Currently I’m reading Vol Two. She comes with me to the bathhouse, where I enter rooms that snuggle me in their heat and allow me to travel into the rooms within myself that hold a heat of their own. That deep, lingering, sultry kind of heat that moves through the body without permission. Anaïs travels there with me, into those secret spaces where desires, memory, and the hidden self are deliciously exposed.

With each page, I encounter the many contradictions a woman can experience within herself. The contradictions of any woman journeying through self-discovery. In this, we relate well. I encounter sensuality in the form of a glance, a stare, a touch, warranted or not. I encounter hunger and the self-creation upon which it feasts. I love the way she doesn’t ask a woman to be one thing. Never one thing. Within her pages a woman may be desiring and desired, liberated and confined, honest and secretive, creating herself even as she contradicts herself.

She has stirred deeper curiosities within me, feeding a fire that was already burning no matter the size of the flame. I walk with my journal every day, it is always with me. I have begun a commonplace notebook to capture my noticings. These words that stop my heartbeat, these images that make my eyes flutter and feast, these ideas that wake me in the middle of the night, and questions that call me closer.

And, oh, the feminine studies I’m diving deeper into because the psychology of it turns me on. The courtesan consciousness that has lived within me since my own conscious conception of womanhood decades ago.

Reading her has become like looking into a mirror, recognizing the person staring back. We speak the same language, give each other good company while we each have our pen and paper at hand, a glass of wine and I cannot forget, a cigarette. 🚬

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶 🪷

I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

New Moon Musings 🌑

The clouds were thick that morning, and I loved them for it. Gloomy, dark. Cozy. Quiet. Still. The new moon arrived while I was still sleeping so by the time I opened my eyes she was already gone from my view. I’ve spent a good portion of my life being a witness through her various stages and I’ve learned so much about her, about me.

I made tea. I sat with the grey light coming through my window. I pulled cards. I noticed the ease that was sitting alongside me. Strangeness in the air. A spell was cast and I was feeling the remnants. A jar, a candle, a match, ashes burned and left outside to be tended by the weather of Galveston. Something old and inherited was put in the fire, something handed to me the way you hand someone a coat that doesn’t fit and tells them it’s cold outside. No expectations, no rules, no rights or wrongs, I came up for air and waited.

Sitting there on the morning of the new moon I was handed a gift that actually fit. It was a gift of not knowing what would come next, what to expect, what I would feel and what I would feel like. Sitting there in the middle of not knowing with ease sitting alongside me cleared up decades of treating uncertainty and the fear of uncertainty as one thing. They’re not the same. There’s a difference. I thought the answer to not knowing was to know. To gather enough information, to plan enough ahead, to secure enough ground that the not-knowing would finally be evicted from my internal house. I never worked! I was never going to work. The not-knowing lives here, internally. It has always lived here. What changed is that I stopped trying to force it to leave.

I am certain of the uncertainty now. That has somehow made me no longer uncertain. I’ve stopped requiring answers as the price of my own steadiness, my peace of mind.

That morning I was happier and honest enough to let that be enough. That distinction matters to me more than anything I could tell you about during this season. These past three weeks have been some of the toughest. It felt as if the grips of the deep sea would not let me go. Would not allow me to breathe. The tears flowed, endlessly. Cleansing every inch of me. Mercury Retrograde has been walking backward since the end of June and I sat there with the new moon feeling a bit of relief. My breath was steadier and as I said, I was happier. A woman with her tea, noticing that her jaw wasn’t clenched, witnessing her own presence.

I am finishing this note ten days later and Mercury has turned forward again. Asè 🙏🏽 Everything that was put on hold is now flowing again. Slowly. With some certainty. I’m noticing I’m tempted to tell you that I’ve arrived somewhere. I haven’t. Things are still uncertain, but certain. The emptiness of where that old belief used to sit is now beginning to fill with something else, something that truly belongs to me, something that truly fits, and that’s what I’m certain of.

I’m not in a hurry. No longer in a hurry. I notice that the absence of hurry is itself the answer to a question I’ve been asking since I was young enough to be afraid of my own mother’s voice in my mouth.
These things will be uncovered in time. 🌙

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶 🪷

We descended and you found the place in your body that was bracing itself, and you wrote to her.

We entered the water in your own home and you said no rushing until something in you unclenched.

And now we close the circle with closing words to seal what the water opened. I offer you something to return to when the world gets loud and the softening feels far away.

The Incantation 🕯️

Read more

(This post is recorded in my voice. Press play and let me read it to you. 🪷)

I keep watching the women around me do things that take my breath away. Quiet, unglamorous, terrifying things. Moving. Starting. Standing up. Forgiving themselves after years of not knowing how.

This one’s for them. And if you’re reading this…it’s for you too.

Come as you are.

This is for the woman who has felt herself changing
and didn’t know whether to call it falling apart
or, waking up.

I’m here to tell you, it’s both. It’s always been both.

This is for the one who packed up everything she knew,
every familiar street she walked on,
every comfortable corner she turned,
and moved her family across the country,
to settle in and break bread on new ground,
because something in her said, now. Go now.

This is for the one who started the podcast
when nobody asked her for it.
Who hit the record button before she felt ready,
before she could say no.
Who gathered her words with each step.
Who believed in herself before there were any listeners.
Because she knew she needed to.
She needed this. This needed her.

This is for the woman who went back to school
after life had already happened to her.
Now older.
Weathered.
Worn to the ground.
And look at her now,
weeks away from something brand new.
From someone brand new.
Keep going, Sis. You’re almost there.

This is for the one who set up the camera,
sat in front of that camera,
hit record,
then pressed upload.
Now look at her…
letting herself be seen,
feeling proud,
before she had proof it would even work.

This is for the woman learning, slowly, in the dark
on quiet mornings,
that she can forgive herself.
That knowing better is doing better.
That the woman she was
was doing the best she could
with what she had and what
she knew.

And for the one who finally said enough.
Who stood up in the room,
or on the phone,
or in her own chest
and chose herself.
Even while her voice was shaking,
while her words were choked in her throat.
Even then.
Even then.

This is for her.

You are not too much.
You are not broken.
You are not behind.

You are becoming.
You are remembering.
That is the whole point.

Come as you are.
Bring the unfinished parts.
Bring the questions without answers.
Bring the hunger you’ve been apologizing for.

There is room here.
There has always been room here.

Maybe you were just waiting for someone to say so.

Consider this me saying so. ❤️‍🔥

If this piece moved something in you, there’s more waiting in the deeper room.

Last week I opened The Descent, The Practice, and next will be, The Incantation. Three companion pieces built especially for my paid subscribers who want to do more than read, they want to do the work.

If you’ve been circling the paid tier, wondering if it’s for you, consider this your sign. Come in. There’s room.

To your

becoming and mine,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶 🪷

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading ℳ𝓎 𝒮𝒶𝓃𝒸𝓉𝓊𝒶𝓇𝓎 𝒲𝒶𝓉ℯ𝓇𝓈, your share might be the light someone else needs right now. 🧜🏽‍♀️

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You sat with the question last week. You found the place that was holding its breath. You wrote to her.

Now we move deeper and enter the water because the body doesn’t release through understanding alone, she releases through experience. Through sensation. Through water.

This week:
we practice by entering the bath. 💦

Read more

You don’t need to travel anywhere. You need a door that closes, water that runs warm, and a body you’re willing to follow.

Read more

I decided to share it because, if you’re here reading this, returning to here, finding your way here, to this corner of the internet where I share my truths about what it means to Become, then something in you already knows what I’m about to say. You’ve felt some version of it, and maybe, you’re in the middle of it right now.

This journal entry is about joy.
Specifically about what happens to a woman’s joy over time. What she does with it. What gets done to it. And, what it looks like when she stops waiting for the right circumstances, the right room, the right person to give her permission.

I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re reading it. And, I’m glad I wrote it because, the truth is my friend.

If you’ve known me for some time then you know how often I wore my joy like a garment.

Loose, flowing, free.
I smiled more. Laughed harder. Moved through life with softness in my body and delight in my spirit. It felt like slipping into something that moved the way a prayer moves like smoke through the air. The way that sensuality feels on the skin, easy and breathless. I held my mornings like they were sacred objects. I pulled cards. Read for people. Played music through my home. I offered what I had been given…a particular kind of presence that was undeniable, a warmth that moved through my hands into yours, and a voice that slowly, deliberately, intentionally seeped through your pores. Priestess work, unfolding in all my sacred spaces. Women and Men arriving to sit with me in meditation, conversation, healing, touch, remembrance.

That version of me didn’t smile because she was happy, she smiled because she was full.
Not because life was perfect but because I was deeply connected to myself. I was devoted to beauty then. To ritual. To Goddess. To sensuality. To pleasure. To my body. And, in many ways, bliss walked beside me.

Then the ground shifted.
Life cracked wide open.
18 years between each collapse.
Financial hardship.
Lose.
Start. Stop. Starting over.

I won’t rehearse the details here. Some things are just for me, not out of shame but out of sovereignty. What I will say is this, I lost my home where I held that work. I packed what I could carry. I moved. I rebuilt. I breathed in, and then the breath was knocked out of me again and I moved and I rebuilt again, and here I am.

Here I am.

Somewhere in between, I dimmed. I became guarded with my joy.

But, I want to be precise about this because for a long time I thought I had become bitter. I hadn’t. What I had become was vigilant. There’s a difference.
Bitterness is grief that doesn’t know where to go. Vigilance is a strategy. Vigilance became a form of safety. Mine started long before any of this took place. It was something I learned in childhood, the particular art of watching for the shoe to drop because it always did. When the shoe drops enough times you learn to keep your head down. Stay quiet. You learn to scan the room before you smile in it. Stay alert. Watch carefully. Prepare emotionally for loss before it even arrives. You learn that your joy, when visible, becomes a kind of open door and not everyone who walks through deserves to be inside.
So I kept mine closed. Withheld more. Stopped allowing people easy access to me.

What I didn’t understand then and what I understand now with the kind of clarity that only comes from living through something is that I confused dimming with discipline. Watchfulness with wisdom and restraint with power. I realized I started to associate joy with danger. Because, what happens when you build a beautiful life and lose it? What happens when your nervous system learns to wait for the shoe to drop? What happens when becoming visible again feels risky because people remember who you used to be, where you used to live, what you used to offer, what happened to you?
What happens?…You learn to dim.

There was also another grief I had to face. For years people often saw my physical beauty before they saw my depth. I was often called sweet. Pretty. Cute. Soft. And while none of those things are wrong, they began to feel incomplete. I am not offended by beauty. I am a beautiful woman and I know that.
I am also deep. Fierce. Grounded. Wise. Commanding. Devotional. Protective. A woman with substance beneath the surface people first notice.

I think many women understand this feeling intimately. It’s exhausting being perceived before being understood.

The other day I was in a bookstore with my daughters. We were laughing. The kind of laughing that happens when someone gets camera-shy and everything becomes funnier. The young man behind the counter started to laughed with us. He looked at me and said, you’re cute.
Something stopped in me for a millisecond.
And then I thought: yes. I am.
Fifty years old and still being called cute. Still luminous. Still capable of filling a room with something contagious and completely unplanned. Years ago that word would have irritated me but I smiled and kept it moving. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that midlife was the end of beauty, joy, sensuality, desire, and playfulness. I unconsciously inherited the idea that women become less alive as they age. Less desired. Less radiant. Less worthy of being seen.

What I understand now is this: Beauty Never Dies. Never.

It changes shape.
It deepens.
It becomes embodied.
It becomes conscious.
It’s beautifully layered.

And now my joy feels different than it once did. I no longer need my life to look a certain way. It’s not the flowing dresses or the slow mornings or the candles, or the cards, or the clients who leave feeling held. Those things carried it but they were never the source of it.
I no longer need certainty before stepping out, or entering a room, or allowing myself delight.
Joy lives inside of every step I take, so no matter where I step, joy is always there.
I no longer need everyone around me to be emotionally well in order for me to live. This has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. I used to believe, to my core, that my joy had to rise and fall with the emotional climate of my home, I no longer believe that. And now, my joy is becoming my guiding light. I don’t wait for it to break through, I look for it. I find it. I feel it rise in me like a well that finally stopped running dry. It’s mine It’s something I choose. Every single day, something I choose.

Someone recently asked me what my joy depends on now, if not on what’s happening around me. I didn’t have to think long.
It’s Me, I said. Me. Me. Me.
My joy, these days, comes in big laughter when I watch a family I follow on youtube who remind me of how I used to carry on with my brothers. 😅
My joy comes in my hobbies, which I go hard with, make no mistake.
My joy comes on the seawall, in the bathhouse, in my books, in the particular aliveness my body finds when it moves. Because as a fire sign moon, I need movement the way fire needs air. Thank you, for this incredible, enlightening, article. It was the confirmation I needed.

My joy doesn’t need an audience.
My joy doesn’t need circumstances to cooperate.
My joy is a reclamation.

This season is not a light one. And still, I am doing the work…the specific, daily, unglamorous work of not taking on someone else’s unease as evidence of my own failure. Of not letting my circumstances set the temperature of my joy. It isn’t easy. But I am doing it. And in doing it, I’ve discovered something…joy that belongs entirely to you, privately, unapologetically, unguardedly yours, cannot be taken by another person’s mood. It cannot be relocated with the furniture when you move states. It cannot be collapsed along with the finances.
It lives in a place no external circumstance can take away.

I am learning to live there. It’s a happy place and it’s all mine.

The woman I am today, does not dim herself for a room.

She walks into rooms, or doesn’t, entirely by her own choosing, and either way she is lit. 🔥

This is not a performing light. It’s not and offering light as an invitation for others to consume her. Just lit. On fire. 🔥🐎

The woman I am today, is in her bag. I know what my business looks and feels like. I take responsibility for my life and my choices.
Queen of my domain. 👸🏽
I do not apologize for being who I am and I certainly do not beg.

This is the part I want us all to sit with, to embody, to enjoy, to live, to love…❤️‍🔥
I no longer beg for my joy.
I no longer beg for my becoming.
I no longer beg for permission to be who I am and do what I desire to do.
I no longer beg for someone to be a certain way in order for me to live happily.
(I’ll say that again.)
I no longer beg for someone to be a certain way in order for me to live happily.
(This will change your life.)

I no longer rely solely on another for the well-being of my life.

I no longer beg for the life I want to live.

I live it now.

Joyfully.

To your joy and mine,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶 🪷

Cassandra is one of those women.

I’ve known Cassandra for years. Long enough to have watched her move through seasons. Through her becoming, through her disappearing, and through her return. She is a free spirit in the truest sense of the word. Not untethered, but uncontainable and unapologetic in the way that only women who have done the work can be.
She’s sensual in the way that belongs to a woman who has come home to herself, to her body and has reclaimed her freedom.

When I began building Goddess in the Flesh - a series of conversations with women who have reclaimed themselves, I knew she had to be the first.

What follows are not just answers to questions, but a mirror 🪞 that glaringly resonates with me. I believe she may be one for you too.

Origin 🕯️

Q: What first drew you to sharing your life or work publicly?

A: Honestly, I think what drew me to sharing publicly was a longing. A longing to be witnessed in a way I hadn’t been in my private life. There’s something about putting your truth into the world, even imperfectly, that says I exist. This happened. I matter.
I think I was searching for mirrors. Women who looked like what I was feeling inside and when I couldn’t find enough of them, something in me said: then be one.

Q: How has your relationship with visibility evolved over time?

A: In the beginning, visibility felt like performance. Like I had to earn the right to be seen by being inspiring or put-together or healed. Now, visibility feels like presence. I’m not showing up to impress anyone. I am showing up because I refuse to be invisible to myself anymore. And that shift changed everything about how I move in public spaces.

Q: Was there a season where you felt yourself disappearing? What was happening internally?

A: Yes. And the dangerous part was how quiet it was. I wasn’t disappearing loudly. There was no dramatic breakdown. I was just…shrinking. Editing myself in conversations. Swallowing my instincts. Dimming down so that the spaces I was in could stay comfortable.
Internally, I was exhausted from being palatable. I had convinced myself that being easy to love meant being easy to ignore and I had become very, very good at both.

Reclamation 🕯️

Q: When you said (in your Instagram post) “the main character has returned”, what changed internally?

A: What changed was that I stopped waiting for permission. I had been living like a supporting character in my own life. Reacting, accommodating, making myself small so others could feel big. And then something shifted. I can’t even name one single moment. It was more like auditioning for a role that was already mine. The main character didn’t come back because something was given to me. She came back because I stopped giving her away.

Q: What boundary changed everything?

A: The boundary that changed everything was the one I set with my own inner voice. The one that had been narrating my life in someone else’s language. The boundary I had to draw was between who I was told I was and who I actually am.
External boundaries matter but until I stopped letting the old story have unlimited access to me, nothing outside could really change.

Q: What belief about womanhood did you outgrow?

A: I outgrew the belief that a good woman makes herself manageable. That softness means silence. That if you’re too much, too loud, too complex, too contradictory, you are somehow failing at femininity. I grew into the understanding that the divine feminine isn’t just light and nurturing and gentle. She is also the storm. She is Persephone descending and returning. She is Ma’at holding the scales of truth. She is Yemaya, vast, maternal, and capable of destroying what doesn’t serve.
Womanhood isn’t one note. It never was.

Embodiment 🕯️

Q: How does your power feel in your body today?

A: It feels like groundedness. Like my feet actually touch the floor now. There was a time when I was so adrift that I floated through my own life. Present but not rooted. Now my power feels like something that rises from the earth through me rather than something I perform from the surface. It’s warm. It’s steady. And it takes up space without apologizing.

Q: What daily practice anchors you when doubt creeps in?

A: I return to my body. Because doubt lives in the mind. It is a mental loop, a story, a what-if. And the body doesn’t speak in what-ifs. When doubt creeps in, I get quiet. I breathe. I pray. I alchemize. I ask myself: what is actually true right now, in this body, in this moment? Not, what I fear might happen. Not what someone once told me about myself. What is true right now? That practice has saved me more times than I can count.

Q: If this current version of you were a Goddess Archetype, who would she be?

A: She would be a convergence. She carries the depth of Persephone, someone who has walked through the underworld and didn’t just survive it, but was transformed by it. She holds the justice of Ma’at, committed to truth, even uncomfortable truth, especially about herself. She has the abundance and emotional sovereignty of Yemaya, nurturing but boundless, giving but not depleted. And she carries the regality of Cleopatra, a woman who understood that her power wasn’t despite her womanhood, but because of it. She isn’t one archetype. She is the convergence of all of them. And, she is still becoming.

Sovereignty 🕯️

Q: What does being self-led mean in your real, everyday life?

A: It means I check in with myself before I check in with everyone else’s expectations. It means when I have a decision to make, the first voice I consult is my own. Not out of arrogance, but out of respect for myself. It means I’ve stopped outsourcing my discernment. Self-led doesn’t mean isolated or rigid. I still receive wisdom, still lean on community. But I am at the helm of my own life. That’s new for me. And it’s sacred.

Q: Where do you no longer negotiate your worth?

A: In my relationships. In my creative work. And in rooms where I am the only one who looks like me. I spent years making myself easier to digest in spaces that were never designed for me. I would shrink my perspective, soften my presence, translate myself for comfort. I don’t do that anymore. My worth is not a starting point for negotiation. It is a given. And if a room, a relationship, or an opportunity requires me to forget that, I’ve learned that’s not my room.

Q: What would you say to the woman who feels herself slipping into the shadows?

A: I would say: your disappearance is not the problem. It is the symptom. Something or someone has convinced you that you are safer small. And I understand that. Sometimes small kept us alive. Sometimes invisible was the only way we knew how to survive. But surviving and living are not the same thing. And somewhere inside you, there is a version of you that remembers what if felt like to take up space without guilt. She is not gone. She is waiting. She has been waiting with extraordinary patience. And when you are ready, not perfect, not healed, not finished, just ready…she will rise. She always does.

Rapid Fire Reclamation ❤️‍🔥

One identity you’ve shed.
The woman who made herself easy to leave.

One truth you live by.
I am not for everyone. And that is not a wound. That is a boundary the universe set on my behalf.

One practice that keeps you grounded.
Returning to my body. Always, that body.

One sentence you’re no longer afraid to say out loud.
I am exactly who I am supposed to be and I am still becoming her.

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Cassandra 𓄂𓆃 can be found at:

BFree Organics

BFree Organics IG

Cassandra.Nichole IG

BFO Wellness Club

I hope something Cassandra said found the part of you that needed to hear it.

This is the first of many. More goddesses. More flesh. More truth.

See you in the next one.

With love, 💗

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

She used to preface everything.

I know this might sound strange but…
I’m probably overthinking it...
Don’t judge me, I just…

As if though her thoughts needed a disclaimer before they were allowed to exist. As if she owed the room a warning before she took up space in it.

She doesn’t do that anymore.

🕯️

There are photographs she can barely look at.

Not because she was unattractive in them. But because she can see it now…the way she made herself smaller inside her own life. The posture of a woman who had quietly decided she needed permission. To want things. To say things. To be things.

She remembers that woman.

She remembers the way every decision came with a question mark attached. The way she would look to the nearest face in the room before she trusted her own knowing. The way certainty felt like a foreign country she heard about, but never visited.

She looks at those pictures now and she does not feel shame.

She feels something tender.

She feels the grief of a woman who can finally see how long she lived curled inward. She sees how much of herself she handed over. She sees how many years she spent asking is this okay about a life that was entirely, completely, only hers.

She doesn’t ask anymore.

🕯️

There is a woman who booked a flight.

Not a practical one. Not a responsible one. The one that made no sense on paper to a city she’d never been to, to a life she’d been circling for years without landing. And when people asked why she was going, she smiled and said because I wanted to, and let the silence after that be enough.

She used to have a longer answer.
She retired it.

🕯️

There is a woman who got dressed this morning and put on exactly what she wanted.

The color that makes her feel like herself. The silhouette that has no apology in it. She walked out the door without checking the mirror one last time to make sure she hadn’t been too much. She has spent years being too much and has decided that this is no longer a problem she is willing to solve.

Her clothing is not a statement.
It is simply, and beautifully, hers.

🕯️

There is a woman who stopped calling herself a victim.

Not because nothing happened to her. Things happened to her. Real things. Heavy things. Things she carried so long they even shaped the way she walked and talked.

But somewhere between the wound and the rest of her life she made a decision - quiet, private, seismic - that she was no longer available to be defined by what was done to her. She grieved it fully. She honored it completely. And then she set it down.

For herself.

The woman who stops explaining her healing
is not in denial.
She is in sovereignty.

🕯️

There is a woman who lives her life in a way that raises questions.

She moves differently than she used to. Slower in some places. Bolder in others. She has rearranged her priorities in ways that don’t make sense from the outside and she has stopped trying to make them make sense from the outside. She knows what she is building. She knows who she is becoming. The people who need to understand will understand. The ones who don’t - she loves them anyway, from a new distance.

She has learned that explanation is often just another word for permission.

And she stopped asking.

🕯️

She is not cold.
She is not unkind.
She is not running from accountability.

She is simply a woman who realized one day while scrolling through old pictures, while watching a video of herself from years ago, and not quite recognizing the woman in it, that she’d been living at half volume.

That somewhere along the way she’d turned herself down.

And that no one was coming to turn her back up.

So she did it herself.

Not with a speech.
Not with a declaration.
Not with a single dramatic moment of awakening.

Just…quietly, firmly, finally.

She stopped explaining.
She stopped shrinking.
She stopped asking.

And the woman who walked out of that decision was the one she’d been waiting to meet her whole life.

Dear Magical Woman, ❤️‍🔥

There are pictures of you from before.

You know the ones.

Honor her.

And then let her go.

Because you are not her anymore. You move differently now. You dress how you want and go where you’re called and when someone asks you to explain yourself, you smile and you don’t.

You’re a woman who has finally understood your life belongs to you.

Welcome home.

Let the world experience you, just as you are,

Your Sister in Spirit,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶
𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

The bath is not an indulgence.
It is the oldest altar.

A candle, lit for pleasure because something in you
still knows
how to make a thing sacred.

The water doesn’t ask what you’ve done.
It doesn’t weigh what you carry
or measure what you’ve given away.

It simply, receives you.

This is the part they forgot to tell us,
that the body was never the problem.
That warmth on skin is a form of prayer.
That slowing down in your own flesh
is not laziness.

It is devotion.

There is a Priestess in you
who has been waiting
at the edge of the water.

She is not waiting to be pure.
She is not waiting to be chosen.

She is waiting for you
to remember who you are.

So, you enter.

Not to cleanse yourself of sin,
but to remember that you were never dirty.

To enter without an agenda,
without performance, without witness,
without apology.
To enter and let the heat loosen
what the mind has tightened.
To let the steam soften what the world
has hardened.

The Priestess who bathes
understands that water is older than doctrine.
Older than shame. Older than the laws that told women
where holiness was allowed to live.

She knows the body is the doorway.

She bathes the way women once did
before the body became something to manage,
before pleasure was made exile,
before a woman’s wholeness was split into
what was acceptable and what had to be hidden.

She bathes to cross a threshold.

Warmth moving through her slowly.
Stillness steadying her breath.
Time loosening its grip.
Her nervous system remembers what safety feels like.

Her pleasure is sovereign. ❤️‍🔥
Her presence is enough.

When she rises from the bath
she does not emerge new
she emerges intact.

Herself.

Nothing has been taken.
Nothing has been proved.
Nothing has been performed.

Only remembered.

She walks back into her life carrying the quiet authority of a woman who knows that devotion can look like rest, that holiness can feel like warmth settling into skin, that the sacred sometimes sounds like breath meeting steam meeting silence meeting depth.

This is the Priestess who bathes.

She does not ask permission. She does not explain herself. She does not split herself from herself.

She returns, again and again
to water that holds the shape of
every woman who came before her.
Every woman who has yet to remember.
Every woman who is her.
Every woman who is finding her way back to,
her.

and let the world experience you,
just as you are.

A Sister in spirit 🌹✨

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

Finding my rhythm in a new place.

There is something about hot water and open air that loosens the parts of you that have been holding on too tight. I think about this every time I return to the bathhouse piece, the one that keeps finding new readers. I was writing about heat and ritual and old human need to gather somewhere warm and wordless, together. But I was also writing about permission. Permission to be still, to be rested, permission to be restored. The response surprised me at first, that kind of resonance that keeps us connected, whispering the same language. Then I stopped being surprised because I know we are all, in some way or another, looking for a place to exhale. 😮‍💨

I’ve been writing more.
Reading more.
Studying more.
My days feel more organized in ways they didn’t before. There’s structured clarity around my goals now. I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers. I’m staying here, being true to this word because it’s my daily devotion.

I’ve also been getting out more, attending small gatherings and events. It feels good to be in rooms with people again, to explore, to observe, to listen. There’s something about entering new spaces, familiar spaces, that reminds me that life is still, and forever more, expanding.
I’m learning to notice differently - wider skies, more room between things, appreciating this space instead of rushing to fill it. The adjustment has been softer than I expected. I’m enjoying discovering new corners, new rhythms. New ways of belonging to a new place that is still revealing itself.

Texas has been good to me. 🫶🏽

My front porch, where I sit, meditate, read, write, is not just a place. It has become a sanctuary.
It means sitting with what is in front of me without needing it to be anything other than what it is. It is the opposite of the scroll. It is presence as a practice.
The bathhouse operates the same way. You cannot rush a steam room. You cannot multitask in a cold plunge. The body becomes the whole agenda. And in that surrender, something opens.

I’m reading more. Writing more. For my fellow writers you know the two are not separate activities. They are the same conversation - one with the page and one with the world. I’ve been treating them that way lately. Reading as research for living, writing as a way of understanding what I have already lived. It’s the way Anaïs Nin and Joan Didion speaks of writing.

The structure in my life has returned. My goals are clear. I know what I am building and I know what I am leaving alone.
The last part matters more than I admitted to myself. Leaving the rest alone.
I no longer harp on things that are out of my control.
My Peace is not for sale.
It is not passive.
It is a daily, devotional decision, reiterating, my pleasure is not too much. ❤️‍🔥

Read: The Soft Disorientation of Becoming

The bathhouse will keep coming up in future newsletters - it has not finished saying what it needs to say. Some subjects are not topics, they are lenses.
I plan to keep looking through this one. 👁️

To your daily devotion,
and mine,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

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I’ve been to two bathhouses recently here in Texas and they’ve become my second homes. Both are exactly what I hoped. Deliciously divine. Healing. Melting. Grounding.

They’ve become my slow sanctuaries. A mystical rebirth. A wet offering and sacred seduction, the womb I willingly return to. Time loosens its grip, my body relaxes, lets go and remembers an older language.

I don’t go with an agenda, with a checklist, with a plan. I go with a willingness to surrender and be led.

My body always knows.
She knows which room to enter first.
She knows when to linger.
She knows when to move on.
She knows when it’s time to sit, to open, to soften, to stay.

Sometimes I stay for five hours. Sometimes seven. Soaking. Sweating. Resting. Moving slowing. Intentionally. As if each step is a prayer. There is no rushing here.
No rushing. No rushing. No rushing.
Sometimes I sleep in private dark rooms, wrapped in warmth and utter silence. Other times I steam where water falls gently over my face, my breasts, my thighs-embracing me, holding me, shielding me from the busyness of the outside world. The heat feels maternal. Protective. Ancient.

This is where I remember that rest is devotional for me. It’s medicinal.

Since 2009, bathhouses have been my holy grounds of internal cleansing. Jeju Sauna, Atlanta. I practically lived there for years. Spending the night on many nights because of its twenty-four hour access. The ones I recently found are not twenty-four hours but if you take your time, if you sit for a while, it could feel like it.

Between the massages, the foot soaks, the body scrubs, the warm, hot, cold baths, and even just sitting in silence with a personal face mask, it’s more than indulgence. It’s medicine.
And on certain visits I always get a Hip Bath. Also known as a Yoni Steam. It’s Holy and Divine.

This is the kind of rest that ripens you. The kind that speaks to you.

I’m listening.

An era of obeying pleasure. Of choosing softness without needing to justify it. Of devoting myself to rhythms that feel ancestral and wild and feminine and mine.

On the Sacredness of Silence Around Bodies

In the Bathhouse, we listen and we don’t judge. Shh. 🤫

When you’re in the bathhouse, you see every kind of body. Curves, scars, softness, stretch…marks. Lean lines, aging skin, post-baby bellies, tight skin, loose skin, hair, no hair. Some women walk freely, some a little less. Some cover, some could care less. Some watch. Some avoid eye contact. And all of it belongs.

One thing I’ve come to deeply value in these spaces is the absence of body commentary.
No one is saying:
”You’ve lost weight.”
”You’re so small.”
”Your body looks, good.”
Even if meant as a compliment, even if said in love, it interrupts the quiet miracle of simply being.

We learn from such a young age to look at each other’s bodies and offer praise or critique. We learn that we have the authority to judge. But in sacred circles, in healing waters, in sanctuary waters there is no room for that. We are not here to look at one another. We are here to be with one another. In our truth. In our skin.

Walking naked in the bathhouse I feel confident. Not because I look a certain way, but because I’ve stopped measuring myself against the noise of expectations that can be so loud and debilitating.
I realize that I have nothing to complain about. My body is my body. My Temple. She holds me. She moves me. She deserves my reverence and the very best from me.

I believe that this is where women go to soften. This mentality right here. It’s how we begin to normalize all shapes and sizes, not by pretending differences don’t exist, but by refusing to make anyone’s body a spectacle, even in admiration.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let this be a soft reminder, Ladies 🌹
Don’t comment on someone’s body. Not even to compliment. Especially not in sacred spaces. Instead, let her feel herself, uninterrupted, unbothered. Because how she feels in her body is what truly matters and if she feels well, loved, healthy, and whole, that is all that matters.

Let’s be a catalyst to return women to their own sacred, magical gaze.🪞

To your sacred beauty,
and mine,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

Softness touched me, and I didn’t pull away.

This entry arrived quietly. Not as a declaration. Not as a performance. As a noticing. A soft turning inward. A willingness to pause. A moment where I realized I no longer wanted to push through, life.
This season is asking something gentler from us.
It’s asking us to listen to our body.
To trust pleasure as information.
To let ease guide us instead of, urgency.
To believe that softness is not a detour, it’s the path.

What follows is not instruction. It’s permission.

A field note from a woman deciding to yield.
To receive without guilt and rest without explaining herself.
This is me, standing on sacred ground choosing pleasure as a place of return.

🌹

I’m yielding to my pleasure
in my body,
in my breath,
in the quiet places where wanting lives.

Yielding

Like a body softening into warm water,
i feel it when I slow down.
Like a jaw unclenching,
i feel it when I stop performing.
Like breath finally dropping into my belly,
i feel it when my hips loosen
and my spine remembers it was made to move.

Yielding

Pleasure, no longer feeling conditional,
something to be earned after labor,
something postponed until everyone else is settled,
something to keep at arm’s length
in case it asked too much of me.

Yielding

Yielding is trust.
Yielding is consent with myself.
Yielding to pleasure is a feminine intelligence.
Yielding is choosing to stop bracing
and letting pleasure arrive at its own pace.

Yielding

Is a woman in her body,
listening instead of overriding,
receiving instead of performing,
allowing instead of managing.

Yielding

Is the warmth that spreads when I let myself linger.
The low hum that turns on when I stop rushing.
The way pleasure rises up my spine,
whispering to me…I am here, can you feel me?

Yielding

Means letting my body lead instead of correcting it.
It means trusting the intelligence of arousal,
how it wakes me up,
how it roots me,
how it reminds me that I. Am. Alive.

Yielding

Is letting myself be touched by what feels good -
a voice, a presence, a hand, a moment,
even my own awareness resting inside of my skin.

Yielding

When I yield to my pleasure,
my body softens and opens, instead of shutting down.
Like petals on a flower - breathing in, breathing out.
My desires start to inhale and ex.
My femininity becomes felt.
Melting, moistening, becoming wet.
This is sacred ground…
where my wanting is not sinful,
where my pleasure is not too much,
where my body is not something to transcend
but something to inhabit.

I am here.
I am open.
I am responsive.
And I am letting pleasure take its time with me,
have its way with me.
Letting pleasure, pleasure me. 💦

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

May you remember that pleasure is not something to earn but something to allow. May your body feel safe enough to open. May your breath deepen without effort. May your softness be met, not questioned.
May you lay down the need to justify ease and trust that what feels nourishing is also what is true. And when pleasure finds you, quietly or all at once, may you let it stay.

To your pleasure,
and mine,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

When you love me, you love me.
Not the idea of me.
Not the version of me that performs, explains, or shrinks.
Me.
Just Me.

True lovers are lovers who have learned how to love themselves first.

The lover in me begets lovers outside of me. Around me and through me.
Love multiplies when it has a source. Do you hear what I’m saying?
Love multiplies when it has a source and let that source be you.

When you love yourself, you know what it is to love someone else.
Not to cling.
Not to beg.
Not to barter for belonging.
But to offer love cleanly, freely, without hunger gnawing at the edges.

To become your own lover
wrapped in your warmth,
your silk,
your dining-out clothing
is to court yourself with intention.

It is to take yourself out.
To savor the pleasures of life without waiting for permission.
To enjoy your pleasure in life.

Getting to know you
who you are.
Getting to love you
who you are.
Getting to accept you
who you are.

You are the main lover.
You are the main course.

You feast upon yourself with eyes of admiration.
You return to yourself again and again and again and again
not because you are lonely,
but because you are home.

Bring me back there.
Back to my pack.
My wolf pack.
The place where I remember my instincts, my loyalty to myself, to my knowing.

I woke up with a new lease on life
a life that claims my worthiness without debate.
A life that knows I am enough
and always have been.
And always will be.

I am witnessing my rebirth.
Being unearthed.
Pulled from beneath old permissions, old silences, old agreements.

I belong here because I say so.

No, don’t choke.
Don’t sit over there and stare, stunned, looking broke…in spirit.
You no longer have the right.
And who gave you that right?

I did.
That’s who.
And I take it back.

No more.

My words are sure.
Very sure.

I am my true lover.
And I shall give myself everything my heart desires.

You are not waiting for love.
You are practicing it…on yourself. 🧜🏽‍♀️

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

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I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

There’s something tender about these days. Something I can’t quite name, and yet, my body recognizes it. It feels like standing barefoot in a life that’s quietly rearranging itself, without needing my permission.

There’s so much I want to do.
So much waiting in the wings - books stacked like love letters, ideas whispering to be written, yarn for new crafts, and meals I want to learn to make with more slowness. But yesterday I pulled a card and it said rest.
I went to my appointment. Rest.
I sat with my tea. Rest.
I read a few chapters. Rest.
I did my laundry. Rest.
I wrote a letter. Rest.
I’m getting all of these messages of rest and my body confirmed it. Because last month, I did rest, deeply and intentionally. As a result my body experienced changes that I haven’t seen in years. Something is working. I’m learning, I’m listening.

Last month I rested…for real. I moved slower. I put down the performance and picked up peace. I nourished my body with intention. I got off social media. I returned to food as love, writing as release, and presence as power. And when my cycle came, it surprised me with a quiet flow.
And I cried.
Because I knew then that my womb had been listening.
She heard the stillness.
She felt the love. She felt the attention, and respect.

Now here I am, weeks later, still not fully “back” on social media.
Not really sure I even want to be.
I find myself on the other side of that healing moment, shape-shifted.
A bit off.
Unfocused.
Not quite able to return to the rhythm I knew before.
And maybe that’s the point. Right?!

Maybe I’m not supposed to go back.
Maybe I’ve entered another layer of my own becoming.
What I do know is that my peace has been louder than the need to post.

I’m craving more time in books than in apps. I’m reading like crazy and it’s the kind of reading that feels like nourishment, like soul food. I want to write, but I don’t know what at times. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the writing begins right here, in the quiet space of not knowing.
I’m noticing there’s been more presence with my family than with followers. My friendships are shifting too. They’re not shifting in dramatic ways, but in sacred ways.
I’m finding myself less available for anything that feels like obligation. Period.

I’m being pulled toward textures and tools. I bought a Loops & Threads kit. It’s waiting for me. I’ll need to find a needle.
I booked my first of many appointments at the bathhouse and my body whispered thank you.
This is the part I often resist: the shape-shift that comes after rest.
The soft confusion.
The disorientation.
The new rhythm trying to find its way into my body.
But I’m here.
I’m listening.
Writing in the in-between…
…morning pages…three full, imperfect pages.
Sips of tea…warm, soothing, healing tea.
Thighs warmed by the sun on my balcony.
My pen catching whatever thoughts might still be floating through. I live for these moments, I breathe in these moments - the perfect flow after a perfect storm.
And then, I remind myself that maybe this is the practice.
Letting life be unhurried. Letting myself be enough, even when I’m between chapters.

I’m reminding myself over and over again that this isn’t a time for conquering.
It’s a time for listening.
For receiving.
For laying on sacred ground and letting the next version of myself be born without force.

I don’t know exactly what I’m writing next,
or what direction this next cycle of my life will take.
But I do know this:
The woman I’m becoming is leading.
She reads to remember.
She receives to release.
She rests like it’s prayer.

And I’m following her.

—

If this note met you where you are, leave me a little comment below or share a word that describes what phase you’re in. I’m listening. Maybe, it’ll be your word or phrase for next year. 🕊
P.S. I’ll share about the bathhouse experience soon. This feels like a sacred return to my body. 🛁

Rest In Love,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

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I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

Today I learned something about myself.
Something that has been shaping the way I move through the world without me even knowing it.

I realized that joy has never felt easy for me.

I can be grateful, I can be disciplined, I can be soft and reflective and devotional… but joy — true, rising-from-the-belly joy — has always felt like a visitor I wasn’t sure I was allowed to welcome in, and it would stay.

I used to think something was wrong with me.
That I was too serious.
Too careful.
Too focused on what needed tending.

It’s not that I don’t or didn’t want joy.
It’s that somewhere inside of me, joy learned it needed permission to be - to breathe, to feel, to take up space, to be mine.

When joy lived in my childhood home, it was fragile, fleeting at times.
It was something I held lightly, carefully, because a shift in tone, a sigh, a look, a mood could snatch it away at any given moment.

Joy didn’t stay long. So I learned not to trust it. I learned to hold my breath in good moments. To stay alert even in softness. To prepare myself for the next disappointment that would inevitably arrive.

I didn’t know I was doing that. To this day, I didn’t know how much I guarded myself from the very things I prayed for. From the very things that felt so good.
You don’t know what you don’t know, until you do.

So now that I’m a woman building her life with intention, now that I’m healing my womb, my voice, my boundaries, my body…I feel something loosening - another layer.

I feel joy tapping at my door again. I feel her inside my smile as I rise in the morning. I feel the flutters in my tummy tickling me from the inside. And, I hear these whispers saying that it’s okay to feel her again.
She’s knocking and I won’t keep her waiting.

Practicing something new:

I’m practicing letting joy rise without choking on it with “what if.”
I’m practicing letting my shoulders (not the shoe) drop when something good happens.
I’m practicing savoring the softness of the moment instead of rushing to the next task.
I’m practicing trusting that I don’t have to brace for impact every time I smile.

I’m learning that joy doesn’t demand perfection, it just needs presence.

I’m learning that joy doesn’t have to be loud. Sometimes she arrives quietly, in the steam of my morning tea or the sound of my husband’s voice whispering something sweet. Or the way my daughter texts me something that makes me giggle or a two-step dance I do with my son that makes my body jiggle.

I’m learning that joy is not a peak to reach but a muscle to warm, open, and stretch gently, day by day.

Maybe this is what healing looks like:

Not forcing joy, not chasing joy, not “earning” joy…
but simply allowing, joy.

Letting my body feel safe enough to receive it.
Letting my heart stay open long enough to hold it.
Letting my life be soft enough that joy can find a seat in it.

I don’t want a life where joy survives me.
I want a life where joy lives with me.

So today, on this sacred ground, under these wild notes of my becoming,
I’m choosing something revolutionary:

I’m letting joy in slowly, gently, without apology.

Because I deserve to feel good in my body while I’m alive.
And I deserve to be held by more than my strength.

Joy can stay now. 🥰
She is welcome here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some affirmations to ground yourself in as you remember saying yes to your joy. ✨

I release the habit of shrinking and open myself to expansion.
I am becoming a woman who trusts her own yes.
I am worthy of the life I desire, without conditions or explanations.
I soften into my enough-ness.
I am not afraid of life; life is not afraid of me.
I step forward even when I tremble and that is sacred courage.
Every day, I grow more fluent in receiving.
I welcome pleasure, possibility, and support into my body.
My yes carries divine permission.
I am the woman who walks toward her life with grace, not fear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just watching this beauty invited joy in.

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

There are days when the world feels recklessly loud. When the air feels thick and hard to breathe. His whispers hold me like a prayer, as he takes me to the sea.

Peace, surrounding me. As I look back and take notice of him watching me. Filming me. Taking me in. I feel him as a pulse, a living altar of body and breath.
I see him, my lover.

The waves 🌊 casts spells, prayers to gather. They whispered, be here, be here.

Barefoot, skin kissed by the salt air, I could feel an acceptance moving through me. The tide rolled in, then out again. In, then out again. And with it, went the tension. Holding. My. Breath. I began to let go. Following its rhythm nice and slow. Inhaling, exhaling, we were one. Between the sound of waves and wind, I felt whole.

Peace isn’t something I am chasing anymore. It’s something I’m meeting. It’s the quiet knowing that settled in when I stopped performing and started surrendering to the softness within.

I know now that the world will always try to pull me toward noise, toward urgency, toward proving. But here, the water reminds me I don’t have to try so hard to be seen. My glow isn’t for validation. It’s for devotion.

When I walk along the edge of the shore, I feel truth in my bones. The glow that people notice isn’t makeup, or what I’m wearing, or luck. It’s peace.

Peace. Peace. Peace.

It’s the radiance that comes when you’ve chosen yourself again and again, even when no one is watching. Even when he is watching.

My softness used to scare me. It felt like vulnerability, like exposure, like being taken advantage of. But now I understand that my softness is a sacred invitation to listen, to feel, to open, to return. The waves don’t apologize for their rhythm, so why should I? They rise, they fall, they return. And so do I.

As I stood there, wind tingling my hair, sand cooling my feet, I whispered a quiet prayer, a thank you to the sea. A quiet prayer, a thank you to him.

This is devotion.

Sometimes, the most sacred thing we can do is simply let ourselves be-unguarded, unfiltered, unhurried. Don’t rush me. I want to glow without explanation. To breathe without needing to fix anything. To be me without needing to ask permission.

This, right here, is what home feels like: salt on my lips, stillness in my chest, my soul unarmored and at rest.

Tell me, Beloved…
What reminds you that you are home in your own body?

Here’s where I am now…breathing deep. Feeling the iron and oxygen move through me like devotion. My blood hums with remembrance. My body is no longer starving for truth it is feasting on it.
I am no longer becoming.
I am being made-by love, by touch, by the ache of my own awakening.

I am the aftermath of desire,
the architecture of every sacred yes.

What I am building isn’t a home or a dream,
it’s a body remembering how to worship again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And to my Lover who took me to the sea,
in my boy-shorts & tee 😘,
thank you for seeing me,
in these moments,
knowing exactly what I need.

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

sometimes i write to you as if we’re sitting together with tea, sometimes with wine, sometimes just as friends who can say the things we don’t always say out loud. today is one of those conversations…
i want to ask you something real. something raw. something we don’t often talk about after the vows, after the years, after the routines and the bills and the kids.

is he really your lover?
is she really yours?

that is the question.

your lover. the one who makes your body respond, who leaves you aching, wet, hard, tempted. the one who feels deliciously dangerous in all the best ways…

…not just your spouse, not your partner, not your person in life…your lover.

marriage, long-term love, commitment - these words can sound steady, grounding, safe. but tell me, after years together, is he still your lover? is she still the woman who tempts you, lures you, yearns for you, leaves you fluttering inside?

being husband and wife, partners, roommates, co-parents, that’s one thing. being married to my husband for 26 years i’ve learned that being each other’s lover is an entirely different vow.

so, the question of wetness

let’s be honest - relationships can dry you out. the spark that once left you tangled in sheets, laughing in the dark, aching for more, can dull into habit. but a lover? a lover makes you moist. a lover makes you hard. a lover calls forth your body’s natural, primal response. and for women, this is literal. do you still feel wet at the thought of him? moist when his eyes meet yours across a crowded room? does his presence, his essence, still turn you on without effort? do you blush and fantasize at the thought of what he’s going to do to you when he pulls you into a room, closes the door, and satisfies his hunger while satisfying yours?

for men, do you still find her tempting? do you still feel that pull, that lure in her body, her voice, her smell? do you get excited at the thought of what you’re going to do to her when you pull her into a room, bend her over and…!
or has it all become familiar, safe, and no longer deliciously dangerous?

cardi b named it boldly in WAP (wet a$$ pu$$y). a song many dismissed, clutched their pearls, turned their noses up, but it carried an undeniable truth. (didn’t it ladies?). desire is wet. desire is alive. desire is messy, wild, and unapologetic. just. like. you. 💦💦💦

and so, is your relationship still dripping with that kind of raw, shameless want?

lovers do things

being each other’s lover is not passive at all! it doesn’t just “happen.” it is tended, teased, cultivated, intentional. lovers flirt. lovers play (and sometimes with other lovers). lovers turn the everyday mundane into an opportunity for pleasure. lovers know that this pleasure in their relationship is of the utmost importance.

when i say it’s intentional, it is intentional.
ask yourself this question: when was the last time you slipped them a note. something dirty, something sweet, something only a lover would speak? when was the last time you let a kiss linger long enough to awaken the body, not just acknowledge the day?

you know those kisses that come early in the morning, when the two of you are laying in bed waking each other up? those kisses that say all the sweet, delicious things you want to hear? you want to say? the kisses that make everything else go away and you’re reminded that you are the only thing that matters in this moment.

for me, those kisses are a prelude to morning sex which i absolutely love and prefer.

lover, or roommate?

is he really your lover? is she really yours? or have you traded the lure for the logistics, the wet for the routine?

to be lovers is to keep choosing each other’s bodies as sacred, tempting, irresistible. to honor not just the bond you’ve built, but the fire that made you choose one another in the first place. this fire doesn’t have to die. sure, life happens and it may be diminished for many reasons. but it doesn’t have to stay there. it can be revived, rekindled, reawakened.

marriage can endure without it. but love - the kind that keeps you moist, keeps you hard, keeps you aching for more? that kind of love requires two people willing to remain lovers.

until next time, lovers

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

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something woke me…🔥

not the sound of birds or the stirring of morning.
not the hum of light brewing to rise.
not the subtle movement of morning’s past.

it was presence.
something wordless, deeply felt. ancient. old. a knowing.
it curled beneath my ribs and pressed into my spine,
a rhythm so intimately familiar and fiercely divine.

i didn’t know it by name. it didn’t care to say,
only that it was here to stay.
it carried the scent of forgotten prayers
that lay heavy on my pillow.

it carried the weight of every buried lie
and every truth left unsaid.
it carried stories of grandmothers,
and intricately weaved them into my head.

i was not ready.
i was not ready is what i said.
but yet, i rose.
i chose to soften and flow.

i rose, not out of obligation, but recognition.
not out of duty, but desire.
desire. desire. desire.
i am here to walk through this fire.
to answer the prayers.
to make my ancestors proud.
to finally stand up
and bravely wear the crown.

🐚

some awakenings don’t ask for permission.
they arrive like fire.
like the wind at the edge of a storm.
like the moment you finally stop lying to yourself.
like the moment you’re ready to open your eyes and see.

🕯️

have you ever been stirred from sleep
by something that felt like it remembered you?
have you ever been awakened by something unseen, deeply felt, that changed your life?

with breath held between realms,
and a heart wide open to what stirs me,

ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

I’m tending to the soil of my life with more intention, to write from my hips and my heart, and to honor the rhythms that shape us as women, mothers, mystics, and makers.

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Dear Magical Woman,

You learned young that being “good” meant being quiet.
That love was earned by how little you asked for it.
That respect and love was reserved for the ones who stayed agreeable,
even when the truth burned in their throats.
Truth that spit flames when no one was looking.

You carried that gospel like it was salvation.
And it almost killed you.
Took you out.
Obsolete.
Done.

Because goodness, as they taught it, wasn’t goodness at all.
It was obedience dressed up as holiness. Let us pray.
It was silence mistaken for grace.
It was shrinking yourself into shapes that fit inside someone else’s vision
of what a woman should be.

I remember the girl who believed that if she just kept smiling,
kept nodding,
kept saying “it’s fine” when it wasn’t,
she would be safe.
She would be loved.
She would belong.

But that belonging was a lie.
It came at the cost of your own reflection.
It’s the lie that grew tumors, that bottled up your insides.

The day you started asking, “What if I don’t want to be good in their eyes?”
was the day you began to live.
As hard as it may, you began to live.

You stopped performing the version of womanhood you were handed.
The one polished for approval,
the one that left no room for your rage, your desire, your divinity.

You learned that real goodness is raw and holy,
a kind that makes space for boundaries and messy truths.
A kind that can say no without apology.
A kind that can walk away from the table where you’re being served silence.
Yes, even that kind too.

I write this to remember:
I am not here to be palatable.
I am here to be whole.

And if wholeness makes me “too much” for some,
then I will be too much for the rest of my life.

With all my fire,
keeping my promise to myself ᥫ᭡.
ℒ𝒾𝓈𝒶,

𝒢ℴ𝒹𝒹ℯ𝓈𝓈 ℒ𝒶𝓀𝓈𝒽𝓊𝓃𝓂ℯ𝓉 🪷

Here's where I am now…breathing deep, feeling the iron and oxygen flowing through me like a new kind of freedom. My body is no longer starved of its truth. I am no longer becoming. I am building.

Also, turning the pages of, ‘Women's Ways of Knowing’, I’m realizing I’m not reading. I’m actually re-educating my younger self, teaching her that goodness was never about shrinking. It’s about expanding into your full, sovereign self.