Upcoming at The Studio: The 2027 edition of Many Moons is off to print! This means our preorder waitlist is officially open and we announce it the week of August 31st. Sign up for the waitlist here, where you’ll be the first to receive special discounts and perks!

Curious about our iconic offering? Try the 2026 edition—on sale now— before diving into next year’s. Plus, all Fire Horse apparel is on sale now, too.

ICYMI: Over on Moonbeaming, the latest episode is Your September 2026 Reading: Trust the Transition. In this deeply personal episode, Sarah opens up about the change she’s currently navigating and how it connects to September’s central theme of corrective experiences.

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The theme for September is Corrective Experiences. A corrective experience is a healthier version of an experience that previously might have been chaotic and unhealthy.

In September, you don’t have to go into situations or relationships thinking they will last forever. You do have to search for all the glimmers of hope in your life, and create moments of peace, flow, beauty, intimacy, and connection. You do have to find the places that feel tender, challenging or downright chaotic to create the corrective experiences you need.

The more corrective experiences you seek out this month, the more agentic and confident you will become. You will end the month with proof that things can change, because of course they can.

Convince yourself that things can be different by doing things differently. Choose to see yourself in a different light.

Now, onto your September Tarotscopes. As always, read for your Rising, or any other placements you want more support around. For example, if one of your personal planets is getting activated this month, you want to activate certain energy in your chart, or you want to focus on a certain aspect of your life this month, read for the energy there. As always, take what you’d like, and leave the rest. These are meant to affirm, support, and inspire you!

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ICYMI: Over on Moonbeaming, there are some exciting new things to tune into. Sarah discusses Healing the Fear of Being Seen with multidisciplinary artist and writer Maya Mackrandilal. This episode uncovers what happens when we begin meeting our protective parts with curiosity instead of judgment. There is also a deep dive into Sarah’s creative process i…

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On Deck: Our first make-it-happen creative challenge starts later this month!
The studio is hosting a 40-day challenge to help you finish your shit! It’s called the Creation Lab, and it’s a co-working, tip-filled virtual space designed to help you finish your: website, book proposal, closet clean-out, or any other creative project that will help you make your life happen, and make you ready to make the most of this year.

Enrollment ends Wednesday, July 9th. You are going to make your creative life happen, no matter what!

Enroll Here

ICYMI: The podcast is going strong. Our recent episodes include how to start as a neurodivergent, and a reading for July! Tune in to all here.

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Welcome to the Venus 3x3: a monthly collection of arts, culture, commerce, and practices that have brought me love, joy, glimmers, inspiration and/or a mild rabbit hole obsession over the past month. This is a way for me to keep track of all the love in my life. This is Collection 15. For May’s edition, go here.

I wrote that May was the hardest month I had to face in years. If May was hard, June was harder: I have been dealing with heartbreaking, exhausting, activating, disorienting change and grief. In 15 years, we haven’t spent more than a week apart, but we haven’t seen one another in over a month.

The theme for June was: All Our Parts. I cannot underscore how prescient this theme was. My 5-year-old self, 15-year-old self, 25-year-old self, 35 year old self, wounded self, wise self, spirit self, were all present this month. I tried best as I could to hold space for all my parts. In confusing, painful times, the only task is to choose love, compassion, and softness, over and over again.

I thought about not writing this month’s missive, but when I reflected, I realized this is exactly what the 3x3 is for: to keep track of all the beautiful moments that are there in our lives, despite the sadness and hardships.

This is the Venus 3x3: what I love, things I am grateful for, things of beauty, and what we must cultivate if we are to thrive, not only survive. Even in hard times, we can choose to not revert to survival mode, we can choose not to harm ourselves further.

I am, at the moment, a shell.
However, when I took the time to look back at the month, there were dozens of gorgeous moments in June, despite the pain. This is the goal for the Venus 3X3, for all this healing, but also a holistic and spiritual life. For all of us will go through excruciating heartbreak. If we build a holistic, intentional life, we will still have the support and beauty we need to embrace life with open arms.

Read on for the June highlights.

3 Things

Results: This month, two of my containers closed. Some of the favorite feedback I received was that one client always felt that something was wrong with her, and she doesn’t feel that way anymore.

Another participant shared that she wrote a newsletter a week without any fear. These kinds of results are why I do what I do. Literally what we aim to do, and music to my ears.

I’ve become obsessed with our folks getting fast results with Moon Studio courses, and as a result, results have expanded and materialized. If that is you, say hello below, my beloveds!

The easiest, yummiest, chocolate cake recipe. I baked this cake from Ina for a joint birthday celebration! Here’s the recipe. Easily adaptable for vegans and the less sugar-inclined. Took about 2 hours, start to finish. Do not omit the hot coffee. I added cut-up strawberries, which were an amazing addition. Next time, I’m going to do something with dark cherries, as those would be an incredible addition as well. This is a crowd-pleaser recipe, which is also easy to make: a keeper!

Butch Ballet (At Outside In Theatre): The incredible Gina Young created an incomparable work of art: Butch Ballet, a play/musical/spoken word/art piece that is amazing. I laughed, I cried, I wish it existed 25 years ago.

Whether you are queer or not, you need it too. If it tours, and I am sure it will, do not hesitate to go. Support live theater! Support queer art.

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3 Practices

Dolphin Joy: Dolphins are synonymous with a type of elation and joy that language cannot express for me.

At least once a year, I go whale watching; but it is really to see dolphins, which I am sure that I was in a past life. ;)

Going into nature and communing with the energies of the animals and elements that bring you balance is always going to be a revitalizing process.

9 For 9. Last month, a teacher asked: how do you expect your life to change if you can’t do 9 minutes of spell work, for 9 days? Of course, she was correct, and I’m back on the micro spell wagon. How about you?

Want to see your life change, but you can’t change your life?
It won’t. Start with a small practice, and build up around that. The micro becomes a web, and anchor, and will grow. This creates evidence that you can be trusted.
The Universe trusts those who can trust themselves.

Riding the Waves. I gave up on a lot of structured practices this month. I’m simply riding the waves. I’ve let myself cry in my car, cry at midnight, in the morning, in the grocery store, and cry at work. A random man saw me sobbing on a bench and sort of just paused there, surprised by this sight, looking like he forgot I could see him too. I’ve let myself ride the waves as they come, while still being conscious of other people. A long time ago, an ayahuasca facilitator solemnly told me, before a ceremony:

It comes in waves.

It sure did, and it sure does!

Apparently, beloved nun Pema Chödrön has also written this.
Any intense life experience will come in waves.
Allow them to surface and process them as they come.

3 Memories from the month

Friend Chats and Connections. Listen: I have leaned on people this month! Thank you to all my friends who picked up the phone; you know who you are. A dear friend of over 10 years visited from Philly, and we had an incredible time together this month.

Other friends have been remarkably kind and present. I feel really blessed.

A Wholesome Birthday celebration. I shared the recipe above for a wholesome, sweet bday celebration I had with a fellow July baby. We ate, burned our written intentions, and sang happy bday to one another.

Everything I’ve done despite devastating heartbreak. This month, I was very uncontained. My nervous system, facing early childhood development trauma that this rupture has kicked up, is fried.

I am sad, angry, confused, and triggered in every inch of my nervous system. But: I’ve run a biz, run promo for upcoming launches, written a lot, taken incredible care of my dogs, maintained connections with friends, cooked, prayed, and kept going. I’m not downplaying how hard it has been, I am marveling at what we can have capacity for when we do not bypass our pain. All the work I’ve done and what I teach works. My husk of a human right now still wants to build a vibrant, expansive, and objectively gorgeous life. Luckily, I have a life where I can build upon a lot, which is also why we decenter to recenter.

What were your favorites from this month?
What do you do when in the throes of grief and heartbreak?
What’s going on in your world?
How did the theme of the month play out for you?
Let me know below.

Upcoming at The Studio: Our newest course The Creation Lab begins on July 13th! This course is an encouragement and accountability container to help you make your creative project. It takes place over 40 days and utilizes energy work, group coaching, and teachings by Sarah to turn your desires into reality, and create something!

ICYMI: Over on Moonbeami…

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Hi everyone!

We’ve got a super special discount for Moon Studio Substack subscribers. Our upcoming course, The Creation Lab, is a workshop designed to make you do “the thing” and get it done, in 40 days.

It is an encouragement and accountability container to help you make your creative project.

It’s a blend of prerecorded brain snacks, emails, to-dos, pra…

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Above is one long-sleeve from our latest apparel drop, which is now on sale, you can order it here! Fire Horse Moon Tour 4-Eva!

Welcome to the Moon Studio newsletter, a more intimate space than our business newsletter. It’s where I, Sarah, the creator, share more from my world with you.

ICYMI: The podcast is going strong. We hosted incredible conversations: How To Advocate For Your Health with Tyla Bee, and a gorgeous conversation with Heidi Rose Robbins about fate, change, and astrology! Plus some solo episodes on spiritual crisis, and why you hate money. Tune in to all here.

We are hosting our next creative lab, where you must make something, anything, in July. Sign up here.

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Welcome to the Venus 3x3: a monthly collection of arts, culture, commerce, and practices that have brought me love, joy, glimmers, inspiration and/or a mild rabbit hole obsession over the past month. This is a way for me to keep track of all the love in my life. This is Collection 14. For April’s edition, go here.

May was the hardest month of the year for me, possibly the hardest month I’ve had in several years. Shout out to my friends for showing up for me while I had to go through something I never thought would happen.

Hilariously, I had thought May would be a break, as the Many Moons theme was Relaxation. I kept thinking of it as best laid plans collapsed, hopes imploded, and curveballs kept on coming. What I realized was it was a call to relax, actively. That if certain situations are not relaxing and they could, or should be, than they are not for you.

There is so much suffering in this world. Do not add to it. There were so many times in May when I thought, it does not have to be this way. And I think that’s the grief I’m processing. Not only for my personal life, but for the world.

But yes! This is the Venus 3x3: things I love, things I am grateful for, things of beauty: what we must cultivate if we are to thrive, not only survive.

Read on for the May highlights!

3 Things

My garden. My garden is currently in its lovely bloom time. It’s not super flashy, as it is mostly all native pollinators. Plus, my soil and sunlight situation isn’t stellar. But! The salvia is vibrant, and the bees are everywhere. That feeling when you know you’ll be holding a sun-kissed tomato is unmatched.

I’ve spoken about how being able to garden is a blessing I do not take lightly. For many, many years, I was too sick to look after a garden: I did not have the capacity. Now, every moment I putter, plant, prune, and play in the garden I thank the heavens for my health.

The Clear Channels workshop and all its alums. We did it! The last ever live version of my most popular course, about creating a newsletter, time management, making things as a non-linear person, energy work, and channeling. It sounds like a mess— I promise you, it all fits together. It was and is amazing.

I checked in with alums, and there are some awesome newsletters of theirs on Substack! Check out readings from Yasmina, all about Tarot and Astrology. My personal favorite newsletter title to come out of Clear Channels, This Movie is Cancer, is film obsession through an astro lens! Brittany, the Bright House, is going strong with shares and poems! Other alums! I’ll be sharing your work in future newsletters, and I’m so thrilled and proud of all of you.

Local Produce. I signed up for a CSA at the start of this year, and it’s been one of the very best decisions I’ve made. Tons of produce, I can barely eat it all, for $80 a month. This is what true abundance feels like to me. Find one near you, and support local farmers!

3 Practices

Giving it all away. When in doubt, when you don’t think you can, when you need to remember why you are here and what it means to be human, give it away. Your best. Your excitement. Your ideas. In May, I hosted a free challenge, the Creative Comeback. It was just what I needed, and starting TODAY, I’m restarting it. It was a wild success because it gave folks what they needed. And it was awesome. And it was fun! The Moon Studio also announced it’s first ever grant series, more to come on that!

I’m hot for radical generosity. Aren’t you?

Amazing Hottie Elder Moodboarding. I’m in “middle-age,” in that weird space where I feel 25 most days, but everyone is now suddenly treating me like I’m old. It’s weird, and I’m sure it will only get weirder. People! As a way to rewire my brain’s pathways, I’ve been collecting photos of amazing, magnetic, stylish older women. It’s so fun, and it’s already working. Change your algorithm, change what you look at, change your mind.

Here’s an example: the one and only Chiara Voliani, Italian artist and jewelry designer. Inspo for any age, really. Chiara, please be my bestie?

Channeling. I’ve channeled so much in May, which means I have all these new energetic tools I’ve been sharing with my students. Current favorites include anchoring intentions onto one’s path, combining capacity checks with energy work, and more esoterica coming the Moon Studio’s way!

3 Memories from the month

Karaoke. It has been 7 years since I did live karaoke in an outside space. I take extra precautions because I am so immunocompromised, but my friend was hosting gay karaoke in a small venue, and I knew I needed it. And I really needed it. Joy gathering!

Secret Studies gatherings. The community and cohort in this year’s Secret Studies continues to be my favorite ever! The synchronicities are wild! The magic is strong! The healing is potent! I’m blown away by the power of the group. I am going to miss y’all!

My beloved puppy foster. This month, I fostered my first puppy ever, and I fell in love. In a week, I got him (mostly) potty-trained, taught him how to sit, come, and (sort of) walk, and felt emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time. I wanted to keep him, but it wasn’t possible, and he’ll always be the one that got away. The foster suggested I try another puppy, to see if it was just the puppy energy, or him.

He went to an amazing family and is going to have a great life, so everyone won. I learned that fostering animals is something I’ll want to do forever. If you can, please foster! It saves lives. :)

Ok, that’s the 3 x 3 round-up. As always, this is a mere sliver and slice of a beautiful life I am intentionally creating. Hopefully, this inspires you to create your own—and to stay truthful. Keeping track of the major themes and enjoyable moments is a way to solidify core memories and to engage more deeply with life.

What were your favorites from this month?
What’s going on in your world? Let me know below.

ICYMI: Over on Moonbeaming, we explore what it means to practice abolition in our most intimate relationships, how trauma lives between us, and why healing cannot happen in isolation with abolitionist somatic practitioner CARE (they/them).

Sarah also chats with Kaitlin Coppock, founder of Sphere + Sundry — a premier house of talismanic materia and astro…

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ICYMI! Clear Channels, our newsletter creation course that is truly a container for finding your voice and learning how to channel, begins this weekend. This is the very last time I am teaching this live, so if you’ve wanted to know all the ins and outs of publishing a weekly newsletter, through a spiritual and healing perspective, now is the time.

The Moon Studio newsletter has 26,000 subscribers with a 68% open rate, which is virtually unheard of! For the last 2 years, we’ve made all our money off the studio newsletter—I decided to stop promoting our courses on social media.

I put my money where my mouth is, and want to teach you everything I know about creating a newsletter that you want to publish consistently, and your people want to read.

As part of the accountability container, I also teach a June workshop all about Substack. I currently have 5,860 subscribers here, with 336 of them paid. I have done no promo, other than publish. In the workshop, we’ll go through my backend, so you can see what pieces performed best, as well as how to use notes a couple of times a week, so you can attract more subscribers.

You’ll get advice for how to set everything up, and ideas for you to get inspired by.

Paid subscribers: I messaged you a code for a discount.
Non-paid folks, click the button below.

Enrollment ends tomorrow at 5 pm PT.

CLEAR CHANNELS

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Everyone, it seems, is currently in a threshold moment. Molting. Becoming. Not quite there yet, not quite fully resolved or cooked or clear. There’s doubt, frustration, confusion, and grief. There’s hope, faith, and glimmers of inspiration.

A lot of us don’t know who we are anymore. Or, we don’t like what we’ve become, what our life is mirroring back.

We’re frustrated. Maybe we’ve gotten a diagnosis that has completely changed everything. We thought our lives would look different from what it does. We’re frustrated that everything looks the same. That everything turned out a certain way, even after everything we did. Maybe life is telling us the call is coming from inside the house, and we aren’t sure where to begin. We want the pattern to end, but we aren’t sure who we need to be to break the pattern.

Some call it the chrysalis. I call it Catching Up To Yourself and the Present Moment.

Whatever descriptions work best, you can feel it: it’s integration time.
Which means, life is going to look and feel a bit raw, unknown, and messy for a while.

If nothing else, I’m a shapeshifter. I go through phases. My interests change, then they change me.

I mature, evolve, and move on to my next phase.

I learn different modalities and wisdom traditions, apply them, watch what comes forth and alchemize as a result…and just like that, life has changed again. The mess is back, you’re back in the unknown, ready to follow the breadcrumbs, throw seeds into the void, and grow a new garden.

I’m no stranger to goodbyes; a lot of loss happens when you are committed to growth, healing, and consistent waking up. It’s confusing to many people who want to keep the same dynamics, don’t want to self-reflect, or who simply don’t like this next version of you. Grief, the constant companion to change.

My entire business has been built on change work, and the idea that change is the only universal experience.

Evolution can sound sexy, but inevitably, there are many moments when you don’t know who you are anymore, and that can be disorienting.

You either know exactly what you want but aren’t sure how to embody it, or you are completely confused about where to begin finding yourself again.

Here are a couple of my suggestions to do just that.

Shift Your Perspective Around What Messy Is

You feel like a mess. No one likes to feel like a mess! We like to know, we like to be, we like to know where we are headed. We’ve never been taught to love the process. Every spiritual tradition on the planet reminds us though, the process is the point. We are never not in process.

On my desk, I have a Post-It note where I’ve written:

“This is it. You are doing it. Remember to love yourself through it. This is all you have.”

Intense perhaps, but a reminder I need. This is it. “It” is the bad day, the frustrating moment, the week all you need is love and support, but all you receive is crickets from the outside world.

It’s the time spent writing the emails. Getting the budget together. Smiling at your coworker with appreciation. Reaching out to a friend. Remembering to have fun!

Remember to love yourself, which is, in itself, a whole process.
The only things I’ve learned so far about self-love is that for people who didn’t naturally have the experience of unconditional love, it’s a skill you implement through practice. And it’s when you don’t feel worthy, proud of yourself, or resolved is when you need to practice it more. At first, it could feel fake. You might need to bring in rose quartz and puppies and lots of visualization, affirmation, and somatics.
Over time, it becomes an inner anchor.

This foundation helps you to accept what is with more ease, aka less resistance, including the mess.

Reframe your perspective around being in the beginning or the middle of a process.
Messy is just potential that hasn’t found its shape yet.
Messy is often just unorganized potential waiting for direction.
What looks messy is sometimes just possibility before refinement.
Once you focus, try, experiment, play, more will be revealed.

One day, you’ll look back on these moments and see them for what they are: what you needed to go through so that you could experience the next version of your healed self.

Figure Out Your Current Curriculum and Use That As Your Next Self Guide

Your current curriculum is a mix between what life is throwing at you and, intuitively, what you know you need to become.

When life throws you circumstances that you do not prefer, you are being asked to be the person who handles situations differently, especially when it is an old wound being brought to you in a different package. The same trigger or wound is going to come up over and over again until you decide to deal with it in a radically different way, from a radically different energy.

In time, with repetition, that new energy becomes your new Self.
The one who has broken the curse of being hooked by fear, shame, or scarcity.
Your current curriculum is what you are supposed to be learning on a spiritual level.

Themes like receiving, surrender, eroticism, power, discipline, communication, trust, alchemy, abundance, magic, attention, grief, openness, courage, pivots, unconditional love, healing shame, grace, expansion, and yes, I’ll say it though it’s extremely overused, letting go, are all the kinds of spiritual themes you might be asked to learn.
(It’s usually only one, possibly two, at a time!)

For more clues, you can look to your Tarot card of the year.

There’s also a path we’re meant to be moving forward on, a path that will lead us to our next phase. For some, it is a path of deep study: herbalists will sit with one herb for a season, or even a year, and they might be on the path of the Pink Rose, or the Blue Lotus.

Your current path could be made clear by what is happening around you, and it is asking you to become the person to walk it. Maybe it’s the path of experimentation, or of forgiveness.

This can show up as synchronicities, suggested by teachers, or be decided by you. One of my healers recently told me that my current path is the path of beauty. At first, I recoiled because it felt frivolous, what with the world being what it is. She explained that the world needs more beauty, and that the energy of beauty is deeply healing and expansive. When you see a beautiful rose, you stop. After a lot of years in pain, I do want to focus on making beautiful things, and anchoring into the energy of beauty.

This rose in my garden, proving how nurturing beauty is.

Don’t Wait Until You Are “Resolved” To Share Yourself

Do not miss out on your life while trying to get it all together.
The best thing I did when I got incredibly sick was I didn’t “wait” until I was “better” to publish again.

I attuned to my capacity and worked with where I was at.

The best thing I did when I was transitioning out of one phase of the business into another was keep going.

I didn’t “wait” until I had a better-looking website, more cohesive offerings, or had the next branding tagline about my business.
In fact, I still don’t, and business has never been better.

I just keep doing the work, staying curious, and bringing forth what is inside of me, what feels alive, or what is possible with the resources and capacity I have.
Do I want a better website, more cohesive copy, and more organized offers and visuals? YES!

Do I have an open month free where I could just…do that? NO!

So, I work in the spare hours I have each week, trying to do little bits at a time.
Similarly, do I have 3 months to luxuriate in my potentials and then spring forth, fully formed in my next version, like Athena?

NO! I have a few hours a day to do energy work, journal, switch up my habits, reflect, meditate, and flow towards embodying the next version of me.

Over time, this all adds up. Don’t be afraid to dissolve, to deteriorate, to compost parts of yourself. Do not wait until you are a cohesive human, easily explainable, to live your life and try things.

You are allowed to be in process at any age. In fact, the more human you are, you might be much more resonant and magnetic to the folks you want to attract.

Find Moments and Practices When You Feel Like “You”

I always feel like myself when I’m having a deep conversation, cuddling with my dogs, in the bath, or after a long walk in nature. Lately, I’ve enjoyed dancing, and getting lost in the flow of ceramic making.

When do you feel most like you, no matter what is going on?

For me, a lot of feeling like the “next phase,” is through fashion and decorating: colors, outfits, jewelry. So I’ve given myself the time to explore that and find some next signature looks and outfits.

To add onto that, meditate on your future self, and think about what practices they would incorporate into their day.
Meditation? Tapping? Morning walks? Do they work on their novel on Sunday mornings while sipping an oat latte? Get into it.

This might be a silly reminder, but no matter what, try your hardest to drink enough water, eat food that makes your body feel nourished, and get enough sleep! Whenever I feel tossed, I sometimes forget to eat my veggies and drink my water.

My latest Mind Map.

Never Underestimate The Power of A Mind Map

One of the (many) exercises we do in Clear Channels is a mind map. Mind mapping is incredibly fun and a great way to see everything you are thinking about, wanting, yearning for, desiring, and curious about on the page.

I’ll create my own sections based on what I need to know more about.

For example, most recently, I made one with the following subjects:

Questions I was curious about
Themes I was interested in
Things I already knew, both stagnant and that I was still interested in
Desires I had for this next phase of my life
A few more secret subjects

In Clear Channels, we do a structured mind map exercise to help you see the larger themes of what you are interested in, which provides the context and structure of what you’ll be sharing about in your publication. Then we look to see if there are some umbrella themes.

It’s specifically designed for folks who think they have too many interests, aren’t sure who they are, or what to write about.

Remember, those weird soupy, goo-like moments are all part of coming back together again. Becoming undefined can be beautiful and reminds us of the law of impermanence.

Don’t forget to have fun!

If you’re a subscriber and interested in signing up for the last ever Clear Channels, I messaged you the code: look in your messages here. If you aren’t a subscriber, and want to learn more, go here for more.

Welcome to May!
At the Studio, we’ll be hosting Clear Channels for the very last time.
Clear Channels is a live, virtual container to help you to find your voice, channel, and start a newsletter. It begins May 29th. Get more information here.

Clear Channels

We also have courses on marketing, money, and making something on deck.
Sign up for the Moon Studio newsletter to receive!

Read more

Above is an illustration from our latest apparel drop, you can order it here!
Fire Horse Moon Tour 4-Eva!

Welcome to the Moon Studio newsletter, a more intimate space than our business newsletter. It’s where I, Sarah, the creator, share more from my world with you.

ICYMI: The podcast is going strong. We hosted incredible conversations: How To Advocate For Your Health with Tyla Bee, and a gorgeous conversation with Heidi Rose Robbins about fate, change, and astrology! Plus some solo episodes on spiritual crisis, and why you hate money. Tune in to all here.

We are hosting a FREE ten day, creative reset in May called the Creative Comeback. Sign up for it here.

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Welcome to the Venus 3x3: a monthly collection of arts, culture, commerce, and practices that have brought me love, joy, glimmers, inspiration and/or a mild rabbit hole obsession over the past month. This is a way for me to keep track of all the love in my life. This is Collection 13. For March’s edition, go here.

April was a blur! I am really hoping to try and wrap my hands around time, and not feel like I am running after the tail of the Fire Horse that is 2026.

In April, I spent 2 nights in absolute heaven, traveled to Oaxaca for a Spanish immersion and got really sick, continued to teach Secret Studies, the intuition course I am LOVING, and faced some truths I could no longer ignore. The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

I started studying the Kabbalah more seriously, and am going to start with a tutor soon.

If I had to describe April, it would be coming alive. To myself, and who I am now. To what I want, and why I want it.

Read on for the April highlights!

3 Things

Enlightened. I’m rewatching the Mike White classic show with Laura Dern, and I’m pretty obsessed. It is truly original and definitely gives off Severance vibes. It’s a strange mix of satire and pure compassion, and has awesome cameos by Molly Shannon and Diane Ladd as Dern’s mother, who is her mother in real life! Can also see how this led to White Lotus. Loved this interview with White.

The farro salad at Highly Likely. The Moon Studio is lucky to have Highly Likely, and I’ve become obsessed with their farro salad. It has dried cherries, radicchio, hazelnuts and arugula. Tried to recreate it at home, and came close with this recipe!

I tend to repeat meals until I get sick of them. This is the current rotation.

Mary. This will probably be an entire entry at some point, but for months, my guides have been telling me to get a Mary statue. I waved it off until a wild synchronicity took place, and on Easter Sunday, possibly the worst day to find one, I did. She’s been tucked away in my garden, between the sage and the rosemary, and I’ve been praying and talking to her each morning. It is finally becoming clear why I got the call: I need a mother. I’m so excited to dig into the true story of Mary of Magdalen, the Tower!

My vibe! A little goth, a lot intense. ;)

3 Practices

Decentering men. With all the insane news about men being monsters, I was reminded of how over 20 years ago, I consciously decided to decenter men. It’s important that you make your art, heal, get your money, have fun, and enjoy your life. Men can really derail our soul’s purpose, and that’s the spiritual reason to recenter yourself and what you need. Make your art, find your purpose. If you are hetero, men can be the icing on the cake, but YOU must be the cake. More to come: I feel called to teach a free workshop or something around this topic.

Increased vulnerability. I’m not someone who shares deep, private, detailed accounts of my life publicly. Currently, I make a lot of my living as a facilitator and teacher, and I’ve been taught in the old school way of limiting disclosure. Over the years, I’ve been more and more vulnerable: I think it’s important you know what I’ve dealt with and how I got here. Honestly, as someone who needs helpers who have been through some shit, it only makes sense for me to share more of my past. So, I wrote a super personal piece last week about decentering men that covered some of the ways I had been abused.

I’m still not sure how I feel, especially because I got absolutely NO feedback on it, but it was the truth, and I’m a big fan of the truth. Time will tell if I continue to release more of my past to the public.

Learning new languages. I did a Spanish immersion, y’all, and it was a dream! I want to go back and do another! I did it in one of my favorite cities in Mexico, Oaxaca. I can’t wait to find a practice group in LA and improve on my Spanglish. ;)

As part of my brain damage recovery, I’m learning new things often. The teacher didn’t know English, many folks in Oaxaca do not speak English, so I was really forced to practicar. Highlights include a cute little chat with a woman at a cafe, and successfully insulting a misogynist…en Español! ;)

My room/reset center. Guide to Oaxaca forthcoming in May/June. :)

3 Memories from the month

Camping on the Carrizo Plains. I’ve shared before that one of my goals is to camp in California as much as possible. Well, Heaven on Earth is a place, and it’s called the Carrizo Plains. It’s an amazing ecosystem, one of the last grasslands in California, with intact Indigenous cave paintings that are also a ritual site.

Nature is a cathedral, but truly, some places are more holy than others. This is one of them, you could feel the spirits amidst all the incredible natural features, like salt ponds.

Sauntering down the streets of Oaxaca at midnight, eating a taco. The food in Oaxaca is amazing, and the street food does not disappoint. Traveling alone is still one of my favorite things: I feel most like myself, I “catch up” to myself, and it gives a major perspective on my life.

The Artemis II launch. This was our Super Bowl, y’all, and it did not disappoint. Carol! Competent adults! The photos! Astronaut Christina Koch was the first woman to see our beautiful planet from space. I don’t know about you, but I’m still processing.

Ok, that’s the 3 x 3 round-up. As always, this is a mere sliver and slice of a beautiful life I am intentionally creating. Hopefully, this inspires you to create your own—and to stay truthful. Keeping track of the major themes and enjoyable moments is a way to solidify core memories and to engage more deeply with life.

What were your favorites from this month?
What’s going on in your world? Let me know below.

This includes a Substack workshop where I take you behind the scenes of my dashboard, show you my data and numbers, and tell you everything I possibly can about this platform.
We also have BIPOC scholarships, linked below.
CC Alums: your discount has been emailed to you, please email love@moon-studio.co if you need it!

Creative classes, marketing + promo classes forthcoming in 2026.
(Click the links above to get on our waitlists.)

CW: I mention SA, abuse, and patriarchal violence extensively in this piece.
No specific or overly graphic details are shared, but please take care of yourself and do not read if you can’t do it.

This piece is the first of a series about how my life changed 20 years ago, when I reoriented around feminism and a matriarchal worldview at 24. More people of all genders are understanding that it is time to decenter. They are understanding that they must recenter themselves.

This pays off almost immediately. While I am a survivor and suffer waves of responses with each exposure to the truth, I am no longer directly tormented by the behavior of men in my personal life. I have a safe bedroom, a safe house to recover in.

This is a huge relief.

Because of this choice, I am not shocked or hurt that almost all the men in my life have said or done nothing; those expectations ceased decades ago. I am outraged and deeply sad, but not surprised.

I am more successful than I ever could have imagined, both as a fully formed human, in my creative life, and in my spiritual growth. That is because I stopped trying to meet the standards of a worldview that hates me. I wanted to turn towards love instead.

I wanted to know myself, see myself, and experience myself fully, truly. I was curious about what life had to offer and why I was here. This process could not be done without unplugging from the poison of patriarchy.

Before I begin, a message for the #haters determined to misread the tone of this piece. Nowhere in this piece do I say that the way forward is to hate men or be mean to them. Men are part of my life, I love many men! If you don’t agree, I’m not talking to you.

When I write the word “men,” this is in reference to the concept of toxic men and toxic masculinity as a whole. Entitlement, dominance, control, greed, and violence. The overall disinterest, disdain, and disrespect of women and our entire collective well-being are what I am referring to. It’s this extreme selfishness that often extends into narcissism. This is insecurity programming, which is at the heart of this widespread masculine behavior. Cowardice allows this pattern to proliferate without consequences, because at their core, most men, too, are terrified of men.

There are many reasons why this began, and a lot of it has to do with greed, disconnection from place and culture, which makes it easier to go to war. This emptiness continues through avoidance and perpetuation of trauma, as well as the lack of capacity to express and process emotions, especially grief. This supports colonization, as land is exploited as a religious or nation-state project, and everything alive becomes something to dominate, even though this is an illusion. Everything alive is priceless. When we stopped being in direct communion with nature and stopped listening to the earth and one another, the grasping and lack of connection became what I call the 3 S’s of colonialism: shame, scarcity, and separation.

Patriarchy and capitalism collaborate by turning people into objects and relationships into transactions. Those who control the markets place arbitrary values on human beings. In the patriarchy, women are the most precious commodities in a market they must participate in, but do not consent to.

Chattel slavery, human trafficking, indentured servitude, child labor, indigenous child schools, detention camps, missionaries, and prisons are all part of this dehumanization project as well.

How men must conform to pass through the metal detectors of the patriarchy is harmful to them on every level. They must be authoritative and decisive, strong and silent, unwavering financial providers, with no needs or emotions of their own. It is hard to be a man; the pressures are many, and the support is rare. Men aren’t supposed to need others; they can’t be seen as weak. Grief, pain, and trauma build up inside until they are offloaded onto those around them. And on and on it goes, inside of family systems and nations. This is why wars never end. It is their fear of death that creates unnecessary death and suffering, because those in charge have no connection to life.

It is absolutely time for men to decenter men, too.

+++++++++++++

When I was 24, I came out as a lesbian and made the conscious choice to reorient around a matriarchal and feminist lifestyle.

At that time, it was easy to do. In Portland, Oregon, there were dyke coffeeshops and the women’s bookstore. Lesbian therapists, trans plumbers, bisexual real estate agents were common, as well as plenty of queers of all identities who hated the patriarchy. We read Hothead Paisan, Dykes to Watch Out for, and Stone Butch Blues. We watched Go Fish and Watermelon Women on repeat. We listened to the Need and the Haggard. This was a wave of feminist renaissance that surged again after the women’s movement of the 70’s, and I was blessed enough to be there.

This wasn’t dumb luck, though: it was an intentional move on my part to experience more freedom and explore my queerness. Since age 15, I knew I was attracted to many gender expressions, but in my 20’s, lesbian felt most appropriate. Once there, it was clear to see that I wanted to engage with my inherent worth as a human being and experience the bliss of my true self, outside of male influence.

Before this, the patriarchy (and men) had loomed large in my life. A great portion of my brain and body was consumed with seeking approval from them, while simultaneously trying to protect myself against them.

Between the ages of 12 and 21, I experienced 3 major sexual assaults and countless minor ones. An elderly, lecherous neighbor chasing me around his home that I had delivered cookies to, “for a kiss” when I was about 10, counts as a “minor” assault; molestation and rape being the “major” ones.

Isn’t it something that so many of us can rate these experiences from “not-so-bad” to truly traumatizing?

***************************************

My psychological orientation was architected by a father who was programmed like a hate-seeking missile to obliterate my existence. The cruel treatment from my caretaker gave him power in my psyche. Because I had to reorganize around his actions and moods, I had to constantly clock where he was. His scant approval and love became quite valuable, and I became hypervigilant. I wanted more than anything for him to love me, choose me, see me.

This set up a dynamic where I subconsciously sought approval from all men, but especially dominant, addict types that oscillated between abuse and neglect. I was set up to believe that they had more value; they were the arbiter of my selfhood. I unconsciously became a starving Self, mistaking breadcrumbs for a full meal. Toxic romantic relationships and platonic relationships with a cast of addicts, high-powered bosses, punks, much older professors, woeful indie types, and dalliances with other assorted losers consumed much of my time for almost a decade.

The abuse was normalized by the lack of intervention. My mother did little to protect me from my father, nor did my gay younger brother, nor did any of my extended family or anyone else I ever told what was happening, including multiple family therapists. A handful of times, coworkers, strangers, or a friend would express concern about these toxic situations, but as a parting gift—there was no intervention or spaceholding, just concern for my safety. It wasn’t until I met my current partner that I could fathom the dangerous waters I swam in for most of my early life.

As I got older and became independent, the outside world also enforced this dynamic. Multiple stalkers snatched away any semblances of safety I had inside my apartment; at work, there was a constant drip-drip-drip of men hitting on me or discussing my appearance in inappropriate sexual ways to my face, or just making fun of me publicly. Sometimes, they would chase me into the cold locker to grope and kiss me.

Other women enforced this normalization, taking sides with the men by either ignoring it, blaming me, or directly protecting them by siding with them. Maybe they hated me for being so male-centered, I’ll never know. My mother opened the door for my ex-turned stalker, and told him my location over tea. Even though she knew everything he had done. She knew I literally left the country to escape him.

Once, I reported a coworker at a restaurant I worked at who would scream horrific things about me in my face randomly, during busy shifts. I would drop plates and start shaking around him; he would laugh. Sorry, the female manager said, I know sometimes he says off-color things, but he’s the best we’ve got. Just try to avoid him if you can. He had a young daughter.

I do not have the space and time to write about the full impact of misogyny on my career dreams and finances. Do all women daydream about what their career could have been without misogyny blocking it? (That goes triple for Black and brown women.)

One of my first-ever career opportunities was in the creative industry, where an ad executive made my life hell. He’d sexually harass me, chase me around the top floor of Wieden+Kennedy with a chair, throw things at me, threaten me, compare me to his wife, and, do the usual: call me names I do not want inside of my mouth. After 9 months, I reported him to HR, begging for a transfer. 3 weeks later, I was fired. I was making $30,000 working 60-hour weeks, he made $300,000 smoking weed at work and going to movies on weekdays, clocking in and out when he wanted. Of course he’s still got a great career: he’s a notable “change maker and progressive” in the industry. You know, “a good guy.” Last I heard, his ex-wife created a non-profit for abused boys.

A couple of times, my insistent pressure worked. I made my father fire his employee when he lured me into his van when I was 12 and ran away after he tried to SA me. Once, when I was molested at a summer camp with multiple witnesses, my rage made the counselors ask the molester to leave. Both times, I turned into a shrieking, feral creature for hours, screaming at them to get the monsters away from me, until they acquiesced, probably more concerned about stopping a tiny banshee’s noises than being concerned with my safety.

By the time I was about 21, I figured out that I was on my own with the particular terror that is SA. By the time I was 28, I understood that men, even as friends or co-workers, were not to be trusted. It didn’t make sense to spend a lot of my energy on them, even if I genuinely liked a lot of them.

***************************************

Looking back, it was like I was a totally different person from who I am now, because I was. I lived in a different reality than “real reality.” There was the “real reality” that we were taught through movies, conversations, religion, and media. In “real reality,” the predators were always stopped, and the pervert always got caught before anything too bad happened. Justice was served, hooray! Men were heroes, chivalrous and noble; men would protect us all. In this reality, supportive women would gather round me, singing softly, shielding me, while the brave, good men stepped in to stop “the bad guys.”

But my reality, my lived experience for decades, was the total opposite.

Whose reality was I ultimately going to trust? My own lived experience, packed with 20-odd years of clear data? Or stories that everyone else told about reality, but refused to honor with action, which never seemed to occur around me or for me?

It’s humbling to admit how much I was in denial about all this, and for so long. I’m supposed to be a seer, but our trauma is where our sight gets murky. The yearnings I had for love, safety, and belonging were vision obstructors. Also, it feels good to see the world through rose-colored glasses.

So far, this is long, long, but considering what all of us have endured, it is a blip. I could generate hundreds of pages of stories like this. Every woman could. Of course, I won’t publicly share my worst stories. We rarely do so. Every woman is made to feel so much shame about it. Mostly, we wouldn’t want to disturb you, repulse you, or give you any more reasons to reject us or blame us. Because isn’t all this violence we are subjected to, also somehow our fault? Is it because we’re to blame, we’re the ones putting up with it, or because we want to love and be loved, and rarely have had access to resources and power that weren’t also traps and coercion?

After all this, I came to see that consensus reality is quite different from life herself.

The “real” reality they made up is an illusion they need us to believe in, one of pain, hierarchy, disconnection, and fear. Love cannot exist with fear.

Have men been fearing women this whole time?
You only try to control that which you feel threatened by.
People only try to ensnare something precious when they believe there is no other way of keeping it. But mostly, it doesn’t feel like fear because so much of it looks like hate.

Many women are conditioned to be needed, so we confuse someone needing us with love. We confuse attention, extraction, and abuse for love. We confuse approval for love, but approval is yet another control tactic. We have been led to believe in the promise of their protection because this is what we are offered as children, and it’s everywhere in our culture.

These relational dynamics keep us isolated and in survivor mode, running on fumes, hypervigilant and ashamed, highly masking or exiled, while also needing to be submissive, grateful, graceful, and attractive to the male gaze. It’s disorienting and exhausting to live this way. This is the consensus reality many agree to, and think we must live within if we are to survive.

Even when we think we are needed and therefore safe, we don’t always survive. Women who are murdered by men are almost always murdered by their partners. Nearly 9 out of 10 women, or 90% of women murdered, are killed by someone they know.

Coercive control is when abusers dominate their partner’s life, eventually destroying their sense of self and intuition. Often, it is subtle: little digs or suggestions about your appearance, constant questioning, needing to know where you are and who you are with constantly. Acting in ways to keep you separated from your happiness and life, either through giving you so much labor to do that you have no time for yourself, or starting fights or sulking when you put yourself first, or when you tell them no. Often, your personal relationships are criticized, or they act in ways your network does not want to be around, so support eventually leaves you.

Repeat corrections and critiques of even the most minuscule of matters slowly break you down: You bought the wrong rice again, ugh, let me go shopping next time, you didn’t close the drawer all the way, why don’t you pay attention? Are you sure that’s the correct term for that? Well, guess you didn’t have time to clean the car this week. Why are you so sensitive? I didn’t say that, you’re taking it the wrong way, you look better in the red dress…That new friend of yours sure is odd…are you sure they like you? Are you sure?

You become isolated, accustomed to surveillance, with little access to resources. Most of the time, this process isn’t loud or detectable. There are no screams for the neighbors to hear, no visible wounds that raise eyebrows. But something feels “off,” a low-grade hum of nerves buzzes inside you, and it’s harder to make decisions. You no longer want to do anything, but aren’t sure why. Somehow, the shape of your life has come to resemble a birdcage.

You can’t escape from prison if you don’t know you’re in one. Patriarchy, and how it treats women, is a form of global coercive control. Why do women’s rights change in every state in this country, but men’s do not? Who writes the laws, and who enforces them?

This is mental, energetic, emotional, and physical imprisonment. It is spiritual as well. Our labor is exploited, our intelligence mined, our energy, compassion, and beauty denigrated.

Women, the original creators. So many go through the same trauma as our sacred earth, our ancient, collective mother.

***************************************

There is progress, then backlash. There will be a surge in women’s rights: “the right” to abortion—you know, permission to control our own bodies—was in 1973. 49 years later, it was overturned. Women got access to their own credit cards, as well as the ability to own a house without a man’s permission and cosignature in 1974—the right for women to access their own resources began 48 years ago. The extinction bursts are loud now, with the Epstein Files and everything else, trying to suck us backwards in time.

Before the collective consciousness can accept reality, enough truth has to come to light for enough people that they can no longer ignore it. Many people ignore what’s in front of them because they can’t confront their own responsibility in creating it and upholding it. It’s too much sensation, it’s too overwhelming. Shame and grief accompany awakening, which is all happening now. Now that the ship is sinking, people are flip-flopping: never trust them. Some implode, others crash out. Others fight the truth with their denial until their last breath. Others double down. It’s on us to be the solutions as best we can with our resources, capacity, and specific skillsets. Our intuition will lead the way.

Fighting the patriarchy is always a great choice, but we also need to boycott it with our resources and energy. We must withdraw our energy, emotional labor, and physical labor: this is how we recenter ourselves. The patriarchy must be starved just as much as it must be fought.

The other systems of oppression and domination that enable white supremacy, extraction, greed, homophobia, transphobia, and all other needless suffering must also end. This can happen if we put our efforts towards building the new, and it starts with our own, precious lives.

The first step in healing from abusive injuries is going no-contact with the abuser. If you need to heal, if you want to know who you truly are without outside, non-consensual interference, you must remove yourself as best you can.

I opted out, best as I could, and so much changed.
I had time. More agency. I could explore my preferences. I could work and also be in bands, make art, center friendships, hone my intuition, study, read, learn many things, eventually build a business, and finally know some semblance of peace in my personal life.

Yes, I was a mess, yes, for many years, I was still attracted to toxic women with many of the characteristics I had been programmed to seek out. Same with friendships. I had many symptoms of trauma, still do. Can you blame me?

I’ve shared but a sliver of my experience, and even then, I feel like it’s way too much. Even now, I’m concerned for your comfort, afraid of your judgment. But I need to offer up the broadest brushstrokes of my origins because you must understand that if I radically change my life for the better, you can, too.

The more we share our stories, the more healing it creates. This matters because I matter, and this all happened to me. What happened to you matters because you matter. I didn’t do anything to cause it, and you did not, either. As a facilitator, I want you to understand what I’ve been through and that I know what so many are up against. I want you to know it can get better. After you make different choices, starting with recentering yourself and decentering men, it can and will.

My starting revelation was easy:
I couldn’t trust their version of reality, because it wasn’t actual reality.
Because I couldn’t trust them, and couldn’t trust them to see the truth, I couldn’t believe them. Patriarchal reality is an egregore, a collective thought form fed with and through pain and violence.

Once I understood it was an illusion, I could stop my investment in it.

One should never respect someone who hates them; even entertaining small amounts of contempt is dangerous. One shouldn’t invest too much time and energy in people and things that are not reciprocal, and certainly when you barely exist to the other person, or exist as an object, a prop, a projection screen. It’s basic energetic math. I couldn’t trust their taste, perspectives, opinions, philosophies, research, or religions unless it was explicitly outside of patriarchal programming.

Go ask a straight cis man who his favorite female philosopher is. Or who his favorite female athlete, writer, streamer, podcaster, producer, comedian, director is… Now do the same with his favorite trans artists, teachers, and thought leaders. Ask your male friend, close family member, or lover if he remembers where he was when Roe V. Wade was overturned, about what he felt when Brett Kavanaugh was elected, or how he tried to soothe you the first time Trump was elected…and the second. Ask him who he voted for. If he’s white, ask him when slavery was overturned, or what Juneteenth is about, or when it is. Ask him what your shoe or clothing size is, have him buy you your favorite perfume, tell you what your favorite books or colors are. Have him tell you the approximate shade of hair dye, or lotion, or supplement you have used every single day or month for the entire time he’s known you. Go on, ask away.

Women currently partnered with men: What could they tell you about your female friends based on who they are as a unique human being, outside of their appearance?
Do they know the specific gifts to bring to her home that she’d appreciate most, or the specific food allergies she has?

A friend of my partner’s has not asked me 1 question about myself in the entire 15 years I have known him, except perhaps, How Are You? a few times, as a cordial greeting.

I know all about his job, family, and the fancy new gadget he just bought. I could record a podcast episode solely about his interior experience, just throw me a mic, bruh.

Most men are men-centered, doing everything for male approval.
Even when they aren’t conscious of it.
There’s even a word for it: Homosociality.

When they choose to date or marry women, it is often through what they think other men want, not what they actually want. This cowardice creates so much violence. Because of their sexual repression and envy of those who are sexually free and out, they confuse their attraction for repulsion. Their infatuation becomes an attack. It’s always the most actively homophobic men who turn out to be closeted. Men may be attracted to gorgeous transpeople, stunning fat women and people of all genders, beautiful women of color, hot dudes, or any other wonderfully valuable and awesome human that could make their life heaven, but because they are afraid of being devalued, shamed, or separated from the group, they often choose what they think will make them resemble a man to other men. Their repressed desire becomes a weapon.

It’s a marketplace they’ve made up, remember? They need us to appear valuable.

***************************************

Decentering men isn’t hyperbole or sensationalism; it is a logical response to consensus reality.

You get one life; don’t you want to meet all the different you’s?

It took about 5 years from my conscious decision to decenter to see the material results: I started to like myself, enjoy my own company, have standards, imagine that. I refined my gifts, took myself seriously, grew my interests and business, had goals and accomplished them. I began to see myself, clearly, and what I was capable of.

In my first serious relationship with a person who supported and respected me, I flourished. It didn’t take much, honestly: I just had to remove most of the dangerous people, the ones who acted as if they hated me, to begin to do well.

To thrive, you must surround yourself with people who love you and want to see you grow. These are those who want the healed version of you, even if you aren’t everything they prefer, even if you become more wild, more weird. You need beloveds who understand that you are precious and life is sacred, and who want to see you and know you outside any transaction or insecure power dynamic.

I slowly learned to moderate my explosive temper that was forged when I had to fight for my life. I worked on evening out my moods, and was more mindful of the precious rage I wielded and the mask of aggression that I wore for safety’s sake, for so long. The guardedness had calcified through years of betrayal, and the realization that I was entirely on my own. Why let anyone in?

These have been the hardest patterns to break: to soften, to let myself be playful and funny and open around others, not just alone or with one or two people. Not exchanging my labor for acceptance, not always holding everyone at arm’s length for fear of getting obliterated again, believing that people can love me just for me. It’s hard for me to outwardly express my joy and pride because for decades, those celebratory moments were when my father would attack me and ruin a prolonged experience of expansion and joy in my tiny 7-year-old body, 12-year-old body, 21-year-old body... I’m so sorry you were hurt, Dad. You didn’t deserve it. I hope you find healing, whatever that looks like. I really wish you nothing but the best in this life, and next.

When people are overly interested in me, my inner alarm system goes off. It’s probably the part of myself I hold the most grief around. That young part of me that equates interest with abuse, relaxation with violence, has valid reasons for wanting to be left alone. I’m lucky to have a few friends who make me feel safe. Some of those people are men.

When I am alone, when I make my art, and share my writing, I am most myself. When I’m doing my work at the Moon Studio as a facilitator, teacher, and creator, is when I feel authentic. My creativity is real; it comes directly from spirit and directly from my spirit. This feels like possibly the greatest triumph of self-reclamation, a huge exhale I’ve been waiting lifetimes for. Alongside the fact that thousands of people trust me to guide them, these are some of my major accomplishments.

Can you understand how much I do not take your trust for granted?
I understand what it takes to earn it. I really, really do.

When I recentered myself, new pathways emerged.
A chosen path, one I could walk, step-by-step, filtered through my intuition, values, personal aspirations, and gifts, just for me. No one else understood, and this did not matter. I invested my energy in more of what I wanted, more of what I enjoyed, and it paid off. My self-trust grew, as did my spiritual life. I discovered I could channel, talk to the dead, hear my guides, the planets, plants, and create entire new worlds. I became a powerful psychic and energy worker.

I finally had enough energy to help others. This felt really good.
Recentering is to move towards what you want, not simply away from what you do not. It is becoming what you have always dreamed of with gratitude, while understanding there are always more facets to enjoy, more expansion to look forward to.

Love feels real now, something I have, something I am.
Finally, I have started to become who I was meant to be.

Thank you for reading.

More in this series will come out over the next 2-4 weeks. I’m going to take my time: subscribe to receive.

Subscribe now

Thank you again for supporting me and being here. May you know peace, and safety. May you know and enjoy yourself as you were meant to. May this happen for all beings, everywhere, always.

At our Equinox circle last month, I shared that I had two main goals for this season.
One was to catch up to the present moment with gratitude and appreciation.
The other was to watch where my “not okayness” script was running things, and trying to ruin “perfectly ok” things.

The truth is, the version of me from 15 years ago would not have believed this was her life. The studio I am lucky enough to sit in most days is gorgeous, people comment on how fantastic the energy feels here.

Like a cloud, a visiting friend remarked.

When I get clearer, the truthier truth1 is that my past self would have totally believed this was her life now because it was everything she was working her fucking ass off for. It was in every prayer, every late night hunched over the computer, every spell she carefully crafted, then made sure to teach others. She knew it. She believed it. She trusted it. And she worked all the way down to her bone marrow for it.

She never gave up on me.
I owe it to her to let her know we made it.
To be so grateful for her grit, her sacrifices, her insane amounts of belief and hope that many saw as completely delusional.

I’d rather be hopefully delusional instead of scarily hopeless, I remarked at a private ’90s rock star book signing last month.

To embody this gratitude as safety, enjoyment, and a resourced nervous system. She was doing all of this for more safety, inner resources, freedom, and pleasure.
I owe it to her to ground myself—all of my selves—deeply here.2

To me, this is integration work.
To enjoy what I have. To appreciate all that is. To focus on staying fluid, humble, yet also incredibly proud. She never doubted us. She never doubted we would get there, to safety. Confidence and consistency are just that powerful.

The other part, the “not being ok” part, is trickier because it’s cunning and embedded. At the circle, I shared that I grew up in a household where everything was fine, but nothing was ok. There was no reason for the fights on vacations, the hijacking of holidays by any number of troubles and fears, the screaming matches on a random Sunday. This is the traumatized system on loop, even in objective safety: it makes up ruptures out of thin air, it needs to externalize the internal, needs to recreate that fight response, the hypervigilance, and needs to be in a heightened defensive mode. These systems weren’t taught anything else, and did not have the capacity to detach from their baselines that had gotten so comfortable in their fear of a settled, harmonious field. The vulnerability that intimacy and collaboration require might as well have been happening in a different solar system, so foreign it was.

But I do have the capacity. And I was born with the innate knowing that it was intimacy and vulnerability that would lead to safety, not defensiveness.

This origin happened decades ago, and thousands of miles away. None of it technically exists anymore. But aspects of my nervous system and subconscious are still confused, not brought up to speed that we’re safe now, and this comes in very subtly.

I haven’t cleaned enough. The snacks aren’t good enough. How could I present this to guests?
The course won’t be transformative enough. I should have done more, finally made videos like everyone else, why haven’t I rebranded yet, my business looks like a fraud….. And on and on.

All lies. All ways to make everything that is completely fine, actually way more than fine, not ok. And I’m fucking over it.

The world is on fire. We need to be more resourced, not less.
We need to give from overflow, not scarcity. The empire wants us burned out, hopeless, afraid, and disconnected. Those of us who have the resources to help need to help. In ways that stretch us, that confront us, and that challenge us. But I’m never running on fumes to do so, ever again.

Yesterday, I texted my partner: There’s no reason we should have anxiety or worry, (about this particular issue we were dealing with that sucked but ultimately was…you guessed it…OK! lol), it’s simply echoes in the body from a terrifying past that we are holding onto because it is familiar to our nervous systems.

Yes, there is a new cycle I want to expand into. There are career pivots and identity shifts and a lot of ambitious itching going on.
But I need to compost some bad habits first.
I need to catch up to reality, create new core memories, and focus on enjoyment and pleasure. I owe it to my past self, and I owe it to my future self. We survived.
We made it.

ICYMI: Over on Moonbeaming, we discussed poetry, myth, and symbolic language with Sarah Shin.

Sarah also chatted with Neuroscientist Mona Sobhani, PhD on exploring the possibility that science and spirituality were never meant to be separate. Here’s a link to the episode. Catch up on all our episodes of your favorite podcast here.

Clear Channels is coming…

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Above is an illustration of our latest apparel, available for pre-order here.
Fire Horse Moon Tour 4-Eva!

Welcome to the Moon Studio newsletter, a more intimate space than our business newsletter. It’s where I, Sarah, the creator, share more from my world with you.

This newsletter is proudly sponsored by my favorite magical purveyors,
Sphere and Sundry. I’ll include my current obsession of theirs below!

+++++++++++++++++++++

Welcome to the Venus 3x3: a monthly collection of arts, culture, commerce, and practices that have brought me love, joy, glimmers, inspiration and/or a mild rabbit hole obsession over the past month. This is a way for me to keep track of all the love in my life. This is Collection 12. For February’s edition, go here.

March was a blur. Best laid plans, make plans and God laughs, yadda yadda yadda. I flew to Portland for a couple of days for a special ritual to honor a friend, followed by some health issues and I ended up at the ER for a day. Our family dealt with another family health issue at the same time. I had wanted to make a lot of headway on my painting and book proposal, but had put those on the back burner as Real Life Shit (™) took over.

But, the theme of the month themed regardless: The Alchemy Begins. The amount of pressure I felt under allowed me to surrender like never before. All the lessons and practices I teach in Secret Studies about the nervous system paid off. (We start with the intuition of the nervous system and the body.) I was calm and grounded in the face of challenges. I stayed happy and dancing each morning, even in the face of some really scary unknowns, and real reasons for real grief. I am proud to say that my work…works. Almost instantaneously, and then all over if you practice consistently.

Spirituality and energetically, I still feel amazing, and am only more interested in deepening more.

Read on for the March highlights!

3 Things

Even the Good Girls Will Cry. About 50 pages in, and I’m really enjoying this memoir by musician Melissa Auf der Maur. It combines mythology, music, and magic. And, she dishes! I really love a celebrity memoir that dishes, and feel let down when they don’t. The book is organized into 3 parts: Music, Magic, Death, with subheadings about everything that happens in her life, which I appreciated.

The beginning of her book, which states that there was no other time she would have wanted to come into her womanhood other than the 90’s, made me nostalgic. I was a teen in the 90’s, and for white feminists especially, it was a hopeful time for women. I too, am at least glad I had a spoonful of a different kind of experience, and as I told a couple of folks at the reading of hers I went to, I’d rather be delusionally hopeful rather than heartbreakingly hopeless.

Cloves and coconut oil. Years ago, I heard about the healing powers of cloves, and a toothache led me to experiment. I mortared about 10 cloves up, and combined it with a few tablespoons of coconut oil, for a natural mouthwash mixture. After a week of use, my tooth hurts less, and my mouth and teeth feel much cleaner.

After more research, I have become enamored of cloves. Anti-microbial, an antioxidant, antiseptic, and anti-parasitic, cloves can be used for many different purposes. Nature is healing.

This divine violet tincture. Everything Max from Roots and Crowns makes is next level, but there’s something so precious about these purple jewels in flower form that only come once a year. Violets for grief, violets for joy. Good for shy guys, violet helps us break out of our shells and express our blooms with confidence and self-acceptance. These are limited edition: I bought two, and you probably will want to as well. They’re that good.

Violets by alleged bisexual Albrecht Dürer.

3 Practices

Magic in the everyday. I’ve been using my magical materia almost every day, to great affect. My current Sphere and Sundry favorite is the Venus in Taurus friendship subset. And yes, it works. My social life has ramped up, and I’ve been much more extroverted. It’s been such a cute practice to smile at total strangers and see almost everyone respond. The world needs more everyday kindness, y’all!

TMS. One of the scariest and hardest to shake side effects of Long Covid has been the crippling depression. For the last 4 years, derealization, anxiety, and other traumatic brain injuries took over my poor brain, making it difficult to function. While I don’t exactly skew towards the sunniest disposition, this time was different. It impacted my motivation, energy, and hope. Now, I’ve done a LOT of recovery work, so it’s hard to say what did what. (That’s my caveat).

I just finished my first round of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, which is 36 sessions. When I say I’m back…Before trying this treatment, I read testimonies from folks sharing that TMS saved their life. Now I understand. My joy, my sense of humor, my silliness, curiosity, pleasure, cheer, inspiration, levity, confidence, creativity, motivation…all of it is back. Long Covid took all of this away; the virus took about 70% of my natural personality away from me. But now I am back. I enjoy myself. I’m grateful again. It is an expensive treatment, and results vary wildly. I can say it was 100% worth it.

Noticing. One of the practices we introduce in Secret Studies is the noticing practice, which is exactly what it sounds like. The quintessential mindfulness practice, I’ve been noticing that I’m ready to leap out of so, so many false stories I’ve had about myself and what is possible. When we notice, we can detach ourselves enough from large sensations to process them as our capital s Self, and we don’t become them. We don’t become the fear, the resistance, the overwhelm; we understand it is an experience we are having, but don’t have to hold. We can also notice positive and interesting themes, patterns, and so on, which help us moonifest them in the material world.

3 Memories from the month

Butterfly launch. The caterpillars turned into butterflies! We got to watch 2 leave their cocoons and fly into the world. Exhilarating.

Portland Visit & Ritual. I was in and out of the City of Roses to take part in a magical, potent healing ritual, see some old friends, and contemplate moving back. Gentle reader, I do not think I could stand the rain, though some of my favorite people live there.

Equinox circle and sound bath. Rituals don’t have to be elaborate, and rituals done in community are connective. My friend Hayley and I hosted a small gathering at the Moon Studio full of poetry, shares, snacks, and sound. It was deeply nourishing and a reminder to gather in circle more often.

Our group cosmic egg equinox spell.

Ok, that’s the 3 x 3 round-up. As always, this is a mere sliver and slice of a beautiful life I am intentionally creating. Hopefully, this inspires you to create your own—and to stay truthful. Keeping track of the major themes and enjoyable moments is a way to solidify core memories and to engage more deeply with life.

What were your favorites from this month?
& remember:

Happy Spring, y’all!

I hope that you are staying grounded and connected as the horrors persist.
We are being asked to change, to adapt, and to stay human. To neither ignore nor be subsumed by the events of the world. To integrate, to go beyond, to connect to the Secret Third Thing, the truth that lives beyond ideas of right and wrong. 1

The equinox is the time when nature illustrates this concept. Duality, non-duality.
We enjoy approximately the same amount of day and night, dark and light.

I’ve been actively thinking about a lot.
From actively working on changing and integrating a lot, to the active and constant surrender of being a forever work-in-progress. I’m more called to share when still in process, not only when everything is wrapped up in a tight little bow, a lesson packaged up for your consumption. More and more, I’ve wanted to stray away from this impulse, which subtly implies that there will be a landing place, a time we’ll not be engaged with unlearning, unraveling, expansion, learning, challenges and complexities.

I’ve wanted more time and space to really research and flesh out work—everything from rebranding my podcast and business, to a series of essays here, to writing a new book, creating new paintings, and so on. But the underlying message, at least for right now, is that due to certain health conditions, responsibilities, and other obligations, I won’t have the long chunks of time that I have been craving. For now, I need to be where I am, sharing how I can, which feels like a larger lesson that all of us could reflect on.

The following are 13 offerings, shares, quotes, and ideas for me to mark this moment in time. Enjoy and receive these as my friend Christina says, a “thought snack.”

1. The cross-quarter days are Omen Times. A time to look around and see what life wants to present you with, and attend to that. Not what you wish, but what is here. What themes have come up? If patterns are patterning, what are they? What archetypes are resonant? What phrases do you find yourself repeating to yourself? What is coming up that you don’t want to deal with? Are you a good omen for others? How and why?

2. The cross-quarter times are opportunities to make peace with the past season and move on. Winter is over, and with it, wintering activities. Spring is now here, and with it, spring activities. I am someone who can hold on like the jaws of the pitbulls I love, who can ruminate like I’m getting paid for it. One of my greatest weaknesses, and a CPTSD symptom, is being someone who loops the pain of the past to keep myself safe. If I can keep my eyes on it, I can’t get hurt by it anymore. If I give it energy, it means it happened, it was real. Most of the time, there’s a tender emotion that needs expressing. A lot of the time, good old-fashioned memory reconsolidation techniques like
self-hypnosis, narrative journaling, inner child soothing, and past life regressions are required. A secure attachment with the present must also be built while embodied, which I've been teaching about so much because it works. So, I’m letting the past be the past, and the present be the present. I’m enjoying who I am and where I am for the first time in a very long time, and that is more than enough.

Let the past be the past. Process the pain, so it can no longer have you frozen inside of its lockjaw.

3. Now is the time to create seasonal resolutions. Our brains do best in 90-day sprints, which, of course, is a season. What do you want your word for spring to be?
Mine is gentle. Another is action. The third is creativity. The fourth is peace.
Pick seasonal resolutions that mirror your energy, and choose a couple of activities that you can only experience in Spring. After work walk dates, gardening, new recipes, particular nature spots that are glorious now… what are some experiences that only Spring can give you?

4. One way to deepen connections is through ritual. Yesterday, I hosted a really lovely Equinox circle with friends, and it was such an excellent way to mark this new season, together. We shared poems to Spring, talked about what was real for us, discussed this new, complicated paradigm we are all in now, ate snacks, did some light somatics and energy work, and I gave folks a soundbath, one of my favorite activities. It was simple, easy, and the definition of nourishment. Rituals together can be simple and short; it’s amazing what 2 hours with open-hearted people can give you.

5. We recently celebrated Friday the 13th, one of 3 of these we’ll enjoy this year. In Kabbalah, 13 is a sacred number, one of unity with God. It refers to "going beyond” the 12 signs of the Zodiac, transcending to the One who has created it all.

In witchcraft, 13 corresponds to the natural cycles that no man can tame. In all cultures across the globe, there are powerful correspondences to this number. The patriarchy has taken over our cultures our traditions, our beliefs, our stories. It’s time to rewrite them all, it’s time to reclaim our values outside of indoctrination. We have been living in a backwards pants day black mirror, where we are told that what is “good and feminine” is submissiveness, and what is “bad” is our power. We were taught to be ashamed of our gifts, our intuition, and our power. We can begin to find out the truth by asking more questions, questions like:

Who would benefit from this story? Who benefits from this framing?

6. At the Moon Studio, I fold Third Way thinking into just about everything I teach, because the illusion of duality will destroy us all. We set up the false constructs of right/wrong, bad/good, black/white, love/money, and so on, in our minds and our relationships. This is poisonous.

7. The poisons extend into that of self-definition through abnegation. You are what you are repulsed by, you are defined by what you are not. This frame stems from schismogenesis, the process of defining yourself through your opposite.

If you are a “man,” then you are not “weak,” because women are “weak”. If you are “white,” then one cannot be “primitive,” or “dirty,” or whatever else racist terms white supremacists like our so-called president use, because “whiteness” is explicitly not that.

But when you define yourself like that, through hatred and negativity and the need for someone else to symbolize all you are ashamed of in yourself, you are trapped. You have no culture, no grace, no capacity, no awareness. You are insecure because you never truly know and accept yourself. There is only the performance of what you think you should be, and so, are a hollow example of a human.

"If you can only be tall because somebody's on their knees, then you have a serious problem.” —Toni Morrison

If you think I’m discussing only the obvious culprits, well, I am. But I’m also asking myself where I unconsciously leap to superiority, where I project, and what shadows I keep shadowboxing with that do not exist. That are an illusion. And, I’m trying to get better at catching when someone else is shadowboxing with a projection that only they can see, while we are in a present-time conversation.

Once, after receiving an angry Torah scroll of a text from a (now ex) friend, one in which I was sure was meant for her (now ex) wife, I wrote back: We’re discussing scheduling changes. This doesn’t seem like this message is meant for me. Is it?

8. One requires more compassion, consciousness, and capacity to live in the grey, the ambiguity, the both/and. Think of how duality seeps into your everyday and controls your energy. If you don’t look “pretty” today, are you then automatically “ugly” now? The time and money wasted trying to perform a version of femininity or masculinity that will prove to everyone that you are because you are not.

Think of how identities that you have never even chosen2 determines what you do, how you speak, how much money you make. An issue I have with identity politics is that ultimately, it is another trap invented by supremacists trying to control all of us for their financial gain and energetic control. 3

It is when we get trapped by the limits of them, when we are separated from ourselves and others by this identity, we fall prey to the scarcity of. I’m thinking of the false identity of (white, heteronormative) America, one built on violence and the erasure of assimilation. This identity is obsessed with the other, on destruction, on extreme domination because they have no true self, no true connection with the land, with the One, with love.

Imagination. Non-identification. Non-duality. Reconnection with life. Reverence for the planet, the elements, one another. Tapping into all that we ARE, not becoming absorbed by all we are NOT. The work of a lifetime.

9. Even the way we communicate and relate to one another, so often, is based on dominance. So many conversations are based around someone being right, someone trying to prove a point, someone trying to be the smarter one, the winner. Instead of simply trying to understand and connect with another, or try to make one another feel safe and seen. Think of how much you are just waiting for someone to finish speaking instead of really listening, really tuning in, really being with this other sacred person with their own ideas, experiences, heart.

For years I tried to seek understanding with a caregiver, and for years he used me as a prop for his ego, someone to blame for his fear, his pain, his insecurity. Intimacy is terrifying for people. So then, they deflect, they hurt, they fight—the ultimate distraction.

We are in war because white men do not know how to be intimate and tender with one another. Because their nervous systems are so jacked up, their insecurity so rampant, they need the constant high-intensity dopamine hits like massive amounts of money and murder. We are at war because the people with their fingers on nuclear weapons are not interested in love, in being in love or receiving love. No one who kills and rapes babies is interested in listening to the land speak.

For decades of my life I fell under the trap of attempting to connect with someone who could not be relationally accountable because they have no interest in this. I listened to what they said, not how they treated me. How many years could I have gotten back had I truly understood that there was no capacity there, there was no consciousness? Lifetimes. The work of lifetimes.

10. What the mind invents, the mind destroys. But the real is not invented and cannot be destroyed. Hold on to that over which the mind has no power…Realize you cannot be born nor die, and as the fear goes, all suffering ends.”
    —Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

11. Nature proves that gender is a man-made construct. The banana slug has both female and male reproductive organs. They fertilize one another. The Bluehead wrasse rearranges their ovaries into testes if a male is not around. They also change their markings dramatically. The African Reed Frog can transform their sex and then change it back. People are always asking me the genders of my dogs, and always misgendering them. Then, they look embarrassed and apologize when they are wrong. I always tell them that truly, it doesn’t matter.
    Is gender necessary?
    

12. The overriding concept I’ve been marinating on is that of relational accountability, brought to me by my friend Christina by way of a course she is taking. It was the language that has unlocked so much for me. The sad truth is, many of us have not been taught to be accountable in our relationships. The question I try to ask myself constantly, while relating, is, “How can I make this person feel safer, more seen, more attuned to?”
    
    Schismogenesis and duality and the binary has trained us to see ourselves as separate. But now I want to seek similarities and see difference as texture, depth, an interesting pattern we make together.
    

13. My intelligence, my intuition, my creativity and my love are relational, not individual. They came from other people, they are not mine; they did not spring solely out of my head like Athena from Zeus. They happen through conversation, through connection, through intentional study.
    
    My best qualities and gifts are meant to serve the whole, meant to support, meant to be used for priceless things that I must put a price on. I find all of us miracles, as I find myself, as we are all humans who have been betrayed and traumatized by other humans, but yet. I still believe in love, I still love, I still try to give others something that was often rare so as to be precious but should not be.
    
    The frequency of love and reverence is what relational accountability should stem from. It’s why when the rose in my garden says no, I don’t pluck her rose from the stem. It’s why I’m patient with my plants’ rehabilitation and would rather cut them down to the smallest amount and fertilize the soil, rather than compost them.
    
    Every day I hear horror stories, and every day I am exposed to people making miracles. The brutal terror that the colonizer’s pain causes may destroy humans any minute, but it will not destroy the earthly paradise we’ve been so lucky to have been given.
    

The equinoxes and solstices are times of extreme mirroring.
Meaning: life is showing you exactly what you need to attend to, and what must be transmuted, alchemized, let go, shifted, or moved towards.

Omens abound.

I’ll give you an example from my own life to illustrate this.

A few days ago, I was in the aisle of an airplane, waiting to get off the flight. A tall man, standing in his seat, kept pushing on me and making it so I had to push back or else I would be tipped over.

Read more

I’ve been reflecting on everything I’ve learned— and wished I had known before starting the Moon Studio. This is a pivot year; we called it in 2025. Before any pivot or expansion, I like to gather what I’ve learned and what I would do differently.

Regret is a useful, useful tool. Use it often and find yourself progressing quickly.
Discernment is applied wisdom. It’s doing things differently once you know better.

IDK about you, but I often learn the hard way. While the Moon Studio has given me more than I could possibly express in language, it has also been really hard. Not enough “successful” business owners discuss this. Business, in the United States, is always framed in aspirational terms. Painted like a dream, an escape from the rat race, a place to live life on your own terms and become financially abundant, and with it, liberated. Peruse any Reddit group for small business owners, however, and a different reality emerges.

It’s tough to be a spiritual, sensitive being in the current marketplace.

You can become liberated without running your own business. And like with anything, there are real trade-offs. Many business owners I know, ones who have been successful for a decade plus, are now ending their businesses or radically altering their business structures. Streamlining, scaling down, taking a break. I am in this process as well, of really asking what it is I want to do, create, experience, now that I have more capacity.

The world is non-dual, which in the West is regularly forgotten.
Spirituality, we don’t get to choose how we will learn our lessons, heal, and evolve.
We don’t get to choose our lessons at all! A spiritual truth I witness people resisting all the time, and with it, their growth and forward momentum.

Learn your lessons so you don’t have to repeat them. First step: figuring out what those are—they are often not what you would prefer.

It is particularly challenging to run a business as ethically as I can in this time, in this country, in this climate as a solopreneur, chronically ill, queer woman. One often feels like one is between a rock and a hard place, even while feeling grateful, blessed, and enjoying days that I once dreamed of. Reality is paradoxical.

Below are some lessons I’ve learned, the spiritual and the practical. Some of them seem paradoxical, but paradoxes are a sign that something is truth.

1. It always comes back to the integrity and quality of the work. You don’t need a fancy website or endless certifications. You need to create work that is original, incredible, and that effectively solves a problem. You need to cultivate a magnetic energetic field and create real desire, the kind that makes people hand over their time and money, which are extremely precious resources.
   
   There are no shortcuts. While aesthetics and vibes are important for aesthetically driven brands, if the product isn’t of quality, your success will be limited. Anyone who experiences fast success easily probably doesn’t have staying power. They might be exceptionally skilled at marketing, but that doesn’t mean their product or service will be as good. Some people are great at branding and marketing, period.
   
   Or, they have connections, money, or use nefarious means to climb quickly. Becoming great at what you do takes years. I studied my modality, complete with giving away free work, for 7 years before I started charging for it. I took courses and certifications in hypnosis, somatic healing, and embodiment coaching, and constantly studied to become better at my facilitation. After over a decade in business, I am only now becoming excellent at certain components of it. Other elements will take years.
   
   When you are excellent at what you do, you won’t have to promote as much. Clients will stay with you and refer you to others. Excellent work creates more options and freedom. People will trust you, so when you pivot, they will stay with the next version of your business.
   
   Become excellent at what you do. Be obsessed with it. Love it. Offer it up from a space of abundance and generosity. Decide to continuously improve. Take critical feedback and apply it. Do this over and over again.
   
   This is about the work. Use your business as a chance to expand and evolve, not hide or stay stagnant.
   
   2. Every single issue, shadow, or negative pattern you have will impact your business. You must clean them up, integrate them, or change them. Staying conscious and aware is vital. Your mental health, creative health, emotional health, physical health, and spiritual health must be taken seriously when you are running a business. Whatever you aren’t conscious of—your tantruming inner child, people-pleasing tendencies, damsel in distress victimhood, or negativity will run the show.
   
   Your shadows will haunt you and create real problems until you figure out the root of them and alchemize them.
   
   A lot of folks think they can escape the pain of corporate, a 9-5, or all the workplaces they’ve had. You often do not have to face your biggest baggage when you work for someone else. Everything can always be the fault of someone else. If you start a business, there is no escape. Often, you are the one at fault!
   
   My largest shadows have been relational trauma and scarcity, so these are the issues I am constantly coming across in my business.
   
   My naivete and fast trust of others has cost me time and time again. My biggest unconscious issue was believing that everyone in my sphere would behave as I would, especially those who said they had the same values as me: feminist, progressive, etc. This has put me in extractive and abusive situations and caused me great anguish.
   
   My tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume their goodness has backfired more times than I care to admit. I have been used by countless people masquerading as friends/collaborators, and it was my fault.
   You don’t attract negativity, but you do allow it. You don’t attract extraction and harm, but you do allow it. I hate the new age BS that you attract what you are. Flies love honey. Takers LOVE givers. Unhealed people LOVE healed people.
   
   You are not what you attract. You become what you allow.
   
   I didn’t understand that not everyone who courts you and makes their way into your inner circle actually cares for you and wants the best for you. Now I do. I didn’t understand that my learned limerance, a complex created to love those who harmed me, would stop me from seeing the motivations of certain folks clearly.
   
   Scarcity has turned up in undercharging and overworking. These caused serious burnout that took years to heal. The root of this was ancestral and related to low self-worth and neurodivergence. I had major unconscious programming around martyrdom and sacrifice that needed to be brought into my subconscious and transmuted. This has been the major project of my life, and I’ll be forever thankful to my business for showing me these shadows.
   
   Your specific flavor will be unique to you. Notice I didn’t say I struggle to come up with ideas, retain clients, or get shit done. Notice I haven’t complained about my clients—I love my clients and have had little to no issues with those in the Moon Studio Community I serve. These are not my shadows in this life. But maybe they are yours.
   
   The good news is, you are shown your failures over and over, and have those many chances to change. Understand they are there to help and refine you, they aren’t punishment. For example, a lot of the mistreatment and betrayal I experienced from others was leftover childhood trauma that I was perpetuating through repetition compulsion. Healing was going to have to happen in this lifetime.
   
   Healing my self-worth began the process of healing my inner child and nervous system. This is also matriarchal cycle-breaking; I’m one of a few women in my entire familial line who has gotten well-paid for their gifts. The past life healing is real as well. The projects of relaxation, flow, and ease are my serious spiritual jobs.
   
   3. Protect yourself and your business on every level. The person you marry is not the person you divorce. Following on my relational wound shadow, I have been burned by collaborators, colleagues, corporations, vendors, wholesale stores, clients, and “friends.” I have been ghosted, had money stolen from me, IP stolen from me, been slandered by people I thought were beloveds…essentially used and abused every which way.
   
   A lot of business owners don’t discuss this openly, but being a woman running a business, especially a “spiritual” business, sets you up to be targeted. You get projected upon; if you deviate from that projection, there will be backlash. You will not be respected or taken seriously. A lot of people hate women, including other women, and they are quick to take out their jealousy and aggression on you. People especially hate a woman with standards who expects the work to be completed with a level of professionalism and excellence.
   
   Unfortunately, the more exposure you have to people, the more you find out that some do not operate with integrity. (LOL at this comment as we look at the world!)
   
   Before entering into any relationship with anyone, make them sign a contract that protects you completely. Figure out every single possible issue that could occur, and put in place protections for yourself. I have experienced behavior from others that I didn’t even know was possible. Now, we have contracts in place that cover every possible scenario we can think of, and we’re also protective of who we work with as clients, vendors, and freelancers.
   
   I have strict standards for collaborations now. I almost never collaborate or take pitches from people I don’t know incredibly well. Even when I am pitching folks I love and adore, I take a slow burn approach, letting the collaboration unfold organically.
   
   Protect your time. Protect your energy. Protect your ideas. Protect your nervous system. Protect your creativity. Protect your magic. This all leads to expansion.
   
   4. Energy cannot be faked. Realness, authenticity, and coherence are necessary. People will feel it! If you are a spiritual provider, facilitator, or teacher, energy work and energetic hygiene are non-negotiables. I’m a private person who doesn’t want to be an influencer. I don’t want to be recognized on the street or for millions to know me. I don’t want people to see the inside of my home, follow along when I’m on vacation, hanging with friends, or am experiencing some majorly gorgeous moments. But people can feel the potency of my work, and the blessed undercurrent that runs through it.
   
   My life is living proof that what I teach works. My life is joyous and magical, and people can sense this. Half my job as a creative is energetic cultivation. Another huge component is enjoying my life.
   
   5. Hire slow, fire fast. This business saying is absolutely correct. Trust your instincts. If a working relationship feels off, do the uncomfortable thing and end it early. It will save you much grief, time, and money down the line. Try someone out as a freelancer first before bringing them on full-time. If you want to scale, your working relationships and team are the most important aspect of the business. You want to like and trust your coworkers, and for them to like and trust you.
   
   Hiring someone is supposed to improve your business, give you more time, and make you more money. 3 weeks is usually long enough to tell if there’s a good match.
   
   This is a great rule for the non-business world. If something feels off, trust it! Not everyone you feel “off” about is “bad,” sometimes it is literally not a good fit.
   If someone doesn’t improve your life or show you reciprocity proactively, have a conversation with them. If things don’t change in a few months, it might be time to step away.
   
   6. Money healing and abundance embodiment are the most important aspects of a healthy, thriving business. Chances are, if you are running a creative, spiritual business that means something to you, you aren’t doing it for the money. Believe me, if I was in this to become a millionaire, I would be doing MANY things differently. (I know what I would have to do and frankly, I don’t want to do it.)
   
   Businesses need money to function. You need money to pay your bills. One of the most basic metrics of success for a business is the ability to generate income!
   
   Money is not bad. We need more conscious people to make more money. Data has shown that local businesses support their local economy, and women entrepreneurs give back much more than men do.
   
   Paradoxically, after a certain amount, I realized that money wasn’t the point. Before I had money, money was incredibly important to me. No one thinks more about money than someone who has to stretch every last dollar and make a huge portion of their decisions from not being resourced.
   
   When you become ok financially, you realize that money scarcity becomes energetic and mental scarcity. I realized how much scarcity had invaded my psyche and energetic field, and that began my abundance rewiring. I also assumed that having money would take away problems that it does not.
   
   On the archetypal level, money is a symbol. Money represents something different to all of us. For me, that’s safety and freedom. It’s being able to be generous and do what I want. Waking up is understanding this is all available to me anytime—I don’t need money to experience any of this!
   
   If I can tap into those energies and anchor into them, it feels great. A shortcut I am playing with now is:
   
   If I didn’t have to work for money, what would I do?
   
   Don’t allow money to be a trap that stops you from happiness or growth. Figure out what money symbolizes for you, and start embodying those things today.
   
   7. Allow yourself to change. For years, I was scared to change. But I evolve frequently and am a shapeshifter at heart. If you are an artist, you will change. All your favorite artists change: if not album to album, certainly era to era.
   
   If you mature, you will change. Allow yourself and your business to change and grow. People will leave, but new people will flow in. A lot of people in the spiritual industry stay at the 101 level. This stunts them and does not do justice to those who are hungry for depth, intellect, and more advanced work. I’m not interested in being everything to everyone or to catering to the lowest common denominator. I want to serve empowered, intelligent, wildly talented people to advance spiritually and creatively. I want to support sensitives in living their dreams, making a ton more money, and feeling safe enough to share their unique gifts with the world.
   
   The most innovative people change. Staying the same serves no one.
   
   8. Business is advanced spiritual training. There is no greater spiritual development than a business. (Having children is way greater, but I wouldn’t know.) There is no greater self-development tool than business. Every trigger will surface to be transmuted. You’ll come face-to-face with your fear of failure and success. You’ll meet your own limits again and again, then finally transcend them. Money, love, relationships, purpose, leadership, organization, skills, creativity, faith, hope, fears—these are all huge, sweeping themes that show up again and again, during just another Tuesday at the office. Develop capacity. You will never not stop facing challenges and problems. A sign of mastery is being able to choose the kinds of problems you want to have.

   
   9. Business is a beautiful opportunity to create new feminist and matriarchal templates. Many women-owned businesses say they are feminist or spiritual,
   but they repeat the same patterns and power structures that we inherit from colonialism. They don’t pay their workers a living wage, steal from others instead of creating original work, and are secretly or not so secretly competitive.
   
   Your business can be a garden, an ecosystem that creates life and leads to the health of the greater world. You must remember that business is a chance to live out your ideals for a matriarchy.
   
   The most radical thing I did was vow to stop sacrificing myself for the business and make it become something that supported my life and health, not something that drained it. Then, I focused on paying my workers well above a living wage, having a 32-hour workweek, and creating a lateral team structure where my “employees” were coworkers and I respected them. Meaning, if my studio manager doesn’t want to work with a particular vendor, we don’t. Meaning, if they want to try out an experiment or hunch, I let them. Meaning, if they make mistakes, I don’t punish them or fire them.
   
   I think of the Moon Studio as an opportunity to make the world a better place. Multiple studio managers have come to me with workplace trauma, and I’ve watched them physiologically exhale as work became a source of support, not stress.
   
   To date, we’ve donated over $180,000 to grassroots orgs, hosted endless fundraisers for those in need, and given away over $100,000 in scholarships.
   We keep our offerings very affordable, comparatively, and give out a TON of education for free. We are incredibly careful about sourcing our materials: we work primarily with other small businesses that are local, women-owned,
   POC-owned, queer-owned.
   
   This is only possible because of you. If we do not have clients buying Many Moons, purchasing our ritual objects, taking courses, and supporting this substack financially, we’d have to shut down. This is all because of. you! Which is a beautiful lesson in MATRIACHY and COLLECTIVE ABUNDANCE! It can work! Promise. Let’s support MORE OF IT.
   
   10. You are going to have to learn marketing. There’s no way around this one! Make it fun, creative, and authentic. Make sure it is as easy, simple, and systematized as possible. This is why I teach marketing for creatives and sensitives.
   
   People think marketing has to be hard, scary, or complicated. You can actually use your intuition and energetic gifts in your marketing. You need a system. You must put strategy and systems together from the very beginning. When I realized this and implemented it almost 3 years ago, I made over $200 K more a year doing less work. Systems Are Magic!
   
   11. You are going to have to do things you don’t want to do. Here’s the part that took me a long time to learn. I’m incredibly stubborn. You must learn basic business principles, and you must do things you don’t want to do.
   
   I’ve noticed that a lot of creatives and sensitives wait until they “feel” creative to work. You’ve got to make your own flow. I’ve noticed that folks use problems as excuses to not take actions they feel uncomfortable about. Running a business is high sensation, which is why somatics and capacity building are all a part of the work I facilitate. Becoming an alchemizer is sacred and profound work that will help you for life.
   
   Magic is in the work you are avoiding. Bet.

   
   12. The point of life is to live. Get a full life. Cultivate it. Your business is not the point of your life; it is a channel and mirror for it. If you are lucky, it helps fulfill your purpose, but your purpose is always much greater. If I could go back in time, this is probably the biggest message I would impart to my younger self. When my world completely collapsed after getting Long Covid, I realized I didn’t have a whole life.
   
   People I thought were my friends only cared about me when I could be their support system, not when I was in collapse and needed real help.
   
   All my interests revolved around the business, and my extreme burnout made me not want to touch anything remotely related for a long time. Things that used to excite me no longer did. I was making a living, but I didn’t have a full life.
   
   Since my recovery, I’ve been slowly building a life filled with hobbies, relationships that have nothing to do with work, and following other interests. I garden, paint, volunteer, and am trying to make more time to make music again. When friends ask me to fly across the country or go on a creative retreat with them, I’m there. I skip out on work to entertain out-of-town beloveds. Work is no longer my first priority.
   
   Running a business is intense and can be all-consuming. You need real friends, you need people who don’t care what you can do for them. You need hobbies and passions that give you life. You need other spaces that give you respite, rest, and energy.
   
   13. You can do things your way. There are a lot of cookie-cutter templates and swipe copy in the land of people teaching other people to business, which is why everyone’s businesses sometimes feel boring and uniform.
   
   Everything is made up, and you only get one go round in this life! Let your personality out! Use your inherent creativity to make cool stuff! Let your utter weirdness out into the open!
   
   Do things your way! Stop hopping on trends if they feel gross to you! If you don’t want to do what everyone else in your space is doing, don’t! Stop looking and comparing! Create your own unique spaces based on how you want to do them, not what you think you should do.
   
   My formative work years were forged in the fires of corporate America and waiting tables. These left me with some incredible skills, but also instilled in me that I wasn’t allowed to be a human at work. When I began sharing about my life and how I applied the spiritual learnings I teach, I became a much better teacher. When I let my humanity and intuition lead and became more honest with everyone around me, the business blossomed.
   
   Your business is your garden where you can decide what to grow and how to grow it.
   
   To listen into our podcast, go here.
   To sign up for our studio’s newsletter, go here.
   

ICYMI: We’re just about finished with our Moonbeaming series on intuition, which you can tune into here.

The theme for March is The Alchemy Begins, which coincides with the Spring equinox and Eclipse season. Understand, ahead of time, that March is a full, robust month filled with complex energies. Write your to-do list and cut it down by a third. It mi…

Read more

A close-up of Lizardite, a new mineral we got in the shop.

Welcome to the Moon Studio newsletter, a more intimate space than our business newsletter. It’s where I, Sarah, the creator, share more from my world with you.

ICYMI: Our groundbreaking and life-changing Intuition course is now open for enrollment until 2 pm PT TODAY. Email support@moon-studio.co if you want in.
It’s the primary place I am pouring my research, teaching, energy work, and facilitation into this Spring!

—a message from my beloved about the class. Our onboarding call was Wednesday, there’s still plenty of time to jump in and catch up.

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Welcome to the Venus 3x3: a monthly collection of arts, culture, commerce, and practices that have brought me love, joy, glimmers, inspiration and/or a mild rabbit hole obsession over the past month. This is a way for me to keep track of all the love in my life. This is Collection 11. For January’s edition, go here.

February was action-packed on all fronts. Collectively, we’re at a breaking point, with new horrors and nightmares surging up every day. We are also seeing what happens when folks join together (MPLS) and when we have actual leadership (Mamdani, doing more for the city of NYC in 2 months than probably any mayor in this country, ever).

I knew that personally, February would be the month where life would speed up. The Many Moons theme was Reality In Conversation with Herself, and it tracked. I did a LOT, and my body revolted. I don’t regret it, but I know I need to smooth things out into a more sustainable pace. This month was full friends: I visited a friend on the East Coast, celebrated a friend in the desert, met ANOTHER friend in the desert, and had 2 friends visiting. I also had a major manifestation come through, as well as had our Intuition course launch, and and and and. This is what it felt like externally, and inwardly, I had some major uplevels in my healing. Right now, I’m still recovering from a flu, but I spirituality I feel amazing.

Read on for the February highlights!

3 Things

The Legend of Ochi. I watched 4 movies this month. 3 I enjoyed, and 1 sucked.
(The Materialists, don’t waste your time even though #Pedro.) My favorite, a film I’ll probably watch again, is The Legend of Ochi, directed by Isaiah Saxon. It follows a brave girl as she tries to reunite a lost magical creature with their family. At this point, I’ll watch anything that Willem Dafoe is in, and all the other acting is great.

Korean skincare. Consider me influenced. Following the sensationalism of all things Heated Rivalry I caved and got some Korean skincare. (Shane Hollander divulged, millions of women bought.) It has now been a month of using the products faithfully, and my skin is a better texture and people have commented. The 3 products I use every night are Time Revolution by Missha, VT Cosmetics Reedle Shot, and and this product by Skin1004. As always, results may vary.

The current exhibits at the Philadelphia Art Museum. I got to visit a dear old friend during the tundra storms that hit the East Coast, which was an adventure. While the trip could be its own entry, I was blown away by the Philadelphia Art Museum and the exhibits there. The surrealism exhibit was stellar, and getting to see a bunch of Leonora Carringtons and Remedios Varos work all in one room, and in dialogue with one another, was a dream. The show that stole my heart, however, was the Noah Davis exhibit. He is one of my favorite painters, so considered and loose, so wide-ranging and structured, truly a vanguard.

If you can get there, you won’t regret it.

Close up of a painting by Noah Davis.

3 Practices

Capacity Checks. These are at the heart of my work because they’ve saved my life. Capacity checks aren’t about trying to fight against where you are at, or completely collapse. It is about meeting your energy where you are, and proceeding accordingly. I’ve gone to a party at a 5, and completed due dates at a 2. In the larger goal of being compassionate to the self, engaged with life, and fully present, this is a non-negotiable tool.

I AM practice. Hi, hello, here I am, repeating myself. The practice is a Magician Year practice, and I’m still doing it because I still need to do it. Our stories are all pervasive, and it’s imperative to figure out if the decision you are about to make is your scared 3-year-old self or something closer to you, in the present moment. This year is definitely about emotional sobriety, and it stacks onto the capacity check nicely. The stories aren’t real, but how we react to them certainly are.

Morning Practices. I’ve been using my Many Moons to track how life is responding to my energy, my intentions, and my goals. I light some incense, flow into meditation, and jot down all the mundane and magical messages.

3 Memories from the month

Caterpillar mornings. We planted a lot of milkweed, and the monarch caterpillars rejoiced! As did we. It’s such a sweet memory to wander out into the yard each morning and see these tiny little worm babies turn into gorgeous caterpillars. Here’s hoping these hungry caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Travel Tarot Launch. It was gorgeous to watch the magical Jeff Hinshaw be celebrated by all his beloveds. He has been a dear friend since he moved to California, and he deserves the world. Jeff created the Lonely Planet Travel Tarot, and in true double Aquarian fashion, planned an extravaganza that was warm, thoughtful, collective, and that honored the process of him creating this masterpiece. Definitely recommend this deck!

The Hierophant, the random card I received at Jeff’s beautiful gathering.

Savoring a major dream coming true. It’s so beautiful to begin this year with something I’ve wanted for over 5 years. Here’s to more dreams coming true, secretly. Because here’s the thing you need to ask yourself, this year. If no one saw or knew what I wanted, would I still want it? If the answer is yes, keep going!

Ok, that’s the 3 x 3 round-up. As always, this is a mere sliver and slice of a beautiful life I am intentionally creating. Hopefully, this inspires you to create your own—and to stay truthful. Keeping track of the major themes and enjoyable moments is a way to solidify core memories and to engage more deeply with life.

What were your favorites from this month?

ICYMI, we’ve released a bouquet of podcast episodes all about intuition. This is all to celebrate and promote the Moon Studio’s upcoming container, Secret Studies. It is a course on expanding your intuition, trusting yourself, and becoming besties with life again. Read more, and sign up here—enrollment ends tomorrow!

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Gentle reader, I write you from the high desert, where yesterday I woke up with a sore throat so bad I couldn’t speak. I had to cancel a Tarot class I had planned to give my patrons today, so decided to write instead.

This past week has been a whirlwind, so much to process and integrate. The start of the Fire Horse year came in fast as expected, with a major womanifestation I had wanted for 6 years coming to fruition. The speed at which it happened was a shock; I earnestly began making moves towards it (again) in November, fully expecting the process to take up to a year. But, as usual, eclipse season was generous to me, and this goal took shape exactly in the houses of mine that the moon recalibrates in.

I had wanted this letter to be filled with some resolutions I’ve been marinating on for the first stretch of the year, but I truly have not had the time to sit down and decide where to start. I understand that this is meta; a lot of the year will feel like this. Gotta take those reins and hold them lightly.

As a mystic, I am a direct interpreter of life. I’m taking the speed of this manifestation as an omen for the year; maybe what we want can come to us more swiftly than we could imagine. I’m seeing, in real time, how much our minds support or hinder us in our experiences of perception, interpretation, and relationship.

As I attempt to molt the last 6 years/lifetimes off of me, I need to put a name to what I was doing, so I can cease repeating the unwanted with this shed. The word, of course, is fighting. I was fighting for my dignity, fighting for my marriage, fighting for the truth, fighting for my business, fighting for my reputation, fighting for my cognition, fighting for my experiences of reality to matter, fighting for my health, fighting for answers, fighting for help, fighting for my life, and when I could, fighting for the well-being and safety of others.

I’m exhausted, but I am the Chariot, the life path 7, after all. I was born to fight.

The Chariot moves fast through tension, fighting gravity. They must be strong and sensitive, overly attuned to the energy of the powerful beasts that drive them forward. Most ancient races were 7 laps, which is where the numerological correspondence in the Tarot comes from. Most Charioteers were enslaved, competing not only for entertainment, but for the money to gain their freedom.

What does a Charioteer do when they don’t want to fight anymore?

If the Magician is Body as Conduit, the High Priestess is Body as Portal, the Empress is Body as Vessel, the Emperor is Body as Protector, the Hierophant is Body as Temple, the Lovers is Body As Connector, then the Chariot is Body as Vehicle.

Charioteers are excellent but unlikely channelers. People are surprised at my psychic abilities; I can come off as guarded, feisty, spiky, fierce—decidedly unspiritual. Shouldn’t I be acting like the mother they never had? Where are my linen pants? Where is my dulcet, quiet, well-modulated voice?

People forget that warriors are mystics, too. Look at Bruce Lee.

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” —Bruce

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Earlier this week, I found myself driving to the desert to celebrate my friend Jeff’s Travel Tarot Launch. Because of my illness, I usually have to wait until the last minute to see if my body will cooperate. It’s a funny joke the universe plays on me, because I used to judge people who decided to come to events at the last minute. I thought they didn’t care, I thought they were flaky, I thought it was rude. Now I know better to make assumptions about anyone or anything.

I snagged the last space available on the invite; I took that as a sign. A few hours later, I got the last room at a motel 5 minutes away from the venue. It was called the Harmony Motel; I took that as another sign.

As I drove down the 62, I connected to the swirls of anxiety tracing figure 8s in my stomach. On the event guest list was someone who had done terrible things to me that cost me time, energy, money, reputation, and relationships, which lasted for years. This was someone I admired, someone I respected, someone I thought was a friend.
If they came, it would be the first time I would be in a room with them in over 6 years.

What are you scared of? I asked my inner child.

I’m scared they will be mean to me, and then everyone else will be mean to me, and I will be all alone and unprotected, and I won’t be able to escape, my inner child replied.

This is what used to happen to me when I didn’t have access to a car and a credit card. This is how I know it is a younger part. The adult me fights, the adult me does not put up with bullshit, the adult me stays for the bare minimum she has to, and then gets the fuck out of there with a full tank of gas.

Well, it’s a party with a lot of people there. There’s not a big chance that will happen. If it does, we’ll leave, ok? We don’t have anything to be scared about. We didn’t do anything wrong. They did terrible things, not us. They should be ashamed, not us. We didn’t do anything wrong. I told my inner child. That unraveled a bit of the larger knot I’ve been picking apart for years, that eventually, I’ll get to smooth out into a clear, long path.
A less bumpy ride.

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The manager at the motel was unusually curious. She asked me many questions when I checked in, which I loved. Usually, I am the one asking all the questions, and everyone hates it. I secretly love to be asked questions. It makes me feel like people care about me.

Maybe that’s how I ended up giving her a free reading.

Most of the people who checked into the Harmony Motel, with its bright red No Vacancy sign flashing in the desert night, were also there for Jeff’s event. A lot of Tarot and Astrology conversations had poured into her small office all day. By the time I checked in, the last guest to arrive late in the evening, her interest had ripened.

Are you a Tarot reader? she asked.

Yes, I replied.
Usually I say no, because I don’t do it much anymore.
I also don’t want random people to project things onto me.

Do you believe this stuff works? she asked. She wasn’t being mean; it felt curious in tone, so I wasn’t offended.

Listen. If I didn’t believe it worked, I wouldn’t do it, I said.

Do you want a reading?

After the reading, which she definitely needed, we chattered a bit.

Life is really just so much work, isn’t it? She mused.

Yes, it is, I replied, but we’re lucky enough to get to choose the kind of work we do. And the point of work is to infuse it with meaning. When it isn’t meaningful or an expression of our nature or true essence, everything feels pointless, and then we lose our way.

I think that’s why it’s been hard for me to make resolutions; it’s been hard for me to choose because now I finally feel like I have access to choice. After years submerged, feeling like the universe was holding me under water whilst I thrashed around like a worm on the hook, I now feel her loving embrace. I can choose. I could always choose the whole time, but I forgot that, so it felt like I was trapped. Now I know I am not because the knowing is embodied, my vehicle. And I want so much. I want to touch rose petals everyday and the people of Gaza to truly know peace and steaming udon soup on cold gloomy nights and free healthcare for all and a thriving creative career and for fascism to end and for my leukemia treatment to go smoothly and for late night snuggles and early morning cuddles and to birth a new book and for the earth to be respected again and for the end of corporations and for time with my friends and for all billionaires to be shoved into a rocket ship and launched into outer space. They did it to an innocent dog named Laika; why can’t they do it with all the parasites?

I want, I want, I want. So much more now, because I think I could possibly have some of it.

The spiritual mission of the 7 is to make choices from free will, not fear, aversion, or resistance. To move out because we consciously chose a beautiful new home, not because our landlord kicked us out with no notice. To forge our own path, not the one we should take because it will be easier. Our greatest spiritual victory is to nurture a creative project or dream from seed to stalk with complete consciousness and undivided concentration. It is rare that one has the opportunity to do so. One must work very hard to get free.

Because spiritual lessons are learned through direct experience, 7s often learn through contrast, through being held to the fire. We often feel as though we are always making choices from between a rock and a hard place; either pathway feels compromised and crunchy, an escape route, or the best we can do with the lot we’ve been given. The conditions we are dropped into are often adverse: a family that doesn’t understand us, friends who secretly hate us, a body that betrays us. Never our choice, never enough time, never enough resources, never enough support, always having to force, push, or fight our way through the morass of impossible conditions that surround us. The shadow of this archetype is believing that we must have something to push up against to take action. That we don’t exist without our resistance. Self-sabotage comes from unnecessary shadow boxing with our demons and unnecessary conflict within ourselves and others. We have to remember: what you resist, persists. Or even worse, as a teacher always says: what you resist, you become.

The Charioteer kept a knife handy, ready to cut the horses free at the first sign of a crash. 7s need to learn how to drop the rope, cut cords, and clear away the hooks that threaten their will. They also need to discern false alarms and stay the course. After all, cutting all ties is quitting, and quitting means losing the race.

When we become the vehicle, the flow of life takes over, and we lose ourselves in the divinity of movement. When we move as—as love, as peace, as calm, as the elements, as that which we seek, it doesn’t matter where we are going. It’s the experience that matters. It’s the connection, redirection, and distribution of energy made in a conscious manner that opens up the road before us.

When I take the drive back home later today, I’ll pray in the quiet. I’ll ask what I can do to practice acceptance with more swiftness, so I can move along on the road of life. I’ll give myself the gift of contemplation that I know I need before any big decisions are made. I’ll open up to the cloud angels in the sky and see what they have to say. The knots will unravel, the road will become smooth and open, not because I can control the future, but because I now trust myself to practice grace.