this lunar eclipse energy rn feels like

when u saw a magic trick

became obsessed with how it was done

peaked behind the curtain

learned how to do it

so now ur just

not mesmerized

by it anymore

an epilogue

of learning

another chapter

burning

the lesson’s learned

through hurting

body mind

a churning

thank you for journeying dear reader

why girl-splain the astrology to you

when we have poetry and art and reels for that

would you like to report a synchronicity?

there’s a form for that too ^

as always & much love,

mythra

instagram.

youtube consistency.

the algorithm, the funnel, the content calendar, the churning of it all.

the whole machinery of get discovered, then get them to stay.

i treated it less like a math problem and more like straight gambeling.

more post. more better.

numbers game.

but only when the vibes are vibing.

post on the right day at the right hour to the right invisible god.

and it never once occurred to me that i might be betting on the wrong outcome entirely.

i don’t want people standing outside my work, watching me perform.

i want them inside it.

those are not the same ambition.

one of them is an audience.

the other is a room.

i’ve wanted to build an immersive world since i was a freshman in college.

walked into a collaborative photoshoot installation and understood, physically, that art could be an environment to be in, instead of a thing you look at.

i had my own one-room gallery show in 2021 to document my thesis project.

but it just wan’t interactive enough.

despite being able to stand in the projections, see yourself in the mirrors, sign the book, and prove that you were there online.

i’ve spent years of my life falling into internet lore rabbit holes.

i decoded memba’s language.

learned the sigils well enough to write them back in it.

i wasn’t trying to consume those worlds.

i was trying to prove i could get inside them.

and once i was in, i wanted to build the door myself.

lets talk system design.

😈

there’s a ladder. author. worldbuilder. architect. protocol designer.

an author writes the thing.

a worldbuilder writes the rules the thing lives inside.

an architect builds rooms people can actually walk through.

and a protocol designer does something stranger.

they design the conditions under which other people make things, and then they let go.

i’m not abandoning authorship by moving up that ladder.

i’m not diluting anything by letting people touch the work.

i’m just no longer the only hands on it.

someone solves a cipher.

someone finds a form and answers a question institutional and absurd.

someone submits a sound they’d normally ignore.

someone mutates a beat they didn’t make and weren’t supposed to finish.

someone writes the provenance of an object that never had one.

someone receives ten seconds of a film and adds ten more without knowing what came before.

none of that is content i authored alone.

it’s ours.

this is where it loops back to the ai thing, because it’s the same question wearing a different coat.

i have written about ai as an extension of authorship.

how using claude doesn’t make the work less mine, it gives my ideas more surface area.

that was one axis.

control extended outward through a tool, but still control.

this is the other axis.

and it’s scarier, honestly, because it’s not extension.

it’s surrender, on purpose.

maybe authorship isn’t diminished when i stop controlling every output.

maybe the deepest form of authorship is designing a world capable of surprising its own author.

i think i’ve been quietly building toward “i don’t need to be the only one making this” from two completely different directions at once.

the machine side and the human side.

and they met in the middle.

underneath the mythology-building and the ladder metaphor is something a lot more embarrassing and true.

i want reciprocal creative play.

i have always wanted it.

from collaborators, from friends, from lovers, from whoever’s reading this.

i don’t want to be perceived.

perception is passive.

perception is someone standing very still outside a window.

don’t just perceive me.

play with me.

leave fingerprints.

move something.

bring me something i couldn’t have made without you.

maybe that’s what an accomplice actually is.

not someone who consumes the world i built.

someone who leaves marks on it i didn’t put there myself.

i started with a file.

i got folklore back.

thank you dear accomplice in the making,

for seeing & being,

to not be alone,

it is the most free-ing.

much love,

as always,

mythra

myth-ra.com

i didn’t set out to overthrow anything.

i was just annoyed.

january 1st has never meant anything to me.

no eclipse.

no equinox.

no shift in the actual sky.

just a roman emperor’s accountant, centuries ago, deciding where the year starts.

we’ve been living inside his spreadsheet ever since.

so i asked the obvious question and then, because i’m me, i didn’t stop at asking it.

• what if the year started where the sky actually turns?

• what if the months weren’t named after emperors who wanted a piece of the calendar for themselves?

• what if the whole system was built around a body instead of an empire?

the ouroboric calendar starts on the spring equinox.

not january 1st.

the day light and dark are actually, measurably equal.

not administrative.

astronomical.

thirteen months of twenty-eight days.

every single one starts on the same day of the week, every time, forever.

no more “wait, is this a 30 or 31 day month.”

no more memorizing a rhyme your third grade teacher taught you.

and then there’s the extra day.

the one that isn’t a day at all.

i call it mūlara.

the void.

it doesn’t belong to any month.

it doesn’t have a date.

it’s the day the calendar goes quiet and lets you go quiet with it.

no tasks assigned to it.

no meaning forced onto it.

if you were born on it, you were born between stories, and honestly, the calendar has no jurisdiction over you.

neither does much else.

some years there are two void days back to back.

i call that one mūlara khet.

the double root.

the year just... breathes a little longer that time.

time doesn’t owe you anything.

you don’t owe it anything either.

here’s the part that actually changed how i live inside time.

i built the calendar on two engines running at once.

the outer engine is solar

• it’s the part of you the world sees

• output

• momentum

• the things you ship

• the days you show up

the inner engine is lunar

• it’s the part that doesn’t perform for anyone

• cycles

• moods

• the tide that moves whether or not you posted about it

it has never once made room for the week you bleed, the week you’re a ghost, the week you’re suddenly, inexplicably, made of fire.

it just keeps counting boxes on a grid, flat, uninterested, the same for everyone, every year, forever.

my calendar doesn’t do that.

my calendar has courts.

spring, summer, autumn, winter, and a fifth season i call the threshold.

right at the end.

where you’re meant to let things die before the year turns over.

an actual composting month.

built in.

on purpose.

because nothing in nature just produces forever without a fallow season.

except, apparently, the version of time we’ve all agreed to live inside.

there are gates, too.

fixed points in the year where the sky actually does something.

the equinoxes, the solstices, the first full moon, the last day before the void.

each one carries its own card, its own ask.

not a horoscope.

an assignment.

the spring equinox gate says:

• lay your actual tools out on an actual table

• look at what you have before you decide what you lack

the winter solstice gate, the longest night, says:

• stay up past the point it stops being fun

• sit in the dark you can’t opt out of and just admit what you keep choosing

the last gate, right before the void swallows the year, says:

• write the year in one sentence

• one

• then close the book with your whole hand

most days the calendar has no notes at all, and it says so, out loud, to you, every unremarkable morning:

nothing is happening today.

astronomically, symbolically, structurally.

the calendar has no notes.

which is most days.

thresholds are rare on purpose.

i needed a calendar that would tell me the truth about that too.

that most of my life is just gonna be tuesdays.

“mystics” don’t always be advertising that part.

if you want the job done well, you gotta design the system yourself.

you don’t have to take my word for any of this.

put in today’s date, or any date that matters to you, and see what the calendar says.

a birthday.

an anniversary.

the day everything changed.

the day everything ended.

it don’t predict.

it just tells you what season you arrived in,

what the sky was doing,

whether you landed on a threshold or an ordinary day.

type in a date and find out.

Subscribe now

i didn’t build this because i think everyone should abandon the gregorian calendar tomorrow.

you still have to show up for your dentist appointment on the day they wrote down.

i built it because i wanted one clock that was actually goated.

one that started where the sky starts instead of where a fallen empire decided.

one honest about the body having its own math,

separate from and layered underneath the one on the wall.

the calendar is alive.

and it’s yours too if you want it.

thank you for reading <3

go peep the ouroboric jawn when you get a chance

as always & with much love,

mythra

myth-ra.com

Leave a comment

people assume i’m a leo.

or fire sign, at minimum.

doesn’t matter that i’m not,

the assumption tells you something true either way.

that im serving.

in the astrologies, my moon is in the 5th house.

and that’s leo’s home turf,

regardless of what sign it’s actually sitting in.

leo type internal world.

with the emotional exterior to match.

expressive roars.

confident lounging.

the performer’s house.

people clock it in me before i say a word.

they’re not wrong.

they’re just early.

because i wasn’t always this.

oh, we had a character ARC.

larva to legend,

if we’re being generous.

cowardly lion to LION, if we’re being honest.

hunchback of 1st grade

i sat hunched forward in my school chair,

every single day,

arms crossed over my stomach like i was sick.

or bracing for something.

i didn’t even know what i was doing.

it was just how i always sat.

no real posture required.

just shrimp back.

one day another kid said to me:

“your stomach must hurt all the time, because you always sit like that.”

boom, roasted.

by a seven year old.

for the crime of protecting the most vulnerable part of my body without even knowing i was doing it.

my stomach didn’t hurt.

not physically.

but he wasn’t wrong about what he saw.

i had already learned, that early, to fold myself smaller.

to guard my center.

Read more

the selkie had one skin.

that was her whole problem.

one skin means one theft.

one theft means one chest with one lock,

and a marriage built on top of it like a house on a buried thing.

it’s a good story and it’s not this one.

because there was another woman,

further inland,

warmer water,

and she was not a seal.

the first man to love her was very proud of himself.

he’d heard the old tales, so he knew the procedure:

find the skin, take the skin, keep the woman.

and sure enough,

one dawn he found it draped over the garden gate,

still holding her shape,

iridescent,

unmistakably hers.

he locked it in a chest and buried the key in his certainty,

and went inside to live with his captured wife.

she made him breakfast.

she was in an excellent mood, actually, which should have been his first clue.

it took him three years to understand what he had.

three years of noticing that the woman across the table kept... changing.

small things.

her laugh moved to a different part of her chest.

she stopped apologizing in doorways.

words came out of her that the woman he’d caught would never have said,

and they kept coming,

and one day he dug up the chest in a panic

and held the skin up against her

and it didn’t match anymore.

“you’re not her,” he said.

“i never was,” she said.

“you should have asked what kind of animal i am before you read me a seal’s story.”

and she was gone by morning.

not fled.

finished.

there’s a difference, and the difference is the whole myth.

because here is what kind of animal she was:

the selkie sheds once and spends the story trying to get it back.

the snake sheds as a way of life.

there is no “the skin.”

there is only the current one, already loosening.

she doesn’t own a skin that can be stolen.

she runs a continuous operation of becoming,

and everything she leaves behind is a former self with its own forwarding address.

she’d been doing it since before the first man.

she’d do it long after the last.

and the skins

this is the part nobody warned the men about

the skins don’t die.

a shed skin holds its shape.

it goes on without her.

the songs she sang in one skin kept singing after she’d moved on from the voice.

the version of her that loved the second man continued existing

even long after she’d shed it,

which is why he kept insisting she’d “changed,”

as if that were an accusation and not her entire species.

her molts went traveling.

one skin ended up in a city she’d never visited,

getting played in a room full of strangers,

and someone in that room swore they’d seen her live.

they hadn’t.

they’d seen a skin.

the skin did the show.

she was hundreds of miles away in the garden,

growing the next one.

she heard about it later and laughed.

touring is for bodies.

she had emissaries.

so the men.

let’s do the men, because the men are the comedy.

each one caught her.

that part’s true.

and each one, sooner or later, went looking for the skin to lock up,

because men who love wild things always eventually consult the manual,

and the manual was written about seals.

the first, you’ve met.

three years to notice.

the second was faster but angrier.

when he felt her loosening he raised his voice,

as if a skin could be shouted back on.

he woke to a perfect her-shaped molt in the bed beside him

and spent years telling people she was still in there.

in a way he wasn’t wrong.

that version of her was his now.

it just wasn’t her anymore,

and it never argued with him,

which he eventually admitted was the tell.

the third was clever.

the third said, “i know what you are. i won’t take the skin. see? open hands.”

and he meant it as virtue and wielded it as invoice…

i let you be free

and discovered that freedom granted is just a leash with slack in it.

she shed the version of her that owed him gratitude and left it holding his receipt.

each of them keeps a skin to this day.

each of them, in a certain light, after a certain drink,

will tell you about the one that got away.

they are all telling the truth.

she got away from each of them.

she was never away from herself once.

now the question you came here holding.

the question she carried too, some nights, in the garden between skins,

because shedding is not painless and the myth won’t pretend it is.

the loosening always costs.

every molt takes the eyes last,

and there are blind days in the middle where the old sight is gone

and the new one hasn’t opened,

and in those days even a snake wonders:

not hold onto — she’d had plenty of that.

hold through.

who’d learn the new laugh instead of subpoenaing the old one.

the old tales are nearly silent on this man.

nearly.

there is a variant —

folklorists argue about it,

which is how you know it’s true,

where someone finds one of her shed skins on the garden gate,

and instead of locking it in a chest,

he studies it.

learns it like scripture.

and when he finally meets her, skins later,

he says: “i found one of your earlier works. it was beautiful. i’d love to see what you’re making now.”

the variant is fragmentary.

no one recorded how it ends.

but notice what the fragment gets right:

he didn’t hunt her down.

he found a skin — a song, a page, a mark she’d left in the world — and it did what her skins do.

it traveled.

it worked.

it brought the right one to the garden the way a lamp brings the moth,

and she never once went looking,

because you don’t send the snake out searching.

that’s what the skins are for.

so no, this is not a story to get your hopes up.

hope is for people waiting on an outcome.

this is a story about inventory.

she is in the garden tonight.

warm water, dark moon, another skin already loosening.

she can feel the next self coming the way you feel weather.

somewhere out there her molts are working:

singing in cities she’s never seen,

sitting on shelves,

locked in the chests of men who guard them like they mean something,

and they do mean something,

just not what the men think.

every skin says the same thing, in the end.

every song, every page, every version left behind on a gate says it,

to whoever finds it, in whatever city,

however many skins too late:

she was here.

she is not here now.

if you want to meet her, don’t follow the skin backward.

grow.

she only ever travels forward.

that’s where she’ll be.

thank you for your patience on this one, dear reader

no cap, im burnt tf out

physically, mentally, emotionally, yada yada and then some

for no obvious reason

other than working through a lifelong wound

you cant even see

it’s

visibility

ironically

until next time, and with much love,

mythra / lauren

you know her story.

a god did what gods do.

and a goddess punished the wrong party for it.

and a woman woke up with snakes for hair and a gaze that turned men to stone.

a curse.

everyone agrees it was a curse.

they wrote it down that way and they carved the version of her that made the best trophy.

the severed head, the hero holding it.

monuments are for the ones who wreck you.

we’ve covered this.

midas you also know.

a king wished for the golden touch, got exactly what he asked for, and starved in a palace full of priceless food.

a wish.

everyone agrees it was a wish, and a stupid one.

men are allowed to be greedy in myths as long as they learn something by dinner.

but there was a third one.

she wasn’t cursed and she didn’t wish.

she finished.

Read more

there is no statue of her.

this is the first thing you should know.

every other creature of the old water got marble.

mermaids.

gorgons.

she got nothing.

no temple, no cult, no cautionary vase painting.

no one carved her form from stone.

this was no oversight.

this was business.

the harbor town was like all harbor towns.

it ran on leaving.

the shipwrights sold leaving.

the taverns sold the night before leaving.

the priests sold blessings for leaving.

and the widows’ guild sold black cloth for when leaving went the way leaving usually goes.

and three miles south, on a shore no map bothered naming, she sat on an ordinary rock and ruined everything.

bc of course she did.

and btw, the rock matters too.

sirens are supposed to perch on wreckage.

on bone-piles.

on jagged teeth of stone.

hers was just rock.

flat-ish.

good for sitting.

mythology hates this kind of detail, which is why i’m keeping it.

here is what the sailors were told:
there is a siren on the southern shore, and her song will take everything from you.

welp.

maybe it…

depends what you were carrying.

because the men who sailed past her did hear a song.

but it wasn’t her voice calling them onto the rocks.

sirens never worked that way.

that’s cover story.

her song did something worse than kill them.

it reminded them.

one man heard his daughter’s laugh in it.

one heard the specific creak of his own gate.

one heard his wife saying his name the plain way.

not the way she said it at the dock with the whole town watching.

one man heard nothing at all except the sound of his own breath.

which he had apparently not listened to in eleven years.

and he wept so hard his crew assumed he’d been cursed.

he had not been cursed.

he had been returned.

every one of them turned their ship around.

you can imagine what this did to the leaving economy.

the shipwrights called her a witch.

the priests called her a demon, which is what priests call competition.

the tavern keepers didn’t call her anything because tavern keepers understand marketing.

you don’t advertise the thing that’s beating you.

they held a council about it.

cause there is always a council.

and the council settled on the oldest weapon in the arsenal:
they wrote her out.

no statue.

no name in the ledgers.

the sailors who came home stayed home.

planted things, fixed the gate, learned the tuesday rituals.

and homebound men don’t write epics.

the ones who could have testified were too busy being happy, which history has never once found interesting.

she became unknown because she worked.

but a myth is a seed, not a stone.

and one made it through.

a young sailor rowed out to find her.

he’d heard the rumors underneath the rumors.

he was ambitious in the way that is really just fear wearing a nicer coat.

and he stood in his little boat before her ordinary rock and made his demand…

“sing me to glory.”

she looked at him for a long moment.

the look of a woman who has been asked the wrong question by every generation since the flood.

“i don’t sing men to things,” she said. “i sing them back.”

“then sing me back to greatness.”

“can’t sing you back to somewhere you’ve never been.” she said mildly.

that was the worst part, sailors agreed, the mildness.

“then what do i do?” he asked. “where do i go?”

she gave him the only prophecy she ever gave anyone…

“all roads lead back to you. i’m just today’s catalyst.”

he asked her, the way they always eventually asked, whether she was lonely out here.

unloved, unworshipped, unnamed.

no statue.

no cult.

not even a decent vase.

she laughed.

the laugh, witnesses would have said, if there had been witnesses, if the witnesses hadn’t all gone home…

“the sirens who sang men onto rocks got statues,” she said.

“monuments are for the ones who wreck you.”

“nobody builds a shrine to the road home.

“they just take it.”

then she shrugged.

an ancient shrug.

a geological shrug.

“they don’t remember my name. but every one of them remembers the gate. the laugh. that voice. that’s my signature. i don’t sign the front of the canvas.”

the mark is the message.

she never explained herself again.

the sailor went home.

of course he did.

that was never in question.

she was patient the way tides are patient, which is to say, not waiting at all.

just returning.

on schedule.

forever.

they say the town eventually forgot she was there.

they say new sailors still round the southern point and come back changed.

and blame the weather, or the omens, or a dream.

they say…

and this is the part i believe…

that she is still on the ordinary rock.

unbothered.

mid-hum.

entirely uninterested in being found.

and entirely findable, the way the truth usually is.

no one carved her form from stone.

she carved herself.

Leave a comment

you’ve heard her, by the way. you thought it was just a memory but that’s the whole song.

welcome back.

thank you so much for swimming to this shore with me today.

it is an honor to switch things up, as is the nature of any practice.

more mythic tales to come.

and much love,

mythra

Subscribe now

rebranding.

laurenfrankdesign.com is dead.

the etsy still wears the old name, the last remembrance of a life forged in undergrad.

everything else is already answering to mythra.

lauren frank design was carved by other hands.

mythra is self made in origin.

my mythology: reverse siren
explaining it wouldn't do the justice that unraveling it yourself would.

as a shapeshifter, i take many forms.

yet, there are still threads woven throughout.

yet, i’ve been excavating my own personal mythology for years.

like Simba, remembering who he was all along.

the online-mystic-matrix economy:
everyone’s selling the crowning, nobody’s selling the drowning.

because the drowning doesn’t photograph well.

it doesn’t fit in a carousel & takes longer than a launch cycle.

the thing that works is less glamorous and doesn’t come with a certificate.

and remembering requires looking in places most have agreed not to.

not because the door’s locked, but because they weren’t conscious of the door.

Read more

they’re right.

learned it from the best.

every dealer, every cult, every god worth worshipping runs the same play.

the first hit doesn’t cost ya a ting.

now, that’s architecture.

most would rather you not notice the mechanism.

i’d rather you see it clean.

here’s how people actually find me.

a producer in denver is driving.

Soundcloud serves up one of my tracks to him.

he didn’t search me, didn’t get a pitch, didn’t see an ad.

the algorithm just put my tune in his car and he felt the call.

he immediately commented on the track.

expressed his genuine desire, to flip it.

i sent the files.

fast forward, he flipped that shit.

and trust me, shit’s gas.

stay tuned…

almost everyone paying me originally met me face to face.

not online.

in person, in a body, in real life, before any transaction existed.

this track record scoped across my writing, graphic design, modeling, photography, yoga, custom art, consulting and so on-and-on services.

my friend Davin and i met at Elements festival last summer, and he became my first paid subscriber on here.

the first person to support my public displays of truth telling.

i’m not going to pretend that it didn’t mean the world to me.

so yea, the IRL converted.

the most organic content funnel was always just being myself.

until my musical beacon emerged.

this year, 2026, i started posting about 80% of the music i made on Soundcloud.

many artists heavily curate which of their work they share.

after mulling over it in their vast aura of perfectionism.

i think later, post first.

it’s a numbers game, perhaps.

but to me, its a beacon game.

the pattern doesn’t change.

it’s also just who i am.

abundance hath overflowith.

i’d make the work whether or not anyone came.

the making isn’t the strategy.

the making is the lifestyle.

the strategy is just being honest that the making attracts.

there are two broken ways to do this and i refuse both.

one: give everything away forever.

every reading, every wav file, every drop of the deep stuff, free, til you’re hollow and quietly resentful and calling it generosity.

two: gate-keep from the first second.

lock it all, charge at the door, let nobody taste anything. and then nobody bites, because why would they. you never let them feel it.

i flood the zone with proof.

then i build a threshold.

✨ abundance with spine. ✨

here’s the turn.

once you’ve tasted it, the deeper ask costs.

the live set costs.

the unedited stems cost.

the seven sessions cost.

the room where i actually take you apart and put you back together — that costs.

not because i got stingy.

because the free version already proved the value.

you already know it’s real.

so now the exchange has to be real too.

first hit’s still free tho. 😉

am i the drug? nah.

perhaps im the catalyst.

and here’s the part that makes this clean instead of gross.

the difference between me and a grifter is the product is actually real.

a dealer who cuts the product is a scammer.

waters it down, sells you the promise, keeps the potency for nobody.

i don’t cut.

if anything, i double down.

the free hit and the paid hit are the same potency.

i’m just telling the truth about both.

i’m not manipulating scarcity.

there is no scarcity here.

all i’m saying:

there’s more where that came from, always, that’s the whole problem and the whole gift.

i’m being honest about abundance, which almost nobody does, because honesty about abundance means admitting you’d do it for free and you still want to be paid.

both true.

hold both.

i’m not a charity and i’m not a vault.

i’m a dealer who happens to be telling the truth about the product.

you felt the first one.

you’re here.

you already know what’s real.

Thank you so much for ingesting this free hit of primordial truth.

Hope it unlocks a deeper yearning within you…

To peer a bit deeper within…

My content funnel.

If you have the inkling you want to work with me, enter at your own risk.

I bite.

Seeking external for what’s within?

The only place i’m tryna guide you, is back to you.

Type shit.

Much love as always, from my pen & my page,

Mythra

myth-ra.com

Happy birthday.

I want to start there before I start anywhere else, because for a while I wasn’t sure I’d get to say it to you again.

In the way where you don’t tell anyone you’ve started grieving someone who is technically still alive.

That’s the part no one warns you about.

You can mourn a person who is still breathing.

I did that.

For longer than I’ll admit here, I held you the way the earth holds a river that’s gone underground.

Not gone.

Just deeper than I could reach.

Welcome back to the land of the living.

People think the opposite of friendship is falling out.

What we had was years of silence.

You in Texas, recovering from something that tried to take the whole of you.

Me up here, building an empire from a floor, alone in a way I don’t say out loud to most people.

We weren’t ignoring each other.

We were simply surviving, in parallel.

Same depths.

Different oceans.

Read more

Welcome to Dark Forest Internet Theory.

DFOS for short.

I was sitting in a shamanic circle in a yurt in Phoenixville when the woman next to me mentioned she was born in the Black Forest of Germany.

She said she wants to return there someday.

I’ve been thinking about the Dark Forest Theory ever since.

The idea goes like this: the public internet got so loud, so algorithmic, so extractive that real humans started retreating into smaller, quieter spaces.

Paid Substacks. Discord servers. Group chats.

It sounds like freedom cause it sounds like the woods.

God knows I love my seclusion.

But here’s the thing I can’t stop turning over:
is it actually the dark forest if I don’t own the trees?

Substack could sell out tomorrow.

Discord could get botched next year.

Soundcloud could get erased by the mandala effect.

Instagram already fell into the sunken place.

Twitter became X and I didn’t even flinch, but only because I was never really there.

The platform was always the platform.

Never mine.

I have a complicated relationship with being ejected from spaces I didn’t own to begin with.

I’ve been banned from Snapchat, Feeld, Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and Seeking Arrangements.

Most of those are dating apps, which means the common denominator is… men.

And men on dating apps are a particular kind of maniacal.

But the pattern holds across platforms: show up as yourself, get flagged, get removed.

The patriarchal algorithm and the men on it are running the same code.

They want accessible.

Agreeable.

They want someone who won’t short-circuit the system just by existing in it.

Like me.

So maybe I was never going to own the trees.

What I actually control is embarrassingly simple: I show up.

Every week.

Biweekly a post for everyone & biweekly a post for the people who chose to go deeper.

That’s it. That’s the whole operation.

And then there’s the mycelium.

Get this: I organically made a friend on Substack!

And she invited me into a Discord server with other freelance women & queer folks who are actually building things.

She also shared a zine opportunity that fit my work so well it felt like she’d read my mind.

Discord could disappear tomorrow.

But our connection wouldn’t.

The web we’re reinforcing — across platforms, across DMs, across all these spaces none of us own — that’s not platform-dependent.

That’s mycelium.

That’s the unseen connective tissue that holds a forest together underground, invisible, doing the real work while everything above it changes shape.

The internet could collapse.

We’d need stronger roots than that.

But the direction is right.

The more we connect across these platforms — not betting on any single one, but using all of them to find each other and reinforce the bond — the more we’re rebuilding something we lost.

Community. Connective tissue.

The thing that doesn’t need a server to survive.

I’m surrendered to the fact that I don’t own this.

Substack could become X.

The paid tier could disappear.

I’m trusting that it won’t, the same way I trust that the people I’ve found will still be findable if it does.

That’s what we’re actually building here.

Do you know the way?

Thank you so much for reading!

As always & with much love,

Lauren

laurenfrankdesign.com

Leave a comment

Shoutout to the Creative Freelancers Discord — if you want in, reach out to Apple on Substack to inquire. She built it, so she holds the door. But we’re excited about anyone who’s excited.

once again 
she bleeds again 
like a bloody visit 
with a bloody friend 
a snakeskin shed
death once again 
uterus amped 
itself to end 

Fuck a Gregorian calendar.

I decided to uncover my own.

And what better calendar than the one my body is already running?

I bled eight times in 2024.

I bled nine times in 2025.

So the question of the year, the one my body is currently deciding without consulting me, is: will I bleed ten times in 2026?

Or will the count eat its own tail and start over at one?

For most of my life a doctor would have called this a problem to fix.

Of course my body’s clock is out of whack, I was on birth control for ten years.

My doctor told me to skip the placebo pills and not bleed.

So I didn’t.

Until I said fuck off with that madness a few years ago.

The body sheds on its own clock, and its clock is not the moon’s, and it is certainly not a doctors.

My calendar is my uterus.

I mean that as the least poetic thing I’ve ever said.

It’s just true.

The blood is the ledger.

The keeper of time.

And I’ve been reading it for years now, in a red book, by hand, like the seer I apparently became while I wasn’t looking.

I used to be surprised when I got my period.

I’m not surprised anymore.

Now I make bangers about it.

Read more

it’s been a while.

last year i fell on my tailbone and hurt myself after watching two large black rat snakes fully intertwined fall together from the sky.

the year before i spent the day alone in a park crying as my grandmother died in the hospital. it was so her time.

and two years later, almost on cue, i’m driving her car on i-76 and it breaks down.

nana, thanks for saying hey!

so this year, i had no expectations.

and i didn’t get any crazy gifts or surprises.

but boy oh boy did i get something better…

presence.

i took myself out to try a new café and got a massage before some soul-soothing social enrichment time with the homies.

i received. i treated myself. i got myself a chainmail bracelet and two tinctures.

i laughed my ass off seeing the backrooms movie with Kaitlyn and Davin.

and i got to spend hours at my favorite park with my bestie, Safyeah.

we played music on my speaker as we waded through a stream hunting for crystals and bones.

we got a few good rocks.

we pulled cards from my new deck, Myth Oracle by DMD.

my card for the day was rebirth.

of course.

on my birthday.

the knife vs the mirror

the original article i was gonna post today was a knife to the throat.

after moving back in with my parents, i was consumed by rage towards them.

i expected my boomer-ass parents to change, lol.

after a year living on my own, i was back living with the racist mother i blocked.

and my dad—who also suffers from an unregulated nervous system, who can’t validate another’s feelings to save his life, who can’t consider anyone before himself.

both my parents throw tantrums like toddlers on crack, daily.

my sister and mother suffer from the “woe is me” victim complex on the rocks.

their self-hatred projected onto me with every jab, shaken not stirred.

i was crazy expecting them to ever listen to me.

to ever take accountability.

i thought i could convince my mom to NOT want to kill more children in Gaza.

but none of them will ever change.

the turn

my wonderful Safyeah reflected me back to myself so well yesterday.

my suffering—all inflicted myself.

i chose this.

i know it’s temporary.

i can always come back to the present.

to choose to control only what i can.

and leave the rest.

the past isn’t “real” anymore.

there’s no point clinging mentally to old stories.

yes, my childhood was terrible.

i was physically, mentally, emotionally abused.

i wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

but i have support now, 27 years later.

i have friends who care.

who listen.

who pick up the phone.

who hang on my birthday.

who listen to my music and read my writing.

who support and encourage me to speak my truths.

who remember things about me that my parents could never.

and i can see clearly once again.

see it for what it is: a free place to stay for a period of time.

until my next plan.

as the next chapter unfolds.

i always choose freedom

i choose the long-term gratification of traveling after preparing for a few months, paying off some credit card debt.

short-term, it’s a nervous system hell.

long-term, i’m free.

i am in control of my life.

i trust this sacrifice will be worth it.

i trust my intuition.

i trust my inner guidance.

i trust a higher sense of universal guidance.

i survived so much.

life can only get better and better.

i truly do believe i got the worst part of my life done early.

if i can transmute that, i can alchemize anything.

after a lifetime of psychological torment and starting to slowly decondition the generational and societal scripts—my life is mine.

even when my parents still can’t respect the most simple of boundaries.

i can figure out how to install a lock on my door.

i can leave every morning before they wake up.

i can buy my own food and spend all my time escaping their chaos.

i can keep moving stagnant energy.

and keep letting go.

letting go

i kept too much shit from my apartment when i moved out.

i was overwhelmed.

but now i have the motivation to release more.

to keep letting go.

i don’t need half the shit i forget i have.

thoughts and materials alike.

i’m sitting in a café that’s new to me and i already love it here.

i have a window seat.

i ate a poached egg potato bowl.

i got a full charge on my device.

i feel no need to wear headphones in public.

i like being present in my environment.

but at home, i know i need noise-canceling headphones.

so yeah, i have a game plan.

lauren’s declassified wooked-out survival guide

- daily walks

- daily lay in sun on floor / hammock

- try new places weekly

- social hangs as often as possible

- beach / creek days (must be in natural water)

- work out weekly

- get a massage monthly

- create & consume art / music daily

- remember who you are, even when you’re exhausted from being the bigger person

i am reborn.

i was reborn on my birthday.

i am reborn every day.

thank you so much for reading <3

may your current trip around the sun be filled with grace and with ease

as always & with much love,

lauren

P.S. you are unfolding beautifully yourself ;-)

The current zeitgeist cocktail:
a hot mix of doom scroll
with a garnish of information overload.

Here’s what nobody tells you about the scroll…

You don’t reach for it because you’re weak.

Read more

I know why you opened this.

You came for skincare and some 5 am cold plunge manifestation oat milk situation.

We have actual tips at home.

And yes, I’m celibate.

That’s tip zero.

1. Stop Showering for Societal Reasons

When I need to be energetically cleansed, I take a bath.

Or jump in a natural body of water.

So, yeah. I shower when I feel like it.

Sometimes that’s daily.

Sometimes that’s every three days.

My hair is either freshly washed or so greasy it qualifies as editorial.

Confidence smells better than perfume.

Dry shampoo exists. Or don’t.

Maybe I shave once a quarter.

Truly, who cares.

2. Wear the Same Thing Every Day

Find your uniform.

Some custom dank 1 of 1s.

Wear it until disintegration. And then some.

Like my token black bleach dye doodle pants.

I cant even send them through the washing machine anymore.

RIP.

My Doc Martens have been with me since high school.

Oh, are they cracked.

The hand-painted eyes are worn off.

I’ve stepped in shit in them on three continents.

They are the most complimented item I own.

3. Eat Whatever the Fuck You Want

Sloppy-joe-farmers-market-meat straight outta the pan at no specific hour.

Carrots and hummus for three days in a row because I felt like it.

Birra tacos once a week.

Dark chocolate daily.

I tend to stay tf away from seed oils when I can.

But hey, existing is practical.

Your body is hot regardless of what you feed it.

People who are obsessed with your eating habits are boring.

4. Live on the Floor

Couches are for people who haven’t yet discovered the spiritual enlightenment of feeling gravity.

I thrive for the floor.

A $300 sheepskin rug is allowed.

I feel 10x more relaxed after laying on the floor than a couch or bed.

TBH I want a floor bed. I’m over all this western shit.

When you live on the floor, every time you stand up is an event.

5. Boundaries With Tech

Your phone lives in the car overnight. Or another room. Or the kitchen drawer.

Anywhere but your bedside table.

A baddie does not sleep next to her surveillance device.

Greyscale toggle, on.

Gray it out and watch the urge to scroll die in real time.

DND, always. Not “DND when I’m working.”

Not “DND at night.”

Just: DND.

If you’re important to me, I’ll sense when you need me.

If you’re not, you can wait.

6. Ghost People Without Explanation

Energy sus? Ghost.

Asking too much? Ghost.

Gaslit your neurology? Ghost.

Projecting every little insecurity on me? Already ghosted before they noticed.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation for protecting your peace.

Just stop responding.

They’ll figure it out. Or they won’t.

Not your problem.

Mystery is hot.

And free.

7. Imagine Everyone as Already Dead

No, seriously. It’s a whole jawn.

It sounds morbid until you try it.

When you can see people as complete humans — even the ones who harmed you — without needing to be in a relationship with them, you’ve reached a level of emotional sovereignty most people will never touch.

The bozo. The ex. The mother. The “friend”.

All of them, already gone.

What’s left is the part of you that doesn’t need them to apologize, change, or even know.

Pro tip: if this sounds morbid to you, you’re not ready to be a baddie yet. Come back when you’ve processed some shit.

You Were Already Hot

Here’s the actual secret:

You were already hot.

You didn’t need the tips.

You didn’t need the tricks.

You didn’t need me to tell you to stop showering or live on the floor or ghost the guy who couldn’t read a room.

You just needed permission to stop performing and start existing.

It’s about:

• Eating what you want

• Wearing what feels good

• Ghosting who deserves it

• Creating without permission

• Existing loudly in a world that wants you quiet

So yeah. Those are the tips.

You bad.

Thank you for reading!

Type shit.

Much love,

Lauren

inside me there are two wolves.

i designed each of them a shirt.

one says: my top tracks are AI generated & I sleep fine at night.

the other says: brb vibe coding.

both are separating the people who get it from the people who don’t.

if you read those shirts and laughed, this article is a love letter.

if you read those shirts and recoiled, this article is a mirror.

enjoy.

Read more

Men must fall.

Women must rise.

The pop spirituality scam of our time is telling you we’re “healing together.”

We’re not.

We’re on opposite journeys.

The pendulum swings both ways.

These are not the same task.

They are inverse.

When you tell a man to “step into his power,” you’re telling him to double down on the pedestal.

When you tell a woman to “soften and open,” you’re telling her to do more of what already broke her.

The men who insist loudest that they’re not misogynist are the ones with the biggest blind spot.

They think misogyny is yelling slurs.

It’s not.

It’s the assumption of access — the assumption that your time, your body, your attention is available to them on terms they get to set.

When a woman says no, and a man gets furious, that fury is the pedestal.

Made visible.

He has to lose something to do the work.

She has to gain something to do the work.

He goes down. She goes up.

We meet in the middle.

🍎🐍

The Scam

Walk into any wellness corner of the internet right now and you’ll get the same line: we’re all healing together. divine masculine and divine feminine rising in harmony. it’s a co-creation.

It’s a beautiful sentence.

It is also a sedative.

Because what it actually does is flatten the asymmetry of the work.

It lets men off the hook from the fall and asks women to do more of the rising they were already doing.

It treats two opposite directions like they’re the same path with different fonts.

They are not.

A man and a woman walking the same spiritual aesthetic are usually doing inverse internal labor.

He is being asked to dismantle.

She is being asked to assemble.

If you put both of them in the same yoga class with the same playlist and tell them “open your heart,” one of them is doing real work and one of them is reinforcing the exact problem.

Guess which.

The Pedestal

I keep using this word — pedestal — and I want to be specific about what I mean.

A man on a pedestal is not necessarily a man who thinks he’s better than women.

The pedestal isn’t an opinion.

It’s a default setting.

It’s the assumption that his interest in you means you should be interested in him.

It’s the assumption that his time is more valuable than yours by default, even when his time is being spent doing nothing.

It’s the assumption that your “no” is a problem to solve rather than a sentence to honor.

It’s the assumption that your work — emotional, sexual, creative, domestic — is available to him at the cost he’s pre-decided is fair.

It’s the assumption that when he expresses something, you owe him a response.

When you express something, he gets to evaluate whether it was worth saying.

None of this requires him to believe he’s superior.

It just requires him to never have been asked to question the floor he’s standing on.

That’s why the men who say “I’m not misogynist” the loudest are usually the most dangerous.

Their certainty is the tell.

They’ve never looked down.

The Floor

Women, by contrast, were given a thorough education in the floor.

We learned to apologize for taking up space before we knew what space was.

We learned to soften our voices, our opinions, our refusals.

We learned to translate ourselves into shapes men could digest.

We learned that being chosen was the achievement and being passed over was the punishment.

We learned to perform availability and call it openness.

We learned to perform smallness and call it grace.

We learned to perform endurance and call it love.

The work of rising is the work of unlearning every single one of those translations.

It is not “stepping into your feminine.”

That phrase was invented to keep women small with prettier vocabulary.

It is taking up space.

Saying no without apology.

Charging real money.

Expecting reciprocity.

Refusing to translate.

Refusing to earn what should be baseline.

Refusing to be the emotional janitor of any room you enter.

It is becoming everything you were told was too much.

The Tell

Here’s the diagnostic.

When a woman says no, watch what the man does next.

If he updates his understanding of the situation, recalibrates, and moves on with respect intact — he’s done some falling.

If he gets angry, hurt, sulky, sarcastic, or starts negotiating — the pedestal is shaking and he’s trying to re-stabilize it by making her wrong for refusing him.

That fury is not a personality flaw.

It’s not “he’s just having a bad day.”

It’s the pedestal made visible.

It’s a man being briefly forced to consider that his desire is not the organizing principle of someone else’s life, and rejecting that consideration violently.

I’ve been on the receiving end of this so many times I can clock it within a sentence.

The shift from charm to hostility when interest isn’t reciprocated.

The “you think you’re so much better than everyone” once they realize they can’t access you on the terms they wanted.

The sudden discovery, after rejection, that the woman they were just praising is actually a bitch / slut / cold / crazy / full of herself.

She didn’t change. The terms changed.

He was used to being granted access and wasn’t.

The Receipts

I write truths weekly on Substack.

I post new songs I wrote every week.

I charge for tarot readings.

I do my best to not give my labor away unreciprocated.

The men who hate me most are usually the ones who:

— call my OnlyFans degrading and are subscribed to it

— call my Substack pretentious and read every post

— call me too full of myself for refusing them and won’t stop trying to access me

— call me cold for charging real money and would happily consume my work for free forever

The contradiction doesn’t register for them because they’re not actually evaluating me.

They’re evaluating whether I’m available on their terms.

When I’m not, the language gets ugly.

When I am, even briefly, the language gets sweet.

That’s not personal. That’s the pedestal talking.

Women, Too

I’d be lying if I pretended only men do this.

Some women get triggered by other women who refuse to earn approval.

Not because we’re doing anything to them.

Because we’re doing nothing for them.

No softening. No apologizing. No shrinking. No translating.

No quietly making sure everyone in the room feels okay about our presence.

When you watch another woman live like she doesn’t have to earn her existence, and you’re still earning yours, it exposes the floor as a choice instead of a fate.

That is unbearable for a lot of women, because it implies they could have stopped earning at any time and chose not to.

So they make her wrong. Too cold. Too much.

Thinks she’s better than everyone.

She doesn’t.

She just stopped earning.

The work of women rising is contagious, and that’s exactly why it’s threatening to women who haven’t started yet.

Not because they’re bad.

Because they’re scared.

Because the floor has been their identity, and watching someone else leave it is watching the proof that they could too, if they were willing to lose what staying offers.

I’m not contemptuous of those women.

I was one of them.

The door is open.

Nobody’s making them walk through it.

But nobody’s going to make me apologize for being on the other side of it either.

What Dies in Men

— the assumption of value just for existing

— the assumption that interest is owed back

— the assumption that women are spiritually responsible for managing his ego

— the assumption that the floor is fair because he’s never been on it

What dies in men is the pedestal he was handed.

Not his power.

Not his masculinity.

Not his sexuality.

The pedestal.

The unearned baseline.

The assumption that he is the protagonist by default.

That is real ego death.

And it’s almost always involuntary, because nobody steps off a pedestal voluntarily.

Life has to throw them off it.

Or a woman has to refuse to keep propping it up.

What’s Born in Women

— sovereignty as baseline, not aspiration

— the ability to say “you bring no value to the table” without apologizing

— the death of the pandering muscle

— the death of the translating muscle

— the death of the over-explaining muscle

— the refusal to be the emotional infrastructure of rooms that don’t reciprocate

— the willingness to be hated by men who feel entitled to your softness

— the willingness to be misunderstood by women who haven’t started rising yet

— charging real money for real work

— eating, sleeping, resting, choosing

— becoming everything you were told was too much

This is not “your divine feminine.”

This is your full size.

Your unedited footprint.

The you that existed before you learned to make yourself digestible.

We Meet In The Middle

The fantasy that I’m rejecting is the one where men and women rise together, hand in hand, on the same trajectory.

We don’t.

He goes down.

She goes up.

We meet in the middle.

That is the only honest map.

Anyone selling a different map is selling the pedestal in spiritual packaging.

The path of men is to become nothing.

The path of women is to become everything.

When those two journeys actually happen — when a man does the work of falling and a woman does the work of rising — what they meet in the middle is not romance.

It’s not partnership.

It’s not the divine masculine and divine feminine in some sanitized harmony.

It’s two people who can finally see each other.

Without the floor. Without the pedestal. Without the script.

That’s the world I’m working toward.

That’s the only one worth meeting anybody in.

Thank you for reading <3

Much Love,

Lauren

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Why tHe FuCk are yoga teachers LIKE THAT?

I would know.

I was one of them.

550-hours total of trainings split into three different certifications.

I taught a weekly restorative class Monday nights at a rock climbing gym.

Taught three times a week during the precipice of my yoga grind.

Getting paid $25/hour to hold space for a room full of people burnt me the fuck out.

Many yoga teachers I encountered taught over 10 classes a week.

The people teaching wellness are just as rat race running on fumes as the rest of us.

I don’t like many yoga classes or teachers because their nervous system is jacked.

I’m not writing this from the outside looking in.

I’m writing this from the backrooms of the yoga studio zeitgeist.

You've noticed the shitty Sanskrit tattoos.

I've noticed the holier-than-thou pronunciation of non-native language to a room full of people who don't know what tf is really going on.

Your friend who tried one 100-degree "power-flow" vinyasa class and never went back has noticed.

It's giving cult-ure.

The question isn’t whether the pattern exists. The question is why.

This is the paid tier.

The gloves are off.

The Thesis

All three of the Philadelphia yoga teachers I’m about to show you are spiritually bypassing & completely unchecked.

That’s not a vibe. That’s the mechanism.

Everything else is texture.

Read more

I’ve been sitting on this article for months. I wrote it in October.

Then I waited for the timing to be poetic.

And now, as his empire crumbles, art imitates life.

First off, I ain’t capping.

Joe Rogan DID take part in healing my father wound.

I used to resent my dad for being himself.

But after listening to a few bajillion hours of Joe Rogan being present I got my fix of paternal energy.

The bare minimum, just sitting there, asking follow-up questions, letting people talk for three hours while maintaining a genuine feeling of interest.

Enough to stop resenting my own father for his inability to sit still.

Now I’m not a doctor. But hey, if it works, it works.

I wouldn’t necessarily prescribe everyone who is deeply struggling with their own daddy issues to just listen to Joe on repeat.

But there’s a pattern here worth seeing.

Look at the manosphere. (Boyosphere, technically.)

Generations of fatherless-feeling men turned to Joe as their north star.

Because who else fucking is there?

I have trauma-bonded with plenty a fatherless lad who doth have love for Joe.

I see it. I get it. Me too, tbh.

The man sat with scientists, comedians, fighters, mystics — people from wildly different worlds — and just asked questions.

Not performing curiosity.

Actually wanting to know.

He could be opinionated and still say “that’s interesting, I never thought about it that way.”

That’s what I needed from my dad and never got.

Permission to be the full spectrum of myself without being told what to think about it.

My dad is brilliant in his own way.

Engineer. Pilot.

Can fix anything mechanical and nothing emotional.

He gave me stubborn critical thinking, self-reliance, and a know-it-all brain that builds systems.

But a five minute phone call? That was always the wall.

A few moments of almost presence before the eyes glaze, the subject changes, the emotional bandwidth maxes out with the classic “alright, I got to run”.

Yet a stranger on a podcast could do three hours without flinching.

I do love me some duality.

So yes, I love Joe Rogan at the core cosmic level.

But that love is why I call out his shit so gutturally in the track I wrote.

Because the same man who modeled curiosity told Theo Von his meds were making him crazy when Theo cried about a war.

The man showed him his heart and Joe blamed it on the pills.

The same man who built the most important table in media got scared to sit at it.

Traded curiosity for a tribe he’s afraid to lose.

Cause yeah.

He’s a toe.

Five foot three of pure confidence shaped like a thumb with a Spotify deal.

So I wrote a diss track.

A love letter disguised as a roast.

The kind of thing you write about someone you actually respect but can’t stop clowning.

I called him a thumb thumb from Spy Kids.

I told him he needs a woman in that room who’s not impressed by the machine.

I offered to read his birth chart.

And then this line came out:

you healed my father wound / by doing what he never did / you just sat there and you listened / three hours — never flinched / my dad couldn’t do fifteen

And I stopped. Because that wasn’t a joke. That was the whole thing.

The comedy made it safe enough for the truth to slip through.

You think you’re writing a roast and you end up writing a eulogy for the version of your dad you wished existed.

And then you forgive the one who does.

🎵 Listen to “Toe Rogan” on Soundcloud

A comedic diss track, a love letter, and an accidental therapy session, all in one.

Thank you so much for reading!

This was a fun one, that’s for sure.

Much love to you and all the others with open daddy wounds,

Lauren

“You’re not autistic. You’re just ADHD.”

A local Philly yoga teacher said it, right down the barrel to my face.

But goddamn, that airhead was not the first.

Multiple people have told me, with complete confidence, like they have access to my neurology, that I’m confusing ADHD with autism.

Bruh.

They argue that autism looks different.

That if I were actually autistic, I wouldn’t be able to [fill in the blank with whatever I’m currently doing that they’ve decided autistic people can’t do].

Welp.

Here’s what I want to say to that '“wellness professional” and everyone else who thinks they get to narrate my brain:

I’m fucking autistic. Stop gaslighting me.

okay, but what’s the whole story?

Behind the paywall:

• the gaslighting script that every neurodivergent person has memorized

• the IQ test, the adderall, the diagnosis they hid from me

• why autism runs in my family but only I got the “cope” label

• why I’ve never met another brain like mine

• what I’m done with & what I’m claiming

  New Article & Song Release Every Friday

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