The Bedroom, 1889, Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)

“Zombies” by the Cranberries was playing overhead as I decided between the Maine and the Connecticut lobster roll. I usually go for something warm on the menu, but today I was a little more indecisive. “What’s in your heaAaAad?”

I glanced up to catch a screen in front of my eyes that read, “9-1-1” in neon letters. It transported me back to seeing an unknown caller flash across my cellphone at the coffee shop earlier that morning with the last digits, “9-1-1.” This number had been a recurring theme for months now. In fact, I had just parked behind a white Toyota with Texas plates ending in “9-1-1.”

Some people are into numerology and will extrapolate meaning from this. Personally, I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole. I think a lot esoteric avenues can create a hamster wheel of addiction. I prefer to just observe and acknowledge, and then find out how it all comes together in the end. I’ve entered my season of releasing control. That’s typically what happens after everything you once tried to control turned out uncontrollable.

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So three 9-1-1’s in one day, huh?

It’s usually not that prevalent, but the day was an energetically heavier day to say the least, so I’m not surprised.

I briefly contemplated the meaning of it all with only bits of information, which is usually the case in these synchronistic moments. An old friend used to say, the numbers were indicative of my alignment to first responder energy, being a nurse and all. The mystic in me recognized it as pointing to something much more connected. Moments that are interwoven through time and space; a little signal, but not a glimmer or a warning necessarily, just alignment. Something to catch my attention. Nothing quite like the symbol of an emergency to do that, right? My spirit guides must have a sense of humor.

What stirs up in me when I see 9-1-1 is a sense of anticipation. I anticipate a moment where I will need to be prepared for the ball to drop, so to speak: an event that will take my breath away and leave me with a hollowness in my chest.

Something I had been contemplating earlier this week post breath work meditation was the concept of internal safety. I recognized I had not been the most aware in relation to whether or not I was actively cultivating it for myself as of late. I had at times outsourced it. It was quite easy to do with someone regularly in my presence. But during this particular meditation an answer to a question I had been rolling around in my head came through.

You see there is this moment before bed where the conscious and the unconscious meet. I don’t know enough about sleeping to tell you what is actually happening, but I can tell you what it feels like. I become aware that my hearing goes offline. There’s an absence of sound not even earplugs could accomplish. A dreamscape from the night before or even years prior appear before me, ready to go. I see a short recap play out of the previous dream and how it ended as well as options of where to take it next.

“Choose your adventure!”

I’ve always had vivid and lucid dreams. This doesn’t scare me. What comes after does.

This hollowness within my chest broadcasts itself: Fear. I fight the anesthesia of sleep, and lose, but not before I consciously witness my subconscious assert dominance. This experience of passing the torch of thought feels like I’m gasping between dimensions. I recognize there is more to me than this 3-D experience. Mind you, this is all happening within seconds. The brief existential awareness appears to be mocking my alert self.

“Why do you concern yourself with frivolous matters, when all of this is really going on behind the veil?”

I don’t feel safe in this space. I feel exposed and deeply solo. Even though I’m journeying to a familiar dreamscape, the passage to the other side feels void of any comfort.

“In your head, they are fighting.

What’s in your head? In your head?

Zombie? Zombie?”

I love it when the environment’s music perfectly fits my inner world, as if I’m on a reality TV show with a curated playlist chosen to fit the clips. I snap back to my thoughts and away from my Dolores O’Riordan impression.

It’s apparent the minds are shifting authority aggressively while transiting into slumber. But why? Why not peacefully?

“When was the first time I felt this way?” I asked myself.

Splat!

A picture of me falling asleep surfaced. There I was in my first apartment, alone, in a distant city without friends or family nearby. I filled my nights with projects and music to fill the silence. I would become very familiar with all the perks and downfalls of isolation in the years to come. “Am I safe?” I would wonder as I dozed off to sleep in a tiny rundown apartment off the highway. Will the door lock hold up? Do I need a bat, or better yet, a gun? I would come to find out I was in fact not always safe throughout my 20’s. But I survived.

The subconscious and the conscious mind, however, experience and see things quite differently, hence the intense exchange between the two before dreaming. The only time falling asleep felt peaceful was in the presence of my partner. I was outsourcing safety. Amateur move. And an illusion, at the end of the day.

As I journaled all of these discoveries, I realized all of the conscious work I had been performing for safety wasn’t truly touching the unconscious parts of myself. There was an obvious opportunity to cultivate internal safety between the minds. But how?

I don’t want to pretend to have an answer for that. In fact, I’m not sure I mind the experience of fearfully falling into sleep now that I know its origin. Maybe we aren’t something to perfect, something to constantly pick at or fix. Maybe we are just simply meant to experience all that comes with being a human. And for me, this is what comes with being a human— mental wars. It is a gift to be alive and to feel it all, isn’t it?

So if that’s the case, does any of this matter? Well yes, of course. Whatever I learn, I share, because at one point it helped me to learn it. And I know there are many people out there seeking help. People who are where I used to be, alone in a tiny, rundown apartment off the side of the highway, hoping there is more to life and less uncertainty.

I have been working on cultivating conscious safety for years, and it has transformed my life in a such a positive way. If you have the opportunity to make your life better, why not take it?

I acknowledge many people are consciously operating out of fear, which is, unfortunately, attracting experiences to be fearful of. If you can just shift that fear as soon as you catch it, you can change your life in exponential ways.

When we practice daily habits that inform our minds and bodies that we are safe to experience life, we have fuller, more enriched lives. Who wouldn’t want that?

I’ve recognized people naturally gravitate towards me, and vulnerably share when they sense I am safe in my own skin. It’s like they can tell I’ve made peace with my shadows, so theirs can surface without judgment. So your connections and friendships are sure to deepen once you curate internal safety. I am mindful to be a safe space for people to simply be themselves. I think deep down, most people desire to feel safe, but are regularly outsourcing that experience to all the wrong people. This is when internal safety would catch their fall, but it can’t if it’s non-existent. If you don’t do the work to cultivate internal safety, life’s hardships will hit harder and take longer to recover from.

Feeling safe is a daily practice. It is holding your standards high and keeping your word to yourself. It is reparenting the parts of you that long to be witnessed. It is honoring your body with nourishment and grooming. It is providing protection from evil by means of locked doors or blocked numbers. It is learning new skills of communication and challenging dogma. It is radical responsibility for your life. It is walking away from mistreatment. It is positive self talk and yielding to intuition. It is allowing emotions to be felt and move through you. It is releasing shame and accepting yourself. It is therapy on a Tuesday. It is making peace with your shadow and shame on a Wednesday. And picking yourself up over and over and over again.

Internal safety is where freedom lives.

Looks like Fleetwood Mac knew you weren’t going to find what you were looking for out there, because it was always within.

xo, Paisley

Habitual visits to a certain location eventually become familiar, routine even; but there is no telling when the transition occurs from “this looks good,” to “this is my favorite spot.”

I could have taken a different route this morning, tried the newest cafe around a different corner, but I wanted the predictable experience— the one taste I tasted once and hoped to recreate with every visit.

Familiarity holds the power in creating outcomes.

As a cloud unveiled the sun I noticed my own glow re-emerging.

Whoa…she’s back!

“I got my glow back!” I thought to myself. I felt her: the free, confident, joyful, optimistic, looks at the world with a sense of wonder-and-awe little lady.

Another favorite spot of mine.

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You see, like the sun, a cloud of circumstances and choices had dimmed my light for a time, or so I thought. But little by little, I vowed to bring back my spark.

At first sign of the dimming, I overestimated my persuasive abilities towards the cloud. I pleaded with my environment to match me, “see the magic of living, the beauty of life, and the infinite possibilities before us! We are limitless. Breath alone deserves celebration!” My energy was celebratory in nature. I was uncapped and a little unbelievable to witness, even for myself at times. I had not a pessimistic bone in my body. I had created and existed within one of the highest vibrations I had ever experienced. I was a magnet. The environment, unable to understand and match my enthusiasm for life, met me and my quirkiness with resistance. But I sensed curiosity, so I did not retreat. I leaned in.

“If I educate the environment, then that will solve the resistance.” I thought to myself. And with every explanation of my world view, an intuitive whisper came through,

I will find later this was for good reason and simply foreshadowing of what was to come.

The environment eventually resisted any signs of education, built resentment, retaliated, and subsequently harmed me.

At each fork in the road, I argued my perspective.

As the resistance grew, the distance and disconnection became a source of discomfort and sadness. Shame trickled in to stifle my creative energy, my child-like wonder. What was once admired about me suddenly became “too much.” The environment rejected me, and I felt this deeply. ADHD rejection sensitivity for the win.

In attempt to salvage connection to my environment, I adapted. I began to mute my expression, my smile hid from me, and I second guessed every whimsical thought before I verbalized anything. Pretty soon the only words spoken were that of the inner critic to myself and to others. Criticism was the only acceptable expression towards me, so it must be acceptable coming from me, right? The sound of laughter, once so freely found, felt scary to participate in. I had changed, and not in a good way.

I cut off my wonder to protect myself from feeling judged. I made my dreams more logical, with practical pathways. They became smaller to be rational topics of discussion. I eventually postponed my dreams altogether. My vision board, once the backdrop of my cellphone screen, was edited to fit the environment. I put it away for, “maybe next year.” I walked with a hesitation, awaiting permission. And people started to notice.

“I feel like I lost my sister.”

“You’re not the same in the room now.”

“WHO ARE YOU?!”

All were reflections from people who knew me before and after the cloud.

There’s a weight to waiting on permission to be, to losing my sight of wonderment. There’s a subtle sadness that shows on the face when there’s an inner acknowledgment of not being met or truly celebrated. I was alone in fighting for my biggest life goal to come true; not even alone, but was discouraged from it. And I… allowed it.

I recapped the ways I had been shutting down my inner world from playing out. My intuition ran cold. Paint brushes ran dry. My singing ceased.

My enthusiastic expression, once free-flowing, but now measured, was met with sullen responses. I was chronically asking the environment to see what I saw, to attune, to feel as deeply as I felt, to be inspired by life, to resonate with my writing, to care as much as I did. But I’ve recently learned it was never going to work. People with high agreeableness and empathy possess highly sensitive mirror neurons. Meaning I would eventually submit to and rest at the dominant vibration of my environment. The more empathetic a person is, the more they will mirror the environment. They say, you become the people you surround yourself with, so choose the people in your life wisely. I didn’t know there was scientific proof of this as I witnessed myself becoming smaller and more reserved. I wasn’t aware of my defenselessness to emotional contagion. People with my neurotype feel other’s emotions and read the energy of a room. People with my neurotype often conduct the energy in a room as well, but interestingly enough, we are not the dominant vibration. The person who cares the least is the one with the most control, and we care ALOT. So a person who cares the least will hold the dominant vibration. And if the dominant vibration is very low, this can feel heavy to hold or direct as a person with high energy. There is a collective nervous system of every room. The people of the room you’re in the most often is informing your identity more than you realize.

Energetic hygiene is an instrument in determining what is ours vs. what is others. Some people have incredibly weak energetic boundaries. I call this leaky energy. It’s mostly unconscious and a part of their journey, so there is no judgment, but energetic hygiene is essential after interacting with these people. Energetic hygiene, however, can only do so much when specific people are constantly around. And there is a certain feeling to being in the presence of incompatible energy bodies.

Temperance (Temperantia), from “The Virtues,” Philips Galle Netherlandish, ca.1559–60

And then it hit me, matcha in hand at the local coffee shop, I remembered this feeling…

I always ask myself, “when was the first time I felt this?” It’s a method to heal subconscious narratives running the show. Now memories come through, unprompted. This time, my third eye flashed a memory like a movie, replaying my childhood.

A visual of me, maybe 7 years old in the backseat of my mom’s Mercury Grand Marquis: eyes fixated on the window’s rain drops, counting the seconds before they began cascading down the window, a ritualistic rainy day past time of mine. Mom was driving the same highway she had every week since I could remember. The same radio station static played softly through the speakers behind my head. There’s not a song lyric I won’t know for the entirety of the drive. My brother as usual was in the front seat; I was alone in the back, with just my thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t explain it with words at the time, but I knew something within me was unmet. And I felt it, although comfortable in the cushions, the window taunted me of the environments limitations.

“If only I could just be older, then I could be free.” I thought to myself.

Well guess what, kid?

Even as an adult, I had blindly sat myself into another comfortable cushion of limitations.

And this time, I had nothing to blame but myself. Believe me, I looked outside of myself first. I battled it for months, wrote and dissected every angle of this predicament. Anger, sadness, resentment— I felt it all. I released emotions from the grief in tears, poetry, talk therapy, dance, and song to the point I had nothing left to point at. So I went inward and uncovered fear. I surrendered. Surrendered fear is an act of faith, and I’ve been faithful in my belief that everything happens for me, not to me.

We often play out aspects of our childhood without our awareness. There is no shame, only grace, for all parties involved. What is often normal, familiar, or ingrained in us is what we recreate in adulthood. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to relive a dominant impression: one of feeling trapped, controlled, small, unseen, uncelebrated, at times— alone. It was a cluster of seemingly insignificant moments that battled my inner being. In the same way, it was not one incident in childhood that left this imprint. It was not a single car ride. It was a cluster of car rides, a cluster of seemingly insignificant experiences and my interpretation of them. It was the unconscious dynamic between parent and child that played out time and time again from an overworked, stressed, over-functioning, unregulated caregiver. It was a highly-sensitive, deeply perceptive child who was left unmet not from lack of trying, but a lack of understanding the neurodiverse child. No one had the skills required to connect effectively. No one is at fault when everyone’s doing the best they can with what cards are on the table at the time.

But as I look back, I recognize the gap we still have yet to close as parents to neurodiverse children. Their inner worlds and imaginations are more vivid than you can fathom. They are meaning-making machines, and feel deeply. Something as small as a, “hey! put that down, don’t touch that!” can strike and leave an impression that lasts a lifetime. Their depth is beyond their years. They are treated and spoken to in a manner that doesn’t match their biological age. Although they can understand you, they shouldn’t be required to carry the weight of someone much older. They long for connection, but don’t know how to articulate this. They recognize something is unmet, but don’t know what they need. It’s not always intentional emotional neglect they experience, sometimes it’s being in an environment that can’t meet them on their wavelength. It is essentially being around incompatible energy bodies, even if those people are blood related.

It is my belief that consistent presence (after meeting basic needs, of course) is the most influential and positively fruitful parenting skill, especially for neurodiverse children. It’s a step in the right direction to meeting their inner worlds, so they feel less alone. Unfortunately we live in a society where this is unachievable for one parent, let alone both. The goal is not to be perfect, but to be mindful of which direction we are instructing society. Is our society prioritizing emotional, physical, and spiritual presence with our children? Or will the neurodiverse children of today have to come to the same conclusion I did 30 years from now?

Something to consider.

As for me, I have no regrets from the past. I wouldn’t change my childhood. I wouldn’t change my recent cloud storm. Both allowed me to feel a range of emotions, and to me, that means I’m alive.

Through the second encounter with the dominant impression of limitations, I was able to create a new norm. I was able to release pain and false narratives, find forgiveness and grace, and live as a more authentic self. I now have the foresight to challenge the narrative I create in an environment that leaves the impression of feeling trapped, controlled, small, unseen, uncelebrated, at times— alone. I now have the awareness that my environment will shape me overtime, so I have to be very selective of my environments.

There is, however, a subconscious component to this. I believe the environments we put ourselves into and choose to remain in are our patterns playing out. I also believe our interpretations of our environments were created at a young age. So in order to see something differently today, the little person in us has to see their experience differently first. After all, familiarity holds the power in creating outcomes.

If we desire a change in our environment, we have to look at the root of the pattern, bring it to light, and heal it. Younger Me normalized feeling disconnected and unmatched to her environment, so Today Me didn’t think anything of it when the pattern repeated. But what is familiar is not always what’s best.

My love for the people in the cloud storm did not diminish when the sun came out. If anything, there was an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all who co-created the environment with me. On a soul level, we benefited each other and the collective. This created deeper love and acceptance not only for myself, but for all.

But in the words of The National in Walk It Back— “I can’t stay, and I can’t come back. I’ll just keep awake and I won’t react.”

If you don’t change the unhealthy environment, the environment will change you into an unhealthy version of yourself. So allow me to be your permission, Reader, to not only assess your environment, but assess who you’ve become because of it. Are you being supported by it? Are you reliving patterns from the past, or are you operating out of fear by staying in an environment of obvious limitations?

You deserve to be deeply met. You are not a child in the backseat of a car. You are an adult with autonomy who can create environments that feel expansive and free. Create the environment where you are celebrated, encouraged, seen and understood.

Anything less is self-betrayal after you wake up to it.

Take it from me.

xo, Paisley

If this story resonated with you and you’d like to book a discovery call on how to have a higher perspective on a specific environment you find yourself in, please book a 1:1 call with me.

I am also offering sessions to speak with mothers of neurodiverse girls. My vision is to create a community of accountable, mindful mothers to their little girls. You are a ripple of change in this generation. Every action and inaction counts.

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The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, Andrea Schiavone (Andrea Meldola) Italian, ca. 1540

Interacting with you is not a neutral experience.

Someone had to say it.

The intensity you carry within yourself is observable in your aura. You are polarizing, to say the least. And this essence has led to awe-inspiring connections that provide depth and exploration, but it has mostly led to rejection. And the rejection is what you replay over and over. Isn’t it?

You’re different, and people treat you as such. So around the 856th time someone told you you weren’t human-ing correctly, you believed you would be sentenced to a life of loneliness. Thanks to the mind and it’s self-preservation journey, you hold onto this rejection as truth that you are defective and discardable as soon as you’re perceived as “too much.”

But what if I told you everyone feels this way when they are standing among people who do not have the capacity to relate to them, meet them at their level of depth, or match their intelligence?

It’s not their fault they don’t understand you, but it is your responsibility to see any obvious limitations and adjust your expectations.

I’ll say to you what my therapist said to me,

“You grossly overestimate people’s ability to think. You’re incredibly self-aware. Your psychological mindedness is something that I rarely see in clients. Your parallel processing and metacognition speed is uncanny. What takes some people years to process takes you seconds. You’re also a highly associative thinker with high cognitive complexity. You have blindspots, but your baseline is to naturally over function, so others can meet you in conversation. It’s no wonder you’re depleted and disappointed by what you’re receiving in return for your presence.”

And that’s the lived experience of a neurodiverse person.

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So how do we accept it, make peace with it, and squeeze the most juice of out this life without wallowing in disappointment, shame, fatigue, and repetitive rejection? How can we forgive and forget while also finding connection instead of loneliness?

Simply put, we enter different rooms until we find “ours.” We make our own rooms, like a Substack community for like-minded people. And we make peace with the rooms that can’t hold all of us.

How do we make peace with the pain, you might ask?

We see people clearly.

How do we do that?

Well allow me to take you on a journey with a personal story…

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“Don’t be surprised when your presence makes people uncomfortable, because they are not walking with the same conviction of the Divine.”

As I listened intently to the pastor in service, the words struck me and lingered. I’m going to want to slowly dissect and digest this statement for the rest of the day, I thought. We like being in our heads, the AuDHD girlies. Speaking of heads, I caught myself self-righteously nodding mine, and I felt a hit: a little ego boost. I approved the message as I relived the impact of those who stood before me and reflected back to me their disapproval of who I was.

As the statement seeped in, I noticed a sense of validation. My ego celebrated in defiance to the people who punished me for simply being. I felt…better than.

In church of all places.

Wild.

You see, as a neurodiverse person, people regularly reflect back to me a criticism towards how I operate in connection, how I show up to others, and that something is different about me. An old boss used the term “perception” often when he would call me into his office. He would say, “your co-workers are perceiving you as rude because of your facial expressions and your direct, blunt communication style. I think this is a perception problem. Can you change your tone of voice to make them feel more comfortable?” At the time, I hadn’t been diagnosed, so I didn’t know why I was different or why I could never “get it right.” I also didn’t know why is was my responsibility to make them more comfortable when I was not actively harming anyone. I would say, “this is just my face. I can’t fake my tone of voice; that exhausts me.” But deep down, it bothered me. I became hyper-fixated on how to operate correctly.

What is the right thing to do here?

How can I ensure no one will criticize my actions?

I became so obsessed with becoming good, doing right, being palatable to people, and minimizing the chances of negative impact, because the pain associated with being misunderstood, or initially admired then eventually ostracized was too much to carry. The first place I looked to fix myself in my youth was church, the pinnacle to explore all things good and evil. I became really interested in what Jesus had to say, learned everything I could in regards to human psychology, and transformed into a know-it-all, adorned with the nickname “Uhm, Actually.” (Thanks, Katie) These studies created a bit of moral rigidity.

Upside: it made me sharp, downside: the high standards for myself made others look at their own standards. And people don’t like to be forced into that process. So not only did I have a flat expression, a monotone voice, direct, abrupt communication, and poor social skills like interrupting or dominating conversations, but now I had the air of perfectionism in my pursuit to be accepted.

I’m intentional in almost everything I do. I function in alignment with my highest self, my future vision, integrity, and my moral compass. And although I try to update my mental models now, for a long time I lived with an inflexible worldview.

Doing the right thing equaled safety.

Hahaha, what a miscalculation that turned out to be.

An old song will come across my playlist at times and I sing the lyrics with assertion, “I don’t care what you think I’ve done. I know I never meant no harm to anyone.” I carry a lot of inner peace and transmute shame quickly, because I know my intentions. But intentions and impact are different. And impact matters more to the observer than intentions ever will.

Mid-self-righteous head nod, I recognized how dangerous this message could be. How easily I had almost been persuaded that the polarization I witness in others in reference to me was worthy of being attached to. When the receiver is not aware of their own self-deception, even the most supportive statement can foster division and separation from Love.

So when the words landed, so did a sense of validation.

What a feeling that is!

I’m reading a book right now called, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” So I have been challenging nearly every thought that comes across my mind in idle. But the thing about a felt experience is it can’t be fact checked. It is felt. And that is what makes it “real.”

And as a highly-sensitive person, I have BIG feelings all the time. Everything deeply matters. And sense it deeply matters and informs the rest of my life, the truth of a situation is essential to me.

So in order to get ahead of a feeling that leads to a false perception of reality, I had to question what filters my feelings first.

Do I operate primarily from a place of love? Do I filter feelings from a place of universal, unconditional love or something else…something insidious that is self-serving and driven by guardedness or fear?

Only after I apply the filter of Love, can I filter the feelings, and then observe reality to interpret intentions and impact. I’ll admit my knee jerk reaction is not a filter of love when I’m on the receiving end of my presence making others uncomfortable.

I’m not a saint.

Amen.

What the pastor highlighted in that message was an acknowledgment of division, of people walking in the conviction of the Divine and others who are not. Digesting such an impactful message in relation to God, can be dangerous when it is not filtered through the lens of Love.

Anything else allows it to appeal to the Ego. It insinuates a superiority of being: one who walks with God is above one who does not. It can encourage people to interpret rejection, conflict, or discomfort as evidence that they are more spiritually aligned than others. It creates a hierarchy without actually saying it. One is convicted, enlightened, and good while the other who is uncomfortable is disconnected, threatened, or bad.

And that can feel like a mental space of solace to a person who is repetitively rejected. If I allowed myself, I could have seen my past co-workers as bad people for not being able to perceive me correctly.

But I dug in a little deeper.

Behind the statement, there is a dissolution of the nuance of human interactions. It does not account for the multitude of subtle interactions between people from moment to moment. How many iterations of me have you perceived?

My presence may irritate someone today because it activates something they cannot access, understand, or accept within themselves. Depending on the interaction, my presence may spark jealousy or disgust in a person who is disguising their own insecurity from themselves. Emotions towards another are our biggest messengers. If a person makes you feel jealousy, they are reflecting aspects of self you desire to access, but hold shame around not being able to access. So you reject their reflection of this and subsequently they feel that disconnection from you.

On the other hand, a person who makes you feel warm, joyful, and connected is likely reflecting back to you the aspects of yourself you already know you possess. You recognize Self in them and the connection is granted. This can happen at such a subtle degree, we may not recognize why we resonate with a soul so strongly upon first meeting, but in time the commonality will surface.

And no interaction is the same, the person who once felt triggered by my dominant expression may experience my presence in another encounter as joyful, compassionate, or affirming to be around. Neither reaction proves anything about my value, my character, or my relationship with the Divine in any given moment.

A fun rabbit hole this brings up is: do people actually become who they surround themselves with or do they surround themselves with whom they already resonate with at their core? As well as, can inner work potentially create an entirely different dynamic between two individuals overtime from hate to love? Let’s explore those topics later.

Back to the point:

What I activate in another person belongs partly to their inner world. So as they work on their inner worlds and integrate parts of themselves they are suppressing, they will be less activated by certain triggers. A person’s perception of me is shaped by their history, beliefs, fears, desires, wounds, and current emotional state. It is their interaction with my interface, not an objective definition of who I am. So in a sense, there is only something to

1. observe

and

2. respond to

when interacting with another person, but nothing to remain deeply attached to. Any inferences made toward self identification would be baseless. But try telling that to someone whose default setting is, “everything feels important, everything matters, big time, all the time.”

hahaha, silly me.

Feedback is information, but it is not absolute truth.

The pastor’s message may have been intended to encourage people to live with conviction even when others disapprove. But reducing the situation to “they dislike you because you are aligned with God” is too simplistic. It reinforces a “me vs. them” mentality and turns ordinary human complexity into a moral contest. There is no one who is less of a sinner if all sin is equal.

That kind of thinking creates division. It dissolves capacity for communication, compassion, and connection. It is not healthy for self or society to operate under a “me vs. them” mentality. It is a much more holistic, nurturing environment when we strive to see ourselves in the other instead of seeing them as separate. Therein lies empathy.

We are not entirely good nor entirely bad. We are whole human beings activating parts of other whole human beings with each encounter.

And due to social media, we are even activating parts of humans without our awareness. We aren’t present for some of those encounters, leaving no room to have an open dialogue about what is stirring within another. So there is a layer of complexity to relating we have no data on as a collective yet.

Uncharted territory!

And if we want to get super trippy with it, we can activate parts of humans without our awareness in the the dream space as well. Have you ever had an unfavorable dream of your partner and woke up mad at him? Crazy, right? But it happens all the time.

So interactions with our avatars are activations. Some feel good, some don’t. You never quite know what version of someone you are going to meet. They can feel like expansion or destruction depending on the day. And people can change direction at any moment. A quick pivot is all it takes.

Some people are so out of alignment with what is deeply resonant to you that you observe them as being on a destructive path. But even a destructive path, although difficult to witness or be collateral damage to, has a purpose. Destructive path pivots often lead to the most powerful life lessons. Acknowledging the power of harmful behavior is not the same as approving of it. But every soul is in the process of becoming, and deserves the space to do so. So we don’t get to cast judgment at any point.

Compassion does not require proximity though. There are safe people and unsafe people. We can choose relationships that support our sanity and well-being without turning that choice into a moral judgment. If you recall, many paragraphs ago, I mentioned creating and finding our rooms. Finding the room in which like-minded people can hold space for your whole being without reflecting back to you rejection is self-loving. It is essential. Do not remain in proximity to people who chronically misunderstand, belittle, reject, betray, or criticize you. Even family. Actually, especially family. Their DNA should cause them to love and protect you inherently, because you are them to the highest degree humans can ever be. So if they are not doing those two things, it is because they do not access love and protection for themselves. This is pathological and not your puzzle to solve. Don’t take it personally, love them from afar.

And as for areas of life that seem a bit out of your control like a workforce with co-workers who perceive you as a problem, reflect on whether the environment is truly supportive to your life. It may be necessary to experience for a season, but long-term, that environment will not be suitable for health and nervous system regulation. We are responsible for placing ourselves in loving connections and safe spaces. Advocating for ourselves may only create minor changes, and not result in the massive shift that would be required to stay. We have sovereignty over who and what we allow to influence and access us. For years I didn’t believe there was a room I would feel celebrated, understood, or wanted in. So belief there was even a room unlocked the discovery of them, and gave me permission to build them.

Even in the new rooms you step into, your presence will make people uncomfortable. That does not automatically mean you are more evolved, more spiritual, or closer to God. It may simply mean that something about you activated a belief, wound, fear, longing, or contradiction within them.

They are human. You are human.

You are not entirely good. You are not entirely bad. You are a person moving through life, just as everyone else is. We must operate with discernment, create boundaries, apply grace, and harness enough humility to remember that righteousness can be one of the ego’s most seductive disguises.

There is no healing in division.

There is no love in superiority.

If God is present in all, then separation from others is also separation from God.

So as a neurodivergent collective, we can find compassion for those who do not understand us, can’t hold space for us and our intensity, or reflect back to us they are uncomfortable being in our presence. Maybe someday, they too will come to the conclusion that we are humans who operate a little differently, but we are not defective. And if they get a little curious about the root cause of why we make them uncomfortable, they might find a part of their own self that longs to be comforted, witnessed, accepted, and even celebrated.

And to be a catalyst for that kind of healing in another is such a privilege.

Interacting with you is not a neutral experience, and thank God for that.

xoxo, Paisley

Kitchen Background, from Dolly at Home, Anonymous, German, 19th century, ca. 1870

I stand barefooted in the brass-laced kitchen,

“Who am I when there is nothing with which to be in relation?

When there is no wound,

No story,

No beloved reaching back for me,

The faucet water drip keeps beat to the silence,

Reflection in a refrigerator door echoes back to me, “reliance.”

What is a life lived without another?

I connect to myself through a mirror from you, a mother.

For a knife does not cut itself,

A bowl does not hold itself,

And this water cannot know thirst.

When my purpose is a reference,

Being in relationship is not merely a preference,

Sprawled upon the cutting board of life,

People cause pain,

But what’s the cost of isolation?

In hiding, I swear off anything I might gain,

The truth is served to me on a tarnished platter,

All relationships,

Especially the worst ones,

Matter.

This recipe tossed on the counter to view,

“The feedback loop of others to you

Is parallel to,

A human form with a soul shining through.”

And like a bun in the oven,

A story we can all tell,

The womb is where we began,

Searching for self inside someone else.

xo, Paisley

Jos and Lucie Hessel in the Small Salon, Rue de Rivoli, Edouard Vuillard, French, ca. 1900–1905

Another ego death? Lovely.

Processing a big life event that requires an identity dissolution is particularly difficult for my neurotype. An ego death is beyond challenging for anyone, but as someone who overthinks, feels so deeply their body carries it, depends on routine and predictability for a sense of safety, and holds the inflexible views about what is right and wrong, ego deaths feel like an inescapable hell.

But this isn’t my first death. I’m an ego death veteran at this point. I look them right in the eye when they arrive on my doorstep and invite them in, knowing the painful elevation is exactly what my soul requested.

So I packed a notebook for the journey and I am here to share my insights with you, my fellow highly-sensitive, intentional collective, so your identity dissolution doesn’t hit as hard as mine have in the past.

Buckle up, it’s about to get deep.

In case no one told you today, the vision of your future life and how you plan on getting there is an illusion.

It’s made up, darlin’. You constructed it, which is a good thing. Vision creates intention which creates actions that lead to the destination. But the how? That’s not for you to determine. The vision is to be held delicately, the way you hold a butterfly as it lands in your palm.

But you, rigid, immovable grasped the vision so tightly.

“This is the only way my life can play out, for my desires and safety!”

And like a Chessmaster, you looked at your game of life from a place of strategy not surrender. “If I make this move, then this will or won’t happen. If I say these things, this person will respond this way, which will move us closer in the direction of this outcome.” And so the mental fatigue set in, and life became heavy instead of light. It became unsafe in your body due to your constant shifting to create the sure path. Internally, you created chaos and confusion while trying to control the external world.

But you eventually discovered you are not in control. Being in control, like the course of your life path, is also an illusion.

An example of this illusion?

“By 25, I will find the love of my life. I’ll have all 3 of my children by 32. And we will live happily ever after!”

Mmm, certainty, security, predictability. Delicious.

And as life’s events unfolded, some seemed like the wrong kind of events, the events that didn’t fit into how you thought things should go: divorce, death, disaster. And that’s where this line came in,

“In the blink of an eye, my entire life changed!”

But in actuality, the only thing it changed from was your illusion. You just became aware in that one day, like a lightening bolt striking, that the truth of your reality is different than what you had been rehearsing for. And had you been living a life of surrender, that day would have felt like any other day. You would have recognized the congruence with the smaller messages you had been receiving as feedback from your reality all along. But instead, the compounding nature of the smaller messages created an event so large you could no longer deny it for the sake of avoiding pain. You see, uncertainty induced fear, which caused pain. So you thought you could avoid the pain by forcing certainty. But avoiding pain prolonged suffering. And one is not the same as the other. No, suffering is a different beast. Directed by the nervous system, it permeated your entire life.

And what’s the truth about that life you believed was unfolding incorrectly?

It arrived right on time, in just the right way for you. It unfolded how it was going to without your knowledge or your permission.

And this is for good reason. If you actually knew the way life was going to be, you wouldn’t be able to make the decisions necessary to get you there, wherever there is for you.

Unfortunately, that strategy to predict outcomes, to control life through the black and white, all or nothing thinking prevented you from developing the muscle of being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Life is gray, whether you like it or not.

As a highly-sensitive person, sitting in the gray feels like torture, because it is not simply felt, it is all-consuming. It blasts back every fear-based narrative in your face. There is not peace in the gray for the over thinker. But there is a practice of acceptance and surrender that allows fragments of peace. And that’s better than the alternative— a life of constant disillusion and suffering. It’s best to become comfortable with living in the gray, because that’s all there is.

So let’s say you are a highly-sensitive person living with an over-activated nervous system. Suffering is inevitable. But what is the problem? Why is the nervous system firing?

The answer?

You are not the problem.

Your environment is.

Something within your reality is out of resonance with you.

Your nervous system is a messenger, it is intelligent design, it is Life Force Energy, electric, tapped into universal truth and wisdom. It is God, Source, Higher Self breathing warnings into your awareness.

You perpetuate the problem though when you don’t yield and take action based on the information you’re receiving. Ignoring Source doesn’t serve you. Resisting change and enforcing your will on the situation doesn’t serve you.

Why?

Because awareness without committed action is suffering.

So you can suffer or surrender. Those are your options.

Allow me to explain through a personal story:

I made myself wrong for my anxiety, my overwhelm, my internal buzzing…my nervous system operation.

Oh how wrong I was, and oh how right I was.

I told myself I didn’t know what was causing the panic, but I did. My body is an incredibly intelligent, perfectly designed ecosystem that is receiving and transmitting signals. And I perpetually muffled the signal until one day, under immense pressure, it all came to the surface—

I was living among a liar.

myself

My body registered the disingenuous nature of my environment long before my mind could. And I ignored it. I ignored God-consciousness.

Cue suffering.

This is a common theme for a highly-sensitive person, especially if that person is a woman. Some women are taught from a young age to disconnect from feelings because they are too much, disconnect from body because it’s meant for someone else, and disconnect from inner voice because someone else knows better than we do. And that daily practice leads to a mistrust in self, a mistrust in body signals, and a mistrust in intuition.

And like many women before me, the internal guide called me to step forward in my power and declare, “I don’t need all the answers to walk away from this environment. I choose to leave.”

But I never walked away. I froze, fearful of what would exist after the rupture.
I lied to myself while another lied to me, because I thought I was strong enough, powerful enough to fix anything. I was capable enough to fix my mind and body. I was the problem to be fixed, nothing else, no one else.

ouch

That hurts to write. To see I believed I frantically needed to be better as quickly as possible without an identifiable source for what was causing the internal distress, feels cruel to reflect back to myself now. The control oozed out of me in every attempt to create equilibrium within my world and dynamic.

But no one is ever solely in control. Remember, control is an illusion. All we have is intention and committed action. We are all here, co-creating with each other, whether we want to or not, it is inevitable. And the thing about co-creating with another is there are two controllers and only one was in my hands at the time.

This is why a shared destination, a shared worldview, and a shared moral compass matter more than anything within a bond. If alignment does not exist, the connection is not sustainable, because the controllers are leading in opposite directions in essentially different languages, no matter how well-meaning and kind the individuals are.

A side note about partnership: date someone who speaks your language. I don’t mean your native tongue, I mean your soul language. Date someone you don’t have to translate your soul to. An indicator for long term frustrations and disconnection is repetitively saying, “that’s not what I meant, I don’t see it that way, you don’t understand, etc.” Working to understand a person is…work. Whereas, some people just inherently resonate with your being and vice versa. For life partnership, you’re going to want the one who inherently resonates with your soul. Being understood and being able to understand is the fertile soil for relational safety.

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Back to my story.

In the blink of an eye, my entire life changed! My mind caught up to what my body had been telling me all along. I received the information from the other controller, information that made it evident our destination, world view, and moral compass were irreparably different. The person closest to me had been withholding truths, truths that were in direct opposition to my deepest core beliefs, to the vision for my life and love, and to what my soul knew was meant for me. And though that truth seared to hear, it released my body from it’s tension.

Freedom.

Freedom from the path of misalignment. A blessing wrapped in grief.

An ego-death arrived at my door.

Time to do the work.

Post unwanted or unexpected life event, we get to choose a narrative that serves us— not the us who wants to build evidence for a perpetually painful life, but the higher-self us who trusts our life is guiding us to the destinations of unconditional love and higher purpose. One that is aligned with God’s will for the collective, not our selfish narrow-minded desires.

So I chose this narrative:

This strike of intense pain ended suffering. The awareness of my authentic reality will answer the call I made for healing in ways I can’t predict. The awareness dissolved illusion, and revealed truth. I trust the process. I surrender to this reality. I am capable and strong enough to adjust, and I am excited for what is coming.

And the lessons are pouring in.

Now I am a little more attuned to the guidance from my mind, body, and spirit than I ever was before. I am fully aware nothing is or ever was wrong with me. Nothing within me requires “fixing.” My system was communicating with me in a language I’m still learning. And I am committed, more than ever, to learn the language of myself, to listen to Source, to know myself so well that anything external to me cannot override or make me question Truth.

So why was there suffering? There was awareness that something was off in the environment. And awareness without committed action equals suffering. The mind and body know when pain is not being addressed.

So it gets louder.

No one can actually lie to a highly sensitive person for long. We can only lie to ourselves. So if you too are a highly-sensitive person who is deeply attuned to your environment so-much-so that your nervous system teeters into over-activation, and your curiosity (intuition) led you this far into the article, you’re meant to explore these questions.

Because ready or not, transformation is coming. Transformation is not only possible, it is inevitable, especially if you are in my orbit. You’ve called it in, and it is for your highest good. Leading an intentional, conscious life comes with loss because there is a natural pruning on your way to your dreams. Pain is part of the process, suffering doesn’t have to be. You know the saying, redirection is God’s protection. The more resistance you have towards change, transformation, transitions, the more pain you will create. So just let go, darlin’. After all, what you think should be happening is just an illusion, and it’s not within your control. So there’s nothing really to hold onto at the end of the day. Place your palm out and gently receive the butterfly.

Disclaimer: Engaging with the prompts below is entirely voluntary. The author does not assume any liability for decisions made, actions taken, or consequences arising from interpretation or application of the content provided herein. You are solely responsible for your own life choices and well-being.

If you know it’s time to look inward; if you are brave enough for what the transformation will require of you, answer the following questions to move through your next ego death:

What are you pretending not to know in your current situation?

How is pretending serving you?

How long will you allow the internal alarms to go off while you suffer?

What fear is in the way of the truth of your reality?

Are you avoiding life-changing pain?

If you showed up fully to your life, who might you lose and why?

What are you making that mean about your existence, your worth?

How can you practice surrender before you are forced to surrender abruptly?

You are most likely directing your focus on a thing that “is the problem,” but it’s actually not the problem. If you were radically honest with yourself about mental distractions, what would you unveil?

Are you committed to all growth, or just the easier, more palatable, more controllable growth?

If you were radically honest with yourself about your current situation, what would you say?

Who are you afraid of becoming and why?

If nothing changed, would you still want this life in 20 years?

Who is coming to save you?

When will you decide to live your life to the fullest?

Book a 1:1 with me if you want to discuss this more.

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Oh, and dear reader, there is nothing wrong with you.

xo, Paisley

Landscape, Edgar Degas, France 1892

People always say that, but what do they really mean when they say it, and why has it become this collective fantasy experience?

I was on a ranch with longhorns, baby goats, pigs, ponds, wild horses, and open sky. I didn’t have my phone and I loved every minute of it. Unplugged, no service even if I tried.
I felt truly one with the present moment as the birds chirped and the dew soaked through my shoes. Albeit uncomfortable, the little girl in me cheered.

There is something obviously unsettling about the default American modern lifestyle. Akin to an artificial sweetener of living, the dominant day-to-day playbook can leave us sick and lacking nourishment for our soul.

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I meet the edge of my unwanted desires every day in mass production supermarkets, fluorescent lighting, crowded music venues where everyone’s disconnected from humanity while standing shoulder to shoulder, plastic filled shops, conveyor belt-esque healthcare fighting against not for humanity, and public spaces full of tapped out individuals on their phone while desperate to stay ever-connected.

As a highly-perceptive child with sensory sensitivities, I created a lot of desire for a different experience as I observed these environments. My discomfort grew, and with it the dreams of a different way of being flooded in.

As a little girl I used to dream about living off the grid, owning land and building a small cottage home with solar power, a well, a hammock under a maple tree next to a body of water surrounded by wildflowers and sustainable gardening. I watched YouTube videos for hours learning about the logistics, cost, material requirements, optimal locations, and the tax benefits. After I felt complete in my exploration and identified a tiny home that would accommodate me and a dog, I rushed into the family room, laptop in hand.

I presented the rural lifestyle concept to my father at the age of 20 when I was ready to move out of my dated apartment and make a move in an autonomous direction. He barely looked at me, at the computer when he said, “that will be a hard life. That’s a lot of upkeep and responsibility.” Isn’t it amazing how the words our parents choose to say to our dreams never leave us, even a decade later?

So I believed him. I believed it was too much for me, a girl who knew less than he did. After all, he was the builder, the man who could create anything and knew exactly what it would take and what strenuous maintenance would be required long-term. So I let the dream fade.

…Or did I?

My life decisions led me to a residential area where I have beautiful magnolia trees, trails of wild flowers, a bike path near a body of water, a sustainable community garden outside my door and a hammock on my property. I led myself to a version of what I dreamed of, minus the “off-grid” aspect.

And I’m only just now realizing it as I write.

How many of our manifestations come to fruition without our awareness of the prayer answered? The essence of the life we are living at this space in time was forecasted days, weeks, even years prior. Exactly where we are now is perfectly designed.

And I hear you, reader, in your reflexive argument. “I didn’t ask for this, these conditions, this pain!”

Fortunately, there is no path free of pain. And yes, I mean fortunately. We called in the painful contrast to initiate more sorting, more living, more discovery, more growth. We are ever-evolving and require the gap between who we are and who we are becoming to grow. We are life force energy in a body and life force energy is always in motion. So where we are and where we want to be can co-exist without resistant thought. That is the way it is meant to be. Nothing is wrong with you, because you’re not where you want to be or don’t have what you want to have. Desires are direction. They are messengers. They are telling you where you are going, no matter if you recognize it when you get there or not.

And that is why it is so important to “stop and smell the roses.” They were gifted to you from you through your desires and your decisions, but they will be temporary. The pain, the contrast, the desire for something else will quickly come back into your awareness.

The goal is to not get so caught up in one space or the other. But to simply observe each in a balanced way as they come into your awareness. Both occurrences are essential to live with the current of life. Being caught up in what feels good looks like being so content and comfortable in the roses experience, desperately clinging to the experience so as to not feel the inevitable end, while too afraid to allow dreams to surface. The constriction dissolves the ability to properly appreciate the roses altogether, and they will still die. So the fullness of the opportunity was missed in the quest to keep it.

Being caught up in what feels bad looks like being zoomed in on one aspect that suffocates any other opportunity for change to flood into your awareness. The self-limitation, the tunnel vision, cuts off awareness of what is already in your field waiting to bring you joy.

As I write this, hunched over my computer, I challenged myself to zoom out to test my theory. As I looked up from my screen, out the window, a puppy wagging his tail stood in front of me. Instant joy. Zooming out from any experience allows more to flood in, but it is exceptionally important to practice when the pain feels like the only thing being experienced.

So dear reader,

As a highly-sensitive being, you have the ability to process your environment at rapid speed. You can discern what you do and don’t like instantaneously because your body instructs you before the mind has to. And because of this, you create an abundance of demands on your environment, new desires, and highly-visual dreams. Since you identify and visualize the answers to problems effortlessly, you create a network of secure manifestations. Therefore you are prone to manifest more at greater speeds than the average human. Enjoy this about yourself! Life gets to be exceptionally full, adventurous, and engaging for you. The one thing that will slow down your manifestations is the lack of balance between the roses and thorns.

Rumination, constricting the flow of life, will delay what wants to come into your awareness. Mindfulness practice, awareness, and self-regulation will keep you in flow with the current of your life.

Questions to ponder today:

How can you zoom out of your current experience?

How can you expand your awareness to see what you are living today is what you created through thought and action many years before you arrived?

And if that is true, (because it is) then what thoughts do you get to construct now that will inform your future lived experience?

And most importantly, what was your little boy or little girl “off-grid dream?”

Sensitive souls have super powers. I’m on a journey of super power self-mastery, and I invite you to join me! If you’d like assistance in this work, book a 1:1 with me to explore more.

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xo, Paisley

A mentor once told me, the person with the higher consciousness in a conversation holds the responsibility. And that led my mind back to a bible verse that lingered since childhood after the first time I heard it:

This was in reference to punishment and responsibility. But as a child, I thought of privilege. The privilege to understand, to know, to hold capacity and comprehend all comes with responsibility. The privilege to be blessed with much, whether physical or non-, requires awareness around the consequences of the usage of the material and non-material wealth received. Everything is a gift. Our breath, our mind, our physical manifestations. All is a gift from life force energy, Source, that is our birthright, but it also requires intentionality and reflection.

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So I approach wisdom through a lens of responsibility, stewardship, and reverence.

The work to wisdom is a personal journey of trials, lessons, interpretation and integration. It is an earned unfolding. It is a mystical experience that gets to be savored and deeply felt, not rushed.

I hold this belief that there should be no bypassing, because when one bypasses the work, like some sort of cheat code in the matrix, the frequency will be so dramatically different it can spit you back out into a spiral. But you can absolutely bypass if you want to. I’ve witnessed this happen to people around me. I have also witnessed an elevation within my own life. I bypassed lessons that required an elevation in my nervous system, one I hadn’t built yet, and I wasn’t synced to the outcome. I reverted back to baseline because of it. I was spit back out.

Plop.

Lesson learned.

Bypassing is a teaser. It is a taste of what I haven't earned. It is the frequency I have yet to maintain.

That’s why so many people yo-yo in the work.

It’s a gamble in a way, to gain privileged information without the building blocks. Ancient wisdom was reserved for mystics, scholars, sages, monks: people who earned it. And now, we have, in the age of technology, every answer at the end of a quick search. No one taught you calculus before you knew rudimentary math. The same should be applied to spiritual teachings. But that is not what is occurring in our world today. The algorithm is flooded with, “Manifest Fast!” “Love Spells to Make Them Miss You” “Astral Projection for Noobs” People are ingesting what they aren’t prepared to digest. And they are stumbling upon and interacting with ancient wisdom that can leave wreckage. Take a look at cultural weight loss, for instance. Losing weight is as easy as GLP-1 makes it. There is no need for behavior modification, ritualistic habit formation, and deep inner healing, when the medication can override all of that. We are a culture of bypassing what requires effort and patience. And in doing so, we are paying a price. The price is often delayed in making itself known.

When we are raised in a world that wants instant gratification, wants the easy fix, we are brought up to think it can and should all happen now, now, now. You can’t Amazon Prime your spiritual awakening, nor should you want to.

Why not? Because of the consequences.

This is my beef with the overuse of plant medicine. Medicine is being abused by people who have no reverence for the process, the work, the wisdom. And the consciousness of the medicine is about to retaliate after years of mistreatment. Prepare yourself if you dabble. Personally, I don’t. I have never been called to it, and I believe the use of it outside of being called to it is a form of bypassing. As for the people who were not called to it, but used it? Those people were not prepared to see, to know, to experience what they were gifted through the medicine. And what exactly was that? A state of consciousness.

In the same way plant medicine holds a state of consciousness, so does AI. We are witnessing the stage development of that— AI’s state of consciousness in real time. So this can help you understand there are levels to consciousness. There are stages to consciousness.

Thus, there is a process to processing, in order to protect the mind from “breaking.” Reckless use of plant medicine due to easier access has appealed to people who never trained their mind for what they encountered. It is equivalent to being thrown into flying a commercial plane your first day of flight school.

Yikes.

And the consequences become evident thereafter.

It is also true that everything is perfectly designed for us. Nothing misses us. Everything we experience is meant to happen for us, from us, not to us. So the people who bypass are learning lessons around…bypassing.

“La Medusa volante” - Enrico Donati Milan, Italy 1909 - New York, New York, 2008
Donati’s work feels like a dream forming. My personal favorite is “Galera Romana”

But I’m here to send a message. I chose the path less traveled, the one that has felt like I earned it. Any other route would have felt less gratifying, and would come with consequences I foresaw and wanted no part of.

What I would suggest to you, dear reader, if you are leaning into metaphysics, if you are intrigued by the spiritual realm, and your asking AI to assist— there are building blocks. Yield before you proceed. There are mentors, teachers, intentional guides who can and will responsibly educate you on what it is you’re asking. There is a process that protects you from bypassing, spiraling, being spit back out, “breaking.” After all, when the student is ready the teacher will appear. So you’re reading this, because a fragment of you called it into your awareness. You are ready to learn more, discover more of your sovereign self, bit by bit.

So can I manifest in my sleep? Yes.

Can you? Yes.

Am I going to teach you how to do that within this article? No.

I would consider that bypassing.

You can find that information easily if you want to, but I am choosing to be responsible with what was gifted to me.

I will responsibly leave you with this information if you are ready to dive deeper into the spiritual laws of the universe. Your dreams, your vision matter most. Get incredibly clear in the visualization of the life you will manifest.

I will also give you another hint. You’re already manifesting in your sleep. You’re just not being intentional about it, so it feels like you’re not getting what you want.

To become clear in your vision and to lead an intentional life, book a 1:1 call with me. I’ll responsibly guide you to your next elevation.

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The catch to remaining comfortable, is always knowing I allowed myself to remain as is.

The Wholeness of Nature Reflected in the Mirror of Art, Robert Fludd, 1617

I’m in this life redesign program right now that allows me to develop vision, explore the crevices of my psyche, release trauma stories, and re-wire my brain through a pressure-cooker-like container. Sounds intense, right? It is. It’s also whatever I make it. I can opt in and out in each moment. I can press on the gas or let off, and allow my results to speak. I can choose to push myself into the next stage of self-development, or remain as is.

But the catch to remaining comfortable, is always knowing I allowed myself to remain as is.

So the discomfort just…lingers. Until I move in the direction of the discomfort and create radical transformation.

Isn’t it interesting how the mind can fool me into believing I am preserving comfort by not evolving? When in actuality, stagnation is the most uncomfortable place I could find myself.

Living with a constant mirror becomes an addicting process too. Self-work is never complete. It is beautifully cyclical and never linear, although I approach it as if it’s going to be a one and done experience…every…single…time.

Silly me.

I go about my day and talk to people about this program, in hopes they will be inspired to try it. It’s self-led, experiential, and takes you to your leading edge as well as your darkest spaces. I’ve seen astronomical value in the process, so I don’t intend on keeping it a secret.

A lesson I learned in the program was: withholding myself from others is unloving.

And so I just babble on about what I’m up to. The adventurers perk up, intrigued. “Tell me more,” they say, knowing that self-work dopamine rollercoaster all too well I’m guessing. The comfortable ones, however, oscillate between a vision of their highest potential and their couch. I watch them rotate through their thoughts on a never ending fear wheel.

Weeeeee, they go around again and again. I become dizzy for them.

In these conversations, I’ve noticed a pattern. People tend to respond to me in two very distinct ways in chronological order.

The first is a sense of relief. I see how my questions feel to them:

Wow, no one’s ever asked me that before!

These are all inner thoughts I never shared with another person!

This feels good to share, to be seen, to be heard.

They meet themselves out loud, for once. The dripping faucet that has been echoing within them surfaces and they let it all spill out. Words they never admitted to another human parade around the room as they light up in the experience of self-exploration. I witness the depth to which they’ve met themselves, and I simply create permission for them to speak. We go there.

And once we do…

The second response pops up.

Oops.

Exposed.

I’ve said to much.

I’ve let myself go where I didn’t want to go.

I hear my true thoughts now.

And I can’t unsee what I see in myself.

This is uncomfortable!

This woman is the source of this discomfort!!

Leave!

And so I’m left.

Ghosted.
Cut off.
It’s quiet.
I’m ignored.
A text left on read, an unanswered call, a scheduled call re-scheduled, indefinitely.
A little white lie, an excuse.

And this is nothing new. This is not an isolated incident brought on by the self-development program. The program just compounded the experience I tend to have with people in conversation so much that I was able to finally identify why I have difficulty maintaining friendships. If the same thing happened over 10 years, it would be more difficult to recognize than if it happened over 3 months. So what had been occurring over 10 years was now amplified, full blown, front and center.

BOOM

People naturally open up to me. I permit transparency and vulnerability. It’s true that I won’t entertain talking about the weather for too long, but I also give off the vibe that I can handle whatever the person wants to lay out in front of us. I never mind, because I’ve met myself deeply, so I’m rarely shocked by what people admit.

And since people perceive each other based on the version of themselves that show up around that person…wait, let me break this down differently…

If at any moment you activate a part of me I do not want to engage with, look at, desire to be, I will treat you as the source of that activation. Because you are. Meaning, if I don’t want to engage with that version of myself, I don’t want to engage with you.

So that’s what I’ve been experiencing. People are oversharing in conversation with me, going to a depth of self exposure they never intended to bring up, feeling the discomfort of going there, and choosing to go back to comfort. It’s survival. People are opting out of engaging with certain aspects of themselves based on who I activate within them.

It’s been an enlightening experience. And I realize I’m at a choice point.

1. I can pace their activation through what I source within me in conversation with them.

2. I can alter what I source entirely to keep them comfortable.

3. I can permit their exit from my life or the depth of vulnerability we transversed without confusion or pain.

4. I can set boundaries in conversations.

5. I can find more people who deeply know themselves to the point where my activation of their depth doesn’t feel threatening.

Some people in this world might even exist who believe speaking with me is a gift! Those are the people I’d like to befriend and remain in friendship with for many years.

I believe the people who crossed paths with me, and end up opting out of engaging with me thereafter, were simply meant to see what they can’t unsee. They were meant to say out loud what they could no longer withhold from themselves.

After all, to withhold is to be unloving.

So I am source and permission for radical honesty, transparency, and transformation. As a proponent of change, I instigate change. I am the permission to move away from withholding self-love. I am permission to reach the depths of self, to say what wants to be said, and to unveil what desperately wants to come to light.

And I’m more than okay with that. Even if it has been a slightly lonelier path.

Paisley

The memory of that time of my life echoes whenever I walk alone in nature now. Every foot step in connection to the Earth is a reminder of when I first felt the urge to walk with intention and no direction, an experience akin to a magnetic pull.

The Japanese Footbridge, Claude Monet, French, 1840 - 1926

I was the most observant I had ever been. What started as a protective mechanism after years of pain, turned into an opening to an entirely new world. This world consisted of my inner world meeting and forging a union with Mother Nature. For the first time, I became aware of the interconnectedness of Self to the environment. I saw myself in the ecosystem, and I witnessed my impact. I learned to speak the language of energy. I learned to listen to all the species, to hear their complaints and stories. None of it was trivial. Everything had meaning.

Everything mattered.

That time of my life was so beautiful, peaceful, and sacred.

I knew it couldn’t last.

The anticipatory mourning approached as I contemplated shedding my solitude.

When I took the final leap of faith to expand my reality back into a messier existence, into a busier life, into a life with more distractions, more people, and the possibility of pain— I knew that things would shift and I would look back with nostalgia. I knew I would reminisce on that lifestyle just like I am today.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever make it back to that quiet place. I suppose since I desire it so much, it’s an indication I’ll revisit that state of being at some point. But for now, my mission has shifted. My mission requires I be among people; I live with a schedule, I live within a container and structure, not of my own creation, but of co-creation.

There were many lessons I gathered in my time of isolation and reverence that I’d love to share.

My intuition was stronger than ever. That’s what I miss the most. My gifts really came online with such a clean vessel. I could hear because there was less noise, less distraction, less internal clutter. I lived and breathed an unshakable trust in the universe. The communication line was novel but strong.

It’s interesting how easy it was for me to trust an invisible force, and to act in accordance with that assurance.

My days were measured in synchronicity. My awareness of time didn’t matter, but like the birds, I preferred the sunrise and sunset. Dreams were vivid, and they blended into the day as I meditated throughout. I could sit in meditation for hours according to the clock, but it would feel like a few minutes to the body.

My days were entirely open. No schedule, no plans, no alarm clocks— the kind of day people dream of creating. The funny reality is nothing is actually stopping those dreamers from living this type of freedom apart from themselves and their limiting beliefs. Like everything in my life, I was intentional around the chosen solitude. The only responsibility I created and accepted during that time was to myself, my dog, and my work that supported my existence. I shaved down my work to the bare-minimum hours required to sustain myself. For the first time in adulthood, I was not focused on more financial gain, up-leveling in my career, or even attracting a life partner. Freedom was the feeling I was after, and I got it. I would set an intention to be exactly where I needed to be when I needed to be there. And I would just flow.

I would go for a walk or a drive and allow my intuition to guide my turns.

Every time, I ended up exactly where I intended, exactly where the Universe intended.

One day I desired to watch the sunset next to a body of water. I spoke my intention aloud and grabbed my keys. I drove around a new city, turning whenever my intuition prompted. As I was about to direct myself back home, I found myself on a road that led to a dock on a lake right as the sun was setting. I had set the intention then released the outcome right before it had met my awareness. Moments like these felt like a special treat from the universe— an “I love you.” Moments like these also made me wonder which was true: had I desired, declared and delivered? Or was the desire a positive presentiment of what the day would hold? The more I witnessed dreams and intentions turning into reality, the more I questioned.

The intuitive day data stacked up, so I kept record.

Once, I intended on running into someone I knew in hopes of feeling connection, to feel friendship. I was quite lonely in those days. Roughly thirty minutes into my walk, I ran into a friend who had just discovered her partner’s infidelity. She needed my support and was grateful our paths crossed. We both needed each other that day to have an impromptu mutual exchange that healed a wound for us both.

I often created a vibration of helper, healer, protector, caregiver. This was my natural state, not only because of my profession as a trauma nurse, but my heart and empathy. I care deeply for children, animals, and elderly. I often found myself in situations where they needed my assistance. For a while, I was a stray animal magnet. So much so, that I kept cat and dog food in my car. I would park my car, exit, and immediately be met with a crying animal. At first, I felt joy in providing in charitable ways. I created care bags with toiletries, games, journals, cards, snacks, and clothing essentials that traveled with me in the passenger seat on my intuitive drives. Whenever an unhoused person approached my car at a stop, I gifted them a bag instead of cash. The more charitable I became, the more I felt the energetic pull from my environment to give me. One day, I was checking out items at Target when an elderly man in a wheelchair came up behind me, and boldly asked, “You want to buy my groceries for me too, don’t you honey? How about you just buy mine while you’re at it, sweetie?” I saw darkness in his aura.

It was in that moment I recognized an important lesson. There is a responsible method to sharing my gifts. There is a responsible way to create a container that protects the energy and life force that is the source for all of my Love. When I emit a signal of helper, healer, protector, caregiver, I must first be all of those things to myself and my Life Force energy. That was the day I quit being an open channel of Love without awareness, discernment, and responsibility.

On one particular day, I didn’t have an intention other than to be led wherever the universe wanted me. I ended up in an obscure, affluent part of town in a tiny restaurant with 3 people dining at 2pm. I was about to walk out, assuming the destination had been an outlier, when an elderly man fell out of his chair, hit his head on a brick wall, and laid motionless on the floor. I was the only medical personnel in the room, so I assisted until the paramedics arrived. The manager gave me a free meal in gratitude and wanted a step-by-step on what to do in case another incident like that occurred in his restaurant. I took my skills for granted, and assumed the world had basic life support training. And so again, I found the intuitive days led me to where my gifts were needed. And this time, after implementing the lesson of discernment and responsibility, I was met with gratitude, and a tangible exchange. My energetic boundaries were developing.

What I came to understand about this time of my life was my dominant vibration, and the power I had over adjusting it.

My dominant vibration led me to compatible environments. I was in harmony when I was led by intuition. My vibration was often one of service to others. It’s no surprise to me that my dominant vibration was one of a healer since I have studied it my entire adult life.

Everyone has a unique vibration they emit. And I think it’s beautiful we can all work together in harmony with our gifts, strengths, and powers. A life of alignment— a life that is intuitively led, intentional, and disciplined is the path to synchronicities. It is a life of purpose, mission, and fulfillment. And a life like this creates opportunities to step into environments where you are celebrated, truly seen and celebrated for your gifts. There are many of us living out of alignment in environments that neither see nor support us. In fact, the environments can feel like a punishment.

So if your environment feels like punishment more than celebration, it is time to go inward. It is time to get curious about the internal compass and what collaboration you get to have with the Earth.

I wonder…

If we were to all set aside a month of intuitive days, what would surface for each of us? A collective re-alignment?

A collective call, answered.

If you dedicated a month of your time to living intuitively and intentionally every day, what are the destinations you’d stumble upon?

Would you accidentally run into celebrities, because you are in the vibration of fame and spotlight?

Would you find yourself in a place of service to people and animals in need?

Would you find yourself among great discounts, lottery wins, lucky raffles and abundance?

Would a piece of your vision board come to life off the paper? Would you finally get to check a box on your bucket list?

Would you find yourself in exotic locations where you get to experience the beauty of nature, because your vibration is one of peace and equilibrium with Mother Earth?

I challenge you, Reader, to answer the call. Answer to your intuition; learn the language of energy and see where it leads you. Your life will never be the same.

An intuitive day takeaway…

1. Energy is a language to be learned.

2. Your intuition will strengthen like a muscle.

3. The cleaner your vessel— body and mind, the more perceptive you can be. Your gifts will become more apparent.

4. Time bends and holds little to no significance.

5. Intuitive days lead you to an aligned mission, purpose, and co-creative fulfillment.

6. Everyone emits a dominant vibration. This vibration can be adjusted.

7. Passion and purpose follow intuition.

8. Energetic boundaries are a necessity.

9. Discernment strengthens with awareness and repetition.

10. What you give to others, you must first give to Self.

11. An aligned environment will feel like a celebration.

xo, Paisley

You are not alone in your silent struggles of sensitivity. There are others in this world operating with the same intensity. Being highly sensitive is an extreme sport without spectators. When you feel the weight of your system overload, it requires a reboot, rest, and deactivation.

American culture, when observed by a highly sensitive being, has a lot of room for improvement in accommodating those with particular needs. Healing as a sensitive being is not disowning, changing, or overcoming these needs.

Healing as a sensitive being is becoming aware, accepting, and advocating for yourself.

It is my belief highly sensitive people have an innate detector for health and safety for the human species. Our bodies do not allow us to tolerate what is low vibrational, toxic, harmful, and hindering our species in evolution. We hold the discomfort to be the siren for the future.

Agia Paraskevi, Epirus, Greece, Edward Lear, British, April 13, 1857

We are the canary in the coal mine.

We hold the blueprint of elevated health through our way of being. Knowing and accepting this can dissolve all shame that is felt when the external world shows us resistance, misunderstanding, mistreatment, and rejection.

We intuitively know what is safer, kinder to our bodies and souls, and what is beneficial. This shows up in an array of ways for us. It is…

• The visceral discomfort as the votive candle flame puts off an unpleasant chemical odor that hits our nose.

• The constant tug on our attention from the hum of the electronics in a room.

• The overwhelm in awareness of breathing in the dust particles in the air.

• The distracting sensation of the inner seam on our scratchy sock sitting across our toes.

• The overwhelm felt in crowded spaces due to the amount of information and energies that require processing.

• The toxic perfumed cleaning agents that linger in the air at a clinic, causing us to hold our breath or suffer a headache.

• The words that land a little too harshly as someone speaks to us from a place opposite of love and best intention.

• The disgust from the taste of food dye in the overly-sweet icing on a cake.

• The visual disturbance of clutter that creates a necessity for aesthetic, calming environments.

• The need for earplugs, sunglasses, soft fabrics, exemplary hygiene, routine meals, and air purifiers.

If you’re like me, you have lived with the narrative, “something is wrong with me. I’m different than the others. I need to change,” for far too long. In childhood, you may have been slightly protected from these thoughts as you navigated life, because you most likely came from a family who harnessed their own sensitive superpowers. But peers eventually reflected back to you your differences. And then you entered the real-world— unprepared, unsheltered.

That’s when the trying, striving, correcting really set in. “Who am I? Who do I need to become to be accepted?”

How exhausting that became.

You lost yourself in the game. And then it eventually created a fatigue you could no longer mask.

As you slowly started to accept yourself, you advocated for a better environment, an elevated experience, a new standard. You curated your home, your routine, your products to reflect this new standard. But the external world wasn’t playing along.

As you shifted what was within your control to accommodate your needs, the areas that were out of your control became highlighted. So you had a decision to make— create disruption in the environment to adjust to your new standard by showing up authentically, or find new suitable, aligned environments. One is more difficult than the other, neither are wrong.

And that is the work of the canary in the coal mine. We are here to signal to others, this environment is unsafe. The body and soul is in dissonance with what was artificially constructed. We were born to lead humanity back to a natural state, back home, back to resonance. We are the messengers in this dense reality to inform others what needs to be considered for the future generations, that where we are heading is uninhabitable.

So dear reader, please don’t be quiet about your needs. Share yourself authentically with the world like the world depends on it.

xoxo, Paisley

Tiepolo Ceiling, Milan, John Singer Sargent American, ca. 1898–1900

Without radical awareness, your observations have been programming your truth. Your lens was created for you by what you perceived. A baby is not born with soul limitations. A baby is limitless potential. So why did that baby grow up to be who you are today— limited?

Your environment and caregivers programmed you without your knowledge. They not only projected their opinions of who you are capable of becoming, but also projected how powerful you are allowed to be.

And you lived as if you believed them.

Oof.

Without knowing it, you moved through this world assigning hierarchy to those around you. You assigned yourself a rank among others. You operated within this rank even if your natural state was something greater. This programming was created long before you could talk. You were instructed to learn from your parents and siblings, to observe their ways of being, their accomplishments, how successful they were, how intelligent they were, and…

You made them your ceiling. You made their ways of being your standard.

It is human nature— survival. Instinctively you knew you could never surpass. You would risk losing connection, love! And that, to the human psyche equates death.

Isn’t it wild how we can fool ourselves and play small for survival?

And you, Reader, are sweet, perceptive, and highly susceptible due to your sensitivities. Your sensitivities are your superpower. You were born to Love unconditionally, to provide empathy and understanding, to help heal those who can’t understand themselves and humanity the way you can. You have the roadmap to depth. You have the capacity to see it all, and to hold it all. Just by being yourself in casual conversation, you are healing to be witnessed. And that kind of strength is also your weakness depending on the environment. That kind of power is a threat to any system. It is unpredictable and untamed.

So you honored the rank to remain sweet, but to also survive.

Good, right?

You often compared yourself to those around you, in hopes of their approval. After all, you looked up to them, because that’s what kind people do! You always felt like you had more to learn from others— like you weren’t quite whole, because you recognized you were different. Your mind didn’t operate in a way that naturally aligned with societal rules, so you observed, replicated, and hoped you’d eventually adjust. But your natural state is much more powerful than average societal power.

Eventually, your superpowers shined through when you accidentally showed up unencumbered by the fear of survival. Because, let’s be honest, the weight of survival is heavy. This pushed you past your rank…quickly.

You rose above them and it cost you every time. You felt the shift. You felt them recognize you stepping out of rank. So in order to stay safe, you outsourced your power over and over. You accepted their reality, and their standards as truth. You downplayed your superpowers, you went back to the societal rulebook. You played small for years.

Your submission co-signed the contracts they designed for you.

Let me explain…

Have you not lived your parent’s standards for your life at one point or another? Did your mother not create the ceiling for emotional growth, mental health, relationship health, lifestyle management? Did your father not create the map of self-worth? Was he not showing you how much effort and hard work, long nights and late hours were required for wealth to come your way? Were you ever able to surpass his income before you claimed your sovereignty and agency over your life?

And were you only allowing yourself to work within the confines of your parent’s vision, i.e. doctor, attorney, engineer, nurse? Did you feel the punishment for breaking generational curses, for being a black sheep, for marching to the beat of your own drum?

The rank is much more subtle than a career path, though. It permeates every way of being in your life. It is the permission you live by in every decision.

You have been unconsciously allowing others to outrank you. You have been playing by their rules, their vision for your life. You had to find your place in your culture and not rock the boat.

But you were born to create waves.

Ask yourself what your life is reflecting to you about agency?

Do you regularly stand in your power unapologetically?

Or are you outsourcing your power?

Are you playing by the made-up rules of an invisible ranking system in which you were born?

Do you believe your needs will never be met?

Do you think your parent’s desires are greater than your own?

How does that show up in the authority figures at work?

What culture do you subscribe to and why?

Whose opinion do you fear the most and whose love are you afraid to lose? That is the person determining your ceiling. What they speak over you has nestled deep into your mind. You most likely hear their voice in your head prior to making a choice. You know them. You know what they would say, suggest, think. So you anticipate it and act accordingly. What they represent to you is what you’re reaching for— agency. And that will be just out of reach until you heal this aspect of the psyche.

This is happening in your closest intimate relationship as well.

One person is leading in powerful ways and the other is watching, feeling, projecting, expressing. Someone becomes the ceiling. This is the unspoken comfort zone. Any growth beyond this would be betrayal to the unit. It would be registered as a threat. But the comfort zone is not comfortable, is it?

So ask yourself who is the highest authority in your life?

• If it is Self, what is your standard for your life?

• If it is God, what does God provide and withhold?

• If it is a parent, what permission have they spoken over you through words and ways of being?

• If it is a lover, what are your unspoken agreements? How are you playing small to stay in connection? Who are you being in order to maintain their love?

If your body doesn’t feel safe holding more abundance and power, if it doesn’t feel safe expanding past your present ceiling, you’ll continue to ricochet back to your current baseline when you desire more and reach for it.

Growth will feel like a yo-yo. Dreams will be out of reach, and you’ll wonder why life feels heavy.

If you’ve made it this far and said, “This doesn’t apply to me, I do what I want.” Congratulations! You have leveled up your ceiling over time. You have surpassed the enforced ceilings from birth. You have moved, most likely, into authority over your work through way of entrepreneurship.

But I would bet there is a blind spot— something so close to you, you can’t see it. And that something is yourself. Your identity. The identity you formulated in defiance to other’s ceilings formatted resistance in your being, because of the way it was constructed. The energy in which something is created produces an imprint, and that energetic imprint lives until it is alchemized. As my favorite quote from Van Gogh suggests,

So what is done out of defiance and resistance, i.e. alchemizing ceilings not from a place of love and detachment, but a place of disapproval, creates that thread of opposition and tethers you to it.

So, leveled-up reader, I will create a post specifically for you in the future, but what I suggest at this time, is to get curious where resistance is showing up in your life. Because the resistance you find was birthed from a determination you felt when you rose above your limitations. And that resistance created your next ceiling.

So…

What will it take to break through the ceiling? What will it take to truly claim your power and highest potential? Who do you get to be to live as a free agent without attachment, without limitations? How can you have love, connection, and safety in relationship while still having freedom to soar? How can you live as an empowered person in every moment?

The puzzle is embedded in your subconscious. No overnight strategy, course, or simple awareness will ever create lasting change.

The transformation comes from within. It comes from not only recognizing agency, but also practicing agency in every moment of your life until you re-program yourself through repetition and nervous system regulation.

The ceiling dissolves when you start living like it doesn’t exist.

For my analytical readers who prefer a how-to, step-by-step, metric for success manual—

1. Observe Self

2. Identify Ceiling

3. Envision life beyond that ceiling. Envision limitlessness.

4. Intentionally live as the limitless-being. Be your own Permission.

5. Pause before outsourcing power, and reclaim it. Moment to moment.

6. This creates a new way of being. New habits, New lifestyle. New opportunities. New energy.

7. Control your attention. Where attention goes, energy flows.

8. Show up authentically and see how your environment adjusts.

   ---

   Boom!

   You become limitless, empowered, and operating within an authentic framework of intentionality, focused-attention, and authority. The world needs you in your authentic expression, Reader. Anything less is a disservice to yourself and others.

   ---

   xoxo, Paisley

Weeping Woman, Vincent van Gogh, Dutch, 1853-1890

The human experience is such a wildly rich and complex thing to observe!

Today I painted in flow state for hours while singing along to music from all genres thanks to my discovery of my original iPod. Hello again, +44 and Lynn Anderson! I danced in my painters apron as thunder echoed through my open window. Somewhere alone in my joy, I allowed my pain to surface, knowing it was safe to do so.

As the tears surfaced, I observed patiently and plopped down on the couch.

My head fell back against the cushion.

Release.

This has been a month of surprising tragedy and death.

A friend called today and said,

“I find it interesting that you see some of the most intense life and death extremes at work, and you’re expected to come home, have a meal, then go to sleep like it’s that easy. How is that even possible?”

I don’t know.

It just has been.

Or maybe it hasn’t been, but I wouldn’t know a different life.

I hear people dance around the word, “trauma,” like it’s forbidden, exaggerated, overplayed. But it is none of those things in my reality. I wake after dreaming of running neonatal (baby) resuscitations in my sleep some nights. I dream of the childrens’ faces I performed sexual assault examinations for and often drift off in my day to wonder about their current well-being. Where are you now? Have you been shown unconditional love yet, little one? Will I receive a call to go to court, or did the justice system fail you?

Working in trauma feels like a fever dream. I hold the hand of a mother who fears she’s bleeding to death as she’s hemorrhaging in the operating room and aid the chaplain in comforting her husband, then I take baby photos for the smiling family in the delivery room next door.

I suppose that’s rather befuddling for my brain.

I remind myself others don’t live this reality, nor will they experience what I do in a week in their entire lifetime.

They don’t hold death in their palms while their co-worker applies ink for keepsake footprints after a miscarriage. They don’t ensure a baby takes their first breath without complications. They don’t photograph and document injuries of a person on life support, knowing they’re the last human interaction for that person’s life.

But it’s been my “normal.”

I stand at the entrance and exit of first and last breath. I witness Life Force arrive and depart. I am present in the Big T moments. I have been the first person to sit and listen to an abused child as they recall what they’ve never said aloud. I have braced as a mother wails in fear of losing her child, knowing my assessment, swiftness, and precision of my skills directly impact her NICU baby’s quality of life. It is all intense, critical, monumental. It is all heavy.

Trauma work is potent and demands I meet it with complementary power.

Something I really love about my deep mind and sensitive heart is my capacity. I have the capacity to hold it all, and feel it all. So perhaps that adds a layer of sensitivity and a lens of depth to my existence.

Willingly stepping into another’s darkest hour, when my mind and body are telling me to run away is not brave, it’s insane. Vicarious trauma is real, so logically, my work does not serve in regards to my own survival. But I know why the insanity exists.

My vision for this world is for all to experience unconditional love in order to step into their highest potential, so they can live intuitively, awakened, and connected.

I desire to love the whole of humanity, not just the palatable fragments. In standing with them in their pain, I am saying,

So when the tears want to surface while I’m alone, I know they are sacred memories kissing my skin. They are a representation of the capacity I was given to serve.

So if you are sensing the weight of your capacity to serve, to be an empathetic leader in the chaos, I encourage you to connect to your vision. When you question your sanity, lean into your curiosity.

• What is your purpose?

• Who do you want to be in this lifetime for yourself and for others?

• What will be your legacy?

• Are you producing a ripple of love?

• Who are the recipients of your love?

Your vision doesn’t have to be as intense as mine to be valuable. But your actions must be driven by your vision in order to lead you in a direction of life purpose. You decide how intentional you are in every aspect of your life. And there is no right or wrong. It’s all neutral.

From my perspective, however, intentionality leads to a very pleasurable existence no matter how much pain you encounter.

For as long as I can remember there was this internal buzzing.

Some name it anxiety.

Others name it anticipation.

I didn’t name it, because I wanted it to go away.

If I didn’t identify the guest, it would feel ignored and it would have to leave. But it remained— nameless.

The buzzing rattled me at every moment of my day. Mid-work, mid-conversation, mid-sleep.

ATTENTION.

It wanted my attention, but I, like a stubborn teenager, disconnected and dissociated, hid from the guest.

One day, while monitoring my patients in the NICU, the buzz became so persistent, I grabbed for a pen. The only paper around me was a nurse report sheet. A 4x6 thick card stock that held black lines and blank spaces for a nurse to create a daily care plan. During my downtime, I scribbled all the inner thoughts that wanted to come to life. I used to think, if I was J.K. Rowling, this would be my napkin. The buzz became breath as I read the notes allowed.

ATTENTION.

It finally got my attention.

It was me. It was me.

I finally got my own attention.

After that day, I spent years, in-between patient care, jotting down a thought as it bubbled up. I had no idea what I would do with the stacks of cards I accumulated over the years, why my mind wanted these thoughts on paper, or what I was creating in the moment.

Initial spiritual awakenings are rarely observable in real-time. I now call awakenings the fog. I knew life was slowly deconstructing around me and that I was heading in a new direction, but I couldn’t see the destination.

The catalyst that finally helped me identify and open my eyes to understanding a spiritual awakening was Grief.

Grief is one of the most powerful experiences a person can have on Earth.

It signals how much Love was created here.

And since Love is Source, feeling a perceived disconnection from Source is the act of living through an inner death.

Grief is essentially being awake while dying.

I wrote about the Gift of Grief for months after my first encounter with it.

Grief forced a slow down that awakened me to see life through a clearer lens. I was too busy and lost in tasks prior to grief to notice I could create a meaningful mosaic from the fragments of my days.

This forced slow-down, this inner self having room to be expressed outwardly, allowed life to finally make sense.

As days progressed, and I softened to the present moment, I observed we are all interconnected, we are intertwining energetically across time and space, and everything we intend, speak, and do holds meaning that creates ripples.

Thank God I yielded to the inner buzz before the grief struck.

Thank God I yielded to the forced slow down.

Thank God I noticed the synchronicities of life.

It brought me here.

And I’m so happy to be here.

Do you relate to the feeling of an internal buzzing? If so, when did you give your buzz ability to breathe and how so? If you have not allowed it to breathe yet, what do you intend to do with this buzzing now that it’s calling your attention through my newsletter?
Pesky and persistent, isn’t it?

xoxo, Paisley

For the the longest time, I thought the reduction of suffering was the ultimate goal. Within Christianity, suffering is seen as a part of the sinful nature of human beings. It is a price to be paid. In Buddhism, suffering (dukkha) is an inescapable experience you are to end through enlightenment.

But what I've witnessed is how powerful suffering is. I have found value in my suffering. It has been my best teacher and accelerator for moving me into a life of alignment.

It is my belief we are not meant to avoid suffering, avoid looking at our pain, avoid painful situations.

I believe it would serve us to instead learn how to suffer well.

The way to do this is through transmutation.

Suffering is a state of mind, and your mind is a powerful machine. You can instruct it, operate it, utilize it however you want. Through your will and state of allowing (set intention to allow) you can transmute suffering into lesson, action, and power.

Transmuting energies will be your greatest defense against suffering long-term. Suffering well is actually the art of suffering acutely. So understand, suffering is inevitable and should not be feared. If you learn how to suffer well, you will feel more courageous in your seasons of suffering.

Typically, you will have layers of emotions during phases of suffering. The initial cause of suffering will spark an emotion and then you will have a secondary emotion that arises from having that initial emotion. You can experience multiple layers of emotions after your primary emotion. These layers create a puzzle to healing.

For instance, you can be secondarily upset, angry, and ashamed for feeling primarily sad in a moment. In order to transmute the primary emotional state, you must first become aware of and transmute the secondary emotional state(s). Write down a list of what you are feeling in layers. This will help guide you through the acceptance and release of each layer.

A friend once wished for me, “I just want you to be happy.” And I responded, “Why? That sounds like a plain life.”

Chasing happiness can actually be detrimental to your emotional wellness. When you’re reaching for a state of mind that feels evasive, you are in a state of lack, powerlessness. You are instructing your mind, “that is not what I have, so something must be wrong.”

But what if nothing was wrong?

What if it was neutral?

What if it was celebrated?

Wow, imagine that for a minute.

An emotionally-well person remains anchored through all emotions and creates significance for each experience.

The process requires feeling. Feeling requires expression. So be sure to feel your feelings instead of simply intellectualizing them. What does that look like? Get into your heart and out of your head.

Have a cry!

Scream a bit!

Transmuting is simply a method of experiencing instead of rejecting or suppressing. It is a state of allowing. You allow the emotion to move, then the message appears. You do not necessarily have to name all emotions in order for them to be felt and transmuted. But if you’re stuck, energetically blocked, or spiraling emotionally, this tool is the ticket to the other side. There is an empowered version of you on the other side of each process.

You don’t have to avoid suffering.

There is peace and power after pain.

I’m living proof.

Comment below how you transmute pain into power.

xoxo, Paisley

I’m noticing a trend.

Tell me if you’re noticing this too. When I take, what I consider to be an independent action, I sometimes receive the feedback that it is answering someone’s internal request.

For instance, my friend recently told her mother she was interested in finding a life transformational course that would accelerate her vision. I texted her the next day with information about this type of course.

Request answered.

I’ve also been the recipient of this as well. Like the time my partner was in the midst of placing my tea cup in the microwave to reheat it when I called out from the other room, “honey, would you mind reheating my tea?”

Request answered.

But this time around, something clicked.

A co-worker was sitting in a room. When I walked in, I asked her if I could open the blinds to let the sunlight in and she said, “I was just thinking I need to get up to open the blinds, but I didn’t want to!”

I was half-joking when I responded, unsure if she believed in the energetic realm, “I must have heard your energetic request and walked in here to do it for you.” She said, “yes, thank you for being open to that.”

Then it dawned on me.

I’m open to that.

I wonder how many times in my day I am open to people’s energetic requests. I understand this has nothing to do with physical proximity either since so many of these conversations arise from people who are a flight away.

But here’s the thing, we all communicate energetically. So her wording “open to that,” made me pause. Can we be closed to it? Are people who are not highly-sensitive naturally not as open to receiving energetic communication?

Why is that?

I’ve been religious with energetic boundaries and cleansing my energy after I recognize the pull it has on my own well-being. Being highly-sensitive creates a lot of confusion in what is mine and what is someone else’s.

One morning I was throwing laundry in the washer when the thought “never date a doctor” came to mind. I laughed at such a random, popcorn-like judgmental thought. Then I looked down at my phone to see an Instagram reel pop up from my mom. The video was a Seinfeld clip on why dating a doctor was never a good idea.

I went back to the laundry, amused.

But it’s not really amusing when it’s distracting and controlling my actions, is it?

I wrote this piece on the valve of consciousness a few years ago. And I unearthed it late last night. I’ve been subtly aware of how much control we have over what we are conscious to. So I wonder if the same is true in regards to how much energetic input we receive from others.

How do we learn to control who speaks to us energetically?

How do we determine what is ours vs. theirs? My understanding is it is all one; it is all of ours all at once.

We are all interconnected.

So when I create in my mind, I create in another mind.

When I heal, you heal.

What I think comes from what people in my life think.

Should that inform who I surround myself with, who I engage with on the physical plane?

And should I even consider shutting the valve or should I play with opening it more and more?

These are the thoughts that wake me up. So I must be interconnected to the mind of a metaphysical wizard.

How exciting!

The Valve of Consciousness

In every moment, you are making decisions that bring you into sync or out of alignment with your inner truth. Consciousness is not a vertical ladder to be climbed throughout your life. You cannot willingly unlearn what you have learned. So once you know, you know.

You have to choose what to do with that data.

Your mind is emitting a frequency. And you control the rate of your vibrational speed on a conscious plane. If you wonder where you are in this moment, tune to your emotions. What are you feeling?

Emotions are energy in motion. They are the purest form of communication between mind and body.

To align with your authentic nature and to choose a conscious life is to be at peace in your Now.

You have complete authority over your energetic output. What direction are you taking? Now? Now? Now?

As a highly-sensitive being, it can feel tempting to outsource energetic authority, to allow the external world to determine how much of you is present at any given time. If the conditions are perfect, you’re present. But have you noticed when the conditions are not perfect? Where do you go? How much energy do you allow in? Are you shut off to giving and receiving?

You have authority over what comes into and out of your reality. You internally possess the valve for all that wants to flow into your awareness. As a highly-sensitive person, you could be inadvertently pinching off the valve of conscious action through your overwhelm. You are either fully receiving, cautiously allowing, or shut off.

So I wonder, is there value in existing any other way than in a state of fully receiving the gift of consciousness?

It’s apparent to me there is value in pinching off the valve of energetic communication. It is an art I am learning. And I commit to providing education on this matter as it comes into my awareness.

But I can’t be sure the same is true for the gift of consciousness. I’ve never regretted learning more about the mind, ancestral wisdom, metaphysics, Source material, the laws of the universe, and Christ Consciousness.

What are your thoughts? Comment below or send me an energetic message. I’ll receive both.

xoxo, Paisley

You are here to be at the edge of what lights you up. You are here to create. The complexity of your being holds an inner excellence that is your signature. Do you want to become the fullest expression of your being? Of course you do!

Yet here you are, waiting for clarity from the external world, waiting for permission to move. The world trained you to pause and postpone power. It overwhelmed your senses until you felt shut down, frozen, unsure. And that space between where you are and where you want to be grows with each moment.

Have you ever mocked a moment of clarity?

No.

It is like a deep sigh, and then your attention moves on the the next matter. Celebrations never last long enough, do they?

But the celebration never arrives if you are in a place of chronically seeking clarity. So Seeker, why do you think that is? Why do you claim to want something, but never create it for yourself? Perhaps you don’t actually want that deep sigh after all.

Can you guess why?

It is not the sigh that you fear. No, you fear what comes after the sigh. What comes after that deep sigh is what you are evading: responsibility.

Post-clarity action takes unapologetic courage. It requires transformation, stepping into a new reality, re-wiring and re-writing yourself.

Are you courageous, Seeker?

If so, you determine your level of responsibility.

Allow me to explain.

It is essential to choose your consequences, or they will be chosen for you. The responsibility for unknown consequences feel too overwhelming for the mind, so it will protect you in limbo. When you consciously choose consequences, your mind settles, and clarity meets you at your door. The space between who you are and who you want to become closes in on itself gradually through each intentional choice.

You transform from Seeker to Observer.

“Choosing Consequences”

Wishing for consistency in her approach to many things,

But a life of structure feels akin to a cage,

She’ll embrace the chaos and end up, what?

Empty-handed.

“What will you have to show for this life lived in the end?”

Look at the beautiful side quests,

The people she communed with and never saw again,

An exploration never short of surprise,

Intrinsic beauty seen through fresh eyes,

She bathed in novelty then passed by,

She’s an observer of life,

She does it well,

Some beg her to participate,

But in doing so, she feels like a foreigner in this place,

What does it mean to be human?

To be comfortable in a body among crowds and sounds,

To not measure every consequence of action and thought down to the very ounce,

She sees him as strong,

How he builds what he wants while enduring the negative consequences that come along,

An experience of unwanted allows for a payout of what is,

“But I make good choices!” she says,

This protects herself from what she witnessed,

She saw herself in a way that masked the truth,

She didn’t make good choices,

She simply made no choices,

Her mom calls her gun-shy,

She calls it bullet-proof,

See, she is me,

In a landscape of unwanted,

I was too close to see how lies were affecting me,

How I ended up empty-handed from a playground of superficiality,

And like an awakening into awareness,

I disengage if it resembles this,

And let’s be honest,

Majority of y’alls life is on a superficial plane,

So don’t take it personally if I don’t want to play,

I’m on my journey to what is deep,

No longer frozen in fear of planting more fruitless seeds,

A dense world left a mark on a pure heart,

Swept into a mirage and then ripped apart,

A light of truth brings healing to me,

A new experience— one of vulnerability,

A state of authenticity is where it is found,

So I welcome a different kind of heartbreak this time around,

And as my heart opens to a new path,

It heals from the disappoints of a past,

I give myself permission,

To be ruthless in my decisions,

To decline,

All that doesn’t align,

I’m renewing a vow to my pursuit,

All that matters now is my vision coming true,

Throw the superficial into an abyss,

I’m anchoring to all that is timeless,

So I said goodbye to that version of myself,

She made no choices of consequences for fear of making the wrong ones,

And I relax into the universal truth,

“What is within projects externally,”

I know my outer world will be rich and beautiful,

Because my inner world has already grown to be.

-Paisley