And to be clear, they were incredibly astute and reasonable questions, mainly of the ‘how?’ genre. How does this work? How will I know? When? What if this? What if that?

And while I was more than happy — at some point — to answer each one, I was definitely not going to throw gasoline onto the exact faculty overrunning her system by offering her more information. Let me say that a different way: information is gasoline to a woman’s overthinking and I’ll be the last person to do that to her.

It’s tricky. My clients are steeped in intelligence. The levels they play at required them to ask some freaking brilliant questions along the way. AND they’re smart enough to know intelligence is not the only ingredient. They also get where they are by being intuitive, something they want to develop more of.

So when a client comes to me with a list of brilliant questions, yet spoken from a tone of urgency, I both get where she’s coming from but also that it’s a moment for direction, not more information. And the direction she needs is down, below the neck, back into the body.

So before I answered anything, I asked her to notice where she’s at right now.

When you sent me these questions, where were you?

What was going on in your body?

Walk this back to when the questioning started in your mind… what was happening right before that?

Notice how your energy is collapsed right now?

Notice how the temperature underneath these questions feels urgent and scarce.

Notice how focused your mind is right now.

Notice the background hum of chatter behind all the questioning… at the layer of belief… that is driving all this questioning — what is it saying?

(Likely, “none of this is going to work anyways, who do you think you are, this is going to take you forever, you don’t even know if this is the right approach, what if this isn’t even where you’re supposed to be, etc.”)

I encouraged her to get intimate with herself before we answered anything. Because the body is playing a major role here and while her questions were reasonable, I don’t know that they are all relevant or worthy of her time and energy. But we won’t know until we first know what field she’s standing in with herself.

The background hum is the most important piece for me as her mentor. Because we all have it and most of us have never been given permission to slow down enough to hear what it’s saying. I like to think of it as a layer in our protective field. I experience it as an actual energetic layer in a client that has a specific feel, tone, attitude and signature to it that can be discerned and then deciphered. When I sit with my clients in this layer, sometimes it presents as a person from their past, a symbol, an animal even, or a specific memory arises along with inner child where we can discover why this protective layer exists and why it’s closing off her energy flow (the Jungians would call it life force).

The point is, the more we know, the more we flow. Or as the Greeks said: know thyself. If you’re here to wield your energy, you’ll soon discover that understanding your protective layers is just as important as owning your genius. You don’t exist in your purpose outside of those layers but despite them and since purpose is what you’re after, don’t try to bypass this important awareness and integration.

Ask yourself next time you become full of questions, where does this live below the neck? Set aside the specific questions and thoughts racing through your mind, and notice what the feeling is in your body as they’re racing. Do you feel amped up or like you’re running from something? Do you feel it in your throat? Your gut? Your chest? What does it feel like in there? If you’re new to this kind of intimacy with yourself, it’s a practice but one you will never regret stepping into because you’ll start to realize your body is an incredible instrument of awareness and knowing.

Because my client is brilliant, she sent me a message back a couple hours later that said:

“So, it’s funny. I went and reset myself. I put my phone down, I got home, I took the dogs all for longer walks than usual. And then I listened to some music. It all took about, I don’t know, 75 minutes. And I noticed, oh wow, I feel completely different. And I was like, this is very nice because I still sometimes forget that compared to 2023, 2024, and even into 2025, a mood like the one that I was in when I was messaging you earlier today, would have taken me at least a day, if not multiple days to really get out of. And it’s like, it took me 75 minutes. Literally 75 minutes. How bananas is it that I’m in a completely different headspace? And celebratory, right? How fucking crazy is that?”

That’s what getting intimate with ourselves can do. It can reset us and shift us out of one field and into another that shows us where the truth of our overthinking really exists. The sheer acknowledgment of, “I’m overthinking right now” and the deliberate act of resetting, however you uniquely do that, is the right approach. Hers worked in 75 minutes instead of days because she’s the intimate work of knowing herself I had reminded her of with my questions back to her. She’s sat and examined the beliefs her body holds and where they came from. She knows what protective layers are and how they serve her.

The resets work because of the relationship she’s built with herself and because she’s using it as a way to shift out of a state, not overpower her mind.

There’s no shortage of good advice out there right now, for your nervous system, your habits, your routines. Most of it is smart optimization. But it still all hands you something to think about. One more thing to manage, get right, perfect in your day. And more to tackle when you fail to stick to them.

Most of her questions went away not because she got good advice, but because they dissolved the second she get quiet enough to feel where she actually was.

I know you can feel the weight of your protective layers, but do you know the shape?

That’s why I built this quiz, which is not a personality type or based on your human design. It’s a mirror to name what you’re carrying so you can finally see it, and redirect your energy as smoothly as my client redirected hers. There are seven of these layers. This one will show you which likes to run your show.

Knowing this might be the difference between three days of flow and three days of feeling like everything is wrong.

Take the quiz, then go take your dogs for a longer walk than usual.

Seeing you,

Shauna

I was lying upside down on an ironing board with a frozen water bottle pressed to the top of my belly, trying to coax her into flipping herself right-side-up before her eviction date.

She was breech and we had known this for weeks, holding out hope that she’d turn and we could proceed forward with our birth plan. I’d done the chiropractic adjustments, the acupuncture, the moxibustion — a Chinese herb you burn near your pinky toe that smells exactly as weird (according to my husband) as it sounds. None of it worked… that girl was committed to her position.

The midwives, who had been extraordinary by the way, genuinely wonderful, were now steering me toward an ECV (External Cephalic Version). A procedure where a doctor manually turns the baby from the outside. It’s not dangerous and is a quite common procedure, and every rational, reasonable, practical argument pointed toward: do the ECV. This is the next obvious step.

And despite my midwives convicted stance on the matter, something in me kept saying no.

But I wavered. I questioned. Because the no in me wasn’t particularly loud or dramatic (as intuition often isn’t). It was more like a door that wouldn’t open no matter how many times I pushed on it. I kept checking in with myself, turning it over in my mind, interrogating it. Is this fear? Am I just avoiding something uncomfortable? Am I being irrational? I took all of that seriously and sat with it. I asked myself the harder questions underneath the obvious ones.

And every time I got still enough to actually hear myself, the answer was the same.

This is a no.

There was a final appointment where the decision had to be made. I could see the disappointment on their faces that I was not following through on the next suggested step because this meant a complete shift of the birth plan. I don’t blame them — they had done everything right and their recommendations all pregnancy long were solid. And here I was, this woman they’d cared for through eight months of pregnancy (during COVID nonetheless) unwilling to schedule the procedure.

One of them toward the end of the appointment said (with a little reluctance I might add), “Well, you gotta trust mother’s intuition.”

I left, and fell apart in the parking lot, crying most the way home.

Because it was hard. Because the question that follows every moment of self-trust when the stakes are high is what if I’m wrong? What if I’m the one making the mistake here? Who am I to override the experts? They’ve done this a thousand times, I’ve done it zero.

Fast-forward to a cesarean delivery, and in the operating room, when they lifted her out, the doctor said, “She was positioned with one leg up, one leg down. She wouldn’t have turned even if we’d tried.”

I will never forget the wave of validation that washed over me in that moment. Because not only was it about the win — going against the prevailing voices and being right about my decision — I earned a deeper knowing within myself that I’d be able to advocate for myself and my child when and if it got hard, because I had just passed my first initiation. I had a moment of evidence, a gift I could anchor into, anytime I ever questioned if I was capable to be the kind of Mom I knew I wanted to be. That, yes, I will listen, I will tune in, and I will stick to what my Signal — my intuition — says is the right next step uniquely for me. And I won’t do it flippantly. I’ll consider, question, get honest, check-in with fear, and give myself as much patience in the process as I can.

I think about that moment a lot when women tell me that can’t tell if something is fear or intuition.

This is one of the most important questions you can learn to navigate in your life if you’re committed to a path of intuitive self-leadership. You Signal is not infallible or some cosmic GPS that never reroutes. Sometimes it feels wrong; sometimes it is wrong.

Learning to know your own Signal is a constantly-evolving, clarifying and intimate process, predicated on your relationship with yourself. What you’re seeking is to stop betraying yourself in the moments that matter most, but no one said this is easy. Things get murky, confusing, complex. The world and the authorities in it are sometimes loud, convincing, and you will find yourself making case files to support them at the expense of your own knowing.

The goal is not to make the experts wrong, but to ensure you stay connected to yourself. Because you know the feeling; I know you’ve had it. The moment after something goes down where you thought I knew. I felt it. Why didn’t I listen?

That feeling isn’t just disappointment. It’s a specific kind of grief. And it lands like self-betrayal, like you left yourself at the exact moment you needed to stay.

It costs us. It hurts. But we recover, we heal and we move on. And we learn from it for the next time (and there will a be next time, you can almost guarantee that.)

I think it’s incredibly easy to get swept up into Signal and intuition being associated singularly as a wish-fulfillment machine, like a concierge service for getting what you want, when you want it, better than you imagined. A lot of what gets marketed as intuition is really just manifesting the outcome you want dressed up in something more mystical. It’s beautiful when it works, but it’s not the whole picture.

A question I think anyone needs to sit with if they are on an intuitive path and committed to deepening it: Are you really trusting your intuition or are you trusting outcomes? Because they are not the same.

And because at some point your intuition will take you somewhere that doesn’t feel like a reward. You’ll follow it and get hurt. You’ll follow it and get disappointed. You’ll follow it and wonder, genuinely, why you keep listening to this thing that seems to keep leading you somewhere hard.

And that is exactly when your relationship with intuition either matures or collapses.

The version that collapses goes back to logic and controlling outcomes. It decides intuition was a nice idea, but not reliable or even dangerous. It outsources the knowing back to what looks good on paper and what the ego and rational mind can make sense of.

The version that matures starts to ask a different question. Not why did this go wrong — but what is this for?

The most important part, at least for me, is this: your Signal is what helps you know what is true for you. In your body, in this moment, about this specific thing. And your Signal is connected to context far more expansive than your rational mind can make sense of. I believe there is so much we can’t see, timing that works in our favor if we let it, possibilities in the unknown field that come together if we can trust it. Your Signal — what’s true for you — can see all of this context and considers it when you’re at the crossroads of a tough decision.

That’s what helped me stay in that appointment and walk out having made the harder (and lonelier) choice. My mind was not certain, I was just more loyal to what I felt than I was afraid of being wrong.

My current working definition of patience is trust spread out over time.

I had enough history with my Signal by then to know what it felt like when it rang true versus when I was just scared. That distinction took time and practice, and even since then, many years later, that distinction continues to get sharper through my lived experiences. It took the willingness to check in honestly instead of looking for confirmation of what I already wanted to decide.

That is the skill I want to help you build.

It’s not that your life will suddenly become frictionless. It won’t. Your Signal will sometimes take you somewhere strange and difficult and confusing before it makes sense. It is not only guiding you toward what you want, it is guiding you toward what you need, which is occasionally the same thing and sometimes conspicuously not.

But when you know yourself this well, when you’ve built a real, lived, honest relationship with your own Signal, you stop white-knuckling every hard decision. You stop outsourcing your knowing to whoever sounds the most confident in the room. You stop second-guessing yourself into exhaustion and then kicking yourself when you didn’t listen anyway.

You get to be the authority on your own life. And you get to trust that because you’ve done the work to actually know yourself.

This Sunday night I’m starting something new. It’s called The Signal, a 3-night email séance for women to summon the Signal their practical self keeps muting.

Starting Sunday night, and for three nights, you’ll get an email from me at 7pm ET. You job is to sit with yourself (literal and original definition of séance, btw, before spiritualism made it all about communing with the dead) and spend 20 minutes with the email you receive. It will open you up, transmit, transform, and offer you a somatic experiment to strengthen your connection to your Signal.

Each email is built around a different layer of what gets between you and your Signal. I’m talking about the noise, the static, the hyper-vigilance, the over-functioning, the patterns you’ve normalized so throughly they don’t even register as patterns anymore.

And then on Wednesday night, June 3rd, we get on a live group Zoom call together to go even deeper. I’ll show you how connect with your Signal’s Yes, No, and Not yet as well as take questions and even do a few mini readings if there’s time.

Register here - it’s free and the first email arrives Sunday night!

I was not planning a Part Three to this series. But then the news hit yesterday. Sixty-eight million views to a website that calls itself a rape academy. I’m not going to repeat the details; you’ve seen them.

But since I started engaging in the conversation, I’ve been sitting with my notes on prosperity that I’ve shared here—on surrender, on receiving, on the integrated inner masculine—and I wanted to speak to the gap.

The gap between the frequency I’ve been describing and the world we’re actually living in. The gap between let something larger hold you and a culture that produces sixty-eight million curious clicks toward the dehumanization of women.

Why I’m writing about prosperity at all — in a world like this

We are living through a scarcity crisis that isn’t primarily about money. It’s about meaning, dignity, and the capacity for genuine human connection. Societies throughout history have moved from scarcity to abundance through technology and innovation but what technology cannot produce are people who knows how to live well, receive fully, and contribute from wholeness rather than depletion.

The prosperity frequency, the one I’ve been mapping across this entire series, is not a personal luxury. It is a civilizational need. Because a culture full of women running on depletion, performance, and chronic vigilance is a culture that cannot generate what it most needs: genuine care, creative progression, embodied wisdom, and the particular kind of power that comes from a woman who is fully, unapologetically alive in herself.

That is what’s at stake. Not your morning routine or your revenue goals. Think bigger. Like the actual quality of what we collectively generate when women are whole versus when they are not.

And what sixty-eight million views actually tells me about the quality of our world right now: a lot of people are empty in a way they don't know how to name. And that particular kind of emptiness doesn’t stay contained. It goes looking for something, and what it finds depends entirely on what it's been taught to reach for.

My entire recent body of work is built around helping women develop their inner signal.

Intuition is real. Developing your inner signal matters. And it will not always be enough.

Women have felt something off about a person and been right. And, women have felt completely safe with someone and been devastated. There is no level of attunement, no amount of somatic awareness, no nervous system regulation practice that works as a perfect detector. Some people read as safe and aren't. Some violations come from the least expected direction. The body can be right most of the time and still not save you every time.

That’s a hard thing to sit with as a woman.

So if full-body attunement isn’t the guarantee, what is? And if safety isn’t certain, what does surrender even mean when the world can't guarantee it meets you safely? What does let something have its way with you—the very phrase I used earlier in the series—mean in a culture that proved this week it doesn't always deserve that trust?

I'm not willing to land on permanent vigilance as the answer. Not because the threat isn't real, duh, it is. But because a woman whose nervous system never settles isn't living. She's just surviving in a more defended way. And there's a cost to that too. Permanent vigilance is its own kind of destruction: a nervous system that never settles is a woman who cannot receive, cannot soften, and cannot rest. If safety never fully arrives, she can never fully arrive either.

A woman who lives in a permanent threat assessment is not safer than a woman who isn’t. She is more exhausted, isolated and less connected to the very instincts that would actually serve her.

So may I suggest a third option: working on our healthy inner masculine integration. (And if that phrase is new to you, I wrote the whole map of it here. Short version: it's the part of you that makes surrender safe.)

Build something inside of yourself that cannot be taken. A self so rooted, so regulated, so genuinely at home in your own body and your own knowing, that when the world does what it does, you don’t disappear. You don’t collapse into helplessness or swing the other direction into wearing permanent armor.

Instead, we stay in the room. We grieve what needs grieving. We rage what needs raging. We protect what needs protecting. And then we come back to ourselves, because we—our self—is the one place we have always been able to return to.

Be so ridiculously unrelenting in becoming a woman who is so whole inside herself that the world’s brokenness cannot reach the place you live from. Don’t let the world minimize your inner feminine, but don’t also let it prevent you from integrating with the other parts of yourself, including the healthy inner masculine. Because it all has to work together.

What the healthy inner masculine does when the world confirms your worst fears

He does not tell you to trust anyway.

He does not tell you to drop your guard, open your heart, and assume the best. He is not naive and he is not asking you to be. What he does is this:

He honors what you already know.
The integrated inner masculine is the part of you that does not gaslight your own instincts in order to be polite. He does not override the body’s no because the social situation makes no inconvenient. He does not require proof before he honors what you felt. When your body says something is wrong here, he says: I believe you. We’re moving.

He is the part of you that acts on what you know, even without certainty. Even without evidence that would hold up in a court. Even when it makes you difficult or dramatic or wrong in someone else’s eyes.

He refuses to let you be the one on trial.
For a woman who has been violated, especially by someone she trusted, especially by someone no one would have suspected, the inner masculine is not the voice that says you should have known. He is the voice that says: the violation was not evidence of your failure. It was evidence of someone else’s. He is the internal witness who will not let her be gaslit by the perpetrator, by the culture, or by herself.

He keeps your instincts sharp without keeping you braced.
This is the nuance. Vigilance and discernment are not the same thing. Vigilance is fear running a constant background program—scanning, bracing, waiting for threat. It is exhausting and it dulls the very instincts it’s trying to protect. Discernment is different. It is the quiet, regulated, inner authority that notices and then responds rather than reacts. It is the woman who is fully present in a room and knows something is off before she can name it. That is the inner masculine in his most protective form: alert but rooted.

On “not all men” and what good men can actually do

As a side note, I want to speak directly to the men who might be reading this, or whose partners might send it to them.

When a woman says something about male behavior and your first instinct is to say “not all men”, she wasn’t talking about you.

It tells her your discomfort landed harder than her experience did. And she felt that, even if you didn’t mean it that way and she walks away knowing the wrong thing moved you.

The men who are actually safe don’t announce it. They demonstrate it, especially in the moments where it costs them something. When they stay present with a woman’s hard experience instead of managing their own reaction to it. When they hold another man accountable in the room where the behavior is happening. When they ask: “What is that actually like for you?” — and mean it — and stay in the answer even when it’s uncomfortable.

Get out of grand gestures entirely. It’s a consistent, daily, commitment of choosing presence over self-protection.

And it is one of the most powerful things a man can do right now.

A culture that produces sixty-eight million clicks toward the dehumanization of women is a culture running on scarcity and disconnection. On the particular kind of emptiness that turns other people into objects rather than sources of genuine encounter.

We need the outrage and the legislation and the conversations because it all matters and none of it is optional.

But it doesn’t get to the root either.

The root being: people who are genuinely whole do not consume other people. They don't need to. Wholeness doesn't reach for domination. It doesn't need the sixty-eight million views. It already has something real to return to.

This is slow work. Unglamorous work. The kind that doesn’t make the news and doesn’t go viral. But it changes what people feel when they walk into the room you’re in.

You know this already because you yourself have walked into a room and felt someone's energy before they spoke. That's the field and whole people generate a different one. A field that makes the scarcity frequency—the internal state of never having enough, never being enough, and reaching for power over others to fill what's hollow inside—less available, to their children, the men in their lives, everyone in their orbit who is still deciding what kind of person they’re going to be.

And the woman on the other side of this integration isn’t untouchable. She’s also not naive. She grieves what this is and she’s paying attention.

She just doesn’t disappear into it.

And that, in a culture that is counting on women to either comply or collapse, is not a small thing.

My name is Shauna VanBogart and I write about embodied transformation, the inner life of high-achieving women, and the psychology of what it actually takes to change. I have spent nearly two decades inside this work and Resonance House is that work’s current home.

I am aware that for a certain kind of woman, the woman who found her way here, who has done real inner work, who has maybe spent the last few years deliberately reclaiming her softness and her flow and her right to stop grinding, the word masculine lands with a small internal flinch.

And I understand that flinch. I have had it myself.

We spent years (or our entire upbringing) being told to be harder, faster, more strategic, more structured, and hyper-independent to perform a kind of relentless productivity that we glorified as drive and achievement. Then the divine feminine movement arrived and said: put it down. Soften. Flow. Receive. And for a lot of us, that was the most liberating thing we had ever heard.

So, like all good businesswomen, we pivoted. We read the books, we worked with our teachers, we questioned our upbringing, we started learning about the patriarchy, and we found our personal paths into the divine feminine space within ourselves.

Some of you may be questioning if you went a little too far. If, in the process of reclaiming your flow, you accidentally put too much down, including parts of yourself that you actually need.

What does a disharmony of the feminine look like?

I know “masculine and feminine energies” can float into abstraction real fast so let’s break it down in your actual day. Here is what it looks like in real life when a high-agency woman has overcorrected into pure feminine without the harmonizing of the integrated masculine structure:

• She has vision she’s been “holding” for two years that has never become an actual offer in her business. She trusts the timing, yes, but she’s still waiting.

• She says yes to opportunities that don’t align because saying no feels too closed-off, too rigid; she may feel a sense of, “But what if that was an open door the universe was trying to send me?”

• She has done extraordinary inner work. We’re talking healing, somatic practice, therapy, retreats perhaps, and still cannot make a clean decision about her business without polling five people first.

• She talks about receiving and surrender but her bank account tells a different story because there’s no structure underneath the openness—no funnel, little follow-through, no dedicated space for the things she says she wants.

• She is warm, intuitive, deeply feeling, AND chronically overwhelmed. Because everything comes in, she feels it all, and little of it gets organized or directed anywhere.

• She has confused passivity with receptivity and is in a little denial about it.

This is what feminine energy looks like without its partner. And it’s not prosperity.

Check your resistance to the masculine—because it’s real

*Quick reminder that we’re talking about forms of energy and not gender, although I purposely conflate them below because the masculine does map onto men (and women) in these ways.

We’re living through a culture moment that has made the masculine genuinely difficult to trust, and not without reason. For a lot of women, it feels like their bodies literally can’t go there, as much as they have their mind on board.

The external masculine, as it has been expressed in institutions, power structures, and in many of the men that women have encountered, has a long and well-documented track record of being unsafe. Of taking rather than protecting, demanding rather than honoring, and using structure as control rather than as care. Just open your news feed on any given day and you’ll see a culture immersed in it.

So when we say integrate your inner masculine, we are asking a woman to make peace with a force that, in her lived experience has often been the thing she had to defend herself against—for very real reasons.

That is not a small ask.

And it’s partially the reason the divine feminine movement took off the way it did. Because for many women, finally being told you don’t have to be that was genuinely healing. Like helping a woman put down a weight she was never supposed to carry in the first place.

BUT…

The external masculine’s failures are not an argument against the inner masculine’s gifts. And integrating your inner masculine is not the same as deciding you don't need anyone.

That distinction matters—because hyper-independence is actually one of the most common signs that the inner masculine is not integrated. The woman who has decided she can only rely on herself, who has quietly sealed off the need for support, partnership, or being held by anything outside her own competence—that is not sovereignty, that’s a fortress. And fortresses, however beautifully built, are not places prosperity can move through freely.

What inner masculine integration actually does is the opposite of closing you off. It makes it safe to open. When you have a trustworthy inner structure because the part of you that gives direction, sets boundaries, and says I’ve got you is genuinely online, you stop needing external support from a place of depletion, and start being able to receive it from a place of wholeness.

You don’t outsource because you lack, it’s more like you start allowing from fullness.

That is a completely different energetic posture, and it’s the one that makes real partnership, real collaboration, and real support actually possible. Because you’ve stopped confusing need with openness, and receiving with dependence.

So, just to be clear, the integration is not about needing less. It’s about being whole enough that what comes to you can actually land.

What a healthy inner masculine actually does for you

When the masculine within you is healthy and integrated, here is what you gain:

• He orients you. He is the part of you that has a clear bird’s-eye view of your actual path—not the performed path, not the strategic path everyone else thinks you should take, but your genuine direction. When you feel confused, he cuts through the noise and says: this way, not that one.

• He makes the decision. Not by overriding the feminine’s feeling but after she has felt it, he commits. He is the part of you that stops endlessly processing and says: we’re doing this, closing the loop.

• He builds the container. Your vision, desire, your open and receptive field… all of that needs somewhere to land. He builds the fence. He designs the structure. He makes sure prosperity has an actual vessel to pour into rather than flowing right back out.

• He protects your softness. This is the one most women don’t expect. An integrated inner masculine is fiercely protective of your feminine. He is the part of you that says she doesn’t have to earn this, she doesn’t have to prove this, she is allowed to rest. He guards your receptivity so you don’t have to guard it yourself.

• He does the claiming. He is the inner voice that says: you are ready. I see you. I’ve got you—and with with total certainty. And when you hear that voice from within, something in your feminine finally exhales. Because the claiming isn’t coming from outside. It’s coming from the most trustworthy source there is: yourself.

• He converts desire into form. The feminine knows what she wants. The masculine makes it real. Together they complete the creative cycle which starts with desire, then direction, and finally delivery.

What this actually looks like day to day

Let me paint a picture for you of a woman with an integrated inner masculine because it looks like someone who knows what she wants and moves toward it without a lot of noise. She…

Can be soft in her body and clear in her direction at the same time.

Can be in full creative flow and still close the client.

Can surrender to what’s moving through her and still show up at her desk the next morning and build the thing.

Is sensual AND decisive, still AND directional, receiving AND leading. She doesn’t oscillate between the two, she has learned to run both simultaneously, and it reads in her energy as a particular kind of settledness that is almost impossible to fake.

That is the integrated woman. And she is the one who actually lives in prosperity, not because she mastered the feminine by edging out the masculine, but because she’s a full, whole being.

Think about gardening. The feminine is the quality of the soil; ideally it’s rich, alive, generative and receptive. And along with the soil, the masculine tills the field, plants the seed, builds the fence that keeps what’s growing safe.

They need each other.

Without feminine receptivity, masculine structure becomes a beautifully built house no one can actually rest in.

Without masculine structure, feminine receptivity becomes formless—things flow in and right back out.

A mentor of mine, Paul Cuneo, once used the metaphor of the wine and the glass. Feminine essence being the wine; the masculine being the structured glass to contain and present the wine.

Prosperity is not one or the other. It is the state that becomes possible when both are working in partnership.

A big part of what the divine feminine movement didn’t address over the years, is that for the feminine to fully open and receive, she has to trust the masculine enough to surrender. And for most women—given what the external masculine has modeled and the conflation of those terms—that trust has to be rebuilt from the inside out, with her own inner masculine, before it can ever feel safe.

What to do next

It never fails to come back to noticing.

Start here:

Notice where you stop short of a decision. Where do you loop, poll, process endlessly without landing? That is often where the inner masculine has gone quiet or is being suppressed. Sit with questions along these lines: what do I actually know here? What can I say for certain? What do I know for sure is clear and truthful here? Start small and start with easy stuff. For example, “I know I have to wrap up my day by 4:30.” or “I know this email converted two clients.” On some days when the inner masculine feels like it’s totally retreated, I start with, “I know my car is white and there’s milk in the fridge.” Seriously … I don’t care how silly it sounds, coming back to certainty in these small ways is incredibly grounding.

Notice where your structure serves control rather than care. Some women have plenty of masculine energy but it’s running a fear program. Relentless productivity, harsh internal standards, a ton of self-criticism, the inability to rest—that is the unintegrated masculine turned against the feminine rather than in service of her. The question to ask is: is this structure holding me, punishing me, or imprisoning me? These questions are meant to slow your mind way down so you can be with all the layers of them (and there are many).

Let yourself be oriented. Sit with your actual desires and ask the inner masculine to show you the direction. Not the whole plan. Just the next true step. He doesn’t give you the whole map at once. He gives you the next move. A simple phrase of, “Show me” that you say in your head is enough to let your system know you are paying attention.

Practice the handoff. When your feminine has felt something fully—an idea, a desire, an impulse—practice handing it to the masculine to act on.

Here’s what that looks like: You feel it, then you let the idea, desire, or impulse land in your body completely without rushing to figure it out. You give it maybe a day and you notice the next morning whether it’s still alive or whether it was just static. And if it’s still alive, when it’s still there in your body the next morning with the same low hum of yes, you let the masculine pick it up. You make one concrete decision about it that isn’t a plan or a whole strategy. Just one decision. I’m building this. I’m sending that email. I’m saying yes to this and no to that. The masculine’s job is not to map out the entire journey, it’s to take the signal the feminine handed him and turn it into a first move. A real one, in the actual world.

What to expect when you start integrating

It will not feel peaceful at first, I want to tell you that now.

When the inner masculine begins to come online in a healthy way, the first thing he usually does is get clear—and clarity, when you have been living in comfortable ambiguity, can feel aggressive. Suddenly you’ll know things you’ve been not-knowing on purpose. You’ll see decisions you’ve been avoiding and you’ll feel the direction and the weight of having to actually move in it. All signs it’s working so stay with it.

You may also find that as your inner masculine gets healthier, your tolerance for external masculine dynamics that don’t honor you gets lower. The integrated inner masculine raises your standard because you now have a felt reference point for what it feels like to be claimed, protected, and held with full integrity. Anything that falls short of that will feel more obviously wrong than it used to. Again, all signs it’s working, so maybe take a pause on making any drastic decisions until you settle into your new norm.

And finally: the feminine will test the masculine before she trusts him. This is normal. There will be moments of wanting to take back control, to collapse back into overdoing, to question whether surrender is actually safe. The integration is not a one-time event. It is a practice and it deepens over time the same way all real things do.

In Part One, I said that abundance is something you build and prosperity is something that finds you.

Prosperity finds the woman who has done both things. She has built the container and learned to stay open inside it. She has integrated the part of herself that gives direction and the part that surrenders to what moves through her. She has stopped outsourcing her structure to the world and stopped abandoning her softness in the name of being strong and capable.

She is fully herself, which happens to require both the feminine and masculine (not half and half).

The divine feminine movement gave women back their right to receive. Now it’s time to give them back the inner masculine that makes receiving safe, sustainable, and real.

I’m Shauna VanBogart, and I’ve devoted the last two decades to understanding what actually changes a woman—not just her ideas, but her nervous system, her identity, her capacity to receive, and the way her life reorganizes around that change.

My work sits at the intersection of embodied transformation, nervous system regulation, desire, and the deeper psychological patterns that shape how women love, lead, create, and prosper. I create immersive experiences, teachings, and spaces for high-agency women who are no longer interested in surface-level growth… they want the real thing.

A great place to jump into my work is with the Vision Board Restyle.

Begin here →

But I keep meeting women who have done everything right by the abundance playbook and still feel like something is just slightly beyond their reach.

And that’s because the integration that has to happen next isn’t going to happen from a spirituality book, a session with your coach and likely not in a meditation. It’s more like dancing, by yourself, late at night, in full sensual contact with yourself.

Stay with me…

Abundance is something you build. Prosperity is something that happens to you.

That’s the whole thing. But let me take you inside it because the difference isn’t just semantic—it’s somatic. You can feel it in your body if you know what to look for.

Abundance is a mindset and an internal shift that says: there is enough, I am enough, more is available to me. It asks you to open up, expand your thinking, to stop blocking, and receive more.

And it works. Up to a point.

What I’ve noticed—in myself and in the women I work with—is that we get really good at the abundance thing and still feel like we’re standing in front of a door that should be open by now. Shouldn’t it feel different by now?

It can be tempting to set off on a path of more mindset work around abundance. And likely you’ll end up right back at this same door, asking yourself what you’re missing. It’s a good question because something is missing, but it’s not MORE mindset work. It’s learning how to arrive at something that can only be surrendered into.

That something is prosperity.

Prosperity isn’t a mindset. It’s more somatic than that. And it requires something most high-achieving women have never been taught to do.

It requires you to stop running the show.

Yup. I know… we hate that as go-getting women. In fact, we’re terrible at it.

You don’t just want more (AKA abundance). You’re wanting a specific felt experience of that more. A particular kind of satisfaction that comes from feeling secure, safe, joyful, pleasureful and even sensual in the more. And that, my friends, is not abundance, it’s prosperity.

These words feel interchangeable but they're actually different orientations. Abundance is an internal recognition, a mindset of limitlessness and fullness that already exists, regardless of material reality. You can be abundant sitting in silence with nothing. Prosperity, rooted in the Latin prosperus ("doing well"), is abundance that has moved through you into form. It implies active thriving across domains: health, wealth, relationships, vitality. Abundance is the source state; prosperity is what abundance looks like when it's lived and expressed.

And if you want said prosperity, you have to let prosperity come for you instead of trying to conjure it.

I know. That sounds passive. Maybe even a little terrifying if you’re wired the way most of us are—competent, capable, self-directed, the kind of woman who builds things from nothing and figures it out.

As someone who has dedicated her life’s work to the feminine capacity to receive, this is a timely reminder: the same way a woman cannot force an orgasm, she cannot force prosperity.

You can try (godspeed and good luck). You can manage the conditions. You can do everything right. But if your nervous system doesn’t actually trust that it’s safe to receive—if somewhere in you surrender still reads as danger—it will not come. Or it will come in small, controlled amounts that never feel like enough.

Abundance opened up our right to have more, but it keeps us in building and effort with spiritual aesthetics, if we don’t continue on the journey to prosperity.

Prosperity is what’s on the other side of the build. It’s the frequency that doesn’t need you to do anything more except surrender. And depending on your relationship with letting something have its way with you—meaning: letting something larger than your will take over, hold you, move through you—you will either live in prosperity or you will keep accumulating abundance and wondering why it never quite feels like enough.

What science says about surrender

Neuroscientists studying the female brain during orgasm found something pretty cool: the prefrontal cortex—the seat of reason, self-monitoring, and behavioral control—goes significantly quiet. Brain imaging studies show that the more a woman could release cognitive control, the more aroused she actually became. And when researchers studied women who were faking? The control regions of the brain lit right back up. No deactivation. No real release.

You cannot manufacture the real thing by managing your way into it.

The neurological requirement for a woman’s full pleasure is the temporary suspension of the very faculty she uses to run her life. The planning brain. The monitoring brain. The I’ll-just-handle-it brain. It has to go offline just long enough to let something move through her that is larger than her management of it.

How this connects directly to money, business, and the frequency of prosperity: research confirms that women’s stress levels directly suppress sexual desire and capacity for pleasure, more so than in men. Higher cortisol means lower access to the receptive state. The harder she’s working, the tighter she’s gripping, the more she needs to control outcomes, the less access she has to the frequency of full receiving.

Why this is especially hard for women like us

Our beautiful capability to build, create, have it handled, has a shadow: we often don’t know how to stop building long enough to receive what we’ve built.

We keep adding. We keep doing. We keep improving and expanding and going to the next level. And all of that movement—which is real and necessary—can actually block the frequency of prosperity, which is inherently still, slow, and receptive (full frequency notes in the next section).

Prosperity feels like this extraordinary sense of being held. Of something larger and more intelligent than my own effort saying: I’ve got you. You’ve done enough. Let me take it from here.

My experience of prosperity is it being something that happens to me when I finally got out of the way. It’s very much in the body, something you surrender into. It has the quality of being taken care of by something bigger—whether you call that the universe, God, your own deeper intelligence, the current—it doesn’t matter. What matters is the felt sense: I don’t have to do this alone. I don’t have to force this. It’s already coming for me.

Think about abundance vs. prosperity like this:

Abundance is filling your own cup. You work on yourself, you open your channels, you expand your capacity, and more flows in. You are the active agent. You are doing the filling.

Prosperity is when the cup overflows because you finally relaxed your grip on it.

The energetic posture is completely different. And depending on your relationship with not being in control, with trusting something outside of your management, with allowing yourself to be fully taken care of, this will either feel like the deepest exhale of your life, or it will feel terrifying and wrong and like you’re giving something up.

Prosperity as a frequency broken down

Like ingredients of a delicious cake:

Still. Slow. Unhurried: Like there’s nothing to prove and nothing to fix and nowhere more important to be than exactly where you are right now.

Sensual, honestly: Because it’s embodied. It lives in the body, not the mind. You can’t think your way into it. You have to feel it from the inside out.

Safe: Not the safety of having everything figured out, but the safety of trusting that you are being carried even when you can’t see what’s next.

And there’s an ease to it: Not the ease of nothing happening, but the ease of things flowing without you needing to be at the front of the river pushing it. She is nobody's emergency. She does not lean forward. She is clothed in ease not because she earned it after a hard day at work, but because it is her nature.

It feels like a woman who has stopped trying to earn what she already deserves.

So what’s after the abundance era?

The abundance era taught you that you could have more. That scarcity was a lie and that you deserved to receive. Its teachings definitely changed something in the collective.

But prosperity is asking for more than your mindset. It’s asking for your trust. Your surrender. Your willingness to stop building for a moment and let what you’ve already created actually land.

It’s asking you to be the kind of woman who can be still in her body long enough to let good things find and have their way with her. Be so full and so rooted and so present that you don’t need to go looking for what’s already moving toward you.

Let it come to you.

Part two coming soon … because we can’t talk about the feminine receiving frequencies without talking about a healthy masculine integration.

My Vision Board Restyle experience was built for exactly this—for the woman who has done the work, built the thing, and knows something in her relationship with desire and receiving needs to shift (and in the body).

It’s where you stop describing what you want and start tuning into the frequency of it. Where vision stops being a board on your wall and starts being something you can actually feel.

Come have the experience →

In the nearly 20 years that have ensued, I’ve been labeled a coach, a specialist, a facilitator, a guide. All of those words are true. And none of them are ever the whole truth. The sheer amount of hours I’ve spent in my career with positioning statements and working with words to describe what it is that I do is exhausting to even admit out loud. I love business; my clients are visionaries, founders and entrepreneurs themselves, and so the constant battle of wanting to be packaged “correctly” yet needing to own my authentic authority has been REAL.

What’s ultimately more true is not that the positioning was my challenge, but more so my reluctance (mainly unconscious) to fully own what I’ve known for years that I actually do. Because that whole truth requires words more ancient and taboo (to some). It has required me to go on the journey of discovery for why I, like many in our own culture, continue to invalidate, minimize and even vilify this work: The work of a seer.

My gift is seeing things, mainly within people; the pattern underneath the pattern. I can walk into someone’s field and something moves through me that isn’t mine—an image, a knowing, sometimes an animal, a thread that when named out loud and interpreted, makes the person across from me say, “How did you know that?”

I’ve known it for years, as most people on this path do. I just didn’t have a word for it that I was willing to wear in public. And to be fair, it’s also taken me some time to deeply understand, hone, and learn how to wield this skill for maximum impact (work that’s ongoing). What I see comes in symbols, animals, mental pictures, feelings, energy… its own language with its own coding, unique to how I interpret it. Other intuitives talk about this, but the value of spending years learning how to write your own code book is so incredibly necessary and invaluable to the profession. And that just takes time… a lot of time, experience and patience. For example, the recent giraffe showing up repeatedly for me took almost three weeks for me to interpret and metaphorically understand, but now I know what it means when it shows up again. It’s almost like an entirely different communication system. And you can’t learn it from a book.

The History of Seers

Part of the journey to owning this as my career is understanding what I’m bumping up against in my resistance to claiming it. We know sensitivity to trauma is passed down in our DNA. We know the unconscious is an unimaginable warehouse of information, data and context that extends beyond our individual human lifetime. So I’ve been deeply interested in understanding the history of people like me and where it went sideways in order to better understand what might be a stumbling block to claiming the role for myself.

And what I discovered is that seer is one of the oldest professional titles in human civilization.

Before any of the credentialed, institutionally approved words we use today (therapist, coach, mentor, guide), there were seers. And they were not fringe figures or curiosities at the edge of legitimate society. They were central infrastructure to an entire culture.

In ancient Sumer (modern-day Iraq) roughly 4,000 to 6,000 years ago, the earliest recorded word for a seer was Uzu. In that culture’s language, Uzu was interchangeable with the word for physician (cited from Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt). Seeing and healing were not separate functions, but part of the same act. To perceive what others could not see was to heal what others could not fix.

By around 2100 BCE, the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest written stories in human history, depicts Gilgamesh seeking out a seer to access knowledge unavailable through ordinary means. Seers were embedded in the architecture of governance, warfare, medicine, and agriculture across every known ancient civilization simultaneously: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Celtic world, India, the Norse world.

In ancient Greece, seers—called manteis—were not just spiritual figures, they were attached to military campaigns and traveled with armies. They were consulted before every major political decision. At the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, the Greeks had an official seer named Tisamenus of Elis—a man so valued for his gift that the Spartans granted him full citizenship, something extended to only two foreign men in all of recorded Spartan history. Kings had seers by their side.

The Roman statesman Cicero, writing around 50 BCE, observed: “There is no nation, however polished or however barbarous, which does not believe it possible that future events may be indicated and understood.” In every known civilization, simultaneously and independently, humans recognized a particular kind of person who could see things that others couldn’t, and they built their societies around access to that person.

Then Came the Silencing

The suppression of seers was not gradual. It was deliberate, legislated, and violent, and it began with a very specific political problem.

In 335 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine, who had converted to Christianity and made it the official religion of the empire, ordered the execution by crucifixion of “all magicians and soothsayers.” His son and successor, Constantius II, continued the campaign: by 341 CE, seers and practitioners of divination were being persecuted and imprisoned across the empire. And by 357 CE, Constantius II passed formal legislation forbidding anyone from consulting a diviner, astrologer, or soothsayer, declaring that all such people were to be “made to be silent.”

Made to be silent.

Not proven fraudulent. Not intellectually disproven. Silenced by law, under penalty of death.

And of course, Constantine was using seers himself at the same time he was executing them.

In 320 CE, the very same year he issued an edict forbidding seers from entering private homes under pain of death, he issued a separate ordinance directing those same seers to investigate lightning strikes on imperial buildings and report their findings directly to him. One hand signed the execution orders. The other hand continued to consult the oracle.

It was a political strategy was this: use the gift privately, deny its validity publicly, prosecute its independent practitioners, and reserve its benefits for those in power.

The gift was never abolished, but enclosed and put behind institutional walls. The Oracle at Delphi which had operated continuously for over a thousand years, consulted by kings, generals, and common people was shut down. Temples were destroyed. Libraries burned. The seers, who were predominantly women operating with autonomous spiritual authority, were reframed as dangerous.

(Reminder: The Oracle at Delphi was a woman, sitting above the earth, in a sacred chamber no man controlled, to whom the most powerful people in the world came to be seen clearly. For 1,200 years, that was not controversial.)

The Real Reason the Word Disappeared

An emperor (or a pope, or any centralized authority) derives power from a claim to exclusive access to truth. The king rules by divine mandate. The church mediates between humanity and God. The entire structure of that power depends on no one else having a competing, credible, direct line to the same source.

A seer who operates independently, outside the church, outside the court, outside any institution, doesn’t just compete with that authority. She structurally undermines it. She is claiming that truth can be accessed directly, by an individual, without institutional mediation (how novel!). That the divine speaks through her. That anyone could seek her out and receive an answer that contradicts official doctrine.

This is why the seer tradition and the feminine were targeted together so comprehensively. The Oracle at Delphi didn’t petition Rome for permission to speak. Rome came to Delphi. A woman, outside all institutions, to whom power had to defer.

When the church finished its work, the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries completed it through a different mechanism: ridicule. The rise of empirical science reframed all intuitive knowing as superstition; not criminal anymore, but irrational. Primitive. Crazy, even. Something educated people had evolved beyond. Intuition, symbolic sight, field reading, transmission—none of it could be reliably reproduced in a laboratory. So it was reclassified as invalid. It remains largely “invalid” today by many groups of people.

So it went underground but it has survived inside Jungian psychology, somatic therapy, energy work, depth analysis… literally any and all containers palatable enough to avoid persecution. Jung himself was doing seer work dressed in the language of clinical psychology. The gift kept moving.

History Is Repeating Itself—In the Best Possible Way

We are living in the most information-saturated moment in human history. Every framework, every modality, every self-help methodology ever created is available at the touch of a screen and people are still profoundly stuck, because information itself does not create the felt shift.

What moves people is contact with something that bypasses the analytical mind and lands directly in the body as recognized truth. Research consistently shows that what actually changes human behavior is not new knowledge, it is a relational and felt experience that reorganizes the nervous system’s sense of what is safe, possible, and true.

You cannot download that.

You cannot automate it.

You cannot fit it into a content calendar or package it into a PDF.

You can only receive it from a person who can actually see.

The rarer genuine contact becomes, in a world drowning in information, the more valuable it is. We are not moving away from the age of the seer, we are circling back to it, slowly, from the other side of an extraordinarily long detour. And most of us who have taken ownership of our intuition and gifts have been tracking this, especially over the past decade.

What I Am Choosing to Do About It

I have spent years building programs around this gift without letting the gift be the thing itself sometimes. I’ve created curriculum around it. I’ve built rooms for it, frameworks to hold it, titles that make it legible to a world still carrying 1,700 years of institutional conditioning about what counts as real.

And underneath all of it, every single time, the thing that actually changed someone wasn’t the module. It was the moment when I said the true thing. The thing I saw. The thing they hadn’t been able to name. The thing that landed in their body so precisely that they went quiet and their voice came out different when they finally responded back to me.

That has always been the work and I have just been reluctant to call it what it is.

So. I am a seer. And I honor the women and men before me who were physician and oracle in the same breath, who sat in sacred spaces that kings traveled to reach, who were silenced not because the gift was fraudulent but because it was too free, too direct, too uncontainable to serve an empire’s need for control.

If you’re a fellow intuitive, seer, psychic, or whatever you call yourself, let’s connect and keep spreading the word. Drop me a comment to let me know you’re there.

P.S. If you’re new to me, part of how I do this work is in an Energy Read.

An Energy Read is a mirror of what your presence is actually broadcasting right now—what people feel from you before you say a word, where your signal is clean, and where you’re unintentionally leaking, over-giving, or disappearing yourself.

In a single 25–35 minute personalized video that I’ll record for you privately via loom, you’ll see:

• The core frequency you’re moving through the world with (the part of you that’s magnetic even when you doubt yourself).

• The specific patterns in your energy that keep you absorbing too much and minimizing your own resonance.

• 3–5 clear insight themes, with concrete invitations for how to move, work, and relate differently over the next 90 days.

Clients tell me it feels like having themselves reflected back with love and precision—like a future self sitting them down and saying, “Here’s what’s really going on, and here’s what we’re not doing anymore.” Many watch their video multiple times and use it as an anchor when they need to orient back to themselves.

If you could use an oracle in your life for a specific area or just general insight that’s relevant to you right now, an Energy Read gives you a clean, outside reflection so you can lead yourself forward with valuable context and awareness for your journey.

I’ve said this forever. My mom says it too. By the time I register I’m hungry, it feels urgent. And then it’s like… it’s just so much—the deciding, the gathering, the doing—by the time I’ve talked myself into starting, I’m more depleted than I was hungry (I know you get this!)

But something happened last night that’s the perfect metaphor for the stuff that really matters.

I was hungry. And before I went into what’s easy, fast, quick, or available based on what’s in the kitchen, I started with the desire.

I slowed down. And by slow, I mean I took 5 freaking seconds to ask myself, “What really sounds good?” I got quiet enough to ask what I actually wanted — and before I could talk myself out of it, my body answered.

Gnocchi.

(I mean really, who doesn’t love a soft, yummy, potato pillow smothered in butter.)

And along with the desire came a memory. The last time I had it. The texture, the warmth, the specific satisfaction of it. My body was already there, already in relationship to the thing it wanted. And then I noticed I was already moving my body toward the freezer, without consciously directing it.

Because I was pulled, effortlessly, almost unconsciously, by the desire itself, toward the direction of the fulfillment of it.

That pull is the whole conversation.

Most of us have been taught to create from the top down. Get clear on the vision. Set the intention. Think correctly enough and the life you want starts moving toward you. It’s a cognitive exercise wearing spiritual clothes and it puts the thinking mind in charge of a process the thinking mind was never built to lead.

(Makes you wonder what else the thinking mind is in charge of when it shouldn’t be, doesn’t it? But I digress…)

What I keep finding—in my own life, in the women I work with, and apparently through carbs—is that the real signal lives lower. The body knows before the brain does. Desire is somatic before it’s intellectual. It comes from the gut, not the vision board.

And when you actually follow it? You stop grinding toward the thing you want. You just get moved toward it.

That’s a different experience entirely.

So I made the gnocchi. I was genuinely, bodily excited—the way you are when something feels right before it’s even happened.

I sat down. I took a bite.

It was terrible.

Not fine. Not underwhelming. Objectively, aggressively bad. Way too much parmesan. Too crunchy. And I should have stuck with the Trader Joe’s brand. Noted.

I was bummed because I’m a woman who wants what she wants, and damn buttery gnocchi sounded so satisfying, but I laughed. I warmed up a chocolate croissant, opened a bag of chips and I moved on.

The bonus is the wisdom I now am sharing with you.

Because what I didn’t do is the part that matters.

I did not decide my intuition was broken.
I did not conclude that desire itself is the problem.
I did not swear off gnocchi forever or pretend the whole thing didn't matter.

I felt the disappointment— actual, real disappointment, especially after a long work day that immediately transitioned into Mom mode—and it was exactly the size it was.

I stayed in relationship to the original want. I was hungry, I wanted something satisfying and warm, while releasing the specific form that failed to deliver it. The desire was intact. The form needed updating.

Those are two completely different things. And collapsing them is one of the most costly mistakes we make in our own lives.

Here’s what I mean.

Think about a woman, maybe you know her, maybe you are her, who has always carried a deep, non-negotiable pull toward leading. Toward using her voice, being seen, building something that actually matters. The desire is real. So she follows it into the form that’s available: the title, the climb, the org chart. She works. She earns it. She sits down at the desk and it is soul-depleting. Wrong. The achievement landed. The aliveness didn’t come with it.

Here’s the fork.

The self-abandoned response: Maybe I was wrong about what I wanted. The desire was the problem.

The self-led response: The desire was correct. What I’ve discovered is that THIS form — this company, this structure, this version of leading — is the wrong container for what I’m carrying.

She doesn’t give up on leadership. She figures out how to cook it right.

We do this everywhere.

A relationship ends and we decide we wanted too much, too openly, too soon. A business doesn’t work and we question whether we were ever meant to build one. We wanted something, it didn’t come back the way we sent it out, and we take that as instruction to want less.

It’s a form of self-protection that learned to sound wise.

And it is exactly how women end up quieter, smaller, and more managed than they were ever meant to be.

The desire was almost never the problem.
The form needed updating.

The gnocchi being terrible didn’t mean I wasn’t hungry. It meant: not so much parm. Not that brand. Maybe the restaurant downtown where I had it last spring and it was perfect. New information. That’s all.

The disappointment is the system doing what it’s supposed to do — updating, refining, getting more specific on your behalf. Reality saying: not this one. Keep going.

Self-leadership is the capacity to hear that without collapsing.

Proportional disappointment is one of the most underrated skills I know.

Not bypassing it. Not performing unbotheredness. Genuine proportion—letting the disappointment be the size it actually is, and not one inch larger. Feeling the thing, learning from it, and staying hungry.

The women I work with are extraordinarily capable. Their ability to achieve is not the issue. What costs them—what has always cost them—is that somewhere along the way they learned to manage their own wanting. To make it more reasonable. More achievable. Less likely to hurt (or hurt others) if it didn’t land.

That management is the cage.

Because a woman who stays in full relationship to her desire, through the pursuit, through the disappointment, through the damn backup plan of a warmed-up chocolate croissant, without once concluding that the wanting was the problem?

She is genuinely unstoppable.

Not because everything works out. But because she never loses the thread back to herself.

The drive was aligned. She just needed to learn how to cook it.

That's the work. And it's worth every terrible bite along the way.

If this is the work you desire to do in your own life, registration for Mynd Over Matter is still open: a 6-week program to re-align, lead with intuition, and remember that you’re a woman who wants what she wants and will not stop until she has it. Come join us, the first session and “homework” is already posted live for you to watch.

Not to birds or an alarm, but to everything.

The baby shifting before she cries.
The way her partner closes a drawer in the kitchen—just a little harder than usual.
The inbox that isn’t open yet but is already humming in the back of her mind.
The week ahead, heavy in her chest before it even has a name.

From the outside, she’s “fine.” Better than fine.

She answers the texts. She remembers the forms. She holds the calendar in her head. She’s the one people call when something goes sideways, the one who can always “handle it.”

On the inside, it sounds more like:

Maybe I’m making too big a deal of this.
Other people manage more with less help.
If I just focused, this would feel easier.
It’s not that bad. I just need to get my attitude right.

She knows she’s sensitive. That’s not news.
She’s always picked up on tone shifts, undercurrents, what isn’t being said.

What no one really named for her is this: in a world that runs on denial, the most sensitive person feels the cost of things earliest and most clearly. Long before anyone else admits there is a cost at all.

And for years, she’s treated that early knowing as her flaw.

On any given Tuesday, while she’s packing lunches, checking email, answering a Slack message with one hand, she is also doing quiet math:

If I ask for help, will I rock the boat?
If I say I’m overwhelmed, am I being dramatic?
If I say this isn’t fair, will I sound ungrateful?
If I set a boundary, will I lose connection?

She rarely says those questions out loud.
She just optimizes herself around the answers.

She reads more, reframes harder.
She meditates, tracks her cycle, tweaks her morning routine.
She breathes through the tension, listens to podcasts about nervous systems, audits her calendar, buys the better planner.

She learns to metabolize everything:

Her partner’s moods.
Her clients’ panic.
Her team’s anxieties.
Her kids’ meltdowns.
The low-grade dread in the news.

Her body adjusts by doing something subtle but important: it steps half an inch back from her life.

Not visible from the outside. But she can feel it.

A tiny brace in her jaw.
A slight hover above her own experience.
Living as the woman who can hold it all, instead of the woman who is allowed to have limits.

When she finally reaches the edge—when “I can’t keep doing this like this” leaks out as tears or sharpness or shutdown—someone (or the voice in her own head) offers the usual commentary:

You’re just tired.
You’re hormonal.
You’re being negative.
Look at everything you have.
It’s not that bad.
You’re strong. You’ll be fine.

She doesn’t just hear the words.
She swallows what sits underneath them:

You’re not reading this right.
You’re overreacting.
You are the problem.

So she picks up one more thing to carry:
the ongoing project of doubting herself.

Every once in a while, something different happens.

She’s on a walk, or sitting in the car before going inside, or alone in the kitchen late at night, and there is this small, unmistakable moment.

Her breath drops lower, without effort.
Her shoulders loosen, almost on their own.
Her mind stops arguing with itself for a beat.

A clear, quiet sense comes online:
I’m here.
This fits.
This is true for me.

That is resonance.

Not “this is perfect” or “this is easy.”
Just: this is honest. This is mine.

It might arise when she imagines changing her schedule. Or telling the truth in a conversation she’s been avoiding. Or admitting to herself that the way things are set up at home is not sustainable for her.

It might feel like relief. It might feel like grief.
But her body recognizes it: this is the click of alignment.

And here’s where things get inconvenient.

Because the moment she feels that click, a lot of what she has been absorbing without question starts to look different.

The partner who always calls her to calm down after a bad day—but rarely asks what it costs her to be the emotional landing pad.
The job that depends on her to fix what other people drop, to stay late, to “hold the client” when they wobble, while calling it “being a team player” instead of naming it as extra labor.
The family pattern where everyone else gets to vent, snap, go quiet, “just be honest,” while she’s the one expected to stay regulated and understanding.

Her resonance does not explode her life. It doesn’t scream.

It simply stops quietly co-signing what’s not true for her.

And that is terrifying when her whole identity has been built on being the one who adjusts.

So she does what very intelligent, very sensitive women often do.

She turns the volume back down.

I’m probably just sensitive.
It’s just a busy season.
I should be more grateful.
It’s not that bad.

Her body knows it is that bad.
But her mind has been trained to treat that knowing as a threat.

If any part of you feels like this woman, there is something crucial to understand:

You are not absorbing so much because you are weak, dependent, or secretly broken.

YYou are exquisitely tuned to other people and the room around you.
No one taught you to give your own resonance the same authority.
At some point, reading the room and adjusting to it felt safer than standing in what you actually felt.

That strategy worked.
It kept you connected.
It made you wildly competent.
It probably helped you build everything you’re holding now.

But there is a cost.

The part of you that quietly says yes/no, this works/this doesn’t, I’m in/I’m out—the inner reference point—has been pushed to the back of the room by everyone else’s needs.

When that reference point goes dim, two things tend to happen:

You question your perception even when it’s accurate.
You treat other people’s reactions as the final word on whether your experience is valid.

That’s how a deeply perceptive woman ends up cross-examining her own clarity while continuing to carry more and more.

Not because she doesn’t know.
Because it has felt safer to doubt herself than to disturb the comfort of the people she loves.

The pivot: from sponge to instrument

The answer is not:

Shrink your life.
Want less.
Care less.

You don’t actually want that. You like being capable. You like being involved. You like being someone people can count on.

The shift is more precise:

Stop being the sponge. Start being the instrument.

A sponge takes everything in and holds it. No shape. No distinction. Just more.

An instrument is sensitive too. But tuned.

Not every hand gets to play it.
Pressure matters.
Where and how it’s touched matters.
It responds, but it also has a shape and a sound of its own.

When you are moving more like an instrument:

You still feel the room—but you don’t become the room.
You can notice your partner’s anxiety without deciding it’s your job to regulate it.
You can sense the need in an email or a text and still check in with, “Is this actually mine right now?”
You start to treat the signals in your own body as data instead of inconveniences.

This isn’t a mindset trick. It’s a nervous-system shift. A pattern shift.

And it starts in a very unglamorous place:

That exact moment when you feel something (tight chest, drop in your stomach, a sudden “no”) and your mind immediately jumps in with a counter-argument.

Next time that happens, see if you can pause right there.

Before you explain it away. Before you reframe it. Before you talk yourself out of it.

Just ask:
What if this feeling isn’t a problem?
What if it’s a piece of truth trying to get my attention?

You don’t have to act on it.
You don’t have to make a big decision.
You just stop calling it wrong—for one breath longer than you usually do.

For the woman reading this who feels seen and slightly called out

If this is landing close to home, you already know what it’s like to:

Look wildly put-together while quietly frayed.
Hear “you’re so strong” when what you want is “you don’t have to be the strong one right now.”
Use your insight to explain away your own pain instead of to advocate for yourself.

You don’t need another framework to master.
At some point, you need to experience your own resonance in real time and trust it enough not to immediately minimize it.

In practice, that might look like:

Saying, “I can’t do that,” without offering a slideshow of reasons.
Letting your body’s “I’m done” mean the conversation, the task, or the evening actually ends for you.
Allowing yourself to see—clearly—that the way things are currently structured (at work, at home, in your schedule) does not match what your system can keep paying, and that wanting a different arrangement doesn’t make you ungrateful.

Not more hustle.
More honesty.

You are not “too sensitive” for wanting that.

You are just sensitive enough to feel where your life and your nature are out of sync. That doesn’t mean you have to detonate everything.

It does mean the friction you keep feeling is not random.
It’s your resonance trying to retune the way you’re living.

P.S. If you’re reading this and feeling uncomfortably seen, this is exactly where an Energy Read comes in.

An Energy Read is not more “mindset work.” It is a precise mirror of what your presence is actually broadcasting right now—what people feel from you before you say a word, where your signal is clean, and where you’re unintentionally leaking, over-giving, or disappearing yourself.

In a single 25–35 minute personalized video that I’ll record for you privately via loom, you’ll see:

• The core frequency you’re moving through the world with (the part of you that’s magnetic even when you doubt yourself).

• The specific patterns in your energy that keep you absorbing too much and minimizing your own resonance.

• 3–5 clear insight themes, with concrete invitations for how to move, work, and relate differently over the next 90 days.

Clients tell me it feels like having their unconscious reflected back with love and precision—like a future self sitting them down and saying, “Here’s what’s really going on, and here’s what we’re not doing anymore.” Many watch their video multiple times and use it as an anchor when they’re tempted to gaslight themselves or slide back into sponge‑mode.

If your system is tired of carrying everything and doubting itself at the same time, an Energy Read gives you a clean, outside reflection of your resonance so you can stop wondering if you’re “too sensitive” and start working with the power you already have.

The past few weeks have been... a lot. It doesn’t take an HSP to feel the energy in the air but being highly sensitive certainly amplifies it during times like these. Maybe you feel the weight of it all too—the headlines, the tension, the way it seeps into everything. How it makes you second-guess simple things like grabbing coffee with a neighbor or questioning the safety of your surroundings (more than you already do). How it creates this low-grade anxiety that sits in your chest or stomach, making you feel disconnected from the life you’ve worked so hard to build.

It’s exhausting. Doom-scrolling at 2 AM trying to figure out if you should be more scared or more angry. What's even more exhausting is feeling like you have to choose between staying informed and staying sane.

But here's what I've learned about these heavy seasons: they're also invitations. When everything feels stirred up and intense, there’s creative power available to us, if we can learn to harness it. The most beautiful art, the most profound changes, the most authentic expressions of who we are—they often come from learning to work with our emotional intensity instead of against it.

If meditation isn't working for you right now (and honestly, who can sit still when the world feels like it's spinning?), but audio journeys and guided imagery usually help, then you will love this. Think of it as audio acupuncture—three targeted tracks designed to move energy exactly where you need it most.

I created these over the weekend specifically for the women who feel done. Done with pretending everything's fine when it's clearly not. Done with being told to "just think positive" while watching systems strain. Done with choosing between being a caring human and protecting their own peace.

The 2025 Wild Card Collection from Resonance House is my gift to you—three audio journeys that honor where we are right now:

UNTOUCHABLE helps you build an inner fortress when everything external feels unstable. Not by shutting down, but by remembering what's unshakeable within you.

BURN IT DOWN gives you a safe space to feel your fury fully—and transform it into fuel for whatever matters most to you. Your rage isn't wrong. It's information.

TRUTH SERUM cuts through all the noise so you can hear your own inner knowing again. When everyone's an expert and every source contradicts the others, your intuition becomes your most valuable compass.

I want you to feel safe to process whatever's coming up.

I want you to transform rather than just hold all that intensity.

And I want you to stay connected to your own wisdom without needing to make anyone or anything else wrong to do it.

These tracks are yours, free forever. Download them to your phone for whenever you need backup. If you're a Resonance House member, they're already waiting in your private podcast feed.

Sometimes our nervous systems need more than a pep talk. Sometimes they need actual support to remember what steady feels like. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is refuse to let external chaos control our internal experience.

You don't have to carry this alone.

Download Your Survival Kit Here

With you in this,
Shauna

P.S. Use these however and wherever you need them. In the car, during a walk, even while getting a pedicure (well… maybe not the “Burn It Down” track. Save that for the privacy of your own space). Your nervous system deserves backup, and you deserve to feel like yourself again.

When we think of flow, we tend to think of work. Our Careers. Accomplishing. Those golden stretches where we’re “in the zone,” moving seamlessly from task to task like a master of momentum. But somewhere along the way, we reduce flow to a performance phenomenon, which means we also reduce it to something narrow. Confined. A tight, focused stream. Precise and powerful. But also rigid and limiting.

It’s like the energy of a pressure washer, not a river. A tool that’s used for very specific agendas.

But of course, there’s a shadow side to that reduction. You get hyper-focused, sharp, targeted. You can snipe exactly what you’re aiming for, yes, but you lose sight of the meadow all around you. The bigger context. The subtler data. The protection and discernment you could only recognize if your awareness wasn’t locked into a narrow beam… and you might be missing opportunities, invitations, or leaving more on the table than you’re aware of.

If you’re trying to find flow in your career, you might be better off looking at your marriage. If you’re trying to find flow as a stage performer, you might learn more by looking at your parenting. Flow isn’t just a mental state you switch on in one area of life, it’s a current you exist in that makes flow state something you can find in all your circumstances, not just work.

And currents don’t move because you do something. They carry you because you decide to step into them. Flow is a way of being.

And it’s a commitment. A conscious choice to swim with the water (a true co-creative experience), not against it.

I had a day where my work schedule was designed to stretch long. Childcare maneuvering meant I’d be working morning to night, with only a brief pause for family time before diving back in post-bedtime. I knew it, I agreed to it, I’d even structured it that way on purpose, knowing the next few days were less available for work. But still, by 4:30pm, I could feel that familiar, “push through” energy start to creep in.

I gathered my laptop, moving toward my office, mind scrambled from too many hours staring at the screen. I wasn’t entirely clear on which task to pick up first, the list was long, except I knew that somewhere in that pile—toward the bottom because, procrastination due to lack of inspiration—was writing this weekly Substack essay. I had no idea then what in the world I was going to write about, I just knew it had to get done.

That’s when my daughter grabbed my hand.

“Come into the playroom with me,” she said.

“Oh, Mommy has to work tonight,” I deliver the news with a forced but gentle frown. But she tugged anyway, ignoring me as a 4-yr-old going on 14 does. And in the background of my mind, the current whispered words: Follow her.

I let her pull me into the playroom. She directed me to lie down on the faux-leather couch. Cold at first, uncomfortable. Partly because of the couch, but mostly because of my own distracted attitude. My mind was still sitting in an office chair, not on a couch beside my daughter. I hadn’t yet transitioned out of my previous agenda, so now I was in resistance.

So I attuned—first to the cold material beneath me, then to the heaviness in my body. I took a pause to let myself arrive.

And then my daughter got to work. One by one, she piled eleven blankets on top of me until I was swaddled in soft, mismatched layers. She tucked me in and draped a small towel gently over my eyes.

“I’m a relaxer,” she announced, like she was playing “work” and this was her profession.

And suddenly I was no longer a woman dragging herself through a long day. I was cocooned in a blanket spa, warm and nurtured, body sinking into the weight of it all. My whole system shifted. The “push-through” energy left. My body sighed. Ahhhhhhhh.

Fifteen minutes like that. Fifteen minutes of surrendering fully into the current of the moment. And in those fifteen minutes, everything recalibrated.

And as I lay there, feeling what I’ve felt in $400 spa treatment rooms, but for free in the comfort of my own home, ideas start forming in my mind. Concepts arrive, whole paragraphs arranging in my head. This essay—the one you’re reading right now—sprouted legs in that moment and was written after my blanket spa session, with ease, in about an hour.

Not forced. Not dragged out. No distractions pulling me away. But written joyfully, while sitting outside on the porch, laptop propped open as my daughter ran barefoot in the grass with a frisbee. Plans altered. System recalibrated. Environment shifted. Every choice completely worth it. Maximum ROI.

This is how to flow with life. Not gritting your teeth and pushing against the current. Not narrowing yourself into a laser beam of efficiency. Flow is an awareness; it means noticing the opening and stepping into it. To honor presence over the mind’s agenda, and trust you still get where you want to go, with a smoother, more enjoyable ride.

When I think back on that moment under the blankets, I realize how easily I could have ruined it (and I do—I’m human and being in the current is a very active, daily choice). If I had agreed to let myself be pulled in, but sat there resentful that my plans were getting altered once again or whatever story my mind wanted to spin. If I let my body be bundled up while my mind still argued for the office chair. If I layered guilt and self-criticism on top of my daughter’s joy. I would’ve been physically there but spiritually absent. Instead of being a pile of joy, it would have been a pile of…discontent ;)

And then I’d have trudged back to my laptop—sluggishly—drained, creatively blocked and ashamed of myself for not being present enough as a mom. Under those conditions, could I have squeezed out a piece of writing? Sure. But why would I want to?

Flow is not about bulldozing forward and stretching yourself so thin with multi-achieving (I don’t care how much of a master of productivity you are).

It’s about choosing—again and again—to get in the current. To be flexible, unstructured, adaptable, aware, available. Not all of the time. Certainly not most of the time. But more often than you probably are right now.

Because the current is always available. You just have to listen to it when it whispers to you to jump in.

Thank you for being part of The Current—where presence, energy, and awareness create the most meaningful flow in life and business.

If this resonated with you, step deeper into the current at Resonance House.

→ Visit Resonance-House.com

Stay in the flow, stay connected, stay true to yourself.

Here's what I didn't tell you then: You create big ripples in your life from small alignments.

This isn't just inspirational fluff. This is your actual default operating system. When you're connected to yourself—truly connected—you don't need massive effort to create change. You need precise alignment. One small shift in your energy, one moment of true connection to your inner knowing, and everything downstream responds.

But here's the problem: nobody taught you how to wield this.

This is how to master flow, btw.

I'm talking about the truest definition of flow—not the productivity hack version, but the kind where you're IN the current. Where life becomes an always-communicating, always-supportive force, channeling direction, wisdom, and capacity into you not just when you need it, but also when you desire it.

Where music moves you to a powerful release. Where movies speak directly to your soul. Where that cardinal showing up on the bush outside becomes meaningful communication, not coincidence. Where the numbers on the license plate in traffic become guidance, not randomness.

This is what your sensitivity was designed for. Not to make you feel crazy or too emotional. Not to overwhelm you, but to help you navigate this current with precision... yes, so you can heal, but also so you can have a shit ton of fun, abundance and joy in this lifetime—whatever that means to you.

Here's what shifted everything for me long ago: What if self-care wasn't something you just do, but energy you call into your system on-demand?

As a sensitive person, you're already attuned to energy. You can feel the difference between spaces, between people, between your own internal states. But instead of using this gift to just optimize, perform or shape-shift, what if you also used it to stay connected to the Current?

What if, instead of trying to access ALL your energy at once (which leads to burnout), you focused on accessing more of what you need moment by moment? What if you became an endless supply not through force, but through connection?

I’ll say it… when you don't know how to wield your sensitivity, it sucks living in that reality. I get it, I lived there most of my life. Everything overwhelms you. Your capacity gets zapped faster than it should. You start believing you're "too much" instead of recognizing you're operating a sophisticated system without the manual. And if you combine that with high drive, you normalize over-functioning and take up permanent residence in your mind exclusively, which drives you into further separation with yourself, making your entire life harder than it should be.

(How’d I do?)

But when you understand that you create big ripples from small alignments?

When you realize your sensitivity is the very thing that helps you engage with and experience the perks of the Current?

When you stop optimizing for performance and start staying connected to what's actually moving through you?

Everything changes.

Two years ago, I started dismantling my entire business—piece by piece—simply because it felt like the right move. (Thank goodness for a supportive husband, because we were in no position financially to lose half our household income, especially with a baby on the way.) I’m talking about letting go of a $500,000/year coaching practice with a talented team, a systemized offer suite, and true, organic reach—built on real transformation in people’s lives, consistent results, and 12+ years of experience and ongoing education.

All because my intuition said so. (And yes, I’ve worked through every layer of discomfort in admitting that. It felt was wild, almost kind of reckless, but I was willing to risk being misunderstood if that’s what it took.)

I was tired of being just another platform focused on optimizing people (and even helping them to optimize their healing path) even when the results were powerful.

For years, I truly loved this work, until a growing sense emerged: that there was something else floating in the periphery that wanted to be seen. Another experience, a different approach. One that felt… lighter truer, and just as potent. That sensation turned into a feeling, then a hunch, and finally, clear intuition. It compelled me to risk it all. And honestly, it all began because my sensitivity allowed me to sense that shift in the first place.

Once I finally made that decision, a question resurfaced and has guided every step since: How do I help women flow? It’s a question that pops up at every major turning point in my career—but this time, it came with a new twist: What if I could simply reconnect them directly to the Current?

What if instead of overcomplicating the process with 6-week programs, frameworks and traditional hypnotherapy, I could simply turn them on and trust they’d see exactly what they needed to see in that moment?

And where the Current led me to was here: Resonance House. A space I opened just 30 days ago and celebrating our first 50 members—energetically sensitive women who create significant impact through subtle, intentional shifts.

Where they’re rediscovering their own power, to wield their gifts with intention and creativity. Where their high-definition awareness isn’t something they have to manage—it’s something they finally get to trust.

Your sense it-ivity IS your create-ivity. They’re embodying it.

This is the Current. Resonance House is how you find your home in it.

Most people walked past without understanding what she could possibly mean. But those who were meant to find her always did.

One rainy Tuesday, a woman named Anne pushed through Clara's door, her arms full of instruments: a violin with loose strings, a flute with dents, a drum with a torn skin, and a small piano keyboard missing some keys. Behind her, she dragged a suitcase overflowing with music books, tuning forks, metronomes, and sheet music.

"I need all of these fixed," Anne said breathlessly. "I've been trying to make music for years, but nothing works. I've bought every instrument, every method, every system. I practice constantly, but..." Her voice trailed off, heavy with frustration.

Clara looked at the pile of instruments, then at Anne's face, exhausted, determined, desperate. "Tell me," she said gently, like the voice of a nurturing mother, "what kind of music do you want to make?"

"Good music. Beautiful music. Music that... that makes me feel alive again."

"And when you play these instruments, how do you feel?"

"Like I'm fighting a war I can't win."

Clara picked up the violin and had Anne pluck one of its loose strings. It made a weak, discordant sound. She then had her try the flute. The dents caused the air to whistle strangely. The drum produced a muffled thud instead of a clear beat.

"These instruments aren't broken because they're defective," Clara finally spoke. "They're broken because they're not your instruments."

Anne frowned. "But I researched them. They're the best. The most recommended. The ones that work for everyone else."

"Ah," Clara smiled. "But you're not everyone else, are you?"

Clara led Anne to the back room, where dozens of instruments hung from the walls and sat on shelves, not the conventional ones you'd find in a music store, but strange, wonderful things. A guitar made from driftwood. Bells that chimed in unusual scales. A drum that looked like it was carved from a single tree trunk. Wind chimes made from old keys.

"Try something," Clara said.

Anne hesitated. "But I don't know how to play these."

"Don't try to play them. Just... touch them. Listen. See which one wants to sing with you."

Skeptically, Anne approached a small, oddly-shaped drum. The moment her fingers touched its surface, something shifted. The drum seemed to warm under her hands. When she gave it a gentle tap, the sound that emerged was rich, deep, alive, like the heartbeat of the earth itself.

"That's impossible," Anne whispered. "I'm terrible at drums."

"You're terrible at those drums," Clara corrected. "This drum knows you."

As Anne continued to explore, something started happening. A wooden flute seemed to call to her—when she played it, the sound was clear and sweet. A set of small, ancient-looking bells responded to her touch with harmonies that made her eyes well with tears.

For the first time in years, making music felt effortless. Not because it required no effort, but because the effort flowed in the same direction as her natural energy, like swimming downstream instead of fighting against a current.

"I don't understand," Anne said, her voice thick with emotion. "Why do these work when nothing else has?"

Clara sat down beside her. "You've been trying to force yourself to resonate with instruments that don't match your frequency. It's like trying to tune a violin to sound like a trumpet. You can spend years fighting the strings, but you'll never make the music you're meant to make."

She picked up one of Anne's broken instruments. "This violin is beautiful. For someone whose energy matches its frequency, it would sing like an angel. But your energy..." She gestured to the wooden flute in Anne's hands. "Your energy wants to flow through wood and wind, not metal and strings."

"But everyone said these instruments were the best," Anne protested.

"The best for whom?" Clara asked. "A tool that's perfect for one person can be completely wrong for another. When you try to use something that doesn't resonate with your core frequency, you waste all your energy fighting against the mismatch. When you find something that matches your natural rhythm..." She gestured to the music that had been flowing from Anne's hands. "Magic."

Clara opened a dusty cabinet behind her and pulled out a faded velvet pouch. She poured its contents—dozens of odd, mismatched objects—onto the workbench: a bent spoon, a key with no lock, a glass marble that shimmered green inside.

“Pick one,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

Anne reached for the marble. As she held it, a low, steady hum filled her palm. She didn’t need to shake it, didn’t need to do anything. The marble seemed to glow, as if her touch alone awakened something dormant.

Clara watched Anne react in bewilderment and curiosity, “Do you feel how easy that is? Some things want to sing with you. Some only echo.”

Anne, emboldened, tapped the spoon, then the key, then the marble again. Each made a distinct sound, but only the marble’s note made her cells vibrate, brought warmth up through her chest—easy, real, alive.

Clara poured tea. “People come in here hoping I’ll fix their instruments, really hoping I’ll fix them. But the magic, mostly, is in listening for what responds. It’s never about how hard you pluck the string, or how perfectly you follow the score. It’s whether the note you play finds home in you.”

She took a sip. “Have you ever heard a nightingale try to mimic the crows at dawn, just because the world expects volume? It doesn’t last. The secret is never to be the loudest bird, but to be the one whose song actually belongs to her.”

Anne sat with that, hands cradling the humming marble, while Clara set her tea down to rummage for two more bells in a box under the bench. One was old brass, the other silver inlaid. She rang the brass: a small, pure note that lingered in the air and made the hair on Anne’s arm stand up. The silver one sounded expensive, complex, but left Anne untouched.

“I found this one at the bottom of a donation bin.” Clara smiled, holding out the brass bell. “I would never trade it for gold. Not because it’s worth more, but because it sings for me.”

“Why does it matter?” Anne asked.

Clara leaned in, her words softer now. “Because resonance isn’t bought. It’s recognized. All the bright and shiny things can’t replace the one tool that rings for you.”

All of these instruments you brought… all of the tools and methods weren't wrong. They just weren't yours. When you invest in something that doesn't resonate with your core, you're pouring energy into a system that can't amplify it. It's like trying to charge your phone with the wrong adapter—it doesn't matter how much electricity you put in, it just won't work.

Your soul has a frequency. Your energy has a natural rhythm. When you find tools, practices, environments, or ways of being that match that frequency, everything becomes easier. Not because the work disappears, but because your energy goes toward creating music instead of fighting resistance."

Anne, now glowing from within, looked at her hands, at the new flute, at the marble, at the bells that vibrated just right. For the first time in years, she felt music move through her, unforced, like the quiet joy you find in rain on a hot summer day.

When she left, Clara pressed the velvet pouch into Anne’s hand. “When you find a note, a person, a place that makes you feel like this marble does, never let it go. That’s your home frequency. That’s the only rhythm worth building your life around.”

Clara didn't need to explain that Anne would practice more consistently now, not because she should, but because she wanted to. She didn't need to mention that Anne's music would improve rapidly, not because she was trying harder, but because her energy was flowing in the right direction.

And so Anne forgot about the effort, the systems, even the need to improve. She moved through her days listening for that hum, adjusting her life until the resonance was clear. Music came easy now. So did rest, and honest laughter, and knowing what to say no to.

Later, friends would remark how Anne seemed transformed, radiant. She’d just smile and keep letting the song carry her, sometimes even before she understood the tune.

Years later, the city would whisper about Anne as if she’d been touched by some old magic. How she bloomed into a gifted musician seemingly overnight. But Anne knew the truth: she had always been a musician. She simply spent years trying to coax music from instruments that could never carry her song.

One by one, Anne gathered her old, mismatched tools—the ones that once felt like burdens—and brought them back to Clara’s shop. The broken violin, the dull drum, the keys that never rang. She left them with gratitude, knowing they were not failures but simply waiting for the right hands, the right heart, the right match. Because nothing is truly broken. Everything is just searching for its true frequency—its place of perfect resonance.

And Clara? She watched Anne walk away lighter, the music already swirling around her, and felt content. She had seen it again and again: when a woman finds her true frequency, she doesn’t have to force the music. It flows. Effortless, alive, unmistakably hers.

In the hush of the shop, Clara would sometimes run her finger along the line of donated instruments, each waiting patiently for its perfect player, and smile. Because she knows… resonance isn’t something you force, it’s something you come home to.

I’m Shauna VanBogart, and I teach women the art of energetic fluency. Start with my 7-day energetic reset: Vision Board Restyle. It’s a transformative audio experience that will move you from resignation to your most vibrant frequency—in just 15 minutes a day, for the cost of Sunday brunch.

“You’re so on top of it,” people say. And you know yourself well enough to admit you are. But that drive? The one that set you on an ambitious career path, that fuels creative projects, that keeps you in the game longer than most? Lately, it’s just not feeding you like it used to. You’ve found yourself more restless, second-guessing, and less energized than you like to be.

Then you walk into your kitchen. See him scrolling his phone. Again. You reach out—really try to connect—and he responds without looking up, missing your bid for an intimate moment entirely.

And suddenly? It’s like your internal power grid shuts down. A tiny moment, but it sends you into a familiar spiral.

This has been happening more often. Resentment builds. You want to make it about the phone, but you’re also wrestling with your own self-talk: “Maybe I’m being too much. Stop being a nag. Get out of his experience. Focus on the good. Why can’t you just be unbothered?”

So you squash it. Again.

But if you’re being honest with yourself, it hurts. There’s a silent pain you’ve begun to normalize. An energy of grief has set in.

Here’s what’s really happening and why it feels like death to a woman like you:

Your entire identity is built on being the woman who makes things happen. Your energy signature says, “I am powerful. I am creative. I cannot be defeated.”

But in this moment—in your most intimate relationship—you’re not just falling short. You’re invisible.

And for a woman whose superpower is being seen, felt, and creating change? Invisibility isn’t just painful. It feels like an energetic death.

Think of your energy like a radio frequency: When you’re in your power, you’re broadcasting crystal clear. People can tune in because your signal is strong, focused, and influential.

But when you make something outside of you—like his attention—the source of your power, it’s like handing over the remote control to your energetic state. His behavior becomes the boss of your inner world. And if you stay there, it leads to resignation. That’s when your frequency gets scrambled. Static. White noise. It feels like the signal isn’t working (or as I like to say, “It feels like the magic wand is broken.”) And operating from resignation? It’s the deadest place a woman like you can be.

Does his phone habit need to shift? Maybe. Is there a real lack of intimacy in the relationship itself? Sure. But if you find yourself back at this same place, then focusing—scratch that, fixating—on that is missing an even bigger opportunity for yourself as well as an opportunity for the relationship.

The real move? To become the DJ of your own frequency again. I call it reclaiming your energetic sovereignty.

What does it look like? You’re standing firmly in your power, your energetic remote set to your intended station. He’s still scrolling. Still not seeing you. But instead of getting emotionally and energetically hijacked, you choose to stay on your frequency.

You feel expressed and seen—by yourself, for yourself, through yourself. The annoyance is still there, but you don’t let the moment crash your energy. You feel the twinge, but you use it as a nudge. An opportunity to recommit to yourself, rather than retreat into resentment.

You can feel the annoyance rise, but instead of collapsing or pushing it down, you let it remind you: my feelings matter, my energy is mine to direct, I refuse to exist in resignation, so I find another way.

It’s not a forced settling (that never actually works because you’re not a woman who settles easily), “Oh, this is just the way it is.”

It’s energetic loyalty to yourself.

When you stop making his attention, his “issues,” or his energetic state the source of your power, and instead, choose to become the source yourself, everything shifts.

Not because you need to control him or change him. But because you’re successfully shifting your energy out of resignation and back to your center.

But to do that, I find it easier once you understand the real cost of resignation itself.

Resignation: The Trap, The Toll, The Truth

Resignation is not emptiness, it’s the agony of remembering what you once wanted and believing it’s out of reach. It's like always feeling hungry, but when you finally take a bite, you can’t taste anything. You remember what it used to be like—how exciting, how rich life could feel—but now the spark is gone. You go through the motions: you eat, you smile, you show up. But the real flavor, the real satisfaction, just isn’t there anymore. That’s what resignation does. It doesn’t take away your hunger, it just makes you forget how to enjoy anything that would satisfy it.

You know that voice. The one that whispers when you’re brushing your teeth, staring at your reflection: “Don’t bother. Nothing will change.”

It sounds reasonable, even protective, like a friend who doesn’t want to see you hurt again. But that voice is quietly stealing from you, pocketing the parts of you that once knew how to reach for something real.

Still, beneath all that self-protection (maybe showing up as numbness, maybe as indifference) there’s a low hum. You hear it sometimes when you’re caught off guard. A song, a stranger’s laugh, sunlight casting rainbows on your kitchen counter. A flutter in your chest, remembering what it was like to want something so much it made you brave.

You glimpse it when you wonder what would happen if you turned left instead of right, or when your eyes linger on a beautiful tree, or when your breath quickens at the thought of speaking up or letting yourself really want something.

When resignation sets in for a woman who’s used to making things happen, desire doesn’t disappear—it gets caged. So, when your natural longing flickers in situations you’ve been let down in before, resignation clamps down. It says, “Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t risk letting yourself want. Don’t reach for what has hurt you before.”

But resignation isn’t the absence of desire. The engine is always running beneath the hood. It’s just been boxed up, silenced, trapped in a story you didn’t mean to keep living. Sometimes, the reason you feel stuck, frustrated, or tightly wound is precisely because that longing is still alive, even if you barely admit it, and your frequency is starting to broadcast resignation, the opposite of your authenticity, your Truth.

The more resigned you feel, the further away from your natural flow and the stronger your hidden desire usually is. That’s why resignation feels so heavy—it takes real effort and energetic resources to hold back that much wanting; to operate against the flow. You were built to drive, to make things happen. The more you find yourself bracing or pumping the brakes, the more friction in your life.

The hardest part? You can’t change him. And you don’t want to throw away your marriage over his phone usaeg (but I know you’re questioning it lol). Your only real option is to reclaim your energetic sovereignty. Because that’s where your freedom starts.

Energetic Sovereignty: How to Take Back Your Signal

Resignation is expensive. You’ve been paying in dead hours, missed color, and misues of your energetic resources, and an achey heart that doesn’t dissolve no matter how often you try to ignore or settle it.

The real risk isn’t in wanting; it’s in denying yourself the chance to desire again. What’s at stake is what happens when you keep saying no to what calls you.

Desire isn’t indulgence, and it isn’t the source of your pain. Desire is oxygen. It’s the reason you get goosebumps just thinking about saying yes to yourself. It’s how you claim your place in the world—moving from the background of your own life to commanding the whole room, simply by letting yourself want, out loud and unapologetically.

It’s remembering what it’s like to feel, and letting yourself go there. Nothing will change until you decide to unmute that ache and let it move you again. Desire isn’t just wanting, it’s reclaiming. It’s owning that which makes you undeniable in your own life.

It’s the compass in your chest, always pointing you toward what makes you feel most alive. It’s the golden thread out of the labyrinth of resignation and back into your magnetic flow.

But… here’s the catch and the reason it’s hard to let ourselves want again: Desire isn’t just pleasure. It’s risk.

It’s standing on the edge of the diving board, every instinct alive. It’s risking embarrassment, risking wanting in public, risking not being met. It’s that sharp ache when you say yes to your own wanting, knowing you might not get what you ask for, but realizing, as your pulse speeds up, that you’re more awake now than you’ve been in a long time.

Allowing yourself this medicine when your energetic remote is tuned to resignation can feel terrifying, because it means surrendering the self-protection built via disappointment management.

But letting yourself want again IS the act of reclaiming your energetic sovereignty. And ultimately, that’s what you’re craving most in moments like this.

Energetic sovereignty feels like: “I have power, no matter the circumstances. I choose how I show up.”

One story makes you a victim of someone else’s actions.
The other makes you the creator of your reality.

Your soul knows the difference between these three moves—you just have to lock it in:

• Strategic retreat: I’m choosing to step back.

• Energetic sovereignty: I’m choosing my response.

• Resignation: I have no choice.

Does this mean you can’t feel neglected, unseen, or upset about the lack of connection? Of course not. Nor does it mean you ignore those feelings.

Instead, you honor the wave of annoyance or sadness—letting it move through you, not take root—while remembering your own ability to satisfy yourself. Feel me?

It’s about opening the door to your own appetite. Longing isn’t the problem, I promise. In fact, it’s been your map home all along. It’s a portal, not a problem.

Desire is the fist quietly raised. The unreasonably alive voice inside you that says: “I’m here. I’m breathing. I refuse to be talked out of aliveness.”

It’s a return. A return to you. The woman who feels electricity in her bones when she says yes to herself. Who knows her energy is currency, and that it has value. She is the source of the miracles in her own life.

If you recognize yourself here—if you know the private pain of the woman who folds her wants to fit the room—please hear this: Resignation is the lie that comfort is safer than longing. Desire is the rebellion that says, “I am still alive—and I refuse to die before I live.”

It’s time to resuscitate your frequency. That’s what it truly means to come home to yourself.

I’m Shauna VanBogart, and I teach women the art of energetic fluency. Start with my 7-day energetic reset: Vision Board Restyle. It’s a transformative audio experience that will move you from resignation to your most vibrant frequency—in just 15 minutes a day, for the cost of Sunday brunch.

Lyra’s grandmother had been a Light Keeper, one of the ancient guardians, who taught Lyra how to work with light the way most people worked with clay; shaping it, directing it, helping it flow where it was needed most. The Light Keeper’s understood that light is not just something you turned on and off, but something that needed cultivating, something you conducted like a symphony—multifaceted and layered.

By the time Lyra became an adult, the world had changed. The Machine Makers had taken over the kingdom. They believed light could be manufactured, standardized and distributed according to precise schedules. They valued efficiency and had big visions of spreading light as fast and on-demand as they could. They built great factories where women worked in rows, producing light of various kinds. Units of happiness, quotas of love, measured doses of inspiration.

The Machine Makers viewed the old way of working with light too unpredictable. Too messy. Too complicated.

“We need consistency and sustainability. We need light that works the same way every time,” they declared.

They offered Lyra a position as a Senior Light Producer. The salary was substantial and the benefits were excellent. Everyone raved at how lucky she was to be chosen.

So Lyra hung up her grandmother’s flowing robes and put on the crisp uniform of a Machine Maker. She learned to punch in at exactly 8:00 AM and produce her daily quota of light units. Happiness from 8 to 10 AM. Productivity from 10 to 12 PM. Nurturing from 1 to 3 PM. Ambition from 3 to 5 PM. No mixing. No blending. No complex symphonies of light. Just note after note, produced on command.

At first, Lyra excelled. Because she was so gifted with light to begin with, she produced her quotas faster than anyone else. She earned bonuses, promotions, recognition. She was a star performer and praised for it.

But something strange began to happen.

The light she produced started to feel different. Thinner. More brittle. Where once her light had danced and flowed and adapted to what each person needed, now it came out in uniform streams that worked for some people and not for others.

Worse, Lyra herself began to dim.

She would come home every night feeling like something was missing. Like it was being drained from her. She tried to practice her grandmother’s old techniques—the flowing movements, the listening to the rhythm of light itself—but her hands felt clumsy, disconnected. The light wouldn’t respond the way it used to.

“You’re just tired,” the Machine Makers told her. “You need better time management. More efficiency. Here, try this new productivity system. Take these supplements to optimize your energy.”

So Lyra adapted. She worked harder. She took on additional shifts. She filled her body with “optimized energy”. She learned to produce multiple types of light faster than anyone else. She became a master of what the Machine Makers called “light-shifting”--the ability to switch from one type of light to another with no transition time. In one moment she’s generating happiness light, and a minute later delivering ambition units.

Everyone marveled at her capacity. “Look at Lyra! She can do it all! She’s our most successful Light Producer!”

But Lyra was dying inside.

It happened on a Tuesday at 2:47 PM. Lyra was in the middle of producing her afternoon quote of nurturing light when a child wandered into the factory–a little girl with tears in her eyes who had lost her mother in the marketplace.

Instinctively, Lyra reached for the kind of light the child needed. Not the standardized nurturing light that sat right in front of her on the assembly line, but something deeper. Something that sparkled with comfort and safety and love all woven together in a complex, beautiful pattern that would wrap around the child like her grandmother’s arms.

But when Lyra tried to create it, nothing happened.

Her light came out in the standard format–measured, uniform, efficient, perfect. It was technically nurturing light, but it had no soul. The child looked at her with confused, disappointed eyes and walked away still crying.

That night, Lyra couldn’t sleep. Her mind wandered to her past where she found herself at 12 years old, watching her grandmother wield light in her cottage, “Light is not produced, my dear. Light flows. It flows through you, not from you,” her grandmother explained as the light danced across the ceiling. “Your job is not to create it but to become so clear, so connected to yourself, that light can move through you the way a river moves through a mountain, carving new paths and going to the places calling for its touch.”

Lyra went to her closet and pulled out her grandmother’s old robes. They felt strange after years of wearing uniforms, almost forbidden. But as she put them on, something in her stirred.

She remembered.

She remembered that she was not a Light Producer. She was a Light Keeper. She was not supposed to manufacture light according to someone else’s specifications. She was supposed to work with light the way it actually existed–complex, multifaceted, alive.

The next morning, Lyra stood at the entrance to the light factory. She could see her colleagues filling in, ready for another day of quota-meeting and efficiency-optimizing. She could see the Machine Makers in their glass offices, monitoring productivity levels and planning new ways to streamline the light production process.

And she made a choice.

Instead of walking through the doors, Lyra turned around and walked toward the edge of the kingdom, where the old Light Keepers’ sanctuary still stood, overgrown and forgotten.

The sanctuary was dusty and dark, but as Lyra stepped inside, she felt something she hadn’t felt in years. This was where she belonged. Slowly, carefully, Lyra began to practice the old ways. She started small, just sitting quietly and listening to the rhythm of her own light. Then she began to move her hands the way her grandmother had taught her, not forcing the light but inviting it, creating space for it to flow.

At first, nothing happened. Years of factory work had disconnected her from her natural abilities. But gradually, as she practiced self-connection–remembering who she was beneath all the programming–the light began to respond.

And it was beautiful.

Not the uniform, efficiency, perfect light of the factory, but complex, nuanced light that could be multiple things at once. Light that could hold sadness and joy simultaneously. Light that could be fierce and tender in the same moment. Light that adapted to each situation, each person, each need.

Word began to spread that there was a woman working with light in the old way. People who had been struggling to survive on factory light began to make the journey to Lyra’s sanctuary.

When they arrived, Lyra didn’t give them more light. Instead she taught them what her grandmother had taught her: how to connect so deeply with themselves so that light could flow through them. How to stop forcing and work with their natural rhythms instead of fighting them.

She taught them about capacity. Not as something to be stretched until it snapped, but as something that could be expanded from the inside out. She would gather the women in the sanctuary’s old sunlit hall and say, “Every time you remember who you are, instead of who they tell you you are, your sense of self grows. And every time your sense of self grows, your capacity for light expands. Not because you force it. Because you finally let it.”

Sometimes, a woman would arrive at the sanctuary so depleted she could barely speak. Lyra would sit with her in silence, holding space for the light to flow, until the woman’s own light flickered back to life—a spark in her heart that finally had the space and oxygen to ignite into a flame. And as she began to remember herself, her laughter would return, her voice would steady, her eyes would shine with a light that was unmistakably her own.

The Machine Makers were baffled. They couldn’t understand why people were leaving the factories to learn this “inefficient” way of working with light. They sent representatives to try to convince Lyra to come back. They offered her any position she wanted.

“You were our best producer. Why would you give up everything you’ve achieved?”

But she knew. She had remembered. She was alive again. And she wasn’t going back.

Years later, they would say that Lyra started a revolution. But she knew she hadn’t started anything new. She had simply remembered something ancient: that women were not meant to be light factories, churning out units on command, switching forms to fit someone else’s plan.

They were meant to be Light Keepers–flowing with light, conducting it, dancing with it, letting it move through them in all its complex, wild, unpredictable beauty and grace.

And when they remembered–truly remembered–who they were, the world changed. Not with a bang, but with a quiet, unstoppable rising. A thousand small lights, flickering back to life, until the darkness was not so dark anymore.

Not by grinding or forcing or pushing through, but by flowing. By honoring their own rhythms. By letting their complexity become their brilliance. By coming home to their knowing, and in doing so, lighting the way for others to do the same.

For a long time, she forgot about the garden inside her. She became so busy tending to everyone else’s gardens—making sure their flowers grew bright and strong—that she stopped caring for her own. Sometimes, she even took her most special flowers and tried planting them in someone else’s soil, hoping they would be appreciated there. But her flowers never truly belonged anywhere but home, in the soil of her own heart. Flowers forced into foreign soil cannot thrive. They wither. They lose their song.

One day, exhausted from tending everyone else's garden, she sat down in the center of her chest and wept. Her tears fell onto the neglected earth of her inner garden, and something miraculous happened. The original seeds—the ones planted by her soul—began to stir beneath the surface.

A voice, ancient and knowing, whispered from the soil: "Darling, you have been watering the wrong garden. The opinions of others are like weather—they pass through, but they are not your climate. Your garden has its own seasons, its own perfect timing, its own exquisite design."

As she listened, she felt something loosening in her chest. The tight grip she had been holding. The need to be seen a certain way, the fear of disappointing, the exhaustion of constant tending to others' comfort … it began to dissolve like morning fog lifting.

"What if," the voice continued, "you simply returned to what you love? What if you trusted your garden to grow in its own way, just as others must tend their own? The right people will be drawn to your true blooms, and those who aren’t—well, they have their own gardens to care for."

She felt her shoulders drop. Her breathing deepened. Something that had been clenched for so long began to unfurl. For the first time in a long time, she realized she missed her own company. She missed tending to her own dreams.

The woman stood up and looked around her inner garden with new eyes. The garden, her garden, was still there—waiting for her to come home. She saw that beneath the worry and the trying, her original flowers had never truly died. They had been waiting, patient and faithful, for her return. And in that moment, she felt the possibility of peace.

She picked up her watering can. Not to please others but to nourish what was authentically hers. With each drop of self-compassion, with every choice to honor her own truth, her garden began to come alive again.

The flowers stretched toward their own inner sun. They sang their own songs. They bloomed in their own perfect timing. As she tended her garden, those around her felt inspired to remember and care for their own.

And the woman remembered: she was not meant to simply be a mirror of others' desires or to reflect other people’s needs. She was meant to be a garden—wild, authentic, and gloriously her own.

Everything becomes about getting things done. Productive, sure, but not exactly enchanted. I used to worry something was wrong with me. I’d tell myself (and my mentors), “When I have a North Star—something that sets me on fire—I soar. I move mountains. I need that part of me back to do what I know I’m here to do.”

I see this in my clients all the time, especially the high-performers who’ve been in go-mode for so long they start to wonder, “Am I missing something? Where did my wanting go?”

To which I say:
There is nothing wrong with you.
Desire isn’t a performance. It’s not a metric. It’s not something you can fail.

It’s a relationship. And sometimes, like all relationships, it needs a little space, a little patience, and a gentle invitation to come back home.

Desire is a cocktail of biology, psychology, and a little bit of magic. Your brain’s reward system (hello, dopamine) is the DJ, spinning tracks that make you want to move. But sometimes, life turns the volume down—stress, burnout, hormones, or just a string of Tuesdays that never seem to end.

Some people are naturally tuned to pick up every frequency of wanting. Others need a little more quiet, a little more time, a little more invitation. Both are beautiful.

How to Flirt with Your Own Desire (When It’s Playing Hard to Get)

• Start with Curiosity, Not Pressure.
  Don’t wait for a lightning bolt. Notice what you’re even slightly drawn to—a color, a word, a texture, a feeling. Sometimes desire whispers before it shouts.

• Go Beyond the Glossy Pages.
  This is what a Vision Board process is designed to do — help us reconnect with our desires. Magazines are fine, but so are photos on your phone, Pinterest, ticket stubs, fabric, leaves, or even a word you scribble on a napkin. Desire isn’t picky about where it lives.

• Let Yourself Play.
  Sometimes desire needs a little mischief to wake up. Take a different route home. Eat breakfast for dinner. Wear something you’d usually save for a “special occasion” on a random Tuesday. Surprise yourself.

• Notice What You Don’t Want.
  Even “no” is information. Every time you pass over something, you’re getting clearer on what you do want, even if you can’t name it yet. Slow it down and get curious about why you don’t want it. This process is deepening your relationship with desire.

• Give It Time.
  Desire builds with gentle attention, not force. If it feels flat today, that’s okay. Keep showing up, keep noticing, and trust that your sparks will return—often when you least expect them.

A Little Secret:
Speaking of vision boards… some of the best vision boards I’ve ever seen started with images that felt random, even boring. Weeks later, those “random” choices ended up holding the most meaning.

So, if you’re in a desire drought, you’re not behind. You’re just in the part of the dance where you’re listening for the next song.

If This is You…

If you’re ready to flirt with your own wanting again, I want to invite you into something quietly transformative: Vision Board Restyle

It’s not about hustling for more or forcing yourself to “manifest.”
It’s about letting life surprise you again.

For one week, you’ll get a daily audio journey (think: immersive story and choose-your-own-soul-adventure) and playful creative prompts to help you reconnect with what lights you up. You’ll build a Primer Book (that’s my take on the vision board that’s portable and private) that’s like a living, breathing reminder of what makes you feel alive.

If your desire muscle is a little sleepy, maybe it’s time to stretch it—gently, curiously, and with a wink.

If that sounds like the kind of invitation you’ve been waiting for, I’d love for you to join us. We start on Tuesday and registration is closing soon: https://www.shaunavanbogart.com/vbr

Not the kind you sleep off, but the kind that creeps in when you’ve been “on” for too long.

You know the vibe… when even the fun stuff starts to feel like a chore.

When you start dodging the things you actually like.

When the idea of packing for a weekend trip with the kids feels like prepping for a lunar mission.

When you RSVP “maybe” to everything and secretly hope it rains, snows, and the world loses Wi-Fi so you have an excuse to stay home.

Your partner wants to play cards after the kids are down, and you’re like, “Can we just…not?”

You love them. You really do. You love your life. You’re just…done.

Soul tired is what happens when your magic gets spread too thin.
It’s what happens when you’re always the one making it happen, holding it down, keeping the vibe high for everyone else.

Basically, you’re just maxed out on efforting.

It’s not that you don’t want to connect. It’s that you’ve been in “make it happen” mode for so long, you can’t remember what it feels like to just be in a room.

I’ve had weeks where my phone buzzes and I flinch. Where I’m more likely to snap at the people I love than laugh with them. Where I’m leading, managing, and troubleshooting everyone’s life, including my own—like it’s my full-time job. (Spoiler: It’s not … unless you’re a client, then yeah, it kind of is.)

So, what is the move? You just need to call your energy back.

Let’s do something right now.
Not tomorrow. Not after you finish your emails.
Right now.

Touch Something Cold.
Grab your iced coffee, your water glass, or the windowpane.
Feel the chill. That’s real. That’s now.
That’s you, pulling your spirit out of the mental spin cycle and back into your body.

Say Your Name Out Loud.
Whisper it if you have to.
“Shauna.”
(Or, you know, your name.)
Feel how it vibrates in your chest. That’s you, anchoring yourself back into yourself.

Find One Tiny, Delicious Detail.
Maybe it’s the way your sock is slightly twisted, the page that’s slightly curled on the edge of a book, or the exact shade of green on your houseplant’s new leaf.
Let yourself get weirdly obsessed with it for three seconds.
That’s your magic, finding its way home.

When you do these things, you’re not escaping your life, you’re re-entering it.
You’re flipping the script from “I have to manage everything” to “I get to notice something.”

You’re letting the world get small enough to hold in your hands again.

Here’s the Real Magic:

You don’t have to fix your soul tiredness. You just have to stop fighting it.
Let it be there, like the daughter who’s having a rough week.

You don’t have to cheer it up or make it productive.
You just have to let it sit on the couch and eat chips for a while.

And then, somewhere in the middle of all that not-efforting, you’ll notice something quietly shift.

You’ll laugh at a meme.
You’ll want to call your sister.
You’ll say yes to a walk around the block, not because you “should,” but because your feet kind of want to.

Here’s some other ways that actually work for soul tiredness:

• Eat something with your fingers.
  Strawberries. Popcorn. A slice of mango. Let it drip. Lick your fingers.
  Sensual, messy, alive.

• Sit on the floor for five minutes.
  Not on a yoga mat. Just the floor.
  Let your body remember gravity. Let your mind drop out of orbit.

• Text someone a meme that made you laugh.
  No explanation. Just the meme. Connection, minus the effort.

• Light a candle and blow it out after three breaths.
  Watch the smoke curl. That’s your old programming leaving the building.

• Put on a song you secretly love and lip sync the chorus.
  (Or belt it out loud, it’s your party)

You don’t need to overhaul your existence.
You just need to let yourself be a person for a minute.

Trust me: The world will wait.
Your people will still be there.
You’ll come back to yourself in the smallest, weirdest ways-one song, one window, one breath at a time.

When you’re here—like, really here—the world shifts.
People feel it.
You feel it.

Soul tiredness can’t survive in the light of your own attention.
Not the kind you give everyone else, but the kind you give yourself, right now, in this tiny, ordinary, perfect moment.

You’ll still have laundry.
You’ll still have emails.
But you’ll also have this:
A tiny pocket of magic in your day.
A reminder that you can drop the effort and just be.

And every time you do, your soul gets a little less tired and you get a little more you.

If you’ve been feeling soul tired, I want to invite you to join me for something transformative: Vision Board Restyle. It’s a 7-day soul safari that isn’t about forcing yourself to “manifest” or hustle for more. It’s about letting yourself be surprised by life again. About opening your energy, your imagination, and your senses to what you want-sometimes before you even know what that is.

For one week, 15 minutes a day, you’ll get a daily audio journey (think: immersive story that’s like unlocking a new room in your subconcious) and playful creative prompts that help you reconnect with what lights you up. You’ll build a Primer Book that’s more than a vision board, it’s a living, breathing reminder of what makes you feel alive.

If your soul is tired, maybe it’s time to rest into desire again.
If this resonates, I’d love to have you join me.

Learn more about Vision Board Restyle & claim your spot here.

The more artificial brightness we surrounded her with, the less tolerance she had for even the slightest shadow. Every shadow became a monster, every sound a threat. We had tried to chase away the darkness with light, but it only seemed to make things worse. She was waking up four or five times a night, scared and increasingly restless.

Our initial approach was reasonable: add a little light to dispel the fear. But the fear persisted, morphing into new reasons and excuses to problem-solve the dark. She'd tell us there were monsters lurking in the shadows.

Monsters don’t exist, baby.

She'd look at me with eyes that said: You don't see what I see.

Mommy and Daddy would never let a monster get you.

Her silence told me she wasn't buying my security system either.

You know what I just remembered? Monsters aren’t allowed in houses that are painted white.

Me, making up facts, to meet her fears halfway. I watched her process this information, her face softening as she accepted this arbitrary rule of monster behavior. It worked—for a day. A fragile peace that crumbled the moment we were driving through the neighborhood and she pointed to a blue house and said, "Monsters can go in that one, right?" And I realized I'd only given her new criteria for categorizing her fear (and now patrolling it for other people), not releasing her from it.

I recognized myself in the dynamic we'd created with my daughter's fear of the dark. The deceivingly easy belief I had once bought into was that if I could just shine a light on every single fear, shortcoming, and deficiency, I would rest easy. My life would flow. My problems solved. I would be at peace—finally. And I’d be lying if I said this approach didn’t work, kind of, because some problems were solved and things would flow—for a day. Then another reason to work on myself would pop up. Wash, rinse, repeat.

A constant pursuit of "enlightenment" that only led to less tolerance of the shadow—in myself and in everyone else. I’d feel the highest of highs, only to be yanked abruptly back to a place of discontent and disgust over myself, the moment any of my monsters would rear its head.

The shadows, once a reminder of my vulnerabilities and strengths, became enemies to be vanquished. And with each step forward, I felt my sense of trust, presence, and wholeness slip through my fingers. I was traversing a path that gradually darkened, not with shadows, but with the absence of them. The more I invested in becoming "all light," the more the joy and connection that once filled my life began to fade. It was sobering to eventually realize I had unknowingly subscribed to the very myth I had warned my clients of—the myth that equated spiritual growth with the eradication of all that is dark within us.

Just a few days after my husband and I resigned to the fact that we have got to tackle this bedtime dynamic, there was a full moon and a clear sky. So after bedtime, I went out to the back patio to look at the big, beautiful full moon and I asked my husband to go get the telescope. It was my daughter’s Christmas gift from Santa—the only thing on her wish list—after spending months with my husband watching space documentaries and cultivating a love for the solar system.

As I stood there watching him adjust the lenses, I turned toward the house and saw the silhouette of a tiny figure darting through the kitchen. My daughter, two hours past her bedtime, was up again, scared. And instead of guiding her back to bed, I invited her outside with me.

"Come see this!" I exclaimed, as I motioned to her dad and the telescope. "Come look at the moon!" She grasped my hand, and we walked barefoot onto the concrete and into the darkness.

As she looked through the telescope at the moon, alternating with steps back to take in the full sky, I could see the wonder beginning to eclipse her fear. And as she gazed up at the stars, she asked, “I can see some of the stars, but not the others—where are they?"

I explained that you can't see the stars when there's too much light. Her face fell slightly, and in that moment, something clicked. She didn't need to eradicate her fear; we didn't need to eradicate it either. Perhaps we could show her that darkness is a backdrop for the beauty of the universe. I feel peace remembering that most living things begin in darkness—seeds in the earth, babies in the womb. There is fertility in the dark. Creativity. Passion. Ambition. And the most amazing magic. If we let the dark exist.

"That's why we turn off all the lights," I told her, "because we want to see all the cool things that exist in the dark—like the stars and the moon. Without darkness, we’d never get to see the stars and the moon.”

“Or glow sticks?” she asked.

“Or glow sticks,” I affirmed, taking a breath because in that moment, I felt the shift.

Goethe said, "Where the light is brighter, the shadows are deepest." I see the night sky and the full moon and recognize it’s not beautiful despite the darkness—it's beautiful because of it. In that reminder the full moon gifted us, I felt something adjust into alignment within me too. The knowing that sometimes the most profound sense of wholeness… or rightness … happens not in the light, but in the darkness. When we’re not toiling away to figure it out in therapy or journaling for hours, but in deciding we simply want to see something beautiful outside when the sun goes down.

We stared at the moon for a little while longer and then I walked her back upstairs. When my husband checked on her an hour later, fast asleep in her bed, he reported to me, “She turned her lights off.”

And she proceeded to deliver a message—THE message—I needed at that exact time.

Five days earlier, I was in the bathroom having a meltdown. A moment of raw vulnerability, the kind that motherhood seems to specialize in serving up. I felt trapped in a cycle that seemed determined to squeeze out any remnant of the woman I used to be, before I became 'Mom'. Almost every attempt to create space for myself in the weeks leading up to this was thwarted by a last-minute babysitter cancellation, a daycare closure due to some freak storm, or my husband's work schedule doing an unexpected somersault.

The meltdown was inevitable, really. For weeks, I'd felt the emotions simmering just beneath the surface; feelings I'd stubbornly refused to acknowledge. Deep down, I knew their source: a younger version of myself, wide-eyed and ambitious, grappling with how motherhood fit into her grand plans. She was the 23-year-old me, at the dawn of my self-employed career, brimming with aspirations and an unshakeable belief that nothing could stand in her way.

When my first daughter arrived in 2020, I felt the seismic shift in my identity. My world expanded in ways I never imagined, but that starry-eyed 23-year-old stood steadfast beside me. She was in full-on superwoman mode, determined to prove to the world—and to herself—that we could have it all. We could be the nurturing mother I'd always dreamed of becoming while simultaneously conquering our career goals.

But with the arrival of my second daughter, that inner superwoman began to falter. Her unwavering confidence gave way to frustration, and I found myself trying to distance from her increasingly insistent voice. Each day became a complex juggling act—two little ones, a full-time business—and I felt like I was constantly trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

I could feel the battle raging inside me, threatening to burst forth at any moment. My younger self was continually triggered by our carefully laid plans going awry, while I stubbornly refused to entertain her grievances. I didn't want to hear what she had to say. This was MY life now, MY choices. Yet with every rearrangement of the work schedule to prioritize my girls, I could sense her seething resentment about what our life had become. I judged her for being naive, unwilling to listen to her protests.

So when the meltdown finally came, crashing over me like a tidal wave, I knew it was time. Time to confront her. Time to confront myself. Time to face all of it—the dreams, the fears, the resentment, and the love that intertwined it all. It was time to have an honest conversation with the woman I used to be and the mother I was becoming.

Once I reluctantly accepted the inevitable—"Okay, we're going here, it's happening, buckle up"—the emotions spilled out like a waterfall. There I stood at the vanity, huge tears streaming down my face, when she suddenly materialized in my mind's eye. She was defiant, this younger me, decked out in a BCBG shift dress from the outlets and designer heels scored at TJ Maxx. Even as she screamed at me in this bizarre mental theater, I couldn't help but notice how pretty she looked with her perfectly curled hair and full makeup.

But beneath her screams and my very real tears, I finally felt it—fear. Raw, unfiltered fear. I'd had an inkling of its presence before, but until I allowed myself to truly feel it, I had no idea how intense it really was. If you've ever witnessed someone confront the very fear they've been desperately trying to keep at bay, you know how chaotic and overwhelming it can be. As I let this part of myself play out in my psyche, I found myself simultaneously holding space with love and acceptance, finally mothering her instead of dismissing her very real feelings.

As the meltdown reached its crescendo, I finally heard her say it:

You’re going to get stuck here!

There it was. Her truth I'd been trying so hard to avoid hearing.

It triggered me right back. Everything in me wanted to scream at her, "You don't know! You have no idea what it means to have these two beautiful girls!"

I wanted to berate her, to make her see reason. "Look around!" I longed to shout. "Look at this life! You don't get it. I'm not going to let your grievances shadow what I've worked so hard to create!"

In my calmer moments, I knew deep down that motherhood hadn't erased her or my dreams; it had transformed us both into something new, a landscape we were still learning to navigate together—I had tried to affirm this to her many times before but she wasn’t latching to the idea. So instead, for weeks leading up to this, I started guilt-tripping "her" whenever the tension flared up. I'd point to everything we'd endured—the three heart-wrenching pregnancy losses before our beautiful second daughter arrived. How much we'd been through to create the family we'd longed for.

Just be grateful!

…

That’s what I wanted to scream back.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I leaned against the vanity and felt it with her.

We’re going to get stuck here!

I felt the dreams held so tightly by my 23-year-old self slipping through her fingers like sand. Her value, her sense of pride, her baby—her whole world was falling apart because her entire self-worth was wrapped up in her career. It was the only place she felt worthy. She wasn't scared about motherhood; she was freaking out because she didn't know who she was in the space beyond her business.

I’m going to get stuck here!

I full-body sobbed, letting the energy move through me like a storm. I felt the fear from a completely non-judgmental space, empathizing and holding a state of acceptance in my heart until it passed. I didn't feel compelled to say anything back. I just rode the wave until the tears stopped on their own.

When we both felt ready, I collected myself and proceeded with what appeared to be a very normal day, despite the lingering emotional hangover. But something was different. In that bathroom, amidst the tears and fears, I'd finally given space to a part of myself I'd been trying to silence. And in doing so, I'd taken the first step towards integrating who I was with who I was becoming—a mother, yes, but also still that dreamer with stars in her eyes.

That night, my daughter presented me with another cat drawing she had created. Lately, it seemed cats were materializing everywhere in my life—haunting my dreams, appearing as symbols on random objects, and even catching my eye on roadsides. My beloved cat Henry, who had been my constant companion since the inception of my career at 23, had passed away just a few months earlier during my third trimester. He had been my silent confidant, always sensing when I needed comfort and nurturing. My husband would often bring Henry to me in times of sadness. I attributed this feline omnipresence to my subconscious yearning for that unfailing, loving energy—a solace I could no longer offer even to my 23-year-old self. "If I could just do something for her... for us... to get her to see," I pondered.

As the weekend approached, my intuition whispered an unexpected suggestion: send my husband golfing on Sunday. Let me be clear—this was far from my usual inclination, especially with a newborn in the house. But the urge was so strong, and these days, I rarely overrode such instincts. So I made my way to the kitchen to relay this surprising suggestion and my husband intercepted me. The look on his face told me everything before he even spoke—he was about to ask if he could participate in a golf tournament the next day. I told him I sensed he needed to be there for some reason, encouraging him to go while assuring him I could manage the girls.

Come morning, I felt an inexplicable pull to embark on an hour-long journey to the beach with both my daughters—my first substantial outing alone with the two of them. It was October in Charleston, the weather a perfect 70 degrees, and I reasoned that with a single beach bag, how challenging could it be? There was an undeniable sense that I needed to be there. Any parent of small children knows that some days, you simply lack the capacity for such adventures. But on this day, for reasons I couldn't quite articulate, I felt fully charged and ready for this impromptu expedition.

The closer we got to the beach, the stronger my intuition. Something was waiting for me there, I felt certain. Perhaps an old friend I'd reconnect with, I mused.

We found a perfect little nook on the beach. I spread out a blanket and watched my four-year-old revel in pure joy, digging in the sand and being chased by the waves. I wore the baby, strolling up and down the shoreline. Maybe I’m going to find something special, I thought.

Though this sense of anticipation lingered, it remained a gentle backdrop to the serenity of simply being present with my girls at the beach. There wasn't a trace of stress. If you bottled up pure joy, it’d be from Sullivan's Island that day.

A couple of hours passed, and it naturally felt like time to leave. As I changed a diaper, my older daughter still contentedly digging beside me, she appeared.

A woman in her 60s, enjoying the beach solo, radiating the energy of a literal angel.

"Are you a big sister?" she asked my daughter, who nodded as I smiled.

"Hey... I got this bracelet down at the market, and I was wondering if your daughter may like to have it?”

I watched my daughter's eyes widen as the woman slipped a colorful beaded bracelet off her wrist. I felt touched that out of all the children on the beach, she'd chosen us.

"Would you like to have that?" I asked my daughter. She nodded again.

As the woman passed the bracelet to my girl, I noticed a single large bead in the center with an image on it—of a cat. A freaking cat. You know that feeling when you get a sign so clear, you just know it's not coincidence? This one hit me hard, emotion welling up in my throat.

And as if that wasn’t enough of a sign, as the woman turned to leave, she paused, smiled at me, and said, "It doesn't get any better than this." Then she winked and walked away.

It took every ounce of control not to completely fall apart on the sand. I felt those words. I felt the 23-year-old feel those words. My entire heart was exploding. And I knew—I knew—she had finally gotten it.

I have never felt the words of that phrase ring as true as they did in that moment, that day, on a beautiful beach with my two beautiful daughters. Just being me, a mom, a woman, a business owner, all of it harmonized and none of it in conflict.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Life doesn't always fall into place so magically, but I'm deeply grateful for the beauty and divine orchestration of our Universe and our unconscious. Motherhood still has its challenges, but the fear I harbored about what it meant for other parts of me hasn't returned since that day. I have peace and a good story. And I would still have the bracelet if the dog hadn't eaten it the next morning. But such is life.

On one side, the well-worn path of financial security and familial responsibility. On the other, the alluring trail of personal fulfillment and entrepreneurial dreams. But what if I told you that these paths are not divergent, but rather intertwined in a beautiful dance of intention and consciousness?

We're told we must choose: security or passion, family or dreams. But what if this dichotomy is an illusion? We certainly have capacity as humans to hold multiple truths simultaneously. We can nurture our dreams while honoring our responsibilities. We can take calculated risks without compromising our values.

This is the essence of conscious entrepreneurship. Something I fear has been lost in the Instagram feed of endless “instant $30k launches!” and seemingly overnight success.

I won’t even begin to tell you how many clients I’ve coached into pursuing financial pressure-release valves while they build their business. Because the weight of performing financially, in a business that just wasn’t ready to produce for them in that way, was crushing their spirit. Forcing a miracle never works.

It's about transforming the pressure itself into fuel for conscious growth. Every step you take can be intentional; every decision aligned with both your purpose and responsibilities.

Building a sustainable business isn't about reckless abandon or desperate gambles. It's about moving forward with complete awareness, like walking a path with both eyes wide open. Open to both the possibilities and the pitfalls. The calling that speaks to your soul – that deep, resonant purpose that keeps you awake at night – it's not going anywhere. It's patient. It's loyal. Like a faithful friend, it will wait for you to be ready. So it’s okay to be in a space with yourself where pitfalls are allowed to exist.

The beauty of this approach is that it eliminates the false urgency that often plagues entrepreneurs. When you know that your purpose will never abandon you, you can move at the pace that serves both your vision and your values. You can build with intention rather than desperation. When we operate from a contracted space (i.e. putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves to make a business work in an unrealistic timeline), we make decisions that don't serve our highest good or our true purpose. It's like trying to create art while wearing handcuffs – possible, perhaps, but at what cost?

So I wrote you a love letter. A love letter to your purpose that you can read and ground into whenever you start to feel that pressure, limitation or confusion over what you need to do. I hope you find peace in it when you need it most:

“As I embark on this entrepreneurial journey, I carry with me a profound realization: I am the architect of my own reality, fully aware and present in every step of this process. My vision is clear – to create something uniquely mine, something of value to others, a venture that nourishes both my soul and my bank account. Yet, this aspiration doesn't exist in isolation. It coexists harmoniously with an equally powerful commitment: the unwavering dedication to my family's well-being.

This venture of mine, this calling that speaks to the very core of my being, it's not going anywhere. It's patient. It's persistent. It will wait for me to align my actions with my highest self. And in that alignment, I find the strength to face any challenge, to make any decision necessary for the well-being of my family, without feeling like I'm sacrificing my dreams. Because my purpose, my passion, it's not some fragile thing that can be shattered by temporary setbacks or practical considerations. It's resilient. It's enduring. It's a part of me that will never abandon me, no matter what path I choose in the short term.

I move forward, not with the frantic energy of someone trying to prove something, but with the calm assurance of someone who knows their worth, their capabilities, and their priorities. I'm not afraid to take risks, but these risks are calculated, conscious, and always in service of both my dreams and my responsibilities.

This journey isn't about reaching a destination. It's about who I become along the way. And I choose to become someone who lives in abundance, who makes decisions from a place of clarity and purpose, who honors both their personal aspirations and their familial duties.

So yes, I will move forward from this place of abundance and clarity. Yes, I will allow myself to take risks. Yes, I'm investing time and energy into building something of my own. But I'm doing it with a clear understanding that my family's wellbeing and my entrepreneurial journey aren't opposing forces – they're parallel paths that can and should complement each other.

My dreams are valid. My responsibilities are important. I have the power to honor both. I move forward consciously, true to my values, and trust my purpose always guides me home.”

Remember, the goal isn't to arrive somewhere as quickly as possible. The goal is to build something sustainable and meaningful while honoring all parts of who you are. Your purpose will wait. It will persist. And when you approach it with consciousness and clarity, it will reward you with fulfillment beyond measure.

This is the art of conscious entrepreneurship – a dance of purpose and practicality, performed with open eyes and an open heart.