Something beautiful and celebratory and lovely as it marks the beginning of two people’s marriage to one another. Full of hope and clarity, yes, as those most important to the couple gather to honor the relationship they’ve built and continue to nurture, assumedly for the rest of their lives.

But there’s something else, too. The element of what a wedding quite literally is: an event. An event with logistics, advance planning, venue selection, coordination, guest lists, and the emotion behind every decision and selection to be made.

The pressure from society and oftentimes from a couple’s family and friends can make it very easy to get swept up in the excitement, the overspending, and the did-it-for-the-’gram fallacy.

With emotions typically and understandably running high, it’s very easy for the couple to stray from the original vision — the reason you wanted to have a wedding to begin with. After all, we live in a day and age where going to city hall with no fanfare to sign some documents, sans big white dress and towering piped cake, is perfectly acceptable. Every couple gets to make the decision of whether to have a wedding to mark the beginning of their marriage.

So, Sarah and Lucy are teaming up to write about how they’ve each stayed as true to themselves and their partners as possible in planning their weddings, the questions and visions, and ultimately how to feel like the event marked/is marking their marriages in the most aligned and authentic way.

Lucy’s wedding took place in September 2025 in Ireland and Brooklyn.

Sarah’s wedding is taking place in October this year in the Hudson Valley, NY.

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Couple Stories & The Proposal

Sarah

There is a version of me who would have been embarrassed to admit that I met my partner on the apps, but here we are. No shame in my game. As a proud introvert and bed-by-9:15pm-er, where else could I have expected to meet my man?

We had our first date at a coffee shop, sat with each other for two hours, and he asked me out for date no. 2 before we even got back to our cars. We saw each other three or four times a week for the next three, and then I invited him to come with me on my pre-planned single gal solo trip to Italy, which he happily accepted.

We woke up on the plane after landing outside Milan on our one month (!!) anniversary, and the rest is history.

We’d talked about spending our lives together and buying a forever home together and making all sorts of plans together pretty much from the beginning, so the discussion about marriage came naturally, too.

On Tuesday, May 27 last year, I walked through the door of our home after an Uber ride home from the airport following a trip overseas with my parents. I was greeted by a hundred votive candles, half a dozen bouquets of yellow roses, and Devin, ready to get down on one knee ♥️

Lucy

My better half and I were introduced by a mutual friend in 2014. I was living in Chicago, and he was visiting from NYC. The introduction was perfectly timed as I was moving to the Big Apple in a few months. Right away, I found him extremely charming and hilarious. We continued our friendship once I moved to Manhattan. It was such an adventure seeing the city through his native New Yorker eyes. Our friendship evolved into romance and we navigated life together through our mid-twenties and early thirties. I feel incredibly lucky to be understood, prioritized and complemented by another person. He has helped me achieve my goals and supported me through times of hardship. I credit so much of my blessed life to having the bolster of unconditional love. It has been amazing to grow with someone and see them evolve into an even better version of themselves every year. I am so incredibly proud of him and our relationship.

We got engaged on a trip to Ireland with the mutual friend who introduced us and her husband. It was the best day ever and included a full Irish breakfast, holding baby lambs and a panicked DIY manicure all before a scenic coastal proposal. captured it all with stunning (iPhone!) photos and we toasted with champagne before heading to the pub.

The Wedding Vibe

Sarah

As a lifelong introvert, a big wedding was never something I envisioned. And I know how this makes me sound, but I also don’t generally love parties.

What I love is getting together for an intimate coffee with a friend or a double date at most. I love getting really deep, and giving one or two people my completely undivided emotional attention at once. I find socializing that way is the most enjoyable and fulfilling for me, and for my friendships.

As it relates to my interest and values around parties…. let’s just say the notion of ”wedding colors” never entered the chat for me lol.

So, we truly never even considered having a big wedding — from a social perspective or a spending perspective. In fact, we were very torn between doing a micro wedding or just going to a courthouse with our immediate family and taking us all out to dinner afterwards. And not even tell the restaurant we chose that we were dining to celebrate a marriage (hello, markups!).

In the end though, we decided to have a super small & intimate micro wedding to mark our marriage.

If this sounds like your vibe 💌 dear reader, if there is any pressure you feel—whether in an intangible societal way or in a literal way from family or friends—YOU DO NOT OWE ANYONE ANYTHING. Unless they are offering to foot the entire bill, it’s not even a question that you should do exactly what you and your partner want. And if they are offering to foot the entire bill, you still have a 100% say over exactly what YOU do to mark the beginning of YOUR marriage. It’s no one’s life, no one’s event, no one’s money, no one’s effort, no one’s joy or burden but your own.

We’re planning for our guests to soar across the sartorial spectrum, with my fiancé in a tux and me in ivory (or cream, what’s the difference?) colored separates that were most definitely not intended to be a wedding outfit, but I don’t give a sh*t! I did have quite a few mixed feelings during my journey of finding a wedding outfit, but I’m happy enough with what I have, and that’s that. Letting go of the pressure to find the makes-me-feel-like-a-princess dress and accept good enough was quite honestly the best thing I did for my mental health during this whole process.

The wish list:

• Small guest count, <15 total

• Not a banquet/venue hall

• The food is even better than the atmosphere

• Pretty views, with some connection/proximity to nature

• A good value for the price. We don’t want to spend ten grand for a tiny daytime event 🙄

• Elegant but very unpretentious

Lucy

My husband and I had been together ten years when we decided to get married. During this decade, somehow, our families hadn’t really gotten a chance to get to know each other, so time together was a high priority for our wedding events. We also didn’t have that many nice photos together, so while not the main goal, this was part of the wedding season agenda. We may have course-corrected a little too much. I’m currently in the process of creating a photo album book, and the amount of photos we have is absolutely overwhelming (complimentary).

We love to throw parties (usually Halloween and New Year’s Eve) and float around the room making introductions, jokes and memories. We both went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (though we didn’t cross paths there), so crafting an atmosphere with a strong creative element really scratches an itch for us. This went into hyperdrive for our weddings (spoiler: we ended up having multiple weddings).

We also love dressing up and expressing ourselves through fashion but didn’t want to be too prescriptive with our guests. We wanted to give people like us an excuse to dress up, without alienating anyone who prefers to keep things simple. We were never going to have a black-tie event, but we wanted it to be festive and fashion-forward.

Speaking of aesthetics and priorities – in an added effort to spend as much time with guests as possible, we did a couple’s shoot two days after our wedding ceremony so we could attend the drinks reception. I brought my mother’s Gunne Sax wedding dress and we made our way up the coast in a big cuddle puddle of fur babies (our photographer brought her three adorable dogs to the shoot which made it extra fun). This is not for everyone, but it worked well for us. I think about this day with so much fondness.

The wish list:

• Maximize time together with loved ones

• Prioritize creative expression

• Deliver highly impactful moments, both emotionally and visually

• Capture photos of the memories, but not at the cost of the memories themselves

Venue Search

Sarah

We wanted our micro wedding to be at a winery or boutique hotel or even an upscale farm, somewhere that wasn’t purpose-built for events.

Both me and my fiancé love and appreciate natural settings. It was important to find somewhere that, if not partially outdoors, had resplendent views of a natural setting and the ability to do photos and/or say vows outside without too much foot traffic from other people on the property.

Somewhere like Milea Estate Vineyard, Blue Hill Farm, or Rose Hill Farm.

Thankfully, my wedding planning process has been very easy from a logistics/details perspective, because there’s really not much I need to think about or worry about!

As much as I want to be like Martha Stewart or Meghan Markle à la “With Love, Meghan”, or Lucy herself for that matter, I am simply not someone who authentically dedicates time, effort, and money to having an event be all-out and a proper reflection of my personality and values. Those ladies do it incredibly beautifully, and I’m happy to simply sit back and appreciate them!

I only had calls with one other venue, and only did two site visits at different properties from the same boutique hotel brand in the Hudson Valley we ended up going with.

I’ve emailed on and off with their in-house events director since the beginning of this year, but I am incredibly grateful to have been fairly hands-off throughout the process. Since parties and events just aren’t my forte or divine interest, I’m thankful that I haven’t felt the need to fret about much other than what I am going to wear. The venue we’re going with (whose details will all be revealed after the wedding!) handles pretty much everything.

What I was looking for:

• Natural setting/landscape with beautiful views

• “Micro wedding” package advertised on the website

• Food & drinks provided by the venue, not a third party caterer

• Have the vows and sit-down dinner in a private area away from other guests at the site

What I was hoping to avoid:

• An outrageous sum of money for a small event - we’d much rather (and gladly!) spend outrageous sums of money on the honeymoon

• A corporate or purpose-built-for-weddings feel

Lucy

The venue search was extensive for me.

In the summer of 2024, I toured restaurant venues in NYC and historic estates in my hometown with my mom. I met with two different planners on Zoom who work in the Southwest (we were at one point very strongly considering New Mexico).

In September 2024, I rented a white 2020 Chevrolet Sonic that I dubbed “the Bridesmobile” and toured a dozen venues in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut. I didn’t end up moving forward with any of them, but it was a fun experience. I managed to sample a lot of local ice cream along the way. If you want to tour from the comfort of your own home, I recommend the book Life Along The Hudson: The Historic Country Estates of the Livingston Family.

Around this time, I also contracted a wedding planner to venue hunt for me in Ireland (FYI this is something you can do without signing on for full planning).

I had an epic spreadsheet; the math was exhausting as anyone who is in this process knows. Guest max and min, site fees, administrative fees, proprietary vendors, etc. It really tested my two-week attendance at Math Club in middle school. Not to mention there are really only a handful of nice Saturdays (weather-wise) in New England and they were getting scooped up quickly. I went into this process a bit naive and all over the place, to say the least. All that being said, I learned a lot and am happy to share the intel. I also want to channel the surplus research into an epic 40th birthday party in 2030, so stay tuned for that ;)

What I was looking for:

• A venue that has a character aligned with our sensibility as a couple

• The ability to go late (a surprising amount of places have a hard stop at 9 or 10pm)

• Various nearby accommodation options

• A point person with clear communication and good vibes

What I was hoping to avoid:

• Drop ceiling tiles and corporate carpet (a surprising amount of options have one or the other – some even have both!)

• A totally raw space

• Something 100% weather dependent

• Inconsistent communication/point person with bad or weird vibes

The Invitations & Paper Goods

Sarah

Like Lucy, I have a passion for paper goods! I’ve never seen a call for pen pals on Substack I haven’t answered lol.

At first, I felt silly for the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on invitations for ~6 households to whom we had already texted the details of the event months ago. But I thought, f*ck it, I deserve to spend the money on an aspect of this event (wedding) that genuinely excites me and sparks my creativity, and is something my fiancé and I can pick out together.

So, I spent many, many hours sorting through the Minted inventory of every wedding invitation suite available. I narrowed it down to about ten options, and then my fiancé and I spent a Friday night going through them and deciding together which ones we loved.

We ended up ordering complimentary samples of the top four options, and I was glad we did! It gave us a chance to feel the paper weight, see the finishes, and touch & feel the embossed options.

In the end, we felt most connected to an option we hadn’t even ordered to see: this beauty right here. We actually swooned when we saw the cute little red barn in the top right corner - it’s the second red barn motif that’s come into our lives, and we are here for it. I feel so strongly that our property one day will have a sweet red barn somewhere on it, and I want to keep the invisible string going!

I will say, the theme of the invites doesn’t have too much tie-in to the feel of the venue for the wedding, but they made us happy and were different from anything we’d ever seen sent for a wedding, so we didn’t care!

I also don’t regret spending the extra money on RSVP cards, even though our handful of guests had let us know months prior that they were coming. Now, I get to save the physical responses as mementos.

Note: due to the setup of our micro wedding package, we did not need to request each guest’s meal preference in advance. I still am glad I got the physical invites though for no other reason than it brought me some whimsy and joy.

Lucy

I love paper goods, and if I had an unlimited budget I’d commission something really fabulous with embossing and hand calligraphy. As this was not the case, I did a combination of DIY and templates then printed with Zazzle.

For our Ireland ceremony, I created a Save the Date using an antique Valentine my mom had uncovered from her family home. I adjusted the colors to mimic our wedding floral colors and added text to the front and back. I had it printed on a textured paper with a scallop border. Zazzle included envelope printing with addresses for free. This was less than $50, and I loved how they came out.

For the actual invites, I downloaded a calligraphy font and a section of 19th century oil painting and made my own simple invite. Our Welcome Day included time at a farm and a castle, so I bought a double-ended calligraphy pen from Goods for the Study Nolita and drew horses, birds and the castle itself to scan and add to that specific invite, and later the wedding dinner menu.

The idea was to tie a bow around each and include a vintage stamp, but the practicality of that was limited. I will say, when you see beautiful flat lay photos of invites, know that not 100% of guests received exactly that. I spent around $150 for 20 households on these, including the vintage stamps I didn’t end up using.

For our Brooklyn event, we went with this retro ticket template. To add a bit more style, we opted for these envelopes and Keith Haring stamps. I believe this ran about $200 for 80 households. I liked this invite because of the unusual size, but hubby did have to do a lot of troubleshooting to print the addresses on them. For this event, we didn’t do save-the-dates but sent these invites eight months early. If I were to do this again, I’d do an email save-the-date and stick to a traditional invite timeline of eight weeks out. Having the invites out early just led to us chasing down RSVPs, and trust me, couples have better things to do a month out from the wedding than chase RSVPs.

Many people will say invites are a waste of money but I think they visually communicate the energy/intention of the event. More than one person told me it was helpful to have a physical cheat sheet of the schedule, especially for our Welcome Day in Ireland. That being said, I’m glad I only spent a very small percentage of the budget on this category. It’s one of the first decisions in wedding planning, and it’s easy to go overboard.

If you are not keen on paper goods, I think email invites are totally fine but not all demographics are going to be referencing wedding websites. The sad reality is that the ones that need the info are the same people who don’t seek it out. I do think menus are a great place for creative expression if you don’t want to do paper invites. I enjoyed 75% of the process of making my own invites, and 25% of it was torture but this is very typical of most of my creative endeavors and I only have myself to blame :)

The Budget Breakdown

Sarah

🤑 Best splurge: Two vintage Hermes scarves from TheRealReal that I absolutely fell in love with the designs of, that I’ll accessorize with on the day. And better yet, I can wear them as often as I want for the rest of my life!

💰 Best cost control: I like fancy, handmade, expensive European shoes. I am one to spend $230+ on a pair. However, I wear heels (even kitten heels!) maybeee three times per year. I did not want to spend a lot of a pair of expensive shoes that I wouldn’t wear often at all, so I found a pair for $34 on Amazon that I actually liked more than the $250 pair I’d originally bought!

Below I show the mix of expenses leading up to our wedding. IMO, food and drinks should be the biggest expense and that stat is definitely inline with my and my fiancé's values! When we were at the very beginning of planning something, his only request was that he wanted the food to be really good. Same!

In my and Lucy’s next weddings breakdown post in November, I’ll go into detail more with exactly how things shake out!

Lucy

Budgeting transparency is my thing here (I’ve already broken down what I spent on my pre-wedding glow up), so I’m down to talk about this! However, since multiple people contributed financially to our wedding events and might not all feel the same way, I’ll stick to percentages of total budget here to give insight without being too revealing.

The biggest factor for our budget: we had multiple events. This was our number one priority: to spend time together with our people making memories. In Ireland, we had informal welcome drinks at a pub, a farm day with archery and horseback riding and a formal welcome dinner at a castle that turned into a game of Traitors during the afters. Our wedding day was lovely and leisurely, with a 2pm ceremony, a two-and-a-half-hour drinks reception, a wedding dinner followed by more mingling and some dancing. At midnight, a birthday cake came out to celebrate all the September birthdays and the party continued until 3am.

Later that month in Brooklyn, we had a 140-person party at a movie theatre where we screened a film about our love story (complete with an animation and celebrity cameos) that ended with our Ireland vows. Espresso martinis came out at midnight and the dancing (plus some gambling) continued into the early morning. The whole thing was surreal and I feel beyond blessed. I spell this out because the budget was distributed differently than a typical six-hour wedding event. Some things were big splurges (three photographers, two dresses/two suits, many days of food and bev) and some things were cut back (in addition to the invites, I DIY’d the Brooklyn florals, and we had a relatively modest honeymoon). As my Bestie says: “You can have anything you want, but not everything you want.” Our wedding events were the ultimate manifestation of that — and we stand behind 99% of those choices.

The Traditional Breakdown:

Mine:

A quick note on fashion & beauty: I deliberately kept attire out of these event numbers to keep the focus strictly on the events themselves. Sarah and I will do a part II of this collaboration highlighting wedding accessories in November, so subscribe and stay tuned for that!

Disclosure: To make this page as functional as possible, Lucy included three affiliate links to the items she truly stands behind. If you purchase through these links, she may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, she earns from qualifying purchases.

Pleasure Scrolling

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Consider this my 4-3-2-1-0 cosmic edit of everything worth passing along. I hope you find a crumb or two in here that leads you somewhere good, too. And as always, please share what’s been lighting you up lately! 💫

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Happy Friday, everyone! Cosmic Crumbs now has 109 souls along for the ride, and I can’t tell you how excited I am each week to have the chance to build this community! I’m so grateful to have you here 🍪

Without further ado….

Literally talking to my nervous system

Lately, I’ve started quite literally talking to my nervous system—like I would a friend who’s going through a shame/burnout/perfectionism/fill-in-your-blank spiral. Instead of berating myself when I feel like I should be doing more, moving faster, or pushing through, I thank my nervous system for trying to keep me safe. And I remind it that whatever I know I need in that moment is safe, too.

Nervous system, it is safe to rest.

Nervous system, it is safe to go your own pace.

Make it your own:

If you want to try it yourself, notice the next moment you feel shame, fear, anxiety, or any other protective-but-unproductive feeling over doing something you know is actually right for you, and take 30 seconds to talk to your nervous system like you would a friend. Thank it for trying to protect you, then remind it that this new choice is safe, too. Sometimes, inner work really can be that simple.

Treating myself at a new (or tried-and-true) café

Anyone who has followed along with me on Notes knows that I loveee a coffee shop / bakery. I named my publication Cosmic Crumbs for goodness sake! I love a pastry, and have become something of a café connoisseur.

When I have a WFH day with my job, or I have some creative work I want to do over the weekend, I’ll frequently go to a local coffee shop or bakery and grab myself a nice matcha, a well-made and beautifully baked pastry, and truly relish the change of scenery for my eyes and my taste buds.

I have, quite seriously, found that third-place settings like a café are actually portals to our most observant, restful, in-flow selves. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a post about the most transformative & transportive cafes in the world I’ve been to. Any interest?? ☺️☕️

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Make it your own:

Check out Instagram, Google Maps, ask a friend, look in Facebook groups, or simply notice as you drive by a coffee shop or bakery that looks interesting. Pick a morning to check it out. Pack a book, your journal or laptop, and enjoy a treat!

Sought out stories from my childhood

It is said (at least by To Be Magnetic!) that our inner child holds our authentic self without the pain, shame, trauma, or programming we naturally incur as we grow up in the world.

The last few months, I’ve done meditations to connect with my inner child, read a story and even heard a recount of one from my aunt about how I was as a little girl, and am re-reading a journal that I kept between ages nine through nineteen.

The effect has been healing, and enlightening as I try to find my way back to that bright, daring, unafraid-of-anything little girl.

Make it your own:

• Ask your parents, relatives, or family friends to tell you a story about you as you grew up

• Re-read old journal entries, go through old schoolwork, look at old family photos or home movies

• Use the meditations within the TBM Pathway membership (there are dozens upon dozens!) to connect back with your inner child

Taking a nap

As a lifelong judger of those who napped, a head cold about a month ago simply necessitated me joining the ranks of those I judged.. the daytime nappers. I took a nap, and shockingly didn’t give myself hell for it.

I wrote a whole post about the experience, and the effect it had on regulating my nervous system — which was shockingly profound!

Make it your own:

If your body or mind is calling you to take a nap, or even just rest your eyes for ten minutes, do it. Talk to your protective parts and/or nervous system, and tell it that it’s safe to take the rest it needs.

Join over a hundred creators, dreamers, and purpose seekers honoring the cosmic crumbs that lead us back to our most expanded & aligned selves. 🍪

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Podcast: Spirit Babies, Soul-Led Living & The New Paradigm with Nikki Novo

by

I adored this podcast Elizabeth did with spiritual leader & intuitive Nikki Novo. It gave me such a dose of come-as-you-are-authentically energy I really needed, especially after I had a personally lackluster Lion’s Gate portal day on 8-8.

If you need a reminder that who you are at your core, without any programming or adjustments, is the most incredible and alive you you are, this is worth a listen!

Podcast: You’re Allowed to Let Go of the Plan You’ve Been Forcing

by

I’ve admired Les as a creator and a businesswoman for years now, and I felt a kinship in where she’s at with her journey to where I am in mine. Les built a media company from the ground up around her podcast and social media presence, and almost a decade in, she shares an intimate and vulnerable perspective - that she’s not totally sure she even wants it anymore.

If you’re at a crossroads in your career where you feel a ping to release all you’ve been fighting for, working hard for, building towards, this one is for you.

I Never Wanted to Be Anyone More Than the Best Version of Myself.

by

“I have never wanted to be anyone else. I have just been trying to close the distance between who I am and who I know I can be. That gap, the one between current me and her, is the only competition I have ever cared about winning.”

If you are channeling badass, higher self energy and want a reminder that she can be closer than you think if you look, this one is for you.

Handmade, hand-dyed, hand-pressed greeting cards

Specifically, this $28 monthly subscription from Farmette. I admit, I signed up for it after being influenced on IG, but I would do it all over again in a heartbeat!

This subscription comes with 4 cards, an affirmation, blank circles, and even an organic tea sachet from flower petals on their farm. Did I mention the dyes for their paper come from their own farm’s flowers??

Check out this video (for the instagrammers amongst us) for their process, it’s truly fascinating.

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

Oh, how I love a billionaire’s tale of woe. With real-life inspiration (as far as I can tell) from Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos’ lives, this story follows the daughter of a Jobs-esque billionaire who had just died unexpectedly as the book begins.

His daughter returns into the family fold five years after being exiled by her dad, and the who’s-who of the world’s business scions, dignitaries and VIPs descend upon the Storm family’s private island in New England to pay their respects. What could go wrong?

~ just because ~

This felt profound for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on. I’d woken up at 4:30 in the morning with my fiance so he could catch a flight for a business trip, and I used the extra time to drive up to NY to spend a couple days with my parents before my workday started.

I never would have seen this simple, yet stunning collage in the sky if I hadn’t been up. It made my whole day.

A roundup of my posts from this summer. Plus, some Notes that resonated the most :)

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See you next week, for my and ’s collab where we tell all about our respective weddings - hers past, and mine present!

It’s likely one of the most, if not the most, expensive items of clothing a woman will ever purchase.

It’s the one she makes an event (or, for some women, multiple events) out of finding.

It’s the sartorial factor meant to mark her departure from the open waters of singledom to the neat lanes within a pool, swimming side-by-side with her chosen spouse through life’s calms, ripples, and swells.

What dress, what outfit I say, could stand a chance against such great expectations?

In all honesty, I am envious of the brides who have an easy time finding the wedding dress or outfit that instantly made them feel like the best version of themselves for their big day. Or even if it wasn’t easy, I envy if it was enjoyable and ultimately rewarding.

To be sure, I am blessed in many ways when it comes to my *micro* wedding journey, perhaps most so by the expansiveness I’ve found in thinking about not only the physical prep, but the emotional and spiritual prep as well.

As far as the wedding outfit goes though, my heart goes out to the women who are in a similar boat of feeling like the magic you’re supposed to feel is just…missing. Or worse, that it passed you by because it’s not meant for you.

What I didn’t expect when beginning my wedding dress (as of now mine isn’t a dress, it’s separates) hunt was how it would bring up feelings and insecurities not necessarily about my body, but about how I approach conveying my identity and personality through my clothing choices.

Especially as I’m in a particularly liminal season of discovering who the hell I am and what the heck I want to both give and receive while I’m here in this great big beautiful world, it’s a timely moment in my life to give some thought to what I do want to convey through the clothes I choose to wear.

If any of this resonates or you want to talk about your own wedding pressures or triumphs, please don’t be shy 💕

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Frivolous.

That’s the word (and feeling) that comes to mind when I think about my own personal style and the money and time I dedicate to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing women online and IRL who are truly and genuinely expressing themselves and their personalities through their style. We have so many avenues to explore to express visually! Clothing, accessories, jewelry, shoes, hair, makeup, outerwear, nails — all of which can be found in an incalculable number of styles and varieties to, quite literally, suit your self.

Unsurprisingly, lately I’ve seen a handful of influencers I admire posting for euro summer. Of course they dress beautifully! And a lot of the time, they’re making money off of dressing beautifully because they link all of the pieces on their ShopMy and get affiliate commission when their community buys those pieces. More power to them, I say.

On many occasions I have clicked those very ShopMy buttons to check out the closets of my favorite online expanders, and for a fabulous but fleeting moment, I tell myself I can and will have that style, too.

And then, three things happen.

1. I look at the price tags of the exact or comparable pieces. I am financially blessed, and financially disciplined. I can afford a haul from Quince, or a basket full from TheRealReal or eBay or Poshmark.1

   But then I think about the other things I could buy with that money. Things I feel are more aligned with my values when it comes to spending. And I abandon the cart, after sometimes hours of online dopamine-fueled window shopping.

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2. I think about how often I would actually wear it. More than half the time, when I’m envisioning myself wearing one of these pieces, I immediately think of vacation. And while I do indeed take beautiful vacations a couple times a year, my life doesn’t live on vacation. If my immediate reaction to a new item is how great it will look during >4% of the year, and I struggle to envision wearing it in my day-to-day outings, it’s a no.

3. I think about whether it fits into the life I have.

   Not the life I aspire to but don’t actually want enough to make happen.

   Not the life I know looks good on Instagram.

   No. My actual, current life and lifestyle. I’m 29, and I like comfortable footwear, dammit. There, I said it! You’ll find me wearing my On sneakers with a pair of elastic waistband cotton shorts and a linen button down whilst traversing the perilous cobblestone lanes of the Amalfi Coast before you’ll ever find me in a very cute but even slightly uncomfortable pair of shoes or tailored dress that looks amazing. I would be fooling myself—and going against my true essence!—if I sacrificed one iota of physical comfort for the way something looks.

And those stop-me-from-going-overboard-or-losing-my-sh*t-or-my-bank-account thoughts are exactly what come up when I think of what I’ll wear to get married in October.

What a bride wears for her wedding day can be as big and special and important and meaningful as she wants it to. It can be all she’s ever dreamed of, or it can be another line item she checks off her to-do list because it gave her the least hassle.

Both choices are allowed & proud.

My ethos when it comes to personal style is: I dress to live. Not the other way around.

I thought I was done feeling guilty about not wearing what society wants me to wear, or what’s trending at the moment, or simply what I know will look better than it would feel.

But the big white dress of it all brought those feelings right to the surface.

I am normally a decisive person. I don’t typically have trouble knowing which option is what I truly want. I’m usually pretty quick to make a decision, accept it, and move on. But this wedding outfit scenario is throwing me for a loop in a way I truly did not expect.

At its core, it’s just a couple articles of clothing and accessories. But what it represents, and what society believes it represents and ingrains us all to believe, adds so many more layers and frankly quite a bit more pressure to a day that already has plenty.

A wedding dress is meant to convey the epitome of a woman’s style, taste, and *ahem* virtue 🙄 It’s expected to be the most important and expensive article of clothing she will ever wear. And then never wear again, ironically.

And maybe that’s a big part of the issue. My own perfectionist tendencies, combined with society’s expectation that this outfit is meant to represent the epitome of not only my personal style, but my personal taste and what I hope to convey about myself, my personality, and how I desire to be perceived, all wrapped into one garment, colluded to brew a perfect storm that had me seriously contemplating just wearing a chunky brown canvas rice sack for my big day. You know, the ones they sell at Costco? Ok I’m kidding about that last bit. Mostly. Talk about a statement dress.

That’s the problem though: I don’t entirely know what kind of woman I am yet. I’m in a season of actively figuring out who I am, what feels like me, and what I actually want to communicate about myself versus what I’m absorbing from others on the internet, even others I admire deeply! So how am I supposed to find the dress—the one magical garment meant to perfectly encapsulate my style, taste, personality, and essence—when I’m not even sure I could tell you what all of those are right now?

The reality is, I’m seven weeks out from my wedding and I’m not totally certain what the hell I’m going to wear. And I’m only having 12 people, total. I can’t fathom what the brides who are predisposed to this pressure have to go through for bigger weddings!

In the grand scheme of things, what we wear on our wedding day really doesn’t matter. The pressure we let sit on our shoulders is only real or valid if we allow it to be.

I want to be clear, I have complete respect for the woman whose wedding outfit does matter a great deal to her. I have a friend who had no fewer than four bridal appointments (that I heard about at least) in multiple states with multiple family members in tow before she found the “right” dress. She authentically wanted to find a dress that gave her the princess moment on her big day, and the experience was meaningful to her. That’s all that matters.

I suppose I’m writing this for the woman who feels like the odd one out for simply not caring too much about personal style, even for the day society tells us is the most important sartorial day of her life.

For the woman for whom “good enough” when getting dressed in the morning, is.

For the woman who has other modes of self expression that feel aligned and bring her joy.

For the woman wondering if something’s wrong with her because she never had the princess moment trying on a dress, and is questioning whether she needs to care.

I have a strong suspicion that, on my wedding day, I’ll step into my skirt, slip the top over my arms, strap up my kitten heels, fasten my jewelry, and don my accessories, and then look at myself in the mirror and think to myself, “sure, that’s just fine” and get on with what I’m actually looking forward to as a product of the day — marrying my forever man 💍💕

And that’s more than fine.

We’re doing a 12-person micro wedding at a boutique inn & spa in the Hudson Valley in October. I’m teaming up with the fabulous Substack-friend-turned-IRL-friend to bare our souls and give every juicy detail of our weddings for an upcoming post at the end of this month, but I wanted to share some of the quieter details from my perspective first, now that we’re getting closer.

Don’t get me wrong, I loveee pouring over other people’s “about my wedding” posts—including an especially fabulous one from Lucy herself focusing on her florals, where she shares her trademark perspective that transparency is the ultimate form of luxury—but I think there’s a gap in online writing about the emotional and spiritual components to what a bride does to prepare for her wedding.

So, while I won’t get into all the details of the wedding itself in this post (keep an eye out on August 28th for Lucy’s and my collab post for our respective wedding vibe, venues, initiations/stationary, and our budgets!), I’ll get really honest and real about the inner preparations that don’t usually make the headlines.

Let’s dive in!

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Honoring my introversion

If you even loosely know me, you know that I’m an introvert. I recharge my batteries and am able to shine my brightest light by having plenty of solitary time. When I am social, I like to see one friend at a time for a very intimate coffee meetup or walk where we’re able to go deep with one another. Thankfully, (and by design!) my fiancé is fairly similar in this and also enjoys a quiet social life.

So even the idea of a baker’s dozen party of my closest family members is a bit tiresome for me. Seeing them individually or in a small group at a time? Lovely. All of them together at once with us? *starts taking deep breaths to self sooth*

I know my social disposition. I know my social limits. But I recognize that this is one of the only times in my life where the people both I and my fiancé love most, and are loved by most, will be in one room together—and to honor us, no less—so I’m choosing the let the gratitude of that recognition win out over any social anxiety I may be having.

The act and implications of marriage

Getting married does not mean anything in your relationship will change overnight. It may, but for the average couple/the average partner, not much about tying the knot will prompt you to drastically or permanently change your behavior or the way you approach your relationship.

My fiancé and I have had conversations over the course of our 2+ year relationship about what behaviors/approaches we’d like the other to evolve as they’ve come up. Neither of us is expecting a chrysalis-shedding-its-cocoon-into-a-full-perfect-butterfly-partner moment in the days or weeks after we get married.

I think it’s fairly common to ask someone after they’ve married, “so, how do you feel?” I expect my answer to be that I feel exactly the same in my relationship. Nothing at all really is going to happen, other than the government taxing us differently—which, to be fair, is a pretty big deal financially will have financial implications if handled badly—but emotionally and relationally to one other, the act of getting married isn’t going to have much of an affect.

We already live together.

We already talk about everything in our hearts for our individual dreams and desires, and how the other can support.

We already have full transparency into every cent of each other’s finances.

For over a year now, I’ve been paying both our bills for us simply because I’m good at personal finance and I enjoy it.

We already talk about everything we dream our future will hold.

Honestly, the state of being married will probably be a bit boring. And that’s exactly how I want it!

Defining what unconditional love means

It is said that your relationship is your perfect and exact mirror. Your divine partner holds up a reflection of exactly what you are meant to work on in order to grow, heal, and become your highest divine self.

Relationships are our divine assignments for personal reflection and growth.

~ Gabby Bernstein

Sometimes that partner is necessary for a season of life. Sometimes for a couple years. Sometimes though, for an entire lifetime.

Here’s something that you don’t see many people overtly say: YOU are your longest, greatest, and most important relationship you’ll ever have. No one, not a husband, not even a child, can compare to the relationship you build, either knowingly or unknowingly, with yourself every. single. day.

As someone with a personal history of perfectionism and controlling tendencies, I had a huge wakeup call around our one-year mark where I questioned whether I believe in unconditional love. And what that query led to, what my fiancé inadvertently but divinely reflected to me, was me discovering that I hadn’t been loving myself unconditionally.

And at the end of the day, you can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t pour from an empty cup. And being in my relationship with my person has given me the chance to explore what unconditional love means—for myself, and for him as my partner.

Nutrition

For me, feeling my best, brightest, and most vibrant self depends on two main things — nutrition and sleep. Things in my day-to-day could go terribly wrong and have me all messed up, but if I prioritize eating really clean and in a nourishing way (instead of reaching for the quick sugar/simple carbs I know will bring a dopamine hit) I will still feel pretty good. Whereas, if things in my life are going great but my diet hasn’t been great, I’ll feel like there’s a distinct missing piece to feeling my actual best.

Movement

I have gone through phases in my life where I’ll work out consistently for a couple months, then not workout at all for a month or two, then get back on the workout routine.

In recent years, I’ve found modes of movement that are actually joyful, and I actually want to keep coming back to.

• Daily walks in the sunshine with my fiancé within ~45 mins of waking up

• MWH on-demand Pilates and strength classes 3-4X per week

  • I will say, I bought a hand weight set this past spring and it actually did level up the tone in my arms, which is a welcome effect

  • I also love following Melissa on IG, she has very uplifting (and aspirational lol) content

• Hot yoga 1X per week at my local studio in the fall, winter, and spring

• Road and gravel cycling in the warmer months - this is my bliss

I truly believe that exercise can and should be joyful. Who wants to force themselves to white knuckle their way through something that’s meant to contribute to their overall health and longevity?

If you love the idea of hardcore lifting and pushing your limits, join a Crossfit like my sister does! If the idea of being inside a gym with few windows and big dudes grunting every other minute gives you the skeeves, walk around your neighborhood or try kayaking. If you enjoy being outside and doing physical activity with a utility, volunteer at a farm or join your FIL in maintaining a forest of trees like my fiancé does.

Movement deserves to be beneficial not only for the body, but for the mind, too.

Skincare

Friends, skincare starts with what’s on your plate. When you eat clean and fresh, you look clean and fresh. That’s when I’ve always seen my skin look best — when I’m eating well, and following Michael Pollan’s classic advice: Eat real food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

But to add to my routine and level up my skincare, I’ll do the following.

Some context: as far as diet goes, I prioritize organic, seed oil-free, no fillers, etc 90% of the time. The same goes for my skincare. I don’t want to use skincare that disrupts my body’s natural processes or microbiome — I want to use products that support them.

So, the products I use an the regular are very high-quality, EWG verified (please please use EWG’s free Skin Deep database - I don’t buy a single personal care item or household cleaning product without running it) or a 1-rating/2-rating maximum. And yes, they have the price tag that reflects the exceptional quality.

• AM cleanser (only if I’ve actually sweat after a workout/sauna in the am. I am religious about taking off makeup the night before and doing a proper cleanse, so there’s no need to disrupt my skin with any cleansing product in the morning if it’s already clean.

• AM oil - all the scents are fabulous.

• AM & PM eye cream - it’s easy to apply with fingers and my concealer goes on well over top.

• Concealer - really hydrating and works well with my skin for under eyes and spots

• Lip and cheek color - it’s really nice on my cheeks. I don’t own a single makeup brush/applicator (hello, fingers) and it glides easily. For lips it’s also way creamier than a lipstick, which is what I was hoping for.

• Brow color - I use this whenever the mood strikes.

• PM makeup remover - LOVE this. And, I love that I don’t need to waste resources with cotton rounds anymore the way I did when I used micellar water to remove makeup. Plus, using it every night just feels luxurious.

• PM cleanser - it’s fun to shake up the bottle and watch both parts meld

• PM moisturizer with donkey milk 😉 - currently using this one I picked up in Lazio, Italy in the spring. When it runs out I’ll use this one, which I’ve used in the past and it’s justttt moisturizing enough for the warmer months.

Sauna

I use my Higher Dose blanket sauna 3X per week to sweat out as many toxins as possible. I find it feels great, and serves a great purpose!

Did you know that according to Finnish research, regular sauna use is linked to lower all-cause mortality, reduced cardiovascular disease risk, and decreased rates of dementia?! And it feels like being in a spa. Win-win!

I just make sure to exfoliate in the shower right after getting out, so the toxins and/or heavy metals don’t just reabsorb right back into my skin afterwards.

~Not~ defining our faith, together

When we met, we were each on a journey of finding faith in something greater than ourselves. Neither of us prescribes to any particular religious denomination, but we both have a faith that there’s a force out there, orchestrating and building our lives for the better.

In all honesty, we don’t pray together regularly. We don’t have many rituals to connect with our faith together. But it’s nice to have a partner who appreciates my “woo woo” spiritual beliefs and is down for anything I want to try out in terms of faith practices, and vice versa.

Doing it for the ‘gram

I think it’s easy to get so caught up in how things look that you risk forgetting how things feel.

I never posted on that I got engaged last May on my personal social media. A couple of weeks ago, I posted one of my Substacks on my IG story that included a sub-headline about my upcoming micro-wedding. Two people reached out to congratulate me, saying they had no idea. whoops.

Back then, I shared the news with people who I wanted to via phone calls, personal visits, FaceTimes, and text messages, and didn’t worry about sharing on a broad scale. I recognize that it’s ironic for me to say I’m a private person, but I think Substack has introduced a new kind of dynamic between sharing publically vs. staying private that we’re collectively exploring.

I’ll probably do one post on Instagram about our micro wedding, and that will be that. I really love the chance to share some photos on Substack along with soul-level commentary about it all. I think maybe we’re collectively oscillating from a picture being worth a thousand words to a thousand words being so much more revealing than a picture, and I am here for it.

Trusting in the divine, always

I remain completely, beautiful sure of the divine’s existence, and trust it more and more every day. I know that God is within my relationship and will be within my marriage, and I’m grateful that my fiancé feels the same.

Do you have any words of wisdom to share?? Any tales of woe or awe from your wedding or someone else’s? Please do share!

Leave a comment

xx

I’ve done something I haven’t done since literally childhood this past weekend.

It’s something lots of people do all the time, which I judged them for.

Called them (in my head) lazy. Time wasters. Silly people.

This weekend, in the midst of finally recovering from a cold, I………. took a nap.

Oh, the horror I felt! The shame! The self-indulgence! Dragging myself up the stairs to our bedroom after trying to read a book outside — I was resting, after all! I was letting myself off the hook from my never-ending to-do list! I was practicing self-care! But I literally could not keep my eyes open after just a few moments.

No, no. I was too weak. Too lazy for active rest.

These were the thoughts running through my head as I went upstairs during my climb of shame to bed at 3pm.

Not to mention, the sun was shining ever so gloriously, downright brilliantly outside during what was truly a perfect summer day. I was absolutely throwing away God’s bounty of sunshine and perfect temperature that afternoon by not being able to rouse my ass to simply read a book outside. I’m resting by doing it! Right?!

For shame, Sarah! For shame!

Meanwhile, ever since I listened to To Be Magnetic’s Expanded podcast episode last week, nervous system regulation has been on my mind quite a bit. The TL;DR of last week’s post was that I have, for my entire adult life, despite all the inner work and TBM work I’ve been doing, mistaken stress management for nervous system regulation. I’d thought that by purposely designing a life with very low levels of chronic stress, plus developing a toolkit for the moments of acute stress that are inevitable, I had regulated my nervous system.

But nope! Nervous system regulation (seriously, please do listen to the podcast it was exceptional and completely opened my eyes!) means recognizing the true role of the nervous system, its backlog of historical data for the way it has kept you safe in the past from little-t and big-T trauma, and how it uses that information to keep you safe now, often by (ironically) keeping you small and insular.

Since I am a very task-oriented, structured, Type A person, I’d been hyping myself up to design a nervous system regulation curriculum for myself. More TBM! More journaling! Add purposeful meditation to my routine! And make a schedule to keep myself on track!

But in that shame-forward moment of getting upstairs and crawling under the covers to allow myself the rest I quite literally needed, something in me snapped. Gave under? Found hope? Found God? Probably the last. I’m a big believer in divine signals and divine intervention, and I’d like to think that God was channeling through me in that moment.

Shame is many things. But most of all, it’s a clue. A clue of what you ought to look inward for, and see where there’s a disconnect between your actions and your nervous system’s belief that those actions are safe.

As I laid there, I started talking to my nervous system. More specifically, I started complimenting it. In the podcast episode, the guest spoke about the imperative to befriend your nervous system, and recognize it for its efforts — though sometimes those efforts are the opposite of what we want in order to outwardly grow, while trying to keep us safe from harm or the unknown.

So, I started talking to it like I would talk to a friend who’s going through a shame spiral.

“Nervous system, thank you for keeping me safe in the ways you know how.”

“Nervous system, you are so great at keeping me safe.”

“Nervous system, I appreciate that you’ve spent my entire life doing everything possible to keep me out of harm’s way. I know you are always looking out for me.”

“Nervous system, we’ve lived a busy life together, and now, it is safe to rest. It is safe to accept the rest we need.”

“Nervous system, it is safe to accept the rest we need.”

Reader, I felt more held, loved, and in touch with the divine flow of the universe’s current in that moment than I had in months.

I felt like I had a revelation. I don’t actually need a structured program for nervous system regulation? I don’t need to add another thing to my plate? I don’t need to organize yet another to-do list to do this??

Reader, take it from me, the queen of Type A task application… you don’t need more to regulate your nervous system and come home to yourself. To get started, all it takes is making a friend who’s been right there with you, all along.

Talking to my nervous system, and holding it, coddling it, giving it the love it’s been giving me for almost three decades, felt like an unlock. So much so that I wanted to try doing it some more.

So, when I came down from my nap an hour and a half later, and saw the sun still shining, I went back outside to try and resume my reading. But after a few minutes, it still felt like too much.

So instead of berating myself like I normally would, and basically making fun of myself and my nervous system, I remembered how amazing it felt to talk to that part of me as if it were my friend. Would I ever berate or chastise or humiliate my friend for wanting to rest? Of course not! So why have I been doing that to my own nervous system?

Outside on our balcony, sitting outside with my book and my hot tea, I realized that despite this gorgeous sunshine and my successful nap, I still didn’t have it in me to sit outside and read my book.

Instead of going through the entire shame spiral all over again, I spoke.

“Nervous system, it is safe to allow yourself to rest.”

“Nervous system, we are deserving of resting inside, no matter how beautiful the day is outside.”

“Nervous system, is it safe to continue to accept the rest we need.”

And I went back inside, plopped on the couch, and joyfully wasted the next three hours re-watching With Love, Meghan on Netflix. (Which btw is the most relaxing show out there. I love her wardrobe style, the Nancy Meyers-esque, well, everything, on that show, and watching other people cook elaborate dishes.)

And I did not spend these three hours alternating between scrolling IG on my phone, flipping through a magazine, reading posts on Substack, and window shopping for very un-extravagant wedding dresses (did I mention my wedding is in two and a half months and I’m still not certain what I’m wearing??) on TheRealReal.

No, reader, I was fully present in my rest and relaxation. There was no productivity whatsoever, and it was exactly what my nervous system needed.

Something similar happened the next morning. I woke up, went downstairs and discovered that I’d slept in until 9:40am!! Never in my most decadent fantasies have I ever, ever envisioned waking up past even 8am. So, after the initial abject horror passed, I spoke to my nervous system. Out loud, mind you!

“Nervous system, it is safe to take all the time I need this morning to give my body the rest it needs.”

And so on and so forth.

Then, my fiancé and I went for a walk at a local trail, and he—in a hilarious reversal of roles—was in the mood to go faster and more high-energy than I was. I’d hung back while he determinedly forged ahead a bit, and I took the opportunity to talk to my nervous system some more!

“Nervous system, it is safe to go your pace. It is safe to go as fast as you can, and no faster.”

“Nervous system, it is safe to be a bit more limited than your partner, you don’t have to push yourself one bit in order to keep up.”

“Nervous system, it is safe for us to go at a pace that’s sustainable and nourishing, even if it’s slower than someone else.“

The moral of the story

My point in telling this entire tale is that while programs and structure can be great—I do not regret a single moment or dollar I’ve spent on TBM, and have every intention of continuing—we don’t have to abide by the perfect picture of something we’re working on in ourselves. We don’t have to envision our inner work and then rigidly stick to that vision and only that vision.

Sometimes, the best healing comes in moments of spontaneity. The ones you weren’t expecting at all.

And it really can be as simple as taking 30 seconds to talk to yourself or your nervous system in the middle of doing something you may feel inner shame over, but know is what’s right for you.

As I wrote in last week’s post, that’s your nervous system remembering past trauma and prompting you to handle it differently this time, even if “differently” means keeping you small, shameful, or un-expanded.

The shame I feel about taking time for rest is my nervous system’s way of protecting me from “laziness” and the perceived negative impacts it feels from taking that rest.

Give it a try, and please do let me know in the comments or my DMs how you feel!

It may have been divine nervous system intervention all along…

And what’s wild is—and you can call me crazy here, that’s totally fine—I think my nervous system gave me the cold to begin with.

Ever since getting back on Substack after my Creativity Colonic, I’d been feeling overwhelmed by how much there is I should be doing, optimizing, writing, strategizing, growing, etc. Every time I came on the platform I was reminded of how much more I should be doing.

But what’s hilarious is, once I connected with my nervous system in a meaningful and maybe even life-changing way towards the end of my cold, I felt SO inspired to get back on this platform and draft Notes, get my posting schedule more clarified, ideate for new posts, some that came to me without my even trying!

I do think nervous system work & regulation is a huge key to unlock for so many of us, and I’m here to say this week that it doesn’t have to be anywhere near as complicated or time-intensive as you think it does.

Sending you a great big hug 💕

Let me back up. During my Creativity Colonic, I explored my personal line-in-the-sand between laziness and rest. I sat with the phenomenon of achieving and producing nothing. As someone who has tied personal worth and deservedness to achievement, this was deeply uncomfortable but deeply important to sit with for a few weeks.

And while it’s due in large part to plenty of inner factors, getting back on Substack — specifically in the Notes algorithm to grow — feels blocked. Feels like I’m trying to run a sprint through the deep end of a pool.

I know what I should do. I know the strategies around growth (shoutout to Olivia for teaching me all of them!). But when I sit down at my laptop — delightful candle burning, cozy outfit out, joyful beverage ready — I just don’t. Can’t? I end up doing anything but.

I watched Season 3 of Shrinking (amazing show on Apple tv+) and was struck by something one of the main characters (hi, Harrison Ford) said:

It’s fairly common advice. His character certainly isn’t the first person to say it. I certainly didn’t think I’d ever be so affected by this particular wisdom.

But here I am, taking more time than I’d thought, more time than I’d like, to get back on the horse.

Expressing myself vulnerably and authentically on Substack means something to me. It’s important to me.

I keep reminding myself of this new feeling I’ve seen from a lot of people creating:

The more we shine our brightest light unapologetically, the more we give others permission to do the same.

So, I’m being kind to myself. Giving myself a freaking break for quite possibly the first time in my adult life, but remembering that if there’s something I feel even a little bit called to create, there’s equally someone out there who needs to hear it.

So now, without further ado, a topic that’s been on my mind constantly for the past few weeks….

Wtf even is "Nervous System Regulation”??

“Nervous system regulation” is a big thing nowadays, huh?

I can hardly scroll through Instagram, listen to one of my usual podcasts or even read a novel that doesn’t at least mention the nervous system and the personal imperative to regulate it.

What does that even mean — “regulating” one’s nervous system? I’m someone who follows a strong handful of the popular wellness influencers online, I listen to functional medicine podcasts quite a bit, and would say I’m pretty into both alternative medicine and using lifestyle and diet as medicine.

So why did it shock me while listening to (of course, if you know me!) an episode To Be Magnetic’s Expanded podcast with Sarah Baldwin the other day about it that gave me a completely new take, and made me realize my idea of nervous system regulation was only a small piece of the puzzle?

Listen to the episode

What I’ve misunderstood

Listening to this podcast gave me a huge lightbulb moment…. I’ve been confusing stress management with nervous system regulation.

Of course, stress is piece of the puzzle. No nervous system can operate optimally if it’s constantly in fight-or-flight mode, analyzing every moment of the day for whether there’s a threat present.

So over the years, I’ve curated tools in my toolbox to help cope when stressors come up, such as:

• Putting my phone in a drawer and reading something

• Taking five minutes to do a breathing exercise, like one that comes with my Oura ring subscription

• Going for a walk in the natural light outside

• Pouring a glass of San Pellegrino with lime juice in the summer, or brewing a cup of tea in the winter

Not to brag…actually, yes, to brag indeed!!…my Oura app tells me that my stress management literally can’t get any better.

However, this episode explained brilliantly how there’s something much bigger going on below the surface.

The full(er) picture

Picture your nervous systems as your subconscious guardian angel. No matter what, its greatest and only intention is to keep you safe, especially emotionally and mentally, at any cost.

And assuming you are alive (nod your head “yes” for me) your nervous system has unilaterally succeeded in its mandate to keep you safe and alive thus far your entire life.

When something comes up as your go about your day, whether it’s an external stimulus or an internal desire, our nervous system is the line of defense it filters through.

Odds are, the base experience of whatever this new stimulus is is something your nervous system has encountered before. And the way your nervous system handled it then—successfully, seeing as you are still alive now—becomes historical data for the way your nervous system handles every similar stimulus moving forward. Because it worked the first time, right?

A couple examples to help bring it to life:

• You were bullied in middle school by a group of mean kids. You responded by complimenting them while simultaneously belittling yourself, and they mostly left you alone. Now, when you feel attacked by others, your nervous system’s instinct is for you to put yourself down.

• You had an unsafe home environment growing up, and could never predict your parents’ moods. You responded by making yourself scarce and being compliant. Now, when you sense instability in those close to you, your nervous system tells you to keep your head down and follow their rules.

• You had lots of big, wild, unhinged, creative ideas as a child that your caregiver never indulged. You responded by shutting down the part of your that innately dreamt big. Now, when you have a big idea, your nervous system’s response is to shoot it down before it’s even fully formed.

The moment you start going towards, or considering opening up to the thing you want, your nervous system immediately looks back to its historical data from lived experience. Are you trying to: Use your voice? Take up space? Take a risk? Make mistakes? Ask for help? Be your full self? Rely on someone else?

That was not safe in the past! Or, it was not available to us so we have no data on it, which is even scarier! Your nervous system thinks to itself, “why would she do that?? The last time she did that we were… fill in the negative outcome.” Harmed? Ridiculed? Ignored?

Thus, your nervous system blocks you from the thing you’re stepping towards that you consciously desire. Suddenly that guardian angel becomes your warden in the name of keeping you safe from perceived harm.

How your nervous system factors in manifesting your authentic dream life

If your nervous system believes that the thing you’re stepping towards is not safe—even if it’s something that consciously, you know is wonderful, beautiful, safe, and the best thing that could ever happen to you—it will stop you in your tracks, one way or another.

It may force you to shut down, to procrastinate, to have analysis paralysis — basically the ol’ fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Have you ever had something personally challenging but that you’re really excited for? It’s on your to-do list for the day, and you keep looking forward to working on it, you daydream about actually doing it, you fantasize about how great it will feel to start on…. all of a sudden, it’s 8pm, and you’ve just finished cleaning your bathroom for the third time? That’s your nervous system fighting hard to keep you safe from stepping toward something it believes is unsafe for you.

I once heard a favorite podcast host of mine joke that her apartment is never cleaner than when she’s moving towards a new launch for her business.

How MY nervous system is showing up this season

“One of the predominant reasons why so many of us struggle to live the lives we are called to live is because our nervous system does not yet know that that life is safe for us.

~ Sarah Baldwin

• It’s stopping me from expressing authentically as someone who spends a lot of money on things that bring me pleasure and inspiration rather than utility.

• It’s leading me to procrastinate and put off posting Notes and getting a bit more strategic about Cosmic Crumbs🍪, which I know I ought to in order to grow it and monetize it.

• It had me catch a cold right after having a big beautiful Alignment coaching session with Eric Roberts, where I had some really exciting breakthroughs that I wanted to start putting into action (check out the podcast ep I found him through here)

Our nervous systems would rather we be physically ill than face the underlying emotional hardship that it experienced trauma from in the past. In its eyes, it’s keeping us safe from that harm it knows is scary and terrible!

If I were to blow up on Substack right now, and get hundreds and hundreds of paid subscribers—or frankly, start any number of other businesses I’ve been marinating on—and be in a position to quit my corporate job that brings me little to no soul-level fulfillment, my nervous system wouldn’t be ready to really receive that blessing.

I’d freeze, unsure of what to do with that much aligned abundance.

Because my nervous system is still learning how to allow myself to accept myself as whole, worthy, and perfect the way I am.

I was bullied in middle school and high school. My shadow word is “awkward.” My nervous system knows that the last time I tried to be myself, to take up space, to have friends and be accepted and respected, I was ridiculed and outcast. Called awkward.

So why would my nervous system want me to go towards a scenario where I’m taking up space and living out loud as my fullest self? It wants nothing more than to protect me!

The truth is, I don’t feel ready right now in this moment to find financial success in things that bring me fulfillment and that come from my passion & purpose. I want to. I very, very much want to. I yearn for it. I even kick myself sometimes, in my less kind moments, for taking so long to get there.

But I know that befriending my nervous system and my inner child parts is the next step. And I’m so grateful I get to deepen my relationship with myself in this way, every day.

Shoutout to a writer and fellow TBMer——whose post “The fear of visibility is a double-edged sword” partly inspired this one, and even more importantly, the courage I needed to hit send.

If you saw my most recent post from June 5th, you know that I took a creativity colonic to cleanse all the external—albeit inspirational—voices from my head and heart and give myself the chance to turn inward to my own thoughts, desires, and intentions.

This is supposed to be the post where I tell you how all the answers to life’s myriad questions came to me like keys clicking into place in a lock’s intricate chamber. This is where I’m supposed to have it all figured out.

Womp womp. Big surprise — I have more questions than ever!

Existential questions.

Everyday questions.

Meaning-of-this-one-wild-and-precious-life questions.

On one hand, I sought things out that I’d been looking for clarity on, like my professional path and my relationship to control and perfectionism.

On the other hand, some answers to questions I didn’t even know I had just…popped right up, like the plethora of cute little baby bunnies scampering around lately on my morning walks.

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If you or anyone you know is struggling with a path forward, I’d recommend it. The Creativity Colonic, Rx. You heard it here first!

All my life, I’ve equated effort with outcome.

The input equals the output, right? To the point of burnout, unnecessary stress, fretting, and putting quite a bit of pressure on myself—I’ve led an effortful life because I believed it would “pay off in the end”.

When we have this mindset—believing we can determine our outcome via our performance—it becomes a perfect cocktail for controlling perfectionism. I’m self aware enough to recognize that there’ve been many instances and dynamics in my life where I’ve mistaken control for safety. I don’t want to do that anymore.

Because when someone with this relationship to control gets the opportunity to play in a sandbox, the sandbox often looks very nice - orderly, well thought-out, consistent. But it often lacks heart. Lacks the vibration of love & care. Feels shitty. And its caretaker is usually covered in mud, frantic, overworking to try and keep everything pristine. Substack had been that sandbox for me. All effort, all perception, almost all within the lens of how my creativity would perform.

But I don’t want to create from my heart and soul, earnestly and well-intentioned, thinking first about how it will be received or whether anyone would pay me money for it.

Thankfully, I’m returning with an entirely different perspective. I’ve been super inspired by To Be Magnetic’s mid-year Authenticity Challenge, with the core purpose of developing “f*ck it” energy. I’ll write plenty about my experience with the challenge in the coming weeks!

I reframed the women I subscribe to as people first, creators/writers second.

When I had distance from the steady stream of posts and Notes the women I subscribe to publish, I had the chance to think about them through the lens of their own lives and ambitions and desires and personalities.

I enjoyed that relationship far more than first and foremost thinking about how I can learn from what they’re doing in order to emulate them and one day have what they have. In getting distance from their work, I had the chance to appreciate them.

For me, there’s a thin line between restful downtime and toxic laziness.

Writing, reading, and forming connections consistently on Substack gave my days structure and routine. I was truly spending 2-4 hours almost every day on this platform. With that time then free, I

• Started up my Duolingo subscription again

• Read five books in full and started two others

• Began TBM’s mid-year challenge

• Gave myself permission to be lazy

Laziness doesn’t have to be a bad thing. When you do it in high self worth and are present with it, allowing it to be whatever it needs to be to charge your batteries, it can be really valuable in helping you get back to a place of feeling amazing.

But in my case—and I know myself well enough that this didn’t come as a big surprise—the lack of structure in my day-to-day brought me to a not-great-place and mental state.

I started deeply questioning the meaning of life and the meaning of fulfillment and purpose, but in kind of a melancholy or doomsday “what’s the point” way. Not a great feeling. Not a great perspective to be living in.

Whereas when I’m tinkering, even superficially, with some personal project or far-off dream, I still do come at these questions. But when it happens then, I come at them with a far more optimistic and excited POV that gets me excited and hopeful, rather than depleted and downtrodden.

No matter what I choose to do or not do in this life, I am worthy and deserving. Period.

Something that’s at the heart of To Be Magnetic and various spiritual leaders whose teachings I’ve engaged with is how each and every one of us is entirely worthy and deserving. Full stop.

I am worthy because I exist.

I am worthy because I was made in God’s image.

I am worthy because trillions upon trillions of stars, planets, atoms and molecules came together and conspired to bring me here into existence.

I do not have to prove my worth. I do not have to perform or earn to be whole and complete. I do not have to believe that my life will be complete once I *fill in your own blank*.

The opening Deep Imagining in this season’s TBM challenge stopped me in my tracks, where it stated:

THIS. THIS!!!!!!!

I swear I take an unconscious exhale just reading it.

And I get emotional thinking about how I am fully worthy of anything, without having to perform. To earn. To justify. Just because I exist.

Looking back, I promised myself that 2026 would be my highest self-worth year yet. I had fits and spurts of it, but now I feel like I’m through the woods and on a good vibrational alignment where I’m treating myself in the short term—joyful pastries, reruns on AppleTV, expensive facials at my local wellness barn—but balancing it with discipline that will serve me very well in the long term—regular workouts, bountiful whole food meals, and getting back into the swing of things on Substack.

There is no right way to live life.

There is no right way to pursue passion.

There is no right way to create the most gorgeous, sparkling, thrilling reality & life of your dreams.

Maybe I’m being too easy on myself. Maybe I should be doing more. Maybe I am leaving untapped potential on the table right now, in this season of life. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I started reading Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, during my time away, and one of the first sections blew me away. He wrote, “Your entire life is a form of self-expression. You exist as a creative being in a creative universe. A singular work of art.”

So, one way or another, let’s. make. art.

What to expect now from Cosmic Crumbs

I’ve spent my entire journey on Substack trying to define my “content pillars”.

I’m done. For now at least. I’m going to write about whatever lives rent-free in my thoughts & heart, whatever I’m screaming from the rooftops, whatever I am utterly lit up by.

And if that makes it more difficult for me to grow my subscribership or start making reliable side income from my writing, I’m more than okay with it.

I turned on paid subscriptions!

That being said, if you’ve resonated with my writing & perspectives thus far and you feel called to support, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Soon enough, I’ll play with the balance of putting certain elements behind the paywall for a more intimate community, hosting monthly challenges, and more.

I’m pretty amazed—and freaking proud!—of what a non-event it actually was to switch that toggle on.

And regardless, I truly hope if you’re reading this, my work has made you feel inspired, feel seen, or given you some slice of permission you’ve been waiting for to live out your best, brightest, most authentic life.

Every single birthday year before this one, I never would’ve called attention to it, let alone posted about it.

Every single year before this, I’d hoped that all my coworkers would forget.

Every single year before this, I wouldn’t have mentioned it to even my friends in the week or two beforehand.

When I was leaving for a college trip with a group of students I was friendly with on July 9, 2016, one of the administrators realized it was my birthday and asked me in front of everyone. I was quietly mortified and quickly said “yes, but I don’t really celebrate it” and changed the subject immediately.

In years past, and hell, even now sometimes, I’ve felt frivolous being celebrated for something I didn’t earn or achieve. I’ve literally said when explaining how it felt to someone, “I didn’t do anything, you know. Time simply marched on.”

I now recognize that the aversion to being celebrated simply for existing is horrid, awful shame. I’ve felt utterly unworthy of being celebrated without earning. Without achieving. Without proving myself.

But now, this year, I’m trying really hard to let myself be celebrated without having to prove that I’m worthy of it. I am worthy of it, simply because I exist. We all are.

It’s my birthday. My 29th year around the sun. And I’m here. I exist. I was created by all the stars and the planets and the Godly forces conspiring to bring me to life in this exact form. And I am worthy of being celebrated and honored regardless of anything beyond that fact. ❤️

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1. There is always, always a silver lining. You get to choose whether to look for it.

2. Comfortable sneakers > cute sandals on vacation is always the move. F*ck how you look in the photos.

3. I know what I value, and I’ve come a long way in how those values are reflected in my spending.

4. I’d take a home cooked meal with organic ingredients over the coolest new restaurant any day of the week.

5. 9:20pm is the ideal time for my head to hit the pillow.

6. I prefer seeing one friend at a time and doing a full deep dive into the most intimate corners of our lives than going out for a group outing and seeing lots of people at once.

7. 99.9% (my rough estimate) of perfumes are made with toxic fragrance and even if they weren’t, I’m just not a scent person.

8. I’ve done years of deep inner work. I’m very proud of the level of self awareness I’ve cultivated from it.

9. I don’t believe in sunscreen, and I don’t care if you think I’m a conspiracy theorist.

10. I have insecurity/shadow over being seen as someone who spends money on things that bring me pleasure and inspiration rather than utility.

11. Alcohol can be fun, but it’s never, ever worth the headache the next morning, after your mid-twenties.

12. Self-respect is the sexiest thing one can wear.

13. My soul is calling me to move to Italy for a year, and let it be a trust fall with the universe. My 29th year will be the one where my fiancé and I will decide whether we’re going to truly pursue making it happen.

14. Good posture can change literally everything.

15. Handwritten notes on thoughtful stationery is my love language.

16. My corporate path thus far has afforded me a lot — both monetarily and mentally. As much as I’m readying myself for a more fulfilling and impactful next chapter, I’m grateful for the launchpad and safety net it’s giving me.

17. Time is the most luxurious and aspirational resource of all.

18. There’s nothing wrong with purchasing an $88 candle, but it will not bring you fulfillment — despite what your favorite influencer portrays.

19. I deeply enjoy my own company. Perhaps more than anyone else on earth’s company. Going to a café and sitting with myself is my favorite thing.

20. I’m having trouble believing that I can make more money doing impactful, passion-driven work than I do at my corporate job. But that’s a limiting belief, and I’m working on overcoming it.

21. Money does buy happiness. It does not, however, buy fulfillment, sanity, love, peace, worthiness or self acceptance.

22. There are few things more relaxing at night than a cup of tea brewed while fully present.

23. In proper Mean Girls fashion, calling someone else fat won’t make you any thinner. Being jealous of someone else’s success at the thing you aspire to won’t make you any better at it.

24. Beginning my day with a 20-minute walk in the sunshine is my rock. My ritual. My sacred thing.

25. There is nary anything more delicious than warm bread dipped in proper EVOO.

26. I’m in better physical + mental + spiritual health now than I was in my early twenties, and I’m only getting healthier. That might be the thing I’m most proud of in this season.

27. Judgement is our own shame leaving the body.

28. I am just as worthy, deserving, and whole after achieving everything I’ll ever desire to as I am achieving nothing at all.

29. I am extraordinarily blessed.

Dear reader,

After nine months, thirty-six long form posts, countless meaningful connections—including virtual meetups and even a Substack-to-IRL friend made!—I have reached the milestone of 100+ subscribers!

It’s been a journey filled with creativity, self discovery, self enlightenment, and perhaps most exciting of all, admiration for watching other women share their lives in such a way it both enthralls and expands me.

I spent the last two months working on a rebrand for this publication, because where I began is not where I am now.

I’d started by writing about my deepening relationship with a benevolent, kind, totally-non-denominational Godly force, as a “recovering Catholic”.

I believe someone can have faith without adhering to a particular religion, while still being in touch with the beautiful and bountiful force of God. And that’s what I sought to explore and write about.

I wish I’d had a better experience with Catholicism growing up. I really do. While I now feel happy for anyone who genuinely enjoys being Catholic, the truth is, it left me with emotional trauma and programmed blocks that to this day I’m working hard to move past.

The Catholic experience I had was one of shaming, one of subjugation. One that, whether directly or not, conveyed that women are subordinate to men. That women’s bodies are secondary, and that a woman’s primary purpose is to reproduce children. That masturbation and physical pleasure aren’t for girls, and only loosely tolerated for boys. That gay people are wrong to exist the way they are. That a heavy, clenching shame is something one should wear like a second skin throughout one’s life. That if you do something wrong, you should beat yourself up and give yourself hell for it. Better to have never made any mistakes at all. Better to have been perfect.

It took years to even be able to read the word '“God” and not inwardly erupt in anger and judgement and derision toward the person who innocently wrote it.

Cosmic Crumbs

Through quite a bit of reprogramming and shedding over the better part of a decade, I completely redefined my concept of a divine force, and got to a place where I was excited and felt an awesome degree of community and co-creation with it, And yes, I eventually started calling this force “God.” I also call it the universe. Source. The divine. Sometimes she’s a woman. Other times he’s a man. For me, it matters a lot less what I label it than it does what I believe its intentions and might are.

I’ve found peace with my version of what God is, and peace in how I live out my days with my belief in this divinity.

So when it came to rebranding my work and words here on Substack, I wanted a name that spoke to my belief in a greater force, but that also spoke to my passions and what I’m currently writing about — the journey of inner work, exploration, and building a life that reflects one’s true and unique authenticity.

This is my Canva creation, which I am very proud of and think is just darling.

There’s just one problem - at this exact moment, it feels a bit… performative? Overwhelming? Unnecessary?

Like… I need the perfect name and the perfect logo and fleshed-out content pillars and a Notes strategy and dedicated time in my days for community management and to summon creativity on command and define paid tiers and to make money from my writing and to one day make enough money from my writing that I’ll be able to quit my corporate job and pursue writing and creative passions full-time and then I’ll be fulfilled and happy.

All from a logo swap.

To say, or to share?

Platforms like Substack—and all its social media & blogging predecessors—make it very easy to share.

But in an age of extreme ease to pull the trigger and release out into the world what you think, how you live, your perspectives and thoughts, it’s worth dedicating some time to think about the vast difference between the life you create vs. what you want to share about the life you create with strangers (even the ones that become friends) on the internet.

I’ve written about my life and private-turned-public thoughts thirty-six times in the last year, and now I’m not sure what I want to share. What’s more interesting is that I’m not sure I want to share anything for at least a little while.

Last week I took a long lunch to visit an arboretum with one of my girlfriends. It was one of those breathlessly gorgeous spring days with a gentle but refreshing breeze, the soft squish of saturated earth beneath your feet, and rays of sunlight that were literally visible.

As we strolled and chatted, I found myself, almost unconsciously, stopping to take some photos of the grounds. After a moment, I realized it was literally just so I could post them on Substack later. As truly delightful and incongruously magical Substack is—being both a social media platform and a charming corner of the internet—I knew I had a problem when I halted mid-sentence and mid-stride to capture a photo just to post on freaking social media.

That is absolutely not aligned with my truest authenticity or highest self.

And really, would me creating these posts and pouring my heart and soul and countless hours into getting my thoughts onto the page and producing a final work product I’m proud of be any less meaningful if I than if I privately printed and tucked the final draft away rather than send it to 100+ inboxes? Put it in a memory box in my office that I just show to my kids one day?

Would the wellness influencer/podcaster I’m slightly obsessed with (who does make, by my estimation and what she’s shared, over $300K or so per year through her business) be any less cool of a person if she didn’t post all of her wellness habits and practices online? If she just…lived them?

I don’t think so. I think she and I think I would still be pretty badass. Just not making income from those particular activities of badassery.

Should we aim to make income from our passions?

I’ve seen and been inspired by so many amazing women here on Substack who’ve turned what they share—their art, their creations—into income. I admire them more than I can say for their ability to do so, and ~ I admit ~ there are moments when I feel insufferably jealous of them.

A question I’ve been kicking around lately though as I explore all sorts of purpose and passion-driven work I could pursue is:

Should our ultimate aspiration be to derive income from our passions and/or purpose? Does our income have to stem from our authenticity? Or can authenticity, as long as your source of income doesn’t actively degrade it, be separate from what you do for work?

Can I go to my somewhat dull corporate job, spend the day around generally nice people and a lovely manager, sit outside in the sunny courtyard my office has, answer some emails and clickity-clackity spend the day monitoring a rarely overwhelming inbox, close my computer at 5pm then go home to my fiancé and my books and my baked goods and my friends and my joyful movement routine and my inner work and the walking trails around my home and be happy and truly living my best life?

Or do I have to pursue means of work and income that are aligned with my unique gifts to share with the world in order to be a self-actualized, enlightened, or “thriving” human?

I guess only I can answer that question.

I guess every one of us can only answer it for ourselves.

Is it so wrong to consider whether that’s the point of all this? This one little big life we have, to work at anything as few hours as possible to make as much money as possible to sustain your life’s authentic desires outside of that work?

food for thought

Give me the expensive artisan cheese

Am I a bad—or *shudder* inauthentic—person for enjoying the financial comfort that my unfulfilling income source affords me?

So far this year, I’ve considered all manner of business ventures through which I could share my aligned, unique gifts with the world and make an income from.

• Cafe operator

• Authenticity coach

• Book shop & tea bar owner (there would also be sourdough cookies, which is partly where “Cosmic Crumbs” came from 🍪)

• Astrology & Human Design-informed coach

• Marketing strategy consultant for small businesses

• Full time Substacker (mind you, after nine months I don’t currently offer paid subscriptions)

All in the name of creating and finding income-generating work that aligns with my authentic self.

And I’m just going to say it, the thing you’re not supposed to say - at this stage of my life, I would not consider quitting my corporate job if not for at least the chance of making more money from a purpose-aligned venture than I currently make.

I’m not a martyr. I’m not trying to be. No disrespect whatsoever to you if your perspective differs, but I have a healthy admiration of what money can do for me and the quality of my life.

I like taking expensive trips to Michelin-guide resorts in Italy every year.

I like exclusively buying organic food, even the organic pine nuts which are ridiculously fucking expensive but taste so good in my pesto. iykyk

I like casually buying my dad a 230 euro hand-hewn, hand-forged, hand-everything chef’s knife from this dude for Father’s Day just because I thought he’d enjoy hearing about the Umbrian shop I bought it in.

I like splurging on fancy facials and massages a few times a year and tipping well after.

I like spending my corporate-made dollars supporting woman-founded, freaking awesome businesses who clearly lead from passion & purpose, like her and her.

When I was working as a cheesemonger part-time simply because I loved it, I’d thought… if I were to quit my corporate job and work full-time at this cheese shop (which they’d offered me), I’d never be able to afford all the delicious, amazing, expensive artisan cheese I could if I stayed employed at a Fortune 500.

A Creativity Colonic, if you will

I heard once that the secret to happiness is finding peace and appreciation for what you already have.

I’d really like to give myself the chance to try that with my life and income as it currently is.

I realized I am following so many truly inspiring, wonderful, badass women across social media & Substack who make their income from passion using their unique gifts.

But what I’ve started to wonder is whether I actually want that too, or if I’m telling myself to want it based on how fun and exciting and courageous and fulfilling and rewarding as everyone I see makes it seem.

I don’t know the answer right now. What I do know is that I’m not going to find out by continuing to take in all these—albeit super amazing—external voices.

I want to see how I feel about my own life, inwardly, for a while without any input or inspiration from anyone, regardless of how much I may admire them.

There’s a fine line between feeling inspired and feeling jealous. Between feeling expanded and feeling like you’re not innately enough, just as you are. Just as your life is.

So, I’m officially becoming a digital hermit for the next two weeks as I dive into my inner world, my un-influenced feelings, and true desires.

I’m taking a break from social media in all forms. Instagram, Facebook, and yes, Substack—both as a reader and a writer, because imo it’s not cool to expect others to take in my creative work as I turn a blind eye to theirs.

It’ll be a creativity colonic, if you will.

I’ll dedicate all the free time I anticipate having, which would have otherwise been filled with drafting Notes just for the algorithm, scrolling my Substack feed, going down Reels and YouTube Shorts rabbit-holes, etc., to:

• To Be Magnetic’s mid-year Authenticity Challenge

• Reading books that challenge my current thinking

• Reading books that are pure feminine smut

• Going for solo walks in the sunshine sans podcast playing

• Catching up with friends on the phone and IRL

• Testing out a schedule to keep learning Italian

• Truly feeling into my current life and work, and whether it’s something I want to change for a chance at more fulfillment, or if I’m already fulfilled for this season of my life

• Finding & eating expensive artisanal cheese

I’ll probably come back online in two weeks when this is over, to be honest.

But maybe I’ll enjoy the offline time so much I won’t want to rejoin!

Or maybe I’ll come back in a few weeks absolutely prolific, words flowing onto the page like a river surging after a storm, and feel called to write how the experience impacted me.

Maybe I’ll feel called to document my entire experience and learnings offline as I go, discerning and alchemizing for…fun?! Not for the feed.

Either way, I’m giving myself the chance to feel into my true, unadulterated desires and authenticity, and simply see what comes of it.

See you on the other side 💗

One last thing…

I listened to a recent TBM episode where the guest spoke about how, after landing in somewhat dire straits of debt, she realized that if her traditional decision-making process led her to where she is, then it stands to reason that she should do the opposite of what she’d normally do to forge her path ahead. It benefitted her immensely, and now she’s a published author and thriving using her unique gifts.

Normally to announce what I’m going to below, I’d stay up until 11p (my bed begins calling to me daily at 8:50p) every night building the “perfect” landing page, massaging my messaging so hard it loses nearly all of its original texture, having a conniption over the color palette, and overthinking every moment of every day leading up to my sending it out.

So now, I’m doing the opposite of my overworked, Type A, perfectionist ways. And it feels ~ chef’s kiss ~

Even though I’ll be offline for the next two weeks, my fiancé has very generously agreed to keep an eye on my DMs in case you shoot over any questions.

Here’s to our continued growth, evolution, and coming into our brightest, most aligned selves! 🥂

I hope they do the same for you. As always I love hearing from you, so please don’t be shy to let me know what resonates and of course if you have any of your own practices that help you thrive! 💫

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Happy Friday, everyone! Modern Faith now has 98 souls on board, and I can’t tell you how excited I am each week to have the chance to build this community! I’m so grateful to have you here 💚

Without further ado….

Resting my phone facedown

Or putting it in a drawer altogether. I didn’t realize how much having my phone screen-side-up right next to me primed my nervous system to stay activated.

This change instantaneously makes difference in my ability to focus on what I’m doing without the omnipresent, dormant-but-distracting hope that it will light up with a notification.

Make it your own:

Challenge yourself to leave your phone facedown on your desk, table, or wherever for at least 45 minutes while you focus on something that matters to you. This is truly a Massive-with-a-capital-M change you can make that will help reset your dopamine signals and nervous systems jitters.

Post-workday “savasana”

As the yogis amongst us know, this is a restful post that happens at the end of a yoga session. I’ve started not only using it after yoga, but at the conclusion of any stretch of work. It signals that my workday has ended, and restful personal time has begun.

It helps me begin my evening with quite a bit more intention and peace.

Make it your own:

Give yourself just 3-5 minutes at the end of your work day to lie on your back on the floor, and truly feel each breath that enters and leaves your body. You’ll emerge feeling mentally and emotionally refreshed.

Put myself out there to make an in-person friend

I’ve learned that telling yourself how hard it is to make friends as an adult is not a promising beginning to making friends as an adult.

So, I’ve put it out there to the universe and taken aligned action to meet new women in-person, and one of them actually reached out to me and asked to meet for coffee!

Make it your own:

Start by literally saying aloud “it’s easy to make friends in my position.” You don’t have the believe it yet, you just have to voice it.

Then take some aligned action to put yourself out there, and the right person/people will be sent to you! I fully believe in the universe sending you exactly what & who you’re ready for and open to receiving.

Asked someone I admire how they built their business

I visited a bookstore & cakery concept in the Berkshires over the weekend, gorgeously called Books & Cake. I felt such joy being in their shop, and just loved nibbling on the cake slice while starting a new book I’d bought.

In my daydream fantasies, I think about the idea of opening up a bookshop + cafe concept, and I really enjoyed what these women built. So, I sent their store email address a cold email, letting them know I admire what they built and asking to pick their brains for a moment at their convenience.

I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m very proud of myself for reaching out and showing the universe that I’m open to taking a real step towards exploring the potentially reality of this daydream!

Make it your own:

I know you have someone that came to mind who you admire while you read that. This week, send them an email, a DM, or even better call them to tell them exactly why you admire what they’ve created, and ask if you could chat with them briefly when convenient for them to get insight on how they did it.

How to escape a career that makes you feel dead inside

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For those of us who do work that doesn’t fill us up, Kayti illustrates how running “career experiments” can act as a small step towards finding out what you truly love to work on.

Why your income isn’t matching your potential

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As Jaz wrote: "Wanting more money and being fully available for it are not the same thing." Once we do the inner work of identifying our limiting beliefs or incapacity to receive, the outcomes we desire will naturally find us as we level-up.

I did no work for a year and no one noticed

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If you have any suspicion that you’re in a bullsh*t job, please please please read this. And DM me if you have any thoughts you don’t want to post ;)

Simply Slow: Mail

A curated treat from a slow traveler influencer. She includes gorgeous postcards, a letter about each month’s destination, and a special surprise that’s unique to the place.

$15/month for a delightful snail mail experience I get to savor. Also, her Instagram for the mail club is truly dreamy.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

I know, I know. Sharing that I had a transformative experience by reading one of Liz Gilbert’s books isn’t exactly groundbreaking.

While I've had too many takeaways about this book to share here, the biggest was Elizabeth’s hot take that you shouldn’t create art with the intention of helping people. You should create art to make yourself happy, get something off your chest, or even save yourself.

Worth mulling over — the intention behind why you create, since I’d been under the impression that the only noble reason to create and put something out in the world is to help people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PS - would you be interested in a dedicated post about the transformative learnings I’ve had from the various creative living & self-improvement books I’ve taken in?

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These words were sealed over the tissue paper of my wedding outfit (not technically a dress!) when it arrived. I’ve come to equate “spectacular living” with aligned living, and this wedding outfit is exactly that, in sartorial form.

💍👰🏻‍♀️ Pssst.. I’ve been chatting with many former and current brides over the last few months about their journeys leading up to the big day, and it’s made me realize that between society pressure, family & friend expectations, budgetary factors and lots of other very personal considerations, very few of us have the perfectly authentic and exactly-as-we’d like-it wedding experience.

All these talks (and at times commiserations!) have inspired me to write about my own journey of planning a non-traditional micro wedding with:

• Twelve total guests

• No dance floor or aisle to walk down

• Not even a bouquet that I have to carry around

For at least one of the posts in this 4-part series before my October micro wedding, I’ll be spilling the tea and sharing completely transparent takes with , who had three wedding events and has lots to share!

Because every bride deserves exactly what she wants, and nothing that she doesn’t!

A roundup of my posts from the month. Plus, some Notes that resonated the most :)

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See you next week!

With the inner work I’ve been doing the last few years, I’ve come to recategorize my relationship with perfectionism. From one of contempt and conflict to that of respect and even symbiosis.

I’ve always been a perfectionist, even as a little girl. Though as I’ve grown up and continue to work on my relationship with myself, I’ve been grateful for the chance to unwrap and re-package a pattern that I’ve long considered infuriating.

Today’s writing goes out to all the perfectionists, the recovering “control freaks”, and anyone who’s ever delayed putting something out there because it “just wasn’t quite right yet.”

One of my earliest memories as a child, maybe four or five, is of hearing a faint knock on my bedroom door. I peered up from what I was in the middle of, and saw my dad poke his head into my room, then ask, in a soft, quiet voice, what I was doing.

It was the middle of the night, and I’d woken him up. In his defense, I’d been making a decent bit of noise well after midnight, hours after I should have been sound asleep.

Because I hadn’t been able to actually fall asleep for some reason or another, I decided to make the most of my time awake. I, for no reason at all, had decided to rearrange all the furniture in my room to pass the time. As a four-year-old.

If I drop into that memory and channel my highest self to look over my little four-year-old’s shoulder as she perfected for no reason, I imagine my highest self lovingly explaining to younger me what a compulsion is, and why she might be feeling it.

There’s no reason to fret, little one. Maybe you gave the wrong answer to the teacher today, maybe someone pulled on your pigtails or called you a name. That’s alright, darling girl. You cannot control how others behave, but you can choose how you let it affect you. You can choose, one day, if you aren’t able to today, for a worrisome experience to become a window into your inner world. Your inner confidence. Your own God-given right to find peace within, no matter what happens on the outside.

What I learned, as recently as the last couple of months, is that perfectionism and controlling tendencies usually go hand-in-hand.

Through my work doing To Be Magnetic1 (discount code in the footnotes if you’re interested 💕) and the ability to ask my parents about specific instances from my childhood—a blessing that I appreciate not everyone has—I’ve recognized that I felt a great need for control and perfection as a child, adolescent, young adult, and still today.

👋🏻 If my writing has helped you feel a little more seen, inspired, or aligned, I’d be so honored if you’d consider subscribing and/or pledging your support for this next chapter—where I’ll be offering community challenges, live sessions, interviews with people who’ve left conventional employment to pursue their passions, and even more ways for us to grow towards our most authentic, thriving lives together 💫

Subscribe now

During TBM’s Return To Magic December challenge last year, which served as a gateway into my inner child and manifestation work, I asked my mother if she could remember anything about me as a little girl where I displayed a yearning for control, or any compulsive tendency behaviors.

A memory came to mind for her, from when I was in the third grade. I was dressed to the nines and having a ripper of a Wednesday night at the Albany Convention Center as I attended my very first concert, the Cheetah Girls Live. I’d been decked out in a cheetah-print bubble mini skirt that I’d begged for my mom to buy me at Limited Too, with black leggings underneath and some sort of no doubt equally fabulous top.

As my mother retold it, while all the other little girls were screaming and singing their hearts out, I was sitting in my seat, head bowed as I wrote down everything I saw in my notebook, not wanting to forget a single thing. I barely remember anything from that concert.

But I’m realizing that perfectionism is a protective part of me. When my perfectionism rears its head, it’s acting as a way for my nervous system to sound the alarm. At what? Against whom? Sometimes it’s not always clear. But I’ve gotten to the point where I’m able to recognize it not only somewhat easily, but in the moment as it’s happening.

Just last week, I spent hours just staring at my Substack draft screen, waiting for the perfect blend of inspiration and motivation to strike.

Rather than getting mad at my perfectionism and pressuring myself to squash it down, I’ve learned to regard it as a gift.

After all, it’s an instantaneous feedback mechanism that alerts me of some perceived threat. I then have the opportunity to regard and assess that threat, and have a thoughtful, kind conversation with that part of me about why I’m so affected.

I’m sure it’s no surprise that the threat is basically never as bad as I’m perceiving it to be.

I think I used to believe that healing meant becoming a person who completely released perfectionism. Someone effortlessly relaxed, unbothered, utterly free—probably barefoot in a linen dress somewhere in the Italian countryside 🤷🏼‍♀️

But I don’t think that anymore.

I’m beginning to question whether so many of the qualities we try to tamp down are actually protective parts that developed for a reason. And maybe the inner work isn’t to muscle them into disappearing, but to lovingly let them know they don’t have to work so hard anymore.

So when my perfectionism & controlling tendencies inevitably tap me on the shoulder again—and trust me, they absolutely will—I hope I can continue meeting them with curiosity instead of contempt. Because underneath all that controlling and striving and nitpicking is usually just someone trying her best to feel safe, worthy, and deeply seen.

And really, aren’t we all?

Resources

If this topic resonates, I’ve included a few resources below that I’ve used to help explore the idea that our perfectionism, control, anxiety, and other protective tendencies may actually be parts of us trying to help.

Much of this work is informed by or overtly references Internal Family Systems, and if you feel called to go especially deep into your own parts, professional support and guidance can be incredibly valuable.

1. Expanded podcast | I listen to every single episode of the TBM podcast, and I’ve truly had countless lightbulb moments about myself and my inner world as I’ve listened.

2. Self Help book | This is Gabby Bernstein’s take on IFS work, and it was really a marvel to read about the therapeutic foundation of how our parts influence our everyday lives, as told in a very down-to-earth way.

3. No Bad Parts book | Dr. Richard Schwartz is the founder of the IFS therapy method, and this is the OG book that explains it. Great place to start if you want the foundational elements.

4. To Be Magnetic | I only began my TBM work in November last year, and I can confidently say it’s been the thing that set my life on a new trajectory, and a much more exciting direction.

Until next time!

I had something entirely different planned for this week’s post, but just in the last day or so I’ve been pinged to write about the dichotomy between a creator’s duty to authentic expression and their ability to earn a living from that creation.

Many of you are creators. Creators of businesses, brands, Substacks, and offerings to share with the world.

So maybe you’ve felt pressure to “find the product-market fit” or “get inside your target customer’s head” and “figure out exactly who you’re writing/cooking/acting/building for.” To fully understand who you are creating for, and ultimately selling to, before going too far down the path of your own creation.

If you’ve grappled with the degree to which you need to think about aligning your creation + art with who’s eventually going to be consuming it—what they want, what they’re looking for, what they need—this one’s for you.

** I’d like to mention that ’s posts have been extremely vindicating on this train of thought. Check out her Substack for utterly unapologetic takes on creating art—in whatever form you choose—and staying ruthlessly true to yourself in the process.**

I didn’t need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an MBA to know that when you’re planning to launch a product or business that you’ll monetize, you should probably check first whether there’s actually a market for it. (whoops, already did 🫠)

i.e. Does someone out there actually want to spend their money on what you’re planning to create and then sell?

But what about when you’re creating something that truly taps into what you believe you were put on this earth to create?

Something that, for this season of life, springs from you like a jack-in-the-box, simply unable to be contained within four sad, windowless walls for too long?

Even when you bring to life something that represents the essence of your soul’s expression, should you first consider who the target audience is?

I recognize that harsh, jargon words like “target audience” and “customer demographic” sit poorly next to the contextual melodies we hear when we think of “creation” and “artistry”. But, it’s worth enduring the dissonance to explore the relationship.

There are two schools of thought here.

Each thought has been used by creators far and wide, each with plenty of success. By business owners. By moguls. By the women opening up a neighborhood cafe. By the writer who’s come a long way from starting a Substack from zero 😉

On one hand…

If you have aspirations of making a livelihood off of what you bring into the world, whether that’s as a singer, a chef, a coach, an architect, or a writer, you do need to think about your market and your target patron or target customer.

You can create from the heart all you want. If you have no intention of making a living off what you create, then there’s no need to align your creation with anything but your own internal voice.

But if you’re creating something so pure, so original whose value may not be fully understood or appreciated by your audience, and thus they aren’t willing to exchange their money for it, you’ll have a tough time making a livelihood.

I was listening to a podcast this morning with who hosts “She’s So Lucky.” On this episode, Les vulnerably spoke about her journey with self-employment and creating a media empire.

One thing she touched on really stayed with me: sometimes you can create something genuinely valuable, expansive, even ahead of its time—but if people don’t yet understand the beauty of it or how it fits into their lives, they won’t buy into it. Not because it’s not good.

But because creation, if left unpackaged, can easily be misinterpreted.

This made me realize that there’s a big difference between compromising your authenticity in what you create vs. learning how to translate your vision into something your audience can actually grasp, desire, and then pay you for.

*Les also used betting in a casino as a metaphor for betting on yourself, which was pretty badass. So give it a listen! ♠️♣️

On the other hand…

Your duty to yourself as a creator and/or an artist is to create something that is truly authentic to you. Your vision. Your perspective. Your desire to bring something into this world you want to see exist.

Because if you’re creating something—pouring over it with your heart and soul and time and tears—to align with someone else’s vision or appetite, then what’s the point?

I listened to another podcast from Elizabeth Endres Orrigo over at , whose latest episode is an interview with the founder of Ghia, an alcohol-free apéritif.

This founder, , spoke about how she started her business by creating the exact drink she wanted. She created from her heart, something that she wished existed in the world.

And she pointed to how easily success comes when you operate from a place of flow — a place that’s typically only reached when operating from your heart & soul. From the “zone of genius”, where your unique talents and inherent passions converge into your creation.

So… what’s the right answer?

Creating from the heart in a way that expresses every irreplicable, luminescent detail of your desire? Or reverse engineering what the market needs & wants that you could uniquely bring to fruition in order to make a living?

Maybe it’s not one or the other.

Maybe it’s creating exactly what you feel called to create, feel excited to introduce to the world, but presented in such a way that resonates.

Thank you, big fancy expensive MBA that’s currently yellowing in a jam-packed storage bin at my parents’ house for your role in helping me come to that conclusion.

Sneak peak into a post coming soon…

I believe a great deal of the results you get have to do not only with which of these strategies you begin with, but the intention and energetics at play throughout your journey.

That is a much larger topic that deserves its own post, which is coming soon! For it, I’ll feature insights from a couple of my new Substack friends. Looking at you, and !

Stay tuned!

A big part of that mission, I now realize, is encouraging and helping others to do the same. It’s why I pivoted my Substack from a spirituality-focused publication to one that more overtly explores how we can each get in touch with our divine & God-given authenticity.

Today, I’m sharing my experience so far with a very buzzy concept, one that’s made a big difference in my journey and one that I wholeheartedly believe can do the same for you—manifestation.

While I certainly don’t have all the answers to manifesting exactly what I desire quite yet, I have given manifestation my all over the past 8 months.

To show for it, I have an absolute bounty of learnings—both personal and universal—to share with you. Learnings like:

• Why the old method of “magical thinking” your way into manifesting isn’t going to bring you what you truly desire

• The universe’s only wish for us is to live a life that’s fully aligned with our unique essence & gifts

• What’s meant for us will never miss us, and what misses us was never meant for us

And another learning that brings us right here — that it’s even more important to share the journey as it is to share the final destination.

And that’s exactly what I’m here to do. Today, and every week right in your inbox.

So, let’s dive in together.

Thinking of all the programs and modalities I’ve explored in the last few years in an effort to come closer to my purpose, manifestation has quickly risen to the top of the pile.

And not the old paradigm instruction of manifestation—the “magical thinking” way, where you’re not supposed to allow any doubt or negative thoughts to enter the chat, no matter how grandiose or out of reach the thing may be.

No, I’ve been exploring and having immense gratification (and success!) with a totally different approach.

As November last year rolled around, I was at the center of a perfect storm of exposure to things that would prompt me to dive into the manifestation work that is changing my life in real time.

• TBM’s founder, , had just released her book about the program’s ethos and purpose.

• To Be Magnetic (TBM) was promoting its end of year challenge—the Return to Magic Challenge—which it described as a “guided journey to reparent your inner child, reconnect with your magic, and step into this new year as your most confident, regulated, and magnetic self yet.”

So, I read the book, signed up for the subscription to the program, and dove head-first into the challenge.

What followed was a deeeep excavation of childhood memories and recognizing inner child wounds.

We all have them; no matter how idyllic our upbringings and our parents may have been, the human experience imparts scars. It is our divine opportunity to heal those scars and realign with our truest selves while we’re here.

I also became aware of the gap between the childlike, unburdened, unadulterated, completely authentic little girl within me—before any pain, shame, trauma, and programming—and the way I’m living now.

My current corporate career. My interactions. My relationships. My decisions, both big and small. Some of my desires that are actually ego-based.

The end of year challenge was called “Return to Magic” because TBM teaches that our most vibrant, luminous, authentic selves—stripped of the bullsh*t society or our families or relationships have imprinted on us—are already within us, and truly magical.

During that challenge and since, I’ve learned to deeply appreciate the inner work that forced me to peel back the layers and determine what truly is and is not my soul’s desire.

Becoming a Chief Marketing Officer of a Fortune 500 company by the time I’m 48? Not authentic to me. Even though from ages 20 to 24, I was absolutely hell-bent on it.

One day leaving corporate life altogether (joke’s on me for getting an MBA I’m still paying off lol) and becoming self-employed with the mission of helping people live their own most thriving, authentic lives? Joyous music to my soul’s ears 👏🏻

And you know what? I’d take difficult, and at times painful, rewarding, fulfilling personal work over magical thinking any day of the week.

The most surprising thing I’ve learned is that your manifestations can only come through once you’ve upleveled your self worth enough to properly and fully receive them.

In fact, I fondly describe TBM as a sort of self-guided therapy because you truly do excavate parts of yourself—the unconscious blocks and limiting beliefs—you didn’t know were playing a part in your life, even decades after they’ve left their mark.

You get to know your deepest, most hidden parts intimately. The more intimate, the better!

And when you do—when you put those dark parts up to the light and you forgive them, befriend them, and love them for the role they’ve played in making you exactly who you are now—that’s when the magic happens.

Because you get to co-create with the universe from your heart of hearts, not from ego or what you think you “should” manifest.

You call in the things that are genuinely authentic to you. Not in a personal brand way. Not in a content pillars way. Not in any way that’s for eventual consumption.

Just you. Your mind. Your heart. Your soul’s essence.

What this method of manifestation has taught me is that the universe’s only wish is for us to live fully in accordance with our most authentic selves.

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Stay with me here for a moment….

Take a breath in.

Release the breath out.

Open your heart, and imagine with me—

Imagine, even feel into your future, into the heart of your highest self. She/he is out there. She is living out every dream, every fantasy, every desire your soul has ever had. She moves through the world, her purpose, her relationships, her self worth, her faith in something greater than herself, with a level of grace and love and peace you have only a glimpse of right now.

She left the corporate job she felt unfulfilled by.

She met the partner of her dreams and shares a perfectly imperfect and everlasting love with him/her.

She found a job or created her own that utterly sparks her soul, one where she gets to share her divine gifts with the world every day through it.

When she looks at herself in the mirror, her very first impulse thought is, “Wow, I am absolutely radiant!”

She healed herself. She forgave herself and those around her who she needed to, whether they know it or not.

She looked at the ugliest, most scarred and battle-worn parts of her soul and she kissed them on the forehead. She gave them a balm only she could. She polished every tarnished piece and held it up to the light so it could shine the brightest when it was ready.

This version of you—your highest, most divine self—exists!! For me, and for you, and for every last one of us.

And really, how magical and beautiful is it that we get to co-create our best, brightest, most thriving reality with the divine as our fullest selves?

If this method sounds like something that would be rewarding and of interest, I truly can’t recommend To Be Magnetic enough. Their first step when casting your list is to write down “mini manifestations.” These work to strengthen your trust muscle in the universe as you begin the inner work.

Here was my list, if you’re curious. They all came to fruition within 30 days 🥰

Check out the program! If it resonates, you can use this link with code SARAH8397 for 15% off.

With so much love and gratitude,

Today, I’m excited—and a bit nervous in the best way—to share an update on the direction I see this Substack going for both me and you as I grow it on the journey toward uncovering my most aligned, authentic self.

What you’ll read below is a real-life, real-time retelling of alignment—of coming closer to one’s authenticity. It’s a story of exploring how one can share those gifts in a way that feels absolutely exhilarating.

I hope you’ll recognize some of the passion and curiosity to seek that I speak about in your own life.

While the exact story I share is about me, it’s a story I hear again and again nowadays from people in traditional employment that just isn’t aligned.

This isn’t just my story. It’s the universal story of a pendulum swinging back to authenticity. Back to soul-fulfilling alignment. I truly hope I do it justice.

And not just in this one post, but in every post. In every DM. In every Note, comment, phone call. Every interaction I have online or out in the world. Every move I make and dream I work towards.

Thank you so much for witnessing this story in my life. My greatest hope is that it spurs or encourages something in yours, too.

My goodness gracious… I have welcomed double the people into this community over the last 90 days!! Every time I get the notification that someone else has found enough value and interest in my writing to welcome me into their inbox, I literally rejoice.

It’s funny — until mid-March, my growth through subscriptions was fairly flat. I was publishing consistently (nearly) every Friday. So what changed?

Well, during that second week of March, I started having serious musings of what my life could feel like if I transitioned to full-time work that fed my soul. Work that felt like a way to offer my unique gifts to the world. Work that I felt divinely blessed to get to do every day. Not have to. Get to.

And guess what? Allowing myself to even wonder about taking action that would bring me closer to an aligned life gave me a flood of new eyes on my work over the next two weeks!

And when I jetted off to a “forget I am employed” level vacation to Lugano, Switzerland and Umbria, Italy that next week, I was given a divine gift. I saw artisans and craftspeople and hospitality mavens who’ve created or found work that truly lights their souls up.

In my experience, when you ask someone about their work, the light behind their eyes either dims a bit or absolutely explodes. Speaking to each one of these wonderful people reflected back an absolute fire 🔥

I am immensely grateful for that experience, since it pried my eyes wide open to a way of life where income could really and truly be made from passions. From purpose. From unique, inimitable gifts. The kind of God-given gift that only you can possess.

So, I encouraged myself to dream about soul-fulfilling work even more. Thinking about what it could look like. Crunching starting scenario and best-case scenario numbers. Outlining elements and seizing opportunities to further my own skills and passions.

And, I kept seeing writers on Substack who were transparent about their earnings. I saw new ads on Instagram of women who started insanely niche, clearly from-the-heart-and-soul businesses whose success with them was above and beyond anything they’d hoped for.

To summarize, I started at the tip of the iceberg of aligned action.

And guess what? THE UNIVERSE REWARDED ME GREATLY! I mean, double the number of people who’ve signed up to receive my work?? In just three months!!

When we uplevel our dreams to complement what our souls are truly here on this earth to do, the winds start blowing with us in a big way.

And if we get really honest with ourselves about what we truly want, we have the power to co-create absolute MAGIC.

Now, all of this goes to say that I am investing a lot of time, energy, and some money into what my writing and this Substack community can become!

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at some of the things coming down the pike:

• A rebrand! While I started this as a spirituality blog, as you can probably tell I’ve found my bliss in writing about my journey towards finding my purpose and the learnings I want to share. So, by this summer you’ll see a new look & name, but the same insights and still an overarching belief that we’re all being guided by a benevolent, divine force. 💫

• A new monthly interview series! This series will feature people telling their own stories of leaving traditional employment to pursue their passions and purpose.

  • My first interview will feature a friend of mine who just left his very stable six-figure commercial real estate job to apprentice as a boating captain in Key West! 🚤

• New post topics!

  • About how manifestation can help us come closer to our most aligned, thriving lives.

  • About my belief in universal, divine energetics and how we can co-create with them. ✍🏻

• And more!

And, with this iteration and evolution comes the time when I’ve looked impostor syndrome in the face, cowered from it for longer than I’d like to admit, and recently said “f*ck you, I’m deserving of this and I’m going for it!”

With that……

I’ve enabled pledges for paid subscriptions, which I’ll be officially opening up this summer.

This means, if you find value in my writing and want to pre-support this next step of finding on-purpose work, it would mean the absolute world to me if you considered pledging your support.

• When you pledge now, you will not be charged.

• In the next 2-3 months when I turn on paid subscriptions (I’ll give you at least a week’s notice) you’ll receive an automatic email to let you know your card has been charged.

• And of course, you can cancel anytime.

Along with what I mentioned above, I’ll be offering Substack Live sessions, monthly community challenges for paid subscribers, and even more that’s in the works! Plus, no paywall for any of my weekly posts.

Subscribe now

Regardless of whether you pledge now, I am truly so grateful you’re here with me and we get to do this work together!! 💙💙

P.S. What’s an extravagant, on-purpose fantasy you’ve had lately that absolutely lights you up? Full-time yoga instructor? Bookstore + coffee shop owner? Amazonian wilderness guide?

I’d truly LOVE to know and cheer you on 🎉

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I’m excited to share a new format for the last-Friday-of-the-month post — a 4-3-2-1 roundup of the practices, publications, and special treats that have impacted me this past month and helped bring me closer to my brightest, most aligned life.

I hope they do the same for you! As always I love hearing feedback, so let me know if anything resonates!

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To Be Magnetic

I will not stop shouting from the rooftops the immense impact TBM has had on my life. Truly, this work of personal excavation and aligning is guiding my life in a totally different and more spectacular direction than I ever thought.

And even more, it has given me permission to fully accept and embrace this version of myself and my life.

Make it your own:

Check out the program! If it resonates, you can use this link with code SARAH8397 for 15% off.

Please do comment or DM me if you want to know more about it! I’m happy to share and answer absolutely any questions :)

Morning Pages / Journaling

I’ll write a page or two in the morning about anything on my mind. I rarely give myself a specific writing agenda. I think in creative writing parlance you’d call it a “free write”?? I love putting pen to paper first thing in the morning and being present with myself and my thoughts before looking at my phone.

Make it your own:

If you’re new to journaling and want a creative outlet, try starting with: What stood out about my day yesterday, and what am I most looking forward to today?

For the seasoned journaling pros among us, try: What have my recent tests and triggers been trying to teach me — what does the universe need me to learn before I’m able to move up and on?

Getting natural light

Call me crazy, but getting light from the sun the way nature intended throughout the day (no sunglasses) wakes me up and keeps me more energized than any cup of coffee or matcha ever could. No joke. This is one of my non-negotiables every single day.

Now that the sun is rising closer to 6am, I lovee waking up according to the natural light. By 6:10a it’s basically fully light in New Jersey, so I get out of bed, go downstairs, and take my journal outside for a nice little habit stack.

Make it your own:

Commit to going outside for at least 10 minutes of sunlight within 1 hour after waking — do not stare at a screen during this time, sorry to say but that defeats the purpose.

See what kind of effect it has on your mood and energy throughout the day, and even your sleep that evening!

Unfollowing accounts that don’t serve me

Get ruthless here… you are a product of what you consume. Physically yes, but mentally too.

Make it your own:

Choose one platform—Instagram, Facebook, your inbox, the marketing text messages you forget you opted into—and unfollow/ unsubscribe/ “stop” / whatever you need to do to protect your peace and your headspace.

This life is too precious & short to allow in voices that don’t lift you up.

How I Built a Paid Substack Tier That Earns $40K+ a Year (Steal My Strategy!)

by . Olivia has a knack for including an entire course-worth of very actionable material in a post and making it super easily digestible. In a recent Note, she explained this strategy as “you can scroll through it in 3 minutes or pour over it for 3 hours.”

Olivia shares often that she wasn’t taking a big audience from Instagram or podcasting with her when she began. Literally in the past few months, she’s gone from ~1K subscribers to now over 20K and I truly couldn’t be happier for her. She’s giving major Expander energy! If you’re trying to build or grow a Substack, give this a read.

Why don’t your friends support your art?

by . Amie’s four theories resonated with me not only through the lens of friendships, but more so society as a whole. Especially Theory #2 — it can bring up a lot of intense feelings to see someone you admire doing something you want to be doing, but perhaps tell yourself stories as to why you can’t.

In other words, jealousy. Jealousy can be a very useful emotion to discover what you truly want.

As long as you give yourself permission to really explore it and live it out to the fullest degree you desire.

If our grandmas had Oura rings

by . As someone who remains devoted to her Oura ring, I can appreciate the risk we accept when we use tracking devices that provide a report card of how optimally we’re living our lives.

As the author wrote, “Would she [grandmother] have wrapped up a party early and said, “If I don’t go to bed now, I won’t get my eight hours. Nighty night,” and missed the rolling laughter at 2 a.m. around the table with friends—the honest, real wellness of life?”

But I also do believe in personal optimizations and the joys that the journey of deepening your relationship with yourself brings. So, this post stuck with me because it gave a handy reframe of how we can approach this optimization dynamic with more balance.

Truly Crunchy Magazine — their tagline says it all: A thoughtfully curated and beautifully crafted wellness magazine for women, by women. It’s a quarterly publication, one which I very much look forward to receiving.

My favorite features from the latest issue were:

• Eat your skincare by Anna Person, founder of Root Avenue Natural Skincare — about how tinned fish can be a superfood addition to any diet and help you glow from the inside out. (to be clear…I’m vegetarian, but still found the article fascinating)

• The Cost of Constant Reflection by Ashley, founder of A Nourished Mother — about how humans were never meant to look at themselves in mirrors all day every day

The View From Lake Como by Adriana Trigiani

I ordered this from my library specifically to read during my recent trip to Italy where I contemplated the role of purpose in our income, and it did not disappoint.

The summary describes it as, “a novel about one woman’s quest to build her own life before it’s too late.” As a woman who’s also on a path towards building the life of my own dreams, it landed exactly where it needed to.

My wonderful hot yoga instructor (shoutout to Ashley in the Morristown, NJ area!) read this poem during savasana earlier this week, and I just loved it. It was the perfect ending to a practice that felt especially rooted in surrender.

I hope it speaks to you, too 💕

A roundup of my posts from the month. Plus, some Notes that resonated the most :)

See you next week!

Being a cancer sun sign, I really connect with the summer season and find such an appreciation for all things sunshine, warmth, bounty, and the spontaneous vibes that summer uniquely brings. My recent astrology session experience helped give me the language and validation to realize that.

This week, I am thrilled to be able to share some of my lived experience that has helped me come closer to finding my purpose. If you are a Manifesting Generator (determined via a framework called Human Design — you can check yours for free, you just need to know the exact time of day you were born) or someone who finds themselves bouncing between passions and interests, this one is for you.

Please take this as permission to reframe what some people may think of as “quitting” the moment you lose interest in something to being guided by passion and what truly lights your soul up and refusing to settle for anything less.

You may have guilted yourself (or listened to others guilting you) for “not being able to commit” or “getting bored too easily.” But it’s not about that.

It’s about giving yourself the grace to move between projects, passions, interests, jobs, and containers that truly align with who you are and what you value in a given moment.

What sparks true joy and meaning at a given time in your life.

What speaks to your soul and makes you want to go all-in.

While there is immense importance in seeing your commitments through, especially if others are truly depending on you, no one gives you a medal for white-knuckling your way through something that feels out of alignment or like you’re doing yourself a disservice by continuing — and just as critically, something that you are no longer able to show up to as your full self.

So today, I’m excited to air out the random—and possibly even bizarre—threads of passion I’ve followed over the last few years. All of which were an absolute blast while they lasted, and have led me to exactly where I am today in their own ways.

Welcome to my wacky life for the last ~three years. It’s been random. It’s been out of left field. It’s been freaking awesome. There was a point in the spring of 2024 where I had my full-time corporate job, and held THREE part-time jobs.

What’s funny is, I felt so invigorated and so excited to go to my three other jobs because they didn’t feel like work. I literally would have paid them to be able to do what I was doing.

Without further ado… In the past three years, I’ve been:

🧀 A cheesemonger behind a counter of over 150 cheeses

For about a year between spring of 2023 and summer of 2024, I had a part-time job at a large local independent wine store, which had a massive cheese counter too (genius).

After being raised on Kraft singles and shelf-stable powdered “Parmesan”, I took a great deal of interest in the Trader Joe’s cheese selection during college. Their brie was my gateway drug of choice.

It got to the point where I was reading books about cheese, spending a decent bit of my corporate paycheck on cheese, visiting creameries in the Hudson Valley on the weekends, seeking out cheese shops with immense dedication during my travels regionally and abroad.

So I figured (and with the help of a very pushy in the best way friend of mine), why the heck shouldn’t I just get a part-time job as a cheesemonger? So, reader, that is precisely what I did.

I had more fun than any employee ought to, and loved fully immersing myself in the cheese world. I even made cheese friends and went to a cheese rave at a warehouse in Brooklyn!! (Mom, don’t read that)

And then, quite simply, my passion shifted. You could say it fizzled, you could say I quit. You could say I gave up. But really, I got every bit of delight and awe out of that experience and my passion for the cheese world that I was meant to. So, away we go.

The throughline:

As Glennon Doyle says, “we can do hard things.”

I’d never worked in a customer-facing role before and was a bit terrified since my main job involves monitoring an inbox in a secluded cubicle all day. But pulling the trigger and applying for this job, and then actually starting it and sticking with it, gave me the confidence to recognize that I can indeed do hard things, especially things I feel imposter syndrome about.

🍷 A wine sales associate pouring glasses for a gaggle of the best regulars ever

At the shop as where I cheesemonger-ed, it was mainly a wine shop, and cheese was really just an add-on. The majority of the business’s sales came from wine purchases.

This shop was a in a close-knit, veryy suburban and affluent town in Northern NJ. The sales of both cheese and wine were impacted greatly by how congenial and helpful the salespeople were on the floor.

When the store manager saw how well I was doing behind the cheese counter, they asked if I’d be interested in being the “Saturday Wine Sampler” who mans a wine counter and pours tastes of the featured wines of the week.

I loved wine and exploring how one of the world’s great beverages pairs with one of the world’s great foods, so it was an enthusiastic “yes” from me.

I was excited to learn more, but afraid about the customers—some of whom were extremely wealthy and very discerning (read: snooty)—would ask me technical questions I knew nothing about.

I left for many reasons. The main one was because my passions shifted, and there’s only so much time in a day! Plus, the amount of free wine I got to take home (you can’t sell open bottles) was started to feel significantly unaligned with my health goals, and I’m proud of myself for recognizing that. Nowadays, I drink alcohol about 2-4 times per month, and even that I’d like to cut back on.

The throughline:

Guess what… I did get asked lots of questions from people who knew far more about wine than I did. Plenty of them, I did not know the answers to.

But I learned that when you are genuinely enthusiastic about something and lead from authenticity and the heart, people are more than happy to support you and share knowledge — and even buy your product.

And when the few snooty folks who don’t take kindly to a bubbly young woman with limited knowledge trying to sell them something and then they make it known, bless them. Anyone who acts like that is probably dealing with a lot more than you’ll ever know.

⌨️ The Cheese Coach: cheese blogger and content creator

This passion pursuit was truly a blast. Through my instagram—The Cheese Coach—and blog of the same name, I documented all of the yummy goodness that my time as a cheese & wine professional afforded me.

And, I even made a cheese friend in my area who’s now a regular ol’ everything friend 😊

The throughline:

I mean, I think my IG Reels speak for themselves lol

Before starting my Substack though, I went back and read through my blog to hype myself up and remind myself what a good writer I am. And I totally agreed with myself.

But even more than that, I remembered that I wrote every single bit of copy myself, without the help of any AI whatsoever to proofread or critique me! AI didn’t even exist for the average consumer (I think?) three years ago! I felt sooooo hyped after that realization, and it certainly gave me a jolt of confidence to begin writing Modern Faith.

🧘🏼‍♀️ A yoga studio team member

This was my first foray into a passion that had a spiritual component, and I absolutely loved it. I have always found that yoga studios with “regulars” who come in week after week have lots of exceptional vibes, and the studio I worked for was a great example.

When in community with like-minded people who are committed to not only their physical health, but furthering their physical and spiritual practices, you just feel that you’re in concert with the divine forces of the world.

Though I wasn’t a yoga instructor, I was stationed at the front check-in desk of the studio and got the students all set for class. In exchange, I received free unlimited yoga each month. I’d do it again!

The throughline:

Much of my journey to release the Catholic perspective towards the faith of my youth was taught by yoga teachers I encountered in college and in the years after.

I really don’t think I’d be where I am in my journey of spirituality without the amazing exposure I’ve had to yoga and all of my instructors. Thank you 💕

📲 A small-business owner for social media management

Last year, I was curious about a grounded, stable, and safe way to build up side income so I could eventually transition away from corporate work.

My friend owns a high-end travel agency, and she was looking for someone to run her social media. Since I’ve worked as a freelancer by word-of-mouth and recommendations in the past, I happily partnered with her.

If you’re curious and/or want travel inspo, check out her company’s Instagram!

The throughline:

Registering an LLC with the state of NJ gave me such ✨girlboss. I loved it. And contrary to what many creatives who strike out on their own may prefer, I actually love the back-end admin of running a business.

I love keeping spreadsheets of expenses. Drafting agreements. Staying organized for tax season. One of my zones of genius is left-brain organization, and I get to lean into it as a business owner.

👩🏼‍💻 A Substacker who writes about the journey towards a fully aligned, on-purpose life that’s uniquely our own

The throughline:

This truly is “my favorite corner of the internet”. Every time I pop onto this platform, I feel lit up.

By my own capacity to create.

By other people putting out their unique perspectives and gifts, who support others that do the same.

Substack will be one of my homes for the foreseeable future, and I am absolutely honored that you’re here 💫

All this goes to say that if you have something on your mind or in your heart that’s calling to you, that keeps popping up in your field of fantasy, something you daydream about… PURSUE IT. The more random and bizarre, THE BETTER!!

This is not a dress rehearsal.

We’ve only got one chance to, as Gwyneth says, “really milk the sh*t out of this.”

You never know where it might lead.

Today I’m writing from 35,000 feet as I make my way back from a wonderful vacation with my fiancé. I’ve spent a glorious, leisurely two weeks in Lugano, Switzerland and the Umbria region of Italy.

As a foreward to this week’s post, I want to share something personal.

I’ve always been a bit reserved about money — How much someone makes. How one chooses to spend what they make. One’s ambition to make more.

Today’s post—something that’s been very strongly on my mind lately as I write about the role of purpose and the steps I’m taking to find mine—explores the role of purpose and passion in work and income. Whether you can or should make your purpose your side hustle, your job, or even your livelihood.

I have truly been in awe of so many women I’ve seen in the Substackiverse who have been able to turn their writing—the content of which is usually borne from their authentic gift(s)—into meaningful side income or even their main income stream.

Backing up a bit, I grew up with very little exposure to entrepreneurs. The norm I saw as a kid was adults who viewed their traditional jobs as something to endure. Something that, beyond the paycheck, offered very little. Something to trudge through from 9 to 5, that often was a source of dissatisfaction and loathing.

If you’ve been here for a little while, you know that I am conscious of being unfulfilled in my corporate job. (Disclaimer: I very much appreciate and do not take at all for granted the very real blessings of it—the steady paycheck, the health insurance, paid time off, a safe work environment, etc)

But as I see more and more creators leaving traditional structures of work and carving out paths of meaningful, soul-fulfilling income, I feel it in my heart and in my bones that the universe will support me if I decide I want to pursue the same.

In fact, I have utter and total faith that when ANY of us recognize an area of our lives where we are living in conflict with our unique alignment, the universe sends us messages and signs to lean into exploring how we can get back to our authenticity.

I’ve seen that many of you write Substacks or have passion projects of your own that you may be looking to grow, so please consider this your sign to explore the possibilities 💫

It’s late morning in a hilltop Umbrian town in Italy. Pasticceria owners whose doors have been long open for the day are joined by proprietors of shops lined down cobblestone streets older than my country. “Aperto” signs now grace nearly all the shop doors, announcing a town that’s open for business.

We’re in Orvieto, a beautiful, lovely town enclosed by medieval walls dating back to the 13th century.

While equipped with all the modern conveniences one would expect from a regionally well-known large town in Italy, Orvieto gives a distinct old world vibe. And not just because of the architecture, which is still going strong after almost a thousand years.

No, no, what really left an impression on me about Orvieto that I’m honored and excited to share with you, is how tightly concentrated this town was with artisans, real and true artisans who were invigorated to share their craft and creations with the world via their shops.

I patronized a ceramics shop whose studio was neatly attached to the store; I literally had to interrupt the owner from her work in order to buy my new mug!

I bought a hand-carved, hand-hewn knife from a very nice man, who graciously spent almost thirty minutes explaining how he takes a block of metal and a block of wood and creates stunning kitchen knives from the raw materials — and even demonstrated some of the process for us in his workshop right in the back of his store.

I spent a particularly lovely time in a shop that sells hand-dyed, leather-bound journals along with quills & ink pots and wax stamps — Fun Fact: I am a big proponent of journaling and have kept a journal since the fifth grade! I may or may not have picked up two that spoke to me 😉 Along with my very first quill!

Each proprietor/owner/artisan was even more happy than the last to share not only their final product with me, but their process. Their art form, their passion, and maybe even their purpose. It wasn’t about a sale, it was about appreciation. About care. Craftsmanship and craftswomanship.

Where I’m going with this is: something shifted in me in Orvieto.

Watching these artists work, speak about, and share their craft so openly, I felt what it looks like to be in full alignment with what you’re here to do. To work from a place not of financial pressure, but from devotion. And to trust—truly trust—that there is a way to be monetarily supported by your authentic gifts.

For the first time, that path didn’t feel abstract or like it was for other people, but not for me. It felt possible. Like it’s already unfolding, even 🥰

Because I’m starting to see more and more examples of it. Here. In my own life. In this community!

So while I may still be in my corporate role today, I’m starting to fully embrace and believe that it doesn’t need to be the final chapter by any means.

And I don’t have it all figured out—not even close—but I can feel that I’m on the path. That there is a path. One where purpose and income don’t have to be mutually exclusive the way I’ve believed for so much of my life.

My deepest wish—for myself, and for each of you—is that we allow ourselves to explore that path. To stay curious. To follow the universe’s and our own intuitive pings. To believe that a life that feels aligned, expansive, and deeply fulfilling is not only possible, but completely ours to pursue and find financial success in.

And that we get to figure it out in real time, together 💕

Further reading

I’m honored for the chance to get closer to our authentic purpose, together.

I’m very excited to write about my recent foray into astrology, where I had my very first birth chart reading. Since the new year, I’ve been getting pings from the universe to explore astrology more. I’ve been having this feeling that somehow, learning about astrology is going to tie into the journey I’m on to discover my purpose.

Whether astrology will actually be a part of my purpose is to be determined, but I believe that gathering all of the information about ourselves we possibly can will have an outsize effect on helping us truly know our selves as deeply as possible. And if you’ve been with me here for a little while, you know that purpose is top of mind and heart.

So, I was excited to have found through a back issue of The Retreat newspaper. Anna’s positive presence and approachability really shone through her writing, and I felt great about booking a session with her.

I am very glad I did, because I truly had such a fantastic experience and learned a lot about not only astrology—its purpose, its application potential—but also about the specific energetics at play in my own chart!

If you’re curious to book a session of your own with Anna, you will be glad you did! :)

I truly hope you enjoy hearing about my experience, and learn something if you’ve been contemplating learning a bit about how the astrologic forces can affect you in our day-to-day, and even entire lives.

And don’t miss the list of resources at the end for exploring your own astrology! Let me know what you think ☺️

For Ease of Navigation Through the Guide:

Reasons to Have an Astrology Chart Reading

Expectations Going In + What I Hoped to Gain

The Experience

General Astrology Things I Learned

Biggest Takeaways

Resources to Play and Get Curious

Glossary

Reasons to Have an Astrology Chart Reading

No matter your stage of life, no matter your journey’s direction or progression, I believe you could benefit from an astrology reading.

If you go into it with an open mind, and find an astrologer from a verifiable or trusted source like I did, then you can’t go wrong!

Maybe….

• You want clarity on the stage of life you’re in and how you can work with your unique energetics to make the most of it

• You’re curious about the aspects of your personality and propensities that reign in your day-to-day life

• You feel out of alignment in the life you’ve built

• You want to learn about your unique strengths and potential blind spots

• You want clarity on the things you’re doing and why you do them, the way something in your life has been playing out

• You’re simply curious about a new way to get to know yourself

Expectations Going In + What I Hoped to Gain

Being completely new to astrology—literally, I only knew “I’m a cancer!” and had no real clue what that means on either a stereotypical or practical basis—I went into the session with almost no expectations. I figured I’d have a casual 60-minute chat with a nice woman who was recommended via a publication I trust, and maybe learn something about myself that resonated.

Specifically though, I was hoping that some of these questions—and YES I am exactly the type of person who makes lists of literally everything floating around my head—would get answered.

If you’ve never had a reading before and you decide to, I’d recommend really giving some thought beforehand to what you’re hoping to gain from it.

Recognize that you may not necessarily get the exact answers you seek (or are hoping for) and allow for the experience to be open-ended.

Have faith to surrender the result, and trust that what’s meant to come of it will.

The Experience

Having never met Anna before, her presence was exactly what I’d been hoping for — warm, inviting, highly knowledgeable, and excited to be chatting with me.

She started by asking what my level of experience with astrology is, whether I knew of any of the components of my birth chart. My answer was a resounding “no” and that was okay!

It’s completely fine to approach an astrology session without having any knowledge of astrology whatsoever. In fact, Anna was really happy about me having a blank slate to build upon!

Right before we started digging into everything, Anna started recording our Zoom session so she could send it to me after. I didn’t realize how helpful that’d be, but I’ve already rewatched it! I highly recommend checking with your astrologer to see if they’ll record your session and send it to you after.

What are the energetics of your chart? Not necessarily who you are, but what energies you naturally lean towards, maybe are deficient in, and can cultivate and stoke at any given point in your life to enhance what you’re working towards.

~Anna Hull

General Astrology Things I Learned

• The sign we all know most commonly is your sun sign

• Even though we all have the twelve zodiac signs in our chart, there are three most prevalent signs: sun sign, rising sign, and moon sign

  • The sun sign may be what your ego or conscious mind gravitates towards

  • The rising sign is your soul’s truest expression

  • The moon sign represents your emotional inner world—how you process and respond to feelings

• My signs are

  • Cancer sun

  • Sagittarius rising

  • Virgo moon

• There are twelve houses in astrology - each represents a particular area of our collective experience. For example, the 7th house represents partnerships and relationships. The 9th house represents travel, philosophy, and higher learning.

• The North Node can signal the direction your soul is meant to grow toward in this lifetime

• The South Node represents the patterns and comfort zones you naturally fall back on, or the experiences you’ve already had in a previous lifetime

If none of these things mean any sense, that’s okay! I wouldn’t have had a clue about any of them before my session, either. If your interest is piqued, leave or comment or DM me and we can learn together!

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Biggest Takeaways

• My sun sign — cancer is a water sign. However, neither of my other major signs (sagittarius and virgo) are water signs. In astrology, water can be permeable, and those who have dominant water in their charts can have trouble setting boundaries. But with only a bit of water, my chart indicates I’d be perceptive rather than permeable.

  • How it landed: I totally resonate with this... I do feel that one of my authentic gifts is to perceive others’ emotions, moods, states of mind. When my social battery is fully charged, I can read + work a room with the best of ‘em. I have also worked hard to strengthen my confidence on personal boundaries in my adult life post-bullying experiences in high school, and I am thankful to now feel a lot of ease saying “no” to things that don’t align. As taught in my TBM practice: the most magnetic word is “no.”

• Cancer’s time period (June 21 through July 22) marks the beginning of summer, and summer intensifying. Flora and fauna are in the height of bloom, and they bear quite a bounty during this time. So, people with cancer sun signs are known to bring things to life, and be nurturing of their fruits in whatever form they may take.

  • How it landed: I do find a lot of satisfaction in watching something I create come to life. Feeling like I’m co-creating with the universe to birth something. Plus, to nurture someone else’s cares, worries and dreams gives me immense gratification. I think I’m good at holding space for others’ experiences, while encouraging action and thriving.

• My rising sign — sagittarius is a fire sign. It uplifts, it represents energy rising, bubbling, pushing through to the surface. It wants to move forward, move faster, go further. To learn more, to connect deeper, to make moves. The keyword for sagittarius is “freedom.”

  • How it landed: When I get the urge or idea to do something, you can count on me researching, making to-do lists, reaching out to relevant people, carving out time, and making moves to either explore it to the fullest until I determine I’m no longer interested, or until it comes to life. In the sense of nurturing my passions and interests, this is right up my alley!

• My moon sign — Virgo is an earth sign. It’s grounded, and is the sign of discernment + alchemy. Virgo discerns all of the observations and experiences one has, and alchemizes all of those data points in such a way to be most helpful to others in sharing knowledge or helping with something.

  • How it landed: You’re reading my Substack right at this very moment, right? 😉

• Interestingly, virgo falls in my tenth house—the house of career, reputation and legacy. So, when I’m living out of alignment and my soul isn’t able to pick up on the things it yearns to experience and discern, I feel it very loudly.

  • How it landed: This hit! Totally spot on, I have been questioning my alignment in my current career path, and it’s really been amplified since discovering Substack and having exposure to all the incredible writers who are living their lives out loud, and helping people via their lived experience.

Overall, we spoke about how I feel so many threads of interest and passion that I feel called to explore. But, I’ve been feeling confused because once I explore them, I follow them, and then I get bored and move on.

I’ve been guilting myself about that part quite a bit, in all honesty.

But, Anna shared that I don’t have to. I have a pretty varied chart and energetics surrounding my soul, so it’s literally only natural for my soul to express itself and follow curiosity in varied ways.

In the last three years, I’ve been a cheesemonger, a wine sales associate, a yoga studio gal, owner of a social media business, writer of this Substack, and there’s probably more I’m forgetting.

Anna gave me the cosmic permission slip I needed by showing me that not only is there immense beauty in following all these different passions, but for me — it’s the point.

Each passion I follow allows me to gain experience and wisdom that I will inform the next, and I’m building upon my lived experience in real time.

I feel even more blessed to be able to share that experience with my friends and family, and just as much with you right here 💚

The more you allow your passions to breathe and weave, the more they will flow and fulfill you.

~ Anna Hull

Resources to Play and Get Curious

• Human Design — to learn about your unique Energy Type

  • Here’s a great episode from Move With Heart all about Human Design featuring Jenna Zoe— the woman who has popularized it to be as big as it is today

• Co-Star — to get a free copy of your Natal Chart

• Anna Hull’s Substack — a lovely go-to resource straight from my astrologer

• Podcast episodes that gave me the astrology ping so far this year

  • Expanded: Why You Feel Disconnected From Your Intuition (And How to Reclaim It) with Taylor Paige

  • The Sakara Life Podcast: Finding Purpose in the Planets with Susan Miller

Have any astrology-related podcasts, Substacks, books, Instagram accounts for your dose of astrology? Let me know!!

Glossary

• Birth chart / Natal chart — A personalized snapshot of the sky at the exact moment you were born, which shape the unique energies of who you are

• Zodiac sign — Twelve archetypes that describe different personality traits and ways of moving through the world. We each have three zodiac signs: sun, rising, and moon

• Sun sign — The part of you you’re most aware of and identify with, and the most typical sign you associate with/buy jewelry based on

• Moon sign — Your inner emotional world. How you feel, process, and respond beneath the surface.

• Rising sign — The energy you naturally lead with. How others experience you and how you step into new situations

• House — A specific area of life (like love, career, or home) where different parts of your chart show up and play out

• Planet — Each planet represents a different part of you, like how you think, love, act, and communicate

• Elements (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) — The four energy styles that shape the signs

  • Fire - passionate and action-oriented

  • Earth - grounded and practical

  • Air - curious and communicative

  • Water - intuitive and emotion-oriented

I truly hope you got something out of this guide and reading about my experience as a total newbie to astrology—maybe even wanting to dip a toe in for yourself!

First impressions of our base city—Lugano—are: very clean & tidy, everyone dresses so effortlessly sophisticated (find me wearing tube socks and running shoes), and it’s a very social city at night with aperitivos & wine bars reigning supreme.

I’m very much looking forward to the “mental escape” aspect of this getaway. As you can tell from previous posts and this one below, I’ve been exploring (perseverating on?) Purpose quite a bit.

What is purpose?

Why do we feel pressure, or simply feel called, to find ours?

How do we find ours?

What do we do once we’ve gotten a glimpse—or a fully fledged eye full—of what our purpose could be?

Enjoy, and please do let me know your own thoughts on purpose in the comments 💌

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What is the purpose of purpose?

I believe wholeheartedly that the divine force co-creates with each of our souls to give us unique gifts. These gifts can then manifest as our purpose here on earth. A knack for knitting? A curiosity towards coaching? An affinity for aiding afflictions? These are all examples of purpose.

One of these examples shows thoughtfulness and perhaps provides some warmth on a brisk day. One of them can improve someone’s quality of life, career and relationships significantly. And one of them can mend sickness, injuries and even save lives.

When it comes to the deep inner work of mustering up the courage and fortitude to bring your gifts to life in the world—and honor your most authentic self through them—every gift is vitally important.

I’ve come to believe that when something is created with good, honest intentions and to the fullest extent of one’s abilities, the outcome is secondary to the process and the purity.

A recent example I found in the wilds of Instagram: I can only imagine that this woman, Lauren, who grows herbs and flowers on her farm in California and then hand-makes paper using a 17-step process, then dyes the paper with her freaking herbs and flowers(!!!) is living out her soul’s purpose.

I was truly inspired and in awe when I saw this, and signed up for her stationary subscription club right away.

Candidly, in my time of self-exploration and introspection over the past few months, I have been putting a pretty heavy amount of pressure on myself to find my purpose. I’ve been thinking that once I find my purpose, that’ll be it!

I’ll quit my corporate job and be a soul-business entrepreneur!

I’ll find fulfillment and happiness and alignment and everything will be perfect every day!

I’ll have my whole life figured out!

It mayyy have been possible I wasn’t living fully in reality.

I am very grateful for the challenge of perspective that gave me during a creative consult session I had with her. Carley, who is an Expander1 of mine, very astutely and considerately pointed out that one’s purpose doesn’t have to be their end-all / be-all.

Purpose can be something in the here and now. Purpose can literally serve a purpose during a given moment in time or season of life.

She recounted a story from ’s book Big Magic that was straightforward but immensely effective. If you’ve been grappling with your purpose and would like to relieve any pressure you may feel to find yours, I hope reading a recap of it brings you value.

As Carley told it…Elizabeth wrote about a moment as she walked past a man at the top of a ladder, painting an outdoor mural. She saw that his ladder was about to roll too far from where he was painting, so Elizabeth scurried over and held the ladder in place.

For almost an hour, she stood at the bottom of the ladder, holding it so this man could continue his mural—his art—uninterrupted. As he finished his work, Elizabeth continued on her way.

Later, she reflected on whether holding that ladder was her purpose. If helping someone else create their art and share their authentic gifts was her purpose in that moment.

I truly appreciated hearing this. I felt vindicated more than anything else.

Vindicated because if one of the world’s foremost authors of both fiction and nonfiction can assert that her purpose—regardless of timeframe—was holding a ladder so another artist could do their work without interruption, then I certainly do not have to put anywhere near the amount of pressure I had been on myself to find and live out mine!

I am exploring in my own time, and thanks very much to Carley for helping me reach that realization.

And, I’ve given myself permission to stop questioning:

• Whether I should monetize my purpose

• Whether I should aim to make my unique gifts as full-time work

• What age or stage of life I need to have my purpose figured out by

If you’ve been questioning any of these things, I hope it gives you permission, too. 💕

PS... the astrologer I had a session with spoke about purpose, too! I’ll be writing about that session and sharing findings that can apply to everyone next Friday. See you then!

After my winter of achieving nothing—and being quite proud of it—reminders of a thaw and the bloom that naturally follows seem especially fitting. I’ve receded within myself these last few months, in an effort to introspect. To peel back. To properly witness my desires, motivations, and dreams.

As I wrote in that post, I’ve learned a great deal. But what I’m even more excited by is how my journey has revealed how much there still is to learn about me.

I am a marvel. Every one of us is! A unique, beautiful, divine being with valleys and depths not even an ocean could fathom.

As I have found, with exploration into the self comes a healthy (and heavy) dose of questioning. Questioning what we’re doing with our lives. What we were put on this earth to do. To share. To give. Questioning the purpose of it all. And how what we’ve been spending our time and energy on thus far ties into—or perhaps, does not tie into—why we believe we’re here.

I’ve had plenty of “aha!” moments so far where I’ve uncovered things like:

• Getting closer to my purpose and how it can show up in what I do each day

  • Having a proper come-to-Jesus with myself and finally admitting that I want to bring something into this world that goes beyond my 9-to-5 day job—and reminding myself that it’s more than okay to let go of an aspiration I once had to climb the corporate ladder

• Limiting beliefs and blocks I’ve been carrying around from childhood, as we all do in our unique ways

  • Growing up, I really didn’t have any exposure to entrepreneurial people. My family and close adult connections had job titles that were perfectly captured by a neat and tidy one-liner that fit into someone else’s narrative. So, I’ve never seen being a founder as something “for me”

• How I can bring myself closer to my God-given Creative spark

  • I read a Substack author write, “Creativity fills the soul. Consumption drains it.” And boy does that ring true. I feel my consciousness expand and enter a state of co-creation (even for a fleeting moment) when I create, write, ideate, walk outside, express gratitude. Conversely, I can feel myself contract when I scroll Instagram for too long, obsess over my to-do list, putter around the house more than needed. Creativity is a surefire path to channeling the divinity within you.

• I truly love connecting 1:1 with people who want to find everyday ways to deepen their spiritual practice—and connect more deeply with themselves in the process

  • Who knows, maybe my purpose will manifest as a spirituality & well-being coach one day :)

And the most significant realization I’ve had so far to share with you is that every single one of us deserves to spend our time on the things that feel aligned with our purpose, even if we don’t know what that purpose(s) is yet.

I plan on spending this next Spring season still doing the inner work, but tangibly working towards bringing it to life. For me — and for you! — this can look like:

• Shooting my shot to ask people I admire (and/or feel a healthy jealousy of) how they got their start

• Investing in creative coaching sessions with digital and analog creators I admire

• Having a chart-reading session with an astrologer (!!)1

• Staying open to creative-minded cohorts that present themselves

• Catching the imposter syndrome voice inside my head and REFUSING to allow it to keep me small and comfortable, when I know the universe’s intention for me, and for every one of us, is to expansively take up every bit of space we feel called to in this world

This has been a season of discovery. Of turning inward. Of uncovering what was always there, waiting for me to be ready to see it.

And now, like the first signs of spring, I feel ready to begin bringing it to life. To follow the path I’ve been quietly co-creating with the universe—and to share what I find along the way.

It means more than I can say that you’re here with me.

If my writing ever makes you feel a little more seen, a little more understood, or encourages you to follow something stirring within you—please know I am rooting for you 💕

What will you bring to light this season?

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With so much gratitude,