She came prepared. Did the pre-planning. Intentions set and worksheet completed.

I, too, am like this. In fact, that same day, I walked into my therapists office with 3 items to unpack and put on the table. The third item was the doozy. My husband. Me. My marriage (but I’ll save that for another writing when I have more time to process and more insights I can actually articulate because with him and I the air is rare, and we are both holding on for dear life).

So back to the energy shifts and this client call.

10 minutes into the call the tears began, and I knew we had found the spot.

You know the one. The deepest area of pain, suffering, and disappointment. The wound that is a bit of a constant but shrouded in darkness that it is challenging to see clearly or sense fully.

Yep, that one.

She went right to it and my body locked in. Stillness. Depth.

We would enter the void together.

Because that is what we all need sometimes.

Not someone to tell you what to do.
Not someone to give you advice.
Not someone to fix you.

We just need someone who can carefully and cautious hold a contained space where together we can both go deep within ourselves at the same time.

Because the wound she is carring is the same one I am too.

And over the past 5 years touching it, playing with it, learning about it, honoring it, and being with it has been the one constant in my life. While also feeling it, fighting it, wrestling with it, and thinking it is fucking killing me has also been a part of it too.

But I’m not afraid of it anymore like I used to be.

And this week, a lot more people in my world are touching their wounds and finding out just how strong, brave, couregous, resilioent and fierce they really are.

They are having dreams that are literally coming true (my daughter).

They are having dreams showing them where the clutter is (my mother).

They are seeing the darkness and instead of hiding from it, they are plunging into it and feeling all of it (my morning breathing bestie).

And I am observing these beautiful, lovely humans around me.

And it is not lost on me that we are inextricably connected. That our divine interconnections are connecting. That the surface of who we are is only a sentiment of who we are becoming.

So if you feel this week has been intense, I can promise you it is more than “back to school” or weather shifts.

We are in a major collective upgrade that you can either let uplevel you or upheave you.

You get to decide.

But if you’re like my client and the ones I'm seeing in my inner circle, I’m going to bet you will choose the uplevel.

Keep going, there is no bottom, and nothing can stop you.

this is a part of my ongoing attempt to stop writing for writing sake and simply allowing the content to come through and release

no overthinking

no over-analyzing

no audience growth hacks

if you’ve found this and it speaks to you, welcome

there is a subscribe button, I am sure you can figure out how to find it

It also looked like holding impromptu therapy sessions or open space for healing/trauma-type work at times when the need would arrive. Why? Maybe because I have a hero complex. Or savior complex. Or maybe because I’ve done so much healing and trauma work, I thought it would be a good idea to hold this kind of space for others - esp. those I love. Or maybe simply because I wanted to see what would happen.

An d see what happened…whoa…I sure did…and now I can’t unsee it.

My family system is fucked up.

And I can’t fix it. And I don’t want to.

I knew there was a pattern of victim/abuser under the surface, but I thought it was simply because I was SA as a kid and that’s where it came from.

But now, I’m not so sure that’s all to the story.

I’m questioning everything.

Everything expect me. Myself. My identity.

Because if I know one thing for sure, I am not this system and this system is NOT me. And I do not have to be a victim of a system that I didn’t create and I don’t want to perpetuate any longer.

And I have choices.

That is the most freeing thing I’ve ever written.

When I met with Tavish from this week, I couldn’t track what she was explaining to me about the material we have within us to help us build from a place of purity.

I listened to her speak, but I honestly could not hear a word she was saying.

My mind was confused. She didn’t seem to notice. Or to care if I was following or not. My sense was that was not how this raw material program works. So I figured I would just trust the process. Just go with it. She told me this week is music week. I like music, I thought to myself. Great. Let the music flow.

I hung up our call and didn’t give it much more of a thought. Of course, I played some music. Bosa Nova Covers. My music of choice while I power washed the garage the next day. My music of choice for, well, everything.

But it wasn’t music that was flowing through my body while I washed away the grime, oil, and salt from the garage floor the next day.

I could feel it all - heavy in my body. I allowed my thoughts to explore. Feel the feelings. Connect the dots. Remember the conversations. Replay the moments from a detached perspective. Examine the evidence. See it all in a line up like a court reporter. Feel it all in my body like a root canal without novocain.

It was all there for me.

Raw pain, absolute rage, and deep hostility connected to a family system that was sending me messages I could no longer ignore.

Messages that were meant to hurt me deeply.

Messages fired directly to inflict pain.

Messages aimed at the deepest childhood wounds.

I saw them there. Inside of me. I felt them in the deepest spaces. All while Bosa Nova Covers gently drifted on in the background while I gripped the power washer and removed the build up of grime on the garage floor.

Later, after the garage floor was spotless, the tears began to flow freely clearing away some of the pain that was stained on the inside of me.

Tears connected to times when being who I really was meant I would be dismissed from the family until I put on the “good girl” face.

Tears connected to times when showing how I really felt meant being shamed into “being nice” as to not make anyone else uncomfortable.

Tears connected to times when taking a stand and holding boundaries meant being iced out or given the silent treatment and being forced to sit in isolation until.

As the tears flowed, I wondered, is this my raw material?

If so, why does it have to be so raw it is burning my insides out?

And then, didn’t I already do this work?

Must we do this again?

There is no neat and tidy conclusion here today.

I’ve got a lot of raw material still moving through me and with me and in spite of me.

I also have so many questions.

Why are addictive patterns perpetuated in family systems?

When does healthy become the new normal in an abnormal family and what does that even look and feel like in my body?

Why is it so hard to break out of these damn patterns?

Why don’t people want to do this work?

Who is to blame for these patterns and does it even matter?

What is my responsibility now that I see these patterns?

I’m many not be qualified to lead healing circles with my family, but I am qualified to heal myself. A lot got stirred up inside me this past week and it’s still moving through me, the many tears are proof of that.

I’m not perfect.

I don’t want to be.

I’m raw.

Today, two weeks later, we are home from a family vacation. Long lazy days in the sparkling Mexican ocean with sunburnt skin still tingling. A lifetime has passed since I wrote this piece. The energy has shifted. Death is again ahead of me, no longer behind me.

Nevertheless, I offer you this piece. About fathers and grandfathers who die. And what happens to the heirs of their legacy that live on in their place.

When Death Shifts the Ceiling

I wasn’t prepared for what came out of my husband’s mouth.

It’s a Sunday morning. We are in our comfy pajamas. It’s almost noon, and it’s far too late in the day, but we are still drinking coffee.

This morning when I woke up, I found him settled on my spot on the couch. The spot I love most. I didn’t ask him to move.

I sit in his spot instead, fold my legs under me, and keep refilling my coffee from the carafe between us.

We read in comfortable silence for hours. Him on his phone. Me in my book.

Then, he opens his notebook where he has been taking copious amounts of notes and turns towards me fully.

I settle in. I know this gesture. What follows will be dense in the way that things are when someone has been thinking about them for longer than is probably healthy.

I know my part. I’ve been practicing curiosity about quantum entanglement the way bored couples sign up for pickleball. Not because the subject moves me. Because he does.

I’ll pace myself with the slow, serious nod of someone who understands approximately forty percent of what was just said. Then, I’ll carefully interject a question to assist his flow without interrupting his rhythm. A delicate question, not to stumble but expand. I’m good at my job.

This is what his mind does with the dark. It builds and looks for structure.

If he can explain the mechanism, he can survive the mechanism.

I watch him talk and wonder: is this what depression looks like when it gets good grades?

But this morning he says something I have never heard him say before.

He describes a business idea.

I wasn’t prepared for this. I was expecting more of a monologue about why three unrelated civilizations built the same gigantic structures and symbols before technology existed and somehow still managed to coordinate across continents. Or maybe a quantum physics theory about how observing a thing changes the thing being observed. Perhaps even a newly discovered paper from some rabbi in Paraguay in 1847 that changes the terms and conditions of reality, again.

But this morning, with him sitting on my spot on the couch, I got something wholly unexpected.

He presents me with a business idea.

A bonafide business idea.

It’s like he’s learned all the words in my native language and used them in a sentence correctly for the first time.

I stay still, but the business part of me is threatening to pounce.

She wants to pull out a whiteboard and start to build a strategy. Name it. Brand it. Price it. Give everyone on the team an assignment and launch it before dinner.

But I intuitively know that is not what this moment calls for. I do my best to listen while I also count my breaths.

One, Two, Three.
I watch his eyes.

One, Two, Three.
I hold her back.

One, Two, Three.
I hear the shift.

Something is happening to him I don’t have language for yet.

I remember this feeling when my dad died.

I, too, had been waiting for this permission slip my whole life.

—

I’m sitting on the edge of another man’s bed.

I pick up his grandfather’s hand. It’s already too cold to survive.

I watch his chest. Shallow and slow. The unhurried rise and fall of a 93 year old man who has made his peace with the death portal he’s already entered.

My husband sits on one side of the bed. Me on the other. Each holding a hand.

We know this bridge. We created the same one with his dad almost twenty years ago. Except that was in a hospital. Today, we are in the same room where his grandma died amongst angels.

I look up at the ceiling.

A subtle ray of light refracts off something outside and fills the room with a strange glow.

There are always two sides in every marriage.

Sides you take. And sides you make. And sides that are given to you.

Recently, it was my dad.

The last oldest male. Dead. Seven months ago.

We are on his side, now, with his grandpa. The last oldest male. Almost dead.

The ceilings these men held will both be shattered and we will be in charge of creating new ones. Because the next generation always knows who is the first in line.

The oldest child doesn’t step into the role. The role steps into them, quietly, while everyone else is still grieving.

Suddenly, my heart strikes and radiates in my chest unannounced. It scares me and I wonder if grandpa’s soul has left his body and entered into mine.

I freeze. I look up to see if anyone else has noticed the shift. They haven’t.

I make an audible soothing “shhhhhh” to myself. Or maybe it’s to grandpa. Or perhaps to the walls in the room.

It’s time.

One - everything goes silent.

Two - I watch the last breath exit.

Three - the ceiling shifts.

I stand up, walk over, and open the window.

Knowing there isn’t enough space left for us to breathe.

—

I have to pee.

He turns another page in his notebook still talking business ideas.

My coffee is getting cold and the carafe is empty.

His words are taking on shapes I’ve never met in the lifetimes we have spent morphing into each other.

I don’t know what’s more shocking — the fact that it’s a family business idea, which I’ve been pitching for twenty years, or the fact that he is leaning into the future heart wide open.

I sit quietly nodding, holding my bladder tight, trying not to pee my pants.

—

I know this feeling.

Not the feeling of a bladder about to explode.

The other one. The one without a name yet.

It arrives quietly when the last living patriarch dies. It’s a feeling that comes with a full weight of responsibility. It’s a subtle frequency shift that doesn’t announce itself. And it is delivered to the eldest heir whether you ask for it or not. It also comes with a decision. One you can ignore, deny or embrace. No matter your choice. It remains.

When it happened to me after my dad died, I felt the heaviness and responsibility.

I wanted to do things. Give commands. Tell everyone their new assignments.

I also felt the freedom and spaciousness.

I wanted to create tings. Give permission. Tell myself what was now possible.

My dad was gone and my world became wider and smaller at the same time.

My body knew before my mind did.

The ceiling had been lifted.

And on this morning, with him sitting in my spot on the couch talking about family business ideas …

A familiar sensation begins to emerge inside my husband.

—

I stand up.

I can’t hold it anymore.

“I really need to pee. Be right back.”

As I sit there, relieving myself on the throne, I see it so clearly.

Same Sunday morning. Same coffee. Same pajamas.

A different man.

—

Dear Subscribers,

Thank you for reading my latest essay.

I hope it held a mirror for you - no matter your birth order, your marital status, or the death of loved ones you’ve experienced in your own life.

Each week in my writer’s circle, I receive feedback on my writing. These mirrors help me understand who I am on the page and who I am becoming through the vehicle of my writing.

I’m not here to make my writing easy for you to digest, but I do want to present it in a way that indicates there has been much care and effort put into the presentation of something so preciously earned that will never fully be understood.

I’ve come to believe that nothing worthwhile to our soul’s growth could ever be so simple as to write it once, walk away, and your life is changed by the words. No. That’s not how this thing works at all, is it?

I return to writing to discover more parts and pieces of myself not yet fully expressed. And I hope when you read my work, you will desire to do the same. When we create space for more paradox, more curiosity, more uncertainty somehow we begin to find greater hope, more peace and higher possibilities.

You have unique ideas buried underneath the surface. You have experiences worth examining for meaning. You have assumptions not fully formed within waiting to discover new angles. You have revelations that want to be met today that you will never regret giving space for. Because when your time, on your deathbead, comes to you. Like it will for most of us, you will want to know you’ve fully examined your inner world and are proud of what you’ve found there.

But it’s a choice. A brave one. One most won’t make.

If you’ve been looking for a mirror, a weekly breathwork session, or a writing community, please reach out. I’m happy to openly share more about my experience and how these things really work. You don’t have to pay for a course, sign-up for a mastermind, or hire a coach. We all know they don’t work and are created by those who simply are preying on our emotional dysregulation and desperation until the next person comes along.

With sincere gratitude,

Stacey

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What Other’s Are Saying

Your poetic literary style of writing is very cool to read. It’s its own style that I don’t really see from other writers. So when I read yours, I always feel like it’s this like Julia Cameron, the Artist’s Way type of vibe.

Your writing always feels less like reading and more like being pulled into a room where something true is happening. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it has a kind of emotional gravity that makes me slow down and actually feel it. Plenty of people write beautiful sentences. Very few create a feeling in the reader’s body. You do that.

With your writing, you like to leave things open to interpretation. You don't just want to literally give the thing away, that's part of the experience.

There are sections where you do get that subjective perspective, but there's the layer underneath that's also implied.

The level of dopaminergic high impact lines in that piece was out of control. I felt like I was just highlighting like banger, banger, banger, banger.

This is a really ambitious piece. I love that you took it on. I feel the emotion in it and it comes from that place of rawness. Don’t edit that out.

I was like hooked throughout the whole thing. It was just so visceral. There was just so much packed into it. There's complexity, you have to read it slowly, you have to want to reread something. And normally from a content perspective I would give feedback like, oh that's a little risky, but this is from a creative perspective it's like, okay I get it, I get what you're doing, I see the creativity, I see the effort that goes into writing like this. There's also effort that goes into reading like this.

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There’s also the creative product which is the external output.

Most people think they’re the same thing. They’re not.

I’m sitting in a dark room right now. Three candles lit. The cursor blinking in tandem with the movment of the flames. I can feel a spacious openness somewhere inside of me. A sense I have something to say. To transmit. To share. I sense it attempting to rise to the surface, but it’s roots are still buried deeply beyond my knowing and I can’t access their truth yet.

And I refuse to manufacture something for the sake of my own ego. Or force some you-must-post-Substack-by-Friday-BS-timeline.

So I sit. And wait. And listen within.

This is the part nobody talks about.

The part before form.

Before we hit the publish.
Before the work is complete enough.
Before a sense of security and confidence.

You’re either overly structured by grinding toward outcomes, ignoring the sacred transmission within, and going through motions that look like what creativity is supposed to be.

Or you’re in an abstract, creative state so deep but can’t find a structure strong enough to hold it. So it stays inside, brewing forever, never actually finding its way out to make the impact it desires.

Both are a type of collapse.

The creative state must come first.

The product can then be released when the state says its ready to let go.

This creative state has a body.

It starts heavy. Root energy. Deep under the surface.

Imagine the sculptor who throws the modeling clay down on the slate with a thud. It’s raw, formless, and weighted down with all the beautiful nuance still unseen.

The sculptor begins to move. Becoming one with the clay. The patterns emerge at the same time the electricity moves through the fingers giving it shape.

The clay moves too. Delicacy enters. Lightness lifts. Something elegant beginning to form, almost on its own. You’re not forcing anything. You’re listening for what it wants to be. Sensing where it wants you to arrive.

This is the aperture opening.

Time stops being time. You’re living inside it. A state of being you accessed more often than not as a child. Your intellect sharpens. You intuition glows. You can switch between modes without losing the thread: write, step back, return, refine, release. All of it happens inside the same glowing field.

This is the creative state.

You call it flow.

It is the art of becoming.

You want to live here forever.

You begin to wonder if you can.

But you also wonder about the product. The outcome. The completion.

Is it the written piece? Is it the thing you can show others?

No. It is not this. As much as you are told it should be.

The real product is your ability to detach from the expectation of outcomes on your creative flow. The bravery to release something still in motion. To let it go before you know exactly what it is or what it might do.

This is where most people get it wrong.

I’m going to write about X, to tell you about Y, so you will do Z.

This is tragic. This is the collapse. This is the inner state thwarted at the root.

When you start with the end product, you collapse the inner state, stifle the creative act itself and wonder why nothing comes alive on the page. Why no one responds. Why the words look right yet feel lifeless.

The state must come first. Always.

I’m still in the dark room. Three candles still softly glowing. The clay has taken on a new form.

The cursor blinks as a signal to send, not a signal to wait.

It arrived while I wasn’t looking.

Now I see it.

This is what Letters to the Living is. Pieces that arrive when they’re ready, not when the calendar says so. Diagnostics on the inner state before the outer product. Language for what you’ve felt but haven’t named.

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Prefer to listen? Click here to listen to the audio. Read by me.

ACT 1

“Go park the car. I’m fine.”

My mom’s been saying this my whole life. I’ve never once believed her. But I’ve always done what she says.

She’s been here before. Volunteering at this hospital since my dad died in room 4036 last year. He died certain. The same way he did everything. Parent teacher conferences. Grocery shopping. A 5K three weeks before they sent him home with stage 4 cancer.

Get in. Get out.

She says she volunteers to give back. I know she volunteers to keep coming back. To the last place her body remembers him alive.

I walk up to the counter where my mother is already pulling out her documentation. Proof she deserves to be here. As if proof will guarantee the results she wants.

The intake nurse shoves the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth as I approach. Bread still in her teeth. She makes sure I see her roll her eyes at her co-worker when my mother mentions she volunteers here.

“Go have a seat and wait for them to call your name.”

The seating is modern. Vinyl that sanitizes easy. Phone chargers for every device. Designed to make you forget why you’re here and where you might be going next.

It’s a Saturday morning. Instead of my couch, my husband, my cat, my dogs, my coffee — I’m here.

My dad took her everywhere. Doctor appointments. The grocery store. Fifty-four years. Twenty years of retirement. Small acts repeated until two people stop being two people and become something harder to name.

He’s dead. I’m not.

So here I am.

She called at 7am. A fever. Something underneath the fever she couldn’t name. I didn’t wait for her to ask.

“We’re going to the ER.”

The certainty surprised even me.

I sit down next to my mother.

There’s a TV on the wall. Too loud. My ears start to bleed.

Not a medical show. UFOs. Government secrets. Non-human intelligence.

I inhale deeply. Settle in.

My sister texts me, “Can you talk?”

I step into the hallway.

I’ve been here all week. Not this hallway. This position. Everyone in my family is holding something unresolved right now. And somehow I became the room they hold it in. My father’s death still moving through all of us like a weather pattern with no end in sight. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I stopped knowing where I ended.

I’ve spent a lifetime absorbing everyone else’s feelings and calling it strength. I’m still learning the difference between holding someone and disappearing into them.

I’m not sure I know how to do that today.

My sister picks up on the first ring. Her breath heavy through the line.

“What’s going on with mom?” Facts first. My interior second. I know her.

We both know since my dad died mom hasn’t been the same. But if I’m honest, it began long before he died.

Cancer, like truth, doesn’t need a diagnosis to exist.

Neither does anxiety.

The double doors open with a loud whoosh while my sister is still talking.

I hit the mute button. Not for her. For me.

It’s a monologue. I’m just holding the auditorium so she can hear herself deliver it.

I see the frumpy security guard first. Brown uniform. Too tight in the waist. Out of breath. Walking backwards. Two steps ahead of her, trying to stop her with his body — but she’s pushing through him like a revolving door she knows doesn’t work.

I freeze when I see her.

Not because of what she’s doing. Because I know her.

She has the face of an angel.

Twentyish. Long auburn hair. An old The Cure t-shirt and flannel pajama pants.

Her eyes are hazel with yellow in them. They pierce me. Ask me for help. I don’t move.

I know this woman. I’ve felt her before.

She is holding her discharge papers the way you hold something you’re not sure belongs to you. Walking like the floor isn’t fully solid.

A security officer is trying not to look like he’s escorting her. We both know he’s more scared than she is.

I’m in control. I am calm. I am relaxed. He’s saying it to himself.

I pick up on the signals in her eyes. The same ones in my mother’s this morning.

Fear. Panic. Uncertainty.

She begins to speak. The words sound like someone reading the back of a cereal box out loud to themselves. Her voice barely hits the surface. Like someone turned the presence knob all the way down.

My sister is still talking. I wish dad were still alive. Oh, did you hear about Gracie?

She moves on to soccer mom gossip.

I stay exactly where I am.

I sense it before it starts.

The girl puts her body in a chair facing the exit doors.

Her back is to me. Sitting loosely in the plastic chair like it’s the first thing that’s held her all day.

I hang up with my sister and sit back down next to my mother.

ChatGPT. A new symptom. A new possibility.

I say nothing.

Across the room the girl’s agitation begins to rise. Her arms conducting an orchestra only she can hear.

“Everybody needs to stop.”

“Stop it right now.”

My mom turns. Eyes wide.

I whisper.

“She’s struggling. It’s sad.”

She stands. Security stands in unison.

“She’s a beautiful girl.” I whisper to my mom.

The frequency picks up my words and puts them in her throat.

“Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.”

She begins to sing.

Singing to the glass doors as if they are the last audience on earth.

“You are beautiful.”

I don’t have a word for what just happened.

I’ve felt this before. I’ve never seen it.

Sometimes the beauty that wants to move through a room doesn’t need permission.

I look at my mom. “She picked up my whisper. There’s no way she could have heard me over that TV. You saw that, right?”

My mom nods slowly.

For the first time all morning my mother is not looking for anything.

And I’m not trying to hold anything.

The girl leaves her purse behind and walks out the doors.

My mother and I walk out the same doors 8 hours later.

No diagnosis.

No answers.

All tests clear.

She lets me lead her out like she’s never been here before.

My back is tight from sitting in those chairs all day. My throat is sore.

I put my arm through hers and pull her close as we move toward the car.

“I love you.” I say to my mother.

“You’re OK,” I say to myself.

She fills the space by recounting the day we just had in the ER.

I don’t take the not-knowing from her. That is hers to sit with, not mine.

If I keep carrying it, she never has to learn she can.

For the first time, I am not managing the acoustics of someone else’s feelings.

I notice all the trees.

Green buds beginning to form new spring leaves.

I see the girl in The Cure t-shirt at the back of the lot.

She’s lit a cigarette.

The exhale is slow and certain.

She glances over.

We don’t wave. We don’t need to.

PS — If you read this whole piece and felt something loosen, that’s the frequency of the Writers Circle.

Twice a month, a small group of empathic and sensitive creators come together to write — not to perform, not to produce, but to put language to what they’ve been living.

We don’t manage each other’s feelings in there. We write from them.

PSS -

Before I published this, I sent it to my mom. She was my first subscriber.

Her text came back: “I thought it was great. Could ‘feel’ what was happening through your descriptions. Your writing is getting better and better.”

We’re finding our way to each other. Not through holding. By creating enough space for each other be truly seen for the first time.

I love you, Momma. Happy Mother’s Day.

Class has not even started. I keep my head down so the other kids won’t notice.

Even though I feel their eyes, I can’t make the tears stop.

The sound of their laughter alerts the teacher.

Stacey, why are you crying again today? she asks with a grimace.

I miss my mom, I say softly.

We all miss our moms, don’t we class?

Yes, Sister Mary Ann, the class responds in sing-song unison.

I drop my head further.

Go sit in the hallway. And don’t come back in until you are done crying, she barks.

The metal chair legs scratch the floor violently.

I struggle to breathe as thirty pairs of eyes follow me out.

It’s the first time I feel shame and understand that my crying is the problem.

It’s also the first time I decide to begin replacing my tears with a strong and confident outer shell.

A shell I’d hide behind for the next forty years.

Until I make the mistake of starting to write online.

I close my phone. My hand trembling. Place it gently on the table.

I stand and move awkwardly, my feet finding no comforting pattern to keep me solid.

Hot pain in my chest. Suffocation in my throat.

I’m in shock.

I pick up my phone and re-read the words from my childhood best friend:

You are performative and opportunistic. Quit seeking attention on social media. It’s embarrassing. You were lucky to have such a great man as your father. It just pisses me off that you exploit his death. But that’s just my opinion. Also, your writing is brutal with your haiku’s or whatever the hell it is.

My thoughts form hands, grab rocks, and take aim at my throat.

I begin the familiar spiral.

Oh my God! What will people think? What was I thinking writing these private things here anyway? How could I be using my dad’s death for attention? I knew this was a bad idea. Why do I do this to myself?

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe writing online has unwritten rules I don’t understand. Rules about what you’re allowed to say and how much of yourself to show. Best practices about what counts as grief and what counts as performance. Rules I hadn’t learned yet, or I had broken without knowing.

The final spiral brings me to my knees.

What’s the fuck is actually wrong with me?

I see the guru’s sales pitch the next day.

I sign up for the writing workshop.

To learn the rules.

Her'e’s what is actually happening to me, and why it keeps happening.

Carl Jung spent his life’s work mapping the architecture of our inner and outer worlds.

He called the protective outer structure the ego.
The innermost totality he called the self.

The ego is forward-facing. The part we affix masks to - to prove to others how smart, kind, capable, and amazing we are. Its job is to keep us from dismantling. To make sure we “save face” when life gets complicated.

The self is the innermost layer. Complete, whole, without form. It’s the way we feel before anyone tells us who we are and how to be. This is our soul.

During the early years of life, the ego gets to work. Giving us structure before we have language. It shapes an identity before we can name what we’re feeling.

That gap — between what the body is feeling and the words available to describe it — is what I call The Language Lag (You can learn more about it here).

You know this space. It’s when something happens. You feel it everywhere. Then, someone asks you “What’s wrong?” And you say, “I don’t know.” Not because nothing is wrong but because the words have not caught up yet.

And because I was seven. And because it was uncomfortable. And because no language existed yet for the pain I was carrying within me, my ego went to work.

It began to build a fixed identity.

A solid outer shell.

Mine looked like this:

Crying = bad.
Thing that causes the crying = irrelevant.

And instead of risking that pain on the stairs again, my ego did the only thing it knew how to do.

It locked my soul away for forty years.

I wouldn’t understand what any of it meant until a writing workshop with a guru a few weeks ago.

But first, we need to go back three years when the Language Lag was starting to open up within me.

A colleague suggested I meet with one of her friends. A practicing evidential medium. It will be fun. She’s really good.

Mildly curious, I agreed.

When I got on the call, this woman (it’s funny I can’t even remember her name now) began describing people and places that didn’t resonate with me. I kept saying, “No. I can’t think of anyone. That’s not familiar to me.”

She kept apologizing, explaining that this never happens. I felt bad for her, but I wasn’t gonna lie. That would not be helpful for her practice.

The whole time she was searching for names, I kept hearing one I didn’t recognize.

It grew louder. More distinct. Not the usual way my thoughts come to me.

Brian. Brian. Brian.

Finally, right before we were about to hang up the call. I found myself too curious.

Does the name Brian mean anything to you? I asked her.

She practically jumped through the phone.

YES. Keep going! she enthusiastically directed me.

My heart began to race. My face flushed. I stammered. Began to hesitate.

She softened her voice. Tried again.

You’re OK. You’re picking up someone. You’re right. Keep going. Take your time.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

The words began to flow. Messy. Uncertain. Jumbled.

They poured out from somewhere I couldn’t locate — not memory, not logic, somewhere or something else.

The Language Lag. The space where images are not fully formed. The pain in my chest felt like nerves. Fragments of images. I didn’t know what was mine and what I was imagining.

Yes. She encouraged. You are right. Keep speaking.

The side of an arm. A tattoo. A flash of grass by a sidewalk and a tall building.

She felt comfort. I felt panic.

After fifteen grueling minutes, she finally told me the story of her brother’s death and how I had accurately named details I had absolutely no knowledge of. Later she sent me a picture of him and the tattoo on her left arm. They were similar to what I sensed but not exact.

He died twenty years ago. I’ve been waiting to hear from him. This was the first time he’s ever come through for anyone, she said. You’re a powerful intuitive. You should start working with your gift.

My gift?

It felt more like a death sentence. The same hot pain in the chest. The same suffocation in the throat.

Over the next two years, I’d spend hundreds of hours conducting research on this “gift.”

Over one hundred strangers. Sixty-minute Zoom sessions. A Google feedback form.

It was undeniable. The lag was real. And even then, my analytical mind struggled (still does) to make sense of the accuracy of what comes through me.

Both the pain and the gift enter and exit the same door.

I call it the aperture.

I hired a guru to fix my writing. Turns out that’s not what gurus are actually for.

I thought I was there to learn the rules and get feedback.

Until the day I received it from the guru.

Your piece lacks charge.

Hot pain in my chest. Suffocation rising in my throat.

I quickly got off the call. The tears came fast. The familiar spirals began looking for rocks to throw.

This time, I started to write about it.

At first angry writing.

Heavy fingers pounding the keyboard into submission.

Building a case.
Becoming the judge and jury.
I would tell everyone how awful this guru really was.

I didn’t get too far before I saw her.

Sitting there staring at me. Her eyes wide.

Seven years old, sitting on the stairs.

She stretched out her hand.
I took it.

Carefully, she began to show me.

Not what was wrong.
What was actually happening.

The guru’s feedback held a truth about my writing.

It did not hold the truth about me.

I saw as the pain of the ancient wound entered the aperture.

I felt the gift of my tears creating more open space within the lag.

My sensitivity was never meant to be stifled.
My tears are not weakness leaking out.

They are evidence of the aperture widening, the ego cracking, and the soul learning to shine through.

The same aperture that lets in grief that used to bring what’s wrong with me spirals is the same space that allows perfectly timed messages to move through me for others.

Same vibration. Different expression of the frequency.

This is not a design flaw inside of me.

I built the hard outer shell because the world taught me my soul was too much to show.

I went looking for rules.

The guru gave me something I didn’t ask for.

Exactly what I needed.

My inner soul was never the problem.

The closing of the aperture was.

If you want to learn to write from inside the lag and open the aperture, you’re exactly who the writing workshop inside Letters to the Living was created for.

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What if the question was never supposed to be what’s wrong with me?

What if it’s always been what’s right within me?

This is why I write here.

Not to perform some manufactured certain version. Not to hand you five easy steps toward perfection.

To remind you what already exists inside of you. The same thing inside of me.

I’m not special. I don’t have a gift any more than you have a gift.

I have a skill. That I’m still learning to develop.

I have spirals. That I’m still learning to sit with.

We both have an aperture that opens or closes access to the Language Lag.

What the guru’s workshop actually taught me had nothing to do with the rules of online writing.

It taught me that the rules were never the problem.

The closing of the aperture was.

The words that are uncertain, the ones that come out sideways, the ones that feel most unclear — the ones that make you feel something pounding in your chest. We don’t have to be scared of those anymore.

Those are the ones waiting to come through the aperture.

The guru’s feedback that gutted me wasn’t wrong about my writing. It was wrong about who my writing was for.

My writing was never meant to be polished into palatability.

It was meant to widen the space within me.

By opening the door with the stories I’ve been scared to tell.

I write here because I spent forty years performing certainty and calling it strength. Because I know what it costs to keep the aperture closed. Because I’ve sat across from over a hundred strangers and felt what moves through when someone finally stops explaining themselves and starts telling the truth.

I write here to show you the door. To help you widen your own space. To encourage you to write more freely from your own lag. To get in there — a little afraid, a lot uncertain — and trust that the words that cost you something are the ones worth putting on the page.

Maybe you’ll begin to recognize when your aperture is being asked to open more fully.

Maybe you’ll start to trust the signals in your body.

Maybe you’ll know that your soul — your beautiful, sensitive soul — was never the problem.

Maybe you’ll feel a little less alone.

And maybe — when someone tells you that your writing is opportunistic and performative — you’ll know exactly what that says about their aperture.

Not yours.

That’s what the writing workshop inside Letters to the Living is really about.

Our soul doesn’t need more rules. It longs for resonance. For openness. For freedom.

Twice a month, paid subscribers gather on zoom for a live writing session. Together. In a room where the opening is the point, not the problem. Where the sentence that costs something to put on the page is exactly the one we’re here for.

There is craft here. And skill. And yes, even strategy. But we build it together, from the inside out.

The diagnostics, frameworks, and structures that great writers use don’t come from a curriculum I designed in advance. They come from what this room actually needs. What the writers inside it are wrestling with. What wants to come through and keeps getting blocked.

I personalize and co-create them with you and for you. Because the best frameworks aren’t handed down, they’re excavated from the work itself. And your work deserves to be seen.

But none of it means anything if the aperture is still closed.

If that sounds like the kind of room you’ve been looking for — the door is inviting you in.

What might you write if the aperture was finally fully open?

[Join the live writing workshop →]

She built her career making liars confess on the witness stand.

The kind that makes white collar criminals decide, mid-sentence, that honesty is easier than whatever comes next. Then cry about it. Which she expected. Because the truth and tears always arrive together like a two-drink minimum.

A woman who knows exactly what it costs someone to finally tell the truth.

So, I ask her: Tell me about a courageous moment. A recent one.

After circling for the right answer, she surfaces an old story of past success.

I feel the avoidance. Nope. That’s not it.

She’s new to building her own business. Already wrote a book. Now starting to speak. But it’s still early days and she’s got a wide open calendar.

I ask again, differently. What’s the story you’ve been hesitant to tell?

She goes back even further.

She is not trying to be evasive on purpose.

It’s risky to tell someone what you aren’t sure about. Especially when your entire career has been spent handing uncertainty back to whoever brought it into the room.

Find the facts.
Construct the argument.
Walk out with a winning verdict.

So under the pressure of my questions, she reaches for what was already solid.

I recognize it in her because I did the exact same thing last month.

The interview was super formal, and I hadn’t sat across from a panel in years.

I forgot that it feels like a firing squad where the weapons are clipboards and the ammunition is follow-up questions. The lack of eye contact. The taking of notes. Careful, diligent notes. The kind that capture everything you said and nothing you actually mean.

Uncertain how to answer their questions, I look down at my hands.

Then, I start to dance.

I put on a wonderful performance. You know the one. It looks like confidence from the outside but feels like survival from the inside. The version of yourself who has the clean answers and the poised delivery and words that worked before, in other rooms, for other panels.

The moves were good.
They just weren’t honest.

I quietly stumbled through the rest of the interview.

Got in the car and started to cry. An ugly cry. The chest weight of a car crash you weren’t braced for because you thought you were sitting safe in a parking lot.

It took me three days, a trip to the therapist, and 300 bucks to figure out I'd shown up as someone I used to be.

An old version that knew the words the panel wanted to hear to prove I was valuable, credentialed, and safe.

She started doing the “right moves” before I’d even chosen the music.

That’s the thing about old patterns — they don’t need a cue. And they remember the moves automatically.

A week later they called me back for a second interview.

I almost didn’t go.

Because if what they wanted was what walked in the first time — I knew I could not give them that again.

Because the tears (and the $300 bucks) had already told me what it cost. And I wasn't willing to pay either or those prices again.

I walked in ready. Steady. Prepared.

New music. Trusting the steps to unfold naturally.

Same room. Same table. Same clipboards.

When a question was too complex, I said so. When something didn’t land right, I named it.

I felt brave being my most natural self.

Proud even.

It was no surprise when the natural version of me got the rejection email a week later.

I showed them the old draft first, that’s who they wanted.

When she didn’t show up a second time, they were disappointed.

Carl Jung called this process individuation — a lifelong movement toward wholeness and a fully secure sense of identity that never actually arrives. It’s not a destination. It’s a direction. The self you’re becoming is always slightly ahead of the self you know how to articulate.

This gap between who you are becoming (which your body, your instinct, your deep self already knows) and who you can describe (which requires language, symbols, a coherent narrative your mind can hold) is always present.

But we can’t name what we have not yet integrated. Integration requires time — the deliberate work of living something until it becomes part of your cellular knowing. Only then can language arrive to describe it.

Who we’re in the process of becoming resists language almost by definition. You can feel it moving in you before you can name it.

Like trying to describe a sound you heard once through a wall in a building you’ll never visit again.

I call this The Language Lag.

The Language Lag is the reason the attorney kept reaching backwards to her past success. The reason I performed in an interview and kept my natural self at bay.

It's the reason our writing, after publishing, falls flat because we’ve not made space to show the reader our discomfort and name it with imprecise words.

The words that fit better are always a version behind.

Like a photograph.

True. Just not current.

Language is the receipt. Not the purchase.

Once you recognize the Language Lag, there’s something you can do.

If you’re finding this valuable, share it.

Let’s help someone else get out of the lag and publish that new version.

Share

The Language Lag is not the problem.

Staying in your old self is.

There’s no moment of collapse. The writing feels stale.

Just a subtle, inner quiet that something feels slightly off and nothing arrives that feels new or fresh.

There isn’t anything forming that requires someone to lean in. Nothing that asks the reader to feel something they haven’t already named. Nothing curious or compelling about you.

It’s sending the wrong signal to the wrong coordinates.

The people meant to receive you — the ones who would have read your sentences and felt their chest loosen, who would have forwarded it to the one person who needed it, who would have said finally, someone said it — they were listening.

They just can’t feel the real you yet.

When you clear this, they won’t just find you.

They’ll recognize you. They will engage. They will feel seen.

Your people are looking for who you are becoming right now.

You must write from the lag to help them not scroll past you.

Perhaps you’re sitting with a sentence you haven’t written yet. One so honest and true it costs something to put on the page.

You’ve opened the draft four times this week. Closed it three. Your hand hovering over the delete button indefinitely.

Or worse, you published something sorta-honest-but-not-really for a momentary feeling of accomplishment. And when no one responded, or the comments missed the point entirely, you filed it under not good enough instead of not honest enough.

This is a signal.

It’s telling you to write into the lag.

I'm writing into my own lag right now.

I’m writing to process my insecurities. To find my own words, not someone else’s. To share work that feels unfinished and hit publish anyway.

The sentences I really want are still a few versions ahead of me. I can feel them waiting for me. Cheering me on. Telling me how proud they are. That they see me stretching myself.

This is the process all writers must become comfortable with.

A name, even an inaccurate name, brings the things you’ve been circling closer to the surface.

That’s the Language Lag.

Signaling readiness.

That’s the next version of you — already in motion, already real — sending a signal up through the body asking to be met with new words.

Write toward it. Not the polished version. Not the archive.

Write what’s forming right now.

And watch who shows up.

If you felt something loosen while you were reading, and you’re ready to write from the lag:

Subscribe now

Stacey Gonzales, Ed.D. is a creative architect and executive ghostwriter. She asks the questions the past version of you can’t answer — and writes the version of you you haven’t met yet. This is Letters to the Living.

P.S. Bonus for the first 10 to send me a DM with a piece you’ve got in draft form — something that feels close but not quite right, or that just isn’t landing for you.

I’ll run the full Language Lag Diagnostic on it and tell you exactly where your signal drops and why.

No charge. Just goodwill. And an ask for simple feedback to improve the tool.

If you felt yourself somewhere in this piece — that’s the signal.

There’s a man over there sitting at the cafe window.

Old. White. Rich.

I know he is rich from the clothes he is wearing. Labels I don’t recognize but are pristine in their placement. Material that sits perfectly positioned in place.

Only rich clothes understand this level of precision.

He is shaking.
Not on purpose.
And not a soft, gentle shake either.

Violent shakes.
Tremors.

It’s the worst in his hands.

Continual eruptions clawing their way to the surface from somewhere deep within.

The coffee in his cup waits patiently. One slip, and everyone knows.

I observe this out of my periphery not wanting the tremors to catch me staring.

My tremors aren’t new.
They are ancient.
Older than me.

Inherited from my parents and their parents before them.

I tried to bury them.

In productivity.
In reinvention.
In work.

Turns out they’ve just been waiting.

Apparently, you can’t bury what was never yours to begin with.

When my dad died in November of last year, my center of gravity shifted.

So much of who I thought I was had been built around him.

Or perhaps for him.
Or maybe even despite him.

All these versions now with no place to go.

The one who needed to be loved a certain way. The one who pretended she didn’t. The one who kept trying. The one who gave up. The one who stayed. The one who ran away. The one who kept achieving long after she forgot why.

All of these versions circled back to him.
Even when I tried my damnedest to pull away.

He was the fixed point I’d been orbiting without realizing it.

And then, just like that, my fixed point was gone.

Poof.

That was November.

Most mornings I wake up and find my footing quickly enough.

Make the coffee.
Feed the animals.
Read with my hubby.

Convince myself I know who I am before the day asks me to prove it.

But some mornings the tremors are there before I even open my eyes.

This was one of those mornings.

Eight hours of sleep and still tired.
The kind of tired that coffee can’t fix.

The room was quiet, my body screaming.

Chest heavy.
Right arm numb.

I've learned to recognize this.
To breathe through it quietly and calmly.
To seem settled enough not to scare the neighbors.

But today the tremors clocked in early and got straight to work.

Unlike last week.

When I rolled out of bed and could easily affix labels to myself:

A ghostwriter with something valuable to say.
A mystic who reads everyone else’s energy.
A business woman who has it together.
A family member who shows up.

I have thousands more of these descriptions.

So I did what I always do when the tremors get loud.

I made myself useful. Ran errands. Kept moving.

Went to the dry cleaners.

The Chinese man at the counter always says the same thing: You pay now. You pick up later.

Always paying now. Never picking up later.

I'd gladly pick up any one of those identities today.

I’d even promise to dress it up with lipstick and eyeshadow.

Yet nothing settles long enough.
Back on the rack they go.
Round and round.

My dad called me Pacer.

“Hey, Pacer Acer,” he’d buoyantly yell when I’d walk into his house.

No doorbell.
No announcement.
Genuinely happy to see me.

I was his Stacey Pacer.

After my sisters were born, they became Susie Poosie and Jodie Podie.

He told me I was his favorite.
It was OK that he told them that, too.

An imperfect father. Loving his imperfect daughters. Perfectly.

He didn’t leave me riches.
He left me a name.
A real one.

Not a description I could find on a rack.
Not a performance I could take on and off.

Just Pacer.

Someone who moves.
Someone who shows up without knocking.
Someone he was always genuinely happy to see.

Maybe the identity I have been seeking was always there.

Not in the versions I’d been auditioning for.
Not in the labels I’d been reaching for all morning.

In a simple truth.

Found in the unconditional love of a man who yelled my name across the room like it was the best word he knew.

And just like that, the old pattern kicks back in.

I tell the tremors within to shush.

That I don’t need this shit today.

Don’t you know I have work to do?

Important work.

Work that requires me to be solid.

They tell me to slow down there buk-a-roo.

I look up.
The man’s still there.
The shaking cup held loosely.

I came to this cafe to escape.

Instead the tremors followed me in, pulled up a chair, and sat down across from me like an old friend who knows they're always welcome.

Maybe that’s the point.

I don't have rich clothes with perfectly placed labels to hide behind.

No pristine material waiting for me to hit publish.

Just me.
Unsettled.
Still growing.

Learning to sit with what moves through me without demanding it stop.

Pace yourself.

I pick up my coffee cup.

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Stacey Gonzales is an empath who is highly perceptive about everyone except herself 🔮. She has too many advanced degrees to count, has run marathons, birthed one of two babies at home, and still can't decide what to put in her LinkedIn bio. She writes other people's words for a living and is just now remembering to write her own ✍🏼. She wants to build a homestead on a farm 🌾. She has never camped ⛺️. She sees no contradiction. Breathwork is cheaper than therapy. Mostly 🌀.

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Prefer to listen and feel the words? Press play below. Read by me.

I started writing this publication three months ago.

And yet, I kept hitting the snooze button on it.

Why?

Not because I didn’t have ideas.
And not because I don’t have words.
If anything, there were too many of both.

The hesitation was subtle.
A quiet sense that my energy just wasn’t aligned.

Every time I sat down to write my rough draft, I could feel the familiar pull toward performance and the instinct to shape the words for someone else rather than simply letting them unfold for me within myself.

Afraid of being me.
Scared of really being seen.

More times than I’d like to admit, I’d begin new things with an undercurrent of fear and people-pleasing.

What would start off as curiosity would slowly transform into unhealthy expectations and pressure I’d put on myself.

The creative output I worked so hard on would quickly morph into a performance piece to fill my need for external validation.

The thoughtful processes I created?

They’d eventually trap the very thing I was trying to protect.

If there is one thing I know for sure, it’s this:

The energetic pattern you start with can easily become the pattern you unconsciously perpetuate.

So it sat there.
Like me.

Frozen.
Waiting.

Until now.
Something is beginning to shift.

I might be crossing a threshold.

I’ve always been a deeply sensitive, empathic, creative, and curious person.

As a kid, I’d write in my journal. Raise my hand in class. Write poetry. Explore my dreams. Say what I was feeling out loud. Stare at the sky and wonder what exactly does it mean to exist.

Over time, I began to notice what was met with interest and what was dismissed.

Nothing harsh.
Nothing obvious.

Just enough to learn:

That’s not the way we do things around here.

So those curious parts of me, well, they soon became quieter.

Not gone.

Just…less expressed.
Less practiced.
Less trusted.

And eventually, easier to ignore.

In exchange, I lived and hid inside structures with fancy titles called: leadership, responsibility, systems, outcomes, accountability.

Good things.
Necessary things.
Important things.

Until I swapped it all for the ultimate label:

PROFESSIONAL.

At first, that felt like growth and progress.

But one day, I began to notice something strange happening.

The structures that once supported me began to feel…tighter. Constricting.

Less like something I could move within, and more like something I needed to hide inside of.

Not because someone asked me to.
But because I had formally learned how to “play the game.”

And in the process, the subtler, softer, gentler parts of me were slowly pushed aside…

or worse, ignored entirely.

I’ve always been someone who asks a lot of questions.

Not the efficient kind that move a meeting forward or lead to quick fixes. The other kind. The kind that sit in the room a little longer than expected. The kind that make people uncomfortable. The kind that aren’t entirely sure there’s a one word answer at the end of them. Questions that poke holes rather than close loops. Questions that don’t want to prove something but rather uncover something precious sitting beneath the surface yet to be fully revealed.

You know the type.

The person at the end of the meeting who asks another question just as laptops begin closing, chairs shifting, and a few people exchange that look that says, please don’t.

Yep, that’s me.

And instead of the question becoming an exploration, I became the problem.

Maybe not for the world.

But for productivity.
For efficiency.
For progress.

Because my questions:

slow things down.
make people uncomfortable.
suggest the first answer might not be the only one.

Before starting this publication, I found myself sitting with my own question: do structure and creativity have to be at odds or can they co-exist? Is there room enough for both within me?

Because there’s the version of me who writes in journals, asks questions, and follows curiosity wherever it may lead.

But there’s also the version of me who wants to lead, organize, produce, and deliver.

One expansive.
One contained.

Both necessary.

But neither, on their own, have ever felt complete.

In Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, he argues creativity does not wait for inspiration to show up. Inspiration wants structure so it can find a place for itself when it does decide to appear. It’s something we contain. We capture. We connect.

On the other hand, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act positions creativity as something that can’t be forced into existence. It’s something we notice. We experience. We feel. We receive.

Somewhere between these two ideas about creativity and structure feels like the place where my soul might finally find its expression within the structure of this container.

Not discipline alone.
Not openness alone.
Something else.

A structure that invites flow.
A creativity that invites formation.

For a long time, I thought there was a right and a wrong way to write.

Believing that if I studied enough writers, enough thinkers, enough people who seemed to know what they were doing, eventually I would find the formula.

So I did.

Got a masters in Literature.
Studied digital marketing.
Worked at an agency.

I became obsessed with others.

What worked.
What sounded smart.
What got engagement.
What felt perfectly polished.

And slowly, without realizing it, I started expressing my creativity for external validation within forced frameworks.

Not for me.

For how it would land.
For whether it was “right.”
For how it might be perceived by others.

And once again, the honest parts of me, I pushed to the side.

What interests me now is something messier and more alive.

writing where curiosity leads first
where questions meander and create more questions
where noticing isn’t rushed into meaning
and where expression isn’t shaped too quickly into something recognizable
and where sentences like this break the rules and follow no damn structure at all

Because that’s what structure can do, if you’re not paying attention.

It stunts us.
Interrupts the wonder.
Rewards the answer before the question is fully formed.

It tells you to move on before you’re ready to arrive.

And at some point, every creative person has to stop borrowing other people’s maps
and begin drawing their own.

Maybe you know this feeling too.

The moment where something in you wants to linger, but everything and everyone around you tells you to move on.

Perhaps you’ve traded the quieter parts of yourself for the more acceptable ones.

Softened your voice.
Shortened your questions.
Edited your thoughts mid-sentence
before they even had a chance to fully form.

Maybe you’ve built structures to support yourself only to realize, at some point, they’ve became prison walls.

Maybe, like me, someone told you
that you were too sensitive,
too much,
too loud,
too anything.

And without even realizing it, you started to become a little less.

Less expressive.
Less curious.
Less you.

Maybe you’re just beginning to use your voice.
Learning to trust it.
Anchor it.

Or maybe you’ve spent years refining it
shaping it into something that fits,
that lands,
that’s received,
that gets attention,
but it’s not the kind of attention you want anymore.

And now you’re wondering what the new version of you sounds like.

Yes, I’m certain.

This is the threshold moment I’ve been waiting for, and I’ve crossed it.

I hear those parts of myself again.

The ones that got quieter.
The ones I learned to set aside.

I’m not shaping this for you.
I’m not waiting until it’s ready.
I’m not trying to get it right before I begin.

I’m letting it be what it is.

A little unfinished.
A little uncertain.
A little more honest than feels comfortable.

Because if there’s one thing I know for sure now:

The perpetual patterns start to break the moment you stop performing for approval and are willing to be seen before you feel ready.

So maybe this isn’t ready.
Heck, I’m not ready.

But it’s fully mine.

And for the first time in a long time.

I’m really proud of that.

And, I’m not hitting the snooze button this time.

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