Morning glories lead the month as well, pressure building amidst the tight buds throughout the dark hours of the night, unfurling at the first sign of light in the early hours of the day. Beauty here is something that doesn’t apologize for being brief, or fading before you can sit down for breakfast.

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The two flowers acting as headliners for September have been unapologetically present in my mind, as eclipse after eclipse drove me through the August drought, hoping I’d get just enough rain to catch up to the asters in my blossoming. Running from the low vibrations of overwhelm July put on display as if the sun were my own unwarranted spotlight, August turned that light into one of illumination, a quiet steadiness that brought clarity forward instead of spiraling.

But as that clarity settles, how do you continue forward?

I never really know. There’s only subtle answers, pieces of the full picture, baby step by baby step into the unknown. So as a new month unfolds, I trust intentionality will aid me in my journey forward.

These are those intentions, those whispered vows, expanded from my journal, shared with you

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The September Intentions:

Honesty, in all facets of life.

The energetics of raw honesty aren’t particularly novel to me. Still, the dedication to acting from a place of honesty in every facet of life takes a particular dedication. The more I’ve dedicated myself to the balance of truth and acceptance, the deeper authenticity I’ve been able to stop marching to the beat of others’ drums. From honesty in relationships to myself and others, to the decisions I’m making and what stories inform them… it’s a multifaceted practice to be unfurled, but facing its risk of stinging, instead of performing in pretending, doesn’t cost anything unless you believe it to.

What I’m telling myself: “Sitting with its sting or expansion will lead to greater growth than you could possibly foresee.”

Balancing rest and rigor

Unlearning that taking time to settle into my body, my wave, the present moment, as opposed to forcing output, isn’t for the weak. I’ve been struggling to balance relaxation and the feeling of go, go, go for… my entire life. Allowing a moment, or my body, to slow down provides it with the space to expand into the day. It may not seem productive to others, but it’s the only kind of productivity that doesn’t burn itself out.

What I’m telling myself: “It is safe to rest. To rejuvenate is to care.”

Going with the flow, even through murky waters.

Over the past couple of weeks, multiple discussions with my best friend have centered around feeling incredibly at peace with the chapter of life I’m in, especially as I feel major uplevels continuing to come my way. But when there isn’t a high high or a low low, how can I still live in a state of flow without an extreme to guide my body? Am I capable of moving like water, even when a fog rests overhead? I have faith that I can, but September is the month for me to harness this trust even further. This upgrade in my connection to my intuition is the next step towards unlocking the future designed for me.

What I’m telling myself: “Things don’t have to be clear to accept them as they presently are.”

Fostering a home from within.

A season of in-betweens can send my body, one that so desperately wants to already be settled down, into a frenzy. I’m seeking a move by the end of the year, but I’m here, right now. Until that future coincides with this present, the following questions guide my way back: What do I see in my physical world? What can I feel on my skin? How does that register in my body? How can that feeling inform what I invest in to make my outer world align with my internal vision?

What I’m telling myself: “The sensation of “home” that registers in my body, not the external details, is the one to follow.”

An intention to leave you with…

September is a month that holds many in-betweens. The pressure of the morning glories released for a fleeting moment of greatness, the asters blooming after everyone else before their opportunity dies. The equinox between summer and winter, the shift from play to rest.

What is your body telling you to harness as the seasons shift around you? How can you ground into this moment, this season, this unfolding?

-LA✨

More often than not, they arrive raw: a feeling that’s yet to solidify, a sentence that seems to resurface time and time again, the visions that feel strangely familiar to your body, although you have yet to experience their truth. Used in this raw form, an idea can be almost too strong to hold. So we rush to do something with it… to give it a name, make a plan, turn it into something tangible, even if it jeopardizes its flavors in the process.

I’ve found that many, if not all, of my ideas are simply pieces of a bigger picture. Layers of an onion waiting to be peeled back and seen in a new light, removed from their skin and transformed.

Approaching my ideas this way has become a sort of preservation. An act of letting things sit. Letting the noise settle. Risking the ideas growing moldy until that spark of hunger finally hits, and the end dish becomes clear. What could have been a wasted thought now has the opportunity to step forward, into its own spotlight… or onto its own plate.

Here’s my recipe for pickling your intuitive pulls

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Ingredients:

• One raw, intuitive pull that’s too strong to ignore, peeled and chopped

• A handful of kernels of insight

• 2 pint-sized mason jars

• A generous pour of life’s background noise

• Just enough patience to let the words simmer

• 1 bay leaf

• A hunger for bright expression…*

Recipe:

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That seems to be the underlying theme for this season of life, and exactly what I’m exploring today as I literally try something new.

Welcome to the Liv Abundant Podcast, where nothing has to be figured out yet. In this first episode, I get familiar with the microphone, shifting understandings of self, the blessing of new friends, and… pickled red onions?

Come sit with me while I figure it out…

-LA🤍

It was a Sunday morning in Montana, trees standing guard around me. The sun was kissing my shoulders as I lost myself in a fantasy novel, until buzzing wings shot across my field of vision, barely two feet in front of my eyes. I sat as still as a stone, taking in the beauty of this tiny creature, so skillfully unbothered by gravity. That fated Sunday turned out to be the quintessential moment in drawing me out of my low-grade depression. Not because I was magically healed, but because my body began to recognize the baseline frequency of a life lived in alignment, and how its vibration landed within my body.

This Sunday, I saw a hummingbird for the second time. The sun caressing my skin once again, a fantasy novel transporting my attention. I was no longer in Montana; rather, I was closing out a long weekend alone in my childhood home, but the same feeling landed as the little creature flitted from bloom to bloom. This is how I want my life to feel.

When I attempt to explain this inner knowing to my peers, some seek tangible coordinates to string the sensation within me to something in the physical world. So you want to live in Montana? I don’t think so. So you want to live in your childhood home? Mmmmmmmm… try again. It’s interesting to me how a location is attached to their questions, as if a physical destination is easier to understand than a sensational one.

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The reality is that an intuitive pull may never manifest as a single, solid, graspable thing during a season of change. It’s as fleeting as, and as forceful as the wind. With time, it may. But initially, knowing that there is a peace to tap into now is enough.

When the opportunity to slow down and spend the weekend in my own company, on my own timeline, presented itself, a question came to mind: if I were on my own, how would I want to live my days?

The five days I was gifted to fill as my own were the place to find out.

Day one — A night out with friends.

Chatter from the front of the bar floated across the hallway, separating the noise from us: boys playing pool, girls conversing over wine and movie-theater popcorn purchased next door. With the only walls present being those of the antique building, we could see each other clearly. Our creative sparks, the ways to explore them, visions of future gatherings, and moments of laughter. This is how I want my life to feel: seen for who I am, from a place of honesty.

Day two — A simple day spent thinking.

Time spent alone with your thoughts may freak some out. But warm oats, a gentle bath, the chirping of birds, and the inspiration still fresh from the bar all steer towards an… unlocking of sorts. I had awoken to a silent home. The hum of the AC and the morning stroll spent capturing Mother Earth’s beauty carried me from place to place, instance to instance. Journal pages fill with a newfound realization: this is how I want my life to feel: slow and steady, perfectly on time.

Day three — A baby step forward.

Recordings of my own voice reverberated throughout the sunroom. Streams of consciousness, streams of sunlight. Tiptoeing the line of past and future and the hazy path of the now, leaps of faith turn into little steps. An email lands in my inbox that reflects this shift. The voice memo I’m listening back to serves as a testament to a path that lands true inside my heart, but I clock out at 5:00. A friend arrives for dinner. We walk the dog. This is how I want my life to feel: a blur between work and play that expands me and carries me into my dreams.

Day four — A romancing of self.

Love is an energetic force that exists in abundance. It’s always available to us, should we open our eyes to it. I don’t need a partner to hammer this knowing into my soul; I deserve to be romanced too. The lavender tickling my nose at the farmers market, the gentle breeze carrying me from chapter to chapter in my novel, and the salad on my favorite restaurant patio, enjoyed as a treat, on me, without apology or worry: this is how I want my life to feel, so connected to love, it nearly overflows.

Day five — A walk in the wide open.

Two friends of mine and I, alongside their friendly giant of a golden retriever, stroll down the trail cutting through their country club. Trees dance in the wind. The horses aren’t outside, but their absence doesn’t take anything away. I have no idea where we’re going, but there’s a sense of peace as we talk of old distractions and new beginnings. Boston for one, a new semester for another, and a dedication to the peace within for me. When we sit down at our destination, the lake glimmers in our view. We sit for a little while, soaking in the stillness before standing to make our way back. This is how I want my life to feel: little glimmers of light, accumulated along my way.

Living from this space and moving step by step, in a steady rhythm, towards the feeling I know is in my future is the only way I can imagine moving forward in this season. Blossom by blossom, taking the nectar as it presents itself. It’s the same intention in this bridge season of life, where I know the external will meet me halfway sooner than I could foresee: If I were on my own, how would I want to feel? If I were the master of my world, how would I fill its openings?

The answers may not be linear. But the hummingbird returned on that final day. Its presence was confirmation enough.

-LA🤍

But what if I told you that time traveling is real, if only in your body, to a moment in your past that never actually left you?

I experienced this phenomenon the other evening in a striking fashion, as abrupt as the match striking the box to light the taper candle in my bedroom. As the light met the room’s darkness, I found that when the past and present collide within a human body, the result can be quite unsettling. After all, we have been telling ourselves time travel doesn’t exist yet.

If you open your mind to what traveling into the past, into a memory, can teach you, it won’t only be unsettling, but equally as peculiarly enlightening.

This is my recipe for time traveling, grounded in your body.

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Ingredients:

• 1 taper candle

• A long, overwhelming, chaotic in the overstimulating kind of way, day

• 30 minutes of peace and quiet

• The “notes” app, full of half-finished dreams

• 20% battery life

• That childhood memory that comes up often, but is rarely observed in depth

• The quicksand of the past*

• 3 tools from your toolbox of nervous system regulation

Recipe:

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Everywhere I look, “kinda chic to…” or “things I’m finding incredibly chic” infiltrates my feed, creating a spiral in my mind. The new catch-all word of the internet, in my opinion, is flattening the depth that exists in most of what people are sharing online. The expansiveness, the inspiration, the ease, the beauty… if it isn’t deemed chic by the yellow font plastered upon the feed, are we finding it valuable at all?

When we attempt to shape all of our human experiences into one word, as if we’re trying on the latest diet and equating our success to our worth, we miss out on all of the complexities and texture life has to offer. The flavor that makes it human, not meta-informed, lies flat upon a screen.

It just so happens that a season of observing my life offline to build intentionality in both realms of existence coincides with this season of “chic” galore. The more I’ve seen the word, the more I’ve looked up from my phone. And the more I’ve looked up from the digital abyss, the more I’ve gleaned.

Not chic, perhaps profound. An inventory, sans yellow font.

Things I’m finding refreshing

• Not worrying about how my stomach looks in the mirror after a meal. A recent development that feels a little embarrassing to admit, but a breath of fresh air after years of villainizing natural, physiological ebbs and flows.

• Speaking of meals, watermelon feta salad on a sweltering summer day.

• The remembrance that I am only in control of myself and my reaction to situations. As long as I’m showing up as my best self, whatever else happens does not speak on me.

Things I’m finding out about myself

• My brain thinks in recipes. When I say this is a publication dedicated to the ingredients that make a life, I’m talking about the moments. But they fold together with such a sweetness and mess that I can't always tell where one ends and the next begins.

• It’s easier to live a life not planning the next step, but rather letting my intuition lead me where my body already knows we need to go.

Things I can’t seem to stop thinking about

• The human eye perceives more shades of green than any other color. Nature’s favorite color. We are designed to stay soft in the beautiful visage Mother Nature offers us.

• My female friendships. A year ago I would have cried if I had known how many supportive, talented, beautiful women surrounded me. Now, I’m still crying. Never forget how lucky you are to be living an iteration of your life a past version prayed for.

Things I’m finding nurturing for the soul

• Acceptance of my teenage self. She wasn’t trying to confuse me by losing sight of her innate passions; she was just trying to be loved.

• God exists in everything. The energetic connection between all beings is palpable. It doesn’t matter what you call it; there’s something there to support you no matter where you are.

Things I’m letting be ordinary

• My routines. They don’t have to be optimized to be mine. Performance isn’t a condition for being.

• The inbetweens. Letting the sun rest on my shoulders for 10 more minutes because I don’t know what to do in this hour. Enjoying the company of my cat because I can feel a move bubbling under the surface, a new city just beyond the horizon. Rushing does nothing besides taking you out of this moment. Let it be as it is.

So much of this is who I am within. It reflects the content I share online. None of it would receive the yellow font, and when I find myself in the thrall of trending psychosis, the feeling inside of me saying it doesn’t fit pulls me out. It pulls my eyes back to the greens of the quaking aspen leaves dancing outside the window. It draws me to the images that wouldn’t feel right to stack any word over, as their essence can’t be boiled down into one word. But as my eyes glance up, what they’re finding is true. Human.

I’m finding that’s harder to caption than anything else.

-LA🤍

But Jesus Christ, the title is true. Sometimes you can’t help but feel behind.

I’ve spent an embarrassingly large amount of time over the past year scrolling LinkedIn, which feels like a corporate hell (if you’re a hiring committee looking to employ me, take that statement with a grain of salt. If you’re anyone else, can I get a hell yeah). I graduated with a damn good GPA from a respected university after a less-than-great college experience. I moved home, religiously applying for below-poverty-line-income careers in entertainment while watching the peers who didn’t really interact with me move to big cities, partying together on the weekends and decorating their new apartments, because that’s what I thought I had to be doing. Applying for the chance to do what they were doing was the respectable and good and correct thing to do.

Until an executive from my shockingly great network (although I still couldn’t seem to find anyone who wanted to hire me) said the following words to me over the phone:

“You know what, Liv, you should only be working in this industry if you can’t imagine breathing without it. Otherwise it will chew you up and spit your soul out”

Damn Don. That’s some dark shit.

I genuinely believe the universe inhabited that middle-aged man to send me that message. To deliver an energetic sucker punch straight to the heart. I knew that was the end of my entertainment career. No more Cannes Film Festival internships. No more Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood. The glitz and glam would have to wait, or maybe disappear.

Well, what the hell am I supposed to do now?

Luckily, I had the work of To Be Magnetic to fall back on. I had podcasts that felt like they were saving my life with every weekly drop accompanying me on the hour-long walks in the sub-freezing Minnesotan winter I embarked on to feel something. I journaled every morning and cooked dinner every single night, the rosemary and thyme wafting from my soups warming my spirits and my nose simultaneously. When I went to see Hamnet at the independent theater I used to cozy up in while picturing my name rolling in the credits, I sobbed when I heard Agnes say rosemary is for remembrance. Maybe that’s why it made me want to cry while cooking dinner. I was slowly trying to remember who I was before I got lost in everyone else’s vision.

Healing, in so many ways, has felt like an attempt at doing exactly what those herbs do. A shot in the dark at warming my soul, remembering what’s at its core in the process.

I have done, and continue to do, all the inner work. (I actually have a DI from To Be Magnetic (shoutout and ) queued for when I finish up this scream-typing session.) I ebb and flow between too regimented and not giving a damn at all. I peel back the onion layers of programming that inform the stories I’ve created about myself or my life until I come to understand that my passion for stories, my love of wellness, my woo-woo appearing human design spiels, and the need to feel the seasons in my body are the threads to follow. The intuitive nudges will get me back on track, even when my brain is trying to be so loud I can’t tune it out.

Speaking of intuitive nudges, I actually went on a date a week ago with a man I had been previously seeing. He, interestingly enough, has known a few different iterations of me, and seems to enjoy my company. Maybe I’ll send him this article while I’m at it.

I digress. When he and I first went out, it was in the season of life where I was so desperately trying to get out of Minnesota, clinging to what everyone else deemed correct, clinging to the idea of him in the process as well. I wanted something stable—some idea of a future that was promised for me. Clearly we didn’t work out the first time around. We both didn’t have the capacity for that, and the universe had some reckonings to send across my path.

When we reconnected this past week, I ended up telling him about my month-long crash out I just pulled my head out of. It turned out to be one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time, and it was relatively normal on most accounts. It wasn’t the Michelin-star sushi, or the laughter that fluttered down the streets, but because I was vulnerable and real and fully present. I was me.

So much of the inner work I’ve done lately has led me back to that idea of vulnerability. I’m finding that when I connect with my soul and my future self in the most out-of-body to the degree that it’s nearly in-your-body way, that I was given this body by God, or the universe, or whichever higher power you believe in to do just that: be vulnerable. Experience the highs and lows of life to their fullest. Follow my gut and go places to feel them in my body, glean information from them, and translate it back to others. To share it on the back end.

I cried the first time I realized that. I’m crying again now.

How the fuck do you put THAT on your resume????? I’m thinking you don’t.

I doubt tonight will be the last night I scroll LinkedIn. And I have a feeling another crash-out will come. I am human after all. But if vulnerability seems to be the currency of my healing, then at the very least I’ll throw myself on the line for someone, anyone to know that they aren’t alone.

I feel behind quite a bit, and even though I may come across as a whiny, washed-up almost somebody writing in my journal, this is the sort of inner work and self-acknowledgment most people either aren’t willing to touch or won’t do until they’re sitting on the beach after working their entire life away.

If that makes me behind, so be it. I’ll keep being behind until it springs me ahead. I’m sure it’ll be more beautiful than any beach I could imagine when it does.

-LA🤍

I found myself navigating this undertow after weeks of a pull I hadn’t jumped to follow yet. The knowing that I was about to dip my toes in a city I hadn’t set foot in for nearly a decade. Something within me told me I had to be there, landing in my chest on a random Tuesday. I didn’t dare question it. We’ve grown. What will the city whisper in our ear this time around?

But it wasn’t only the city calling my name, but a slow pull towards a reunion. A person from the past. Skyscrapers meeting water that only existed in my memory.

When the fated Friday comes, it’ll become a balancing act between what could be and what isn’t, juggling the connection you almost lost, the plans you never made, and the laughter from dinner that’s mixing in with the perfume you were happy actually got some use tonight.

Next, something is shifting. A subtle feeling of recognition arrives. It isn’t the $20 wine you let yourself indulge in. It isn’t the late hour. But it too places you in the throes of a liminal space. One second, stretched into eternity.

A future version of yourself steps forward to meet you... not as a vision of something far off, but as a knowing that is already living in your body. Underneath the excitement of realizing what you want for your life rests a current of discomfort and lost dreams. It flows with timid hope, quietly lurking, should you go searching for it after coming out of the flash of a memory yet to come.

When that aha! arrives in a speakeasy—dark, lit with proper candlelight that leaves shadows behind the line of your past’s profile—the current seems to appear just as fully vivid as the candle flame itself, tucking you into the arms of a version of yourself you worked so hard to become. You worked so hard; you can rest now.

From the vulnerability of a connection lost and found to the realization left in its wake, this is a recipe for a homecoming.

Ingredients:

For the preparation:

• A city you haven’t been to in years, but just felt right

• A last-minute dinner reservation

• The 7 blocks it takes to walk to the river

• 1 deep breath

For the main course:

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A steadiness flows through me despite the turmoil lingering as I step across the threshold of my front door, leaving for the farmers market. My parents’ front door, I think to myself. This isn’t your house.

All I’ve been able to think about for the past week is spaciousness. It drifts in front of me with a casual cruelty that would be cool if I could meet it. Catch up with it. My baselines returned to fairly “normal” after feeling flatlined for some time. Whether it’s the market stalls, overflowing with produce at the peak of this summer harvest, or the repeating need for certainty, everything in my life appears to signal more, more, more.

I message my girlfriends about our trip to Chicago the following weekend. I scroll a little too long through Instagram.

There’s no shame in wanting more… right?

Sunday - August 02

The scrolling had gotten to me.

Waking up at 6 am, like clockwork, my legs are heavy, sluggish as I step into my athletic shorts. My head has a concentrated sharpness throbbing between my eyes. Hungover on social media usage… that’s new. It’s depleting, the way I’ve subconsciously overstimulated my brain to the degree of making my morning walk feel like something I have to, not the typical ritual I feel lucky to do.

I’m happy it’s a new day. I’m the only one who can decide to start over.

Hours later, sitting on the back patio, the wind whispers in my ear: Yes. Stay right here. Let me care for you a second longer. Relish this moment. The rest of the world has yet to wake. There’s enough beauty in this moment to fill the reservoir of presence for the day. Flipping to the next page in my journal, I jot down: I’d like to carry the ease that comes with not forcing my brain to move at 500 miles per hour. A long breath in and out.

I look up the Lion’s Gate portal and head inside. The oven timer is begging me to come back to Earth.

Monday - August 03

Slow mornings have seemed to become a daily occurrence. There’s a lingering sense of exhaustion that hums underneath, guiding me into what’s seemingly my standard. Not society’s.

This hasn’t necessarily bugged me recently. Today, it grates on any shred of self-worth I’ve rebuilt over the past week. What the fuck is productivity, and why do I feel like it matters so much? Why is my brain subconsciously equating how much I “do” to how much I’m “worth”?

I don’t like feeling shame around peace of mind. I don’t enjoy dismissing my emotional waves. This isn’t the way anyone would want to start their day…

Monday. A day that held joy. A day that held family and friends. Love and laughter. Disappearing to dust because I get stuck on the thought that I’m not doing enough to make my life one of value. The evidence against this inner turmoil rests all around me. Can I open my heart enough to let it in?

The more I think about it—productivity—the more confused I am. Why does a Monday that starts a little slower seem to spiral?

I open my phone up, and luckily find myself in my text threads with myself, rereading the following note to self:

Reframe: I used to pray for the stillness to have my own peace and timeline and support, and I have that right now! Yes, now I’m praying for other things, but that’s life! A cycle! An upward spiral!

Right… upward spiral. I think about the days I feel most at peace. I make a draft itinerary for the 24 hours to come. This will do.

As sleep pulls me into its sweet embrace, that message that transcended time is what I allow to linger.

I’m the only one who can decide to start over.

Tuesday - August 04

Thank God I woke up this morning.

My morning pages are slowly filling up. There’s no rush. It’s weird sitting on the front steps, seeing raindrops resting on the hostas. Something changed. Something shifted overnight even without being there to witness it consciously.

I’m sure the same can be said about me.

Time has caught up to me. I’m writing from the now, about the now. I’m still looking to call in spaciousness and abundance in an external somewhere, but in this moment, there’s spaciousness within me. The possibilities existing around me are also inside of me.

Maybe if I don’t know where I want to go exactly, how I want to get there, my energy will act as my guide. My emotional wave will lead the way.

For now, I think this will do.

-LA🤍

Today, the universe said more rest for this one. And as if anticipating the long walk I was planning to go on despite my aching muscles begging for a break, the universe sent torrential downpours. Buckets of rain. A don’t even think about it in physical form.

Is it asking me to slow down my body to unlock deeper levels of what’s dormant in my mind? To return to my rituals as my brain slowly opens back up to itself?

I’m not sure, but I know I’m not stepping foot into that rain. I’ll listen to the universe today, and see what I can unlock in slowing down.

Here’s my recipe for a morning spent in slow motion.

Ingredients:

• A lingering spark from the day prior

• 1 Chinese money plant you’ve grown fond of

• 0.5-1 inch rain, give or take

• 1 extra hour in bed

• 20 minutes low-impact movement of choice

• 3 matches, because whoever gets one to light on the first try

• an outfit that feels like home

• 1/2 dozen eggs, unwashed from Tuesday’s farmers market

• 25 minutes in the car, 15 reserved for parking

Recipe:

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But instead of doing all of that, I’d like to share that the quotations around suffering in the title are meant to address the fact that I am a white girl. Next to nothing pisses people off more than a white girl sharing her “suffering” on the internet.

I’m not letting that stop me today.

Here’s to burning the witches, or learning from someone else’s suffering.

The water outside is restless, and so am I, it seems. I’m working through a time in my life where what feels good is less clear than what doesn’t. The waves of Lake Superior disappear into the fog clouding the horizon line, and my intuition seems to do the same just as it reaches a line of satisfaction. My discomfort is SO loud, SO thick, but the solutions want to hide away, just out of sight.

Working out of this hole that is a rut for lack of a better word is unglamorous in every possible way, straight down to the vocabulary I have to describe it. I text friends to cancel plans because I’m making my return to therapy, and naturally my therapist's schedule overlaps with my social life. I see a cute boy at my favorite coffee shop on my way to the bathroom and realize that the reason a rom-com-induced meet-cute isn’t happening probably has less to do with how depleted my reflection looks as I wash my hands, and more to do with the underlying layer of unhappiness resting beneath that grime. The world wants me to be so clear on myself and my own input to heal, it seems. Maybe it’s saving that meet-cute for another time.

There’s no glamorous way to describe this feeling. I like to glamorize the mundane moments in my life because typically they’re a source of inspiration. But right now, there are more gray spaces than glimmers of light in time. And that feels like shit. It feels self-induced. It’s hell on Earth for a recovering control freak like me.

Where my peers have been up and moving along with their lives after graduating college, it appears I’m stuck in a perpetual cycle of emotional and energetic stripping that masquerades as “healing.” At first, it felt empowering—a return to self. A year and 3 months later, it’s simply exhausting.

As I write this collection of thoughts in the journal I havent touched for the better part of the previous month, I open my phone to peek at my horoscope. I can’t help but chuckle in self-deprecating fashion. I’m too woo-woo to dismiss it as being “crazy” or downright incorrect, but having it tell me to focus on self-improvement either by means of destruction or repair is enough to make me laugh. Saturn facilitating power? Frictionless movement? Can the surprising event it notes that will shift my life happen NOW? Please?? These are the things I shout to the moon every time it’s full or new. Here or gone. It appears even my witchiness has become black and white, making it difficult to navigate the in-betweens.

Before taking off for each iteration of the constant meandering in road-trip form that I’ve done throughout July, I’ve pulled a tarot card from the pack that fell right into my lap in the Outer Banks. But before my drive up to the cabin, the soul-sucking depletion was too much, and I avoided the divinity my hands so frequently return to. But even without having pulled a card, I can feel The Moon and The Tower haunting my middays, and Death lurking in the fir trees outside that I so desperately look to return to when the internal goes amiss as it is now.

I attribute much of that call to those trees and the expanse of bodies of water to my Norwegian heritage. I feel pieces of myself grieve the loss of folk-based, ancestral, seasonal ritual that the church shoved aside through flames and trials. I imagine how at home I would feel in this world if living in tune with it was simply enough. If only I had the funds to live that way right now, whether in a big city or not. My own corner, my own blank canvas, where that ancestral energy could rise from the bones of the land into my soul. What would healing feel like instead of reinventing a wheel I was never taught to build? This is a spiral I only allow myself to indulge in sometimes. It’s too all-consuming if it’s any more frequent than that.

My disorientation has been disqualified threefold: First by the internet. Second by history. And finally, by myself of all people. The clusterfuck that is healing was designed for me in a system so far gone that it could nearly be called “never.” I would ask if anyone reading has the answers, but frankly, I don’t have the energy to take advice to heart. I know the answers are locked somewhere inside of me, inside of the foreboding therapy session, inside the wheel I keep trying to rebuild that only leads me back to the road. They’ll come to me. But when? Who knows. It’s bound to creep up on me the way witch hunters did to the witches who were burnt before me.

So, as I round out this attempt at gracefully shouting my suffering into the void, the cosmos decide to make me laugh once again.

Maybe this full moon will answer my call, instead of the societal burning at the stake.

- LA🤍

As humans are naturally inclined to come together, to feed off one another's energy and lean on each other for support, this disconnect has felt nothing short of difficult. Very difficult.

Where my brain tries to cling harder in the tenderness of my heart, I’ve learned the opposite is the best medicine, that maybe disconnecting is a secret sauce worth investing in. Turning to ritual. Turning to what’s within, no matter how messy it may be.

So yes, it appears I don’t know how to be around people right now*, so I won’t be.

Here’s what I do when I have to run.

Ingredients:

• 4 hours spent in a car. Or some journey from one physical place to another

• That song that unlocks memories you aren’t sure you want to remember right now

• An empty messages app

• Book of choice, the less realistic the better

• 4-30 tears**, amount varies depending on potential depth of emotional reservoir

• 1 good podcast episode

• An inclination to change your life

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Approaching a vacation with only one event listed on your itinerary is a tad peculiar. Considering the practice of “getting away” from your day-to-day is so regularly characterized by what to do, where to go, how the adventure is imagined to take shape before it’s even materialized, having only a destination and a singular plan in place with nothing else but your presence to fill the open spaces is… strange.

The novelty of this energy struck me as I sat in the passenger seat of my family’s black Toyota 4Runner, staring out into the expanse of North Dakota’s rolling plains. Riding in my own black stallion, I thought as I watched the hay bales flying by. Me, my mom, and the dog, making our way across state lines with ample space for the mundane to arise, the tarot cards we had pulled in anticipatory reverie before hitting the road tucked in my pack, singing Wide Open Spaces by The Chicks along the way

Staring out at the fields, into the great unknown, I had no way of knowing how spot on the cards would read, whispering of an openness to a journey anchored by a grounded presence allowing for emotional opening to be real and lasting, not a fleeting mood whispered to the pines, escaping through the breeze. The energy that followed couldn’t seem to help but trail me throughout the following 5 days…

The last time I stepped foot in my Aunt and Uncle’s Montana home, I was in elementary school, wearing purple sequined sneakers. Pulling into the gravel driveway at 23, opening the door with bags in hand, slipping through the threshold felt like a warm caress. There’s something beautiful about a home where you know every object is handpicked, handmade… uniquely cherished. A reflection of an inner world that leaves glimmers of its soul on the walls, in the accumulation of knick-knacks and decor.

There’s a charger head left in the wall. Dates are resting on top of the fridge, not in a pantry. A stuffed raven perches upon a standing lamp, content with sitting in that one place to overhear the conversations to come, shared over a beverage of choice (ginger tea for me). It’s a home filled with a little bit of chance, a sprinkle of chaos that fosters love. Openness grows without having to tear the walls down between rooms or add any additional windows. The glass already standing allows the light to float in from between the trees with a quiet peace that says you’re held here. Let me wrap you up. Let me illuminate what matters. To call it a house would be foolish. This is what a home is meant to be. Incapable of being replicated, only earned through loving curation.

Getting into nature was to get back to the heart. On Thursday, my aunt led us through trail after trail, Betty running off leash to frolic in the mossy streams. The brief showers that plunked upon the car gave way to a triple rainbow that felt heaven-sent, as if it had something to say. What felt like a perfect start grew strange as time moved toward the weekend… where Friday brought emotions lingering from my previous vacation (more on this below) bubbled up and spilled out in tears rolling down my cheeks and words shared after dinner. But the raven on the lamp saw me, the tea soothed me, and the two sets of eyes on mine held me.

As I climbed into the cupola above my uncle’s shed, where I had the absolute pleasure of sleeping, a breeze kissed me through the 360° screened windows, urging me to put my book down and relish the fresh pine and quiet. To let myself return to the natural world once more. So I did, and I drifted to sleep with Mother Earth’s love as my blanket.

Well rested and fueled by 3 cookies and a slice of sourdough (because there’s nothing better than required caloric intake for a physical task), we ladies took off bright and early on Saturday for a 3.6-mile journey to the top of a mountain, visiting my uncle at his fire lookout. One foot in front of another, a deep breath in. Switchback after switchback and burning legs. We would stop to catch our breath, only to have it taken away by the view at the summit. Wide open space, shared with family, in a place so far removed from the noise that even my own thoughts sounded different, focused instead of vibrating. This is the only thing that’s real, my aunt says—everything else we’ve made up.

The words lingered well into Sunday, despite the buzz I fostered with 4 cups of coffee butting heads with the stillness of the fantasy novel I read, lounging in the front drive. Our grand finale to the trip was approaching that evening. With those words reverberating through my mind, I decided to stay back from any plans and let the day ease its way towards a closing, letting the meaning behind her words slowly creep into my consciousness. I let it kiss my mind as the sun nipped at my shoulders, and went inside to prepare for our closing act, getting lost in a crowd of festival goers, watching Chris Stapleton perform live.

And so, we did just that. Walking through fields of hay, past strong stallions tethered by their cowboy handlers, the twang of a guitar and caress of a moonlit dusk. The energy from the crowds seeped into my being just as the understanding of my journey to the mountains did earlier that morning. A life well loved is a life well lived. My favorite self-crafted sentiment, held in my heart and remembered. Reinvented. Chris didn’t have to sing A Simple Song for its lyrics to ring through my mind. My aunt and uncle, their handmade home, the gentle giants in the distance as I stood in that crowded valley- it was all living proof of that notion. It isn’t a life of forcing, of performing, or being something else to please. It’s saying wait, what I want matters, and I don’t have to explain it. It can simply be. It’s the little knick-knacks, just like within a home. Why settle for unhappiness when peace can be found right here, in what’s natural?

Monday came, goodbyes were said, and the two-day drive back to Minnesota began. The strangeness of not having anything in particular planned presented itself in my mind once more, but this time with the familiarity of an old friend. With the knowledge that I don’t have to have the plans, but the answers are inside of me. The compass is inside. The pure potential of the ace of cups, the wild trees, the rolling plains- it’s overflowing, and it’s accessible to me.

A life well loved is a life well lived. A journey well experienced is a compass, kept.

-LA🤍

A family vacation always seems to arrive at the right moment. Whether you’re feeling burned out, wanting a little adventure, or the kind of rest you can’t think your way into, it’s as if life throws extra challenges our way before we up and leave town.

At least, that’s how the end of June felt for me.

As the moon moved through its waxing phase, I spent my time before vacation working diligently to be seen for who I am. I was coming off the high from the community event I hosted for Liv Abundant Method and posted about it on LinkedIn without sugarcoating my words… but what I thought would feel satisfying in sharing my voice after an expansive event fell flat. It felt… empty.

That truth unsettled me more than if it had failed. Because if this thing I’d worked so hard toward was no longer lighting me up...what exactly had changed in such a short span of time?

I fell into what I call a low-grade depression. The type where your appetite seems to fade away, what lights you up is dimmed even in its ritualistic occurrence, and any energy that isn’t already spent surviving the day dissipates in mere seconds.

Nothing in my life was wrong by any means on paper. I was showing up in my community. I had just hosted a successful event. On the surface, I’m sure everything seemed just fine, even great. And despite this performance of having everything together for so long, and still doing everything I’d always done with ease, I couldn’t feel myself inside of it anymore. Something in me, multiple parts really, needed attention before I could keep building…

But it was time for vacation, so I packed my bags and figured I’d do a digital detox for a day; maybe that would cure me. We trekked across the flat pine backroads of North Carolina and made it to our beachfront rental, a beautiful sun-bleached thing on stilts. And as my body felt heavy and sluggish, I realized this was the only time I’d actually arrived anywhere in weeks. That version of me who built an event? She wasn’t the version who needed this trip.

I was completely out of my zone. And I don’t know how the elementary school physics fluttered into my consciousness, but it landed exactly where it was needed: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It seemed to say: Maybe the answer isn’t continuing to march forward in faux resilience, but rather listening, addressing what I don’t want, and moving from there.

So I took a few deep breaths. And as my brain got quiet, something inside of me finally decided to step forward.

I don’t want this feeling to last. I don’t want to feel stuck any longer. I’m not sure how to move forward, but I know I need to.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. And when I shared that pain with my mom (because it was a family vacation, after all), her wisdom felt like a gentle caress. An opportunity for somebody else to steer the ship for a moment.

“Maybe the answer will be to take it one hour at a time.”

And so I did.

The Ebb Current

I returned to my rituals as best I could, rising with the sun for early morning strolls along the beach. I indulged in a sweet treat when it felt right, letting the buttery layers of a scone warm my heart, even if only for a moment. I felt a spark coming alive again as I lingered in the fish market, discussing the best methods for perfecting a seafood boil with the man behind the counter. I painted. I ate breakfast watching the water. I bought a deck of tarot cards for when I’d inevitably become ready to dive deep once more. The moments that could have been ordinary encounters this week on the beach were single-handedly showing me that pleasure was safe, even amidst the unknown.

At night, the moon shone over me with such a quiet fullness, as if it were asking me to shine light on what typically rests in the dark. As the sun rose, its scorching fire made it impossible to ignore what came to me in the quiet moments of dawn and dusk. If I moved through a day unconsciously, the sand would scorch my feet. So I approached each moment quietly, asking myself what I needed right now, and provided as necessary.

As my body adjusted to the warmth of the sun, I became better at recognizing the difference between discomfort that asks you to grow and discomfort that asks you to stop. And somewhere between the sunrise walks and moonlit conversations, it became clear that the next courageous thing wasn’t pushing more output, creating whatever kept me running…

It was creating enough space to hear the parts of me I’d been unintentionally talking over.

The System

Looking back, I wasn’t actually showing people myself when I logged on to my corner of the internet. I was showing them the version of me that always had another idea, another project, another insight. As long as I kept creating, I never had to ask why creating no longer felt the way it once did.

But in slowing down, it became impossible not to notice who had been running the show. It wasn’t the part that’s creative, or the part that wants to express and dream and be witnessed, but the parts that get scared to death if they aren’t perfect and worry about disappearing if I slow down.

So I did something that terrified me: I told people I was stepping back.

Sharing this without apologizing was one of the quiet truths from my hour-by-hour surrender that actually moved the needle. It isn’t the cure, but it’s a start, and sometimes that first motion forward is the hardest to initiate. From here, the tide can ebb and flow, knowing that what’s illuminated in the dark hours of the night or the humid, sun-filled day can change and grow and always find harmony in their innate being once again. Each part, not just the picture of a seemingly perfect day.

These parts have to come before the purpose. It feels strange in its novelty, but I know it’s true. I didn’t leave the Outer Banks having found myself. I left, having finally let the wrong version of me wash out with the tide.

The version of me who left for the beach isn’t the version who’s come home.

-LA🤍

For a ritual building framework, here’s more of Liv Abundant

— The 4x4x4 Method — livabundantmethod.squarespace.com —

This past Saturday, all of that changed.

I’ve spent the better part of the past months planning a summer solstice intention-setting event for my brand, Liv Abundant Method. It was an idea that felt not only immediately aligned upon its genesis in my mind, but also a little nerve-wracking. I’d never shared this business venture with others outside of the safety of a screen. But stepping into the sun demands a particular vulnerability from us, and I knew this was the next step for me in my becoming.

Deep within me, this event was speaking to the part of Liv Abundant that looks to inspire, not prescribe. This is only possible when showing up as the most authentic, joyous version of ourselves. Unparalleled expression of one’s own essence is intoxicating and rubs off on those around us. Infusing my own rituals into the event I was planning at hand was the first non-negotiable that came to mind.

It began weeks before it occurred, with me inviting anyone who felt aligned with the event’s energy, with no concern about how many people might show up, even before all the details had come to fruition in my mind. Something within me felt that this was the right thing to do. On one hand, because you never know who will actually make it, who will be free, etc. On the other hand, I understood that the people present make the space. The energy from those investing in something real would allow the evening to breathe as necessary. I had been right. Not everyone could make it. The event would turn out to be smaller than I had initially planned. Still, the energy was exactly what it needed to be anyway, because I had trusted what was known inside of me, and followed its pull without needing it to look a certain way.

A quiet intentionality began oozing into the smallest of event details as preparations commenced throughout the week leading up to our shared dinner. A hand-painted paper chain that was strung together alongside my mother and my brother’s girlfriend. A menu that was carefully planned to reflect the ripe, juicy sweetness of the season about to arrive fully, journals that not only housed prompts I had crafted to dive into the shifting of season but that also housed the ritual building method I built online in a physical form… the pieces of the puzzle began falling into my lap, sorting themselves out with no key necessary besides my inner compass. With my intuition in the driver’s seat, I let it steer me right up to Friday evening, where a hailstorm shook the house, and a Ghibli film quieted my mind. I drank my tea. I got cozy. And as I drifted to sleep, I was enveloped in a slumber so peaceful that it felt like the waxing crescent was smiling down on me, eager to see how the light would fall on the table.

When I awoke, the sun greeted me through the trees as if it were just another Saturday, a quiet breeze drifting in through my window to kiss my cheek. Feeling the call, I responded predictably: a morning walk, a nourishing breakfast, a quick stop at my favorite cafe. I knew, deep inside, that grounding into the day was a non-negotiable, and that harnessing the power of ritual from the jump would keep any opportunity for chaos lingering in the air at bay.

At 8 am, I promptly arrived at the Farmers Market just like any other Saturday, cash in hand, on a mission to invest in bunches of sunflowers… only to find the flower stand that typically greets me missing. Nowhere to be found. But my body knew what my mind couldn’t in that moment: there’s a gift here waiting to be discovered. My eyes searched for yellow, a joyous hue to pluck out of a bucket and carry back home. It wasn’t found in the sunflowers, but from a bundle of wild Globe Centaureas. Something in their spiky blossoms just felt right, reminding me of a glass sculpture from my childhood. It wasn’t until I was arranging the bouquets that I understood the hidden joy in these wildflowers that I couldn’t have foreseen even if I tried. As I knelt in my backyard, the sun shining down on me, little bees worked their magic alongside me, and specks of golden pollen drifted down from the bursting thistles onto the grass beneath us. It felt as if the bees were bestowing a bit of their own magic on my work, weaving the cycles of the Earth into the ecosystem I’m so diligently working to foster.

Although there were a variety of tasks to check off the event prep list, the most grounding part of the work was the cooking. As one of my rituals that drops me into my body fastest, taking that practice and infusing it with the flavors of the season not only connected me to my body in the act, but to the natural world. Having designed a menu crafted of all organic produce and seasonal ingredients, I knew that this stretch of hours in the kitchen would feel like a marathon, but through the flow of a runner’s high, not forcing or straining for anything.

The presence that flowed through me as I baked a cake at the ripe hour of 9:00 am, to the quiet pitting of cherries, to the last-minute slicing of tomatoes and arranging of the salad flight I had so meticulously designed, reflected a dance through the day, one step at a time. I tested the flavors along the way, sitting down only to eat my own lunch or running outside to rearrange the table placements as the sun moved through the trees and shifted across the clear blue sky. I believe the intentionality behind a meal is felt in the first bite, and is remembered long after the last. This is what I was working to curate throughout the day, and what rested within me as I arranged the appetizers in their respective spots, ready for the guests’ arrival.

As the shift from afternoon to evening approached, the guests began arriving. The sun shone down on us, the playlist ebbed and flowed with the whisper of the breeze. Scents of rosemary and sea salt floated into the air and into something in each of us. And when the clock struck 6:15, the intention setting began. Opening words were said, and a soft silence settled over the table.

We opened our journals, looking to reflect upon the closing season collectively, and a strange but familiar nerve passed through me. There was no way to know how the words I had strung together would land in the bodies around the table. Would they unlock something inside of these women? Or would they fall just short of the answers?

That moment of worry dissipated quickly as someone broke the silence to comment on how perfect the moment felt. “Journaling together, sitting in the sun, with Texas Sun playing in the background? This couldn’t get any better.”

As Leon Bridges continued to serenade us, we began reflecting upon the prompts at hand, speaking to becoming comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, grounding into the seeds of identity we planted in the spring that we hope to step further into this summer, and the expansive nature of opportunity that comes following the reflection on such words. There’s a tenderness that comes with stepping into the sun, to wearing your heart on your sleeve, to sharing your inner light with the world. In setting up this event, following through despite the last-minute cancellations and the regretful rejections of RSVP’s that those out of town had to send, I was committing to stepping into my own spotlight and saying “this is important, this matters, this means something” despite whatever the external world might have said otherwise. In sharing their voices with the table, the women who came were doing just that, taking a risk by showing up somewhere unfamiliar and reflecting on what lives inside them as well. To cultivate such a space was inspiring in its own right, but to share it with others who chose to be there unlocked something within me that had felt dormant for a long time.

Energy in its purest form. Radiance.

The moral of the story is that Summer is a season that asks each of us to tend not only to what’s visible, but what’s quietly being asked to come forward from within. We all have our secret sauce, the things that are so authentically us that we can’t help but feel a pull towards them. How would it feel to turn inward, even for one moment, to shine your identity outward? To take the joy that rests within your soul and share it, even if stepping into the spotlight feels daunting initially? I believe this is what’s meant for all of us in this season, and infusing those connection points to our identity into our interactions with others will bring all of the love and lightness summer makes possible into our existence.

That evening, the infusion of my rituals into this event and the days leading up to it proved that when you dedicate yourself to harnessing your identity, pouring it into your daily life and the ways you show up for your community, the clouds break. The beating of the sun becomes a little more tolerable, and a breeze whispers in your ear as the sunlight kisses your shoulders. From that space, the lightness from inside can’t help but seep into your actions. The days can’t help but feel lighter. Radiant. Longer. Exactly as they’re meant to be in the summertime.

-LA🌞

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— The 4x4x4 Method — livabundantmethod.squarespace.com — @livabundantmethod —

While I’ve been back at my childhood home, I noticed my mom had framed a recipe I wrote dedicated to my adoration for baking cookies with her. Something in its sincerity struck me. I couldn’t help but think back on what else genuinely lit me up as a child. Running around barefoot outside and splashing around in whatever body of water was accessible to me, observing nature in all its beauty, and tuning into its rhythms. Listening to my father read Harry Potter to me before bed, and traveling to distant lands in my mind as I read about the cultures of the world in my big encyclopedia of nations.

Self-Reflection: What mattered the most to you as a child? Even the smallest, simplest-seeming details are important here.

Clearly, as children, when we’re provided the space to explore safely, we become so absorbed in our passions that we couldn’t possibly see the connecting points between these little joys. But from the outside looking in, years of life in my back pocket, the through lines become clear:

1. The Earth and its abundance have always mattered to me and hold a special place in my soul.

2. The creation of something from nothing is where I enter a flow state, whether it’s through a story, a meal, or an afternoon with no agenda. Reading a book, baking a batch of cookies, or choreographing a dance seemed to be the only times I lost track of time.

3. I’ve always wanted to know more about how others interact with the world, as informed by their world. What do our surroundings say about ourselves, the stories we find interesting, and our experiences?

Even that childhood recipe holds one of the three through lines: the flow state of creating something from nothing. But as the keeper of this memory, I know the other two were there too. There’s the physicality of it all: flour dusting the counter, the warmth of the oven, sugar and butter creaming together under small, determined hands. And then there’s the quiet curiosity… who taught my mom this recipe, where did it come from, what did her childhood kitchen look like? I can see it all with such clarity, nearly feeling it inside of me.

What’s striking about this excavation of the through lines at hand is that I spent years of my life functioning from a space where almost none of them were being expressed. At least, not explicitly, intentionally, or consciously. It doesn’t shock me that at this time, I was not only mentally ill and dysregulated, but also generally very unhappy, and always wishing that there was something out there that could save me in any way.

Self-reflection: Looking at the gifts/talents you uncovered, what would your throughlines be? Do they still appear in your daily life?

This period of life loosely spanned from middle school through college. I spent my adolescence so worried about why my peers didn’t seem to love me, dog-paddling for their approval, that I grew deeply confused about both who I was and what even interested me. I moved through high school always bracing for impact, watching my back over my shoulder. Naturally, as I was packing for my freshman year of college, I believed the four-year journey ahead would give me two things: a degree and a polished life, put together and neat.

Now that I’m just over a year out from graduation, I’m realizing I went to college to learn how to navigate life, not to receive a prescription for how to use the skills and information I acquired along the way. My education was never going to fix me, but actually facing the pain I had allowed to dim my inner spark would be the medicine I needed most, not academic validation. Reclaiming my body and my mind as my own, not a variable in some pre-determined equation, would point my inner compass in exactly the right direction.

Coming back to myself over time hasn’t been easy. I didn’t have that realization, suddenly turn my life around, and declare, “It’s time to save myself!” The path appeared without announcing itself, the declaration of return coming first, stumbling through fields of forgetting and reaching, slowly but surely picking up my innate talents and instincts again, and only now landing on that realization. Healing is not linear. Neither is coming back to your inner child.

When I was functioning from below the line as my baseline, all the joy in being was hibernating, waiting for me to show a little tenderness to my mind and soul, providing it the capacity to come forward. But allowing that performance to drive your life doesn’t protect you; it simply hides what genuinely lights you up and is designed to exist in this world, within and through you. Your inner authority as a child was never meant to be hidden away; it was meant to inform your path and purpose, your existence within the world.

Self-reflection: What were you told to outgrow that you’re not sure you actually should have?

As I’ve found myself weaving my adolescent gifts into the life I’m building, planning a dinner party how I used to do so with stuffed animals, tending to my herbs in the garden how I used to attempt tending to the flowers in my grandmothers backyard, or taking the extra ten minutes to myself simply watching the rain I used to frolic in fall to the street, I understood for the first time that the little joys were never just childhood habits. These gifts were the pieces of rituals I was always meant to rediscover. To weave into a career. To bring me back to my body. To make me feel whole.

Closing reflection: What childhood instincts are you still living out, and what would it mean to start giving them the attention they deserve?

I’ve been working to intentionally revisit my poem about cookies as I continue tending to the little me’s rituals of joy. I implore you to attempt the same.

Your inner child wasn’t wrong about any of it.

-LA✨

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From a ritual building framework to an authentic social media presence, here’s more from Liv Abundant

— The 4x4x4 Method — livabundantmethod.squarespace.com — @livabundantmethod —

If you haven’t seen Apple TV’s most quietly devastating series, Severance (obviously), here’s what you need to know: the show follows employees who have undergone a surgical procedure that literally splits their work self from their personal self. Their “innie” exists only inside the office, clocking in, doing the job, clocking out. Their “outie” lives the rest of their life with no memory of what happens at work. The innie provides, the outie survives. Two people, one body. Neither whole nor quite incomplete.

Being severed means living between two worlds. Always being curious about what lives in that parallel universe connected by the body. Letting the stories they’re told about themselves, who they are or may be, control their being and the way they navigate their limited worldview.

It sounds extreme. It sounds sad. But it also sounds like the reality of how most of us live our lives.

Do you really want to live in this unconscious state?

There’s a therapeutic model called Internal Family Systems (IFS) that views the mind as a complex ecosystem functioning similarly to a family. Different pieces of a person that take care of one another to create one living, breathing being. That being is the Self: whole, regulated, undamaged, capable of healing from traumas, that’s secure and steady amidst an ever-changing world. Running around it are the Protector and Exile parts.

Our Protectors are our Innies, and the Exiles are our Outies.

The Protector parts are our Innies, managing professionals, and structure extrodanaires. They do the job they’ve been assigned, and keep moving, untouched by the weight of everything outside. The fact that the innie exists is almost a feature: it ensures that whatever trauma exists in the world outside of their bubble never interrupts what’s happening in here. They run a pretty tight ship. Oh, and they’re very good at their job.

The Outies are our Exiles. Vulnerable. Human in all the ways we can actually recognize and feel. Carrying the pain, the shame, the programming that accumulated long before we had the language to name any of it. When those experiences harden into the stories we tell ourselves, the “I’m not enough, I’m too much, I don’t deserve this,” the Innies are there to carry us through the day. To make us acceptable. Functional. Easier to be around.

I spent a long time relying on my innie, primarily. She loved masking the pain I’d accumulated over the years, saying “I have it under control” to anyone who would listen, and to overschedule the outie in an attempt to keep her from wallowing in the pain.

This is what it looks like to operate “from below the line”. From the unconscious place where the stories run the ship, and you’re somewhere between action and inaction, never fully present, always slightly somewhere else. Always a little curious about what’s on the other side of the door you haven’t opened yet.

But what if this ease is a facade? What if true abundance and joy exist when the parts come together? Even amidst the risks of chaos and self-destruction?

The old way of operating had room for innies and outies to coexist in their separate lanes. That leaves us with yet another dichotomy:

The challenge at hand: bridging the gap between your innie and your outie.

The reality I’ve found: Bridging said gap is fucking hard.

Anyone who’s watched the show knows: reintegration is easier said than done. It’s easier to exist at the extremity of one part of yourself than to sit in the tension of both at once. To bring the two together risks chaos. It means severance from the structures that kept you contained. It means risking the loss of an identity that, dysfunctional as it may be, has been fueling your existence.

And honestly? That’s terrifying. I get why we don’t do it. I get why it feels safer to stay in the lane you know, to let the innie clock in and handle it, to save the vulnerable stuff for later.

But it also means living between two worlds. Never being truly whole. Always wondering.

The stories we’re told about ourselves, by our own minds, by the people who’ve shaped us, by the systems we’ve moved through, run the show we call life, whether we know it or not. The question is whether we want to keep letting them.

I don’t. Do you?

Here’s what I keep coming back to: True abundance cannot exist at either extreme. It lives in the integration. In the chaos of the two finally meeting.

Bridging that gap risks disrupting a system… not just inside yourself, but around you. Whole people shake things up. They don’t fit neatly into structures built for the severed. They ask questions in a world where questions aren’t welcome yet. They feel things in spaces where feeling was never part of the job description.

Whole people are inconvenient, but that’s life.

I’m still working through which stories of mine have to go, which version of me has to be released to make room for something more complete. But that’s the work of this season. Not the comfortable, linear, five-step-plan kind of work. The messy, disorienting, unstructured, humbling, occasionally embarrassing but wildly fulfilling kind.

When the innie and the outie finally meet, when the Protectors and the Exiles are held by a Self that’s steady enough to hold them both, the world cracks open. You have access to everything—the full picture. You stop operating in the dark.

Would you like to join me?

The backbone of this essay…

1. …was in-part unlocked after reflecting upon a live call with and of To Be Magnetic, a manifestation program rooted in neuroplasticity, parts work, and somatic practice.

2. …is also informed by my personal understanding of The New Paradigm we are entering, a shift in the collective, as detailed in Human Design. For the best Human Design information and energetic readings, I suggest following .

3. …ties directly into the book I’m currently working through: “Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness” by Elise Loehnen and Courtney Smith. It keeps asking the same uncomfortable question in different clothes: what if the version of you that learned to be good was never actually you? It’s a tough cookie, but it’s already been wildly rewarding work in my life.

   If any of this article resonated, all of the above work is worth exploring. It’s changed my life, and could potentially change yours as well.

Happy reintegration…

-LA✨

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Now, I don’t want to shock your system with the following words…

But January was six months ago. Six.

It feels, in a sense, like the start of the calendar year was designed for dreaming. For sleeping our way through the early months just to survive. I’ve joked before that my internal calendar loosely reflects that of a grizzly bear, but it’s a visual that very clearly illustrates the energetics at hand. Hibernation is the reality of January through late March, and this year, I think I slept in a little extra.

Through this prolonged slumber, I was going through the motions. I was connecting with plans for the future without bringing my body back online to hold them. There was always an awareness of who I was, but never a complete integration of identity on the embodied level. No daily practices to ground me, no holding space for serendipity to arise.

Before I knew it, I was snapped out of my slumber. Without warning, the state of survival transitioned to one of self-reclamation. With nature being the most beautiful mirror we could ask for, the warming of seasons isn’t one to be ignored. While April showers bring May flowers, June is when the blossoms reach their fullest bloom, and sweetness hits its peak.

Maybe I wasn’t a bear all along, I was just a flower waiting for the right nourishment to reach my potential.

When there’s a shift in perspective, it isn’t easy to stay grounded in the moment, especially when you’ve set intentions for what’s to come. It’s easy for us humans to get too invested in a destination rather than the journey at hand. But in a season filled with such an abundance of nature, I find myself looking to the flowers around me for inspiration. They’re growing just as I am, but they aren’t looking to force anything; becoming is innate in their existence. Instead of taking root and praying for the day I’ll bloom into my final form, I remind myself that in this moment, I need a little extra water, a little extra nourishment. Why waste it waiting for proof of growth instead of loving life as it is right here, right now?

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in thousands of questions. What is my authentic gift? Where am I denying myself of my talents? But there’s one I keep coming back to:

Can I hold in my body that this knowing is enough to make me worthy of flourishing and standing strong even amidst a field of billions of other flowers?

I think I can.

-LA✨

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Failure.

I had grand plans in place, the perfect stories to share, all the intricacies and juicy details of my shortcomings ready to be laid bare on the table to bring insight to anyone curious enough to make it past that belated weather report. Honestly, I may as well have been planning to pose nude for the internet, having found the acknowledgment of my flaws easy, but working through the emotions that have come alongside them has been a tougher beast to slay.

So, I open my laptop as one does, I start writing, and the words fall short. I fail to write… about failure itself.

It feels silly, in a way. To have this mundane shortcoming creep up and into my sphere of existence and germinate my writing process. As a retired perfectionist, my chest began to tighten; I felt the early stages of tears in the back of my eye sockets, a slow buildup that communicated some sort of moral failing at my lack of inspiration. Why can’t I find the words? “Can’t” becomes a word that wants to linger. My brain wishes to tell me of all the things I can’t seem to do. This failure wants to latch onto just about every single thing that isn’t in my life… the career that hasn’t taken off, the dreams I’ve grown out of, all of the ways that my 23 years on this planet have amounted to less than that of my peers…

But I’ve been through this before, and I know my patterns better than anyone. I interrupt the cycle of can’t, can’t, can’t before it shifts into the isn’t…

If the words aren’t there, they weren’t meant to be found in the first place. It’s just the words; it’s nothing to do with you.

And with a deep breath, those words held true. The sense of failure has passed, and a story has been reshaped. I close my laptop and commit to a daily ritual that has yet to fail me: immediately reconnecting my body, mind, and perspective by walking, as humans do best. After all, our legs are meant to carry not only our bodies, but our minds forward, whether we’re starting from a place of perceived powerlessness or self-authority.

The failure simply became an experience, and new inspiration took its place.

In “Dune”, there’s a litany that goes as follows:

I like to think of failure as being similar to fear in this way. Failure, as a concept, and the stories it carries with it can pass over us and leave us be, if only we can root ourselves in our presence, our rituals, and our practices of identity that fulfill us and bring us closer to the present moment.

Parallel to this work of fiction 60 years its senior, rests the groundbreaking workbook “Choosing Wholeness over Goodness,” in which Elise Loehnen and Courtney Smith detail the ins and outs of the stories women tell themselves about their existence in the world and provide tools to break free from those structures. While working through the book on my own, a particular quote jumped out at me:

I understood this snippet as saying that, from a whole, grounded state, fear will still arise. But it does exactly what is noted of it in the Litany from Dune, passing over and through us as we’re grounded amidst its winds and acting from that regulation instead of identifying with and bending from said fear.

Now, reread that last paragraph. Take the word fear and replace it with “failure” as you do so.

Once again, failure and the experience of identifying with its stories have proven themselves to function at the same vibrational level as fear.

This plays out in perfect tandem with my Thursday morning. The failure to write arises, and the plane of existence into the future splits in two in front of me:

The first: I let the tears build. I identify with the failure. I let the emotions and identification with them take me as far down into the pit of self-pity as they’ll carry me, until I find it in me to climb my way out.

The second: The failure emerges. I note its presence. I reframe the situation at hand. I ground myself in the present moment. The failure passes over me. I remain unscathed, and expanded as it trails away.

The fact of the matter is that failure is only a mirage created by our mind. It exists within the stories we tell ourselves, and the details we take for facts when they’re simply a symptom of our mind’s power to derive meaning from the present moment. If one allows the very human-appearing, but ego-driven, stories of the present to warp from identification with uncomfortable emotions, we risk not only falling victim to minds but also disconnecting from the joy of life as we know it.

Why not tell ourselves a better story? Why not let the details paint a lighter picture rather than a gray sky? Is our suffering truly that romantic? Would a shift in perspective towards the positive really be that undermining of our experiences?

Potentially, because it would mean acknowledging that for years we’ve allowed ourselves to fall victim to our own minds. Our programming. But how empowering is it to take the reins back? To declare, I am the master of my universe. I can, and I will chart these waters as best I can.

Although I am imperfect in many ways, and I’m still working to integrate this practice fully, I pose a challenge for you:

When, not if, discomfort arises, allow the waves to wash over you. Ground yourself in a practice that feels like peace in your body. Once the experience has passed, reflect accordingly. Acknowledge that you made it out alive, and empower the resilience it takes to choose a regulated understanding of this experience.

In this act of choosing regulation over chaos, the earlier declaration of empowerment holds rather than the negative contractions of inability.

I am the master of my universe. I can, and I will chart these waters as best I can.

-LA✨

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There’s a quiet type of glow that enters one’s body when a place outside of the household becomes home-like in its own way. I’ve found this to occur particularly in spaces that have become nurturing for my own rituals. The fitness studios that elevate not only my heart rate but also my connection to my humanness, the public parks that always seem sunny, or my favorite: the cafes that feel like a warm hug.

It isn’t necessarily the where that matters, but when that location starts to stick, sometimes your heart can’t help but carry you back time and time again.

Enter: Cafe Alma

Housed in the west end of the hotel of the same name (sans the “Cafe”) and blocks from the Mississippi River, Cafe Alma has become one of the staples of this season of life. People come down from their hotel rooms above and come in through the front doors off the busy one-way right outside. There’s a subtle sound of sizzling eggs on a griddle, the buzzing of printing tickets, and the hiss of milk steaming toasty hot. Amid the scents of sourdough and natural aromatics, I’ve found a love for the nutty perfection of their almond milk lattes.

When I’ve had a bad day, I find myself taking the extra care to drive myself over and spend my morning writing from one of their high tops. I look forward to chatting with the baristas despite the hustle and bustle of the space. I spend a little extra money on a pastry where I can taste the love. Some would call it indulgence, I call it recharging my capacity for joy, as I know I’ll find even a sliver of it here when I need it most. It’s a ritual that continually evolves as opportunities arise throughout the day, despite its standard structure: me + cafe of choice + sweet treat + appreciation for said joy. No matter the occasion, Alma is never lacking in the days’ craving.

The same people seem to exist within Cafe Alma’s orbit. There’s a young man with spiky blonde hair and dangling earrings who happens to spawn into the space nearly every time I walk through the door. An older man with rectangular wire frames who always has a pastry in hand, opting for a spot near a window each visit. A woman with perfectly tailored blazers, stunningly long brown hair, and focused eyes, working away on her laptop. I find myself curious about these people whose routines also revolve around this space. I suppose we all share a feeling of comfort in the warm glow of the establishment. A knowing that there’s space for our rituals here, despite our differences.

One day, upon arrival, it seemed my order imprinted itself not only on my body but also on the minds of others. The baristas remembered me, finishing my order as I opened my mouth, in a gesture similar to extending hands during a communion service. I’m not sure why I was shocked, but something in becoming a “regular” shook me to my core. There’s a special sort of love that exists in being recognized for your unique desires and particular tastes.

Emma Mash put it beautifully in a recent note: “I think there’s something really beautiful about building a life slowly enough that people start remembering your coffee order, your usual seat, the version of you that shows up rested and unhurried on a Tuesday morning.”

This sense of being at ease, unhurried, and quietly present in my full self is a frequency I’ve found necessary to make my ritual of arriving here the act of love that it is, not only for myself but for the collective ambiance. When your vibration aligns with that of the space around you, it's nearly as if you become extensions of one another, soaking in each other’s goodness and desire for alignment in being.

And when the coffee is as good as it is at Cafe Alma, who wouldn’t want a ritual, a piece of identity, a state of existence to reflect that sweetness held inside its doors?

-LA✨

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P.S. Other sensory details that make Cafe Alma stand out:

• The laughter shared between baristas as one whisks a deep green matcha

• The sizzling of eggs on a griddle

• An “enjoy,” always handed off alongside an order, finished with a smile

• Playlists that seem just about too good to be true (how do they know exactly what I need to be listening to on any given day?)

• Clink clacks of mugs stacking, whirring blenders perfecting that lemon blueberry smoothie

• The golden light reflecting from the shiny bar counter

I could go on, but maybe you should discover the rest for yourself. Enjoy your latte.

From a ritual building framework to a social media presence, here’s more from Liv Abundant

— The 4x4x4 Method — livabundantmethod.squarespace.com — @livabundantmethod —