wrong, but something real. Something that had passion in it - music, or community, or a sense of purpose so large it swallowed us whole before we understood it ourselves.

We do not leave what we love because it was all a lie. We leave because the cost of staying finally exceeds what we have left to pay with. And then we spend years, sometimes decades, unable to explain why we are grieving something we had to escape.

This book is about that. And so is this map.

I am not a psychologist. I am a woman who burned down to the ground and rebuilt herself in the quiet. And I watched a parallel story play out in the life of one of the most recognizable voices in American rock music. Two people. Two different cages. Same architecture of loss. Same long silence before a sovereign return.

In trying to understand what happened to both of us, I found myself in the territory of two thinkers whose work kept giving me language when I had none.

Carl Jung gave me the vocabulary of the inner life: the Persona, the Shadow, the process he called individuation, and the movement toward an integrated Self. His framework says that we all construct a mask for the world; a polished, functional, socially acceptable version of who we are, and that mask serves us until it doesn’t. Until it becomes the cage. Until the Self underneath it has been silent so long it starts to speak in the only language the body understands: illness, exhaustion, collapse, or disappearance.

Joseph Campbell gave me the shape of the journey, not as a metaphor, but as a structural reality that shows up in human stories across every culture and every century. The Ordinary World. The Call and its Refusal. The Belly of the Whale. The Ordeal. The Road Back. The Return, with something we didn't have before.

Together, they gave me what I call the Seven Stages of Archetypal Burnout. It is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a map. And like all maps, the most important part is the journey itself. And if you have been wandering in the dark for a long time, even a rough sketch of where you are can change everything.

The Seven Stages

Stage One: Persona Inflation. You are performing at the peak of your capacity, and the performance has become indistinguishable from who you are. The mask fits so well you’ve forgotten it’s a mask. The role is real, the output is real, the love for the work may even be real, but the self behind all of it has gone very quiet. This is not failure. This is where most high-functioning people live for years. This is where I lived. This is where Steve Perry lived. And it is sustainable right up until the moment it isn’t.

Stage Two: The Shadow Emerges. The body starts talking. Fatigue that doesn’t resolve. Numbness where there used to be feeling. A restlessness you can’t name or a rage you can’t justify. Campbell calls this the Call to Adventure, but what it actually feels like is more like a low-grade dread, an awareness that something underneath the performance is trying to surface. Most of us refuse this call. We work harder. We give more. We tell ourselves we’ll rest when the season is over, when the album is done, when the children are grown, when we finally deserve to stop.

Stage Three: The Collapse. Something breaks the performance. A surgery. A departure. A diagnosis. A door closing. The body or life circumstances do what the will could not: they stop you. This is Campbell’s Belly of the Whale, not the adventure, not the noble quest, but the engulfing. You are in the dark and the door behind you is shut. This is the stage that looks, from the outside, like failure or falling apart. From the inside, it is the first honest thing that has happened in years.

Stage Four: The Shadow Descends. The wasteland years. Survival mode. The long silence. This is not the healing, although it is a part of the journey. This is the place before the healing, where the old systems have collapsed and the new ones don’t exist yet. Cortisol runs the show. Patterns repeat. Time moves strangely. You are not the person you were, and you are not yet the person you are becoming. The distance between those two truths can be vast and disorienting. This stage does not announce when it ends. It just slowly, almost imperceptibly, begins to change quality.

Stage Five: Hermit and Individuation. The withdrawal becomes intentional. Not hiding. Healing. Jung called this individuation: the slow, necessary work of the Self finally getting enough room to breathe, to grieve, to grow in the direction it actually wants to grow rather than the direction it was assigned. Solitude stops feeling like exile and begins to feel like something closer to sanctuary. Steve Perry had his Harley on the backroads of the San Joaquin valley. I had my Road King on the winding roads of Kentucky. We both isolated for a time. The specific form doesn’t matter. What matters is that this is the stage where the person begins to find their real edges again and connect with themselves.

Then the real healing work begins, either with trauma therapy, somatic healing, or other modalities you feel called to. The point is, this is the work. This is the reckoning. The time when we go deep, sit with all the emotions, process and begin the layers of healing necessary to progress to the next stage.

Stage Six: Wounded Healer. You discover that the wound is not the end of the story. It is the credential. Not in a tidy, motivational-poster way, but in the specific, earned, irreversible way of someone who has been through the thing and come back changed. The healer who has never been broken cannot reach the person who is currently breaking. This is the stage where the loss becomes the door, and you begin to understand that you are not going to waste what you paid for. Steve Perry’s Traces, his first album in twenty-two years, is a Stage Six record. The voice is not what it was at the peak. It is something more. This memoir, along with re-embracing music on my own terms is my Stage Six work.

Stage Seven: Integrated Self. The return, but not to who you were before. That person is gone, and the grief of that is real. This is about returning to yourself more fully than the performance, gift or talent ever allowed. Campbell calls this the Return with the Elixir: you bring back something that can serve others. The story. The map. The particular quality of presence that belongs only to someone who has been through the dark and chosen, consciously, to come back and leave a light on.

You will not find yourself in all seven stages of this book. But you may recognize yourself in one of them with the precision of a photograph. You may find that two or three of them describe the same year of your life. You may read one stage and feel nothing, then read another and have to put the book down.

That is how maps work. You only need the part of it that shows you where you are. Then you map where you’re going.

What I hope is that, somewhere in these pages, you find the thing I found in a YouTube interview at two in the morning, in a recliner, eight weeks post-surgery, ugly-crying at a man who had been a stranger to me my entire life until that moment:

The recognition that your story has a shape. That what happened to you is not random. It is not proof that you were too much or not enough. That someone else, someone on a completely different road, went quiet for the same reason you did. And that the silence was not the end.

It was Stage Four.

And this is what comes after.

Reference: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/steve-perry-journey-new-album-traces-737177/

Y'all, this week I'm writing what's on my heart instead of cranking out a chapter because I think I have to. My writing is intentional, and it comes from the same deep flow I access when I'm at the piano, singing, or standing in front of a canvas. It's the same place. Sometimes it just needs space to percolate. I've done so much work around creating from love and joy instead of obligation or performance, and here it is in motion! I believe that how you do one thing is how you do everything, and I am consciously choosing to live from the frequency of love and joy.

If you know my story, or even a smidgen of it, you already understand why. The kind of healing I’m talking about is not the gentle kind, not the bubble bath and journal variety. It’s the kind where you sit across from someone in a quiet room, and they help you see things in a way that hands you back a piece of yourself you forgot you had lost - or maybe you’ve never been clear enough to see it at all. It’s in being willing and open to see all the things - that’s when things become ridiculously clear.

One thing has remained constant through all of it:

When I stay open and ready to receive, the Universe, or whatever name you give that force, places people in my path who are meant to be there. I believe this the way I believe in gravity. Not because I was ever taught it, but because I’ve watched it happen way too many times to call it mere coincidence.

I’ve had this kind of person show up in my life since I was young. A teacher who saw something in me before I could see it myself. A friend who stayed when staying was inconvenient. A stranger who said exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, then walked out of my life and never came back. Those things have really happened to me. And I’m full of gratitude for every single one of them.

But the intentional people, the ones who’ve helped me do the deepest healing work, have appeared within the last ten years. I believe the timing isn’t accidental, because one has to be ready. Your timing is not mine. Our journeys are each individual and there is no room for comparison here. The door has to be opened from the inside before anyone can walk through it.

There was a therapist many years back, after I was diagnosed with C-PTSD, who helped me over a particularly hard stretch. I believed I’d never play music again. Then another who worked with me using EMDR, that strange and specific process of watching a light move back and forth while your nervous system quietly reorganizes itself around old wounds. That helped me over the second burnout, where I didn’t think I’d ever step foot inside another classroom as a teacher. And then one in Florida, a few years after that, who I recognized immediately as a kindred spirit. Robin helped me uncover and heal patterns that were keeping me stuck. And through it, we became friends. That one still makes me smile every time I think of her.

Currently, there are three people in my life I’m particularly, deeply grateful for. One of them I’ve never met in person. I don’t know if I ever will, and I’ve made my peace with that. I believe the Universe conspires to give us things, but I’m content to let go of the outcome. I’m whole either way.

Genea came into my life in 2020. We became instant friends, the kind where you sit across a table from someone for the first time and feel a click of recognition, just like a beautiful key turning in a lock. I knew from the beginning that we would be lifelong friends and she would have a role in my life. But it wasn’t until almost a year ago that we really began to work together in a deep, healing way. With her gifts, I’ve cleared things at the root level, the deep basement of the self where the original wounds live. I’ve uncovered the deep ‘why’ underneath my patterns, especially the one where I get in my own way right when something good is about to happen. That one has cost me a lot. We’ve done the work of pulling it up by the roots, and sitting with those deep, dark feelings that nobody wants to feel, let alone heal!

Bucky is another mentor who’s stretched me past what I thought my edges were. He’s the kind of teacher who’s not content to let you stay comfortable in smallness, who sees the larger version of you and holds that vision of light steady while you choose to grow into it. I’m still growing! Green and growing, or ripe and rotten! I choose green and growing, although that’s out of my comfort zone and it’s new and unfamiliar territory. Yet, I remain open and am taking steps far beyond anything I’ve ever chosen before.

And then there is Steve Perry.

Yes. That Steve Perry. I know. Ha!

Here’s the thing about Steve Perry that most people miss. His story isn’t primarily a story about music, although, ok. It IS, but…It’s a story about a creative person who gave everything until there was nothing left, and then had the extraordinary courage to stop. He had the bravery to walk away from what looked, from the outside, like the pinnacle of everything a person could want. Can you imagine the courage it took to choose himself over labels, management, bands, and fans who all felt they owned a piece of him? If you’ve ever been in creative burnout, I bet you can, at least to a certain extent.

Perry disappeared into the silence intentionally. He spent years in exile finding out who he was when nobody was watching and the music wasn’t playing. And then he returned, slowly and on his own terms, as himself. Authentic. True.

He did all of this publicly enough that we could watch it happen in real time. And that matters more than I can fully explain right here. Because when you’re in the middle of your own creative exile, your own version of having given everything and lost yourself in the performance of being what everyone else needed you to be, it helps enormously to see that someone else went through it and came out the other side. Not unscathed or unchanged, but sovereign and real. He's a very clear , powerful mirror for myself. Because I lost myself in the performance of obligation too.

I’m full of gratitude for Steve Perry’s courage to publicly choose himself. That’s not a small thing. And it changed the way I understood my own story. THAT’S why I’m grateful.

Stay open. Pay attention to the signs that cross your path. They may show up in the simplest forms; signs, symbols, and animals crossing your path, a therapist’s office that smells like cedar and old books, or a documentary playing on YouTube at two in the morning while you’re reclined at 30 degrees in a neck brace with titanium in your spine. They’re placed there for a reason. The Universe isn’t subtle, but it’s patient.

This healing and book writing journey has opened me up to possibilities and opportunities I’d never have suspected were waiting for me. Life is genuinely, measurably sweeter when you stop white-knuckling the steering wheel and let something larger do some of the navigating.

You never know what might happen.

A girl could just move coasts.

I have been creating fine art for years without knowing what I was actually creating.

Stay with me here.

I wasn’t creating in a lost way. I was creating in an intuitive way. I always have, whether it’s music, art, or writing. When I first began to paint, I would stand in front of a blank canvas and journal on the canvas. Yep, right on it. I let whatever wanted to emerge come forward. When I still taught in a brick and mortar high school, my students used to crowd around my easel every class period like it was a treasure hunt. They’d ask, “What is it Ms. Meadows?”, and they eventually they got the memo. I had no idea what was going to show up.

That was the truth. Every single time.

What I didn’t know was that underneath all that intuition there was a pattern so consistent, so specific, so undeniably mine that it was essentially a fingerprint. I just couldn’t see it because I was inside it. I didn’t realize I already had an artistic style, or that I reached for the same palette time and time again.

Then something held up a mirror. Another parallax of sorts.

What I saw on the other side of that mirror…Blew. My. Mind. I had been painting the same thing my whole creative life without knowing it. I used AI to mirror back to me what I was unable to see in myself. Have you ever taken a step back from a creation, whether it’s a song, a painting, or a chapter of a book? That step is SO valuable, and that’s exactly what enabled the AI bot to see what I couldn’t see from inside my own work. And when it showed me, I just sat there staring at my screen, exclaiming,“Holy Sh$t!”

That moment is the reason I’m building something new right now. And I want to know if you’ve ever felt this way about your own work.

Have you ever wondered if your work has a through line you can't see yet?

Tell me in the comments, please! I am genuinely curious.

I didn’t arrive in Christiana just for the firewalk. I arrived carrying old fear in my body, old stories in my mind, and a quiet hope that something in me might shift. I didn’t know I was about to meet a threshold.

This past weekend, I went to a firewalk event in Christiana, Tennessee, carrying a self-limiting story in my head. It went something like this: I had cervical fusion surgery six months ago, so I probably won’t be able to do all the physical things.

I repeated that story to myself for two weeks before the event. But a few days out, I decided to go anyway, with an open mind and an open heart. I told myself I would simply take what the weekend gave me.

It gave me more than I ever expected.

Normally, I’m full of life, but this surgery shook me to my core. My mind was convinced I’d never be the same again. I was angry at my body, trying to force it to cooperate. Predictably, that went over like a lead balloon.

About a week before the firewalk, I was in a session with one of my mentors. He said something that changed everything: “Step back and really listen to your body.”

At first, I didn’t quite get it. My mind had done so much healing around trauma, control, and identity - but my body had been there through all of it, absorbing every bit. Still, my mind kept trying to force my body to do what it wanted.

And then it hit me: I’d been trying to exert the same kind of control over my own body that religion once tried to exert over me in my story.

That morning, I tuned into my body’s frequency for the first time in a long time. I told her, “I’ve got your back. You’re safe. I’ll protect you.” She exhaled softly, then cried. I realized I had been pushing her, forcing her to perform, keeping her in survival mode.

Back to the event.

I was handed an arrow with a metal tip; the same kind bowhunters use. They placed the point against my throat, right at that tender spot where the voice lives. The place where truth either emerges or gets swallowed. The place I’ve spent most of my life guarding, second-guessing, managing, and performing from. That place. I was terrified.

The instructions were simple: Center into your body. Focus, get clear, and when you’re ready…step forward.

But there was a catch: the other end of the arrow was held firmly by another person. How was I supposed to navigate that?

Standing there, the tip pressing into my throat, I did something I haven’t done nearly enough in my life. I grounded myself. I breathed. I told my body she was safe. Then I thought about all the times I had been silenced… and all the times I stayed silent by choice.

And this time, my body believed me.

I stepped forward. The arrow snapped cleanly against my throat without breaking the skin.

I can’t explain the immensity of that moment. It was the moment I truly chose all of me. The woman who stood there, six months after spinal surgery, afraid she couldn’t do “all the things” - she not only did all the things, but she found herself again.

And not the version who performs or gives until she’s empty.

I found more of the true Debby. The one who’s been quietly waiting - sending signals, holding truth, asking for more. More love. More opening. More life.

Yes, I walked on fire too! Barefoot over glowing 1200-degree coals. I’ll definitely tell that story soon. But first, the arrow. Because it’s everything.

In 2016, during a deep meditation, I received this message: You are a bridge for people crossing thresholds. I didn’t understand it then. All these years, I’ve been building toward something I could feel but couldn’t yet name.

A threshold isn’t just a line between before and after. It’s the living edge where the old stories dissolve and something new insists on being born.

Now I know.

You cannot be a bridge you’ve never crossed.

I crossed it last weekend. And I’ll return in May to do it again and go even deeper.

The True Threshold Experience, and the work I’ve been building alongside my book, is that bridge. You don’t have to walk on fire. But at some point, you have to decide: will you keep the arrow at your throat... or will you step forward and feel it break?

Every one of us holds an arrow somewhere. A story that keeps us frozen at the doorway. The threshold isn’t just mine. It’s the place we all meet when we decide to step forward anyway.

There’s more to come: the breathwork, the rebar, the fire, the shooting star.

But for now, there’s this:

The thing that should have stopped me didn’t.

It won’t stop you either.

-Debby

This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

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1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

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2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

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Hi friends!

If you’re getting this, you’re probably one of the people who followed The Meadow Speaks, and your subscription just migrated here to True Threshold.

I’m Debby Meadows—musician, visual artist, writer, recovering prodigy. I spent 15 years in creative exile and came back. Now I’m writing Tell Me Something True: The Perry Parallax in public: a book about creative burnout and recovery that doesn’t skip the shadow work.

What you’ll get here:

• Chapters of the book as I write them

• Essays on embodied creative practice

• Real-time documentation of somatic integration work

• Honest truth-telling (including this: I was manipulated, yes—but I was also the manipulator)

No guru wisdom. No mystical or spiritual bypassing. Just the messy, real work of creative recovery.

If this isn’t for you anymore, no hard feelings. You can unsubscribe anytime by clicking the link at the bottom of this email.

If you’re here for the real work? Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

First chapter drops this week.

In the meantime, check out the About page to learn more.

— Debby

Big news: The Meadow Speaks is evolving and moving.

When I started this newsletter, I was healing from religious hurt and needed the spiritual frame. That was real and necessary for me at the time.

Even before I had surgery (I’m 9 weeks post op now!), I was feeling the pull and had no idea where this was going.

There’s something profound that happens when a person is able to remove ALL the noise - social media, email, all of it…and be in the liminal space of healing. It’s like trying to grab fog in front of you - you can see it, but it’s impossible to grab because it’s not time. That whole post op recovery period was difficult at times, very dark at times, and very illuminating! And here I am. Resilient, partially bionic (5 vertebra fused in the cervical spine), and startlingly clear in how to move forward.

This is the scariest and truest thing I’ve ever done.

Ease and flow, friends! That’s still the vibe - but -

I'm not a spiritual guide. What I AM is a creative who spent 15 years in exile and came back. And I'm writing a book about my life - it’s quite a ride - it’s a story of creative recovery that doesn't skip the shadow work—including owning this: I was manipulated, yes, but I was also the manipulator. (More to follow on THAT! Bet you didn’t know I am a returning music prodigy, huh?

So, The Meadow Speaks is becoming True Threshold, and it's moving to Substack.

What's changing:

• New name: True Threshold (by Debby Meadows)

• New home: debbymeadows.substack.com

• New focus: Writing Tell Me Something True: The Perry Parallax in real-time—a book about creative burnout and recovery

What's NOT changing:

• It's still me

• It's still honest

• It's still about transformation

• You're still welcome (if this resonates)

What you need to do: Your subscription will automatically transfer to Substack. You don't need to do anything unless you want to unsubscribe (and that's okay—not everyone will want to come on this journey).

If you're here for mystical guidance, I'm probably not your person anymore., although I love the mystical and the spiritual. I’m simply choosing to step into all of me.

If you're here for raw, honest creative recovery work that includes shadow and accountability—come with me.

See you at True Threshold.

— Debby

Subscribe at the new home: debbymeadows.substack.com

See you at True Threshold,
Debby

I got up as usual, made my pour-over coffee, and as I sat down to meditate, I realized something had shifted. The heaviness wasn't there anymore. The ache had quieted and bloomed into something else. I didn't feel like I was fighting my life anymore. It felt... easy. Happy. Comfortable. I had embodied my own skin and started building my life the way I wanted it to be.

I looked around—at the paint-splattered table, the jars of brushes, the sunlight streaming through the windows—and felt something I hadn't in a long time, maybe even ever: aliveness at living life.

For years, survival had been my language. (I talked about that last week!) I knew how to keep going when everything fell apart. I knew resilience. I knew how to bend without breaking. But thriving? That was a foreign concept to me. Until now.

Me thriving at our local drum circle with my bestie, Will - The look on my face must have been surprise, because I was having the time of my life!

Thriving meant letting myself want things—and meeting my own needs. Heck, even listening to my own needs!

It meant painting for no reason, writing with no plan, and dancing in my kitchen just because the song was good. It meant believing I deserved a life that wasn't just functional but beautiful.

I used to think thriving was something that happened to other people. You know the feeling: the ones who hadn't been through what I'd been through, and the ones who didn't carry the weight I carried. But here's the truth I've learned: thriving isn't reserved for people who've had it easy. It's actually reserved for people who've survived hard things and decided they deserve more than just getting by. And in that moment, I really realized that…I wasn’t living as a victim anymore. I was living as the victor!!

I know that thriving looks different for individuals. It doesn't always mean loud success or public applause. Sometimes it's quiet like mine - a morning where peace is the norm and anxiety isn't, or an afternoon spent making art no one else will see, yet it makes me happy inside. It's when creation replaces coping. When joy stops feeling like a luxury and starts feeling like pure oxygen and your next breath.

Here's what thriving actually looks like:

Thriving is what happens when you stop asking, "Can I survive this?" and start asking "What do I want to create?" It’s a point when you realize you ARE the love you’re looking for - you ARE your own safety, and any friendships, relationships, or connections are crystal clear with clarity, not bogged down with the ‘pick me, choose me’ mentality - but they’re experienced with the highest level of self love and authenticity.

Thriving is the moment you realize you're not just managing your life, you're designing it. You're not just reacting anymore. You're choosing, building, and blooming.

Thriving lives in these shifts:

• From protecting yourself to expressing yourself

• From "I'm fine" to "I'm alive!"

• From coping mechanisms to creative practices

• From heaviness to lightness

• From scarcity to abundance

• From fear-based decisions to intuitive - led choices

• From white-knuckling it through the day, to actually savoring it

The body knows when you've crossed this threshold. Your nervous system relaxes. Your shoulders drop. Your breath deepens. And you stop bracing for the next disaster and start reaching for the next possibility.

My litmus test was two days before my surgery - I had paid almost 1K in repairs for my vehicle a day before, and yet it stranded me having the same mechanical problem 30 minutes away from my house. The survival me would have had a FREAK OUT. The thrive me - shrugged my shoulders, left the car there overnight (because I wasn’t paying for a tow) and called the mechanic the next morning. They promptly went and picked it up, diagnosed and fixed the problem. With no additional cost to me. THRIVING!

5 Ways to Move from Surviving to Thriving

1. Give yourself permission to want things.
Survival mode teaches you to minimize your needs and desires. Thriving requires you to name those needs and desires, honor them, and pursue them. Start asking: "What do I actually want?" What lights you up?

2. Create for the sake of creating.
Make something with your hands. Paint, write, cook, garden, dance, sing. Don't create to produce or perform. Create because it makes you feel alive. Creation is the language of thriving.

3. Choose joy like it's medicine - because it is!
Joy isn't frivolous or luxurious. It's foundational. It’s medicine! Seek it out daily, even in small doses. A good song. A warm cup of tea. Sunlight on your face. Five minutes of laughter. These aren't extras—they're essentials. These are my non-negotiables - even in the hospital, even in post op recovery - I AM THRIVING.

4. Build a life that feels like a deep exhale.
Look at your daily rhythms. What drains you? What fills you? Start saying no to what depletes you and yes to what expands you. Thriving requires space, softness, and intentional rest.

5. Celebrate your aliveness.
You made it through things that could have destroyed you. You're still here. That alone is worth celebrating. Mark the small wins. Honor your growth. Let yourself feel proud.

So let me ask you:

Where have you been surviving when your spirit is ready to create?

What would it look like to build a life that feels like a deep exhale?

What if thriving isn't something you wait for—it's something you choose, one small joy at a time?

If I can go from surviving to thriving, I know you can too. You've made it through the hard part. Now comes the good part. I'm here, thriving and cheering you on!

I am LOVING you as I recuperate and heal!

In the Flow,

Debby

This is a ritual we do every morning - meeting at the porch swing, sipping coffee, watching the trees wave at us (and of course we wave back), the pond just below whispering the same sound it's made for as long as I can remember. The air smells like wet leaves and earth, and the breeze gently caresses us. Every few seconds, a leaf drifts down and lands on the water - soft, inevitable, gently carried.

I think about all the times life carried me, too.

After a house fire in 1991, I walked through what used to be our little home, and I cried. I cried even harder with gratitude that we were safe and alive. The kindness of neighbors and our small Kentucky town wrapped around me like a warm blanket.

I think about when my first husband came out after 15 years of marriage. He came out of the closet, and I went into one, as I was still deeply immersed in evangelical church culture. But - I survived and grew, and now we have an easy friendship and laugh and talk when we get together with our kids.

I think about years later, holding my infant stillborn son in my arms, feeling his weight, and memorizing his face - the nurses had to almost pry him from my arms. In my state of mind, I wanted him to survive so badly; and I thought if I just kept him in my arms, he would be safe. Inevitably, I handed him back over to the nurses, and I decided I didn't want to live anymore Yet, I did. I had two other girls at home that needed a Mama. I worked through all the feelings, decided I wanted to live again, and began to flourish in life.

I think about leaving several relationships that nearly hollowed me out - and one that almost physically took me out - I remember the fear of keeping my kids safe, and knowing we needed to run. I packed up my three girls (15,13, 1) and me in our minivan and we fled for our lives one night with almost no money and nowhere to go. But, we survived. And we still talk about the resilient story of living in our minivan for those weeks of the unknown.

And then there was my last relationship, the one I thought would last forever…until it didn’t. For the first time in my life, I told him I loved him but I loved myself more - then packed my van and drove away with shaking hands but a steady, lighter heart.

After every single time, I thought: I can't start over again. How am I going to start over again?

But somehow, I did.

And here's what nobody tells you about resilience: it doesn't just help you survive - it teaches you how to truly live.

Every time I thought I was breaking, I was actually breaking open. I opened to more compassion, more wisdom, and more capacity to love myself and others. I developed more trust in my own strength. That house fire taught me that community is real and kindness is everywhere. Losing my son taught me that love doesn't end, it transforms - and that I'm stronger than I ever imagined. Those relationships that nearly destroyed me? They taught me exactly what I deserve, what I don’t deserve, and more importantly, what I won't accept or tolerate anymore. I have my own back and I can find refuge and safety in me!

Here’s the thing: each time I started over, I didn't just rebuild…I built something better. Something truer. And in the past year, I’ve built a life that actually fit who I am becoming, healing, and growing into, not who I thought I had to be.

So now, when I sit on my parent’s porch swing watching the water flow, I don't just see survival; I see beauty. I see growth. And I see a woman who learned that falling apart isn't the end of her story - it's often the beginning of the best chapter yet.

Back then, I didn't call it resilience. I called it survival and putting one foot in front of the other. But now, sitting here, thinking about our creek bed flowing, bending and twisting around rocks and fallen limbs with little effort, I see it differently.

Resilience isn't about staying strong or pretending we're fine.

It's about letting life move through us without letting it destroy us. Resilience is grace in motion…it’s sometimes loud, sometimes barely there. Sometimes it's not polished or pretty. It's muddy and real and human.

Because the truth is, I've broken a hundred times and still found my way back to love. I've walked through fire and come out singing. And I've learned that resilience doesn't mean holding on tighter - it means trusting that when everything falls apart, something deeper is being built inside me.

Here's what I've learned about how resilience actually works:

It's not a trait you're born with or without. It's not about being unbreakable. Real resilience is more like water than stone. Water doesn't resist what's in its path, it moves around it, over it, and through it. It changes form when it needs to. It becomes steam. It becomes ice. And then it melts back into itself again.

Our bodies knows this. When we're overwhelmed, our nervous system tries to protect us by clenching, bracing, holding on. We grip tighter to control, to people, to outcomes. We mistake rigidity for strength. But true resilience lives in our ability to soften, to accept, to release, to let ourselves be held by something bigger than our fear.

Resilience is built in the pauses and in the exhales. It’s in the moment where you stop fighting the current, let it carry you, and remember you already know how to float.

So let me ask you this:

Where have you mistaken holding on for healing?

What are you still gripping that's keeping you stuck - not safe?

And what would happen if, just for today, you let yourself flow like water?

Maybe resilience isn't about bouncing back. Maybe it's about flowing forward, even when you don't know where the river leads. Maybe it's trusting that even if the current takes you under, you’ll come up to the top and the current will carry you through.

You don't have to be strong all the time. You just have to keep moving, softening, accepting, and flowing.

Root Chakra Grounding: A 5-Minute Energy Healing Technique

Your root chakra is your foundation. It's the energy center located at the base of your spine, and it governs your sense of safety, stability, and belonging. When life feels chaotic or uncertain, this is the place to return to. This is where resilience begins—not in your mind, but in your body's deep knowing that you are held, you are safe, and you belong here.

Here's a simple practice you can do anywhere:

1. Find your ground.
Sit or stand with your feet flat on the floor. Feel the weight of your body. Notice where you make contact with the earth beneath you.

2. Breathe into your roots.
Place one hand on your lower belly and one hand on your heart. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and imagine you're drawing energy up from the earth—like roots pulling nutrients from soil. Exhale slowly, letting any tension drain back down into the ground.

3. Speak your truth.
Say aloud or silently:
"I am safe. I am held."

Repeat this three times, breathing deeply with each phrase.

4. Visualize red light.
Imagine a warm, glowing red light at the base of your spine. See it grow brighter with each breath. Let it fill your hips, your legs, your feet. This is your foundation. This is your strength.

5. Seal it in.
Place both hands over your lower belly and take one final deep breath. When you exhale, imagine sealing this energy into your body. You are rooted. You are resilient. You are whole.

Do this practice whenever you feel unsteady and need grounding to connect with your foundation.

Resilience isn't loud and it doesn't announce itself. It's the quiet hum beneath everything - the part of you that keeps going even when you're not sure how. It's the creek that keeps flowing. The leaf that lands softly. The woman who drives away with shaking hands and a lighter heart.

That's you. That's all of us.

As my favorite band, Rising Appalachia says in their song,: I am resilient, I trust the movement, I negate the chaos, uplift the negative; I show up at the table…again and again and again! I close my mouth and learn to listen…”

Yours In the Flow!
Debby

Remember to grab your copy of the Daily Joy! I’ve updated it to include 200 ways to find joy in 5 minutes or less!

Find your free copy here:

I spent so many years waiting for someone to save me. I desperately searched for someone who would finally see me, love me, and stay. I kept thinking the next relationship, the next mentor, or the next chapter would be the one to make it all make sense. I remember crying out to the Universe, “MAKE IT ALL MAKE SENSE! PLEASE?!”

But it never came.

It wasn’t because Spirit/Source/The Universe wasn’t listening, it was because the real rescue wasn't waiting out there - it was waiting inside ME.

A year ago, I began the move from Florida back to Kentucky after a major breakup of a three year relationship. I remember going back to our shared little cottage near the ocean on my fall break to pack up what was left. Boxes were stacked everywhere, the air heavy with tension and everything both said and unsaid. Of course, I was at the house by myself, packing and moving. I happened to catch my reflection in my favorite standing mirror - a gift from my grandma… and paused. I had tired eyes and messy hair. I was out of breath, sweat running down my back. It was the kind of face that had weathered too much and still refused to break.

I stared at her for a long time.

And then the Universe dropped something right down into my heart. I realized: I was looking at the one person who had never actually left me.

That's when the story turns.

From that day on, something shifted. I stopped waiting. In the months that followed, the Universe provided a person who would guide me through deep healing work and I learned to stop searching for someone who would finally make me feel safe. I became my own safety! I became the love that I wanted and needed instead of going from relationship to relationship trying desperately to find it. I started trusting my timing, my instincts, and my "no." And I began to believe that peace, ease, and flow were possible—not someday, but now.

Maybe that's what this mirror moment is asking of you, too.

Where are you still waiting to be chosen?

What would happen if you chose yourself today?

Choosing to make myself happy was actually really fun. I decided to do things for myself - I took myself on dates to movies I wanted to see, restaurants I loved eating at, and bought myself books…then buried my nose in them (because I really love me a good Romantasy!) I started to dance in my living room in my sock feet. I began to jump and twirl in my grass in my bare feet. I visited creeks. I watched showboats go down the Ohio River while sitting in a Cincinnati downtown park by the river. I put myself first. And it made me joyously, giddy and happy way down deep.

So I started exploring my Daily Joy Practice. How could I overflow this concept and feeling into other women’s lives? Then, the answer dropped down, just as easily as if you and I were sitting at a table drinking a tea or coffee.

It’s called the Daily Joy: 200 ways to find joy in 5 minutes or less - and it’s been UPDATED!

Find your free copy here:

Close your eyes and think of the part of you that has been with you through everything—every breakup, every move, every hard season. Now create a visual representation of her. She can be abstract, symbolic, or realistic. What does she look like? What is she holding?

That woman in the mirror is still here. She’s full of joy, ease, and peace. And she's not waiting anymore for validation, to be chosen, or for someone or something else to make her happy. Neither should you!

Genea is creator of Be the Wolf, a business that explores what it means to stop performing for approval and start showing up as your full 100% REAL self. She focuses on conversations and healing around self-trust, relationships, worthiness, business, boundaries, money, reclaiming your voice, and learning to feel safe in your own skin. WOW!

We talked about my story - about growing up inside a religious cult and what it took to finally leave. About the years I spent denying my voice, doubting my intuition, and letting others dictate who I was allowed to be.

For most of my life, my subconscious thought patterns of playing small and staying silent kept me safe. But silence has a cost! Eventually, the ache of not living your truth grows louder than the fear of what happens when you do.

That’s when everything began to shift.

On the other side of denial and self-doubt, I found light, joy, and EASE.
And maybe most important, I found me - the woman who moves through life freely, creates boldly, and no longer waits for anybody’s approval to exist as the true me.

This conversation is for you if you’ve ever felt trapped by expectations, fear, or the old stories that say you must earn your freedom.
It’s for you if you’re ready to live on your own terms - doing what you want, when you want, and in the way you want.

You can watch the full interview on Instagram here:

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And because this story is rooted in abundance, not scarcity…and expansion, not contraction…I’ll leave you with this:

✨ Mantra for Abundance in All Things

Written by Debby

As I live authentically and circulate what flows through me,
I open myself to the Infinite Source of all creation.
I trust that energy, love, and provision move in perfect rhythm -
through me, to me, and all around me.
Life loves to be good to me!
I am a conduit for expanding energy.

I have:
New paths and aligned work,
Raises and recognition,
Creative flow and inspired opportunities,
Kindness returned a hundredfold,
Favorable outcomes, inherited blessings,
Interest, income, and joyful surprises,
Checks in the mail, gifts appearing,
Money found, bills released, debts dissolved,
Blessing upon blessing, expansion upon expansion.

I am grateful for Spirit and the abundance of creative Flow that flows readily through me.
All of my needs are met and overflow,
and I have more than enough to create more beauty,
to share more freely,
and to lift the collective frequency of all beings.

And so it is.

If my mantra speaks to you, you can download a PDF copy of it free!
Print it out and put it where you can see it daily! Speak it aloud this week. Hang it in your bathroom and speak it to yourself in the mirror while you get ready in the morning.
Let it anchor you in truth, freedom, and flow.

I’ve created a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra to share with you! You can download your copy here.

When we stop asking permission to be who we already are, the Universe answers in turn. The chasing and forcing stops, and the ease and Flow naturally appears.

With love and flow,
Debby

Download a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra HERE!

🌸 Things Lighting Me Up This Week:

• OMG the Tara mantra! This is SO beautiful! Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha (Sanskrit). This mantra is particularly used for those who seek enlightenment, abundance, help, strength, and healing, and for the release of negativity, stress, and fears. This version is with ocean sounds and a second vocal. The harmonies are so beautiful!

• Genea’s work! You can find her here!

• Painting transparent layers with my faves - these beauties!

_{Some links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Mystical Meadows.} 💚

I’m an extrovert. I love people, and connecting with others fills me up like nothing else on earth.

But the previous version of me carried low- to high-key anxiety 24/7. Oh, you wouldn’t know if by looking because I got really good at hiding it! Some of it wasn’t even mine to begin with, but it was inherited; passed down woman to woman, generation to generation from my great-grandmother to my grandmother, then my mom, and finally to me. That anxious current shaped my nervous system and quietly ran my life for decades.

Not only was I anxious, but when a relationship ended, I burned it to the ground. I didn’t just close the chapter, I set the whole book on fire! There’s not one of my exes I’m in contact with, except my first wusband, who is the father of my two oldest girls, and my last wusband, who adopted my youngest daughter.

Whether you’re the one doing the breaking up or the one being left, heartache hits deep. And when it does, we often reach for stories that protect us from pain:
All my exes are narcissists.
I always end up with emotionally unavailable partners.
I was the perfect partner…they just took me for granted.

And how about, “If you hadn’t done X, I wouldn’t have had to do Y!” and "I'm always the one who gets hurt." If you go back and listen to my early interviews from 2019-2023, you’ll hear me say something like, “It was a Russian Roulette of love. And every time, the bullet hit me.” And I really believed it. Been there? Ya, me too.

Those stories help us survive, but they also keep us blind. They create an illusion that the pain was only ever “out there,” and we had absolutely nothing to do with it, when in truth, part of it has always been within.

The truth is, people who take accountability for their part in relationships…any relationships…are treasures. They don’t shift blame, make excuses, or play the victim. They own their choices. And, as a result, they grow, change, and transform into absolutely beautiful, because they are living authentically as themselves from a higher frequency of love, peace, and joy. Listen to me closely: It took a while for me to get there. What I know is, every journey starts with a solitary step.

One of my early business coaches taught me the difference between guilt and shame, and that lesson still echoes through me today.
Guilt says, I did something wrong.
Shame says, I am something wrong.
And the remedy for both? Responsibility.

Responsibility is powerful because it restores your freedom. It removes the need to defend or deflect. Responsibility invites peace back into the room. You stop being at the mercy of someone else’s actions, and you start living from your own integrity.

In my healing, I’ve walked those steps. I’ve sat in the putrid jail cell of my mind, faced my patterns, and owned my part in relationships. I’ve been tossed in the waves of my own making until I finally found still, calm water. Because no matter how painful the story - no matter how manipulative, neglectful, or narcissistic a partner may have been - it still takes two to tango. This may be hard for some of you to hear, and I’m not saying that what happened to you was good or right. But my healing began when I looked at the part of me that stayed, tolerated situations, rationalized decisions or conversations, or kept trying to fix what was never mine to fix.

That’s when transformation happens.

And it’s funny how the Universe gives you sparkly little moments to show you just how far you’ve come.

As I was getting everything in order for my surgery tomorrow, I realized my ex-wusband was still listed as a beneficiary on one of my insurance policies. The old me would have spiraled into anger, rumination, or defensiveness. But this version of me, the one grounded in peace, love and joy…felt nothing but calm.

I sent him a simple text message: If something were to happen, I trust you’ll honor my wishes and pass the funds to our daughter as my will states?

He replied kindly. There was no tension, no barbs. We even had a brief, genuine exchange about art; he’s an artist too—and reminisced about pieces we used to make together. It was, honestly, the most authentic conversation I’ve ever had with the man I was once married to.

That’s what healing looks like. It’s not pretending the past never happened; it’s meeting it with peace.

When we heal ourselves, our world shifts to match our new frequency.
We transform the world by transforming ourselves.

And that, to me, is abundance.

Abundance isn’t only about what you earn, own, or accumulate. It’s about peace of mind. It’s the freedom to respond with grace instead of fear. It’s knowing you already have everything you need inside you - love, trust, safety, flow.

So, as I head into this next chapter of healing, I’ll leave you with this reminder:

True abundance isn’t something you chase;
The moment you choose healing, the universe responds in kind.
Abundance is simply the echo of your inner transformation.

Out of all the places in the interwebs you could be, thank you for being here with me.

I love you,

Debby

P.S. For the next four weeks, my newsletter will arrive in your inbox once a week instead of twice a week to give me time and space to heal. A newsletter on Mondays will still arrive in your inbox as usual!

I’m gifting you a copy of my Abundance Mantra!
Print it out and put it where you can see it daily! Speak it aloud this week. Hang it in your bathroom and speak it to yourself in the mirror while you get ready in the morning.
Let it anchor you in truth, freedom, and flow.

I’ve created a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra to share with you! You can download your copy here.

Download a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra HERE!

🌸 Things Lighting Me Up This Week:

• Jai-Jagdeesh’s music and her song, Expand into Intuitive Knowing

• DavidJi’s short explanation of the mantra I’ve been using lately in meditation, Gate Gate Paragate Parasumgate Bohi Svaha

davidjimeditation

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_{Some links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Mystical Meadows.} 💚

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I left religion 20 years ago. But a religious mantra has lived in my head the whole time.

Being raised in uber-religion is part of my story, and it still has an effect on my life but not a hold on it.

I’m talking truth to you today. Pretend you and I are sitting across the table from each other, sipping on tea, iced coffee, or your favorite drink. I take a sip of my iced coffee, and say,

“Have you ever wanted to say something, typed it on social media, meant it with all your heart, posted it… then panicked and deleted it immediately?
Or spoken passionately about something, only to wish you could grab the words back the second they left your mouth?”

And you nod.

I respond with, “Yeah, me too.” And we both take a sip in agreement.

That pattern in my life was a complex weaving of religion, upbringing, trauma, and learned patterns—a place where I longed to be my authentic self - heck, I even thought I WAS authentic - but I knew something was holding me back from my true potential.

Think about it. That place holds both longing and frustration. It’s a longing because we KNOW we have potential…we KNOW IT. But for some reason, we just can’t figure out how to reach it.

The way we reach our potential is peeling the layers away that are not US until what is left…is our true, authentic self. This not only raises YOUR vibe and YOUR energy, but it raises the frequency of everyone who comes into your path. It raises the frequency of the collective. We heal the world by healing ourselves.

Lately, I’ve healed beliefs and attitudes around money.

When I was in the church, I was taught to tithe 10%. Right off the top, no questions asked.

But I was also taught that it was my duty. The tithe was commanded. And to receive blessings, I had to give offerings; which meant I gave over and above the 10%. That’s where, I was told, the blessings came from. Observe what I just wrote. Is the energy constrictive or expansive?

That was my norm, both in married life and as a single mom. I didn’t hesitate to give 10%, even when I was making only $800 every two weeks, raising three girls by myself with no financial help. That’s $80 off the top.

I’m not gonna lie - it was tough. Sometimes I prayed my car over the finish line to sputter and roll into the gas station. SO many times, I had 1 or 2 dollars left, and we would go to the local Hostess outlet, buy a box of chocolate donuts for a dollar, and that would be our dinner. No matter how hard I worked, it was never enough. Constrictive or expansive energy?

Yet still, I gave offerings because I wanted blessings. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want a blessing, right?!
So, every single paycheck, I gave $100 off the top. Because…blessings.
By the time taxes, benefits, and tithes were taken out, there was about $400 left for two weeks.

That induced a LOT of fear.

Ever been in fear around money?
How did it make your energy feel - constrictive or expansive?

In my world, I lived in lack. Fear and anxiety were constant. Desperation was behind everything I did. Oh, I was talented. I could play the socks off of any congregation in any church building. I could write music, transpose, direct, the whole works. But my ENERGY was constrictive because I lived in fear and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

When we live in fear and anxiety, we create more of the same energy in our lives.

What I didn’t realize back then was that forced compliance, even when done with good intentions, keeps you locked in spiritual servitude. And lack. And fear.

I didn’t give freely. Heck, you know how many groceries I could have bought for that $100 off the top of every paycheck? No, I gave out of obligation because I ‘felt’ I had to. Think about that. Was my energy constrictive or expansive?

When I learned that I could choose the energy of expansion instead of contraction, and trust instead of fear—everything changed.

I learned that money is a renewable frequency (or energy), sat with ALL the feelings around lack, then realized those emotions contracted my energy, which caused MORE fear and anxiety, my world changed. I’m not a guru; I’m a regular girl from rural Kentucky, but I know the immediate change happened when I transformed my energy into an expansive, abundant one. Before, I got up in the morning with dread, anxiety and worry. Now, when I get up in the morning, the first thing I say out loud is, “Good Morning Spirit! Life LOVES to be good to me!”

And that’s exactly what has happened! I moved our of the way and let the money flow. Money comes to me from so many places (even unexpected ones), and it keeps replenishing itself! I can say with truth and authenticity that life really does love to be good to me.

If y’all don’t know, I’m big on mantras. I speak them in meditation and I sing them out loud during the day. I believe the spoken word has POWER.

The religion I was in had a mantra that the whole congregation would say together every service, right before the offering. That saying was stuck in my head, even after being out over 20 years! Here’s what we spoke together:

❝

As I tithe and give offerings, I am believing the Lord for:
Jobs & better jobs, raises and bonuses, benefits, sales and commissions, favorable settlements, estates and inheritances, interest and income, rebates and returns, discounts and dividends, checks in the mail, gifts and surprises, finding money, bills decreased, bills paid off, blessing & increase.

Thank you Lord, for meeting all my financial needs that I may have more than enough to give into the Kingdom of God and promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Expansive or constrictive? Notice there’s nothing in that statement that says,
“Life loves to be good to me. I am free. I am happy. I am whole. I lack nothing.”

Instead, the entire purpose of earning money in that model was to give it back to the institution.

🌕 Rewriting the Mantra

So after peeling back the layers and healing both my relationship with money and abundance and my energetic frequency toward both, I decided to rewrite the whole damn thing.

Because recently, this old church mantra has been running through my head for some reason - twenty years later.
It was still there. And it’s constrictive.

So I rewrote it! From constriction to expansion!

✨ Mantra for Abundance in All Things

Written by Debby

As I live authentically and circulate what flows through me,
I open myself to the Infinite Source of all creation.
I trust that energy, love, and provision move in perfect rhythm -
through me, to me, and all around me.
Life loves to be good to me!
I am a conduit for expanding energy.

I have:
New paths and aligned work,
Raises and recognition,
Creative flow and inspired opportunities,
Kindness returned a hundredfold,
Favorable outcomes, inherited blessings,
Interest, income, and joyful surprises,
Checks in the mail, gifts appearing,
Money found, bills released, debts dissolved,
Blessing upon blessing, expansion upon expansion.

I am grateful for Spirit and the abundance of creative Flow that flows readily through me.
All of my needs are met and overflow,
and I have more than enough to create more beauty,
to share more freely,
and to lift the collective frequency of all beings.

And so it is.

And again, the question…constrictive or expansive? EXPANSIVE, baby! Notice the way your body responded to what I just wrote compared to the original version.

💫 Your Turn

If you resonated with my rewritten expansive mantra, take it with you.
Print it out and put it where you can see it daily! Speak it aloud this week. Hang it in your bathroom and speak it to yourself in the mirror while you get ready in the morning.
Let it anchor you in truth, freedom, and flow.

I’ve created a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra to share with you! You can download your copy here.

Sister, abundance isn’t out there waiting for you.
It’s an expansive current you can choose to step into and flow in!

Yours in expansive energy,
Debby

Download a free PDF of my Abundance Mantra HERE!

🌸 Things Lighting Me Up This Week:

• The Lost Art of Heart Navigation

• Ong So Hung Song: This mantra is about creative consciousness flowing!

• I’m loving being a part of DavidJi’s MindShift!

• Painting transparent layers with my faves - these beauties!

_{Some links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Mystical Meadows.} 💚

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