I don’t feel ok in the sense that I am actually ok, it feels like a survival strategy. I feel like a puppet going through the motions of living… wake up, make coffee, brush your teeth, do some stuff to progress life forward, eventually get back into bed. And the small range of emotion I am feeling allows all of this to happen with little to no disturbance.
I don’t feel depressed, I’m not angry.

I think I’m in shock. My current circumstances make absolutely no sense to my mind and my heart.

I didn’t really know it at the time but having an abortion allowed him to completely walk away from me. And that is clearly what he wanted.
I’m entirely insignificant to the person I entirely gave myself to.
What kind of a fucking joke is that?!?

I’ve decided to get sober from him. To start counting days. I’m on day 6 of no contact.
I don’t feel a desire to reach out. Tracking the days feels like a way to make it feel empowering and potentially celebratory. Eventually, I can celebrate a year of distance between me and this awful drug.

I am using social media as a bridge to life and connection. I’m posting every day. It feels like a lifeline, a simple way to feel less alone. Maybe also as a way to feel like I matter. That this matters.

I am embarrassed and feel like a fool.
I am trying to express myself freely without judgement, without caring more about his feelings, his reputation, his experience than mine.
The entirety of my experience is valid and welcome here.

I am learning how to unfold the internal emotional origami and lay it all out there.

I’ve heard mostly from women and this is deeply upsetting to me. Where are the men?!? Why don’t they feel compelled to reach out, to soothe, to offer words of comfort? Why are women so willing to extend themselves and offer care? Not just my friends, but literal strangers! WHAT are the men doing?!?! There is no lack of engagement from them when I post a half naked photo… it’s fucking weird and disheartening.

Speaking of, I realized recently that he has leaky sexual energy. It’s a pattern. For someone trying as hard as he is to be different from his father, he is actually oddly similar. And even though we both tried to prevent an ancestral pattern, when I step back and look at this whole scenario… it’s exactly the same. He didn’t choose his child. He turned away from commitment and love. He was looking for something else the entire time.

Ok, there it is…

I am angry.
I’m fucking angry.

Thank god.

I’d rather feel this rightful rage alive inside my body than nothing at all.

This space isn’t entirely new. I’ve unfortunately had to familiarize myself with the landscape of grief before, but the air quality here in this particular realm feels thinner and I’m finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.

Ian and I decided not to keep the baby.

There is just no possible way to say that softly. The complete brutality of it echoes through every word no matter which words are chosen.

Deciding how to share this news makes me want to crawl into a hole and fucking die. How can I even begin to say this and properly express the magnitude of what has happened within me by following through?!
I don’t feel worthy of existing after having made this decision and I’m disgusted with myself.

As my body shifts back to “normal” I feel sincere and severe disdain when I look in the mirror because not only can I not feel her anymore but I can’t see the physical changes that indicate she is here with me, being created within me. My body is erasing the evidence, and I am furious at it for healing.

And in addition to the immense and inconsolable weight of giving up my baby, he is once again, no longer open to romantic partnership with me.

The combination of these pains is so deep and gouging that I am finding it hard to exist.

He has expressed that he’s available for the grief around the abortion but otherwise he cannot meet me where I want to be met, which is in a loving committed partnership and life together. Because of that harsh truth, a clean break feels necessary on my end, despite it being mere days post-procedure.
My friends and family could not be happier. They want me away from him and this deeply fucked up back and forth torturous dance he has been leading me in for the past year and a half.

I have to reconcile daily that I have willingly participated in this twisted tango. And that somehow still, my strange twisted brain believes that we are supposed to be together. There is a deep-seated belief rooted in my experience that I have to earn love. And even though I carefully chose a man I thought was outside of my pattern, I am here again, smack dab in the middle of it. Loving him patiently, compassionately offering myself to no avail, and hoping I will be chosen.

Like I said, I’m disgusted with myself.

The Universe presented everything I have ever wanted and then took it all away. So I sit here alone with a womb that has been scraped empty. The heart that he promised to hold onto forever on October 31st (my birthday by the way), has been drop-kicked out of his orbit.

He gets to claim honoring of the self.
Following his truth.
But I am sorry, there is nothing honorable about treating someone’s heart this way over and over again.

Thankfully, we have finally stopped what he calls “this dynamic” but not without completely shattering every ounce of everything I’ve ever wanted from my new life here on the West Coast first.

And I want to be clear about what I would have done… what I was doing, every single day. I was walking beside a man still finding himself and gladly doing so because I thought we were building something at the same time. Searching and constructing, envisioning while taking action, it’s all part of the work of intimate partnership. Old selves die inside a marriage, inside a partnership, constantly and the beauty of it is that someone is holding your hand while you bury them. I felt entirely prepared to witness every death and every birth in him, and to let him witness mine.
People find themselves together, inside a commitment all the time. That’s what commitment is for. It’s the scaffolding that allows two people to excavate and explore without the whole structure coming down. And so it’s no surprise that ours crashed to the ground like a proper demolition site. He was never committed to it. Despite the words, despite the ring, it was destined to fail.

I don't understand why any of this happened but I’m willing to accept that the universe gives and takes without explanation. So I’ll sit here in the rubble of the life I thought we were building. The promised partnership, a family of my own, the future that had a tiny heartbeat for a little while… it all lingers in the dusty air and there’s nothing I can do about it right now besides feel it all and let it crumble.

A bottom is the place you arrive when the pain of staying the same finally outweighs the fear of changing. And it’s not always as obvious as you’d think.

I’m back on the South Shore visiting for the summer, seeing people, saying hello, spending time with friends and I’m sure I look completely normal.
Same face, same voice, same general disposition but those who truly love me and really see me can very clearly recognize that I am not okay.

I want to be radically honest about this. Not for sympathy but because I believe transparency like this is deeply needed. When things aren’t going well, we tend to pull away, isolate and quietly tend to it all alone. It mostly gets forbidden to the shadows. I can absolutely feel inside my own body how much more comfortable it would be to push it aside and pretend my life isn’t unraveling but sharing my experience authentically is the overarching point of my life and my creative endeavors. The powerful and necessary act of transmuting what I feel into something entirely new, something beautifully raw and human is the essence of what being a human and an artist means to me.

A fundamental component of most 12 Step Programs is sharing your experience, strength and hope with the group. An individual stands up at the podium, in front of a room full of people and tells their story. This is the basic structure of nearly every meeting I’ve ever been to and the transformational power of it is in the simplicity.

Experience is the vulnerability, the humanness, the raw story. Having the willingness to show up truthfully. To say out loud and admit to another person that this is what happened. No cleaned up version, just the raw living of it.

Strength is the moment we move toward something new. Not because fear is gone or the path is clear, but because something in us decides to take the next step regardless. This is courage made visible through action. It’s something that moves through us when we finally get out of the way. This is undeniably made possible by the grace of something greater than ourselves.

And Hope is what enters the space when we share the fullness of ourselves honestly. It's evidence that the divine has worked its way into the picture because we’ve stopped trying to manage everything ourselves. We don’t find hope and then share it. We find it by sharing. The sharing is the alchemy.

This simple practice has been transforming people and their lives for years in church basements. These three things together create something undeniably sacred. Those who are struggling get the chance to see that someone else has been here before, there is a way through, and it’s not only possible to survive but to create something far more beautiful on the other side. It breaks the isolation that keeps people stuck and suffering. It is the pure power of seeing and being seen. The whole program runs on it.

Nobody gets better in secret.

Divine Being Human was built on the belief that a real human life, with all its complexity and contradiction, is not only valid but it is the very thing that makes us divine. And sharing that with others is the entire point. The essence of my soul’s work is to reveal it all and revel in what it is to be fully human.

So here is what I am currently experiencing.

I moved across the country to be with a man I loved. On paper, our alignment and shared values felt undeniably perfect. It felt healthy and balanced and like everything I’ve ever wanted from life and partnership was happening. It felt too good to be true but most certainly worth the risk. I would like to believe that I will always walk towards love and away from fear, so I did. I walked fully into this new life but it became clear over the next few months that he was not as willing or able to fully step towards it. It wasn’t as stable as I needed it to be. Especially considering I committed myself to this extraordinary new path when he proposed.

Unfortunately, It hasn’t worked out the way I imagined and the future we built in our hearts and minds has slowly been dissolving every time he doubts his commitment to me, every time he questions whether this is right and this fluctuation between choosing us and questioning us has taken quite a toll on my emotional stability.

We broke up in May and I moved into my own apartment.

About three weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant.

I currently have no job. I am working but barely. I’ve spent my savings. I feel aimless, uninspired and some days genuinely hopeless in a way I’ve never experienced before. I feel incredibly far away from myself. I feel disoriented and incredibly destabilized. There isn’t a corner of my life that feels grounded right now. From the outside, I look the same but I am in middle of a uniquely difficult and painful process of dismantling. My heart is broken, my inner child is devastated and generally, I feel pretty numbed by it all. I’m having a hard time feeling any sense of ease in any moment of the day. The unique flavor of this loss feels difficult to explain but it’s essentially looking down a beautiful lush path meandering through a forest, everything I’ve ever wanted is there, this amazing life with an amazing man, ease and joy, purposeful work, a family, big adventures and the precious moments of every day life, It’s all there, it was promised to me and then taken away.

The energetic pivot feels impossibly difficult. Shifting my gaze another direction and trying to make sense of another life that isn’t this one feels so deeply sad and difficult. There is a swirling tumultuous reckoning happening within my body. Not to mention a baby simultaneously being created. It feels like too much. I’m overwhelmed and I feel mostly paralyzed.

This is the hard part about being at the bottom. When you are at the lowest low it feels impossible to move. It feels impossible to make change. They say pain is a great motivator but I’ve always felt the opposite. I am motivated by joy, connection, love and well being. So this space feels uniquely difficult to navigate.

There are people around me offering support and I feel very lucky to be back east while dealing with this but at the same time it feels increasingly lonely. I am the only one having this experience. No one else lives inside this body, inside this particular shitstorm of losses. And no amount of love from anyone makes any of this more bearable for me.

The last time I felt anything like this was in 2018, when my partner Nathan died. And in the aftermath of that life-changing grief, in the complete despair of it all, something needed to be created. I needed to make something from the love that suddenly had nowhere to go. Divine Being was that something then and so it makes total sense that I would feel the call back to it again.

Nathan’s death taught me how to surrender. It taught me how to admit that I am not in control. It revealed the strange grace that became available as soon as I was willing to say out loud that I needed help.

Once again, I am reminded that there is something greater than me at work here and I need to stop fighting it and reestablish my connection with it.

The 12 steps, if you know them, begin with admitting that there is a problem one can’t solve on their own. I expected Nathan to do it with his addiction and so I’ll expect the same of myself here today.

I can’t do this on my own and I need help.

I want to be honest about how uncomfortable it is to even write that sentence. My mind immediately wants to try to convince me that it isn’t that bad. I don’t deserve anything. Other people have it worse. I should be able to figure this out on my own. Asking for help means I’m a burden. Accepting help means I’m a failure.

And then there’s the one that hits hardest, that this is my fault. No one else did this to me. This is the shitty, desperately uncomfortable result of my decisions, my choices and my actions.

So, what I can do is sit here and be with it. And really let myself feel the weight of it all, the overwhelm, the emotional, mental and physical fatigue, the grief, the frustration, discomfort and the anger. Beneath all of this, when I manage to find a moment reminiscent of stillness, there is only one thing that feels true.

And I intend to follow it.

I am spending the month of August in Maine.

I am going to hunker down in my father’s house to assess my wounds and lovingly tend to them. I’m going to let pain do what pain does when we let it fully exist and express.

And most importantly, I am going to create.

This is the only thing that feels okay in my body right now. It’s the only option moving forward that offers any relief. Creating is the one thing that makes any of this feel meaningful, not as a distraction from the pain but as a way through it, a way to make sense of it.

So I’m going to make stuff.

Each creation will be what every Divine Being piece has always been… an honoring of love. The thread between the divine and the earthly made manifest.

I’ll share the process as I feel inspired but mostly, I want to let it unfold with minimal interruption. I want to let the magic of slow Maine mornings, games of cribbage with my dad, cups of coffee, paintings and poems be the healing balm that my tender heart craves. I want to be in the stillness of existence long enough to really honor this life inside me.

Maybe this is the universe doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. Clearing the path so that I can actually see what is real and true for me and my life.

The bottom, as brutal as it is, can also be a beginning.

If you feel moved to help me begin again, here are a few ways to offer support:

You can subscribe to my Substack

You can make a donation via venmo to offer direct support while I find my footing
my handle is @christen-poole

You will eventually be able to purchase my work. Hand-painted, one of a kind watercolor paintings will be available soon. Each one made slowly, from whatever unfolds throughout this process. I’ll share them here first.

You can say something supportive in the comments. Leaving your messages of support, love and kindness will undoubtedly help me feel less alone.

Change is possible. One day at a time and we don’t have to do it alone.

“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. The feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises?
We think not.
They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
They will always materialize if we work for them.”

-The Promises appear on pages 83-84 of Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Not surprisingly, this most recent relationship and breakup dug into my flesh and bones, found the oldest wound I carry, ripped it from it’s embedded webbing and placed it still very much alive, back in my hands. I am not just navigating a breakup,
I am choosing to look at and deal with the thing that has been underneath every single relationship. There is a subconscious current deep below the surface that has been perpetuating dysfunction and keeping me from the long-term fulfillment and healthy lasting love I crave.

And if I claim this is what I actually long for, I have to take radical responsibility and spend some time with the pain point…

my mother.

The Mother Wound refers to an emotional, psychological, and even spiritual pain that arises from an imperfect, absent, enmeshed, or otherwise wounding relationship with our mother and by extension, with the feminine itself. This is very real in my lineage, on both sides of my family and I can only imagine, extends back generations.

It is rarely about being a “bad” mother. In fact, it feels easy for me to imagine most mothers, my own included, doing the best they could despite themselves being wounded by their mothers, who were wounded by theirs. it’s a pain cycle, like a setting on the washing machine. Throw whatever you got in, let it tumble around and hope for the best. It’s an intergenerational passing down of unmet needs, unprocessed grief, unspoken shame, and survival adaptations passed down over and over again.

This is our emotional inheritance.

And mine has played out in every single one of my romantic relationships. This baseline feeling of not being good enough as I am, not being fully chosen. It manifests differently for everyone but can look like difficulty trusting women, difficulty trusting ourselves, people-pleasing, fear of abandonment, or a deep hunger for approval and belonging that never quite goes away. And we tend to replay this original dynamic with our partners because the psyche is always trying to resolve the oldest unfinished business - ultimately hoping to receive the very specific, unique quality of love we hoped and yearned for from our mums.

This is the primary reason I am embarking on my Sacred Pause. A self-created container to build upon my inner foundation so that I am no longer reliant on an external source for validation, safety, or security. So that the hunger from my younger self that has been following me into every relationship can stop looking for its answer in the arms of another and finally be met from within.

Taking this pause will allow me to create an intentional space to reset and gain clarity. It will be a wombspace where I can nurture a new environment into being. A place where new behaviors and insights can arise and where that which no longer serves me can whither up and die. I can then neutralize it into energetic compost and bring it back to the cosmic soil. I will continue a well-established practice of inner child work and reparenting, read a book a week to further my education/enrichment, create morning and evening rituals to infuse my life with meaning and romanticize my life through union with nature and spirit. For 90 days.

This past month has been confusing and disorienting. And if I’m being completely honest, I would rather be cozied up in bed with him drinking celery juice before we embark on another day together. I would choose that over this again and again, without hesitation.

But that is not what’s being asked of me.

As a little girl, I always knew that more was possible in the realm of love and family. Before I had words for it, I somehow knew that more tenderness, more safety, more intimacy was not only possible but necessary for a truly connected life. But just like everyone else in my family, I only had access to the expanse of my heart through the wound upon it. The crack has always been the way in, so of course, it’s going to hurt. And as long as I mistake this for the only way in, the pain will always be the price of admission to my own capacity for love.

This Sacred Pause is an opportunity to tend to what has been left untended my entire life. To clean and honor and finally begin to heal the wound itself. Because I believe that on the other side of that tending is something I have always known was possible but have yet to fully experience.

I am only now beginning to understand that I am both the child who longed to be mothered and I am the mother who can finally do the mothering. The wound does not require my mother to change, to soften or to show up differently than she ever has. The power of healing has always lived inside of me. It is my work to do, and I am prepared to do it alone.

But as it happens, I don’t have to. She is here. She is open and willing to turn toward this fertile ground alongside me.

And so we will stand together, at the front of a long, unbroken line of women who never received what they needed and so could not pass on what they didn’t have. Mothers wounding daughters who became mothers wounding daughters stretching back further than any of us can see.

I want it to end here, in my lifetime, in my body.

This time, I am not sending my sweet little girl on the journey alone. I am going to cradle her in my arms and carry her across the threshold, not as the child I once was, but as the mother I am becoming.
And I can only hope that my mom will do the same, that she will gather her own little girl close, and together we can walk forward as a tender family of four, finally finding our way to the home we all deserve.

We will build a sacred home inside of ourselves that is full of the love have always longed for.
Everything that comes after will be built on entirely different ground.

This is the Sacred Pause. And this is where it all begins.

I was grieving a life that technically hadn’t happened yet but had been etched into every cell of my body. Every imagined morning waking up beside him, every outing with friends, every loud “bless you” I squeal as he sneezes in the other room, seeing him for the first time on our wedding day… the whole dream was rooted so deeply in my experience that releasing it felt like an exorcism. Like something had to be physically torn from me before it would let go.

These feelings have been enormous. But as soon as they moved all the way through me, when I fully felt them and let them have everything they needed, they haven’t come back.

I did tear up on the phone yesterday as my friend told me about all the amazing coffee he was drinking in Korea, when for a split second, I imagined never sharing another cup with Ian.

And I certainly feel a tightness in my throat, a longing in my womb to be pregnant with his babies. The particularly vivid image of a pudgy little one on my hip, casually making breakfast in a home that we share together, sits so firmly in my mind that I sometimes forget it isn’t real.

So, make no mistake, there is definitely sadness here. But I am surprised by how good I feel overall.

My previous three break-ups were devastating. Each one of them was life-altering. Completely transforming me as I walked through the fire and the initiation of love lost.
But this feels almost easy in comparison.

I am fascinated by what that means and I think I figured it out.

I’m growing up.

I have been taking an online course with Annie Lalla called How To Be In Love. And honestly, I think it should be called How To Be An Adult In Love because that is the core of what she is teaching and modeling. The work of showing up without the frightened inner child grasping for proof of worth. How to be in relationship from a grounded, resourced self and choose partnership not out of need but out of genuine desire to live life alongside someone else.

And you know what the crazy thing is about loving someone as an adult?

There is significantly less drama. Possibly even none. In its place is a fertile soil of peace, connection, acceptance, conflict, repair and the remarkable ability to stay with my own experience instead of codependently worrying about his.

Instead of spiraling into what he might be thinking or feeling, I have been coming back again and again to what I am thinking and feeling. And to be completely honest, he isn’t a part of this.

He isn’t here.

Staying with my own experience allows something extraordinary to happen, the emotional hostage-taking stops because my well-being isn’t in someone else’s hands, it’s in my own.

Let me be clear about something, because I think this is important to recognize… growing up does not mean I have stopped feeling.

In fact, I feel everything. I really really do. All of my feelings move through me in waves. The heartache. The grief. The relief. The boredom. The horniness. The ease of being alone. I am not afraid of my emotional landscape and the range of “weather” that comes rolling through. I let it arrive just as it is and stay with it. Because I have learned to self-regulate, my sense of okayness is no longer outsourced to him or anyone else. It moves through me and at the end of the storm, I am still here. There is a very present hard-won knowledge that I do not need him to be okay.

I am okay.

I’m certainly not killing it right now, by most conventional measures. I haven’t been working for months. I am spending my savings. Each morning I wake up into an unsettled, transitional life with no clear map or purpose and still somehow, I feel proud.

I feel capable and happy.

The constant force in my life is an unending source of gratitude. I have time to write. I have food in my belly. I have a new found freedom as I begin creating a life without him in it.

I used to think that the depth of the pain after a breakup was the measure of how much I loved someone and the devastation was the proof. When Nathan died, my heart felt so loyal to him for years. There was a paralyzing and somewhat romantic fidelity to his memory, like he owned my heart and it was my sacred obligation to keep it that way. To move forward meant I was abandoning him and to love someone new meant he was replaceable or that our love wasn’t special. I had no idea how to hold grief and openness at the same time.

Within the world of loving Ian, something feels different. My heart feels like it’s mine.

I just get to love. I get to love the world, the calico cat hiding in the dewy grass every morning, the raw parts of my thumbs I have been picking at, and all the versions of myself that show up while navigating this new path.

I get to love him and really clearly see him without the distortion of need. I get to love him cleanly with no posession, obligation or lack.

And the craziest part of the whole thing is that this pure love feels like the exact kind that is worth sustaining. It feels like the most real thing. There is a cognitive dissonance here that I haven’t fully resolved.

Is the healthiest love I have ever experienced and offered really the one I am releasing?!?

I keep coming back to something Ram Dass said,

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”

Love is not scarce. It is the entire cosmic web of everything that exists. It is everywhere all the time.

Last night I had a movie night with my new roommates. I’ve officially been in this new living situation for 5 nights and we’ve already made something cozy to eat, settled into the couch, and just existed together. Because my heart was so open, not protected, not quietly grieving the one person who wasn’t there, I could simply be present to the people who wanted to spend an evening with me. I could be in love with the truth of the moment. Ian and I are no longer together and that’s ok.

Maybe this is what growing up and being in love actually feels like.

But as my path continues to unfold, I am realizing something different. My devotion is not to love itself, but to the sacred space where it grows. A co-created refuge that blooms when people choose to fully reveal themselves & to see the other completely.

The word Esylium comes to mind. This may seem a bit dramatic at first, but healthy, inspired, purposeful, connected partnership is in fact, the eternal paradise I have been dreaming of my entire life.

I have been obsessed with this feeling for as long as I can remember and I’m not even sure how to describe what it is. I just knew very early on that my family wasn’t cutting it and there was a better way to live in togetherness.

Turns out, it isn’t love I seek… it’s intimacy.

In-to-me-you-see.

The deep & real knowing of another. The more that is shared about who they are, what they think, what they like, what they don’t like, etc, the more I can familiarize myself with their inner landscape and make sense of how I fit within it.

And ultimately, the somewhat desperate hope behind all of this is that if I know you well enough, you won’t be able to hurt me. Or at the very least, I’ll see it coming.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case recently.
I saw it coming this time and it still hurts… a lot.

But when we mutually disclose who we are, what we are thinking, feeling and experiencing in the present moment it inevitably becomes the living ground of love itself.

This is what the soil of my life was missing in childhood. The nourishment of really knowing one another. No one was modeling the disclosure of the self, teaching vulnerability, or seemed even remotely interested in knowing about me and my experience more deeply. At least not the depth I desire. Most if not all of our truths were masked by fear, doubt and insecurity, not to mention busyness, distraction and the overwhelm of everyday life as a family of 5. Not surprisingly, this manifested into rebellion, anger, distrust, lonliness and separation.

And somehow, I magically knew from a very young age that sharing the truth of who we were was where every seed of connection would inevitably take root. Joy, trust, connection and yes, love, all bloom from this fertile ground of knowing and being known.

Yesterday in a session with Deb Larson, my Jungian life coach, I was guided in an active imagination around The Mother Imago.

The mother imago in shadow work is an unconscious, composite image of the maternal figure’s positive and negative traits, formed in childhood. In adulthood, it dictates attraction by drawing us toward partners who mirror early, unresolved or painful caretaking dynamics. This causes us to unconsciously seek healing for childhood wounds by recreating similar relational scenarios in our love lives, often leading to perpetuated pain points and emotional struggles.

Yikes.

Doesn’t exactly feel very hopeful. But working with and understanding the mother wound lets me grieve the mother I needed but never got as a child and helps me to become that mother for myself. It is an invitation to birth myself… “to break the lineage of pain and step into my own authority, no longer an orphan of the spirit, but a child of life itself.” (Joel Blackstock, The Mother Wound: Healing the Primal Void in the Psyche)

This process has helped me understand how I am seeking these forms of love in my romantic relationships and perpetuating the patterns over and over again.

If all of this feels like a slithering psychological serpent, I’m with you. It’s complex shit. The work of the self is often daunting and depth-work especially, is no joke. We are asked to face the parts of ourselves that we typical avoid, bury and never want to look at again. But this is in exact opposition of the delight and belonging that comes from sharing who we are with ourselves and those around us, even the parts lurking in the shadows. Especially those parts.

Showing ourselves fully does not promise that we will be chosen in the ways we hope for, or that love will take the shape we imagine. But that has never been the point.

In my opinion, the point is not certainty but growth and expansion.
It’s about aliveness. How alive can I feel in myself and under the gaze of another?

In my all time favorite self-help book, The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck, he defines love as, “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” I first read the book in my twenties. It resonated with some deep inner knowing. I finally felt like someone else knew of the same yearning that pulled at my tender heartstrings, the desire for a mutual offering of presence, honesty and care in service to something larger… the ever-evolving landscape of love, intimacy and family.

This is why the emotional heaviness of true intimacy is worth its weight in gold.

This kind of love deepens not only our relationships, but our relationship to life itself. It teaches us how to stay with uncertainty, with tenderness, with the full range of human experience, without needing to escape or resolve it too quickly, or even at all. Because while it’s hard, it yields a heart capable of holding life on life’s terms. A heart that does not close when things are unclear, unfinished or painful. A heart that can remain open even without a promise of an outcome.

And this capacity doesn’t disappear when a relationship changes or ends. It becomes a way of meeting the world. An openness that can grieve, love, risk, and continue completely intact.

This is the quiet power of intimacy and why it is such a crucial component to matters of the heart. It doesn’t protect us from loss, but it expands what the beautifully strong and bloody muscles at the center of our chest are able to hold.

This is the exact spot where I feel supported enough to share about my/our current relational circumstances.

Ian and I are no longer a couple.

We are no longer committed to a long-term future together.

I have already worked through the denial, anger, bargaining and depression. It actually integrated into my experience quite quickly. And of course, I know it is a spectrum I will ride like a sad upside rainbow for some time to come.

Make no mistake, I am completely and utterly heartbroken but while cradling my wounded heart, I am also in acceptance of my new reality.

Which is this…

I moved across the country for love and it hasn’t worked out the way I had hoped.

I took a risk, I went for it, I agreed to marry him after knowing each other less than a year, having not lived in the same state. When he got down on one knee alongside the Yuba River, we had only spent 60 something days in the same place. Everything else had been zoom dates and facetimes. By every conventional measure, it was too soon but nothing has ever felt more right for me.

The alignment of values, depth of connection and shared purpose was undeniable.

It was a love story parts of myself had been preparing for my entire life and I wanted to say yes to it.

So, I did.

We packed up my stuff on the East Coast in November, drove across the country, gathered his life up in South Lake Tahoe and continued to Nevada City, CA to begin something entirely new, together. We settled in, co-living with his mom, unpacked, made meals together, played board games, cold plunged in the lakes & rivers, ran many many miles alongside one another, practiced yoga and began the real work of creating a vision for life that we both wanted.

There is a particular kind of intimacy that only emerges in the beautifully sacred ordinary moments of a shared daily life. These are the gems. Reaching past someone for the coffee, the quiet of two people reading in the same room and the contagious laughter over the latest episode of Ted Lasso can feel like the whole point of everything.

Because they are.

We began expanding his business to include relational and ritual services, weaving together his heart-centered officiating and coaching with my gifts as a creative and facilitator into a vibrant tapestry of offerings, all in service to love. We invested in a geodesic dome company in the area, envisioning a home that would one day serve as the foundation for our life’s work and mission.

To be stewards of the land, loving relational leaders in the community and most importantly, a place to raise and nourish a family while welcoming others into the kind of depth and intentionality we both believed the world was hungry for.

We were doing the unglamorous yet hopeful and inspiring work of building a co-created life of our dreams.

Until now.

4 months since the proposal, it has become increasingly clear that he doesn’t feel confident in the commitment to this life and this vision, with me. It has been an ongoing dilemma in his experience from the moment we met in person. His heart wants this, and something in his mind continuously whispers it isn’t right.

My plan with this piece was to try and explain the complexity and nuance of our situation but it feels less important right now. What I do want to do is slow it down a little bit, because in my opinion, this is the part about love that matters the most.

We cannot have genuine commitment to another person without first having commitment to ourselves.

This is currently a very uncomfortable and inconvenient truth for me but I believe it is the only foundation on which anything real can be built in matters of the heart.

Gabor Maté writes about the seemingly unavoidable tension at the center of the human experience. We are consistently oscillating between connection and authenticity. We are wired for both, and they so often push up against each other. Most of us learned that love is conditional and that to belong we have to perform or abandon our own needs and desires. Essentially, we have to choose between ourselves or someone else for survival and as a child, we will almost always choose someone else. So we quiet the voice of who we actually are, so consistently and for so long, that it eventually becomes a whisper.

What Ian is doing, or rather what he is refusing to do, is deny that whisper even one more time. He is listening. Something in him is choosing to come back into conversation with himself. His devotion to deciphering his own inner truth is an act of profound integrity and I’m not surprised at all, because he is such a stunning man.

This has been clarifying for me as well because I am learning that a man who can hear himself clearly and stand inside his own experience without abandoning it to keep someone else comfortable is the only kind of man I want anyway.

What this truth requires of me is not just to grieve my dream life, but to accept the truth of who he actually is right now. To love the real man standing in front of me, including the parts that are still unresolved. This part of Ian deserves to be listened to, and my own inner work is the only reason I can hold that without collapsing. I feel so grateful that I can hear the whisper of his sweet, tender heart and all I want to do is love on it.

This is definitely not comfortable work. It is disorienting and destabilizing and costing us both something precious, a nearly perfect love story.

Here’s the thing though, love is not the variable that determines whether two people stay. What actually sustains a shared life is a choice. A daily sometimes moment to moment choice to move toward each other over and over again.

So what I am sitting with now is the particularly exquisite pain of not being chosen…

and it is a devastating heartache.

But I have never regretted saying yes to my life, especially not in love.

Not once.

Because it always leads me to moral beauty.

And the people who have walked through my heart, even the ones who couldn’t stay, have left me more myself than I was before they arrived.

Ian is no exception. If anything, he is the most perfect example of it.
And I know he deserves the same thing. To leave this love more himself. To finally, fully, hear the whisper and know exactly what it’s saying.

I trust this life.

And every beautiful gift it has so graciously given me.

So you can imagine my surprise at being completely fascinated by the recent Shia LaBeouf “crash-out.” Personally, I prefer a more compassionate perspective than that phrase allows: the sliver of a man’s life that we weirdly get to not only witness but interpret, dissect, and project assumed meaning onto.

We sit behind our screens, critiquing and judging others as if we have any real context or insight into what is actually happening or true for them. It’s an absurd and rampant feature of our celebrity culture that makes absolutely zero sense to me and for the most part, I refuse to participate in it.

But this week, when the weird little algorithm began serving me Instagram clips of Shia’s New Orleans debauchery, I was in right away.

He is self proclaimed off the wagon, drinking, smoking and roaming the streets during Mardi Gras, getting in fights, getting arrested and then talking about it all for over an hour in an unfiltered and chaotic albeit entertaining interview. It’s messy, uncomfortable and oddly magnetic. Which is exactly why I can’t stop thinking about it.

I have loved Shia LaBeouf from the moment his little face bounced across my television screen on Even Stevens. I was twelve or so and already knew he was special. His talent was undeniable. He was funny, charismatic, his timing was perfect, and he was adorable.

As I reflect on this and a few other early childhood fascinations, Edgar Allan Poe, The Basketball Diaries, Dylan McKay from 90210, Kurt Cobain, the list goes on and on, I can see clearly that my love for the addict archetype runs deep. There has always been something within me that feels for them and I hadn’t really ever made much sense of it until now.

I am drawn towards people who live close to the edge. Whether we admit it or not, we are all sitting on this precarious ridge between life and death at all times. The only difference is that with an addict, the inherent danger somehow feels closer. It’s a more palpable ingredient in every moment. Their proximity to that edge radiates a kind of aliveness that can be hard to access in the safety of ordinary life. It feels real and honest and electric. I also suspect there could be some larger cosmic thread running through it all, tied to the healing of my own family line, though I haven’t even begun to untangle that karmic knot yet. But what I do know, is that when someone is visibly wrestling with themselves and with life, something in my heart softens.

The rise of social media means we now live inside a constant feed of ultra-curated humanity. And in my opinion, it’s empty, useless, and boring.

And thus, the performance of authenticity is trending. They are manufacturing vulnerability. If you’ve ever watched The Drew Barrymore Show, you know what I mean. And while it might serve as a tolerated stand-in, it doesn’t come close to satisfying the deeper ache most of us carry, to truly see and be seen. This is fundamentally the function of community and tribe. To have a place where we can be with all aspects of the human experience, where we can provide support and receive it. We are starved for the healing balm of communal raw realness, the kind that has not been made easily digestible or optimized for approval. Shia is showing us unfiltered humanness in a world that is literally covered in filters. We live inside apps that allow us to retouch not only our faces but now, our personalities. The words we write aren’t even ours, they are drafted and modified by easily accessible programs. They can be embellished or entirely crafted from one sentence. We aren’t even thinking for ourselves anymore. That apparently is too inconvenient.

And honestly, as a creative and expressive person, I’m pretty mad about it.

Then there is Shia, sweaty and wild eyed in the middle of Mardi Gras, shouting “It’s Mardi Gras!” The explanation is almost childlike in its simplicity. As if the point is obvious - Of course we’re celebrating. We’re alive. Because honestly, every day is kind of like Mardi Gras when you zoom out far enough. The miracle of existence alone is enough to be shouting about. He is fully in the moment enjoying yes, the high of the drugs but also the magic of presence. He is belligerent and euphoric, bopping between something that looks almost spiritual and the inevitable alcohol induced chaos. He seems completely uninterested in participating in the socially agreed-upon ways of being. He is not trying to do, be or say the right thing. He’s not managing the narrative or his image. He is just there, existing in real time.

And maybe I am crazy, but there is something undeniably attractive about that. Not sexy attractive but this other definition of the word: having beneficial qualities or features that induce someone to accept what is being offered.

I think it’s possible we can’t look away because we’re starving for this kind of freedom. We are exhausted by trying to survive the social hierarchy. We’ve all spent a lifetime trying to fit in, read the room and control how we are perceived. Most of us have been playing this long game of social chess performing some version of who we are our entire lives. We call it professionalism, maturity and social responsibility but honest to God, most of the time all I can see underneath it is fear.

The fear of truly being ourselves and expressing it freely.

Shia’s chaos feels like the opposite of that fear. I understand how some might see only reckless, self destructive behavior, but I am choosing to see someone experiencing the full range of being human in real time. Joy and rage, play and despair, a spiritual being and an addict with a carnal appetite. He is mirroring the chaotic inner workings most of us are trying so hard to hide away. In my opinion, he’s reflecting back the entire pie of the human experience not just the slices that are socially, culturally, and personally preferred.

And to top it all off, he’s funny.

He is able to laugh at the absurdity of being alive, which is not unlike many spiritual guru’s. Those whose seeming enlightenment rests on the undeniable cosmic joke of it all. My favorite podcast, Bad Friends, gives me this same electric feeling. Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino say what they want, push the boundaries of what is socially acceptable and are both completely unafraid of looking stupid. In fact, they lean into it. There is a looseness in their craft and expression that feels like freedom, and I think that is the thread running through all of this.

Authenticity isn’t always pretty. The way we genuinely think, feel and experience the world can be uncomfortable for other people, which is precisely why we learn to package it. I think we are fascinated watching him roam the streets of Louisiana because we recognize the aliveness poking through the chaos, and secretly want a taste of it.

What I’m left with after all of this isn’t a desire to glorify or romanticize drug use or addiction. Because that is it’s own complex and sensitive issue. This is just an attempt to explore and understand my own intrigue around this fleeting social media storm. And I’m left with a couple questions on my heart...

Where have we abandoned our own aliveness in the name of being accepted?

Can we care a little less about how we are perceived and a little more about whether we are telling the truth about our own experience?

Are we sharing who we really are?

How can we do a better job of letting ourselves be seen?

The practice of staying with ourselves, especially when what we feel is inconvenient or imperfect, might feel as rebellious and wild as a famous person drunk on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras and the emotional and relational stakes in our lives may feel just as high.

But who we are underneath the performance is who we are.

So the real fascination here is not about him at all, but about all the parts of us that long to live just a little more freely.

and just for the hell of it, I prompted Chatgpt to write this piece for me.

“Can you write an op-ed substack piece about how shia labeouf is trending because as a collective we are starved for authenticity and that this is an example of us appreciating something that actually feels real rather than curated?”

Clips of Shia LaBeouf have been circulating online again—old interviews, fragments of conversations, moments where he seems to be speaking without a script. The tone of the reaction is interesting. It’s not exactly admiration, and it’s not quite criticism either. It’s closer to fascination.

The reason has less to do with LaBeouf himself than with the moment we’re living in. People are responding to something that feels increasingly rare in public life: authenticity.

For the last decade, public figures have been trained into a kind of frictionless performance of themselves. Every appearance is media coached. Every statement is calibrated. Social media posts are written with the tone of a friend but the precision of a marketing campaign. The modern public persona isn’t simply curated—it’s engineered.

And the more polished this ecosystem becomes, the more people seem to crave the opposite.

When LaBeouf speaks in interviews, he often does so in a way that feels uncontained. His answers wander. His thoughts arrive mid-sentence. He contradicts himself. He gets emotional, defensive, reflective. Whether or not someone agrees with him is almost beside the point. What people are reacting to is the sense that the moment isn’t being optimized for them.

It feels unscripted.

In a media environment where nearly everything passes through layers of brand management, legal review, and algorithmic strategy, unpredictability reads as honesty. Not perfect honesty, not even necessarily admirable honesty—but something closer to a person thinking in real time.

That feeling has become strangely scarce.

Social media was once supposed to collapse the distance between public figures and their audiences. In theory, it would allow people to present themselves directly, without intermediaries. In practice, it produced a new kind of performance. The “casual” photo is carefully lit. The vulnerable caption sounds suspiciously like brand copy. Even apologies arrive polished and formatted.

Over time, audiences have become fluent in this language of curation. We know what it looks like when someone is presenting a version of themselves designed to be palatable, safe, and broadly appealing. And while that model protects reputations, it also creates a subtle sense of emotional distance.

Everything begins to feel managed.

So when someone appears who doesn’t seem entirely managed—even if the result is messy—the reaction can be surprisingly strong. People circulate the clip. They quote the interview. They talk about it as if they’ve stumbled onto something rare.

What they’re responding to isn’t perfection. It’s presence.

There’s a kind of cultural hunger right now for moments that feel like they haven’t passed through six layers of optimization. Not the performance of authenticity, which the internet has gotten very good at producing, but the slightly uncomfortable version where a person is clearly still figuring out what they think while they’re saying it.

LaBeouf, intentionally or not, often operates in that register. His public life has been chaotic, controversial, and frequently self-contradictory. But the very qualities that make him difficult to categorize also make him difficult to smooth into the standard celebrity template.

In an era of carefully constructed identities, that unpredictability reads as real.

This doesn’t mean audiences suddenly prefer disorder to professionalism, or that every unfiltered public figure will be embraced. Realness carries risk. Real people make mistakes. They say things they later regret. They evolve in ways that are hard to narrativize.

The highly curated celebrity model exists partly because raw humanity is hard to manage in a media ecosystem that punishes mistakes instantly.

But the opposite extreme—total polish—has its own cost. When everyone sounds media trained and every moment feels branded, the public begins searching for anyone who doesn’t.

The renewed attention around LaBeouf says less about the actor than it does about the environment we’re all inhabiting. After years of hyper-managed personas, the pendulum may be starting to swing back toward voices that feel less controlled.

Not because they’re better.
Because they’re believable.

And right now, believability might be the scarcest resource on the internet.

You know when the seatbelt sign goes off and almost everyone embodies that panicked get me the fuck out of here vibe? They all stand at once, even though no one can go anywhere, some can’t quite get out of their seats, so they hunch forward, heads smushed up against the ceiling, arms stretched toward the aisle of freedom, stuck somewhere between sitting and standing.

That’s when I saw her.

She was facing the back of the plane waiting for her opening to disembark the hot mess that is the end of a long flight and I couldn’t help but notice…

the normal human beauty of her face.

Yeah, that’s it. She just looked normal. and. pretty.

She seemed to be in her mid 40’s because she LOOKED like she was in her mid 40’s.

She looked her age AND she was B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.

Because guess what?!?!

NATURAL AGING IS BEAUTIFUL.

Seems crazy that this feels important to express but we have been so painfully conditioned to believe it isn’t. We have been taught to despise what we look like. To do anything and everything to avoid looking like the years of GIFTED LIFE THAT WE ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE ENDURED, ENJOYED and EVOLVED through.

I was struck because I realized how RARE it is to see a naturally aged face.

It feels like NEARLY EVERYONE is lifting, toxing, plumping and lasering the shit out of their naturally gorgeous faces to become… “more beautiful”? As if that’s even possible. The unique face that we are blessed to have doesn’t need to be amplified, enhanced or to appear younger.

On top of all that, there is concealer, eye liner, lip gloss, bronzer, blush and fake eyelashes that are often a mile long. Curling hair into perfect little beach waves, spritzing ourselves with perfume and using shapewear to squeeze us into a hopefully small enough loveable shape and don’t forget lifting our tits highhh to the sky.

It’s some wild shit.

I can vividly remember seeing my older sister wake up in the morning when we were teens, her unruly curly hair and her make-up free face and I thought she looked so gorgeous. But inevitably, she would straighten her hair, pull it back into a tight bun, line her lips and be on her way. I just didn’t get it.

I still don’t.

Why is everyone so afraid?

Sometimes I feel like I found the only two women on the South Shore who aren’t desperately trying to look 30. And lucky for me, they are my best friends. Pure, unaltered, gorgeous WOMEN who look the age they are supposed to look.

I don’t want to aspire to look like the Kardashians, I don’t want to Frankenstein my sense of beauty, I don’t want to remove my buccal fat from my cheeks, I don’t want to use filters on instagram.

In fact, I want to do the opposite.

I want to showcase the texture of my skin, the shape of my boobs as gravity takes over and the crease in my forehead that is basically always there now.

Because if I don’t do it no one will know what a real 41 year old looks like. And the vicious pernicious cycle will continue to perpetuate for other little girls.

I want to see more women out in the world with wiry gray hairs poking out in every direction, with hooded eyelids and cute little jowls that are beginning to form where plump cheeks once were.

I want women who celebrate themselves as they are with no modification to feel a sense of pride in reading this.

You are one of the RARE real beauties swimming up stream against a sea of people who are all trying to look exactly the same.

It feels rough to write this.

But it feels too important not to. I want to know where you women are so I can look at your wrinkles and know your stories. So I can see the years in your eyes and revel in your wisdom while you’re waiting to get off a plane.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

And to be totally honest, she isn’t as much of a friend as I would like her to be but we have gotten to know each other quite a bit over the years.

Ever since I heard the news, I can’t stop thinking about it… well, what’s more true is I can’t stop feeling about it. My heart feels softer seeing her share photos of him. And even just the reality that our photos are only a teeny tiny small fraction of the real life moments we ever share with a person, let alone a parent. In the early days of this loss, the flood of memories running through her must be overwhelming. And my heart is just feeling it, relating to the unique and earth-shattering heartache of losing someone we love. How different the world feels when they are gone. How different our body feels adjusting to never being able to see them, hear them or touch them again.

I don’t think we talk about it enough. We have the funeral and then just kind of silently suffer. There aren’t spaces to go through it. We have one service, one day commemorating their lives, we wear black, we cry and then life just goes on per usual. And we continue day after day, year after year, holding our grief, we mend our hearts mostly alone. We have to figure out how to continue on without them. And maybe that’s the reason I am writing this, I don’t want her to feel alone in this. I want her to know that I know. I didn’t know him but I know the feeling of my favorite person not being alive. And it is brutally hard. It is absolutely the most difficult thing I have experienced and I guess I just want to address that here. I see you and your broken heart, Michelle.

Losing my own father has been my biggest fear since I was 10 years old. It is probably the biggest stressor of my life. So much energy has swirled around over the years into this fear. And it seems like such a waste because I am 41 and he is still alive. That is part of this too, I can feel my own sadness at the inevitable loss of my dad. Even though I have imagined it countless times, I can’t even begin to make sense of a world that he is no longer in. It feels utterly heartbreaking. Like puddle of goo on the floor, nothing makes sense, nothing matters, I can’t go on type of shit.

And I know, of course, we do go on. We learn to live with the empty space. And our relationship with them can continue on without their earthly bodies. I know this from the depth of relationship I have continued to have with my sweet Nathan. But there is some kind of comfort for me in knowing that everyone alive will eventually experience this feeling. That so many lives in human history have been touched by a loss like this. It’s all part of it and we are all part of it and some day my death will ache on the hearts of those who are still here. It’s a rite of passage in a way. To mourn.

More than anything I want to encourage us to mourn together. To miss our people together. To talk about them. To say their names. To remember them year after year. Grieving together, holding space for one another, honoring our dead is so important and culturally we have dropped the ball. We aren’t doing it right. And I want to do something different, I want to do it right.

I have been fascinated by death my entire life. I used to obsessively read the morbid work of Edgar Allen Poe, I used to dress in all black as a kid and I always pull over to look at road kill, to examine it, imagine how it died and move it somewhere to decompose more peacefully. I have always been and continue to be pulled toward death. And ever since Nathan died I have wanted a space for the grief, for the heaviness and for the tears. So it feels like this is a call to action. The recent death of a man I didn’t even know is urging me towards creation. Somehow, his spirit is guiding me towards creating a ritual space that my heart has been yearning for.

And for that all I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you.

I have come to believe very deeply that this elixir of the heart found me just in time. My human experience was about to change so completely that some divine force must have known the fibers, chambers, vessels, and tendons of my heart would soon need fortification.

Without the profoundly loving hands of this medicine gently cradling me, I’m not sure I would have made it through.

Cacao and the many circles I have had the privilege of sitting in have offered warmth, undeniable spiritual connection, and a sense of rooted purpose I’ve never felt before. This ritual, honored both in ceremony and in daily doses, has undoubtedly been my saving grace.

One of the first meditations I did after Nathan’s passing evoked a vision of him as a mystic sage, holding a glowing blue and white beating heart. We stood along the shore of some ethereal lagoon in my mind and he whispered a message of wisdom for me to carry forward, “Love everyone as you have loved me.”

Even now, writing these words, they resonate in every cell of my body. This was the beginning. Divine Being Human was born from this simple mission… to love.

So when my best friend started hosting a women’s circle the week after I moved across the country, I was surprised by my initial feeling…

What the fuck?!?!

Well, that’s not a feeling.

But luckily, with my trusty companion, Self-Reflection, I was able to identify the wide range of emotions swirling through my system. I also got to experience the oh-so-varied visceral sensations that often accompany these more intense internal spaces. Ouchie.

It was a tough blow.

I felt slighted somehow with the timing, like she actively didn’t want me there. I felt angry that I had continued to invite her into MY circles over and over again, a seat right next to me and she scheduled her first one when it was impossible for me to show up! I felt annoyed that she asked to borrow cacao because hers wasn’t arriving in time and more than anything else, I felt scared.

Beneath all of this was the not-so-subtle fear that something THIS important to me could be mirrored, reimagined, and carried forward by someone else.

This was MY thing.

What a seemingly small sentence for such a big fear.

But it makes sense. My ego was being threatened.

Here lives the insidious belief that who I am depends on what I provide and it better be unique otherwise, I won’t matter. If I don’t matter, I have no value. If I’m not valued, I won’t belong. If I don’t belong, I’ll be alone.

and if I’m alone… I’ll die.

That’s how quickly the mind moves from questioning my worth to survival.

This is the not-so-quiet terror beneath my ego’s grip.

Without my specialness there will be no seat for me.

My identity has been so tightly constructed to protect. “I am this. If you know I am this, you’ll also know I am not that.” My ego is deeply desperate to be understood, for people to know who I am and what I am about so I can continue to exist.

So I belong.

Let me be clear, in my rational mind, there is absolutely no problem here. I wholeheartedly know there is plenty of room for everyone to create. Anddd I fully recognize that I learned about cacao from another woman and HER offering. THIS IS HOW IT WORKS. We learn and grow with and through each other. And our closest people are always our greatest teachers.

But we aren’t dealing with the rational. We are in the realm of fear, doubt and insecurity.

So here I sit, with a fresh cup of cacao in my lap as I write this. Letting the deepest places of my psyche be bathed in the magic of each sip. These uncomfortable parts deserve space in my experience and on the page.

Time and time again, when I come back to this beautiful plant, my body is flooded with warmth, circulation and space. Being a vasodialator, it lovingly pumps more blood and more oxygen into the muscle. Physically, the vessels widen. Emotionally, the heart softens. Spiritually, there is more room for love.

The same cacao that held me in my grief is teaching me how to hold fear with love.

And I am realizing now, as I write this, that Nathan’s token, the big blue and white beating heart in his hands, has always been the wisdom.

With each beat, it expands. But… it also inevitably contracts. Every. Time. You can’t have one without the other.

Well, you can, but then you die.

The life-giving power comes from this continual biological juxtaposition

and

I’ve decided to hold my emotional juxtaposition as life-giving as well.

Fear is just love that has forgotten how to expand. They are two expressions of the same energy. Do I want to trust in it or protect, defend and tighten?

And really, this back and forth process is what weaves the tapestry of humanity together. This is the beating heart of being a divine human.

So, as we enter the New Year, my best friend, Elizabeth is hosting her second women’s circle this month and it feels very fitting to air this all out, clear some space and expand.

Her gathering will be held on Thursday, January 15th at 7pm. You can learn more here:

There is a seat for everyone because we all belong.

Hello our beautiful amazing little forest friends,

What an honor it was to gather with you beneath the trees for another Venture Into The Woods. These sacred ceremonies remind us how simply gathering together in circle, sharing this humble plant medicine, and feeling the rhythm of the drum can transform an ordinary Saturday morning into something truly magical. A return. A remembering. A soft landing back into our natural way of being.

And as always, they wouldn’t be possible without the nature-loving gods and goddesses who show up with open hearts to co-create the experience. So before anything else, let us say…

Thank you.

We began by gently arriving and rooting down into the moment, softening the noise of the mind, and expanding into the intelligence of our bodies. The forest held us in her blooming arms, with spring sunlight filtering through new leaves and birds offering their gentle songs.

The cacao was served with reverence, inviting the medicine to begin her flow. As we sipped, I sang Gracias Cacao, calling in her spirit and evoking the land around us to become a hum, a pulse, a presence. The warmth in our hands became warmth in our hearts, and the ceremony opened like a flower.

We formed two groups to share how we were arriving and to speak what was stirring in our individual and collective lives. In doing so, we stepped into the timeless ritual of being witnessed and witnessing.

This circle was also graced by our Big Mama Drum, nestled beside our Big Mama Tree. We took turns drumming and receiving. Our feet on the forest floor, sky overhead, bodies alive with vibration. The heartbeat of the drum echoed the heartbeat of the earth and our ancestors. This sacred rhythm reminded us that drumming is not performance, it’s remembrance. It’s how we gather. How we process. How we pray. The drumbeat wakes the knowing within us that we are meant to feel, express, and transform together.

Later, each of us pulled a card from the Warrior Deck. We let these archetypes whisper into our cells, activating something ancient within. We remembered our own strength, softness and vision. We trusted the subconscious to translate the symbols into the shifts we need most internally.

Caroline shared a parable of a deer found in the woods, an invitation to slow down, see with our spiritual eyes, and recognize that the natural world is always speaking if we’re willing to listen. Her story was a tender tether to the unseen, a reminder that death and life sit side by side, offering us guidance and grace.

We closed the ritual with reverence, snapped a group photo to hold the moment, and lingered in sweet connection for a bit. The sacred and the simple, braided together.

May you carry this with you until we meet again:

• The sense of spring stirring within you, new seeds planted in silence, now reaching toward the sun with quiet courage.

• The rhythm of the drum we created together weaving its way into your daily life, blessing what you touch.

• The truth that tending to your inner landscape is an act of devotion, just as holy as tending soil.

• The knowing that your presence in circle sends out a frequency that continues to ripple outward and change more than you may ever realize.

Our next circle will be held Sunday May 18th

at the Higgins MacAllister Preserve - at the end of Holly Crest Rd. in Scituate

from the hours of 8 to 10 am we will gather, drum and remember.

Please join us if you feel called to slow down and purely exist with nature and each other.

With infinite love and gratitude for your presence,

Christen & Caroline 🌿

It is dim and warm. Candlelight dances across the stone. The scent of palo santo and rose coils through the air like ancient prayer. I sit cross-legged on earth that remembers. I have returned to this place many times in this life. The quiet temple, the inner sanctum, the fertile ground. This is where I come to honor her.

My bleed. My monthly ancient companion.

She has walked beside me for 27 years. She arrives consistently with no apology on time, every time. She aches with me, releasing with me. She anchors me to the rhythm of life. She is the soft animal of my body, encouraging gentleness and rest as we prepare ourselves for another round. She is the quiet voice that says you are alive and fertile with mystery.

In this sacred dark, I remember the truth, this blood is holy.

It is not waste. It is not shame. It is not something to be hidden beneath sterile packaging or silence. It is the lifeblood of creation. The thread that binds all of humanity to the womb and to the great cosmic inhale before life begins.

All life passes through the place I bleed from.

As I let that settle, the truth of it echoes through the walls of the cave and a thousand candles spontaneously light inside my bones. My entire body becomes the altar.

I once read a book that changed the texture of my life. Pussy: A Reclamation by Regina Thomashauer. I read it way back in 2016, but it could have been written in smoke and starlight a thousand years ago. It cracked something open within me. Reading the pages I remembered that I am a temple. A cauldron. A passageway. I recently gave this book to a beloved friend, because her body, too, was whispering ancient things. In giving it, I remembered again. The portal reawakened.

There is a kinship in this awakening.
One woman remembering becomes a torch passed to another.
One body honoring becomes a ripple through this beautiful web of interconnection.

Regina speaks of the Great Pussy in the Sky, our divine GPS. It makes me laugh and weep in the same breath. Divine Pussy to Earthly Pussy. We are led not by logic, but by sensation. Not by linearity, but by flow. We are guided by that which aches and pulses and blooms inside us. The sacred navigation system of our own holy flesh.

Do you feel the weight of that?
Do you feel the beauty?

Every human was baptized in amniotic fluid. Fed by body. Nourished by blood. Communion did not begin at the altar of churches. It began here in the body. In the inner cave. In the belly of the Mother.

And so I bleed.

I bleed and I bow.
I bleed and I paint.
I bleed and I am grateful.

This is not a curse. This is a calling.
Each cycle, a ceremony. Each drop, a prayer.
Each ache, a remembering.

I invite you into this remembering.

Come into the cave.
Light a candle.
Place your hands on your womb, or the space where your womb once was, or the part of you that aches to know this mystery.
Touch the blood. Smear it on your skin. Whisper your name into the dark. Let yourself be held by something older than language.

Your body is sacred. Your blood is sacred.
You are not too much. You are not wrong.
You are a holy thing, pulsing with life and the wisdom of a thousand women who came before you.

Come back to the altar.

Bleed and be blessed.

The one that comes to mind is Sleeping Beauty. The royal baby is whisked away into the forest, forced to go into hiding for fear of Maleficent’s jealousy and the dreaded curse of a premature death. So understandably, sweet Aurora is set up to be lovingly raised by her three (secret) fairy godmothers under the canopy of the trees. Essentially living out a peaceful dream-like life in harmony with the creatures, picking wild berries, joyfully singing, and perhaps one day, unknowingly crossing paths with her destined prince.

This is exactly how I feel; like there’s been a deeper, hidden purpose to my life I don’t quite fully understand. I’ve always known there was something more, something calling me to discover where I truly belong. Only I couldn’t figure out where I came from to claim the throne.

But recently, I've uncovered a small but powerful truth… I'm not only the princess.

I’m also the witch.

And truthfully, I should have known, I was born at the witching hour on Halloween, after all.

A night that dances on the edge of worlds, when the veil is thinnest so it’s no surprise being birthed through this portal would lend itself to potency and magic.

This past October, as I turned 40, the gates of major transformation opened. The significance of the milestone was felt in every fiber of my being. It wasn’t just another birthday, it was the beginning of something profound brewing deep inside my bones like some sort of alchemical potion began coursing through my veins.

The number 40 is rich with ancient symbolism, representing a time of new life, new growth, and the evolution from one chapter to the next. It felt like a cosmic invitation to cross the threshold from the mundane into the mythical, stepping fully into a new realm of possibility. And just like Harry Potter embracing the unknown journey on platform 9 & three/quarters, I skipped right through with a big rainbow tutu on.

In embracing both the heroine and the villain, we unlock our true power. We understand that we are not simply one or the other, we are both, in all our complexity. We don’t have to choose between being good or bad, light or dark. We are both, a swirling dance of contradictions, and when we allow ourselves to live in that truth, we become the true alchemist, transmuting our shadows into gold, our pain into wisdom, our rage into rebirth. We are both.

In this way, the princess and the villain do not battle but they merge. And in the merging, the true magic that burns within us all is revealed. The power to be whole, to embrace the entirety of who we are, and to burn brightly, unapologetically, in our full, magnificent, and messy human form. In the same way that Halloween marks the turning of the seasons, my 40th year marked the turning of a new cycle in my life. The fire of rebirth ignited within me, and with it came the understanding that the time had come to fully embrace who I’ve always been.

It’s time to fully step into my power, to claim both my throne and my cauldron, and to walk in the truth of who I am, unapologetic, whole, and radiant as fuck.

And so, as the sun and moon rise and fall each day and the winds of transformation continue to swirl around me, I know one thing for certain, I’m not hiding any part of myself anymore.

My reign is just beginning, and it will be nothing short of legendary.

I felt this odd desire to put an itty bitty tracker around its cute little waist and connect it to an app on my phone. Forget scrolling through Instagram. Imagine watching little Anty on her own micro reality show. I’d get live updates on her whereabouts, map the distance traveled in a day, and vicariously live through the life of this otherwise negligible creature.

I watched and watched her little zoomies and wondered where is she even going? What is she doing, and WHY? Why do we do anything? Seriously, what’s the point?

It actually kind of feels like she has more purpose than I do. This gal knows what she’s about. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out if I should put the laundry in now or just spiral into a black hole of existential dread instead.

Watching Anty reminded me that my fascination with tiny creatures isn’t new. I’ve always paid close attention to the natural world, ever since I was a kid. I can remember lying on my stomach in the blades of grass at eye level picking up roly-poly’s and watching a dandelion stem bend from the weight of a black cricket. I was completely mesmerized by the way their tiny bodies navigated this lush domestic jungle and, more than that, how they were utterly unaware and unfazed by my gaze.

The more still and quiet I could be, the more I could see. Whether it was a bird carefully building its nest, a deer grazing in a dew-covered field, or the way the sun filtered through the trees, casting dappled light on the forest floor, these moments were everywhere, just waiting to be noticed.

This is the essence of being a nature girlie. It’s not just about being in nature, it’s about becoming part of its quiet rhythms.

The magic is in the witnessing.

Take bees, for example. Bees work tirelessly for their Queen, flitting about from flower to flower, collecting pollen on their little fuzzy bodies, all in an effort to make honey.

🍯🐝🍯🐝🍯 HONEY! 🍯🐝🍯🐝🍯 The simple golden delicious duty of providing the nectar of the gods! Can you imagine? Bees are little miracle workers, spreading life, ensuring our food grows, and the world stays vibrant and full of wonder. And it’s not just their hard work that’s amazing, but also their hum. They vibrate at frequencies that can heal, promoting growth and harmony in the natural world. They’re just buzzing through life, unknowingly performing one of the most vital tasks on the planet.

Are you kidding? Pure amazement.

Don’t even get me started on squirrels.

Just bouncing around like little joyful idiots on tiny pogo sticks, collecting and hiding nuts all day. It’s like a perpetual game of hide and seek. What a carefree existence!

And GET THIS according to the internet they forget where 75% of their hidden bounty is. Think about that, you find a nut, dig a hole, bury it and repeat the process, over and over again, yet, promptly forget where most of them are.

But here's the kicker… the forgotten acorns grow into trees. Yep! You read that right. The squirrels are reforesting the land that humans are so busily destroying. Essentially, they’re bounding around, blissfully unaware, acting as modern-day furry conservationists.

Okay, so what do all of these examples have in common?

Find food. Carry food. Eat food. Share food.

This is the pulse of life. It guides these creatures, moving them through their days with no need for existential questions, contemplation or doubt. This ancient rhythm flows quietly through each living being, shaping our world.

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But wait—let me back up a bit.

When we are born, we enter the world with a raw, direct relationship to the present moment. In this space, we are free from the mental constructs that gradually accumulate over time. We are completely connected to Source, experiencing each moment as both the creator and the creation, like a living breathing infinity loop.

∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨ ∞ ✨

The experience is seamless, with no division between the self, the universe, and Spirit. We’re immersed in the flow, constantly receiving, expressing, and experiencing.

But then… something changes.

Over time, we gradually move away from this innate sacredness.

Typically this marks a moment when the act of creating starts to be motivated by something other than just being - by an impulse to prove something, gain approval, achieve validation, or demonstrate one's worth. This is when the process itself begins being overshadowed by the result, and we filter our creativity through the lens of "how will this be received?", "what will this say about me?" and “how many likes will it get”?

So you can imagine my delight when each brushstroke of this new daily ritual not only marked the paper but began dissolving a life times worth of built-up gunk.

This practice is helping me break through to the creative force that has been hidden deep within my heart and re-introduce the rhythmic looping dance of being with creation.

My soul’s expression is awakening, allowing itself to be seen and take form in the physical world.

Consistently tapping into the flow of my creative energy has reconnected me to myself in a way I haven’t felt since childhood. To create for the pure sake of creating, without needing the outcome to be perfect or even “good”, has been so freeing. While I enjoy the paintings, it’s the act of creating them, not the finished product, that holds the real value.

Through this practice, I see a direct correlation to the work I’ve been doing with my inner feminine. The simple act of creation is an expression of the feminine energy. It’s fluid, intuitive, and present. It can’t thrive in rigid structure and control. It requires surrender, embracing the messy, imperfect, and ever-evolving process. Just as the feminine invites me to embrace my emotions, intuition, and wild essence, daily painting allows me to express, release, and transform without needing control, perfection, or validation.

In creating space for this ritual, I am building an altar to the divine feminine within.

“Here, my sweet, beautiful Creatress, this is for you,” I whisper softly.

I light a candle to serve as a symbol of this inner fire. The palette, the colors, the bristles of the brush are all in service to fanning this flame. With each stroke, trust deepens. Trust in the process. Trust in the flow.

She is undeniably awakening.

I recently read, “Your true purpose will always be born from an attempt to integrate your deepest shadows.”

This idea resonates deeply with where I am right now. Life, with all its challenges, naturally begins to cast darkness in our direction. The shadows are born as we lose touch with the pure, divine connection we once had, severed over time by fears, expectations, and the pressure to conform.

As the internal split within me begins to heal, I find myself reconnecting to a deeper sense of wholeness. These shadows are now the very terrain through which my soul finds its truest expression. This is the soil I am emerging from as I birth the latest version of my dream life.

Surrendering to this process, I feel myself returning to my essence. I am reconnecting my inner life with the universal flow, a place where I can simply be and create.

Perhaps this is a mantra:

Be and Create.

Be and Create.

Be and Create.

The simple remembered magic we are all born with.

Coffee wasn’t just a drink—it was the ritual my life was built on. It was where I paused to reflect, where ideas took shape, and where my community was created, one cup at a time.

In the past few years, I’ve gradually shifted away from this familiar routine. What was once a staple, has quietly faded away while ceremonial cacao has claimed its place at the altar of daily devotion. But the comfort of coffee still lingers like an old lover. There’s something deeply satisfying in the predictability of it. The warmth of the first sip immediately wrapping me in the feeling of home. It’s an old companion that has been with me through countless mornings, conversations and the quiet moments that make up my life.

So, the other day, when I stopped by my favorite local coffee shop —the very one I used to work at—it was no surprise that another beautiful moment unfolded.

These days, it’s rare to truly linger in a cafe, but I had my journal in hand and was ready to settle in. A few minutes later, one of my favorite previous customers walked in and took a seat beside me. We chatted briefly about “The Rule of Jason,” a simple but sacred guideline he had established: if someone has their headphones in, they are not to be disturbed. In our little coffee shop world, it was a slowly growing unspoken law—well-respected by most and only rarely broken by a few. But today was my lucky day, he was headphone-free and we had the pleasure of connecting.

After a bit of small talk, his face lit up with excitement. “Guess what I did yesterday?” Before I could respond, he was happy to share, “I had my very own Tatte Tuesday!”

And just like that, time folded in on itself.

Years ago, on my days off from working at the very coffee shop we were in, I’d venture into the city to visit another coffee shop called Tatte Bakery & Cafe. I’d order a latte and let myself indulge in the simple pleasure of an unhurried morning and this special time when I was the customer. I called it, “Tatte Tuesday” and it was a small, sacred act of joy that quickly became my favorite day of the week.

As soon as he mentioned this blast from the past I burst into tears. Yep… tears. I could tell by the look on his face that he was just as caught off guard as I was.

Tatte Tuesday was fun and adorable - So why was I crying? The moment he spoke those words, I was transported back to my Before life.

Before Nathan died.

The “Before/After” moment is a universal experience, something many people recognize when a life-changing loss carves a dividing line through their existence. My Before was vibrant—life felt full of possibilities. I was in love and hopeful that despite his addiction, we’d figure it out together.

After has been an entirely different landscape. It feels like I’m bearing the weight of my own existence and that every moment is an effort to regain my footing. It has been a slow and painful journey.

Who knew that two simple words could hold the essence of everything I was Before?

So, I cried. I cried for the endless ache of grief. I cried for the version of me that used to exist. Sitting there, looking at my friend through tear-filled eyes, I managed to whisper, “I used to be so happy.” I let myself feel it all. I sat with the feelings allowing this very real vulnerable moment to be witnessed. And in the quiet understanding between us, I knew it was okay. He patted my shoulder, offering me the space to mourn who I used to be.

In that moment, as the tears fell, something stirred inside of my sad little heart, something just as real as the grief.

A quiet invitation.

Not to chase the past, but to honor it. Not to pretend loss hasn’t changed me, but to remember that joy and sorrow can exist in the same breath. Even after heartbreak, there are still ways to reconnect with the pieces of myself that once felt so alive.

And then, unexpectedly, I felt a tingle of excitement.

A beautiful gift was emerging from this conversation, though I couldn’t quite name it at first. It was a feeling, a flicker of light in a place I thought had gone dark.

So, I followed it.

Which is how I found myself here today, writing from a tucked-away corner in Tatte Bakery on a TUESDAY!! The scent of fresh pastries swirling in the air and a latte sitting beside me, warm between my hands. The same ritual, the same sacred pause only now it carries new meaning.

Maybe this is how I soften the line, how I let the Before and After weave together - not as separate worlds but as one continuous story. Maybe this is how I allow myself to integrate, to exist fully in the present without letting go of the beautiful past parts of me that still long to be seen.

Maybe this is how I come home to myself - one sip, one breath, one gentle sacred Tuesday at a time.

The yin-yang symbol has captivated me for as long as I can remember. Even as a young girl, I felt an inexplicable pull toward it, sketching it endlessly in my notebooks, tracing its curves without fully understanding why. It was more than just a remnant of the ’70s peace and love era that I was also fascinated by - it resonated with something deeper, something ancient and true.

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That was her magic.

We met across the counter of our local coffee shop. She was much more than a regular—she was a presence. The kind that made ordinary moments feel really special. She instantly made the cafe feel brighter and the world feel softer. She carried this rare kind of energy, the kind that would linger long after she left the room.

I saw her name pop up while scrolling last night, and like many other times, my heart lifted. For years, I’ve loved catching glimpses of her world—her joy in her children, the adventures and vacations, the milestones of a beautiful life with friends and family. But most of all, that radiant, unmistakable smile. It’s impossible to ignore the power of her smile and what it stood for. She didn’t just enjoy life’s moments—she revered them, absorbing them so deeply into her being that she became the embodiment of grace.

I quickly realized—the post wasn’t from her. It was from her husband. Sadly, he was notifying “all of the Sheila fans” that she had died over the weekend in the company of friends and family.

As quickly as my heart had lifted, it sank. A visceral ache, deep and immediate. A feeling I’ve only known once before—when my sweetest Nathan died.

It’s more than loss, more than grief or sadness. It’s the sharp, stunning recognition that the source of something rare and beautiful has shifted. It’s the sudden awareness of the shape someone’s spirit leaves behind—their blueprint, their energy, the way they filled space without even trying. And now, that space feels different. The world feels different. Something has changed.

People don’t just pass through this life. They imprint on it. And when they go, we don’t just mourn them—we feel the absence of their existence.

Divine Being Human was born from this very feeling. From the deep knowing that every soul carries something extraordinary, something that should be seen, honored, and remembered.

And so, I suggest as a community, we ignite a simple revolution…

Smile more and smile often.

The big, bright, beautiful kind—felt from across the street, shifting the energy in a room, lingering long after it’s shared. The kind that leaves us changed forever. Each smile will echo with the essence of her warmth. With every smile, we’ll pass a piece of her on, extending the impact of her life in an endless ripple that spreads outward into the world. Let us collectively carry her memory in joy. This can be done simply and quietly but the message will be loud and clear: Sheila was here, and she was loved.

Our intention here is to share the collective wisdom, themes, exercises, prayers, and resources that were thoughtfully woven into our time together. We hope that these morsels of soul nourishment will be tended to between ceremonies and our co-created connection will continue to root down into the depths of your being until we meet again.

May we carry the essence of this sacred time forward and share it with the world in as many moments as we can remember to do so.

Today’s Gathering:

We were lucky enough to gather upon a bed of snow and pine needles. Caroline led us into sacred circle with drumming and an invitation to infuse our Grandmother Tree with intention. We began collectively weaving our stories, natures whispers and the yearnings of our hearts directly into the roots, soil, and stone beneath us.

We let the healing vibrations of Flower Essences incorporate into our physical bodies and auric fields. Yarrow allowed us to remain sensitive and open while maintaining healthy boundaries. A Grieving Blend of Bleeding Heart, Chamomile, Honeysuckle, Sweet Pea, and White Foxglove addressed all types of loss, both near and far, helping us release a lifetime’s reservoir of grief painlessly through the heart. Diamond Gem Elixir strengthened our ability to act in alignment with our unique Divine Purpose.

We took turns leading the group toward a place that called to us—a sacred spot in the natural world where the land whispered our names. To be seen in this way—held by the land and each other—was to touch something ancient and profound. It was a magic rooted in the simple, sacred act of witnessing each other as we took our place in the world. We shared cacao, celebrated a special birthday, interpreted Oracle cards, and allowed ourselves to be seen, heard and loved by our small but mighty tribe of women.

Thank you so much for choosing to spend your morning amidst the glittery snow dusted trees.

Until next time, let us weave and roar, weave and roar.

with love,

Caroline & Christen

Ora Cacao - Mystical Mushroom blend & local Mt. Blue Spring water

Earth Warriors Oracle by Alana Fairchild

The Herbal Astrology pocket oracle by Adriana Ayales

Woodland Wardens by Jessica Roux