September has always been the real new year for me.

Not January. September.

Fresh notebook. Fresh light. The days finally have a shape again.

And this year, I want to use that energy for something different. Not a resolution or a reinvention. Something slower and more honest than that.

I want to ask: what work is actually mine right now?

Not the work I was handed before I was old enough to have an opinion about it. Not the role I fell into because nobody else stepped up. Not the assignment I have been dutifully performing for twenty years because it was useful to everyone except, quietly, me.

The work that is actually, specifically, unmistakably mine.

Here is what I know about this: most of us were handed our assignments early. Be good. Be useful. Be needed. And so we spent decades doing work that was real and hard and often beautiful — but was not always ours.

Then midlife shows up and finishes the job. The kids leave. The marriage ends or changes. The career stops fitting. The church you built your whole identity inside no longer holds you. And you are standing in your kitchen at 4 PM holding a set of hands with nothing assigned to them.

That is not a crisis.

That is a reassignment.

This month in The AWAKE Collective, we are asking the slower question underneath all of that: what work is actually mine right now, and am I doing it?

Our September Reflection Guide was created to walk gently alongside that question.

What’s inside the September Reflection Guide:

• Journaling prompts around The Assignment In My Hands, What I Was Handed, Redefining Ambition, and The Work Only I Can Do

• Four low-demand practices to make sacred work sustainable — including The Daily Assignment, The Ambition Inventory, The Return, and The Handoff

• A 5-Day Reset — Awake to the Assignment, Awake to What’s Not Mine, Awake to Ambition, Awake to the Ordinary, and Awake to the Long Game

• Monthly affirmations to return to all September long

• A closing reflection on what it means to finally claim the work that was always yours

This is not a five-year plan. It is not a personal brand exercise. It is the quiet, honest practice of figuring out what is actually in your hands — and having the courage to do it.

Take these pages at the pace of a September afternoon. Some prompts will land like something you have always known. Others will sit with you longer than you expect.

Both are the work.

For paid subscribers here on Substack, I’ve included the full September Reflection Guide download below as part of the AWAKE Collective resources.

If you’d like access to this guide—and future monthly guides—you can become an AWAKE Collective member by subscribing to my paid Substack below for $8 a month.

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🛍️ Her secret dream?
Myquillyn dreams of opening a shop in her downtown. She admits she sometimes wonders if it’s a smart idea or a completely ridiculous one - and knows it probably won’t make much money - but there’s something about creating a space of her own that she can’t quite let go of.

📺 What’s bringing her joy?
An episode of The Waltons every night. Myquillyn had never watched it before, but she is now fully convinced it should be prescribed by doctors. 😂 It’s wholesome, cozy, and exactly what she needs right now.

💪 The bravest thing she’s done recently?
Saying no to something other people thought she should say yes to. Because sometimes the people who love you can see a “dream” for you that you absolutely do not want for yourself. As Myquillyn puts it: “It’s my dream” vs. “It’s my nightmare.” Honestly, good for her.

🎥 Watch Just One More Thing above, then if you haven’t already, go listen to Myquillyn’s For the Love conversation for more from this home guru, including the wisdom, humor, and perspective she brings to making a life - and a home - that actually feels like yours.

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Simplicity for the Rest of Us Course

Myquillyn and I actually created a whole course together, and honestly? We made it because life is LOUD.

Simplicity for the Rest of Us is all about creating more space, not just in your home, but in your HEAD, too.

We talk decluttering. Screen time. Choosing your yeses and nos. Clearing out the mental noise. And making your home feel a little more like a place of peace and a little less like a place that needs managing every damn minute.

And RIGHT NOW, it’s 65% OFF.

That means you can grab the whole course for just $25.

Twenty-five dollars for a little less clutter, a little more breathing room, and some actual tools for making your life feel lighter?

GET IT HERE. You deserve some space, sister.

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

Prayer has always felt formal to me, and that is not my natural genre. Since it was taught to me as a to-do item on a spiritual checklist, it has seemed perfunctory most of my life.

But that isn’t really at the root of my issue.

From childhood, it was drilled into me that God was “sovereign.” He was all-powerful, all-knowing. He was absolutely at the helm of the ship. Not a bird fell to the ground without his say-so. He created the world with a clear plan, and everything that happens is because He ordained it. Everything good, everything bad, everything. Nothing happens outside his authority. He rules over nature, nations, and human history. God has the power and control to do anything He chooses. When nothing makes sense, the correct response is “God is sovereign” and we let our minds suffer.

This was comforting for about half my life. When I was young and my privileged world was highly protected by race, family, geography, and money, the idea that God was in charge of absolutely everything dovetailed nicely into my lived experience. His sovereignty extended over such things as making the varsity softball team and getting into college. The stakes in my ecosystem were fairly low, so if it went this way or that, I was easily able to assign control to God without much cognitive dissonance.

As I got older, the world came into much starker view. God’s sovereignty wasn’t just the explanation for my minor disappointments but for tsunamis, war, violence, dead children, innocent men on death row, car wrecks, specific men placed in spiritual authority, presidents, singlehood and/or marriage. The poetry of Psalms was interpreted as literal: “Our God is in the heavens; He does all that He pleases” (Psalm 115:3). So with intention, He oversaw every manner of tragedy. Nothing was an accident. As John Piper said: “Justice is not the final and highest aim of God’s wisdom. The ultimate aim is that he be glorified for his mercy and his grace toward undeserving rebels.”

Then we were instructed to pray. I’ve been a part of prayers for sick and dying children, family members lost under the rubble of bombs, mercy for wrongfully imprisoned black men, communities terrorized by violent regimes, women desperate to carry a baby to term, children stuck in orphanages, the salvation of marriages.

We prayed and prayed. We prayed for God to move. We prayed for God to intervene. We prayed for God to heal. We begged him to overturn injustice and have mercy on the children. We prayed against violence and abuse. We prayed in great belief that he would and could. We claimed His authority and had faith the size of mustard seeds. We expected the mountains to move.

Sometimes they did. Usually they didn’t.

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We talked about saying the thing — and this was one of our most vulnerable conversations…

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Just a quick reminder that today is our August AWAKE Collective Live — and I really cannot wait to be with you all.

This month, we’re focusing on Saying the Thing and we’re going to talk about:

• The thing you haven’t said and what it has been costing you

• Why keeping the peace was never the same as being at peace

• What it looks like to say the true thing to yourself first

• The freedom that is actually waiting on the other side

We’ll meet at 12 PM CT (1 PM ET) right here on Substack:

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Just a quick reminder that tomorrow is our August AWAKE Collective Live — and I really cannot wait to be with you all. These conversations always end up feeling a little more honest, a little more vulnerable than we expect — and I have a feeling this one will, too.

This month, we’re focusing on Saying the Thing and we’re going to talk about:

• The thing you haven’t said and what it has been costing you

• Why keeping the peace was never the same as being at peace

• What it looks like to say the true thing to yourself first

• The freedom that is actually waiting on the other side

We’ll meet at 12 PM CT (1 PM ET) right here on Substack:

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But somehow you are taking that tiny born baby to college. They packed up half their room and loaded the car like they didn’t just spend eighteen years directly under your feet. Literally, how dare they. This child doesn’t even know how to write in cursive, and what, he is just going to live in another city all of a sudden? With no one in charge of him? This kid you had to drag over the high school finish line? What an insane system.

Impossibly, it’s move-in day.

The college campus is positively jammed with Moms in Charge™?. They are carting thousands of Walmart and Home Goods bags, maybe millions. The dads have tools and instructions and many competing ideas on parking and unloading. If it is the oldest child moving in, there are little brothers and sisters. If it is the youngest child, she might have one parent. There are around 15,000 more cars than parking spaces on the entirety of the campus.

Your child’s dorm room is most certainly on the eighth floor, and with two working elevators for the entire building and around **checks notes** half a million freshmen moving in at the same time, this means you’ll be hauling all their worldly belongings up eight flights of stairs. The good news is, it is 101 degrees and the dorm is very poorly air-conditioned.

If you are moving in a girl, you load in matching bedding and throw pillows, twinkle lights, a Keurig station, closet organizers, wall art, a rug, coordinating bathroom supplies, desk decor, curtains, live plants, cozy lamps, a velvet rolling desk chair, and a beautiful sign for the door. If you are moving in a boy, you load in his clothes and tack up one oversized flag from Amazon.

You will make no less than but possibly more than three Walmart runs with what appears to be the entire population of the city. You forgot a trash can. You forgot lightbulbs. The dad’s screwdriver was no match for the cinder block walls so you need a package of Command Adhesive Hooks. You started out the day deep in your feelings, but by 3:45 p.m., the only emotion is heat stroke and passive aggressive energy toward your spouse.

If you make eye contact, it’s over. Your big tall son or your shiny daughter will figure out that their home team is about to drive away, and everyone freezes. It’s okay. You’ve already said all the words. You’ve been saying them all year. Nothing to do but wrap that kid in your arms and thank God for every second you got to raise them. It’s time for this. They’re ready.

You will likely be a mess. My oldest dropped me at the Lubbock airport curb to fly home, and I had to go inside and put my head between my knees. (Three random college moms sat near each other on the plane, and our seatmates kept buying us wine and passing napkins.)

In D.C. with Sydney, we drove back to the hotel and I went straight to bed at 7:45 p.m. I called my brother and SIL and asked them to be waiting at my house with my six-month-old nephew Calvin because I needed a baby for my healing. I’ve sent all five kids off to their huge adventures — college, gap year program, Marines — and every time I woke up the next day with a cry headache.

But here is where you need to shine, Mamas. That kid might call on the first day, first week for sure, and she is wobbly. The bed is strange, the roommate is constantly six feet away, no one there knows or loves them, they might have made a mistake. The ship has left the harbor but isn’t sailing the wide open sea yet. Maybe they ought to just turn back to familiar land.

Do not over-respond to this bobble. This is going to pass. Do not get in your Suburban and race to back to rescue her. Don’t tell him to come home for his first weekend at college. Do not panic that your kid is a tragic hard luck case marked for despair.

It’s just weird for a minute! They’ve lived at home their entire lives! They haven’t found their friends or their groove yet. They are overwhelmed by how no one is making them do anything, and it’s awesome and a little bananas. Their professors are like “sink or swim, chumps” and that feels daunting after high school micromanagement. It’s just a lot all at once, and that is about the time they dial your number.

Steady, Mamas. Remind them of everything true: they are smart and interesting, capable and resourceful. They will find their people. Push them onward, don’t pull them backward. Let them manage a touch of discomfort; there is no other path to growth.

Don’t match their anxious energy, because they will read your response as confirmation of their incapacity. Stop stalking them on Find My Friends and sending constant texts. Don’t treat them like a helpless kindergartner. They are not as fragile as you think (or as they’re acting). Be a good listener but not an enabler; let them handle their own transition. They need to know they can. They need to know they will.

And they do. They find it. While you log your fifth sleepless night worrying about them, they’ll have already made best friends with their hallmates and stayed out dancing until 4:00 a.m. The road rises up to meet them. This is how it works, the growing up. That first step is a doozy for all parties involved. (To be clear: some of your kids were born for college life, and they will immediately go hog wild and you won’t hear from them for three weeks.)

Be excited for your amazing kid. They’re doing it. There they go, just like they are supposed to. And great news: college kids are so fun and adult kids are even better, so some of your best days are ahead. It’s not all over; it’s just different. Watching them grow up over the next few years is simply a wonder. They’ll impress you so much.

ANYWAY, my advice after drop-off is to come home to someone’s baby (any baby will do), a large glass of wine, a cozy blanket, and some Cheez-Its. This is the best therapy I can offer you. It will have to do the trick. You’ve done your job, dear ones. You finished this leg of the race. You’ve done a beautiful job with this treasure entrusted to you. What an honor. What a joy. Well done, sisters.

If you find yourself in this place, my Prepare Your Heart bundle can help. It will gently take you by the hand and steer you forward. It includes the wisdom from my therapist, Carissa Woodwyk, as well as real-life advice from Dr. Marisa Franco for figuring out the new horizons of adult friendships.

Prepare Your Heart

This and the Cheez-Its and maybe a comforting night show is all the best therapy I can offer you right now. It will have to do the trick.

This is a hard one, and I’m glad it is located in my private Substack community. I am picking through how to talk about this in a way that is honest but discreet. It is tricky calculus deciding what to bring out in front of the curtain and what to leave behind it. I so often wish we were just in the room together and could talk without the internet watching.

We are circling around the idea of “truths we haven’t said and yeses we gave away” this month. This shared female experience of swallowing our real feelings, burying what actually needs to be said, and managing everyone else’s dysfunction or irresponsibility is pervasive. Women overcompensating so others can underfunction is so common, it has become an internet meme…except it is not at all funny in real life.

We recently had a live discussion about this in The AWAKE Collective, and this is what a few of the women shared:

• “I gave all the yeses because I thought it would make me lovable.” — Lynda

• “So often, shame “forced” me to say YES.” — Tracy

• “I’ve learned that saying No to other stuff usually means saying Yes to myself.” — Penny

• “I feel GUILT for doing anything just for my own personal enjoyment… how do I stop?” — Jocelyn

• “I quit being capable. My family-of-origin has accepted it. Kind of.” — Virginia

• “I have nothing to prove. To myself, to others, to the outside world.” — RaeAnne

• “So tired of always being the fixer!” — Lori

I deeeeeeply identified with some of these. PARTICULARLY: “So tired of always being the fixer!” Lori, sing the song of your sisters. This hit so hard, I just sat quietly on our zoom for a minute trying to decide how much I wanted to share personally about that. But as the Collective would tell you: on our monthly live chats, I generally disclose the deepest, darkest thing actually going on in my life because our discussion is private and safe, and it is such a relief to speak the truth with other women who understand.

So with as much discretion as I can muster, let me discuss my fatigue at always being the fixer.

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🎤 Her secret dream?
Amena wants to be a background vocalist for Patti LaBelle. Yes, Patti LaBelle. 😂 She knows it’s a little ambitious, but she’s got the alto, the choir-girl credentials, and apparently a four-woman backup-singer vision ready to go.

🍑 What’s bringing her joy?
Summer peaches and heirloom tomatoes. And not those sad, pale grocery-store tomatoes in November, thank you very much. Amena will drive down the highway and buy tomatoes out of the back of someone’s truck in a paper bag, because apparently that’s how serious she is about seasonal produce.

📖 The bravest thing she’s done recently?
Putting her new book, Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl, out into the world. She says it’s the most herself she’s ever been in her work—and she even let her mom read it first, complete with a very specific warning about the language. 😂

🎥 Watch Just One More Thing above, then go listen to Amena’s For the Love conversation about leaving spaces that were hurting her, finding freedom, and what it means to finally get all the way free.

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I want to share a very small moment that recently happened at my own kitchen table.

Someone I love said something that landed wrong. Nothing cruel. Just one of those comments that lands right on an old bruise. And I felt the old machinery kick in. The smile. The let-it-go. The swallow.

I have swallowed a thousand of those. It is honestly one of my top spiritual gifts.

But I had just spent the whole month of July at Me Camp, reminding myself that it’s okay to say “yes” to my own life. And it turns out the “yes” and the truth are the same muscle.

So I said the thing. Kindly. A little shakily. Out loud.

“That hurt my feelings, and I don’t want to pretend it didn’t.”

The sky didn’t fall. The person didn’t leave. We actually got closer, because the real me showed up to the conversation.

Here is what I know now: the sentence I do not say does not disappear. It moves into my body, my mood, and the space between me and others, and it charges rent. All that silence I thought was keeping the peace was just quietly keeping the distance.

So this month in The AWAKE Collective, we are going to say the thing. To the people in our lives, yes. But first, and this is the harder one, to ourselves. Gently. In our own time. Nothing in this guide has to be said out loud today. But it can be named. And naming it is where it all starts.

Our August Reflection Guide walks gently alongside that conversation. And on Tuesday, August 25 at 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET, join me live right here on Substack for our next AWAKE Collective Live, where we will go even deeper.

What’s inside the August Reflection Guide:

• Journaling prompts around topics like The Thing You Haven’t Said, The Peace That Cost You, Saying It to Yourself First, and The Freedom on the Other Side

• Simple, low-demand practices to help you tell the truth in small, sustainable reps — including The One True Sentence, The Unsent Draft, and The Honest No

• A gentle 5-Day Reset — Free to Name, Free to Feel, Free to Say No, Free to Say It, Free to Stay In It

• Reflection exercises around honesty, the cost of silence, and the freedom waiting on the other side

• Monthly affirmations to return to when the urge to swallow the sentence shows up again

This is not about becoming brutal or burning everything down. It is the quiet practice of ending the lie of silence — first with yourself, and then, when you are ready, with the people who have earned your honesty.

Let this guide meet you where you are. And then join me live on Monday, August 25 at 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET right here on Substack for our next AWAKE Collective Live, where we will keep this conversation going together.

I am coming to you live from home this month, in my actual ordinary life. Which, it turns out, is exactly the point. Saying the quiet thing out loud, where you really live.

Thank you for being part of this community. Truly.

For paid subscribers here on Substack, I’ve included the full August Reflection Guide as part of The AWAKE Collective resources. If you’d like access to this guide—and our AWAKE Collective Live sessions—you can become an AWAKE Collective member by subscribing to my paid Substack below for $8 a month.

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This confessional content is uplinked to the idea of “loving something weird” but you can’t help it. You know what I mean? Not like “I love pizza” but more like “I love taxidermy.” That thing deemed too young for you, or too out there, or too off brand but here you are.

I love something surprising, and I didn’t go seeking it out. My algo heard Remy discussing this, because she creates some of this content with her Meta glasses, and once it hit my feed, I became instantly radicalized.

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⚖️ Her secret dream?
Believe it or not, she always dreamed of serving on the Supreme Court. The only problem? She never wanted to become a lawyer first. She still thinks she’d look pretty great in the robes, and honestly, I agree.

🎨 What’s bringing her joy?
Watercolor painting. A few years ago she picked up a paintbrush, joined a weekly painting circle, and discovered a hobby she genuinely loves. She’ll be the first to tell you she’s not trying to be perfect; she just enjoys creating.

🚗 The bravest thing she’s done recently?
Buying the convertible she’d dreamed about for years. For two of the most frugal people on the planet (my parents!), it was a huge leap. Now she drives it with a smile every single day. And yes, I bought her Ray-Bans to complete the look.

🎥 Watch the bonus clip above, and if you haven’t already, check out last week’s For the Love episode featuring my mom. We talk about family, faith, growing up, and the stories that shaped us. It’s a conversation I’ll treasure forever.

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I am terrible at what I am terrible at. Without question, what I despise most about my patterns is conflict avoidance. It borders on pathological. It freezes me and robs me of sleep. Whatever conversation is needed grows into an outsized catastrophe in my mind. I have a disproportionate and unreasonable sense of loyalty, and staff changes feel like failure. I am MOST worried about hurting someone’s feelings and being experienced as a bitch. So instead, I am experienced as the absolute bottleneck in the business and the unfortunate rock in the river everyone else has to figure out how to flow around.

(This *might* have been a contributor to the breakdown of my marriage, but THAT IS A DIFFERENT ESSAY, BRENDA.)

A few years ago, it was very apparent that my publishing representative relationship was past its expiration date. Beyond past. I had become what the linguistic folks would call a thorn in everyone’s flesh. We were mismatched. We started together in the center of the evangelical bullseye, but I barreled through every conceivable boundary and became the reason they had staff meetings. I was the PR crisis. I was also a cash cow, thus my clienthood remained secured, if not enjoyed.

After making everyone cataclysmic over the gays, my publisher at the time suggested a drastic reduction in the signed, locked and loaded two-book contract I’d already written one book for, and my representative agreed and urged me to comply (when I told my current agent this story, she lost consciousness). Thus I made profoundly little money on the second book I wrote for them, because I fulfilled my side of the bargain even though they didn’t.

What I am trying to tell you is that this relationship had deteriorated, good reader. What I will also admit is that my friends, colleagues, and mentors advised me to bring a respectful, mature end to this working relationship…four years before I did. FOUR YEARS. Four years of feeling unwanted and problematic. Four years of endless queries “can you say this differently” and “would you be willing to soften this paragraph.” Four years of being out of step with the entire catalog and sales team and editorial staff knowing my representative was on their side, not mine. Four years of panic before every call and meeting.

And let me be fair: four years of a conservative agency and industry trying to figure out what to do with an author who had spiritually evolved right out of their established ecosystem, but who was unfortunately a bestseller so whatareyougonnado, amirite?

It took me three years of income loss, relational turmoil, and anxiety, then AN ADDITIONAL year of business coaching where we discussed this ad nauseum for twelve straight months (may God bless you, Mike) before I finally sent a kindhearted but clear certified letter ending our business relationship. And after years of dread about initiating this necessary ending, the email I got back said: “We had a good run.” The rest of the handoff went fairly gently. I completely catastrophized a result that didn’t even happen.

I wasted four years in conflict avoidance that cost so much.

It is painful to think how I might have thrived had I mustered the courage to broach this hard conversation when it was actually due. Also, I would have caused a lot less grief: to them, to the publisher, to my business team trying to manage a writer still in Christian publishing but a community leader using her bullhorn for social justice. Everything was a mess. Because I was unwilling to have ONE HARD CONVERSATION, I created endless headaches for my colleagues and endless anxiety for myself.

“Your silence will not protect you.” — Audre Lorde

I propose that silence is not better than necessary confrontation or change. It is worse. Silence is covering something up, and cover ups have never worked. Silence is a substitute for courage, for truth. And like I’ve said, truth is still true whether we face it or not. True shit wreaks havoc every day - relationally, emotionally, physically, psychologically - so not admitting it doesn’t make it less true. It just makes it last longer.

None of this will make sense to my healthy Enneagram 8s who race into conflict like their favorite meadow strewn with wildflowers, but for the rest of us who are garbage at this, may I give you some sentence starters? Some mental prompts if you need a little help moving into necessary engagement?

• What is the conversation you’ve rehearsed for years and never had?

• What friendship needs one honest sentence to survive, or to end?

• What apology do you owe, or the one you’re still waiting for?

• What’s the one true sentence you’d say to the person you’re thinking of? The truest sentence?

• What has the silence cost? In you, and in the space between you and someone else?

• What are you afraid will happen if you said it?

• Want to write this out? “The thing I never said to ___ is ___.” Start there and don’t stop for a page.

• Write the conversation you keep having in your head but never out loud.

• Have you said a hard, true thing to someone and had it go well? What did that teach you that you’ve forgotten?

I can tell you from experience (manyyyyyy experiences) that these moments when handled with maturity and honesty surprise me nearly every time. Because guess what? Usually that person also knows something is wrong; they are having their own experience of it on the other side. Also, we are generally bad at hiding our true feelings, so when we are too cowardly to say them out loud, they come out sideways, and everyone loves a passive aggressive person!

I can also tell you from experience that moving out of a mismatched relationship or environment, or improving it with honesty, is the super highway into flourishing like you might not believe. To return to my personal example, I published Awake with an entirely new publishing team in the general market, and I basically haven’t stopped blabbering about it since. It had been so long since I felt understood and welcomed, where my ideologies were not “managed” but embraced, I simply couldn’t believe my experience. I struck solid gold.

The only thing keeping me from that space was me. I was the roadblock, the bottleneck, the anxious rock in the river. Beloveds, you may not even be able to imagine what that one true sentence, that one true conversation can do for your life. The short tunnel of chaos you are envisioning, which may or may not be as disastrous as you think, is worth the wide open space on the other side.

Can you trust the future version of you to try? Can you do this one brave thing for her? She is waiting for you. Go to her.

✨ A Secret Dream
Tyler dreams of bringing back the kind of music industry where artists could build real communities, people bought albums, and live music felt personal again. (And yes... he’d love to get Brooke & the Bluff back together while he’s at it.)

💛 What’s Bringing Him Joy Right Now
For Tyler, joy is Sunday nights with family. Watching Celebrity Jeopardy! with his niece and nephew, Zoe and Declan, has become one of his favorite traditions. Seeing the next generation’s curiosity, intelligence, and hope reminds him that maybe we’re going to be okay after all.

❤️ The Bravest Thing He’s Done Recently
Tyler’s answer is simple and incredibly moving: getting up every day. As he continues chemotherapy, he shares how hard it can be to face each day—and how choosing to keep going, keep showing up, and keep believing there’s something worth fighting for has become the bravest thing he’s can do. It’s a beautiful reminder that sometimes courage looks less like grand gestures and more like taking the next step.

🎙️ In The Full Episode...
We have one of our most personal conversations yet, recorded just hours after one of Tyler’s chemotherapy treatments. Together, we talk about cancer, healing, choosing your body, making thoughtful decisions in hard seasons, and what it means to keep saying “yes” to life—even when everything has changed.

🎥 Watch the Just One More Thing bonus above, then check out Tyler’s full episode wherever you listen to podcasts.

Listen to the full podcast

Vibes were high.

We went on to have a spectacular trip, of course. My family is nothing if not a good time. The nephews tore up the slopes. My kids basically never came in until the lifts were closed. I skied with my bigs because I’ve still got it. Huge family meals every night. Tyler made us laugh endlessly. Games and cards and VR headsets. Favorite movies with the fireplace crackling.

Then we documented the long drive home with the same enthusiasm.

Just kidding. There are zero pics of the trip back. In my photo album, we were in New Mexico literally skiing, then the next picture was me in my Texas kitchen holding ice cream (current me has no idea why I took that). The returning vibes were less “here we go!” and more “let’s just get the hell home.”

I’ve always had a theory about re-entry, and that theory is that it sucks. The good times are over, and it’s back to breadwinning, bills, and bullshit. It is a feast or famine mentality that only delivers pure delight outside the parameters of normal life. We suspend ordinary responsibilities and get to indulge in play and connection. These joys are located somewhere else, and when we get back home, they evaporate. It was fun while it lasted, but now I guess I’ll log into this Zoom meeting.

I’ve been reevaluating my theory as I head home from Me Camp in a few days. I’m reworking the thesis. If “the good life” only exists away from the one we live every day, that is a very flawed premise. I’m not trying to be unrealistic, because obviously vacations or sabbaticals or adventures take us outside our normal rhythms, but I find myself asking what good parts can get on the plane and fly home with me. What did I learn in July that I want to remain in October? What Me Camp rituals can survive the calendar and laundry back home?

Well, let me first identify the best trends. I obviously cannot wake up to a lake view at home, so some of the experience won’t transfer. Parts of every vacation or adventure won’t transfer, but that doesn’t mean nothing will. If I can’t take back 70-degree summer weather, what can I bring?

This exercise took me a minute, but I found some Me Camp principles that could transfer if I took them seriously in Texas:

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When you tell a first-grader at Vacation Bible School that if they want to go to heaven instead of hell they should repeat a prayer, that six-year-old is going to pray that prayer so fast. When you tell a third-grade Sunday School class to bring their missions offering or else the missionaries will have to come home and all the rural Chinese people will go to hell, she will bring her quarters. When you tell an eighth-grader that God is logging her every thought and she’ll account for them one day standing in front of him, she’ll become terrified of this watching God keeping a record of her ordinary humanity.

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First things first, I took you on a little tour of Me Camp, lakeside in Orillia, Ontario. Th…

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In just a few hours, we’ll gather for our next AWAKE Collective Live — and I’m really looking forward to being together!

I am coming to you live from Me Camp this month. A little lake in Orillia, Ontario. The water is right there and the light is long and I have been thinking about what I want to say to you all week.

These conversations always end up feeling a little more honest, a little more human than we expect. I have a feeling this one will too.

We’ll meet at 12 PM Central (1 PM Eastern) right here on Substack:

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Then I birthed a sunny free-spirit who looks just like me but has a totally different story arc. She is absolutely a Type B, Enneagram 7. Time is a construct. Life is made to be lived! Capitalism will not define her! In high school when asked about a career path, she said, “A meadow dweller? A berry picker?” (Then she had the nerve to graduate at the top of her class.) She once told me she wished God had made her a turtle so she could “turn her face to the sun and have peace.” I’m just saying this is who she is.

I sent her this meme.

She is 26 now, and it is inspiring and fascinating to watch her build her life exactly to the beat of her internal drum. She is in possession of extraordinary gifts, and she builds her work life with one agenda: Balance income, flexibility, and meaningful work so she can live a meaningful life. She has traveled the world, lives a suuuuper connected life with her friends, and stays active in the practices that make her feel alive.

“Mom, I just don’t have enough time for everything.”

“Because of your hobbies?”

“They are vital!”

She is actively committed to the following on a weekly basis: pottery class, meditation practice (Sydney and a room of senior hippies), yoga, rock climbing, two book clubs, the daily NYT crossword, a janky basketball league, and a jankier softball league she and her friends made up. This isn’t even accounting for her packed social life which includes roller derby, concerts, live music, ACL, SXSW, yard parties, river days, party barges, dinner parties, trash show binge nights, and weekend brunches. Her IG caption at the start of June said: “This summer I’m going to perfect my dive, read lots of First Light Staff picks, and learn how to ride my bike with no hands.”

I birthed a creative dreamer fairy.

While I have certainly developed an affair with Gorgeous Big Wonderful Life™️in the ensuing years, I love watching a daughter set her North Star to “joy” in her 20s. She understands something about life most of us don’t start clocking until our 50s and beyond:

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July has a different energy than the rest of the year. The light goes long. The pace slows down. And if you let it, this month has a way of asking you a question you have been avoiding.

What do you actually want?

Not what you want for everyone else. Not what looks reasonable on paper. What you want for you.

So, this month, inside The AWAKE Collective, we’re talking about The Sacred Yes. The one you say to your own life first. The joy you stop saving for someday. The rest you take before you have earned it. The yes that — it turns out — is what finally lets the whole table fill.

Our July Reflection Guide was created to walk gently alongside that conversation. And on Wednesday, July 15, at 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET, I'm going live from Me Camp to go even deeper.

What’s inside the July Reflection Guide:

• Journaling prompts around the yes you owe yourself, unproductive joy, letting the table fill, and what you stopped earning

• Simple, low-demand practices to help you say yes to yourself on a regular Tuesday

• A gentle 5-day reset: Free to Want, Free to Rest, Free to Receive, Free to Play, Free to Stay

• Reflection exercises around joy, rest, receiving, and the worth you stopped auditioning for

• Monthly affirmations to return to when guilt shows up and tries to get a vote

This is not a glow-up or a reinvention. It is the slow practice of saying yes to what is already yours, and learning that joy claimed on purpose is its own kind of holy.

Let this guide meet you where you are — and then join me live on Wednesday, July 15 at 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET right here on Substack for our next AWAKE Collective Live, where we will keep this conversation going together.

I am coming to you live from Me Camp this month in Orillia, Ontario. I think you are going to love it.

Thank you for being part of this community. Truly.

For paid subscribers here on Substack, I’ve included the full July Reflection Guide as part of The AWAKE Collective resources. If you’d like access to this guide—and our AWAKE Collective Live sessions—you can become an AWAKE Collective member by subscribing to my paid Substack below for $8 a month.

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