I have opinions. This will hopefully not be a rant, but let’s see.

I use AI to help me with my writing.

That one sentence, if left without strikethrough, might get me mobbed.

The strikethrough statement is true in one sense, but there are questions that must be answered.

What part of my writing do I use it for?

I use Claude to help with marketing copy and construction.

I use Claude for proofing my Substack posts.

I am comma and semicolon challenged. I need help. I don’t mind paying money to have my editor find and fix these and other errors in my novels, but for a Substack post? I’m happy Claude can proof these for me. And now, it will show that AI has touched my work. Yay! Absolute bullshit if you ask me.

Who should I tell?

If I ever used it generatively, like for a presentation, or something that wasn’t expected to be creative writing, I would disclose this.

I use it now for marketing copy because I SUCK at that. If I’m going to be an Indie author who has to do every component of the business myself, I’m using AI to help do the things I’m not good at to make better use of my time. Consider this disclosure.

What type of writing should be subject to disclosure?

I think disclosure should be voluntary, AND I feel it is disingenuous to claim writing is yours when it’s not. So, I personally would disclose how and if I used it. I think if you are honest about whether you use AI or not and the writing is good, ultimately, no one will care.

Who sets the rules for the new paradigm addressing those questions?

Writers should. Vigorously.

The internet (social media mostly) has taken the stance that AI use in any form for writing or for its periphery (marketing, newsletters, etc.) is BAD and no writers should use AI for anything.

What?

Are you hearing yourselves? So, we should go back to typewriters, print proofs mailed through USPS, hand written copy, and red-ink line editing?

Everything we’ve used since computers became ubiquitous—word processors, spell check, Excel—runs on a primitive form of AI.

Substack has recently instituted a button to press for definitive proclamations as to whether a writer used AI or not. The only problem is that these programs suck. I disable it, so you won’t be able to put my work through AI to determine if it was produced by AI. Who gave a reader more rights to do something with my work than me? One serious allegation (allegation!) that I use AI to write my fiction could absolutely kill my career. Again, absolute bullshit.

My stance is that writers should build an AI-use taxonomy before outsiders—the social media and the internet judges—impose a cruder, more punitive one: All vs None.

These black and white guardrails are already being applied on many social and writing platforms and it is frightening in its intensity. Writers are being vilified if they use AI in any way, shape, or form, even if some rando on the internet makes the claim and it isn’t true.

I tried working up a nomenclature, a taxonomy for AI use so that it isn’t just ALL or NONE, but it got complicated and I don’t care that much, so I gave up.

Yes, I use it sometimes for non-story things. No, I do not use it to write my stories, novels, essays. There. Are we all happy now? See? No one cares.

But in the interest of publishing something that I can copy and paste for future AI disclaimers:

I do not use AI for my novels. I have a very real, very talented editor.

We go through multiple rounds of edits and proofing, working as a team to get the manuscript as clean as possible.

Did I cheat and put small parts of my novel into Claude just to see what it would say? Yes. Yes, I did. It was very kind and said nice things. Did I use any of its criticisms? No. No, I did not.

I’m curious. That’s all.

I write everything myself, but Claude is like the professor who red-circles my errors. I still manually fix them, and sometimes I disagree and don’t fix them. AI is not perfect yet. It speeds up tedious tasks that I know how to do.

Engineers know how to hand-calculate equations, but I bet they let the computer do most of the work for efficiency’s sake. I use Claude for those efficiency tasks.

EXAMPLE of how I use Claude:

I asked it to evaluate this essay when the logic was tangly, and here is what it helped me do:

First pass: It caught a subject-verb slip I’d missed, flagged a tangled sentence I’d have kept reading past, and pointed out that the taxonomy I built in the opening never gets applied where I promised it would. That’s not a grammar note—that’s an argument I hadn’t finished—and it’s exactly the kind of thing a second pass, human or AI, is for. Then I just deleted the whole taxonomy thing because: bored.

Cool information from Claude. I still have to fix the essay myself.

A lot of this comes down to expectations.

If I wrote a love story that doesn’t end in a happily-ever-after, calling it a love story tells the reader that it’s not a guaranteed happy ending. If I call it a romance (I could do that), the reader who is expecting a happy ending (implied by the genre of romance for those of you who do not know this) will be pissed when I’ve promised them something and I haven’t delivered. I will suffer the consequences via bad reviews, etc.

Therefore, it behooves me to categorize my writing as honestly, accurately, and intentionally as possible. These categories give the shelvers (library, bookstore, Amazon) an idea of where the book should live, the neighborhood it should occupy.

I’m not a philosopher—I’m a novelist. I don’t have all the answers for how this should go—the AI/human interface.

But I do know that indie publishing is a hard job. Please let writers use the tools they need to otherwise produce, market, and support their work without conflating use of AI for production, marketing, and support with meaning that the writer uses it for everything. This is a stupid assumption and it is a logical fallacy. Just stop it. (I’m not addressing this to any of my very kind readers. It’s an open address to the internet.)

I will use AI in marketing. Absolutely. I don’t have a degree in marketing, never studied it, and frankly don’t know what I’m doing, but no one else can do it for me, unless I pay them lots of money, which I am disinclined to do.

I work up a post in Canva (partly AI but somehow acceptable), and then ask Claude to write a caption and hashtags. Can I do it myself? Sure. I suck at it, but I can do it. Is it more efficient to have Claude’s help? Yes.

I will die on this hill.

No one is going to tell me that I cannot use Claude in a component of publishing that isn’t writing. That’s complete gatekeeping and I won’t have it.

So yes, I use Claude in the peripheral-to-writing arena to help me do things I already know how to do, but faster-er.

In twenty years (hopefully sooner) this will all be hashed out and normal. But I can see it going sideways if we writers don’t, as a group, make the guidelines ourselves.

What do you think? Does Assistive AI need the same level of disclosure as Generative AI? This is one area where one opinion doesn’t suffice. Although I want writers to make the guidelines, there needs to be a reader/writer/publisher conversation, with input from all sides. The conversation is important.

Not too much of a rant, right?

Peace,

Jo

More relics today—the items that were symbolic, comforting, and accurate to the time period of 1936 to 1947.

Relics—Letter Box, Fountain Pen, Typewriter

The relics that remain from writing—the pen, the typewriter, and 382 letters in a long cardboard box—are the ones that speak the loudest. They claim agency over the words, assuring me the words would not exist without them.

Fair.

Today, most of us are always removed from the act that was so intimate to Mimi and Maurice, the thing that made them feel like they were sharing souls across the miles.

I’m talking about writing longhand. I use it now for lists, and quick notes, and when I write poetry, first drafts are always longhand due to the connective tissue it places between my desire and the words.

We can barely imagine what it was like to write a letter, mail it, and wait for a reply. It would feel like agony now, and perhaps it felt like agony then too, but we have options that they did not.

Mimi worked in an insurance office and likely used a typewriter something like the one above. To Maurice, she wrote longhand. Only three letters in the box are written in Mimi’s hand, ones she never sent. The rest are Maurice. Romantic, funny, observant, pragmatic. Mimi’s were taken by the Nazis.

When I was doing research for this story, I read every letter. I estimate they totaled over 400,000 words. War and Peace is 560,000 words for comparison. Later research revealed Maurice’s work papers from his time in Belgian Congo. He wrote articles about the natives, including how they made beer and how slavery was abolished there. His papers are in a Belgian museum and I asked the curator to send them to me. I read most of those too. He didn’t mention Mimi in any of them, which is what I was looking for, but a good colonial wouldn’t have mixed work and personal papers.

It is still amazing to me that his letters were kept, and safeguarded, and came to me through many hands. They found someone who was fascinated enough to spend 10 years working out what went into the novel, and what had to be left out. I’m glad they survived.

Blessings,

Jo

Last week, I mentioned that I’d be talking about the relics in the book, the items that were symbolic, comforting, and accurate to the time period of 1936 to 1947.

Relics—Sea Glass

Sea glass also features in the story, but this one I made up completely. While it’s entirely possible that Mimi could have collected sea glass in San Francisco, particularly in the years after the earthquake, there wasn’t any mention of it in the letters. But her family’s story tells you why I felt safe inventing it.

Her family was displaced, meaning their store, with an apartment above it, burned during the fires that swept San Francisco after the Great Quake of 1906. Mimi was seven years old. I wrote a brief backstory of their quake experience and escape in Father’s wagon, but that experience must have shaped her worldview: things were transient, and even place could change shape.

After the quake and fire, Mimi, her father, mother, and sister were all refugees in the hills of San Francisco until they could reunite with extended family and get their footing again.

The sea glass would have been a family activity. Going to the beach and collecting things that cost nothing was something families did then. I remember my grandmother, a contemporary of Mimi, talking about picking flowers, or finding shells on the beach in Santa Barbara where she lived. So, I attached this to Mimi and it didn’t seem too much of a stretch.

I think relics are an opportunity to compare how we live now to how people lived in the early 20th century. They didn’t have much, even if they were solidly middle class. There were few storage units if any. What they loved, they kept with them. Maybe that’s why I’m fascinated with antiques. Someone loved them if they made it to today in good condition.

The sea glass means something. It isn’t inert. But it takes a whole novel to show it.

Blessings,

Jo

Hi All. I wrote another book. A novel—literary historical fiction set in San Francisco, Belgium, and Belgian Congo from 1936 to 1947.

I need to put out Substack Posts, Substack Notes, Instagrams, and Pinterest pins so that the internet knows Mimi and Maurice exists and so that you all can tell everyone you know about it. I do not understand this ick I feel about this thing called marketing.

I’m very proud of the book, but I prefer for people to just magically find my work and love it. One method of magical finding does exist, and that’s word of mouth. To any of you who recommended my first book, Margaret of Thibodaux, thank you and you’ve been very effective.

For Mimi and Maurice, I have a series on Instagram about the relics related to the story. The rose petals, the sea glass, the letter box, etc. So those items and the truths behind them will be the main topics of these next few weeks.

Relics—Rose Petals

Rose petals figure prominently in the story as a placeholder, a metaphor, and a touchstone for the both of them. They are temporal markers that might seem cliché all on their own, but rose petals have been symbolic for centuries, and folks actually kept them, sent them, honored them as representations of love.

In the story, Mimi steals rose petals from a neighbor. She has her own small backyard with her own roses, but the neighbor’s roses have something hers do not.

The real Mimi had a large Chinese fish urn filled to the brim with dried rose petals. This is true. I decided she’d stolen them and kept them as symbols of her thoughts of Maurice.

This is largely how fiction works. You find something true, and then make the why of it up. I held in my hand the petals she touched. I made them mean something that may or may not have been exactly what they meant to her, but it feels right.

I didn’t go into any of the woo connections in the book or in any of the marketing because I didn’t want to insert myself into their story, to make it about me. The woo parts of how the novel came about will only live here in Substack Posts.

So, in talking to Mimi, she told me she picked a rose petal every time she thought of him and had to settle on three petals a day, one for morning, noon, and night, or a whole rose bush would be required as a keepsake.

I kind of made it up. I extended it, wove it through the story. I checked with both of them routinely to make sure that how I wrote their story was close to truth, realistic, acceptable. Not often do authors get to check with spirit editors. It’s rather handy.

Blessings,

Jo

As I count down to my book publish date, September 8, 2026, I am following conventional wisdom to have a presence on social media to attract readers. Social media for me is Substack and Instagram.

Instead of only book content, which starts to bore even me, I decided to have a few other themes, that still show my personality as a writer, what I think about, how I work, or mostly, how I see the world.

It’s been surprisingly fun!

Make a few templates on Canva. Check.

Get a few good ideas. Check.

Good to go. So . . . go!

If you don’t follow me on Instagram, I invite you to because you never know what is gonna happen. It’s quiet there, no screaming, but there is sarcasm, sunsets, and pithy conversation.

Jo's Instagram

I only have 428 followers so it’s not like I’m setting the book world on fire there, but the two series I’ve settled on (besides the book stuff—you can expect that) are:

5 Seconds of Sunset and Conversations With My Son.

I chose the 5 Seconds of Sunset because it’s easy—a 5 second film of the beauty that greets us every evening. I didn’t choose sunrise because, well, that happens early.

Conversations With My Son is just that. Mostly from text messages. He’s funnier than I am. It’s also a great depiction of how I view and react to the world.

I’m pretty happy with the Mimi and Maurice content too, giving some insight into their world, and showing some of the relics in their story. There’s even a few stories that didn’t make it into the book. Keeping it interesting, hopefully.

Today was supposed to be a post I have ready to go about writers and AI, but there is currently a big brou-ha-ha regarding AI on Substack, so I’ve delayed it for when no one is paying any attention to AI. Maybe to be released in 2040.

I’m not one to be intentionally controversial, but this kerfuffle about AI on Substack has to do with the fact that Substack enabled an AI detector by default on all posts. I have to turn it off if I don’t want readers running an AI scan on my work.

I’ll tell you if I use AI. In the post I mentioned that I haven’t published yet, I go in to depth about it. But those detectors are crap and I’m turning them off for my posts.

Not because I’m hiding anything. Not because I don’t want my readers to know whether I use AI or not, I will tell you—no AI used in this post.

But if the detector says my work is AI, my writer reputation can be irreparably damaged. If the detectors were good, I’d say sure. They aren’t. So if you want to scan my work, you will come up against a notice that it’s not available.

Just going for disclosure.

Instagram has a lot of AI use by me. I use Canva, I ask my AI to help with hashtags and captions because I’m not a marketing genius. I personally have no problem telling readers how and when I use it.

But I’ll be damned if a type of program that declared Frankenstein was 100% AI will be allowed to touch my work, at least until it spends some time in its room and thinks about its choices.

Peace,

Jo

An essay from a dear reader’s question: Can I read the Akashic Records? Can I go other places in my thoughts and communicate with others in the spirit world?

I don’t remember how I found the Akashics or how I realized that they were a thing. It must have been when I was just learning to communicate mediumistically that I read about the Akashic Records somewhere.

I did a meditation from YouTube that said you could enter the Akashic Records, so I tried it and found it to be the best way for me to receive information. It’s all there. Everything. YouTube videos might be the easiest way to find a method of access that works for you.

Then, I learned more about it, studying with Teri Uktena. Her Akashic Reading Podcast is phenomenal and lets you learn in 15-minute bites of information.

The Akashics are an energy repository for everything that has ever existed or ever will exist. They are real, non-physical places. And yes, anyone can go there.

The Akashic Records look like a library. But they do not look like a library because that is what we would understand. We built libraries because that is how existence catalogs information, and we built them very much how they are in the Records. Huh. Especially the pretty libraries.

Here you will find communication and information, directly from the source.

We actually all go there during sleep, but not every night. I can see you all milling about in the Temple of Life.

The Akashics are known primarily for the section, the building, that is the Akashic Records (the Library), but there are many places in the Akashic city to visit besides just the library.

Learning to get into The Akashics is easy and I always point people to my teacher, Teri Uktena. I don’t formally teach this—not because it’s complicated, but because she’s already the best teacher I know.

So here’s a short set of directions to get there:

• Close your eyes, get into a comfortable position. Then imagine yourself walking down a hallway. Hear your footsteps, notice the hallway specifics.

• At the end of the hallway is a door. Go through it. Pay attention to where you end up.

• After just noticing where you are for a minute or so, turn to your right and you should see another large door. Go through this door as well.

• That’s it. You are in the Akashics. You might be in a room, or a field, or a temple, or a library. When you first go there it’s like teleporting and the end result can be a bit random. But just go with it and start exploring. If you don’t see anything, that’s fine. Just use your imagination to perceive what is around you.

• It’s a safe place. Talk to anyone near you and they will point you to where you want to go.

• It’s actually very much like video games where you go into a level and just look around, so if you have trouble, go with this idea.

• Obviously, it is more complicated if you want to do something in particular like read a Soul Book, but this is how to get there. It’s all around us. We don’t really “go” anywhere.

And now the tour:

Akashic Records—it looks like a library, for the reason I mentioned, with stacks larger than you can imagine. You can wander the stacks yourself, but I suggest asking a librarian to help you. I call my librarian Madame Librarian and she looks like Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons.

You can read your own Soul Book, and with permission from that soul, read others. It would be unethical for me to ask for Princess Diana’s book. The librarians would give it to me, but I have no reason to be poking around in there. It would likely give me just bright white when I opened the pages. CAN you read anything you want? Yes. SHOULD you? No.

It’s not that the information is hidden from you. It’s that it’s none of your business. You’ll know anything you want to know when you go back to spirit, so most times, it’s a hint to just be patient.

I like getting information from the books because they are less biased than spirit. Spirit retains personality and opinion. Books are a bit more factual. Besides your own Soul Book—a fascinating topic all by itself—there are books on things that have “being-ness.” Mt. Everest has a book. The White House has a book. Careers have books—doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher.

Your house has a book. Buildings are very opinionated and they don’t have the human filter. They will tell you exactly what they like, what they don’t like, and whether someone is bothering them. It’s pretty remarkable.

Temple of Life—an interactive museum where you can ask questions and/or just explore. There are methods to get information rapidly, but museum pondering works too, just in a different way. This exploration needs a little structure, so I usually have you choose right or left and a number. Then we go to the “nooks” on the left or right hallway, and however many down from the great room. You experience things here. You do not read information in a book. For example, do you have money issues? If you go to the Temple of Life with a question about it in mind, the nook you chose will give you visual, auditory, and tactile information as to why you have these issues. As I said, it gets complicated.

The Field—a landscape where you can interact “outside” or journey to a mentor. This is similar in appearance for most people and I don’t want to describe it so that you don’t expect to find it a certain way. There are grasses and rivers and it is beautiful. When I used to do teaching in the Akashics, most people would describe a very similar landscape and be gobsmacked that they all saw the same thing without me telling them what to find. That’s because they are real, non-physical places.

Your Akashic Room—we each have a room, specifically for us, that no one can enter without permission. Mine has a very girly bed to the left, with a lace coverlet and frilly stuff. Not me in this life, but I do like to read in bed. As you get more skilled in the Akashics, you can notice things in your room and they always mean something. My spirit animal, Teddy, who is a grizzly bear (I gave him such a unique name, I know), lives in my room and accompanies me on my explorations. You can meet your guides here too.

The Planning Room—a big, IMAX theater-like setup where you join your guides and teachers to plan your next life. It’s got a large screen for you to try out your choices and then you can make revisions on a board that looks like a war planning map, complete with wheres, whens, and whos that will populate your next life.

You can actually watch/experience why you set up certain things for your current life. This provides understanding. Sometimes it shows that something wasn’t part of the plan and was accidental due to outside or other-person forces.

This can cover sensitive ground. The life setup is complex, but not complete. Others in your life who made plans don’t always act accordingly, or accidents happen to them too.

Getting bits of this information is where the Woo community has gotten skewed on the idea that you chose your life. Yes, you do. But there are caveats. Because you make some life choices, it does not mean that everything that happens to you is about you. Sometimes you accept pain and suffering, or not reaching goals, because another soul, who you love, wants to experience something that will ultimately cause you pain.

For a very sensitive example, if a child dies, it is absolutely indefensible to tell a parent that they chose this. Most likely, they allowed it at some level, because their child’s soul wanted to experience something. And, there are accidents. I don’t know what you’ve chosen, what you’ve accepted, and what is accident until I do a thorough look at this part of your existence—the setup for a life. So it kills me that there are people in the Woo community who state that we choose everything. They are misinformed.

Choosing something and allowing it because you are tangled with other souls feels different. Accidents feel even more different. People generally feel one versus the other, especially when it comes to loved ones. Be kind.

When you are in The Akashics, you can communicate with anyone. There is a mentor outside the Akashic City (many, actually) who you can visit. You go through your room, out into the Field, up a hill on your left, and into the forest to find Grandma. She is one of my favorites and she is who Jezebel in Margaret of Thibodaux is based on—an actual presence in the Akashics.

It’s been told through the ages that only special people can go there, or that you can ask for someone in the Records to read Soul Books for you. Not true. One of the first classes I took was how to mediumistically ask for a guide to tell me what was in the book. Nope. No gatekeeping. You can do it yourself, but it takes a bit of practice. Things there may also appear dream-like and nebulous at first. Stick with it if you want to get your own information.

Part of my self-confidence is from knowing I can get guidance and answers at any time. I am sure of myself because of this. It’s a lovely feeling and a fantastic way to go through life.

But I don’t run there the minute something goes wrong. I’m very intentional about trying to human through things, because that’s why I’m here. To exist as a human.

I stopped doing Akashic readings for a few reasons. First, it takes a long time, usually 90 minutes or two hours. Second, many of my clients wanted answers not for understanding, but to “fix” something. The Akashics can be used for this, sure, but part of being human is figuring it out, not getting answers. Clients were often bemused when I showed them patterns of behavior, 20 possible outcomes, what would happen if they made one of three decisions. They expected a clear answer, and that’s not how it works.

How it works is that I can give you examples of repeated patterns and why your soul is exploring that, but I can’t tell you a definitive solution. You do that. You have free will. It is the most astounding gift humanity was given, and we often don’t use it, realize it, or treasure it.

Now, go forth and find this amazing place.

Peace,

Jo

When I am doing a reading and we are in the Akashic Library (I bring you along), I touch your Soul Book as it lies on my conference table to connect with you. Often, you will feel a chill because I’m touching a portion of your soul.

I didn’t know why that happened during readings until I really understood the idea that our souls aren’t just a little light that sits inside us telling us what to do. It’s a real, non-physical thing, and I can perceive mine and yours. I have to concentrate to do it. I don’t walk around looking at your soul, and I ask for express permission to do so.

I have, on occasion, looked with this perception at a crowd of people and found, to my delight, that everyone I saw had a bright, sun-like orb above their heads. This isn’t their soul directly, but a representation. We are all the same. Our human idea that souls can be damaged isn’t really the truth of it. Humans are damaged, extensively, over and over again, but the soul is eternal and perfect. That’s who you are.

The “soul damage” that is talked about in Woo circles is damage in the way that after intense exercise, you need to rest and replenish. After a difficult life, a soul can enter what I call “Healing” and stay there for however long it needs to. It is still essentially perfect, just resting, healing, replenishing.

Your body is actually inside your soul, not the other way around, and you only bring 25% to 75% of it with you into any particular incarnation. The remainder still resides in the Akashics, and about 10% of it is your Soul Book.

These numbers are estimates and it frankly doesn’t matter what the split is. Your soul does this based on need. It is not broken, not fractured, not lost. It is the essence of your soul to be able to be overarching.

One way for me to tell if your soul has had many incarnations vs fewer is to perceive how much of your soul accompanies this particular body you inhabit. Humans with less soul in this incarnation are usually more skilled (not advanced—terrible word for how this all works), not less.

When you are a newbie as a human, more soul comes in with you. Here’s an interesting take: some humans who don’t human very well—and some of us refer to them as soul-less—actually seem less human to our perception precisely because they have a greater amount of soul with them.

I’m not talking evil. I don’t explain or acknowledge evil as it relates to soul things.

In the largest of generalities, humans who have less experience being human tend to incarnate in third world countries because they have to do so much to just live. Shelter, food, water. It’s not that they don’t deserve an easier life. It’s that they are learning the basics so that as they continue to incarnate, they can go on to other, more complex human endeavors.

Perhaps that is why there is inequality? So that humans have the earth as a lab to try different experiences? Just a thought. Inequality is an existence setup, not a human one. It pushes and primes and motivates. Usually. Again, with free will, we can decide to interpret inequality any way we want.

Plenty of experienced souls incarnate in the third world to re-learn and re-experience things from that “simpler” standpoint. Some who incarnate in first world situations without being ready for it can stumble. You cannot tell who is who by their human presentation. Personally, all of the third world countries I’ve visited felt so familiar, so home-like. Probably because I’ve spent many lives there. It is not worse. It is different.

I have rarely seen newer souls in my practice because they don’t tend to seek out spiritual teachings beyond religion. They are busy. Existential exploration isn’t in their wheelhouse.

So the people I encounter in the Woo community skew toward those with free time to explore it. Doesn’t mean they are one “level” or another.

That homeless guy? Could be the most experienced soul you ever meet.

That guru? Could have had such a large one-life jump that she feels the need to share it.

Me? I’m In-Service.

In general, there are many choices you make when you are co-creating your life with The Creator. God. Let’s call Him God, because He is.

One of the very first choices becomes over-arching for most of your life. Are you In-Service to others, or are you exploring and In-Learning for yourself?

It’s not an advanced degree that’s handed out. And it doesn’t necessarily jibe with the cultural definitions of those two things, although they tend to match up.

Each soul is different, and yet we are all the same—One. It’s a concept that is hard to get your head around, and for me, doing readings and having out-of-body experiences helps dissolve the dichotomy that was only ever human, not spiritual.

Souls have a given task, over however many incarnations they choose, to experience, learn, and express love. That’s pretty much all we are “supposed” to do. If you arrived at the entrance to an amusement park, the only requirement is to enter. So enter. Experience, learn, and express love. We make it more difficult than it needs to be.

If you have set up a life with challenges, then the finding and experiencing of love becomes more difficult, and also more valuable.

But think of it this way. By trial, you learn what you want and what you don’t want. Some souls choose to experience every obstacle possible, and some choose to come to the discovery of love in each life via an “easier” path. You get to choose, and there is no wrong choice.

Can you choose to change something you may have set up? Yes. You can change many things, but as life goes on, you’ve made choices that prevent backtracking toward another path.

I can’t suddenly decide to become Miss America.

But can I decide that I don’t want to feel responsible for the whole world? Yes. Yes, I can. And I did.

I learned in 2013 that I was not responsible for anyone except myself, and those I made a promise to: my husband and son. Every other responsibility I had taken on, whether it belonged to me or not. So when I discovered this, I discarded some responsibilities. I quit nursing.

I quit because I was the Director of a 23-bed ER and my administration was slowly turning from the patient-centered decisions of the past and toward the financial-centered decisions of the future. If I were younger, I might have stayed to fight it. I left nurses who were phenomenal, but they didn’t need me. I needed me.

With the discovery that the ER wasn’t my responsibility (yes, in the human sense it was because it was my job—but I didn’t have to work), I made a conscious choice to do other things.

I chose to write. Good choice, Jo.

Some life responsibilities I re-embraced because I still wanted them, and some I accepted because it was the right thing to do. But I was making a conscious choice, not a self-enforced “should” one.

This is just one example of how your soul setup influences, but does not control, your life. You are not a puppet. My soul lesson for this life was to learn that I was not responsible for everything.

There are lots of physical things we do that make us feel in-line or out-of-sync with what our souls expect, and sometimes, our souls are being dragged along for the ride. Sometimes your soul just shrugs its shoulders at your antics.

But sometimes, you can feel your human aligned with your soul, and that is the bliss, the joy, we search for. It’s rarely found by doing a thing. It’s more often found by being you.

Blessings,

Jo

I’ve been saying this to myself for about a week now. I usually have it together, but due to good things happening, the wheels have come off. And by this, I mean the writing wheels.

Life is good, I am fine, but I’ve discovered something about my writer-self.

My son moved to Alabama—to our great delight—and stayed in our guest room while house hunting. This past week, he moved into a new house and we helped with said move. He doesn’t even have that much stuff (yet), but moving is just . . . well, you know.

Now I get to re-imagine the guest room from scratch.

Writing, painting. I can do all my things here now.

I decided on getting a queen sofa sleeper instead of taking up the whole room with a bed. We have guests sometimes, so a guest room still needs to be in the mix.

We tackled the closet. (By we I mean my husband and me, and he did most of the work. Thank you, honey).

I ordered said sofa sleeper. I moved the desk in from our office. My husband prefers his stand-up desk, so that remains in the office. My space is creative-y, not office-y.

So I have a desk to write at (at which to write, I know). I have my easel set up and painting will commence at any moment.

So why do I think I do not have it together?

It’s the pieces/parts. I have 30, count ‘em 30 drafts for Substack, but none are complete. I have weeds in the garden. I have shopping to do with my son for a few house things. None of these are problems. I’m just more used to having things corralled and put together. So much so that I can’t write until everything is in its place and behaving.

Why can’t I just sit down and write? I think it’s a rationalization for when the writing is more work than it usually is, and I think that a bit of time sprinkled like steak seasoning will magically make it easy. Surprisingly, this actually works. Sometimes.

Not at the moment though. I promise I am working on all the topics you asked me to write about. I have created a list and the lines through the tasks are so satisfying. Blue ink. Never underestimate blue ink.

All of us probably have things get away from us during summer. Vacation, travel, moving. These things conspire to push us off center, and my balance isn’t so great anyway.

So, short post this week and hopefully by next week, writing will be coming at you. I still have lots to write about and now I have a calm, creative, organized space to inhabit.

Blessings,

Jo

Thanks for indulging me. This has been a long time coming and September 8 (publication day) isn’t here yet. This is the cover. Stacey Aaronson is my designer. The silhouettes are their actual photos made into silhouette. I love it. That is all.

Peace,

Jo

Have a look at my podcast section of Characteristically Speaking. I’ve posted a series of audio files called JoJo Elephant. More coming soon.

They are short, meditative journeys for creativity, problem solving, and intuition.

Introduction and How to Use Elephants are just that, intro and how to.

The other files, with names like, Ocean, Rose, and Pluto, are the Elephants.

Something to try out in the lazy (ha!) days of summer.

Blessings,

Jo

short, meditative journeys for creative, problem-solving, intuitive you.

Today’s journey is called Abbey.

Close your eyes.

In the darkness, you look down near your feet, and you discover a toy car.

What kind of car is it?

Is it modern like a Hot Wheels?

Is it all wood?

Is it tiny, or does it take up most of the size of your hand?

And you’re going to start rolling this car with your hand back and forth,

and back and forth, as if you’re winding it up.

But at somewhere, at some point along the arc, you’re going to let it go.

Which way does it travel?

Does it go out ahead of you?

Or behind?

How far does it travel?

And then magically it starts to return to you and comes to rest at your feet.

You look up in front of you and you see a door.

It’s not far away.

It’s close enough to reach out and touch.

What is the shape of the door?

What’s the color?

What’s it made of?

Reach out to open the door and notice what hand you reach forward and whether you push it out or bring it in.

Step through the door.

Where are you?

What surface are you standing on?

Can you see anything around you?

Is there a smell in the air?

Is there a breeze or is it calm?

And you’re going to walk forward five steps.

And you come to a line on the path.

What kind of line is it?

Is it another path that’s crossing in front of you?

Is it a line drawn, like with a marker?

Is it a chasm of some kind?

And you’re going to step over that line,

and you’re going to continue to walk straight ahead for ten more steps.

At the end of ten steps, you are back at the same door.

You know it’s the same door, but does it look differently?

Has the material or the color changed?

You open the door,

noticing if you open it the same way or differently,

and you step through, and there’s the toy car back where you started.

Open your eyes.

short, meditative journeys for creative, problem-solving, intuitive you.

Today’s journey is called Rose.

Close your eyes.

In the darkness, you find that you are moving forward.

How are you moving?

Are you floating?

Are you walking?

Are you in a vehicle of some kind?

Are you flying?

What’s the temperature around you?

Is it warm?

Is it cool?

What smells come into your awareness?

Does it tell you where you are?

Are you at the beach?

Or in the forest?

Or at home?

And as you move forward you realize that you’re going a little faster,

with some purpose

And you realize that you are moving towards something

Do you know where you’re going?

Or does it seem a mystery?

And as you are moving forward, you notice a light in the distance

What color is it?

Is it very bright or very dim?

Is it pinpoint like a laser or diffuse?

And as you move closer to the light, it comes closer to you.

You notice that the light also has purposeful movement.

Is this light a being, or an object, or just simply light?

And as you get closer to this light, you feel comfortable, and welcome, and the light comes towards you, and stops at a comfortable distance for you

And you stop too

Has the light gotten bigger, or changed color?

What’s the feeling you get in the presence of this light?

Is it excitement?

Calmness?

Warmth?

Or coolness?

Reach out your hand toward the light.

What hand have you reached forward?

What does the light feel like?

You notice that it has a texture.

Does this texture tell you anything about the light?

And does the light tell you anything about itself?

What message does it have for you?

And do you thank the light for coming towards you and giving you this message?

And you begin to slide backwards.

You’re still facing the light, but you’re moving backwards to where you began.

And in just a moment, you realize that you’ve arrived where you started.

And your journey is complete.

Open your eyes.

short, meditative journeys for creative, problem-solving, intuitive you.

Today’s journey is called Ocean.

Close your eyes.

In the dark, you feel yourself floating.

What direction are you floating?

Are you floating up or down, forward, to the side?

What position is your body in?

Are you upright?

Are you face down like you’re flying?

And as you float for a little while, you notice that you actually feel a breeze.

Where do you feel it on your body?

What temperature is the breeze?

As you keep going, you see something up ahead in the distance.

Is it in front of you?

Is it above or to the side?

Is it a light or an object?

And you find yourself floating towards this thing that you see.

And however far away it was,

you’re finding that you’re close enough to now see exactly what it is.

How big is it?

Or how small?

Does it fit in the palm of your hand?

Or could you walk through it?

What color is it?

What is it made of?

Does it have a smell to it?

And as you’re looking at this object, you realize that it has a message for you.

How does it give you this message?

Are you hearing something?

Do you see?

Do you just feel or know it?

Receive the rest of the message.

And thank the object for coming to you.

And now all of a sudden you feel yourself moving backwards,

floating backwards to where you started.

And you feel the breeze.

Is it the same type of breeze or is it different?

And you’re still moving backwards.

And now you’re allowed to turn around to see where you’re going.

And as you do, you see a door.

What’s the shape of the door?

What’s it made of?

What color is it?

Reach out to open the door and notice which hand reaches and notice

whether you push it out or bring it in.

Go over the threshold and you’ll find that you’re back where you started

and your journey has ended.

Open your eyes.

Before you begin, a few simple things to know.

Find a comfortable position — sitting, lying down, or even walking somewhere quiet. Anywhere you can give your full attention. Not while driving. Not while operating anything that needs you present in the physical world.

You don’t need to relax. You don’t need to empty your mind or reach any particular state. What you need is focus. Those are different things, and the difference matters. Elephants will meet you exactly where you are.

When the journey begins, close your eyes and follow the directions. That’s all. Go where you’re sent. Your imagination will fill in what it finds there — a temperature, a texture, a color, a feeling. Let it. Don’t evaluate what arrives. Don’t decide whether it’s meaningful. Just notice.

What comes through is yours. It may feel like memory. It may feel like invention. It may feel like something else entirely. All of it is information.

Afterward, if you’re inclined, write it down. The name of each journey is chosen without intention — look it up if something in you wants to. A symbol that arrives uninvited has a way of meaning something.

That’s it. There are no wrong journeys. There is only yours.

My son figured this out early. He'd hear me mid-story, mid-theory, mid-whatever-had-caught-my-attention that day, and say,"Help! I'm talking and I can't shut up!" He wasn't wrong. Writing it down turned out to be the better solution—for all of us.

Characteristically Speaking was born as a blog, years ago. Now it’s this—a Substack where I put down what I can’t keep to myself, and you, bless you, can read it at your leisure.

I’m Jo Taylor. I live in Daphne, Alabama, on the particular edge of the Gulf South where the light does something in the late afternoon that I’ve never been able to adequately describe, though I keep trying. I’m a retired ER nurse, a novelist, a poet, and a Psychic/Medium who is pragmatic to the nth degree—which is either a contradiction or the most Southern thing about me, depending on who you ask.

I write character-driven literary fiction about the private courage of ordinary women. My debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, is out now. My second novel, Mimi and Maurice, arrives September 8, 2026. My poetry collection, Postcards, is also available if you want to know what I sound like when I’m being brief.

Here on Substack you’ll find all of it—fiction, poetry, nursing stories, metaphysical rabbit holes, life in general, and the occasional photograph that stopped me in my tracks. I see the world through my own particular lens. Ray-Bans at the moment, unapologetically Gen X.

“Cassie wasn’t the alive version either.”

— from Postcards: Collected Poems and Short Stories

If you like stories that stay with you. If you’ve ever thought the ordinary moment was actually the extraordinary one. If you believe words are worth slowing down for—

You’ve found your place.

Pull up a chair.

I’m Jo Taylor. An elephant, among its many meanings, is a vehicle — not the journey itself, but what carries you. That distinction is everything. JoJo Elephant is a series of three-to-five minute imagination exercises that take you somewhere you didn’t know you were going. Neither did I, when I recorded them.

These are not meditations. You don’t have to clear your mind or reach a state of calm. What you do need is focus — a willingness to follow a series of directions with your eyes closed and your imagination open. Go through a doorway. Look to your left. Move forward. Your brain will fill in what it finds there. It always does. That filling-in is the whole point.

We live inside an overwhelming amount of information, and we’ve learned — we’ve had to learn — to filter most of it out. The problem is that we’ve also learned to filter out the subtle things: the quiet signal, the image that arrives uninvited, the sense that something means something. Elephants are practice in paying attention to those things again.

What comes through will be different for everyone, because the journey takes place in your mind. You may find memory. You may find metaphor. You may find creative solutions to problems you’ve been circling. You may find something you don’t have a word for yet.

You don’t have to believe in intuitive ability for any of this to work. Think of imagination and intuition the way you think of speaking and singing — they come from the same place, use your physicality differently, and one can flow into the other. The mind is more than sufficient. And if the universe wants to leave something for you along the way — it will.

A few practical notes: do these sitting, lying down, or even walking — anywhere you can give your full attention. Not while driving. Not while operating anything that needs you elsewhere. Journal afterward if you’re inclined. The name of each journey is chosen without intention — look it up if you’re curious; symbols have a way of meaning something.

These are a gift. I hope you enjoy the journey.

“I love salt. I used to devour salted pumpkin seeds as a kid, and also sprinkled salt on a saucer and licked it when my mother went to pick my father up at the train before dinner.” Elizabeth Browne

Salt. SALT! If ever I crave a food, it is something crunchy, with salt.

Salt is the one substance that has been simultaneously essential to civilization and used to destroy it—and we've spent the last fifty years being afraid of it for mostly bad reasons.

In your body, each cell has a mechanism called the sodium-potassium pump. In the most basic terms, the motion of the elements in and out of your cells produces a gradient that is both electrical and chemical and allows muscle and nerve to function, along with quite a few other things.

So it would seem that salt—sodium chloride—one half of the pump, would be essential. Yes. Yes it is.

Why is salt then restricted for many due to moderate blood pressure or kidney problems? Well, salt attracts water, so if you are puffy, it can make you more puffy. This is sometimes not optimal. Do all salts do this? Yes . . . but . . .

The studies that showed salt intake should be restricted were performed on highly processed foods, which by default contain large amounts of salt. Salting your food at the table rarely leads to this increase.

Also, bodies respond differently to different amounts. Some people are resistant to large quantities and never show a sodium increase. Too little salt in your diet causes problems too. Medical emergencies related to salt directly always stem from too little, not too much. Too much is only going to cause significant problems if you already have a disease that salt will make worse. Salt causes no disease on its own.

So, the medical community has backed off of its global low-salt stance and now recommends it for those with disease specific needs.

My favorite salt for both cooking and eating is Maldon salt. It’s been harvested in Maldon, Essex, England, since the 1000s. Like a thousand years. The Maldon Crystal Salt Company is family owned and has been since 1922. In the Domesday Book, it lists the Maldon area as having 45 salt pans, or areas that could be harvested—meaning sea water boiled to extract the salt.

Maldon salt has a distinctive pyramidal shape, big crystals, and a phenomenal taste.

I found Maldon salt after I read the book Salt Fat Acid Heat.

I eat it plain. I sprinkle it on my ribeye as it cooks and sometimes season it before cooking, I put it in cottage cheese, I eat it on salads.

It’s been a preservation method since long before refrigeration, before chemical preservatives. So when processed food includes salt, some of that function is taste, some is preservation.

Salt doesn’t just taste good, and occupy the space of ESSENTIAL in your body. It’s also been the nexus of social disobedience, and cultural meanings. It will also make the soil barren if used in large quantities, so salting the earth was an easy way (easy but expensive) for armies to affect the enemy population’s ability to grow food. It’s been used as a WEAPON.

Salt was weaponized by Gandhi into civil disobedience because it was an item that was essential to life in a readily identifiable physical form, and had been taxed by the British Empire. In 1930, between March 12 and April 6, Gandhi and 78 followers walked 240 miles from his ashram to the village of Dandi on the Gujarat coast. The act of picking up a small lump of natural salt at the seashore was illegal.

His action sparked the civil unrest that led to mass arrests and more civil marches. His simple action is credited with starting the momentum of change that resulted in Indian independence in 1947. A tax on the substance a human body requires, in effect since 1882, was the proverbial last straw.

Now, instead of civil unrest, salt is actually a tourist commodity. At least 5 states in the United States mine salt from the earth. Countries that mine extensively are China, India, Germany, Canada, Australia, Pakistan (Himalayan pink salt), Romania, and Poland. Those 8 countries plus the USA mine over half the salt produced in the world. We eat a lot of salt.

In researching this, I discovered that you can actually tour salt mines in many countries. I did not know this.

Next time you salt your steak, or stick your finger in salt to eat it plain, think of this: Someone from thousands of years ago would recognize very little of their world in our modern culture, but they would recognize salt.

Blessings,

Jo

A few weeks ago, I asked you all for some topics to write about because I was in complete evaluation mode on my own work and producing something new was giving me fits. You rose to the occasion and I’m getting to all those interesting topics.

The question was: Can I become a medium?

And my answer, as in the title above, is that yes, we all have the equipment and ability to be Mediums.

But first, a bit of context. What spirit IS and how they APPEAR to us are two different things. I do not understand the true nature of spirit, from an ontological standpoint. I do know the various ways in which they appear to us.

They function like Wi-Fi. They are everywhere. Little packets of electro-magnetic information that you can’t see, but you can appreciate a result when the correct receiver is employed.

Psychics and Mediums are receivers, like radios. Some are fancy models, some just functional.

You can learn to be a receiver too, or to augment your inherent radio-build.

I have a theory as to why some people are born with these skills. Psychic and Mediumistic skills are syndromic. I call them syndromic rather than a syndrome because not everyone presents this way—it can appear randomly, it can be learned, and the cluster looks different in each person. But the pattern is there.

Some of us have inherent, clustered, unprompted constellations of abilities—this is my argument of the skills being syndromic in their genesis.

Syndrome (from the Greek syndromē, meaning "a running together") is a cluster of symptoms, traits, or phenomena that consistently appear together and are recognized as a coherent pattern — even when the underlying cause remains unknown or debated. Crucially, a syndrome is defined not by a single feature but by the constellation of features that recur together across individuals. Medicine uses the term freely for conditions whose mechanisms aren't yet fully mapped; what matters is the observable, repeatable grouping.

For something to be termed a syndrome, the mechanism does not have to be clear, only that a pattern exists.

There are 8 Clairs recognized individually. I have all 8 naturally. Can you imagine being a kid and having all this information come at you that other people did not recognize? My challenge was to learn to control them, not develop them, but the path is similar.

Clairs refers to how you get information—see, hear, feel, know, empathy, touch, smell, taste. Often, we get information that overlaps the types of reception, and sometimes, it’s just one thing.

How do you learn this? From an ethical teacher. How do you know they are ethical about their practice? Well, just like any other profession, you research.

If I want to be an underwater welder, I can learn to do it. I also need training, safety gear and procedures. Being a psychic/medium isn’t that different. You train/practice and engage safety gear and procedures.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m referring to those of us who do not have mental illness. Those with known hallucinations should not be dabbling in psychic/mediumistic communication. Not because they can’t experience it, but how would they know they difference? The brain can absolutely produce the same type of information. Brain activity is different for hallucinations and mediumistic communications though. Really? Yes, really.

I can communicate with and understand these different phases of existence because I think I can. This is the basis for it all.

Now, for sure, I’ve had experiences that made me know I had some built-in, from-the-factory abilities and skills, but I didn’t even know I could talk back to them until 2016.

Mediumship is the best skill for grief. When you are grieving, you miss presence, communication, and peace of mind that they are okay. When animals, birds, etc. come to you, it isn’t your loved one in that animal body, but that animal has been influenced to appear to you. It’s a “hello.” Sometimes it can be more of a message, but it’s at least a greeting. Mediums can, and should, show you how your loved ones appear in your life. Sometimes it’s a physical touch you feel. We should explain that to you.

Quick story. A reading I did for a young lady was almost complete and I asked her if there was anyone she hadn’t heard from. I almost never did this. She said yes, her sister. As soon as she mentioned her sibling, her sister came sliding into my awareness like Kramer on Seinfeld. I asked the client, “Was she always late to everything?”

The client just about fell on the floor. She told me they used to tease her about being late for her own funeral. The sister knew then that her loved one was okay.

Let me tell you, they are all okay. Sometimes they are a little complicated, but they are still basically okay. This essay would be 7 million pages long if I tried to explain how I know they are okay, all of the loved ones I’ve ever interacted with, and that’s where this skill ends up feeling exclusive. Because some of it you have to experience for yourself.

You won’t have the same knowledge and understanding if I tell you something as you would if you experience it. That’s not an encouragement for everyone to do this, it’s just a fact as to why it feels like some of us gate keep the information. We’re not gate keeping. There’s just so much existence out there.

Mediumship is communication directly with 1 or more spirits, which can be The Divine, a loved one or prior human, a living human (get out! seriously? Yes), angels, guides, teachers, mentors, and yes, demons if you go there. Don’t go there. Do not think of them or give them any emotional energy (worry, fear). They exist, but ignore them. It’s that simple.

If you think of spirit as being like Wi-Fi, you don’t have to understand it in order to receive information. I can drive a car. I don’t know how all the various components work. Spirit is like Wi-Fi, learning communication with them is like driving a car. You need a lane, certain skills, attention, awareness, and basic operating information, but you don’t need to know how an internal combustion engine works (thank God).

Speaking of God, does He talk to us? Absolutely. If you’ve ever received communication and known it was Him, or an angel, or Jesus, or your mom: YES. Yes it is who you think it is. It doesn’t matter what I think or what anyone else thinks.

To put this all together, my theory is that the skills are syndromic in their presentation in humans, but can be learned and developed. This is germane to the central question of can anyone be a Medium because most people have at least 1 Clair they can notice, build on, and then develop the others.

I had some bad experiences when I was younger and shut down my seeing. I had to work to get this back, and what it really took was NOTICING what I was already getting, but not realizing it. For example, I would see movies of situations when I closed my eyes, but I didn’t identify it as seeing something. That sounds impossible, but we do odd things to protect ourselves. It was a protection.

While I don’t work as a Medium or formally teach anymore (writing now, you know), I’m open to questions. Even if they feel very specific to you, they likely have come up for someone else. So feel free to ask questions or DM me and I’ll either answer directly or tell you I’ll write a post on it.

Blessings,

Jo

Many of you have been with me through the writing of Mimi and Maurice, and some of you know how long and how deeply this story has lived in me.

Before it goes out into the world, I’m looking for a small group of readers—no more than 50—who would be willing to read an advance reader copy (ARC).

It is literary historical fiction, set in 1936 to 1947 and in San Francisco, Belgian Congo, and Belgium.

When you are traditionally published, these advance copies (ARCs) go to media, industry professionals, libraries, and book awards to create buzz and get a new book off the ground. For me, as an indie publisher and author, these early reviews show demand and tell the algorithm to give it a chance. That’s why we send these out.

What the book is:

It is 1936. Mimi is in San Francisco, in a house she shares with her father and sister, writing letters to Maurice—a distant cousin she has never met. Maurice is in the Belgian Congo, settling the estates of Europeans who die far from home. They have no shared memories, only paper, ink, and the weeks it takes a letter to arrive.

They write. For years. Three hundred and eighty-two letters survive.

“Between us, an ocean, two continents, and the stubborn mathematics of distance.

Marry me, Mimi. It’s all I want.”

They become engaged and are set to meet in Belgium in May of 1940. Then the war comes. Maurice vanishes into the Resistance—imprisoned, interrogated, forced into an irrevocable choice. At home, Mimi endures years of silence and uncertainty, learning photography—Maurice’s great passion—to see the world through his eyes while waiting for letters that never arrive.

Drawn from their real correspondence, Mimi and Maurice is the story of a love written in full—and of what survives the silence.

Mimi and Maurice is approximately 100,000 words—most readers will find it a 7 to 9 hour read, or perhaps 3 or 4 sessions of reading.

Mimi and Maurice publishes on September 8th, 2026—a date I chose deliberately, because it’s the date the story begins, ninety years ago.

What I’m asking of you:

You’ll receive an ePub file around July 6th by email. I’m asking for an honest review—whatever you genuinely think—posted on or after September 8th. That’s 9 weeks, plenty of time to read without pressure. But a review is not required. If you don’t like posting reviews, simple star ratings, or word of mouth is just as valuable. Or all three. All three are good too.

When posting your review, please include a brief disclosure along these lines: ‘I received an advance copy of this book at no cost from the author. This is my voluntary and honest review.’ Please avoid the phrase ‘in exchange for’ as Amazon may flag it.

How to let me know:

If this sounds like your kind of book, please fill out the short form below. I’ll confirm spots in mid-June so you’ll know to expect the file on July 6.

The form link goes to a site called Tally which hosts the form and then populates a spreadsheet for me.

[FORM LINK]

Thank you, as always, for being the readers you are.

Jo

Many of you have found me through my dear friend, Cheryl Page. She’s an amazing human and so smart that she has to invent new words to get her idea across. Vibrationship is the word for the relationship that continues between loved ones when one has died. They don’t just disappear. They remain and when we interact with them, whether at the level of actual communication, or just thoughts and messages, instead of calling that a “connection,” Cheryl has named it a Vibrationship.

I personally love it. A connection does not imply all that a relationship does. I hope this catches on, and I hope that her newest book, shown above, does well. I’m just starting to read it, but I know it’s going to be good because I am so lucky to have had hours long discussions with Cheryl on so many topics.

For you to decide, of course, but today, I point you to a revelation in how we think of those who leave us. It’s fascinating.

Find it here on Kindle, and it will be available soon in paperback.

Congratulations, Cheryl. You are amazing.

Peace,

Jo