1. Be in relationship with people who make you feel more creative, not depleted. A toxic relationship is a black hole for your creative energy. Constantly trying to nurture a dynamic between you and another person that takes your energy and your innate creativity is damaging to every kind of artist. You can romanticize the drama, the highs and lows, the passion all you want but the relationship is a depleting and it won’t feed the expansiveness of creativity while you’re in it. It eats it right up. It disrupts your sleep, steals your focus, disregulates your nervous system, and blocks you. “Fixing” others is a cop-out for creative people (especially women, because it is basically expected of us). The intensity of a toxic dynamic allows you to pour all of your empathy and emotion and focus into a person instead of into yourself and your art. It is the perfect excuse to neglect doing what it is you desire to do. A person is not a project. Let it go.

2. Take off your headphones. I love being in my own world but the disconnect can become too comfortable and you stay in a loop of your own thoughts, your own chosen inputs. It’s almost a way to control your environment a little bit more when maybe what you actually need is to be open to it. Pay closer attention to the immediate world around you at chosen times. Inspiration and aliveness is right there. You may miss out on the perfect line of a stranger’s conversation that could inspire a poem, a painting, the climax you needed for your story. Don’t be an echo chamber of yourself. Being a witness to the world is an important part of being creative. It is your duty to take it in and reflect it back.

3. The muses have something for you to make. If something comes to you in a dream, in the place between asleep and awake, in the middle of cooking dinner, in the midst of a monotonous day at work, write it down. Draw a quick sketch. The more you do this, the more the ideas come. I don’t believe we are ever working alone. Creativity can be a spiritual practice. There is a string from your soul to the world to your work. Do not sever it. Feed it.

4. Explore your own archive. If you have journals, sketchbooks, half-finished projects, notes tucked in places, look at them. Be inspired by your own path. Take notice of what was there 10 years ago that remains now. Is there a line you have written many times, without knowing? A subject that follows you? Expand upon it and see what comes.

5. Give urgency a break. You can’t write an entire book in one night. Maybe you can, but not well. You can’t rush into being the artist you want to be. Urgency implies you don’t care about the process and only about the end result, which isn’t the point. That is an ego game. Remember that you have time, even if it feels like you don’t. Be with each part of the process.

6. PLAY. If all you do is work, rest, and live in seriousness then your inspiration will be sparse. You have to have breaks. You have to live with the natural cycles of life. You cannot be creating at every moment of every day. There will be times when it does not come, and that isn’t because you are done and burnt out but because there are periods in your life for experiencing, gathering inspiration, living the stories that will come later, being a part of the world. Be in your own life all the way. The point is not just to express in that form, but to express in all forms.

7. Lean into discomfort, curiosity, and exploring work that is nothing like yours, made by people who you do not initially relate to. For a long time I was kind of repulsed by Bukowski without ever really diving into his work, so I read Love Is A Dog From Hell in a few days and grew to appreciate his gritty, vulnerable, confessional poetry. Lolita by Nabokov is a very uncomfortable read, and it quickly became a favorite novel of mine. I wanted to move past my own discomfort with the disgusting and untrustworthy narrator (which is literally the point) and understood how incredible the book really is. Much less about discomfort and more about a life that isn’t like mine: Ocean Vuong, James Baldwin, Clarice Lispector, Frida Kahlo. If all you ever take in is work like your own by people who have lives like yours then you are not going to be a very good artist. Art without empathy, without trying to understand and dive into other point of views, is completely self absorbed. We don’t need more of that.

8. Honor the part of you that knows a “normal” life is not for you. Don’t quiet it. Don’t shrink yourself. Don’t morph to be small, digestible, lovable, simpler, easy. If you discovered something within you long ago that told you you need to create to feel alive, then you must. There is no other way. Stop taking advice from people who are living lives you don’t want for yourself.

9. Find inspiration off of social media. Develop the ability to be influenced by the world around you, by people who were alive 70 years ago, by what has been neglected and forgotten, by what emerges through daily life that is seemingly mundane. Take a break from TikTok artists and go to a used bookstore, the library, a museum, a small gallery. Pay attention to shop signs, old architecture, how clothing is worn and mended. Mimicry is not enough. Connect with something and pull the thread of inspiration from it. See what it turns into.

10. Be in a romantic relationship with your craft. I often hear you should treat your art like a job, but that never sat right with me. Creating anything at all is romantic, passionate, expansive. It is not something you clock in and clock out of but a lover you’re committed to and show up for every single day. You honor it, respect it, court it, seduce it, worship it, love it, nourish it. It is something to be devoted to. It is a relationship to nurture and grow continuously, daily.

11. You are above nothing and no one. Everything in life deserves respect and presence. Everything in life can feed your creativity. Practice beginner’s mind each day and allow yourself to be a compassionate witness to it all.

12. Forgive yourself for time wasted. Begin now. You can dwell on the years you spent empty of inspiration, distracted, giving your all to something that didn’t work out, so afraid of failing that you don’t even start. The ideas that came to you 10 years ago still live in you, waiting patiently to be brought into existence. At any moment you can decide to begin again. Don’t beat yourself up for what you chose before. The time may have not been spent creating but it was spent experiencing, processing, gathering. The work that will come from you now will be deeper and more wise than what would have come without those experiences. Forgive yourself for not committing to your art and do it now.

xoxo,
Emery

If you feel a pull towards something — something vast, something unknown, something that whispers, something that calls over and over — you have to go to it. If there is no known path to it, you have to make one.

Right now it seems that all paths are laid out for you. Everything already exist and you can get the exact directions to that place being shown to you. That all paths have been discovered, and all destinations already exist. But this isn’t true. Your path, your destination, that whisper is for you alone to follow. You are made to live in invention.

We are tricked by social media into thinking there are only a few paths to specific places as a creative person. Everyone is telling you how they did it, and that’s how you must do it too, if you want to succeed. The steps are all there. Every twist and turn, every warning sign for the valley and worn away steps, every exclamation for the peaks and sights. Their paths are yours to follow, if that’s what you think you should do: follow.

But to listen to your soul, to live a creative life (if it is your destiny to do so), is to invent your own way. We admire the artists and writers and creative people that we do not because they followed directions and lived in a way that many before them have lived, but because they chose not to. Because they listened to and followed their own inner compass.

Yes, that compass will lead you to an overgrown forest, to a seemingly eternal desert, to a wide and wild river with no bridge to cross. It is up to you to trust what is within and create the path for yourself. We have bushes to clear, trees to cut down, resting spots to discover, bridges to build.

You will meet others along the way who are discovering their own path and you will walk with them from time to time, but they will not be going to the same destination, and they can’t tell you the entire way to go. They are little guides just visiting. They are not to follow but to walk beside.

Trust your inner knowing to take you where you are meant to go, to protect you, to inspire you. Not all spaces have been discovered. Not everything should be replicated. Take bits and pieces and bring them to your own internal guides, to hold up against the intuitive ribbon of light in you and ask whether it is true for you or not. Give the internal feeling power. Move with that.

If creation is your destination then it is also your path.

xoxo,
Emery

There is a dream within that has never died, and will never die. It asks you daily to come to life, to honor it, to move towards it with your whole being. You can hear it humming in the background while you’re at work, while you cook dinner, while you try to fall asleep. You can lose yourself for a long time and it will still be there, waiting with an eternal patience, just for you. No, it will not run to someone else and be expressed the way you would. Your translation is yours alone.

Somewhere along the way I built a cage for myself. I didn’t know it was a cage when I was building it, just settling into something smaller than the dream asked of me. I set myself aside over and over, and before I knew it the dream was starving. It was no longer my voice I was hearing. No longer my intuition, the muses, the whispers of creativity. I lost my words and saw myself through others’ and believed them instead. I got quiet inside of myself and built many walls between myself and the world.

I wondered how could I have the audacity, the courage, to be a writer, when I had become so far from it, to publish books and be myself fully within them. But then I remembered who I used to be. I remembered myself at 22, 23, 24 writing as if nothing else mattered. I lived in the warehouse that was meant only for partying and creating, the halls smelling of weed and spilled beer, the big windows of the loft leaking in the most beautiful sunrises I’ve seen, the roof a safe haven from the trapped heat of the summer, the echo of my roommate singing with her siren voice. A place of dirt and magic. Everything that you felt there was amplified. I lived in it and everything else was a step away from me. I observed the world and translated it, interpreted it. I was not afraid, and the world responded. I self published Become and then Soft Human, and they made it to places I didn’t expect them to (Lena Dunham, Kendall Jenner, Dakota Johnson’s Instagram pages to name a few). I sold thousands of copies of these books. A funeral home bought dozens to give to grieving loved ones.

The messages were received. Because it was what I was supposed to do. I was in the flow of my life, following what was true in the deepest parts of me. And somewhere along the way I listened to many voices outside of my own, and I shrunk, and I chose a different path of other kinds of dreams and set mine aside, afraid I couldn’t fulfill it or live up to it, or that my time had already passed. But no other dream was enough. There was still the call, ringing from deep inside me. Traveling didn’t answer it. Being a florist didn’t answer it. Buying a home didn’t answer it. Meditating didn’t answer it. Getting engaged didn’t answer it. The dream persisted its pulling, even if it was buried deep within.

Nothing makes me feel the way my dreams do, not even love. But I grew up believing love was the cure all, the savior, the point. That a prince charming would come along and save me from myself. Again and again I morphed for men, I shrunk for them, I built a dream around their hearts, I let them be cruel then we’d fall asleep together, waiting for it to make sense. But it never did. A part of me went away every time a voice was raised, and it didn’t come back.

I’d wake up in the middle of the night with something calling me, something that felt far away but was actually deep inside of me. Not another love, but the book begging to be written. The poem trying to work its way into my ear, the story into my dream. I’d see others writing books and envy their audacity so much that I’d cry. Not because I wanted their life, their art, but I wanted my own again so badly. I lost touch with myself and the dream couldn’t find me. I had to break everything, distill myself, let there be so much empty space so it could find me again. And it has found me.

So for my creative women who love too much:

1. Make the art your lover.

2. Stop watering yourself down to be accepted, liked, loved. Stop morphing to be a different woman — one that is more adventurous and wild, or one that is ready to settle down and have children. Follow your own direction.

3. If a man yells at you, leave the first time it happens.

4. Write poems or draw something every day like brushing your teeth, like eating dinner.

5. Do not quiet your intuition.

6. Create more than you consume. And when you do consume, make sure it is something that will nourish your spirit.

7. Evolve with no shame.

8. Own what happens to you, and own what you’ve done. Then write about it.

9. Do not make a man the point of everything.

10. Experiment with your life, with your freedom. Pay attention to the world around you. Look up from your phone. Take solo road trips. Move your bed to a different wall.

11. Let people have their own stories about you.

12. What the world genuinely and deeply needs is for you to be exactly who you are, fully, with every evolution.

13. And follow the dream within that will never die.

xoxo,
Emery

1. let beautiful things take their time. let them be intricate. let the art of craft come back to humanity. write an endless poem. carve something from wood. stare out a window for an hour. sit long enough with silence that it speaks. touch something with your hands, slowly, eternally.

2. the life you want isn’t going to just fall into your lap. you have to create it as much as you’re going to step into it. you have to make your own path from where you are to where you want to go. it doesn’t exist yet because it is yours alone. others can share their maps to similar journeys, but only you know what’s right for you. you can feel it in your bones. follow it.

3. sweet potatoes, vanilla milk, yoga mat, bergamot & rose tea, palo santo, 90s silk, candle wax, layering perfume, long natural hair, my-lips-but-better lip stain, cherries, green linen sheets, lavender bubble bath, two braids, wine red nails, lace bra, moleskine journal, 3 books, handmade mug.

4. I feel in my body for the first time in my life. literally. it has taken me my whole life to get here, always floating somewhere else. I have never felt so grounded. & now I dream of yoga and moving my body and feeling it burn and watching it get stronger. I dream of spring hikes with my dog. I fall asleep so early, and wake up so early. I have always escaped, always felt my spirit rise to some other safer place. but now I am here. I am here.

5. to live guided by my soul first. with discernment, gentleness, self-protection and a balanced openness. intuitively.

6. my life will be a secret until some special projects are done, and even then may I continue to live mostly secretly. I have boundaries now and my aura is protected. I love love love myself and I didn’t know how to before. I love my solitude and I love what comes from it. I have so many dreams that are attainable. the life I want is coming and I know that because I see it just over the hill, I can almost touch it. nothing is for anyone else. I prepare myself like an altar for the life I want. I want to be deserving of it, I want to hold it all gently and fully. I will get the love I want, I will get the career I want, I will live in alignment with my soul every day, I will honor the spiritual. I am not the person I was six months ago, nor a year ago. if you only knew me then, you don’t know me now. I shed so much. and now I let the last of it fall away. I have gone back to my core, I have been distilled. that’s all I did the past year. and now I am adding to my life, I am rebuilding, and it is beautiful.

7. let yourself be bored this year. see what happens.

8. grief fills up my pockets and my vases and my house until I empty my pockets, clean the vases, open the windows. I do this ritualistically every few days. I write letters and burn them. I talk to a friend who always listens. I let love in. I let love out. I remember grief is only that: love. I let the world continue on, and let small invisible hands take the grief from me slowly wherever I go. soon it feels smaller. soon it bubbles up less. soon it becomes an altar of love alone.

9. we are creating ourselves forever but there is an eternal self deep within that we will always be and cannot lose touch with for long.

dreaming in images —

xx,

Emery

My entire life has been a winding path towards the spirit. As a child, I was highly sensitive and intuitive. Growing up, I subconsciously learned that these were not the right ways to experience life so I tried to numb them, run from them, separate myself from them, which in turn made me overwhelmed by them until I could learn how to be with them. I hid parts of myself to keep myself safe and loved, too often living out of this fear for my own self protection. Eventually this way of self protection kept me from living fully, too, protecting me from what hurt but also what would bring me love, joy, satisfaction, and a more whole life. I’ve wandered deep into my own darkness many times and that darkness carved away at me, eventually making room for more experience, more love, more compassion, and more joy.

It has taken all 32 years to understand myself the way I do now, and I know there is so much more to learn, so much closer to the soul to get. It will never end, and it is a journey that brings the most purpose to my life.

I’m going to touch on a few topics and if anyone wants a deep dive, comment on this post and I’ll write one ~

Getting To Know Your Own Darkness

There is a place within each of us that we dare not enter, a place we tend to avoid as long as we can. To enter this place is to see a more whole view of ourselves, which is a way of setting ourselves free. We do anything to avoid it: drink, have sex, scroll, socialize, hide away. But the shadow is there to teach us. The more you avoid it, the more it’ll run your life. You have to peer into the abyss of yourself and be a witness to what peers back. That is how it’ll no longer have a hold on you. When you can learn to love what you see, forgive what you see, or simply be with what you see, then it transforms in front of your eyes. The darkness falls away, the shadows melt, and eventually all you see is a very old wound. To Be Magnetic is a great resource for doing shadow (and inner child) work.

Learning the Pattern of Your Own Being

So much of what we subconsciously do is a reflection of long term patterns that we have yet to bring into our awareness. Your patterning will run your life. Once you have awareness, it is up to you to move differently in the world. You have to hold yourself accountable and be brutally honest at times about what you see. Make a map of your life. Does something keep happening again and again? What in you wants that? Craves that? Needs that to continue the familiar pattern? Create a new habitual way of being that is full of warmth, softness, firm boundaries, compassion, vision, discipline & devotion, curiosity, trust. It takes time to see it clearly. Have patience.

Being Embodied

It is easy to stay in your own mind. Feeling connected to the spiritual often pulls us up, up, up and out, floating above ourselves in an ether of awareness and witnessing. You think you’re getting the whole experience this way while your physical body is sending you messages, asking for presence. Meditating with your eyes closed keeps you connected, but not enough. It wasn’t until starting my energetic healing program through Taproot that I realized how much I needed to be grounded in my own body. Without being connected to the foundation of myself there is no embodying of what I’ve been learning and witnessing. We started each class with qi gong and then a standing hara meditation where we had to have our eyes open, focusing on a point 10 ft ahead of us. It has always been difficult for me to be in my body. It was the main reason for my panic attacks in my early twenties: I always felt like I didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense, being in a body, and things happened in my life that pulled me out of my body even more. It’s been a long and patient journey to bring myself back into my body lovingly, feeling comfortable and right. Standing and walking meditations brought me back into my body. Learning to breathe with my belly and not my chest brought me back into my body. Yoga. Lying in the sun. Walking in the woods. Being in tune with your own sensuality. Doing everything with full presence will expand your spirit in all directions: outward and deeper into the self that you are. Let yourself feel safe in your body. Practice presence instead of escapism. The more present you are, the more you can listen to what your body is telling you.

Energy Work

In the summer of 2024, I began my energy healing classes. It wasn’t something I started with the intention of becoming a healer but out of curiosity and a desire to learn more about myself, and to learn to approach my writing in a new way. I did not expect the class to completely transform my life but as soon as it began I knew I had to go all the way to the end, and that everything would be different after that. Three certifications from Taproot later I now have an energy healing business. (You can visit my site here, I offer distance healing as well as in person) What healers offer is guidance and a safe container for you to be open to your own healing. I learned how intricate and sensitive our subtle bodies are, how we hold old stories in our systems, how the chakra system is a filter for how we perceive all of life. There are small things you can do daily on your own to get in tune with your own energy: use sage to clear old energy, use palo santo to invite new, visualize a bubble of golden white light surrounding you for protection, do qi gong to get your life force energy flowing (I can share specific moves in a separate substack), you can do your own chord “cutting” (which I’m happy to also share all about in a separate substack), sweep your hands around your head and down your body to clear sticky energy from others, learn the very basics of the chakra system (I listed a book below that is so thorough and easy to follow), practice literally feeling the energy between your hands and play with it. There is so much that goes into energy healing I could write 20 essays alone on it, and most of what I’ve learned I can thank my teacher David Ramsey for. Start with small, simple practices and a basic understanding of the system if you want to work with the sensitive and intricate system we all have.

Relationships As Mirrors

All relationships, romantic and non, act as mirrors in your life. You are a mirror to those around you, as well. Each interaction, without presence and awareness, will simply be each person playing out a pattern with the other person. So much of what you perceive is through the lens of your past, the lens of your wounds, the lens of your heart. It is very rare to see things exactly as they are. But even then, we still bring our whole lives into this moment with another. It is how we connect, interact, share intimacies, love, disconnect, avoid, etc. While solitude is important to know yourself, so is witnessing how you are in relation to another. We are not meant to be solitary beings. Humans need community, connection, comfort. If you run from relationship, you are running from a big part of yourself that you can only be a witness to within that context. You can’t live in a permanent state of self protection. Eventually you have to walk your way out of the solitary silent woods and sit face to face with another human, hold their body, see their wounds and let them see yours. These mirrors can be gentle.

PLAY!

You are not alive on earth at this moment to simply meditate in solitude and pray for your entire existence, unless you are literally choosing to be a monk or nun. You’re alive to have the full experience of being human. Spirituality does not ask you to abandon your humanity. You have to play. You have to laugh. You have to make mistakes. You have to try new things, feel the world, experience pleasure, romanticize your life, embrace sentimentality and connection. Make room for that. There is an immense amount of beauty and joy and connection in the world waiting for you. The ego is not a bad thing unless it is all you live by. The ego exists for identity and play and self expression. Be balanced with your indulgences.

Books to read & revisit at different points in your life

The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh
Be Here Now by Ram Dass
Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith
The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
Lovingkindess by Sharon Salzberg
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Pathwork of Self-Transformation by Eva Pierrakos
Tao Te Ching translated by Stephen Mitchell

also: Ram Dass’s lectures

Field Notes On A Softer Life, Playlist Two

xx,

Emery

I write this on New Year’s Eve, in front of my fireplace on meditation cushions with my dog at my side. I am bringing in 2026 on my own. I am writing a letter to myself to read a year from now, and letters to people who are no longer in my life that I will burn. The sentiment of the words will get to them that way. I have spent the last week in solitude as much as I can, mostly just feeling. Clearing. I had to let many things go this year, and had to face myself in new ways. It all distilled me. I am at my core. I am my core. And part of me really missed this — this essence, this hunger for a way of being, this intensity. I never learned how to carry this self into relationships, how to keep her alive while I pour love into another. Even in my desire to have someone new I lost this self for him when I had just started getting her back, when he asked nothing of me. That is still one of my (many) lessons to learn, to keep hold of her.

So I enter into this new year alone and maybe 2026 will be the year for my passions. I have many plans, many goals, and many rules for myself so I don’t let another year go by without a true attempt at what I want to do. But all of these are secrets for myself. Once I speak my rules they lose their potency and I break them. I have dreams to start, projects to complete, businesses to begin. I build back up from this core. I re-decorate my life, my being. I romanticize again. I dream of the same few things all of the time, and new dreams trickle in. I leave room for the unknown and am excited to meet it.

I started this new series because I miss what Tumblr felt like in 2013. A diary. A portal into inner worlds. Images, inspiration, accidental poetry, journal entries, q&a. Substack now feels like an endless scroll of “how-to” essays and critiques on society, repeated sentiments for the sake of being trendy, a million lessons to learn and ways to live better. Sometimes it sucks me in, but I want to read someone’s diary. I always want to read someone’s diary. I want us to flip the magnifying glass back on ourselves. Why not do it myself? (Plus I’m so sick of social media, so I’m giving it a break. Treating this like a personal blog sounds way more fun.)

In this series, you’ll find:

• reflections on my life

• current things I love

• collections of what inspires me

• anything creative (poems, drawings, photographs, recipes)

I don’t have many rules for this: only that I have something to share, that I am myself all the way, that I respect my own privacy (and others’), and that it stays fun for me.

The new title made me think about what a soft life means to me now, what it asks of me. Living a softer life requires me to not submit to everything in life, to not abandon myself so that others don’t feel abandoned, to not ask someone to go deeper for me when they clearly will not or cannot, to not stay in places longer than I should. To honor my own solitude deeper, to say no to things, to hone in on my passions and make that the center. To let there be a fantasy, a dream, a line of a poem in the air forever. My softness is a garden that needs an intricate iron fence with a gate, a fence covered in morning glories and autumn clematis, a beautiful border for inner safety and flourishing. Only then can the flowers bloom fully. Only then can it all exhale. My softness needs protection. This I have learned only recently, or maybe just got reminded of again. When I honor myself my softness grows, and in my softness lies my dreams for my life, lies my love. If I lose it because I don’t know when to shut the gate, then that’s all on me. It is my responsibility.

currents & favorites:

J. Crew claw clip. Everyday Oil in Early Morning. Dieux moisturizer. My glasses I lose every 2 months. Two Lush perfumes I am layering (trying to find my new scent after 8 years of the same one): Lord of Misrule & Rose Jam. Refy lip blur in Opal, Refy lipstick in Canyon, Rhode lip balm in Salty Tan. Palo santo & sage. Rose Colored Glasses tincture from Wooden Spoon Herbs (use the code EMERYALLEN to get a discount on their products). Headphones. A beautiful handmade singing bowl gifted from my energetics teacher at graduation.

And below: currently reading How to Manifest by Lacy Phillips & Eve’s Hollywood by Eve Babitz. My every day journal, my spiritual journal, and my tiny journal for inspiration and eavesdropping.

A playlist for you: Field Notes of a Softer Life Playlist One

This is enough for part one of the series. Happy New Year, I hope you enjoy whatever comes,
Emery

I have spent the better part of this year in a room in my mind — one warm and bare and full of mirrors. There was nothing I did not see. Nowhere to hide, and I didn’t want to. I watched parts of my life fall away. I had my hands open, my fingers spread. I let what had to go fall through them. And still, more falls through. The year of the wood snake — shedding, shedding, shedding. Life is now distilled to structures, to the foundations of the self and the dreams that have always been true.

All senses of security have faltered, moved. And I move forward with myself. I am rooted in a knowing that is new to me, because there are no illusions around me. No one is telling me who I am. Only I see it. If you had asked me months ago who I was, I couldn’t tell you the good, the dreams. I could tell you the ways I was wrong, the ways I made mistakes or kept my life small or who I used to be. That was all I could see. This year I have lived in the gap between selves. Waiting, witnessing, excavating. I am rebuilding myself now, and more is falling away. I lean in. The mirrors in my mind are being put away. I’ve seen myself and looked long enough to love what is there in a real way, and I can tell you who I am without doubting it. I can tell you about the desires for my life that feel bigger than me, inevitable, like these desires and I are running towards each other like lovers.

I am distilled to a new structure with ancient dreams. It is a rare state to be in, one that I remember from many years ago. Sleepless nights because the poems kept coming. Days of talking to no one because there was work to do. Now, 9 years later, I approach it with a sense of wisdom and groundedness. The dreams have expanded. I have learned so much since then. I have seen myself. I have seen another’s soul as close as my own.

Not everything you love will stay and you will survive it. This is one of the lessons of the year. Not every comfort will sooth you forever. Let go of the job, the person, the thing, the friendships, the structure, the illusion. You will survive it.

How many times have fear and anxiety kept you in the illusion of safety when really you’re just in your own mind, thrashing against yourself like a punishment for not being brave? Fulfilling the prophecy you wanted to avoid? Fear unfaced turns in on itself, makes knots in your soul you’ll have to untie someday. And you will learn to do it with care, with patience and a gentle touch, like untangling a delicate necklace. You have time to untangle it. Your life is not running away from you. You don’t have to stay small.

If you have been distilled, too, to the foundations of your life, learn to find comfort in them. It is not an emptiness that surrounds you but a dream, a potential, an awakening.

The year ahead will not be the same as this one, and you will not be the same person. Let that be the truth. Don’t fight against it. Move with curiosity, passion, intention. Each one of us has a deep truth, a quiet hum of guidance pulling us through our lives. Find yours. Follow it. Sometimes parts of your life have to fall away so you can hear it. There is so much coming that you can’t even imagine. Don’t hold on so tightly to the old structures of your life that you can’t see your new life coming.

There is a message here among the bare bones:

LIVE.

I find Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ words (from Women Who Run With the Wolves) relevant and soothing, guideposts through a vast desert:

I know that I will never have this time again. I will never be 32 again, single and without children, working a job that I don’t take home with me. This life, as it is now, even with its doubts and difficulties, will never be again and I must cherish it and be all in. I have, many times, become imprisoned by myself. Years have passed without doing some of the things I dreamt of doing. And if I have learned anything the past 7 months it is to take complete responsibility for my own life. To forgive what is outside of me, and to forgive what is within. To do that again and again and again because forgiveness doesn’t end, it is an eternal string you pull, a golden thread to make the world lighter. And if that is the state I live in then I can be clear. There is no one outside of me to blame, and therefore my life is my life. All of it.

Now, November. We move deeper into darkness, deeper into ourselves, into close community, into coziness. I love fall and winter for what it offers us: a space to go inward, a time to reflect and move into the internal cave that is so intricately full of ourselves, decorated with experiences, dreams, patterning, and talismans. I’ve spent a lot of time journaling, taking notes, doing research, and having conversations about transformation and intention: inner and outer. Your future self deserves growth, deserves internal change, deserves discipline and devotion and love from yourself to yourself. Your future self deserves kept promises. How many more months, years will pass before you realize that it is all up to you? That your life is your life alone? I felt overwhelmed by this at first. How could I get from here to there, from rock bottom to the life I desire deep in my bones? I’m on my way, the journey not finished, but I have things to share for those who want to change their lives, too. This is the guide that has come from the process so far.

A Guide to Re-Envisioning Yourself

rearranging ⟶ integrating ⟶ becoming ⟶ embodying

This isn’t about becoming a perfect version of yourself, or about comparing yourself to others, or becoming someone that isn’t you. It isn’t about following a trend or even “glowing up.” It’s about learning about yourself wholly and honoring what you see within. Seeing yourself as clearly as you can: your patterning, your conditioning, bringing subconscious thoughts to the forefront, becoming more and more conscious of yourself, and taking accountability for your life. Most patterning kept you safe at one point. Now it may simply hinder your growth, your relationships, your career. What once was safe may now be in the way. This is about living wholly and feeling fulfilled. It is about loving yourself, respecting yourself, honoring yourself, romanticizing your life and making it something beautiful for you.

1. Your View of Yourself
   
   ✶ Get a notebook specifically for the next few months while you focus on this process. The first thing you should do is look at your life and how you want it to go in the next 1-5 years. Write detailed lists of what you don’t want in your life, what you do want for work, how you want to show up for yourself/what behaviors you want to learn, the kind of person you want to spend your life with, and how you would use your income/what you want money to provide for you. Then spend time writing a list of the steps you can take to get from where you are to where you want to be. We can’t jump from being one way to another all at once. You have to give yourself grace and patience. Begin right where you are. There is no where else you could be, and to be fully present with all that you are is a blessing to yourself.
   ✶ Subconscious belief systems shape you long before you have an awareness of them. If you are going to de-center something, you have to re-center something else. Wherever there is an unintentional vacancy life will fill it with a different sense of familiarity if you don’t actively fill it yourself. De-center & re-center. Imagine this as a beginning, a true beginning without over-identification with who we’ve been, reevaluating habits and protectors that we made our identity. Take your time with this process. You are excavating your own soul.
   ✶ Write a list of the things you want to no longer have in your life. Next to that, write a list of the things you want to replace those with. There is a bridge between each to walk over.
   ✶ What is the feeling you desire in your life? How do you want to feel on a day to day basis? What is fulfilling to your spirit?
   ✶ This isn’t about becoming an untouchable version of yourself, something that is “cured” or immune to life. We are not bypassing heartache or the shadows of ourselves and the world. We are making a map through ourselves, through our shadows and around the roadblocks, and building a solid foundation for us to come back to safely when things feel rocky.
   ✶ This is not a path to perfection by any means but a path to authenticity, to flow, to inspiration, to living healthy and aligned. There is no other self to strive for but one that loves and honors you deeply and truly.
   ✶ Know that you are only a few small decisions away from building the life you want. It doesn’t have to be so overwhelming that it seems impossible. Break it down to small decisions.
   ✶ Learn detachment. You can desire, love, want, but know that what is meant to be yours will be yours. Value yourself enough to focus on what you can control and let life respond to you.
   

2. Internal First
   
   ✶ How does the next version of yourself move through the world? How do they carry themselves? How do they connect to their spirit, their body? How do they feel safe and held in the world? What do they value? What do they wear, eat, do in the morning? How do they interact with those around them? What boundaries do they have? What are their long term goals? What dreams do they have that seem unattainable?
   ✶ Set a few rules out of self respect: No more trauma dumping. No gossiping or speaking badly about yourself or others. Be aware of your self talk. Pull the thread of it and follow it to the root, your negative self talk didn’t start with you. Where did you learn that belief about yourself?
   ✶ Understand your own priorities and shape your free time around that as much as possible. If you don’t have personal goals you will follow the guidance of anyone, or worse, you’ll just float through your days aimlessly. Neither will bring you the life that you desire. When we have busy, full lives we can at least give ourselves one hour a day to prioritize something. Write for 20 minutes in your journal, do yoga, go on a walk, organize something in your home, study something.
   ✶ Have a daily routine that you do not stray from. It doesn’t have to be a million habits stacked on top of each other. Allow yourself the space to ease into a different way of being. Incorporate a few new habits at a time until they become natural to you, then add more. We aren’t trying to force or overwhelm ourselves. We have time. Ease in with love.
   ✶ Tidy your digital space. Mute people on social media that don’t inspire you or make you feel good about yourself. Delete apps. Remove chaos from your phone. Don’t feel like you need to be completely accessible. Take advantage of DND.
   ✶ What brings you peace and joy? Make these non-negotiable in your life.
   ✶ Read books instead of scrolling before you go to bed. Don’t open social media first thing in the morning. Give yourself space to be present and aligned.
   ✶ Listen to binaural beats and high vibrational frequencies. Find guided meditations that click for you. I like to listen to them while going on walks or while driving to work to set the tone for my day.
   ✶ Keep your personal life private. You don’t need to explain yourself to everyone. Don’t speak about your plans just to fill the space. Your goals, your passions, your dreams are not gossip. Honor the process, keep it sacred to yourself.
   ✶ Learn something new. Indulge in creative hobbies for the sake of creation. Study.
   ✶ Set boundaries for yourself as an act of love. Keep promises to yourself and watch your self respect grow.
   ✶ If you experience anxiety this herbal tincture is a godsend for overwhelm.
   

3. Caring for Your Physical Self & Physical Space
   
   ✶ Teas to drink: dandelion, hibiscus, peppermint, and lemon balm.
   ✶ In the mornings drink warm water with ginger, lemon, and honey before you have caffeine.
   ✶ Clear out your home. Donate clothes you no longer wear. Get rid of old books you don’t read. Throw away what has accumulated in your closets and drawers. Clear, clear, clear. Make room for your next self.
   ✶ 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Prioritize your well being over drinking, going out, or staying up late watching something. Your sleep regulates your life. Spray magnesium on the bottoms of your feet to give you a deeper sleep. This is my favorite. You can use it for muscle aches or period cramps as well.
   ✶ Keep track of your energy levels throughout the day (and month). Work with your own energy cycles. Pay attention to how different foods and drinks make you feel. Learn what you’re sensitive to and what gives you energy.
   ✶ Move your body daily, whether that’s going on walks, working out, yoga. Build a routine even when you don’t feel like it. Especially in these winter months it is so easy to stay in and just be still. Join a gym or studio. Make a commitment to yourself to go a certain number of times each week no matter how you feel. Self discipline is self love.
   ✶ Cook your dinners. Even if you have to meal prep for the week ahead. Eat proteins and foods that make you feel good. Every practice in this guide is a way to get to know yourself and honor yourself. When we can know what foods give us energy, make us heavy, are difficult to digest, we give ourselves autonomy and learn to trust ourselves. Everything in life is a message.
   ✶ Don’t hide from your finances. If you aren’t already budgeting and keeping track of where everything is going, start now. The more clarity you have about your money, the more it can do for you. Build a relationship with it.
   ✶ Have a makeup routine that complements you. Honor your face, your ancestral structure, your unique qualities.
   ✶ Dry brush, lotion, body oil. Ice roller, oil cleansing, gua sha, moisturize, rose water. Keep it simple.
   ✶ Keep your space organized. Make rules for your bedroom: chaos free, people free, trash free. Make it a space that invites you to wind down and feel safe and calm.
   ✶ Open windows often. Let the air in your home circulate. Get plants. Sage and palo santo your rooms, from left to right and out.
   

4. Ritualize Routines, Devotion Over Discipline, & Energetic Boundaries
   
   ✶ Turn your routines into rituals, treat discipline as devotion. Making the mundane things feel magical or spiritual helps me stick to it. Knowing that I am doing something because it is an act of love for myself and my life makes it easier to do and deepens the experience.
   ✶ Do protective and expansive energy work every day before you leave the house. Most people don’t realize how much of life is based off of energy alone, and they walk around without boundaries or awareness. Set energetic boundaries with the people you interact with on a daily basis. Your coworkers, classmates, the people you are around out in the world. If you’re a sensitive person you likely pick up on everything going on around you and take it on as your own. Be intentional with your energy. (tips below)

   ✶ Write a goodbye letter to the parts of yourself you’re ready to let go of. Send that version of you love. Thank them for protecting you. Tell them you are safe to be your full, embodied self in the world. Forgive them.
   ✶ As you get ready each morning, do it with love. When you are washing your body in the shower, imagine you are washing off anything negative from the day. Thank your food, thank your water. Infuse everything with intention.
   ✶ Find ways to make the mundane romantic. Carry a little journal with you at all times to write poems in. Have a playlist to listen to while you get ready. Drive the beautiful way, even if it takes 5 more minutes. Buy yourself flowers weekly. No one else is going to make your life beautiful for you.
   ✶ Start a journaling practice. I have 17 years of journals and will never stop. Give yourself a safe, sacred space to let everything out.
   

5. Investing in Your Passions
   
   ✶ Prioritize your goals. Treat your passions like a living being you are committed to, something you don’t break promises to. Take classes, join a group, set up a space in your home that is dedicated to something you enjoy doing.
   ✶ Get clear about your goals and intentions — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Write these out and create a structure. There will not be another person to guide you, tapping you on the shoulder daily to remind you to do what you love. That is up to you completely. Commit to it.
   ✶ Keep track of your envy. It is showing you what you desire for your life, it is a message from the muse. Let comparison go.
   ✶ Give yourself permission to say no to people when you already have a plan with yourself to do what matters to you. Honor your own boundaries and the structures you set for yourself.
   

6. Love & Relationships
   
   ✶ Remove people who do not bring you peace. Don’t allow access for those that don’t love and respect you.
   ✶ Often you will find in relationships you are acting out childhood wounds hoping to solve them presently. Pay attention to this as you get to know yourself deeper.
   ✶ Know in your bones that your energy is sacred, your love is sacred, your body is sacred. Don’t have judgment towards yourself for what you do with it, but have an understanding of how being with another makes you feel. Respect yourself first, above all else. Be very cautious about exchanging energy with people who don’t respect it, and therefore don’t deserve it.
   ✶ Find or build a community that is genuine, supportive, honest, and aligned. We are not meant to be strictly solitary beings. We should depend on each other, support each other. Answer when your friends call. Go out of your way to be kind to others. Let kind people in.
   ✶ Don’t audition for others’ love and don’t compete. Protect your nervous system.
   ✶ Respect those that you love. Move with honesty, compassion, care for those around you. All relationships are mirrors to our own wounds, our own capacities for harm and for love. Love is an all-encompassing mirror. Know this as you enter into relationships.

Come back to your journal again and again. Let it be the space for this manifestation of the life you want, the life that is already yours. Revisit the lists and rework them when more awareness settles.

Energetic tips:

• Each morning before work, picture a golden bubble of light around your body. Feel your heart expand, imagine as if its own energy field is expanding beyond your physical body, as far as you comfortably want it to go. You can be protected and take up energetic space.

• Words can be spells, but intentions absolutely are. Have this awareness as you move through your day.

• When you feel yourself attached and in someone else’s energy too much, say to yourself: I call all my energy back to me.

• Leave room for the unknown. You aren’t in control. You’re in co-creation.

• Start a spiritual practice. That can be prayer, meditation, qigong. Anything that brings you closer to the true self within you. There is a calm center that is you.

• You have to be grounded to truly embody the spiritual. If you are all in your mind, you lose touch with your reality. Find the balance.

Resources:

• To Be Magnetic with — I’ve been the TBM work since 2020 and it has transformed my life. They have incredible workshops for doing inner child work and shadow work. I highly recommend becoming a member and using their DIs each day.

• books to read: Atomic Habits by James Clear, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza, Rewire by Nicole Vignola, Energetic Boundaries by Cyndi Dale, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Pathwork of Self-Transformation by Eva Pierrakos, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

• Law of Assumption hypnosis videos

  
  

If you’re in the modern spiritual world I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of tests. It is common in manifestation rhetoric to frame situations as tests to see if you’re ready to live differently, if you’re ready for the life you say you want. Where I have a problem with tests is the belief that you pass or fail. If you fail you are somehow not worthy or ready, and if you pass it instills the belief that it is a “test” you won’t be taking again, that you have upleveled to a new degree of enlightenment that makes you immune to a part of being human you no longer want to experience. We learn to see failure as a punishment and passing as a reward, like getting held back a year in high school or graduating. If I’ve learned anything about spirituality it’s that nothing is strictly binary. To be human, to be a soul, is to live a fluid life within the structures of humanity. It is something to play with, to experience, to expand into and contract from.

I see the healing (or spiritual) journey as a spiral, one that starts tight and small and grows wider as it moves upward. At different points in life you’ll meet similar situations again and again but from a different vantage point of yourself. You bring more wisdom, compassion, awareness, and groundedness to each situation that you may have previously not held within you. Each time this happens it is simply a chance to meet a part of yourself you may not be fully illuminating or paying attention to. It isn’t about passing or failing, but experiencing. The lesson is not whether you are good or bad, smart or ignorant. It is a mirror to peer into. There are parts of ourselves we can’t always see. Parts that need to be triggered to be brought into awareness. It is not a punishment but an exploration. We learn about ourselves by witnessing how we react and exploring why we react that way, why we allow certain behaviors, why something hurts, why we settle. Nothing is a failure. Every experience is another layer added to your soul.

When you experience heartache, betrayal, lack of control, rejection, what are your reactions? What do the protective/savior parts of your being want to do? Lash out, hide away, hold tighter, get revenge, obsess, shame yourself? What do you feel you need to prove to the world? How can you show up in a more aligned way for yourself if this comes around again?

To believe that if you pass a test you are worthy of the life you want implies that if you don’t, you aren’t. Your existence is your worthiness. What you dream of deep in your soul is already yours, and to have it, you simply have to be yourself. What doesn’t feel right to you will always fall away. It is true that the further up the spiral you go, the more your energetic frequency changes. What resonated before may not feel good to you now, and that may be all you need to discover from the “test.”

What harms the spiral most is shame. Shame creates stuck points that turn to blocks and make it so you can’t see beyond them. Learn to have compassion for the part of yourself that didn’t honor you. It could be a part of you stuck in a moment from when you were 5 years old and felt rejected, or when you learned how you’re “supposed” to be at 16. Every shame has an old root. In time, with gentleness, you can pull it out.

There is no test to fail, only a deeper understanding of yourself to reach, a deeper lesson to learn. Life is really asking you: Is this still where you’re vibrationally at?

Questions to ask yourself:

1. What wounds does this pattern validate in me?

2. If I were to act/react differently, what would that require of me?

3. How does staying the same keep me comfortable and “safe”?

4. At what other times in my life has this “test” shown up?

5. If I can reframe my “failures” with a more compassionate perspective, what was it that I felt I needed? What was I hoping would happen?

There is a doorway that we are all walking through. A threshold we are standing on. I’ve been checking on myself again and again, witnessing myself again and again. Just to be sure this is who I am now, to sense what has become grounded and real in me. The summer falls away, the leaves become something new, the mornings get cold. There is a shift within and without. All of us feel it at once, subtly. We begin clearing, intentionally or not.

August leaves with a rush. The external was loud, vibrant, hungry. The heat pushing us all to the water’s edges, finding solace in the shade of a willow tree or lying in the river’s flow. I forgot who I was. I didn’t mean to. I don’t remember when it started, a long time ago and it was no one’s fault but my own, but this whole summer I spent finding myself again. Mostly it was alone or with the presence of the women I love deep in my soul. Sometimes I let the world hold me. Sometimes I let it know me again, on the dance floor in a wine bar, on the back patios with cocktails. But mostly I went to the woods with my dog. I fell asleep early, woke with the sun, watched it come up behind old buildings as I drank my coffee on the sidewalk. All summer I thought I’d run into everyone I don’t know anymore, but no one came, and that alone felt like a sense of protection for my journey with myself. Now I remember my own softness, curiosity, passions, dreams for my own self. I let my heart crave. I let it mourn. I know these things may exist at the same time. In August, I did what the moon told me. I cracked my heart open. I went with the flow of things this summer and didn’t make any big moves, didn’t make any big commitments. I spent it witnessing and playing. The dreams that held on will be brought forth as I move more internal with the seasonal shift.

September: I cut everything back. The queen anne’s lace, the black eyed susans. I prune the vines, pull the stinging nettle. I take everything out of the garden and make a plan for spring. This was not a summer of weeding and planting but one of dancing and talking on the phone for hours, of alone time in the woods, of journaling pages and pages each day. September begins the journey inward. We tame our wildness of summer. The impulsiveness settles. It is the month of letting go of control, which we never really had in the first place. Only the illusion of it, the craving. The veil begins to thin, slowly. I pay attention, I listen. I trust life fully for the first time in a very long time. We enter the doorway deeper into ourselves. September brings order, design, structure. It is a month for distilling, for list-making, for cleaning, for decorating the internal. It is time to do the things you said you would do for yourself.

I have learned many things about myself this summer, or maybe just remembered them. I know that I write in the afterlife of things. While I’m in it I can only feel it, know it, be it. And now the poems come. They all needed time to settle to the bottom of me. There is a presence that flows eternal from what once was. I move on the way a writer does —which is sucking the marrow out of it all to make it immortal in some way. That is the only way I know how to honor what mattered.

I know that solitude is more important to me than anything else, and that I have to be intentional with it. It can’t be filled with distractions. I have to honor its purpose.

I know that I can forgive everyone for everything, including myself. That is the only way to be full in my life. To hold on to everything is to be fragmented, to have cords in every painful thing in my life, will literally keep parts of me there. Which only makes it more difficult to be where I am now, to love myself now.

I know that I am not broken, and no one else is broken. I know that life is a series of reactions to something from long ago, and we are all mirrors for each other. Love is unavoidable and pain is unavoidable and human connection is unavoidable if you want to feel alive in your body. It takes time to get to the root of things, and then it takes even longer to see it clearly and understand it.

I know that healing can’t only happen in hiding. There is a place for healing in solitude, for repairing. But it isn’t the place you stay in forever. You can only do so much work from there. Eventually you have to be in the world again. You have to let yourself be seen and known and vulnerable. Let your heart be slowly cracked open.

I know that love doesn’t need to be erased. That life will continue and build around it. And more love always comes. It is inevitable.

August into September playlist:

1. Thinking of a Place | The War on Drugs

2. On My Mind Again | Dolly Parton

3. I Don’t Not Love You | Eleni Drake

4. Anything | Adrianne Lenker

5. Sweet | Lana Del Rey

6. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong | Leonard Cohen

7. River | Leon Bridges

8. Coney Island Baby | Lou Reed

9. Is It a Crime | Sade

10. My Little Lark | Marissa Nadler

11. Self Control | Frank Ocean

12. The Hardest Part | Olivia Dean

13. Space Song | Beach House

14. Animal Tracks | Mountain Man

15. Roseblood | Mazzy Star

16. Dream Night | Jamie xx

17. Something On Your Mind | Karen Dalton

18. From the Dining Table | Harry Styles

19. Amsterdam | Gregory Alan Isakov

20. Life Is | Jessica Pratt

Journal prompts:

• Imagine your soul is a room. What will you decorate it with? What color are the walls? What furniture rests inside, if any? Describe it.

• Is there a doorway you’ve found yourself walking through recently? Where is it leading you to?

• Is there a persistent dream fueling you? What does it require of you to become true?

September ins:
— forgiving everyone for everything (again & again & again)
— making lists
— writing poems no one will ever see
— yearning
— letting people be exactly who they are
— 3 hour long walks

September outs:
— over-protecting your peace
— needing to fill in the gaps of your life
— doing things for the outcome and not for the experience
— acting like life is black and white
— Instagram therapists
— comparison, in any capacity

There is nothing beyond the paywall, it is only here as an opportunity to support <3

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So much of my life has been spent trying not to feel too much, be too sensitive. Especially as a child, everything felt big. Each feeling coming with a message — one that I either run from or run into. I quickly learned that not everyone feels this much. I’ve felt like an outsider most of the time but it never made me want to be different, only brought me closer to myself. I found my mirrors in poetry, in art, in music. In late night conversations with people I may never see again. In listening to others talk at cafes while I wrote or worked behind the counter. Being a sensitive person has made me see the wholeness of other people. We all contain every possibility, every emotion, every potential experience.

Eventually I did learn that it is a gift to feel this much, to see this much in the world. Being a sensitive person has made love more beautiful and heartache more painful. In my early twenties I tried to turn it off. I tried to shut out the world but it only made me implode. So I leaned back in. I learned to be gentle with myself, gentle with others. To not expect others to feel as much as I feel, or to see the world the way that I do. I gave my sensitivity a voice and from that came my first book, and then my second, and then my third. To feel so much became a blessing and a way to connect with people.

Now I am learning discernment. I don’t believe that sensitivity itself is ever wrong. I believe it is a gift. One that must be cultivated, cared for, understood. Your sensitivity is a map to a way of being in the world. It leads you to your path, your purpose, your lessons. It is something to decipher and distill. When sensitivity turns into taking everything personally and empathizing without boundaries it becomes a problem. Becoming a human emotion detector and interpreter is an attempt to keep you safe, but it can often lead to inventing stories, or giving excuses to others for their behavior, and can keep you in a loop of your patterning.

Being a sensitive person will teach you to trust your own intuition instead of seeking outside of yourself for everything. That is an intentional and daily act. A dullness comes with always seeking outside of yourself for answers. If you can turn the part of you that is investigating back on yourself then you can shine a spotlight on your intuition. Your intuition is what lies underneath the thick sensitivity, the layers of emotion, the circling thoughts. It isn’t always loud, and most of the time is a subtle hum underneath everything else. It does not falter, and it is never wrong. Learn what sets off each part of you and your emotional reaction. If you can pay closer attention to this then you can see the difference between what is true for you and what is not. Discernment will offer your sensitive heart some peace in knowing not everything you feel is as big as you think it is, and not to run away with it all of the time.

Keep a record of what your intuition and sensitivities reveal to you throughout your life. I have a serious journal ritual and have had one since I was 13. I have stacks of Moleskines and composition notebooks on my dresser. Usually I write every other day. Sometimes there are phases when it is once every other week. Some days I write half a page, others I write 12. I don’t sit down with prompts or any sort of guideline. My only intention is to get out what is inside of me and see if I can get to some sense on the page. A pattern will reveal over time, or an inkling of intuition that I hadn’t yet fully trusted will come true. I process what I feel again and again. I am truthful, open, nonjudgmental in these journals. They are and will always be the most sacred things to me, a spiritual practice to be with my soul. And through this practice I have gotten to know the patterns of my sensitivities. This is where I see evidence and learn to trust those parts of it, and where I see invention and learn not to feed those parts of it. The trick is to write about something until it eventually is smaller than you. Get the story, the emotion out of your body. It doesn’t matter how many weeks or months it is spinning inside of you. It will shrink.

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July holds the energy of fire, play, sleepiness from the sun. We mirror the intensity and fullness of summer. The hot pink sun rises as I drive through the hazy valley on my way to work each morning, and falls so late that the days feel like they stretch on forever. Humidity weighs heavy in the air, on the skin. Everyone walks around alive and taking everything in, like someone experiencing summer for the first time. The world is filled with desire, the earth bursting with life. Inspiration falls from the sky to meet you whenever you ask for it. Laziness pulls you in, wildness brings you out. There is no balance in July. July is wild, free, impulsive. Dreams show themselves more. Manifestation is easiest. Everything happens faster. In the summer we enter soul territory. An illusion is lifted and we can see layers of the world. We dive into depths, we float on the rivers of our own being.

July is not for self help books. They can only get you so far: a practical manual, step by step as if it is a guide to putting together Ikea furniture. There is a passion that comes with summer that leaves us craving more, wanting depth and story. So what helps the romantics? The dreamers? We get swallowed by the diaries of past women, by poetry, by myth. We integrate lessons taught through something beautiful, left up to our own interpretation and connection. We see ourselves mirrored back in something written by someone who existed before us, our lifetimes only briefly overlapping, if at all. I read Anais Nin, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Frida Kahlo. They have something to teach with their stories, their myths, their confessions.

from The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. One

Right now there is a universal and internal breaking down of what we know. We are being pushed to extremes in different ways, testing us and asking us to offer some space in between to let it all exist and fall apart (or fall together). There is a call to be as present as possible. To not push anything away and let the intensity of feeling take you deeper into yourself while expanding to meet the world. Befriend a journal and crack yourself open, then go dancing. Everything is intensely wild. Move with it.

This month I am:

• Leaning into my love for Anais Nin. I have always been inspired by her passion, her ability to always see and love the intricacies of life, of the seemingly mundane moment. She turns everything into romance. For a decade, I have loved her diaries and have felt so connected to this woman who lived before me, so many pages underlined and marked with pressed flowers. The feelings in my heart being written in another’s journal is a gift. You, too, are not alone in this feeling, this desire, this ache. You may find yourself in her pages, too.

• Selling the clothes I used to love, but no longer wear and casting loving wishes onto them for the recipients. A prayer for passion and presence and love. I am a true Taurus and love my objects, my bed, my dresses, my sentimentality. I hold on to anything that I once wore on a night I had fun, or a date with someone I loved. Each object holds memory and emotion. It has become time to let some of them go and offer them a new life.

• Painting my nails Big Apple red. Wearing white skirts and vintage dresses I’ve collected. Getting coffee in my platform heels. Keeping my hair in braids. Letting myself get freckled. Wearing big hoops or no jewelry at all.

• Spending more time doing nothing. It is so easy to distract and numb my way through my free time when life is feeling intense, when there is so much chaos in the world. It is important to be with myself and not create a fracture in my soul too big to jump over. I lay in the sun and do nothing but close my eyes and eat fruit. Be a witness to the subtle life happening around me. Leave my phone in the house. Turn it on DND at 8pm. Give myself room to breathe, feel, think, witness.

• Dating myself. The healing process that comes after a very serious relationship is not one I want to miss or numb through. I want to move with life honoring my feelings and getting to know myself outside of a romantic connection for the first time in a long time. I hold all of my feelings in my hands. I let it all be true. I am learning to love my solitude again. I let the loneliness come and the peace come and the sadness come and the joy come. I feel everything and follow my intuition. I am in a committed relationship with myself. I trust that everything is unfolding as it should and while the path ahead of me is unclear, it is the right path because it is the one I am on. So I take myself out for matcha in the mornings and write in my journal for 3 hours. I cook dinner and sit on the porch. I walk with my dog. I sit and watch the fireflies. I drink wine. I go out with friends. I allow space. And it is all new.

books to read:
1. anais nin’s diaries
2. the great cosmic mother by monica sjoo & barbara mor
3. the secret history by donna tartt

songs to listen to:
1. ride — lana del rey
2. roman d’mour — alastair lane, sarah degny
3. fear when you fly — cleo sol
4. feel your weight — rhyse, poolside
5. back, baby — jessica pratt
6. cherish the day — sade
7. zebra — beach house
8. going to california — led zeppelin
9. mariella — khruangbin, leon bridges
10. alive and dying (waving, smiling) — angel olsen

moodboard:

June favorites:
my grandmother’s white cotton skirt with embroidered details. vajrayana diamond light healing meditations. watching the cherry tomatoes grow. kitten heels or bare feet. nasturtiums. red blush. watermelon juice. palo santo. journaling every day. cafe tables on the sidewalks. strawberry matcha. drunk laughter. vetiver perfume oil. wild rabbits.

xx,
Emery

There is more I learn about myself every day. More uncovered, unearthed. Dug up with my bare hands, really.

My seven year relationship ended a few months ago, and I have been shifting into an unknown territory. I see myself in a raw light. I don’t try to fill the emptiness with something shallow. I don’t numb it. But I don’t make a home out of it either. I live in between. All of life is now a mirror.

I think that in many ways I have been absent from my own life, occasionally going with the flow, but mostly resisting. I’ve tried with Buddhism, I’ve tried with meditation, I’ve tried with journaling to enter into a true sense of presence and knowing, but I think I’ve spent most of my life running from parts of myself. I was trying to bypass all the harder things I had to look at and just get to the calm, the stillness. I didn’t know that I had to wade through the muck to get there.

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I sat still, I emptied myself, I waited. I said yes to the things I had to do and forgot the rest, until summer was here and gone.

I waited for the message to come. A message of guidance or purpose, a sense of obvious direction. And while I waited, I roasted carrots and blended tahini dressings. I served manhattans to men wanting to feel young. I meditated. I walked down the paved street to the empty park. I said goodbye to my dog. I laughed with people ten years younger than me. I picked cherry tomatoes from the garden and neglected to weed it. I argued. I wrote morning pages in my Moleskine journal. I arranged flowers, sold incense and vases and canned sardines. I learned how to heal energetically. And still the message wasn’t clear.

Maybe I wanted someone to say it right to me. Any stranger on the street, in the flower shop, in the bar, in my class. Tell me exactly how to do what I’ve been dying to do and yet, somehow, cannot. I had become separate from myself and couldn’t see the path I took to get there.

Nothing in itself is alone. No moment is solitary. Everything is tethered to a previous day. One where I was five years old, or maybe twenty-four. Something that is seemingly not so important but continues to carry weight. The message gets clearer when I can see it doesn’t act alone but holds its own memories.

This paragraph is about to sound unimportant and I acknowledge that, but it’s the truth. Half of my twenties was a built up ego that made me forget why I wanted to write in the first place. It began honestly and through the heart, and got swept away with Instagram and 30,000 followers rising, rising, rising and celebrities sharing my writing. What a gift to the ego, to feel important or relevant. What a trap, too. By the end I got sick of keeping up with it and it stood in the way of my writing, when in the beginning it was the wide open path that let people enter the writing of my heart. When I woke up one morning in 2019 to my page unexpectedly taken down it shattered that absolutely fragile ego. Without it how could I ever be what I wanted? is really what I thought.

A fragile ego is just as dangerous to the self as an inflated one that’s always being fed. One will make you get carried away with the wrong things, the other will make you feel unworthy of any of it. There is no balance there.

And in truth, I couldn’t see it until more recently. Which is a bit embarrassing to acknowledge. I’ve lived in this hidden spiral of feeling like I can never be a successful poet or novelist without a large following. Like that was the trick and not the writing itself. I was living in the shadow of my creative, true self. I rejected myself the moment it was taken down and have been rejecting myself since. I felt that I had lost my tether to a bigger world than what was right in front of me. I was separate from the heart of myself. I wanted connection when I wasn’t connecting. I wanted someone else to see me so I could see myself: my lifelong wound.

I am a slow learner.

For a while I thought the fix would be to start a new page and just post and hope everyone would find me again. I felt too intimidated though. I barely shared my writing or my heart. I took the vulnerability out of it. But I thought if I could build it up then I could have a platform and start writing again. Finally, finally, I see that is the most backwards thinking and I was still completely pursuing from the ego and missing the entire point, just trying to make up for what I believed I had lost. But any loss like that, any missed opportunity, is a redirection, a gift. It might just take years to see it.

My ego is a heavy, heavy door that I am prying wide open. It is friends with the shadow and they feed off of each other and play games. I can hold both of these aspects of myself without rejecting them. They no longer need to rule. I can see that they’re rooted in an old wound and I can pull the focus and intention back to the center, to the soul of things.

So I am going to continue to step away from the ego more and more. I’m going to get as close to the soul as I can. I remember how I did it before. With meditation, with intense poem-writing, with editing, journaling, with reading E.E. Cummings, with sitting in a coffee shop or a bar or a museum and paying attention to people, with treating everything in life with the romance it deserves. Eliminating ego-feeders and wound-feeders (that I bring upon myself) until I have done the work I need to do, until they hold different meaning for me. The books need to be written. And that is all that should matter first.

I’m feeling the end of a cycle. One that I mistook for writing, but was really the ego of it. And, of course, this isn’t only a reflection of the writing process but life itself. This year was filled with a lot of circumstances and actions I didn’t want, but I didn’t have my voice. I put it away somewhere that felt safe and I was wrong. I don’t want to live a life that isn’t mine. I don’t want to be swept up and small. I don’t want to forget myself. And if I am not writing with my soul then I have forgotten myself. If I am living by the wounds then I am a victim to life instead of living as someone who loves it, who welcomes it.

The message is coming back to the heart. 2025 is the deep breath. The letting go. The inhale and exhale. The year of spirit and (real) vulnerability. The year of the voice. Of choosing.

• write morning & night routines this self takes part in.

• how do they honor their joy?

• who do they surround themselves with?

• what do they do when they’re experiencing difficult feelings?

• how do they speak to themselves? how do they speak to others?

• how do they handle conflict?

• write a list of ways that they care for their mind & body.

• do they have a spiritual practice? how do they honor it?

• do they have boundaries in place? if so, what?

• do they embrace vulnerability? in what ways?

• what do they do in their free time?

• where do they place the most meaning in their life?

• how do they bring in security and abundance?

more on my patreon

In September I started a Patreon called the Ancient Heart Club. Each month I’ve been sending snail mail to subscribers and it has been such a joy to do. I write 2-3 pages of energetic interpretations of the month ahead, along with journal prompts, book recommendations, little magic cards, intuitive messages, a moodbard, and a playlist. Since snail mail isn’t ideal for everyone I wanted to make a $5 option of a digital download. The next 3 newsletters are a series focusing on clearing, dream building, and movement for the new year. Since creative writing has always been a soulful way of playing, this project may change over time. I’m feeling into what is clicking with the recipients as well as what I feel needs to be shared.

I thought the beginning of the three month series would be a good time to give a sneak peak of November’s newsletter. If you want to sign up for the digital (or snail mail) newsletter you can here.

Quotes from the letter:

Emerging from a month of seeing the shadow, I am now walking into the darkness that opens to clearing and dreaming. I am leaning into entering a different realm of the darkness that winter holds for us…November is the last exhale of the year before it sleeps. Almost all trees have taken off their golden clothes, leaving the bare bones and essentials. No excess of energy output…We can learn from this.

When we can meet our own shadows we can surpass them, move through them, befriend them so we can find our way into our deep inner dreams.

STEPS TO CLEARING SPACE TO HEAR THE RIGHT QUESTIONS THAT ARE KNOCKING ON YOUR SOUL’S DOOR:

• remove any object that no longer feels good to you. clothes, books, jewelry. empty the junk drawer of things you’ll never need. clear the boxes in the closet. honor sentimentality but let go of what isn’t yours anymore.

• don’t fill the space with something new. allow the space to just exist. let it breathe.

• have conversations you have been putting off.

• reflect on the stories you tell yourself about who you are and your limits. write a list of these limits.

• write a list of the opposite of these beliefs. let yourself imagine what you could be capable of if you trusted yourself. keep these lists together as a reminder.

• delete old text threads & emails. unsubscribe from things you’re no longer interested in. clean your camera roll.

• buy a small journal to carry around with you. leave it blank until you feel called to write in it. it could be a day from now, a month from now.

• don’t feel that you need to answer every question you are asked. get comfortable with “I don’t know yet.”

• write a list of things you learned you should want for your life (type of relationship, career, lifestyle, etc.). get specific on what you feel isn’t your dream but maybe someone else’s. release them back into the ether. let them go.

• forgive.

Once of the five journal prompts:

What are the stories you live by? Look into each month of 2024 and see where you have made decisions or avoided decisions and what brought you there. If you keep a journal, take time to reflect on what you wrote throughout this year. Are patterns being repeated?

The rest I will save for Patreon, but if any of this resonates with you, sign up! I will also have monthly Q&A podcasts (as long as questions come in) so feel free to send questions my way to be answered at askemeryallen@gmail.com.

Thank you for subscribing to my substack. If you don’t feel that you’re in a place to support via patreon I will still be sharing the occasional excerpt from the newsletters here as mini treats.

Emery

In the past 6 months there has been a lot coming to me and unfolding. I dealt with a strange traumatic event and simultaneously took on a second job with little time to myself. In the midst of processing different layers of things and facing my own challenge of stepping up in ways I’m not used to, my dog Ellie passed away. If you’ve followed me for a long time on any platform then you knew her. She was the first dog that was my dog. I adopted her when I was living alone in the warehouse apartment in my early twenties. I think she saved me, as dogs seem to do. She brought so much warmth and meaning to my life, along with joy and silliness and responsibility. We had a soul level connection, sharing emotions and understanding each other in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. She suddenly got very, very sick and within two weeks she was gone. I have known grief before, it wasn’t new to me. But it had been years since death had entered my life. So I got to know grief again, which cracks you open whether you want it to or not.

Ellie was dying when spring was coming. I spent every day with her in the front yard under the blooming crabapple tree. she was lying in a bed of violets, I was near her reading Dune and just watching her breathe, watching her take in the world around her. She passed the day before my birthday when the lilacs were blooming and the earth was coming to life. The grief that I felt reintroduced surrender to me. I had to surrender to everything it made me feel. I had to surrender to a reality that was out of my control. I had been living in a subtle but enveloping state of resistance for a while by then. I don’t think that I realized that until Ellie. For months I hadn’t been leaning into the changes in my life. I still felt bitter about some things, lazy about others, and generally dissatisfied with the way that my life was, yet not actually doing anything about it. I stayed in my resistance like an act of defiance, like making a statement (to who, I don’t know) that I didn’t like this so I was just going to be bitter about it instead of doing anything one way or another. But nothing can put life into perspective like grief can. I’d prayed for Ellie to heal, but after a few days I realized maybe it would be best to pray for her to be protected and feel at peace in whatever way it needed to be. This was the true surrender. I knew that resisting what was happening would mean that I’d also be resisting my chance to love her fully now, to be with her fully now. That was almost two months ago, and I have allowed grief to do what it does whenever it feels like it. To resist it is to build walls around myself, to make a quiet enemy of the world, of the way it is. All of this brought me to thinking about surrender vs resistance. How leaning into one over the other can change your life and your energy, and how there is a third option that sneaks its way in.

Living in resistance isn’t always obvious. It sneaks up on you, shows up in your daily habits, in how you cope with uncomfortable feelings or dissatisfaction. It feels like an added weight on you. When you are in resistance, nothing can grow for you. You can’t be as creative, you can’t be as loving, you can’t be as open. When you resist the present moment, you miss the message that it has for you. Resistance against your present reality is a bad act of rebellion. You’re really just punishing yourself. The more you resist the present moment, the more you resist actually feeling the feelings it brings up in you, which only intensifies it. If you are resisting your life then you are not present and you can’t see any of it clearly. I can dream of being a writer, but resist the fact that I work 50-70 hours a week in the service industry and be so bothered by that that I zone out and write nothing, change nothing, embrace nothing. If I can’t surrender to the current circumstances of my life then I can’t learn to play with it, I can’t take advantage of the gifts it has for me, I can’t feel the depths of it. I felt that resisting parts of my reality would somehow manifest the reality I desired. I wanted to skip all of the steps and just be in the next phase of my life, essentially without doing any of the labor or decision-making it takes to get there. I think life has been asking me every month: “Are you going to resist this, too? Can you sit with this? Can you move with it, lean in, lean out, let it be all the way real without dissociating from it?” and I was avoiding answering.

When you surrender to you life, every little thing begins to unfold. The joy in your jobs that aren’t your dream job, the gratitude that comes with caring for a home that needs work, cherishing the time you have with those you love and with yourself when you have little of it to spare. All of the secrets and joys and pains reveal themselves to you like tiny jewels hidden in pockets of a heavy coat you were wearing every day. The coat gets lighter and more vibrant. You can see where you shame lives and where it stems from, and you can see that you can heal that. You can see where the magic of your life is as it is now, even when it is not the dream. You can have genuine gratitude. You can feel lucky and you can feel bored, and you can then decide what you’re going to do with those things. You can ease into the space you’ve created for yourself and let go of comparison. You can start where you are, which is a beautiful place to be. Surrender allows you to move with lightness. There is a gentle ease that begins to show through.

The more I leaned into surrender, the more I started to think about a third thing that is birthed from this surrender that leads to a more aligned life. If you are to resist completely and stay there, then you are seeing nothing. You are living in your own illusion, in a disconnect from your life. If you are to surrender completely and stay there, then you are not owning your life. You are allowing life to just happen to you. In between there is a dance. This dance requires honesty, self reflection, passion, and an open heart. In between is where you find your autonomy. This is where I want to live, and I know that to get there you have to fully surrender first. You have to see your life all the way (or as much as you can from your vantage point) and then make decisions based on what you see. You can begin to make decisions that a future-self would make. You can learn to honor the dream that lies within, that craves a new way of living. You learn to play. You have to have a certain amount of compassion for the present moment. Move with ease and honor every opportunity you get along the path that you’re on. Each thing has a secret message for you that you most likely won’t understand for years to come. Everything has it’s place. There is so much we can’t know about our lives. We can resist everything and build a dream world, but we’re still here. We have to build a bridge between the two. We can find the dance and move with it, seeing all of the micro-decisions we can make in the now that will bring us closer to a rich life. Once we are able to surrender we can see the varying paths that lie ahead. We can get glimpses into other possibilities, which will allow us to choose to show up differently in our current realities.

JOURNAL PROMPTS FOR SURRENDER & RESISTANCE:

What areas in your life do you feel resistance toward?
Is there something that feels out of your hands that you could surrender to, even a little bit?
Are there moments in your daily life that you’ve given over to dissociating where instead you could do something kind for yourself? What would you do instead?
How can you begin to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be?
Where do you think you can dance with life more? Embrace play?

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Thank you for subscribing and for reading. I’ll be sharing a newsletter every other week from now on.

Emery

CLEANING PIECE I

Write down a sad memory. Put it in a box. Burn the box and sprinkle the ashes in the field. You may give some ashes to a friend who shared the sadness.

CLEANING PIECE II

Make a numbered list of sadness in your life. Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers. Add a stone, each time there is sadness. Burn the list, and appreciate the mount of stones for its beauty.

Make a numbered list of happiness in your life. Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers. Add a stone, each time there is happiness.

Compare the mount of stones to the one of sadness.

CLEANING PIECE III

Try to say nothing negative about anybody.

a) For three days

b) For forty-five days

c) For three months

See what happens to your life.

CLEANING PIECE IV

Write down everything you fear in life. Burn it. Pour herbal oil with a sweet scent on the ashes.

CLEANING PIECE V

Let a list of arbitrary names come into your mind as you go to sleep. Say “bless you” after each name. Do this with speed, by keeping a constant rhythm, so, in no way, you would hesitate to bless them.

Happy new year. Let this be a softer one.