Your wisdom is borne of your hard-won life experience.

So let’s celebrate all the shenanigans you’ve survived. Let’s drop the games, the pretense, and the trying, and realize that you ARE the teachings you hold. You Walk the Talk you speak.

You are the strength of your devotion, and also the sensitivity of your refined instrument.

You are the paradox.

The Sage Archetype: Wisdom Born From Experience

Welcome to this month where together we reveal your core passionate purpose, and the easiest path for your total fulfillment as a Wise One.

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You know when you sit with someone who has clearly lived the thing they are teaching, and your whole body relaxes a little?

You may not even know why at first. They are speaking in ordinary words, but something underneath the words feels steady. They have been in the thing. They are not hovering above the mess with a microphone, a perfect outfit, and a little spiritual flashlight pointed at your face.

Your body can tell.

When joined us for FemWisdom with Ma, she was speaking about her forthcoming book, Waking Up in the Dark Night of Divorce. She said she wanted to write something that helps in the darkest part of life. I know that dark moment where you realize that you can either bypass the pain, or let it ravage you into your next level. That’s real. And exciting.

Don’t you just love a REAL teacher, who teaches from the depths of her own experience? I’m talking about the deep water, folks.

Why Lived Experience Creates Real Teachers

A lot of teaching gets made from the shore, long after the person has dried off, fixed their hair, and figured out the tidy lesson. LiYana was speaking from the water of real life experience. She was not drowning in it, thank God. She knows how to move through her own “stuff” and teach once she’s learned to swim through it. She also knows how to share from the compassionate shoreline, where she’s still close enough to the depth that her voice had the tremble of lived truth in it.

When Ma came through, she named that immediately. LiYana dares to write about the dark night of the soul from the middle of the pit, and she opens the circle to the sisters who are suffering there too.

The Difference Between Spiritual Bypass and Real Healing

Hey.

LiYana brought in an image from a poem about being hollowed out, carved into a cup that can catch the rain or offer soup. Yes, Mama. The hollowing may become capacity, the carving may become the vessel, and also, wow and ow.

Real feminine wisdom is transmitted through the body of someone who has let life carve them and still stayed honest enough to speak from inside the shape it made.

When Wisdom Is Ready to Be Shared

Of course that doesn’t mean we are supposed to go out and teach stuff immediately after being torn open by a life crisis. You don’t have to post from the center of your heartwrenching moments. These things need privacy, tending, therapy, soup, sleep, and a friend who can sit beside you while you stare at the wall and make no sense at all.

But when the lived truth has matured in you, it carries a different authority. You speak, and the people who need the truth underneath the words can feel it. No shouting required. No making it respectable. No polishing it until you look like the shiny conqueror of heartbreak.

Ma spoke to this as a deep path of teaching, the kind that comes through someone who has lived the edges and the troubles, not only the pretty pieces. She said LiYana’s teachings are a radiance of light and darkness, the shadow inside the clay vessel.

Does that make you take a big sigh, too? Cause it did for me.

A teacher of lived truth feels different. Less shiny, maybe. But it lets your own body come back online. Real teachers leave you feeling bigger, clearer, hopeful - not smaller and desperate for more.

Why Light Needs Darkness

Later in the channeling, Ma spoke about magnets. A magnet has positive and negative polarity, and that tension is what gives it power. If you try to worship only the positive and fight away every negative charge, you lose the click, the pull, the strange living force that makes this human dimension so intense and interesting.

For LiYana, Ma named the light as humor, story, joy, love, play, dance, and music. She named the dark as truth about the shadow, a door opened without flinching to the messy dungeon of what is already happening.

That is some wholeness with teeth, right?

You can feel it when a teacher has both. The light gives enough breath to stay in the room, and the dark gives enough truth to trust what is being spoken. You are held in the human reality of it, instead of being rushed toward a shinier conclusion, a pretty plastic red bow on top.

Divorce as a Doorway to Transformation

This is why anchoring the book in divorce makes so much sense. Divorce gives the dark night a doorway people can recognize. It gives the pit a name. But Ma also called the book an undercover gift of feminine truth, because even people who are not divorced know something about division, unraveling, and being carved toward a more honest life.

You may know that too. The divorce may be literal, or the split may be happening inside your identity, your work, your family pattern, or the way you thought love had to work. Some old contract with yourself may be ending before the new one has become visible.

That is not always a place to teach from right away. It can become one - once the truth has lived through you long enough to radiate through you in all moments.

LiYana said afterward that being with Ma felt like having “what was so” spoken half a step before she knew it herself. Yes. That’s a clean clear description of a real transmission. Your knowing is not overpowered. It has room to arrive.

The Feminine Wisdom I Trust

That is the feminine wisdom I trust: Enough light to keep warmth in the room. Enough dark to tell the truth without flinching.

The dark night may not be where your wisdom ends. It may be where the false teaching falls away and the real transmission begins.

Waking up in the dark is one of the most profound ways to wake up.

For years, I felt like I was an undercover agent. In the dark of night, in the private moments of life, I was deeply intuitive, spiritual, and woo-woo! (shhhhh)

On the surface, at work, in public, I was the over-educated professional with a confident steady voice, the public speaker, the teacher, the hot boss mama. (look at meeeee)

I went through rounds of back and forth with this.

Of course, there was my change from lawyer to intuitive. That was a big swing. But this swing of mine didn’t really stop then.

But I’ve always been both.

Living Two Professional Lives

For some years, during the hay-day of online biz building, I went to business conferences for entrepreneurs where everyone was learning strategies to get as many people as possible into programs. And I found a lot of the hard-driving tactics cringy.

Where was the heart, the compassion, the deep commitment to honesty over profit?

Inevitably, I would find a little subset of quieter, creative and gentle entrepreneurs, and we would sort of cling to each other, as if we were refugees from a strange land that spanned business and spirituality.

Together we would gripe and snipe. Fake webinars that aren’t really “live?” That is lying to people. That kind of bullshit in the field tanks the integrity of the business. If we are building businesses with lies baked in, how exactly is God our business partner?

And we looked around, realizing that we were the minority. Our disgust for this stuff was not popular. We hid it from the people on the stage, undercover agents that we were.

The Secret Society of Intuitive Professionals

We weren’t the only ones. The Undercover Agents for God are everywhere! There are scores of people around you who seem like totally rational straight professionals, and at home they’re pulling Tarot cards and picking random verses out of a book, and listening to the next song on the scrambled playlist like it’s a message from God. (which it often is, I think, BTW)

Successful People Trust Their Intuition More Than You Think

Look, I’ve spent over 25 years now, doing radically spiritual work with people you’d never know were deeply spiritual. Fortune 100 execs. Mucho millionaire multi-founders. Scientists and techies and electrical engineers. Some real square-seeming cats, Man. And they are actually, secretly, deeply into the woo-woo.

What’s more, their intuitive discernment is how they’ve got themselves into those positions of power.

They learned to express it in ways it can be heard.

“I have a crazy idea. Could it be this?”

Or, “I’m noticing some hesitation in the room. Are we missing something?”

Or even, “I got this download last night…..”

What Intuitive Leadership Actually Looks Like

The best Undercover Agents learn to offer their hits, their innovations, their out-of-nowhere ideas in ways that sound like they came out of research/experience/analysis.

But really… it’s their magic speaking.

And couching things in this sort of language can be a great idea. It respects the room, the profession, and the person in front of you. But when you have to hide the source of your knowing all the time, something starts to ache.

That is the expensive part of being undercover.

The Cost of Staying Undercover

I recently spoke with a professional financial advisor who was also a deep intuitive. When she works with someone around money, she is not only looking at accounts, goals, and numbers. She is also helping them heal trauma around money and value, feeling old patterns coming through family, education, and experience.

Of course she has to couch everything in careful terms, her profession has rules about what belongs in the conversation. I respect those rules. And I also feel the frustration of watching someone bring such a potent gift under the table, where it cannot be fully seen, named, valued, or paid for.

This is where we gifted professionals can start to feel like misfits. You may think the intuitive part makes you harder to explain, less credible, or too strange for the industry. But the thing you are hiding may be the very thing that makes people trust you, open up to you, or respect your savant genius.

The Four Types of Intuitive Genius

Let’s bring it above the covers, shall we? It’s time to talk about the four types of Intuitive Genius, so we can leverage your birthright of wisdom.

Instead of just talking about vague “intuition,” I like to talk about the ways we express this type of savant intuitive intelligence.

• Embodied genius makes you radiate confidence and clarity in your own skin, inspiring trust.

• Creative genius downloads solutions with lightning speed, making you the innovator.

• Relational genius reads the room with ease, weaving collaborations that go farther than any individual could alone.

• Visionary genius sees beyond the current scene, expanding creations out of the box and into unlimited potential.

In professional life, those are not cute side talents. They are not irrelevant gifts or hobbies. They are the most powerful leadership assets.

And yes, I had to learn this one in my own bones.

My Own Journey Out of Hiding

When my own psychic ability and mediumship opened, people knew me as a lawyer and a Catholic. I had already been rewarded for the approved gifts: communication, negotiation, analysis, all the professional skills that made sense on paper.

Then these other gifts woke up, and I did not have tidy language for them at first. It felt terrifying to imagine being fully revealed. I thought I would have to hide that part forever, and I even moved away to another town because it was too much to process being known in a whole new way.

That was back in 2000, and culture has shifted a lot since then.

Why Intuitive Leadership Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage

Now, when I speak to corporate groups or work with executives, many of them already know something that used to be harder to say out loud.

But they know the leader who can read the room has power. They know the innovator who senses a solution before all the data is in can move a whole project forward. They know the advisor who picks up what has not yet been said can help a client reach the real issue faster.

How to Come Out From Undercover

So maybe the question now is how to come out from undercover with integrity, skill, and language that actually serves the people in front of you. You don’t need to announce every intuitive hit like a thunderbolt from the heavens, violate the boundaries of your profession, or make people adopt your spiritual worldview before they can benefit from your gift.

But you may need to stop treating your intuitive genius like the embarrassing cousin who has to wait in the car.

Your deeper gifts can become part of your brand, your offer, your leadership, your client work, and your decision-making when they are translated well. They can also become part of what you are paid, recognized, and respected for.

What would it take for you to come out from undercover a little more honestly? Because the intuitive gifts you have been hiding are the same ones that make you more trusted, more useful, and more valuable in the work you came here to do.

You don’t have to be woo-woo to be an intuitive genius. You heard me!

I’ve worked with some non-woo folks: scientists, tech designers, business school grads, lawyers, engineers… people who are analytical, professional, grounded thinkers. And they are still what I would call deeply intuitive. It just doesn’t look like woo-woo fairy unicorn goddess sparkles. Instead, it looks like gut-feeling, deep-knowing, creative downloads, visionary ideas.

This might be a freakin’ relief if you’re an over-educated pro who still follows the signs, pays attention to how things feel, and goes with your gut when it matters. Yes. Be relieved. You can be grounded, effective, intelligent, and deeply guided at the same time.

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What Is the Woo Scale?

Where you land on the woo-woo scale mostly tells me how you translate the mystery, not whether you’ve got the secret access key.

I like to ask new clients and collaborators where they are on what I call the Woo Scale. It’s a playful question, but it tells me a lot about how to talk about stuff that matters.

A 10 on the Woo scale might be someone who is ready to talk about programming crystals, Saint Germain’s blue flame, spirit guides, angels, and their soul’s divine mission.

A 1 on the Woo Scale might talk about their instinct for the work, their wisdom borne of long years of experience, and those moments where they “just know.” They might even talk about the visions, the dreams, the serendipities, but also frame it as “weird stuff happening” instead of “my guides talking to me.”

Dude. Whatever. We don’t have perfect words for any of this stuff, anyway. So let’s just pick a lexicon and go with it!

Your Language Doesn’t Change Your Intuition

The Woo Scale is not a spiritual ranking system. It’s not here to decide who is enlightened enough or holy enough to access their genius. God now. Don’t listen to that Spiritual Bypassing BS.

Why Language Matters More Than Labels

When I’ve worked with product designers and technical designers in Silicon Valley, I don’t usually lead with the same language I might use with someone already fluent in guides, energy, and channeling. I use the language they are already using - and metaphors that speak to them. Isn’t that just compassionate communication, after all?

My tech innovator founder might call it “flow state” while my spiritual healer client might call it “channeling.” My Manhattan-based philanthropist client might call it a gut feeling, an instinctual hit, a tweaky feeling, while my trauma-informed psychologist client might say it’s a message from a spirit guide. Same Same.

I’m less interested in policing the vocabulary than in helping you recognize the information when it arrives.The language changes. The thing we’re pointing toward does not. That’s life!

Where Intuition Meets Real-World Leadership

I’ll be honest with you. I like using both sets of language. And I enjoy working with people who are willing to stretch their viewpoint and vocabulary in both directions. In business, your intuitive knowing eventually has to land somewhere real, help you make the right-fit decision, choose the timing that opens the doors of opportunity. You’re not going to give up on a product line just because “the energy is weird.”

What Happens When You Ignore Your Intuition?

You may know something before you can prove it. You may feel the next right move in your body before the spreadsheet catches up. You may get a flash of insight in the shower, on a walk, or in that strange moment between sleep and waking where the best ideas love to sneak in like tiny burglars with gifts.

Then the practical question becomes what you do with the knowing once it arrives.

Well, if you’re low on the Woo Scale, you might dismiss it because it didn’t come wrapped in evidence yet. Or you might hide your intuitive hit because you don’t know how to say it without risking the professional credibility you worked so hard to build. What a loss!

And if you’re high on the Woo Scale, you might explain it in so much woo language that nobody around you can understand WTF you’re talking about. You might go with the intuitive message without slowing down enough to evaluate if it’s a good direction here in the real world.

This is why I care about the middle of the Woo Scale.

The Sweet Spot Between Logic and Spirit

The middle is where mystery and logic can both have a say. It’s where true genius lies, I think, because we tap the most mystical wisdom, and then ground it in real world results. We academic, analytical, or scientific folk can still make room for the mysteries they didn’t teach us in school. When we are comfortable across the spectrum of Woo, we can tap all the info, and synthesize it into genius.

My Journey From Skeptic to Spiritual Translator

When I was in law school, I was definitely not hanging out at a seven or eight on the Woo Scale. I was down at a 3, probably. I was praying and feeling and talking with god, but the answers were quiet and hidden in private. I was sort of “undercover” intuitive.

And then when I awakened to psychic stuff really fast, I found myself reeling. I was seeing angels and dead people and spirit guides, but I didn’t know the lingo. Super spiritual woo-woo people were so confusing and off-putting to me. Good thing I found people who could bridge the gap for me! I’m grateful for the teachers who could translate for where I was, instead of expecting me to pretend I already spoke a language I hadn’t learned yet.

That kind of translation is generous. It lets people discover their own way of navigating spirit/intuition, without making them perform belief or indoctrinating them into some new woo religion.

And yes, I can talk to the super woo people. After 25 years of navigating these realms, of course I can. But sometimes the lingo gets distracting. Sometimes it turns into its own ego trip, a club that only the woo belong to. Suddenly the words become a way to feel special, more tuned in, more evolved than the poor little muggles still using quarterly goals.

Woof.

Learning Two Languages of Intuition

I lived in a hobbit hut on a creek in a hippie hot springs commune-kinda place for seven years. (Thank you Harbin Hot Springs!) It was a place of healing, of profound community, and also - it was like an island away from the “real world.” When I first arrived, I was embarrassed that I couldn’t answer one of the most popular questions, “What’s your moon sign?” I realized that these spirit-filled bohemians had their own language, their own economy, their own culture. And I had to learn it!

After a few years, I admit I started to get itchy. I began working on a property development project down the road because I missed “real life” and business and heady talking and marketing and scientists and engineers and people who were, honestly, lower on the Woo Scale. It felt almost guilty sneaking away to the big city at times just to get a hit of high intellect and down-to-earth business strategy conversations.

Guess what? I got bored doing straight business again too.

That’s when I realized that I need to be in the middle, using both the high-woo and the low-woo languages in order to feel fully expressed, met, and satisfied.

So Where Are You on the Woo Scale?

So tell me, where do you think you fall on the Woo Scale (1-10)?

And what’s your fluency and willingness to communicate with folks at either end?

Work. Ugh. Don’t you kind of hate that word? It sounds heavy. It sounds hard. It sounds sweaty and grumbly and it smells like paper cuts. It snaps like a trap that you can get stuck in for a lifetime, toiling away for the Social Security check that might never come.

Well, when you open your mind to the intuitive world of meaning, to your deeper spiritual path, and to your unique wisdom, that word can either get scarier, or, if you’re strategic about it, you might just find the sacred work that is the perfect fit contribution of your soul.

Look, we spiritually minded people sometimes develop a distorted relationship with action, with work, with effort. It’s tempting to spiritually bypass the whole thing and think that now that you’re “awake,“ everything should come to you effortlessly, peacefully, and with miraculous abundance.

• Think and grow rich!

• Follow the Law of Attraction to manifest with ease!

• Open your “having-ness,”

• and ask and you shall receive!

Yah Ok. These things are good for shifting out of the downer mind, for opening to better and more. But mindset work only gets you so far, and you know it.

What if Action itself is Sacred.

Sacred Work Begins with Aligned Action

Put your money where your mouth is.

Put your time where your values are.

Put your shoulder to it with glee, and show your spirit guides you are serious about co-creating some cool stuff in this world.

If you’re like me, you’ve had a past chapter in corporate where you worked really really hard, probably achieved a lot, but underneath, felt something missing. And then maybe you threw yourself into a more spiritual chapter where you put those work-a-day things away, while you focused only on the spirit miracle stuff while hiding under the covers.

But what if I told you, you can have the best of both worlds? And yeah, you can even make great money doing your deepest work with emergent creativity, and profound satisfaction. (I’ve seen it happen over a thousand times so yes I’m sure)

The Contributor Archetype: Where Purpose Meets Service

Instead of acting like the trapped resentful worker, or the avoidant bypassing manifester, it’s time to embrace your Contributor archetype.

Great, Mellissa. umm… I’ve been trying for a long time… You know that’s easier said than done, right?

Dude, yes.

Why Finding Your Soul Purpose Takes More Than Positive Thinking

I know because I’ve created an entire system to help people identify their soul gifts, their intrinsic talents, and thereby claim their path, their right role, their most natural expertise. And frankly, until you’ve done that stuff, it’s real hard to find the sweet spot of your Contributor. It’s hard to know which “lane” you should stay in.

There’s a method to this madness. My map has a sequence of archetypes to embody. The Contributor archetype comes right after the Specialist archetype which comes right after the Co-creator archetype on the Wheel of Wisdom, which is a month-by-month map of the energies we all walk through.

This is a path of discovery of your purpose. And it’s hard to navigate it all by yourself. Again -that’s why I mapped it. That’s why a lot of people have tried to map it.

My map is specifically for intuitively gifted smart people who want the best of both worlds. It’s why people pay me good money to use my intuitive sense and my marketing sense at the same time to clarify their sweet spot of contribution, a.k.a. their profession and business.

What Happens When You Step Into Your True Contribution

When you are a leader with your true Contributor self, you are magnetic, trustworthy, and resonating with your natural expertise and highest value.

Yeah, people can totally tell when you are serving and working from a joyful devotion that exudes from every cell in your body. People want to follow that leader. That’s the real deal.

If you are already in your sweet spot for contribution (where you LOVE your fulfilling perfect-fit lucrative work) congratulations!

But if you are like most of us, you know you’re slightly off the mark. Maybe you enjoy your work somewhat, but also feel a longing to give the gift you really came here to give the world.

If so, I got you.

How to Discover Your Sacred Work

Start with the Soul Gift Quiz (www.soulgiftquiz.com). Because the first thing to clarify is what you are and what you are not. If you take that little quiz, I’ll send you some emails that help you sort out your right role in the world, and what you are literally designed to do.

Next step, you’re going to notice old beliefs popping up and making things hard for no reason. That requires some clearing of old patterns. Best healing you’ll ever give yourself, cause it opens you to fulfillment, reward, and prosperity. And ideally, that clearing is supported by an understanding community of people who are neither dogmatic nor religious nor controlling. I’m talking about people who want to celebrate you and your contribution, people who are up for walking the path with you.

Shameless plug: We are totally jamming on this stuff over in the Activation Circle that costs less than 50 bucks a month, but manages to keep you inspired, energetically clear, and focused in your lane with tons of live and recorded masterclasses and clearings.

Next-level invite/pitch: And then, if you really want to boogie with me, super accelerating your emergence into your sweet spot of purpose and business, check out Leaders Mentorship or maybe even get a VIP session with me where I will reveal your original gifts, your life, contracts, your past chapters, and the next chapter of purpose and contribution you are walking into now. Then I’ll write you up a business plan with all the words you need to make sense of your sweet wacky self while positioning you to make bigger money.

Ready to Find Your Soul’s True Contribution?

Hey, I told you I have a map for this journey. And I wasn’t kidding around. I want to take you all the way there.

Bothered that I’m tooting my own horn here?

Well, guess what? This is me, in my Contributor archetype, unabashedly inviting you to step into your own. Because that’s when work and play become the same dang thing. And I want the intuitively gifted leaders to step up, contribute fully, and take over the world.

Want to?

The Balance Between Woo and Work

Unveiling your woo to activate your real-world purpose? Then you're right in line with this month's theme and energy.

It's time to peel off the layers of armoring, masking, and cover story to find your right-fit balance of woo and work.

What You'll Explore This Month

Here on Substack, this month you'll be inspired by an author who knows how to be with you in the darkness, messages from beyond that guide you to find your own balance, and stories from real life of someone, who, like you, has been an undercover agent for god.

Sometimes the pause in a big vision feels like failure.

Especially when you have already moved your family, bought the land, built the first structures, watched the money, worked the marriage, and kept asking, “Okay, what now?”

In this FemWisdom with Ma session, I channeled for Tanya Lynn, founder of Sistership Circle, who has been building a beautiful retreat center, De La Diosa in Costa Rica, with her husband, Brent. They followed spirit to take a huge leap - moved with their kids, bought raw land, and began building an actual goddess temple and retreat center.

A real one. I mean real - with money, builders, mud, exhaustion, and marriage in the middle of it.

The dream is huge: a protected place for feminine devotion, Earth, spirit, community, and the old memory of temple life to have somewhere real to land.

And it has been hard.

When Following Your Soul’s Vision Gets Real

Real-life hard. The kind where the build, the relationship, the finances, and the timing all start pressing on the same bruise.

When Ma came through, she was so proud of Tanya.

She named the way Tanya has spent decades creating systems that help women gather, heal trust wounds, speak truth, and hold feminine containers. And now that work had come into the mud.

Literally.

Tanya was feeling that a pause was needed, while Brent was afraid they might lose the builders or miss the window.

Which, yes. Of course.

Builders need a plan. Money likes a plan. A scared nervous system can feel a whole lot like divine timing.

But Ma named the pause differently.

Divine Timing and the Wisdom of the Pause

What Tanya called a pause, Ma called it the humbling. The resting. The coming back into connection.

Because when you are in a massive co-created vision, especially with someone you love, collision can be part of the creation.

Ma said divine union can often feel here like collision and wreckage, and then the hobbling, crawling, post-collision return where both people are humbled enough to embrace again.

Not every relationship needs drama. Please don’t make a theology out of the mess.

But if you’re building something real with another human, the divine union may look less like two angels sharing a microphone and more like, “Ow. I don’t think I can do this without you, and I’m not sure I can do this with you.”

Then came the line I need to remember - and which I hope every visionary woman can hear:

There is no scorecard.

Releasing the Spiritual Pressure to Achieve More

The tyranny of the mind exists in spiritual arrogance too. The grander version isn’t automatically the holy one. Choosing the middle path isn’t a reduction. Ease doesn’t mean you’re quitting.

Beware the coyote.

Choosing the Aligned Path Instead of the Biggest Path

In Tanya’s case, Ma showed three possible paths.

• The huge version.

• The small contained version.

• And the center path — more ease, more collaboration, and enough room for the women circling above the airport to actually land.

That was the image: the women are circling above the airport, watching and asking, “Is there a place for me to land?”

The landing pad is the vessel of the next path.

Just the path with enough clarity, capacity, and invitation for the right people to come in.

You can have the big vision, be wildly guided, and still need rest and collaboration, a path that lets you stay alive inside the thing you are building.

From Holding Space to Curating Space

Near the end, Tanya named the shift herself: from holding space to curating space.

Less “I have to carry all of this,” more “I can create the conditions for others to come in and help hold it.”

Yeah. That.

The vision does not need your exhaustion as proof of devotion.

Building Your Vision Without Burning Out

The temple does not become more holy because you bled into every brick.

What you call pause might be the place where spirit, Earth, your people, and your own body can finally get a word in.

Let them.

The path of ease may be the path that lets the vision live.

Have you ever been in a group experience that should have worked, but somehow didn’t?

Good people.

Decent agenda.

Maybe a smart person up front with a microphone.

And still, the room feels dead. Or weird. Or unsafe in a way nobody names. People get distracted, suddenly very interested in when the bathroom break is coming or why someone keeps blowing their nose so loudly in the middle of the deep thing.

I have suffered through enough mediocre group experiences that I’ve become picky. Maybe you have too.

Because when a group is held well, there is a certain magic that happens. People feel safe, seen, and engaged. Something activates them. Something catalyzes them. Lives can change in the right room.

So what is that magic?

Much of it is guardianship (or the lack thereof).

The Art of Holding Space in Transformational Groups

I first learned this as a teenager at my Catholic high school, where I helped lead Teens Encounter Christ retreats. I was the school campus minister, and so enthusiastic to help lead events that created deep personal experiences of direct connection to the divine among my friends. (Some things don’t change much).

We were trained with roles, and the teenagers on the retreat team were often assigned as guardians of the tables. My job was to sit at a round table with a group of students and help them feel safe, included, and contained enough to actually participate.

I was supposed to notice the nervous person, ask the question that helped them come in, pray for the people at my table while sitting right there with them, and model authentic participation without taking over.

That was my first lesson in the secret art of being a Guardian.

And I did not fully appreciate it at the time.

I looked up to the shinier roles. Speaking. Teaching. Catalyzing the fun thing. Those roles are easy to recognize because everyone can see them.

The Guardian is often invisible.

The Guardian Archetype: An Ancient Role for Creating Safety

Years later, after I met my Apache mama and mentor, , the importance of this role got driven home in a much deeper way.

I remember talking with her about what we would need for a day-long event. I was thinking about teachers and facilitators. Maria said we would need at least three guardians.

Guardians?

She explained that in her family, the Guardian was one of the most important roles in ceremony.

The Guardian holds the vessel of the group secure, makes sure people have what they need, and helps everyone feel belonging and connection, so the group can relax inside the experience.

Because if people don’t feel safe, they can’t really listen.

It can sound trivial, like worrying about the bathroom or the snack table. But under the logistics is the energetic message: I’ve got you. You can relax. You don’t have to stay vigilant about whether your basic needs will be met while someone else is trying to transform your life from the stage.

We design meetings around the presenter. We plan retreats around the facilitator. We give credit to the person with the microphone.

Meanwhile, the person quietly tracking the room, noticing the one who has gone silent, catching the tension before it turns into drama, and making sure the group can stay connected often gets treated as menial labor.

Please.

That person may be the reason the whole thing works.

How to Recognize a Natural Guardian

My partner Tony is a natural Guardian. At a party, he notices when someone’s cup is empty. More importantly, he notices when someone is sad, distant, or slightly outside the circle, and he gently brings them back in.

That’s guardianship.

Conscious Leadership Means Honoring the People Who Hold the Room

If you lead any kind of group, please look for the Guardians.

Choose the natural hosts and grounded sensitives who can hold space without creating more drama. Give them authority. Acknowledge them. Pay them. Stop pretending it is just “being nice.”

And feel into yourself here.

Understanding Your Natural Leadership Archetype

Are you the Teacher? The Catalyst or Initiator? The Guardian?

You may carry pieces of all three, but you cannot effectively serve every role at once.

If you’re the one with the proverbial microphone, you probably can’t also track every nervous system in the room. I learned that the hard way when I was channeling and teaching without a Guardian present. People would get wiggly, anxious, distracted, and I could feel the room slip even when the information coming through was good.

The teaching was not enough if no one was holding the vessel.

Who is already guardianing your team, your clients, your family, or your events without being named?

And what would change if you honored that role as essential instead of invisible?

All hail the Guardians.

Thank you for doing what you’re doing.

With you humans, looking up at the sky
with curiosity, open-mindedness, and an unusual sense of welcome,
it makes it easier for us to come visit, to make contact, to connect.

Why?
See, the rules on this earth dimension are governed by humans’ free choice. It’s part of the game here.

Free Choice, Spiritual Connection, and the Invitation to Communicate

Extraterrestrial friends are not allowed to just pop in without some special arrangement or a big open consensual welcome.

They’re not supposed to interfere, but to respond when called. That’s the law of free choice.

My First Experience Sensing Interdimensional Beings

I was atop Mauna Kea on Big Island of Hawaii the first time I noticed that observatories are like space stations for those eyes to see it.

I was just a tourist who happens to be psychic. But as we drove up this ancient extinct volcanic monolith of a mountain, I could sense interdimensional friends in little sort of encampments along the side of the mountain.

They were suddenly alert, noticing that I was noticing them.

I greeted these beings at the time, surprised to find them here on the barren lava sand at over 10,000 feet elevation above sea level.

I could sense many different sorts of extraterrestrial intelligence here and I allowed my imagination to give them forms and even outfits like friendly aliens so that I could relate with them by personalizing them.

By the time we arrived at the top of that extinct volcano, I was sensing throngs of these beings, moving all over the top of the mountain, completely unnoticed and unseen by the scientists going about their work, and the other tourists snapping pictures of the panorama mountain top view.

It’s funny, but at that time, I didn’t think to ask them the question I finally asked these other guys in Flagstaff a few weeks ago.

Now it makes sense to me, that answer I got in Arizona.

Spirit Communicates Through the Doorways We Are Open To

I’ve noticed that spirit arrives with help and messages and loving connection in whatever forms we are open to.

From Angels to Spirit Guides to Extraterrestrial Intelligence

When I was open to Jesus and the Saints, that’s how spirit showed up. As I’ve opened up my realm of possibilities, spirit shows up in a myriad of forms and helpful areas. Spirit guides, angels, interdimensional friends, extraterrestrial intelligences, fairies, tree spirits, and more. Whatever metaphor/explanation you like, it’s never going to be vast enough to embrace the totality of creation. So might has well choose your metaphor and go with it.

I’ve heard lots of people say “oh I used to sense ghosts and dead people, but I shut that down.“ And I respect that.

We each have the choice to close and open whichever doors align with our values and chosen faith ways. But I for one, I am fascinated and delighted to be open to the many forms of extraordinary intelligence that are available in alignment with the highest good, even aliens who like to hang out at observatories.

What forms of wisdom, support, and intelligence become available when we allow ourselves to stay open?

I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever experienced guidance that came in a form you didn’t expect?

A lot has been revealed about dark power being used in the upper echelons of the old boys’ club: sexual abuse, terror, vampiring other people’s energy for the hit of power. It’s shocking and gross to learn what has been happening under the cover of darkness.

But is it surprising?

I don’t think so.

And before anyone starts wriggling in their seat, explanation does not equal excuse. There is no excuse for abusing kids, terrorizing people, or taking from the people who trusted you.

If we refuse to look at the energetic reason these patterns keep showing up around distorted power, we stay in the cycle of being shocked every time the same rotten structure reveals itself again.

Projection Load: The Hidden Weight of Influence

One of the terms I use for this is projection load.

I work with a lot of leaders. Some celebrities, some extremely wealthy, many just very influential and all of them dealing with a lot of this projection load.

People care about the minutia of their lives. Where they were. What they said. What they had for breakfast, and especially what they wore (eyeroll).

They’re adored, hated, wanted, resented, worshipped, criticized — imagined into roles they never actually agreed to hold.

All of that carries energy. It lands in their field.

And when these guys become so big from the projection load, from the hero worship, from all the ego fluffery, their energy body can get puffed up with stuff that is not even theirs.

Hopefully that person has someone to check them - a mentor of integrity, a spiritual director or therapist, real truth talking friends, a strong spouse… someone they respect who can keep their ego from taking over. With grounded support, they can find their center, their wisdom, their integrity. They can learn to ground all that energy. They can surrender what is not theirs. They can let real life humble them before their field gets too inflated and distorted.

When Influence Turns Into Ego

But when someone starts believing the projection, relaxing into their fluffed ego, things can get dangerous.

They may start feeding on the worship, or even the disdain. They feel bigger than life, entitled to all the special attention, and then terribly desperately hungry for MORE. They grow to feel special in a way that starts separating them from humane accountability.

That is where the hunger takes over, becoming a desperate egoic search for energy to take, to steal, to harvest.

How Energy Exchange Shows Up in Everyday Life

It’s too easy to demonize this sort of vampiric behavior, imagining it only happens in the upper echelons, and in the most egregious ways. But it’s not completely unfamiliar to the best of us. We humans know more about feeding on the energy of others than we like to admit.

Even on the playground, we learn the tiny version. You sneak up behind a friend and scare them. Boo. They jump. You get a little hit, a little juice. They may laugh, but they also feel the loss for a second.

It is the tiny playground version, sure, but the body still registers it.

Now imagine that same power dynamic inside extreme wealth, fame, secrecy, protection, and ego fluffery.

Desperate hunger for energy paired with righteous entitlement and ridiculous amounts of resource to take from others.

That is where feeding can become abuse, and even communities based on this vicious harvesting of pure energy - of the young, the pure, the beautiful.

Evil. Yes. But not nonsensical. There is a process happening here energetically.

Conscious Leadership Requires More Than Success

This is why integrity-based leadership cannot just be about making more money, getting more visible, commanding higher prices, or becoming the name in your industry.

Because that appetite is real. And anyone who is adored on stage one day, who then feels depleted lonely and hungry the next day, can tell you the hunger for a new thing to fill us is real and surprisingly strong.

These energy transfers affect us all. You can be doing good work and still have an adoration-hangover after being in the public eye. You can be deeply gifted and still get puffed-up when too many people hand you their power. You can be spiritual as hell and still need a mentor or partner who can say, “Nope. Uh-uh. Come back to Earth, Fancypants.”

Staying Grounded When You Hold Power

Please have those people. And please, become one.

The leaders we need aren’t the ones hoarding all that projection until it curdles into overwhelm, ego, hunger, or harm. There are people who can hold influence without letting it inflate them, who can let all that extra energy open their channel of genius instead of puffing up the false self.

But that does not happen by accident.

It requires grounding and humility. It requires a relationship with spirit, earth, and body, and the willingness to surrender what is not yours instead of stuffing your field with other people’s fantasies and resentments. Dude, it’s a practice. And in a world where we are not tracking these invisible movements of energy, it can be hard to understand what’s going on. We have the wise words of “stay humble” and such, but I think it’s time to track the energy transfer and learn how to balance it out before it creates more damage.

Can we be done pretending power is neutral? Can we talk about projection load before it turns into ego fluffery, hunger, and harm?

And can we please help people with wealth, fame, visibility, and influence learn how to steward what is coming at them, instead of letting it overwhelm them or using it as permission to feed?

The Future of Leadership Requires Spiritual Integrity

The world does not need more giant egos taking from the people who look up to them.

It needs leaders whose influence opens their channel so they become truly genius, instead of inflating their ego until they become monsters.

This is the work I care about most: helping powerful, intuitive people hold more energy without losing themselves.

If you are stepping into bigger leadership, bigger visibility, or bigger responsibility and you feel the weight of what is moving through you, this is the territory I love exploring.

Reach out. Let’s make sure your genius expands faster than your ego.

Tingles up your spine.

A sick feeling in your gut.

Sparkles at the edges of your vision.

They mean three different things. But no one taught us in grad school how to translate subtle sensations. Honestly, even most intuitive training systems can’t tell you the difference.

Sensory Intelligence: The Forgotten Language of Intuition

When I met my Apache teacher, , I finally met a teacher who knows the difference. She learned the map of the eight atmospheric layers of your energy body when she was still a kid. She practiced using all eight of her sensory layers, growing up on the White Mountains Reservation, in order to track and hunt rabbits. She sat with her great-grandfather who used the eight sensory layers of the art of Ya’Odishido (sensual telepathy) as a part of everyday life - the best way to get things done.

Recently, I sat to have an inspiring conversation with her on this topic, which you can hear as a podcast episode on Channel Your Genius podcast. But I want to give you the low-down right here, because it’s important.

Mental telepathy, says Maria, won’t get you very far. It’s limited to the mind. The more useful perceptions for healing, for connecting, for finding what you need- these come when you can feel, track, and leverage the subtle sensations that your body uses to speak to you.

Beyond the Mind: Understanding Body-Based Intuition

A lot of us have general tags for this stuff: My intuition says this. My gut says that.

But what am I actually feeling?

What I love about learning this from Maria is that she is mapping the woo. Not dumbing it down or turning it into a cute little chart. Actually tracking what’s what.

Her family has been tracking these layers for generations, and the way she teaches is experiential. We learn through feeling (not just thinking) the body, the land, the sensation, and the relationship.

Intellect, Intuition, and Instinct: The Three Ways We Receive Guidance

Maria talks about the difference between intellect, intuition, and instinct, and she keeps correcting how most of us collapse instinct into fight-or-flight. It’s not that. Instinct is the body’s language. It’s primal, often subtle, sensation.

In a world where we think every pain or pinch or tension is “wrong,” it’s a real turnaround to hear what Maria suggests:

Don’t run from your sensations. Find out what they mean.

Because we do run. We receive a sensation and think we are getting sick, spinning out, or becoming too much. We feel something move in the body and immediately want to manage it, explain it, or make it socially acceptable.

But what if the sensation has information?

If you are sensitive enough to feel the room, the client, the decision, and the stress-frequency of the humans around you, that’s a lot to be carrying around untranslated.

Sensing Energy Through the Body and the Land

And the land is part of the conversation.

Maria shared how, when she is out on the land, she may suddenly stop because sensation tells her an offering needs to be made for connection. Maybe there’s a snake on the trail. Maybe a layer of history wants to open and reveal itself in the landscape. She talks about rubbing your hands together, then finding a power spot on the land through feeling instead of your thinking mind.

And when you find that spot through feeling and not the intellect, you can sit there for hours and never get tired. As she said, it is like Mom says, “This is your place. I’m ready to hold you here. I got a spot for you.”

That’s a powerful co-creative relationship with the body, the land, the higher intelligence.

And it makes me think about stress differently.

Sensation Over Stress: Learning to Decode Your Body’s Messages

Life is supposed to be challenging, but it is not supposed to be stressful. - Ten Bears (Maria’s great grandfather)

I recognize how much stress I still hold in my body and field, even with all my practices. Ugh.

Maria notes that this world is vibrating on a frequency of stress right now. We humans are saturated in stress, overwhelmed with so much sensation.

When we collapse every sensation into one overwhelmed pile, we miss what’s actually in there. This one’s the stress one. This one’s a message. This one over here is just me needing a glass of water and lunch, because I’m still a mammal! It’s a lot to navigate when you don’t know how to map your senses.

Developing Intuition Starts With “I Don’t Know”

So how do we learn to map and track and use all these sensations in a good way?

Ironically, Maria suggests we start with “I don’t know.”

And yes, this requires humility.

The kind Maria gave us straight, with no fancy spiritual outfit on it:

Can you allow yourself to say, “I don’t know. Show me what I need to know”?

It’s easy to get arrogant thinking you know everything when you’re overeducated and people always say you’re smart and now you can ask your cellphone to do all the research you want.

But there are cosmologies, like Maria’s, that have been tracking and using the invisible subtle stuff of energy for thousands of years. And there are still a few teachers like Maria, who teach these arts to those who are ready to learn them. I will continue to sit at her feet and learn for as long as I can. Because the applications of this art of Ya’Odishido are endless. And there is a real danger that this modern world is forgetting the natural art of sensation that is most natural to us, most powerful for us, and most important in co-creating directly with spirit and earth.

I recently sat down with Maria for a conversation on Channel Your Genius about Ya’Odishido, sensory intelligence, and learning the language of the body. Listen to the full episode if you want to experience the deeper layers of this teaching.

https://channelyourgenius.com/blog/2026/indigenous-energy-healing

All the oracles say this is a BIG month.

The Energy of July: Intensity, Change, and Transformation

There's a stellium in the sky that mirrors the French Revolution. There's the heat of the summer compounding the rising heat on the planet and the heat in our frustrated hearts at the wild changes and control dramas that are getting quite destructive. Overall, it's hot hot hot.

How to Stay Centered When Everything Feels Uncertain

How do you keep your cool center in the midst of all this?

Meet the Specialist Archetype

The answer lies in this month's Archetype - the Specialist.

This part of you knows your assignment. This part of you stays in your lane, undeterred. This part of you accesses your deepest gifts to live in this intense time.

Your Soul Gifts Are Needed Now

You are special, indeed, as we all are. Learn how you're gifted. Clarify your path, your lane. Do what you came here to do, even as things heat up. We are all in this together!

If you’re wondering what your unique gifts are and how they are meant to guide your next chapter, start by discovering your Soul Gift Archetype here → www.soulgiftquiz.com.

Subscribe to Channel Your Genius for monthly energy forecasts and grounded spiritual guidance for intuitive leaders.

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You really are special.

And I’m sorry, because a lot of us were misled about what that meant.

They told you you were special because you got straight A’s and looked pretty in the pictures and made the touchdown and pleased some authority who adjudicated the rightness of your way of doing life.

Now, you achieved some stuff. I’m not trying to put that down.

But your specialness is rooted in a much deeper place than the dumb-ass rubrics of what “special” required.

The Spiritual Awakening That Revealed My Real Specialty

I was a Stanford-educated lawyer before I had my big accidental awakening, before I fell into the gifts that made me an energy healer and a seer and a guide for people. I never thought woo was real until it happened to me.

That’s when my real specialty revealed itself.

I thought my specialty was teaching improvisation. I thought it was preparing cases for trial, processing depositions and evidence, and telling stories through trial briefs. I thought it was speaking the way I’d been trained in speech and debate. I thought it was drawing good pictures and playing guitar at church.

All beautiful gifts. Truly.

But those are all things I learned. And my natural specialty is something I didn’t learn in school.

Finding the Gift You Were Born With

So maybe the question is:

• What have I been intrinsically since the day I was born?

• What has been my unique effect on people just from being around them?

• What has been my gift to everyone in my life even when I wasn’t trying to do anything?

Hm… those questions are a bit more subtle, I know.

And some of us end up asking them because we HAVE to. Whether it’s the mid-life crisis, the crippling divorce, the unexpected physical challenge, or just your normal every-day nervous freakin breakdown… we finally get around to facing what’s been in us all along.

For us women around 50, it’s a common thing, especially with the joy of menopause in the mix. That’s when we stop giving so many F’s and we start asking a question we never stopped to ask before…

“So what?”

So what that I was school valedictorian? So what that I went to Stanford? So what that I traveled internationally teaching and performing improv?

Where is that now? What is happening now? What am I emanating now?

Because that happened. But what’s true now?

The Specialist Archetype and Your Unique Genius

Enter the Specialist, our archetype of the month.

And that’s important right now, in an age where the robots are copying everything and passing themselves off as humans. It’s more important than ever to touch into what makes you human, yes, but also what makes you distinctly, unmistakably you, you freakazoid.

• What of your gifts is an emanation?

• What of your gifts never leaves you, no matter what job you take or what relationship you’re in?

• What’s your essential juju?

That’s a lot more interesting than your résumé, and more powerful.

The people closest to you probably see this more clearly than you do, because when you’re the fish inside the tank, you don’t know there’s a tank. You’re just swimming around being yourself, while other people may be having an entire experience of your presence that you have not put words to yet.

So here’s a shortcut: ask them.

How to Recognize Your Intuitive Gifts

Ask the people who know you best, who love you and see you in your worst moments and your best moments:

• What are the qualities I emanate?

• What do I make you feel that other people don’t?

• What is the thing you receive from me even when I’m not trying to be useful?

And please, because I know this move, don’t swat the answer away because it sounds too simple.

Don’t knock it away because it seems boring and obvious or like “oh you always say that” or because your self-worth issue wants to protest.

Listen to their response. Record it if you can. Make a note.

Building Your Life and Work Around Your True Purpose

Once you hear it, know it, and acknowledge it, then you can amplify that essence through all the other masks and jobs and duties you may still need to carry as part of your work.

That is when your perceived value goes up, for you and for others.

Your effectiveness goes up too, because you’re no longer dragging your whole self through work while pretending the most potent part of you is irrelevant.

You also learn who balances you, who supports who you actually are, because none of us is a one-person show.

You are a specialist. Each one of us is!

So what’s your specialty?

Not because you went to grad school on a topic. Not because someone gave you a credential.

What is your effect intrinsically, in the quiet moments?

Pay attention to that.

Center your service in this world around that. Center your business around that. Let the genius that flows through you when you’re open become less hidden, less apologetic, and more available. People are already looking for exactly that thing in you.

And if you need help figuring this out from someone who can see deeply into you and put words to your valuable specialty better even than most of your friends…

Hiiiiiiiii! Reach out. This is exactly the kind of deep seeing we practice inside my work: naming the thing you have always carried, then learning how to actually use it.

Let’s talk about the magic of the menopassage - when a woman stops asking permission, stops giving the F’s, stops holding back.

It’s the moment we have been waiting for.

The Rise of Mature Feminine Power in Midlife Women

And also, look out. ;)

Because this flavor of feminine power that rises in mature women is not cute, compliant, endlessly available, or particularly interested in being chosen by the same systems that trained her to stay pleasing. Nope.

She has lived too much for that game now. She has lost a lot, created a lot, been underestimated by people with louder microphones and worse instincts. She has watched the old games up close - sometimes from inside the boardroom, sometimes from inside the marriage, sometimes from inside the spiritual community… - that still managed to recreate the same power nonsense, but with a soft haze of bypass bullshit.

In the meno-passage, our tolerance for even well-meaning bullshit disappears.

Menopause as a Leadership Initiation

In the spirit of no-bullshit, I recently recorded a FemWisdom with Ma episode for the new podcast. This is where I straight-channel the Big Ma and then she/we have a conversation with a Feminine Wisdom Leader about the stuff that really matters. In this case, I was channeling and talking with my BFF, founder of Priestess Presence, .

We shared real-talk about midlife, perimenopause, and the great evolution of the mature woman. Elayne Kalila has guided women in the feminine mysteries for decades, and recently she’s sort of on fire sharing about The Change as a rite of passage, a chrysalis, a metamorphic journey - not just a set of symptoms to manage while everyone politely avoids saying the word “menopause” at lunch. (If you’re not already following her on Substack - go get it)

Anyway, we were in this session, and Ma came through and said something I could feel in my whole body.

Menopause, Voice, and the End of Self-Silencing

The End of Self-Silencing

So many of us women spend the first half of life translating ourselves into acceptable versions of ourselves, making our truth softer, our needs smaller, our visions more palatable for people who benefit from us staying manageable.

Then, we grow up. And BAM - we speak truth, without apology, surprising everyone who’s ever known us.

Sure, our bodies change. Yes, our hormones change. Oh hell yah, our tolerance changes too, which may be the most delightful medical mystery of all.

It’s not that we don’t care anymore. It’s that we now care too much to hold back the Truth.

The Menopausal Maven Archetype

Elayne Kalila has coined the term Menopausal Maven. She says we need a new archetype. And I agree. Because this powerhouse - she’s neither the mama nor the crone.

The Maven cares deeply. She cares about truth, children, the earth, integrity, money, medicine, legacy, and whether the room is lying to itself again. She simply stops confusing approval with safety. And she has the accrued wisdom, the inherent power, and the fearless voice to move mountains in an age where some of these mountains just need to go.

Why Women’s Power Expands With Age

Oh yes. Women become more powerful with age, not weaker per the common story.

We become harder to hypnotize.

We move through the reckoning of the Change, and emerge seasoned, devoted, and speaking the truth.

Yet this power has been hiding in plain sight. Many folks have been looking right past the elder leader women in the room for generations. Our image-worshipping culture can’t even register the power of mature women yet. But they won’t be able to ignore her for long. She is rising up into power. Big time.

The Coming Wealth Transfer and the Rise of Women’s Power

Let’s do the math. There is about to be a massive transfer of wealth from Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation to heirs over the next 20 years — estimates range from roughly $84 trillion to over $120 trillion in the U.S. alone. Women live significantly longer than men, so, um, who do you think is going to be holding this transferred wealth? Some forecasts estimate widowed women alone may inherit around $40 trillion over the next few decades.

And this power transfer is already underway, much to the dismay of the Old Boys’ network, or the archetype of the Old Emperor type. The old Emperor, high on his own importance, often fails to see the mature woman coming because he has already dismissed her. She is done playing maiden, seductress, endlessly useful mother, and professional nice lady. So she doesn’t really even exist as a player on his game board.

Perfect.He overlooks her, and she slips under the fence.

She gains ground while the old structure is busy admiring itself in a cracked bloody mirror.

But the move to the Maven is already afoot. Mature women are already holding more resources, decision-making authority, and spiritual credibility than many institutions know how to acknowledge. Money is moving. Old hierarchies are wobbling in public like poorly assembled patio furniture.

Meanwhile, the Maven is remembering her voice. (you really should listen to the full episode with Elayne Kalila)

That should interest anyone who cares about the future of leadership. Because mature feminine power changes what gets valued and what questions get asked around money, power, land, children, creativity, and truth.

The Return of Grandmother Leadership

My Apache teacher Maria says it used to be the Council of Grandmothers who were always the top authority in decision-making. That’s because they would ask the important questions.

• Who benefits from this decision?

• What is being extracted, and from whom?

• What is being hidden, not spoken?

• And how does this affect All Our Relations - creatures, lands, waters, people?

There she is. Grandmother. Maven.

Winged throat open.

Elayne Kalila calls the new archetype Maven.

Take the Quiz

What FemWisdom Leadership Looks Like in Practice

And I call the new leadership style FemWisdom: mature, embodied, collaborative feminine wisdom that has no interest in becoming another guru show. The power lives in conversation, in shared truth, in the tapestry of women, men, elders, kiddos, earth, spirit, and the strange little magical child who has been hiding under the table waiting for someone safe enough to say, “Come play.”

Finally we are waking up from the old Emperor’s dream.

The world does not need older women to become younger, quieter, smoother, or more palatable.

For Women Moving Through Perimenopause and Midlife Change

If you are in this passage, maybe it feels messy. Your body is changing, your voice is changing, and the old rules are starting to look like a very boring costume you no longer wish to wear.

You are welcome here, FemWisdom leader.

The wings of your throat are opening.

Speak.

I was sitting there thinking, “I’m doing nothing.”

Uh oh. This client paid me a lot of money, flown in for a private retreat in this luxe AirBnB on the river she’s rented for us to do this work. She’s laying on the sofa, receiving a deep clearing of the old patterns we’ve been mapping and tracking for months. And I’m… doing nothing.

Is it really OK that I’m sitting here, tingling, feeling waves of power coursing through me? Isn’t that too easy?

Truth be told, it felt GOOD. Effortless for me. Obviously deeply relaxing for her. But my lawyer brain was like, “um, nothing is happening. I’m doing nothing.”

My guides were giggling at my mental chitter chatter. “Mellissa. Relax. Hold the door open.”

The Leadership Skill No One Teaches About Holding Space

That was my job.

Hold the door open. Let the Mystery pour through and do the rest.

I’m a responsible person, you guys. I wanted to make something happen. I’d deposited her check. I’d promised her a healing. She had come to release something that had held on for a very long time, and my personality needed this healing to work. My Stanford-trained attorney self was somewhere in the back of my mind, sweating over a legal pad, tabulating the efforts, the proposed benefits, searching for something remotely billable.

Meanwhile, the actual guidance was maddeningly simple.

Hold the door open.

You guys.

Intuitive Leadership Feels Different Than Performance

This is one of the great initiations of intuitive business leadership.

Yes, this happened inside an energetic clearing. But regardless of what you do… if you lead clients, teams, strategy sessions, or any conversation where the real issue is hiding underneath the agenda, you already know this moment?

What It Means to Channel Your Genius in Leadership

I call this Channeling Your Genius - and it’s the reason I named my business that.

Your best leadership is supported by your skill, preparation, discernment, etc. But your GENIUS channels through when you’re able to let something larger than your own ego participate in the work.

In your best moments of channeling your work, your brain might say “I’m doing nothing.” But your Genius knows you’re giving your best stuff, by “doing” nothing.

Tons of conscious preparation, education, experience, skill, yes. And then? “Hold the door open,” and get out of the way!

Why Preparation Matters in Energetic Leadership

That day, we’d already done the outer work. We’d identified what was being released. She’d done the hard work of facing her demons, her patterns, her dearly held habits. We’d made the preparations to be here in this safe space, uninterrupted by the thousands of people who tug at her every day. I”d done my work, too. The years of preparation with my mentors to hold this kind of space. The personal work I’d done to be able to hold space for some of the same patterns I’ve held in the past. I had drummed over her, moved energy from her field, burned propolis from my beehive until the air smelled like medicine

Then, we entered that empty space. We opened the door.

The signs were there. Serendipity was moving. We felt it.

She was deep on the sofa, almost completely out. I was sitting nearby, tingling, breathing, holding steady as this stream of light moved through me and toward her. At one point her eyes fluttered open and she said, “This is a big one.”

Then she dropped back down.

The signs kept coming. Nature was responding. We saw it.

The blue jay swept in so close, sitting by the window, watching us. The Sea Eagle cried overhead, punctuating the peak of the release. And a red fox appeared on the deck near us, looking up directly to where we were working.

Seemed like nothing was happening. But everything was happening. And we were doing nothing.

Holding Space Is a Leadership Skill

There’s an art to holding this kind of charged space. I had to develop this skill with the help of my mentors - to learn how to stay out of the way without abandoning the field.

That’s leadership too: being steady enough to stop performing expertise when the person in front of you needs space, not more words.

That was a hard lesson for me to learn over the years, because I love talking and sounding smart. Explaining, narrating, sounding… I’m good at that stuff. But sometimes “hold the door open,” also means STFU.

What Grounded Intuitive Leadership Requires

There are ingredients to being able to hold this kind of space for people of influence.

1. You really better have done your own work on your own shadow stuff.

2. You’d better have training from mentors who have done the work themselves and know the territory.

3. You gotta be able to hold pristine space without getting in the way, and

4. You can’t get freaked out or impressed by the money/fame/etc of big energy leaders - you need to be with them person to person, with compassion.

(Fortunately for me, I grew up around miserable rich people so I learned early that money/fame/importance is not the important part of being human.)

Your Genius May Already Be Leading Through You

Anyway, holding space for healing juju to flood through someone is just ONE way of channeling your genius. Maybe your genius floods through when you’re speaking from a stage. Maybe it happens when you’re designing a new product line. Maybe it comes through when you are deeply relating to your peeps, your family, your kids. Maybe something moves through you, and it seems kinda miraculous, and you think, “But I’m doing nothing.” Maybe you question if your best deepest gifts can really feel so effortless, like a flow that comes through you. Dude. It can.

And your life has prepared you with all the skills, the wisdom, the experience, the knowledge, the perspective, the talent, the interest, and the opportunities that now make you exceptionally qualified to… “do nothing.” And let all the best of you come through.

We are trained to tell the success story in a very one-man-band way.

One brilliant person has the vision, works like a maniac, overcomes the odds, and arrives at the top looking impressively self-made.

Handy little myth, isn’t it?

Hey, I am all for the real-deal actions that make up real-deal work. Calls need returning, contracts need reading, calendars need tracking, and the invoice does not become enlightened and pay itself.

Still, this myth that we are these solo-heroes who work out way to the top - this thing is a lie.

The Myth of the Self-Made Leader in Modern Leadership

My father taught me this without making it a spiritual teaching. He was a superior court judge for decades, then a deeply respected arbitrator and mediator. People have always been impressed by his ability to find the wise sum-up of complicated situations. He has the perfect parable, the high level perspective, the human read, and the strangely perfect platitude for any problem. Annoying, frankly, when one is his daughter trying to win a point. ;)

Dad is the first person to say that every good thing in his life arrived through some happy collision of circumstances he never could have engineered alone. An introduction at the right moment, a surprising yes that changed the shape of his path, a door that opened because he was awake enough to notice it and walk through.

And if you are honest about your own life, I bet you can find the same thing.

Why Collaborative Leadership Creates Better Results

This month, we’re talking about the archetype that embodies this connective way of living: the Co-Creator.

Why High Achievers Struggle With Intuition

For many professionals, especially those trained in the old-school success religion, these parts of the story are ignored. We mention grit, effort, and credentials because those sound impressive. Meanwhile, we pray quietly under our breath, we write off miracles as “coincidences,” and we reframe our decision made on the gut instinct of our partner as a choice made through careful calculations.

We speak our prayers privately in the darkness, rename the intuitive hit “just a thought,” downplay the friend who opened the door, and ignore the body signal that kept us from signing the wrong contract.

We know better in our bones.

In secret, we thank the Mystery for its grace, and wonder when everyone will figure out that our success landed because of dumb luck just as much as talent or choice.

We admit the miracles over wine with our closest friends. We can’t help but recognize it when we look back honestly at the moments that changed everything. The client, the move, the healing, the role that fit like it had been waiting for us. Our effort was real. But so was the serendipitous timing, the unexpected door opening, and whatever other strange grace nudged us, stumbling, in the right direction towards success.

That is Co-Creator power.

What Co-Creative Leadership Looks Like in Real Life

Co-Creator power expands when we finally welcome it consciously, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It grows when we cultivate relationships with our spirit guides (or imaginary friends if you prefer). It flourishes when we turn our attention toward calling in the right collaborators, partnerships, connections and networks - not just the right funding, tools, and rewards for doing it all ourselves.

Why Successful Women Often Resist Support

Unfortunately, it’s hard for many of us Type A go-getters to place nice with others.

We are very good at looking self-contained. We went to impressive schools, built impressive careers, made real money, and learned how to walk into powerful rooms looking like a big deal.

Hey, this took us a lot of practice. And guarding. And defending against other people showing us up or knocking us down or disappointing us or betraying us or stealing our ideas or talking badly of us to our own teams the minute we turn our backs… pant pant… or wait are you still here listening to me rant? Because I definitely was trained to do this in the halls of show-off greatness.

My clients tend to know this game. They, like I, have been burned to a shivering crisp by this game. Under the title, the reputation, the revenue, some deeper part of them is longing for leadership that feels like it really matters - supported, spiritually guided, grounded in the body, and alive in the actual world of feelings and relationships and knowing you did the right thing for the generations to come.

The Shift From Solo Leadership to Co-Creation

The old way gave the boss the praise and hid the web of support that made it all happen. If the team created something extraordinary, the leader became the triumphant victor. The origin story got trimmed until one heroic person stood in the spotlight with suspiciously perfect lighting.

The new way - the way of the Co-Creator, is more honest, more vulnerable, and more collaborative than we were taught to be as professionals. It’s about acknowledging every win as a tapestry woven by a bunch of people, ideas, actions and aligned timing. It can even be about acknowledging the Mystery as a player in the game.

And it starts with you acknowledging how your best stuff actually came to be. Not as just your individual creation, but also with you as the channel of genius who integrated others’ inputs as well.

• Who opened a door of opportunity?

• What inspired guidance arrived unbidden?

• Where did your body insist you stop and listen?

• When did the perfect timing mysteriously align?

• What quiet voice did you hear, and follow?

Developing Intuitive Intelligence Through Connection and Collaboration

The more you acknowledge the inputs, the more they show up to support you. The more you slow down to connect, to collaborate, to listen to the winds as well as the words, the more you’ll hear. This is a big part of developing intuitive intelligence. Don’t be driven by intuitive hits alone, but dang it don’t ignore or discredit them.

Gather it all, and weave it. You’re a Co-creator.

This version of me. She burned it down, and sat crying in the ashes of her previous life. I was determined I was right, and better, and eternally more awake than those muggles who loved me. Ugh.

Look,
I know that "intuitive awakening" sounds like it would be all butterflies, rainbows, and spirit guides... but...
it made me my best self in one respect,
but it made me my WORST self in others.

Power initiations can make us puff up with egoic spiritual grandiosity. And yah, I had some.

When you suddenly wake up with super powers,

• the ability to see and talk to the dead

• healing juju coming out of your hands that fixes your friend's knee up fast in medically impossible ways

• messages from others' spirit guides that tell you more than you should know...

it can make you a real arrogant bitch.

When Intuitive Awakening Inflates the Ego

I know this from experience.

See, I hadn't even believed the woo stuff was real... until it happened to me at age 31.

So when it DID happen to me, I got scared that all the reasonable people who knew me as a Catholic lawyer would reject me.

What to do?
Like any ego-driven human, I rejected them first.

Spiritual Awakening Can Strain Relationships

I haughtily presumed that those muggles could never understand me.

OOF. It's like a punch in the gut of regret to realize this now.

I’m sorry.

I'm sorry to my church friends who were baffled at my change, but were probably just curious and concerned, not judgmental and rejecting. I never really gave you a chance to continue our connection.

I’m sorry to my folks who were totally swept off their feet with worry and fear when their good-girl-normal daughter suddenly claimed to be an intuitive shaman whatever the F that's supposed to mean. (cringe) I didn't have the courage or patience to stay with them as they (and I) learned more about intuitive awakening and the deepening faith it would eventually give me.

I'm sorry to my former husband who tried to keep up with the woo, but found it really wasn't his thing. We never really had the chance to keep up with our sweet, playful, in-sync life-partner rhythm because I changed. Radically. Suddenly. And it was a painful loss of the marriage I thought I'd enjoy till our dying days.

The Lesson I Teach My Clients Now

Recently, I was advising a client who was in a similar snit. She was waking up to her power, feeling full of herself in both a good way and also a bitchy way.

I said:

"Great leaders open gates
and they don't burn bridges."

And I told her the story above
so that she knew I wasn't just being a bossy auntie.

The Humbling Phase of the Spiritual Path

The puffed up ego phase of spiritual awakening is real.
And talking about the map, the journey, of this pathway is helpful to my mentees, so they don't fall into the same traps I did.

And I think it's important, when you see a loved one in this phase, to have some patience, knowing they will be humbled if they stay on the path. It's a phase.

There’s a hidden tragic loss when you get rich. And it’s more painful and damaging than most folk realize.

You don’t know who to trust. You feel strangely “other.” You carry invisible burdens that folks who haven’t experienced big money will never truly understand.

Some of the issues are obvious. We all notice the loss of privacy, because we see the paparazzi thing happening, and the private family stuff that becomes public struggles. Ugh. And yes, that’s a pain too. You can’t drop your kids off at school without looking coiffed. You can’t have a grumpy day and snipe at a rude person in public (unless you live in Manhattan, where famous folk are compassionately left alone to just be normal people BTW).

But the privacy thing is just the visible edge of a much stranger disconnect, a loss of connection with the rest of the human web. Regular folks might look at you as if you’re “above” them, but also you end up understandably cautious of regular folks, most of whom have big projections about the broken economic system, and blast them onto you 24/7.

Oh yes. There’s an energetic cost to being seen, to going big, to shifting into the upper income brackets.

The Energetic Cost of Visibility and Leadership

I was working recently with one of my favorite big leader clients, talking about what happens when a person’s life expands from their years of striving, risking, and working, breaking through into a level of BIG money, reach, influence, and consequence.

From the outside, that looks like the dream: so many opportunities, fancy stuff, more people taking your calls, and that strange little thrill of realizing your decisions influence bigger levels of money, calendars, bodies, and futures.

And then all that projected energy lands on you like a ton of bricks.

Because when thousands (or more) people are looking to you, counting on you, projecting their hopes, dreams, and resentment into (even though they don’t know you personally), I’m here to tell you that your energy body FEELS it. Imagine all those onlookers, positive and negative, shining their spotlights into your personal space 24/7. And you can’t figure out why you feel bombarded by a heavy glare.

In all the conversations about leadership I’ve heard, I feel like the lone ranger because no one is seeing this, tracking this, and talking about this. Then I talk to my Apache teacher, Maria Yraceburu, and she totally gets it. That’s cause her family has been tracking not just the physical but also the energetic realities of things for many generations. They have the language for it. They have a system that describes the damage of it. And she’s leaning into me to try to describe it in a simple way that modern folks who didn’t grow up tracking the 7 layers of the energy body can understand.

So here goes.

What Happens When Attention Never Turns Off

If you’ve ever stood on a stage with hundreds of eyes on you, you know the strange pressure of being the focal point. Even admiration has weight when enough of it is aimed at you. And after you leave the stage, step out of the spotlight, you’re also going to feel the drop in energy. It can feel like a deep loss, even, or grief, to step out of that attention center. Ask any performer about the expected energy hangover after a performance.

But what happens if the spotlights never leave your body? What if they follow your every move, sleeping and waking? That’s what celebrities have to acclimate to. It’s intense. At first, their response is to puff up. Their energy body gets bigger with all that extra energy, and they will be tempted to think that they are different/better/special because of it. Understandable. They know not everyone receives and holds so much energy from so many folks.

Projection Load: The Hidden Weight of Influence

Let’s call this Projection Load.

The Projection Load is the accumulated energetic weight of other people’s attention, expectation, judgment, fantasy, and need landing in your field as your influence grows. And while it can be exciting and expansive, it can also be onerous, stifling, and exhausting.

And if you’re naturally sensitive? Intuitive? Empathic?

Oh boy. It can make you feel crazy-making.

Look, it’s enough if you are occasionally in the public light as an honored leader who is sensitive. You might feel inflated after a performance or talk, then weirdly hollow the next morning. You might crave being seen, then want to hide under a large blanket with your phone in another room. You might snap at the one person who still treats you like a human because everyone else is interacting with the role, the brand, or the myth.

But when you 100x your revenue, I guarantee you there is a whole other thing that happens. You are permanently blasted with the light of people’s attention, projections, and expectations. Even your old friends are now subtly pitching you for funding their creative projects. No one offers to pick up the check at lunch anymore. No one calls unless they need something. They figure you’ve outgrown them. They expect you to parent them. They see you as Other now. And it’s painful. Your vacation options are now limited to 5 Star fancy places, not just cause they’re beautiful, but because they are used to shielding rich people from the Projection Load for a week or so, offering pampering in a bubble with other wealthy folk hiding from the world.

All that projection can make it hard to discern, “Which is the real me, and which is the “me” they’ve decided to see?” That’s where people can lose their center.

Growing Your Capacity Alongside Your Success

This is why there’s something I think every growing leader should know.

Our culture acts like success should make you need less support, as if achievement proves emotional completion. Cute. Also, false.

Big lives require sophisticated support.

If you’re carrying a complex business, a public identity, family obligations, and spiritual sensitivity, there is more in your field to steward. That calls for more clarity and less pretending.

• Get the therapist.

• Keep the friend who is not impressed by your sparkle.

• Have advisors who can tell you the truth without trying to crawl into your wallet.

• Build a spiritual practice that brings you back to your body before the noise of the field starts wearing your face and using your calendar.

And please learn to steward your bubble.

Energetic Boundaries for Intuitive Leaders

Your “bubble” is what I call the personal energetic space around you. You already know it’s real because you feel it. If someone tries to sneak up behind you, you feel them when they cross the line, long before they touch you. That’s your bubble - your energetic personal space - your auric field.

When you become more aware of your bubble, you notice what belongs to you, what belongs to the crowd, and what needs to get out before it causes confusion, overwhelm, or damage.

Inside my programs, I begin every group session with an exercise that clears and powers-up the bubble. Before we open intuition or ask for guidance, we come home to our own space. Intuitive boundaries matter, especially when visibility blasts you into a new level of bubble-fullness.

Support Before Burnout

So if your platform is expanding or your name is starting to enter rooms before you do, don’t wait until the Projection Load knocks you sideways. Get support now. I’m one person you can lean into for this. There are certainly others.

We need grounded intuitive leaders who can hold bigger fields without becoming hungry ghosts in beautiful shoes.

Your field is getting bigger.

Time to learn how to hold it.

Creation energies are off the hook!

That's why I'm launching a new combined Substack here, with writings from all four areas you need to hear about - inspiring fun stories from the path of spiritual awakening, shares and tips to steward and leverage your woo at work and in life, and potent channeled guidance straight from the Big Mama for all of us who are part of the rise of feminine power in the world.

Why Creation Energy Feels So Strong Right Now

Now is the perfect time to use the extra solar energy (cause the days are long up here in the northern hemisphere) to create all you came here to share!

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How do you make deep channeled, powerful, potent information from the Mother of the universe accessible on social media?

I mean.

There’s a question.

Because this work has been coming through me for 25 years. Literally coming through me. The work I have called Yoni Speak, Channeling Ma, Yoni Ma. Potent. Other-worldly, yet grounded deep in the body. Deep in the Earth. Not exactly something you casually toss into a caption between a Canva graphic and somebody’s lunch photo.

And yet, here we are.

Why Channeling Alone No Longer Works

Because the guidance was clear.

It’s time to come into conversation with Ma about what’s happening in the world, and it’s not just about me.

It’s time to let Her converse, connect, and collaborate with the leaders of feminine wisdom.

These are challenging times, and frankly we need our Mommy!

So I asked Ma how to bring her through now. I didn’t want to freak people out. I didn’t want to be seen as a guru. I didn’t want to fit her in a social media box. So then, I asked, “MA! How do I share you now?”

What came through was not exactly a marketing plan, though it does have practical consequences. More like a correction. A re-orientation. A spiritual “Duh - it’s bigger than you alone.”

Channeling has so often been pictured as one person, one voice, one great cosmic something speaking through one special human while everyone else sits there receiving.

Fun as a game, perhaps.

Fascinating, sure.

Also a little too easy to turn into guru BS or spiritually bypassing woo-theatre.

Ma’s message was clear: wisdom moves in relationship, in conversation.

Wisdom Moves Through Relationship, Not Authority

Truth gets more alive when it is met, questioned, translated, challenged, warmed by story, softened by humor, and brought into the actual lives of actual people.

If you are a woman leading with feminine wisdom, or trying to, you already know the difference between a teaching that sounds “impressive” and a truth spoken that shifts the room.

The Difference Between Impressive Teaching and Embodied Truth

You feel the difference in your body.

One leaves you dazzled, enchanted, maybe even intimidated, a “wow” and then you go back to your business, your leadership, your impossible Tuesday, feeling strangely smaller and alone.

The other one lands in your belly and nether regions with a Oh Yes. Helps you feel your OWN Knowing. Helps you speak your own Truth. Helps you make the next right call without pretending the human mess has somehow been spiritually transcended.

FemWisdom is the best term I have right now. It points to the healed feminine force that is rising in the world, even amongst all the mess.

Nurturing, fierce, collaborative, connected.

The Mother force.

The voice that has been shut in the closet for a few thousand years and is now, inconveniently for certain old structures, booming back to life with longing and power and the revelation of the ugly secrets.

Good.

Let Her out.

But let’s not dress her up as another guru, or pretend she has only one leader channeling Her.

These are potent wacky birth-pain-filled times. The old systems are crumbling. Your clients can feel it. Your teams can feel it. People can feel the old hierarchies cracking, even when they do not have words for it yet.

And when people feel that wobble in the systems they rely on, they get crabby and grabby. They want certainty. They want someone to tell them where to stand. They want a truth to hold onto while they feel themselves falling from the old way into whatever is underneath.

What Leaders Are Feeling Right Now (Even If They Can’t Name It)

Dude. They want their Mommy.

But MA is not the “everything is fine” coddling helicopter mom. She’s the “these are the times you came for” wise grandma who’s compassion is as strong as her sword of truth.

Fortunately, some of us are longing for Her level of integrity, of truth-telling, of big-vision clarity that can only come from the soul’s view.

There’s a big difference between the old longing for spiritual answers that make us comfortable, safe, and maybe a little superior (cough cough *religion* cough cough).... And the type of longing for truth that dives deeper into the mysteries that lie underneath everything.

It’s time for spiritual authority to grow up.

The Evolution of Spiritual Leadership

We’ve had enough of the fear-based enchanters of lies dressed in pontificating spiritual justifications or bypass.

It’s time for more spiritual forms, conversations, and containers that welcome deeper conversation and exploration, that are devoted to empowerment and not just evangelization, fundraising and enrollment.

With Ma, I was looking for a good container that lets the scared people opt out.

It lets the ones who feel the knowing deep in their bellies come closer.

It lets the transmission move through story, humor, real questions, and actual relationship without turning the whole thing into a pedestal.

So that’s what we are creating next. And it’s particularly for leaders who are devoted to the rise of feminine power to balance the masculine.

An Invitation to Women Leading with Feminine Wisdom

So… If you are leading anything right now — a business, a circle, a body of work, a family system, a creative movement — and you feel deep in your bones that you are carrying a calling to bring more nurturing, more nature, more deep dark fertile soil, more blood and bone, more mystery and creativity… you are particularly invited to enjoy, at no cost, what’s being created here.

FemWisdom with Ma will be a conversation because wisdom moves in relationship.

Podcast. Substack. You’ve got Her, connecting with real deal leaders.

Because the Mother is not returning as one voice on a throne.

She is returning through the web of wombs.

Through the brave question.

Through the woman who can feel something true in her belly and is finally willing to lead from there.