Blogging Like It's 2006

When your partner looks at you across the breakfast table and says, “You aren’t being authentic” while you’re eating pancakes, it feels like a knife in the heart.

First of all, my soul is made of pancakes so I was as authentic as I could possibly be in that moment.

Second of all, since my authentic self has a wildly unhinged sense of humor and a lot of feelings - and I’ve been trying to keep a lid on a lot of that lately - I guess it’s true.

I’ve definitely fallen prey to some of those misguided “I am an adult and thus must be a perfect reflection of society’s construct of a responsible human” beliefs. Pro tip: Don’t do that. I’d much rather be a free range weirdo.

Our conversation about authenticity was actually in reference to my work and my writing. Since my job for the past number of years has basically been “help people get their shit together” (albeit in an unconventional way), I’ve felt like I need to have my shit together. Since I don’t have my shit together - at least not in the socially acceptable way - I haven’t wanted to talk about it, which has hamstrung my ability to communicate and share in the way I used to and really enjoyed.

I haven’t wanted to write about my real experience, because my real experiences don’t feel like something you can have if you’re also attempting to help other people. Yes, I hear all the things wrong with that sentence.

While I did have it together in the culturally-conditioned way - good job, paying rent on a house, etc - in my twenties, my older self has her shit together in a more real way. Less social currency, but more ability to function in a way that works for me and my brand of peculiarities. My older self is more, one might even say, authentic.

Maybe I also stopped because I thought I had to outgrow my weird, unhinged self the way I once thought I had to abandon cartoon t-shirts on the altar of being a mature adult.

Since I still wear t-shirts with llamas riding bicycles, maybe I get to reclaim my unhinged writing style. While I’ve become (arguably) more authentic to myself and who I am and what I want and need, my writing has become less so.

Really, I just want to return to the wildly unhinged blogging days of yore, when it was 2006 and we weren’t worried about branding or selling or SEO or anything much beyond LET ME TELL YOU WHAT MY DOG JUST DID. NOW I’M WRITING A RESUME FOR MY DOG. HERE’S MY DOG IN HIS BEST WORK ATTIRE, NOW FIELDING OFFERS and then posting a picture of your dog in a tie?

Remember those halcyon blogging days? I want those back. Because that style of writing was fun and endorphinizing and helped me write myself to answers, answers my current self could really use. It felt really true to me, in a way the current style - at least the style I’ve adopted - doesn’t.

I just want to write about my nonexistent dog in a nonexistent tie.

Whatever happened, most of my writing over the past few years has been sadly hinged, rather than gleefully unhinged.

Yesterday’s solar eclipse was smack dab over my midheaven - meaning, big changes are coming in my career. I’ve been feeling this for weeks - the chaos is real, my friends - and thusfar it seems to mean returning to the way I used to write.

Do we have to share all the messy parts of our lives in order to be authentic? That gong you hear is a resounding no from the universe. Do we have to be sanitized versions of ourselves to help other people? That’s another big no gong.

But here’s the thing: For whatever reason, I can’t get there. I don’t seem able to write the way I want to without sharing the mess in a way that I won’t do if I’m doing my current work.

Honestly, I feel a little betrayed by the fact that I’m not going to know what yesterday’s eclipse did to my career and writing for quite awhile yet. I want to know now. I want to know if the only way I can go back to being Unhinged Amber is to shut down my business. I want to know if I just need to scale way back so I have the time and energy and don’t feel the need to present myself in any particular way, but can still do the work I do love doing in many respects.

Or do I just need to find a job and focus on unhinged blogging and writing my books in my off hours?

I don’t know. But maybe if I keep writing whatever I want to write, those answers will come.

How You End Up with Ghouls in a Romantic Comedy

I finally finished re-reading the first draft of my novel! Good job, me!

This was something I planned to do in January, but may need to accept the fact that winter hibernation is real and I shouldn't expect too much of myself.

Now that spring has sprung - the grass is growing high and fast, the trees are blooming, and the cows are mooing - it seems my ability to do things has returned.

Aside from line editing and a confusing plot section where the goons switch to ghouls (?), I'm not sure there's much to do. At least until a few more people read it and tell me where the holes are.

Lots of writers ponder plot and characters and motivation before they ever start writing, but I just can't seem to do it that way. Whenever I try to outline, I immediately lose interest. My brain doesn't formulate anything until my fingers are already typing and following the story that's unscrolling in front of me.

This is how you end up with ghouls in a romantic comedy.

It's kind of like life, really. I mean, hopefully there are no ghouls in your life - none in mine, so far - but you just show up and start moving and see what happens.

If you stop moving, stop typing, things stop happening. And then the story gets really boring.

I wonder if the people who plot their books are also the people who can plot their lives. The kind of people with five and ten year plans who actually follow those plans.

I have never met a plan that I can't completely demolish within three months.

All I can do - in my books and in my life - is show up and see where the path leads and where I end up. Usually far from where I intended.

But, ghouls aside, where I end up is generally pretty good.

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This was posted to my Patreon earlier today. If you’d like to follow me there, I’d love to have you! It’s where I’ve been doing more personal writing these days.

Behind the Scenes of an Intuitive Business

I just got the message that I need to strip my one-on-one work with clients down to the studs and rebuild my offers and how I share them from the ground up.

This is scary but exciting.

In this moment, mostly scary. Change often is. That liminal space between what you know, what you thought you were doing, and whatever will be next. It’s untethered, which is freeing but can also feel like free fall.

When you do etheric work that could be labeled something like channeling or psychic or mediumship or energy healing … there isn’t really a prescribed way of going about it. You have to practice, sometimes for years. You have to experiment and discover your unique gifts and flavor and who you can best support and serve. You have to see what people get out of your work, how it feels, how it supports them in their lives.

I learned I was an empath and a channel in 2013, when I was 35. I practiced for years, mostly on lovely blog readers (I’d been blogging since 2006) who were willing to be my guinea pigs. I started with written channeling and then moved into spoken channeling for individuals and later for groups. Then I began doing distance healings on friends - and clients, once I felt confident. I soon moved into recorded group energy healing. All self-taught, all based on experiments.

What I learned:

• The way an energy healing works on one person is not the way it works on another person, because you receive the healing you need, not what I want to give you. (I learned that the hard way because the distance healing that put one person straight to sleep will activate a kundalini awakening in another, something she wasn’t expecting at 10 p.m.)

• A two-hour group session, especially when it includes 1:1 work with each participant, is way too much for me. I would need to rest the entire next day.

• My group healings seem to be as effective as the 1:1 healings. (Yay, channeling!)

• If I do an intensive with someone, I definitely need to rest the next day. This is part of what the investment is - because it’s not just one day of my time, it’s two or three.

• Twenty minutes of energy healing seems to be the sweet spot, both for results and my energy.

And I’m still learning.

Now that the “start over with the 1:1 healing work” message has come through, I’m entering yet another phase of experimentation.

As often as I’ve experimented in the past, it’s still an uncomfortable place to be. Especially when it means my entire business model might shift … again. (There are only so many website pages a person wants to write in her life, and I may be at my max.)

But I think there’s a lot of beauty in iteration and listening to the nudges that want to send us down new or at least slightly different paths. Let it be hard. Let it be scary. We can handle it. We can do hard things.

Lots of love,

Amber

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If you’d like to be part of the experimentation process, I’m going to be taking on new clients at a lower price scale as I feel into this new iteration. If you’re interested, schedule a free call and we’ll talk about what you need and how I might be able to help.

How To Feel Your Feelings

I still don’t know what to do with feelings. I can admit it.

At 45 years old, I still don’t entirely know what to do with feelings, even though “knowing what to do with feelings” is part of my actual job description.

We all contain multitudes.

The problem with feelings - especially if you are the brand of human who has big ones - is that they can be inconvenient. It’s hard to tackle your to-do list in the midst of quivering rage.

This is an actual response I got to a newsletter workshop I did last month: “Your superpower is noticing the feelings around things, working with them, and clearing them.”

AND YET I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO WITH MY OWN ANGER AND DISAPPOINTMENT.

Aside from write a blog post and yell about it in all caps, I mean.

Also, this isn’t entirely true.

I spend a lot of time working with my own guidance and intuition - you kinda have to, when the way other people do things never seems to work for you (being a trailblazer is all fun and games until you realize you literally have to carve your own path out of the wilderness because WTF is everyone else doing?) - and this morning’s message from my intuition was to feel my anger and disappointment.

Cue: getting nothing else done. Thanks, intuition. My to-do list is mad at you.

How To Feel Your Feelings

According to me and the way I feel my feelings. Please comment with better ideas.

1. Admit that you have a feeling and should probably acknowledge it, before it crawls into your spleen, gets a mortgage, and never leaves.

2. Notice where that feeling is in your body and breathing with it.

3. Tell your partner you have The Feelings. Demand several hugs.

4. Sharpen a pencil and write three pages about your feelings, even though you start scribbling and making a mess at half a page in.

5. Shake it out like a kid having a tantrum when it starts feeling like too much.

6. Ask the ether for help and support.

7. Cry a little.

8. Get back to your to-do list.

We could sit here and pathologize my difficulty with feelings until the proverbial cows come home. Of note, the cows are not actually proverbial, because I live in Sonoma County, California (known for happy cows and also lots of chickens), and I can see cows on the hillside from my office window.

Or I could just accept that something about my nervous system, genetic makeup, and life has made feelings a bit of challenge for me, and continue doing the best I can.

It’s all any of us can do.

I will conclude by saying, Let yourself feel your feelings. Talking to the feelings, letting them out, breathing through them, asking them for messages will help you feel lighter and happier. The more you let your feelings breathe, the better you feel.

xo - Amber

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I made a thing to help you tap into your sensitive superpowers and feel better!

How To Get Writing

Your book is ready for you. The question is, Are you ready for your book?

If you aren’t ready to write, if you’re not feeling it, if you’re procrastinating, if you’d rather be doing other things, here’s how to dive into that novel draft (or any other writing):

Give yourself the time you need.

Feeling behind, feeling like there's not enough time, is a recording your brain made by listening to someone else. Your soul knows there’s plenty of time.

Unless you’re dying and you really want to finish the novel. In that case, just get to work.

Otherwise, give yourself some space. Don’t chain yourself to the desk. Let writing be a joy, rather than a task.

Let yourself feel your feels.

Whenever I experience writer’s block, it’s usually because there’s an emotion that’s clogging up the pipeline. Once I let myself feel it, the words start to flow.

Move your body.

Inspiration flows through the physical body, not just the mind. Do some stretches. Get on yoga YouTube. Go for a walk. Do any kind of physical activity that sounds good right now and see what appears.

Take a shower.

Showers always work for me. I step out clean and with either the next place to go in my writing or the understanding that now is not the time and I get to either rest or do something else. So helpful, that bathroom.

ASK FOR inspiration.

This blog post almost didn’t happen. I aim for both structure and inspiration in my business writing. (My current structure is an email to my list every Monday, a blog post right here every Wednesday, and a personal story on Patreon every Friday.) But I don’t like to force myself to write when I’m not feeling it. Writing is a joy to me and I don’t ever want it to become something else if I can possibly avoid it. Plus, forced writing rarely seems to do well or feel good to anyone.

However, no blog post was showing up for today. Hence, a pickle.

So I set the intention that the perfect blog post arrive in my brain with enough time for me to write it. I literally just thought, “I set the intention …”, and started doing something else with a big, fat “WE’LL SEE” rumbling through my uninspired brain.

Lo and behold, twenty minutes later, here I am. Typing up a post that arrived easily in my brain, and I have just enough time to press publish before I need to leave the house.

Thank you, requested inspiration, for un-pickleing me today!

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Want some help un-pickleing your writing?

I help writers bust through blocks and get their books onto the page!

Why Do People Judge?

I once sat with a friend in her living room as she talked about another friend, the proud owner of a fancy new car. Her phrasing was judgmental - but buried beneath it was a yearning, an "I want this." In that moment, I knew she was being judgmental to cover up envy, a desire for something she didn't think she could have.

Years later, I saw a picture of her standing proudly in front of the very car she'd been judging that day in her living room.

I never looked at judgment the same way again.

Why Do We Judge Others?

As with anything relating to human emotions, judgment is deeply nuanced. But here are a few of the main reasons humans judge other humans:

They have something we want, something we don’t think we can have.

The second part is the key here. If someone has something we want, but know we can have, we might be more inspired to go get that desired thing. But if someone has something we don’t think we can have (or are capable of) (or are allowed), judgment will set in to protect us from that deep yearning.

They’re demonstrating an attribute that we don’t like, something that exists somewhere within us.

We often judge people who are reflecting back to us some part of us that we hate, whether consciously or not. Whether it’s something that we’ve been to therapy for, or it’s a small, deeply rooted kernel within our beings, if someone is displaying something that echoes what we don’t like about ourselves, the tendency is to go in hot with judgement.

They’re doing something that’s not okay.

Yeah, we’re going to judge people who cut us off in traffic or otherwise endanger themselves and others. We’re going to judge people who are cruel to kids or animals. We’re going to judge those terrible shenanigans people can get up to, especially when they negatively impact others. Our wiser selves may pipe up with some information about what may be going on internally with those people, but in this instance I say go ahead and judge. I feel good about judging truly shady people (after a full investigation of said shadiness) and if I’m ever being shady, you should go right ahead and judge me.

Why am I being judged?

Chances are really good that - unless you’re up to some truly shady nonsense - the judgment is all about them and not at all about you. (See the above.)

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One of the best places to practice discernment with your own judgement is in the comments of social media posts. Yeah, I said it.

Maybe the Dalai Lama can get on the internet with zero judgment… maybe. I bet even Mother Theresa cursed out Twitter a few times. They just didn’t add their fuel to the fire. They breathed, noticed what was happening, allowed the feeling to move through them as sensation, and then went about their day being lights upon the world.

My personal opinion about the internet is that it feels like a safe place for people to unleash their unprocessed anger and fear and judgment - so many of them do. Maybe it’s so they don’t unleash all their unhealed wounds on their family instead (and maybe not), but humanity tends to use the internet - and the people who post on it - as an emotional dumping ground.

How Do I avoid Dumping my unprocessed emotions in someone else’s lap, on the internet or otherwise?

What a great question, thank you for asking!

Notice what triggers you to judge - or to any big feeling. Especially things that make you start drafting irate comments.

Now take a step back and ask what’s really going on.

“Am I judging because deep down I want what they have, but I haven’t allowed myself to believe I can have it or that it’s okay to have it?”

If no, dig a little deeper: “Do I want that, but am only just realizing that I want it?”

If yes to any of these, congratulations! You now get to choose if you’re going to take your judgement to the comments (and thereby delay getting the thing they have that you want) or if you’re going to take this fresh new information about yourself and move forward with it.

“Am I triggered because I do this?” “Am I having this big reaction because it tugs at something I don’t like about myself?” “Am I judging because this is reflecting something I really hate about myself?”

If yes to any of these, congratulations! You now get to do your utmost to offer yourself love, forgiveness, and grace.

If your reaction is “I’m judging because that isn’t okay!”

First ask yourself “Is it really not okay?” Like, are we talking abuse of a living thing or are we talking about something kinda annoying or that you don’t personally agree with? Or are they reflecting something that has been an issue for you in the past and you’re angry that you were judged for it?

If it’s just something annoying or that you don’t personally agree with, you get to choose how you spend your time. Do you want to try to change someone’s mind on the internet or do you want to practice your empathy by trying to put yourself in their shoes? Or do you want to just go back to being a light on the world?

If it’s really not okay, you get to choose how to spend your energy. Do you want to yell about it on the internet or find some way to use your power to change it?

None of these answers or responses are wrong by the way. You get to choose how you spend your time and your internet comments - and the block button exists for a reason. If the internet is your therapy, go at it.

Just keep in mind that where you’re being unkind to others is also where you’re being unkind to yourself - and you, like everyone else, deserve a lot of kindness.

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Judgment is a totally valid human response. I’m not here to judge your judgment. I judge, you judge, we all judge. We are human beings and being judge-y is one of our many gifts. It kept - and keeps - us alive.

That said, we also need discernment. Discernment to understand what’s really going on within us. Because the more we can dig a bit deeper to understand our feelings and what’s triggering them, the better chance we have to release or heal or process them. And then move on to a better, happier phase of life.

Transmuting our emotions is a superpower like no other.

Love, Amber

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If this landed with you, and you’d like to hear more from me, hop on my email list.

If you want or need help ransmuting big emotions or giving yourself more kindness, that’s one of the things I do with lovely people like you.

What To Do When You Go Viral

1. Regulate your nervous system.

Your adrenaline will spike, so take good care of yourself.

Take a walk, stretch, get a hug, lie on the living room floor until you feel better.

When something like this happens, it activates our fight / flight / freeze / fawn nervous system response. You might want to take down every troll in the comments (fight). You might want to run away from the internet forever (flight). You might crawl into bed and not move for hours (freeze). You might try to pacify everyone who shows up (fawn). You might do all of them in quick succession.

Calming the nervous system is one of the most powerful things we can learn for ourselves - and it’s essential when something you put online goes viral and people start attacking you or having a lot of opinions about you out of the clear blue sky.

Some of my favorite ways to regulate the nervous system are:

1. Get out in nature

2. Move your body - take a walk, do some yoga, hit the gym, go for a run, dance like an unhinged muppet to your favorite song

3. Get into water (shower, bath, pool)

4. Do somatic or nervous system regulating stretches (google to find some ideas)

5. Breathe - in for 6, hold, out for 8 (or whatever feels right)

6. Eat something nourishing

7. Get a hug

There are also some energetic tips in the video at the bottom of this post.

2. Remember that other people's opinions are about them not you.

Full stop, end of story.

Remember that people are viewing you through their own lens, the way they see and understand the world.

If someone calls you a liar, it’s because they’ve been lied to (or are a liar themselves). If someone denies your experience, it’s because they haven’t experienced it for themselves and don’t have the perspective or empathy needed to put themselves in your shoes. If they say “That never happened!” it’s because their life may be so lacking in interest and magic that they don’t believe it’s possible for anyone else. If they call you names, it’s because they’ve been called names and are lashing out.

For some people, being a troll on the internet is the only outlet they have, for their trauma, their rage, their unhappiness. Not that it makes it okay, but it’s helpful to remember that it’s them, not you.

Happy people don’t troll.

3. Decide how you want to respond.

Decide how you want to respond. You get to respond however feels right to you. You can respond to everyone, you can respond to no one, you can block to your heart's content.

I’ll say it again: Do whatever feels right to you.

If you decide to respond, the more you can respond from a place of regulation (take care of that nervous system!) and a place of compassion and desire to understand, the better things will go.

If you don’t want to do all that emotional labor, you don’t have to respond at all.

Remember that the block button exists and you are allowed to block in whatever manner you please. (I block anyone who is mean or feels off.)

(My personal opinion is that the internet trash fire is a reflection of people's trauma, so when we can approach people with kindness and a desire to see and hear them, things often resolve. Unless they're straight trolls. In which case, hello handy block button!)

4. Remember that you’re worthy.

You’re worthy of being seen, being heard, having an opinion, and taking up space on this planet. You don’t have to earn anyone’s respect.

No matter what gets said on the internet, you’re a good person, a worthy human, and you are loved.

Do whatever you need to do to remember that.

5. Viral posts are a flash in the pan.

It may seem endless in the moment, but it will die down and you can go on about your life.

I hope this has been helpful as you navigate the wilds of the internet’s attention!

Sending you lots of love,

Amber

P.S. Want to read my story about going viral for the first time?

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This video includes some energetic ways to help you clear your energy from the massive push that is internet attention, so listen to the end if you'd like those tips.

If you've experienced this and want to share something you've learned, leave a comment for anyone else who happens to find this post!

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Feeling overwhelmed? need some emotional and energetic support?

As an intuitive and energy healer (with a bit of experience in the realm of The Internet Has a Lot of Opinions About Me Right Now), I’d love to help you regulate your nervous system, receive whatever messages, guidance or wisdom this experience has for you, and help you move forward in a way that feels really good.

We can turn an influx of internet trolls into spiritual and evolutionary gold, my friends.

Five tips to help you write your book

1. Stop judging yourself.

There is a time for your editorial brain to take over, and there’s a time to just let your fingers fly and let the story do what it wants. Write the first draft. Write the worst first draft that’s ever been drafted. That’s all you need to do. You’re welcome to judge your writing - but only after the final chapter is on the page.

2. Give me the whip.

So what if you didn’t write when you said you’d write? So what if you didn’t write as many words as you said you would? So what if your novel has taken approximately seven years longer than you thought it would? So what if you don’t have an agent yet? So what if you meant to be a bestselling author by now?

The ego is always primed and ready to hijack the creative process with desires and timelines and judgments. Desires and timelines are wonderful - have them, use them, play with them. But never at the expense of your own mental wellbeing. Any time you catch yourself being hard on yourself or your book or your process or your timeline - just notice. Catch yourself. Redirect your thoughts to the next step or something that will bring you joy right now.

No more flagellating yourself.

3. Your book already exists.

Your only job is to show up and write it.

4. Writing a book is a long game.

All you ever need to do - all you ever can do - is take the next step.

Show up to the page today. Edit one chapter. Spend thirty minutes on your proposal. Reach out to one agent. Take the next step - and the next and the next - and you will have a finished book that has found its home in the world.

5. Taking care of the writer is taking care of the words.

You aren’t required to chain yourself to your novel. If you can’t find any motivation or inspiration today, take care of yourself. Ask your body what it needs. Ask yourself what you need to feel good. Ask yourself what would jumpstart your inspiration. And give it to yourself.

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I hope that helps as you write your book! Because I would love to see your book on the shelves one day.

Lots of love,

Amber

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Want support as you write your book?

If you’re stuck or ignoring your work-in-progress or can’t motivate yourself to start, this is your magic bullet. We can do a single session to get you moving or work together throughout the entire process of getting your book onto the page and into the world. Let’s unlock your writing genius together.

Is money a challenge right now? If you’d like a sliding scale option to work with me as you write your book, contact me and we’ll figure something out. (It’s really important to me to be available for those who want support, regardless of your financial circumstances. So I have a few sliding scale sessions available each month, as well as options for longer term work.)

If your financial circumstances aren’t what you want or need right now, the Daily Money Healings were designed for you. One month gets the momentum rolling. Two months can create major motion and change. Three months can land you in a new place with money. (And if you don’t currently have the money to join, please avail yourself of the pay-what-you-can option.)

Why Am I Emotional?

Do you ever feel super emo for no discernible reason?

ME TOO.

I recently had to cry like a toddler whose lollipop was taken away and then get wrapped up like a burrito on the couch to chill me out. I’m fine now (thanks for asking) but my scheduled CEO Monday was less power-suited-whirl-o-motion and more human-burrito-and-snacks.

If this is you too, today or any day … fist bump, friend.

Four Reasons You Might Be Feeling Emotional

1. Human Design

One of the aspects of human design is the emotional center. Your emotional center is either open or closed. (To find out which applies to you, google ‘human design chart’ and enter your birth date and time.)

If your emotional center is open, you have a tendency to take on the emotions of others. You’ll pick up on the emotions being felt around you and feel like those feelings are your own.

(I have an open emotional center and so sometimes when I’m feeling something big … it’s not even mine. So if I do a little clearing or get away from the person who’s having the feelings, boom. So much better.)

Learning to stop taking on other people’s emotions could change your life.

2. The Moon

When in doubt, blame the moon.

The moon changes signs every few days. When the moon is in a fire sign, you’ll have a lot of energy to get things done. When the moon is in an air sign, you may feel a little ungrounded and extra chatty. When the moon is in an earth sign, your focus will be better, especially if you take plenty of breaks.

When the moon is in a water sign, you may feel more emotional. You may also want to rest more.

(I use an app called iLuna to figure out where the moon is on any given day.)

3. Parasites

While a bit gross, learning about parasites was such an epic game changer for me that I would be remiss if I didn’t include it. A lot of people have parasites. It’s a fun little aspect of gut health that I never really thought about until I needed to heal it. Parasites can be picked up in sushi, from pets or pork.

Parasites will eat your soul. Or at least all the happy chemicals that make life worth living.

Fun fact: Parasites are more active around the new moon and the full moon so if you find yourself full of angst for no particular reason at those times, it’s probably worth getting your gut checked.

If it’s determined you have parasites, there are supplements that can help you clean them out. It may be the best thing you ever do for your mood.

4. Sometimes we just feel things.

And that’s okay.

Feeling your feelings as physical sensations without getting all tangled up in the story will help your feelings move up and out.

Meeting the feelings like a friend and giving them some compassion and acceptance is often all they want from us.

xo - Amber

If you’d like more tools to help you feel better, I have something for you!

How To Use the Moon

If you sometimes feel weird and unmoored or exhausted and emotional without knowing why, I have a theory for you:

You’re sensitive to the moon.

We’re deeply connected with the movement of the moon, our planet, and the universe in a way that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough in our culture, unless you happen to follow hashtag moon on Instagram.

If your moods and energetic ups and downs often feel like a mystery, learning about the moon can be deeply supportive.

As a sensitive human and triple Cancer, I feel the moon big time.

When our friend the moon is in void, it can leave me feeling cranky and emotional and unsure of everything in my life. Because I know that the void moon can make an unsuspecting human feel uncertain, I took myself off for some self-care at the chiropractor and the coffeeshop during the last long void moment. (Which worked, until I spilled my coffee all over the front seat of my car.) When the moon came out of void, I immediately felt better.

When in doubt, blame the moon.

(Blaming things on the moon is one of my favorite activities even as I remind myself that I’m an empowered human and fully in charge of my own experience, no matter what the world and universe around me are doing. Recognizing what’s affecting us while also taking full responsibility for our lives is a balancing act.)

Now, the void moon isn’t always going to be a royal snit show of crankiness and questioning everything and spilled coffee. But if you’ve been over-extending yourself, the void moon and the water moon will make that very clear. In fact, that’s one of the only things that will be clear during the void moon - how well you’ve been taking care of yourself.

In order to harness the power of the moon to support yourself, your life, and your dreams, here are some tips:

How To Use The Moon

Working with the energy of the moon and planets deeply supports us in the ebbs and flows of life, especially in a culture that wants us to be flowing always and ebbing never. Moving with the moon supports us in resting and nourishing ourselves as much as it supports us in moving toward our goals and dreams.

Because the moon is so close to the earth compared to the other planets, it changes signs every two to three days. Each week the moon moves through a fire sign, an earth sign, an air sign, and a water sign - in that order. Some signs are best for rest. Some signs are best for getting things done. Some signs are good for chilling out. Each time the moon changes signs, it goes through what we call a void moon. Sometimes the void moon lasts a few minutes, sometimes it lasts an entire day.

Here’s a basic primer on the moon signs:

How to use a fire moon: The fire moon is the time for action. You’ll likely be feeling fiery and raring to go - especially if you rested during the previous water moon. During a fire moon, you will probably feel that zip needed to accomplish things you may have been putting off. If you run a business, it’s a good time to call people to action. It’s a good time to start things, and a good time to make massive progress.

Used wisely, the fire moons are a wonderful ally to your productivity.

How to use an earth moon: After the high energy of the fire moon, the earth moon offers a bit of a respite. The energy dips - you can still be productive, but you’ll want to do so by giving yourself rest and breaks and treats. During the fire moons, you maybe running hither and yon and knocking things off your to-do list left and right.

During earth moons, you can get things done, but you might be happier doing so huddled up in blankets the couch.

How to use an air moon: Air moons offer another rise in energy. You will probably feel chattier during the air moons - it’s a good time to talk, reach out to friends and family, share things on social media, and talk about things that are important to you.

There’s a lot of movement during an air moon, so this is another good time to get things done and move with speed and agility toward what you want.

How to use the water moon: This is a time to take things more slowly. To feel more than do. To rest and go with the flow and take it easy. If you’re in any phase of burnout, you’ll want to rest as much as possible.

If you rest during the water moon, you’ll have the energy you need to take advantage of the fire moon.

How to use the void moon: Don’t start things - especially fights. If you have a business, this is a good time to step back and do things behind the scenes. If you’re tired, this is a good time to rest. Otherwise, void moons are best for taking care of the more mundane aspects of life - laundry, grocery shopping, self-care. Self-care is actually one of the best things to do during this phase - get out into nature, journal, meditate, get a massage, read a book.

However you most enjoy taking care of yourself, doing so at this time can help you avoid feelings of uncertainty or discombobulation.

Using the moon to guide the rhythm of your days and your effort can be a beautiful way to regulate energy, heal or avoid burnout, and create in a way that is deeply aligned with your body.

How to Use the Moon To Rest

If you feel tired in your day-to-day life, if it feels like you’re heading toward burnout, these are the moments to pay attention to and devote to rest and relaxation:

When the moon is void, rest.

When the moon is in a water sign, rest.

When the moon is in its balsamic phase, rest.

Resting can look many different ways. Maybe you have the freedom to plan your time so that you can watch movies and nap during these moments. (Even if you don’t have that freedom, do your best to snatch all the rest you can during the balsamic moon, the three to four days before the new moon.)

Maybe these are the days to go to bed early or to not plan to do anything more than absolutely necessary. Maybe these are the days to tell your brain to take a hike when it natters on about your to-do list.

How I use the moon to manage my life

I love hearing about people use this kind of information in their real lives, rather than just reading the factoids. So here’s how I use the moon:

Before I start to plan my time each week, I take a look at my moon app (I use iLuna). I note what days are in what signs, paying special attention to the void moon. If I have any business-y things to announce or sell, I do it in the fire moon. I note where the water moons live so that if I’m feeling tired, I leave a lot of space to rest and take it easy on those days. If there’s a long void moon, I plan to stay away from work if possible and do life-y things if I have the energy, or rest if I don’t.

I do my best to take the three or four days of the balsamic moon off each month. I keep the balsamic moon phase in my main calendar, so I always know when it’s coming. For years, I would crash for about three days a month and have no idea why, because it didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. When I started paying attention to the moon, I realized, “Oh. Balsamic Moon. That’s when I crash.” So now I plan to crash - or at least rest with all my might - and it’s fabulous.

Paying attention to the moon in this way has helped me recover from burnout and use the cycles of my energy properly so that I can live my life in a way that feels good, rather than stressed and harried.

We’re re-learning how to replenish ourselves in a world that practically demands burnout, a world that wants us to be in full bloom all the time. Using the moon to guide your rest and your work is a powerful way to support your life, your work, and your dreams.

xo - Amber

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CoWriting with the Moon

If you’re a writer - or a person who has writing to do on a weekly basis: emails! journaling! sales copy! newsletters! - and would love to play with the phases of the moon in your writing practice, I’d love to have you join us in CoWriting with the Moon!

It’s sacred space to write in community. Dedicated time for your book. Reserved space to batch your content. A place to journal yourself to comfort and answers. Time to plow forward on your works-in-progress.

Whatever writing you want or need to do, this is the place.

“I got more done in this session than in the last two months combined!” - Phoebe

“I finally wrote a scene in a book that I haven’t worked on in months!” - Mikael

“Wow! I got so much accomplished. I will definitely be joining now that I know how fabulous it is.”  - Sarah

How to Cure Writer's Block

I’ve been writing for over twenty years, and I’ve run into virtually every wall a writer can hurl themselves up against. Because writers need to write (or we go a little crazy), I have some ideas to help you avoid that fate.

How to Fix Writer’s Block

Since “Just start writing” is the most aggravating advice ever for any human who’s ever struggled to put words to page, here are five good ways to overcome writer’s block:

1) Set a timer for ten minutes.

Write anything that comes to mind.

Even if it’s just “This will be the worst rough draft in the history of first drafts. This will be the most terrible thing ever written. AND THAT’S OKAY.”

Most of the time, when I start writing utter nonsense without letting myself stop, something cracks loose. Something worthwhile eventually emerges.

When the timer stops, keep going if you’re in the flow. If you’re still struggling, give yourself permission to stop for the day. You showed up, and that’s all the muse requires.

2) Ask yourself what you need.

Are you hungry or thirsty?

Do you need a community of fun writers for support?

Do you need to clear your mind with a walk?

Do you need to journal on something that’s bothering you?

Is there something within you that wants to be seen or healed?

Whatever you need, make it a priority.

Taking care of the writer is taking care of the words.

3) Create a sacred container for your writing.

Blocking off regular time, whether daily or weekly, is the way to get those books written and those writing projects done. When you make writing part of your routine, the inspiration knows when to make an appearance.

Co-Writing with the Moon is a wonderful container for creativity, if you’d like to join us for weekly sacred writing space. Learn more and join here.

4) Write something other than what you planned to write.

If you’re working on a book and stumbling, try writing an email. If you have an important email to write, try writing something funny to a friend first. If your personal essay feels overwhelming, write a short version for instagram. If all else fails, write a haiku about the snail hanging out on your office window.

Get the writing flowing, in any way that feels fun in the moment.

5) Switch venues.

At home? Go to a coffee shop. In bed? Move to your desk. At the office? Take a short walk to shake something loose. On an airplane? You’re not a Charlie’s Angel, so stay put.

6) Get out into nature.

Take a walk, take a hike. Put your feet in the grass. Go visit your neighbor’s rose bushes. Sit under a tree for awhile. Whatever nature is available, get into it.

I hope this was helpful, as you banish your writer’s block!

Lots of love,

Amber

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If you’re looking for accountability, community, and a place to help your creative genius fly, join CoWriting with the Moon! It’s sacred weekly space for your writing. Learn more and join here.

How To Hear Your Intuition

Honestly, I still expect my intuition to sound like a choir of angels or a trumpet from the backseat of a Cadillac convertible.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes I need something with a little heft and a little neon. Sometimes intuition is really clear.

But most of the time, my intuition sounds like most of the other little voices in my head. “Take an umbrella.” “Don’t go to that thing tonight.” “Now that you’ve decided not to go to that thing tonight, do go to that thing tonight. Oh, and you need to leave right now.”

Listening to your intuition, to that little voice in your head that speaks more softly than your doubt, more comfortably than your strident logic, is the learning process of a lifetime.

It can feel muddy. Because the intuition voice often does sound like the other voices. The voices of our parents. Of our teachers. Of friends. Of society. Of people who may or may not know what you need or may or may not have your best interests in mind. Those other internal voices that may be your ego or your logic.

But we can hone our intuition just like we’d hone any other skill: with attention and practice.

How to Hear Your Intuition

Here are two of my favorite ways to strengthen intuition:

1. Quiet your mind.

2. Take note of all the voices and messages that might be intuition.

When we can quiet our brains, allow our spinning thoughts to rest, our intuition comes through more clearly. Because it’s not trying to compete with so many other voices. The more you quiet your brain, the more powerfully your intuition will come through.

Learning to hear and follow your intuition simply requires practice.

One of the things I tell my clients is to write down thoughts they think might be intuition. You don’t have to follow it yet, just take notes. Take note of all those moments that might be intuition. Notice which ones keep repeating themselves. Take note of what happens when you follow that voice that you think might be your intuition, and what happens when you don’t.

Your intention, attention, and practice will help the voice of your intuition become crystal clear.

Viewing intuition as practice - rather than something we either can do or can’t do - is so sweet. We don’t need to be spiritual perfectionists who follow our intuition infallibly. Instead, we’re gathering information. Listening to see how that voice sounds, what it says, how it does and doesn’t sound like the other voices in our heads.

A little practice and you’ll begin distinguishing it with ease.

Last Friday, Brandon’s intuition told him to leave work early. It said, “Go home, you’re not going to get anything else done today.”

He didn’t listen. He let his logic - the voice that says things like “You can’t just leave work early, you need money, slackers leave work early” - override his intuition. Later that night he came home frustrated because, thanks to a confluence of events, he got nothing done and would have been much better served by a nice afternoon at home.

While that doesn’t make for the perfect Friday, it was good information. He heard the voice, he knew it was intuition, he didn’t listen, and he saw what happened. That experience helped build his intuition muscle memory. That experience made it just that much easier to listen and follow the intuitive voice next time.

As we pay attention to what happens when we do listen to our intuition and what happens when we don’t, we start to see and feel how beautifully we’re being guided all day every day.

One more thing to remember about intuition:

Intuition feels no need to be consistent.

Rather than telling you what’s true or what’s “right,” your intuition will tell you what you need to hear.

Which is one of the reasons things can get so confusing.

Me: “But you said not to do that thing tonight?”

Intuition: “Yes, because I didn’t want you to worry about it all day!”

Me: “But now you’re saying I do need to do that thing tonight? And, in order to be on time, I need to leave right now even though I still have to shower?”

Intuition: “Yes! What fun motion and momentum, right?”

Me: [growls] [dives into the shower] [drives into the city and has a great time]

Most importantly, there’s no way to miss what your soul is telling you. There’s no right way to do things and no wrong way to do things. If you miss one message, your soul will send another. If you don’t listen, the messages will get louder.

Eventually, you’ll hear what your soul is telling you. And the more you practice listening to the voice of your intuition and doing what it says (logic and the voice of society bedamned), the faster that process will go. :)

Lots of love,

Amber

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P.S. If you enjoyed this, you’ll love my newsletter! Give it a try here.

P.P.S. If learning to hear your intuition and follow your own internal GPS is something you’d like to explore, I created something to help. Read about it here.

Why I Don't Drink Any More

Title Correction: Why I Try Not To Drink Any More

Before anyone goes all Yoda “do or do not, there is no try” on me, allow me to say this:

Sometimes people have birthdays. It’s a mark of respect to the birthday human to drink with them. Because of this belief,* other people’s birthdays are my downfall. At this point, this is pretty much the only exception. (I’m trying to remember if I drank on my birthday. Oh, yup. I did. Because I am also a human who deserves respect.) (Oh, there was also a little drinking after a family reunion. And during a dinner with friends to thank us for watching their cats. Fine, birthdays are usually the only exception.)

*Like all beliefs, this may or may not be true and may or may not serve me.

All this to say, I celebrated a friend’s birthday on Wednesday and OH HOW IT WAS CELEBRATED. Thursday Amber paid for Wednesday Amber’s choices. It also prompted me toward this topic again, especially in the wake of some effort spent lately trying to understand why I react the way I do in certain situations.

Weird thing about drinking that I’ve noticed for myself: If I am going to drink, it’s far better to do so during the first half of my cycle than the second. Obviously, for my brain and general health never drinking is the best option, more on that in a minute, but in terms of mood and The Regretting of Life Choices, drinking in the follicular and ovulation stages are far better than drinking in the luteal or, heaven forfend, the PMS stage. (PMS is not an official stage, as it turns out. But wow, do I feel it when I drink then.)

Anyway.

To the Reasons I Don’t Do My Best Not To Drink Any More

We have a history of alcoholism in my family. Pretty much all Gen Xers do, right? Because our parents grew up in the 1950s, when drinking was the coping mechanism of choice / the actual only coping mechanism. So many of our parents were raised by alcoholics or, if we don’t want to call them alcoholics, then “people who celebrated the end of the work day with a cocktail or two or seven.”

People raised by alcoholics will have trauma. This is fact.

When you’re raised by an alcoholic, one of two things will probably happen:

1. You will follow the behavior demonstrated to you as a child, and become an alcoholic.

2. You will observe the behavior demonstrated to you as a child, decide you want absolutely no part of that nonsense, and do your utmost NOT to become an alcoholic.

Both of my parents chose Door Number Two. Let’s give them a round of applause, because choosing Door Number Two in those days was basically down to sheer willpower.

Here’s where it gets weird, and this is the part that seems to be less well understood as of yet.

If people have untreated trauma, they will pass it down to their children.

As far as I can tell, this is the only explanation for me and how I am.

According to the mental health professionals at Kaiser, I have cPTSD.

There is no real reason for me to have PTSD, aside from the fact that I have a super sensitive nervous system. I had a nice childhood - well-loved, secure, opportunities like piano lessons (which I did not appreciate) and the college of my choice (which I did). I was also lucky to never experience violence or accidents or war, or any of the other things the traditional trauma model recognizes.

Privilege plus luck does not equal PTSD. Except when it does.

I’ve also lived a life. Breakups, sudden moves, a miscarriage, getting fired from jobs, financial instability. As we’re coming to understand trauma, or at least what I call subtle trauma, these things contribute. But my symptoms seem to pre-date any of these experiences I had as an adult. It’s even possible that they contributed.

To be clear, this is not to blame my parents or my childhood for anything or to avoid taking responsibility. It’s to illustrate that things are considerably less clear cut than most of us have been led to believe, especially when it comes to family systems and what we inherit from our parents and previous generations.

I have a great deal of respect for my parents, I believe they did an extraordinary job with what they had and made big leaps within one generation. My father especially took a truly traumatic and often terrible childhood and turned it around as best he could for his children and for his younger siblings. Sure, a therapist could (and did) say a lot of things about him, but I think he and my mother both did a great job, all things considered.

Here’s the thing:

Untreated trauma gets passed on to the next generation. I believe I have PTSD because my parents did, because they grew up with alcoholic fathers, and had to muscle through because the late twentieth century didn’t have the tools that we do in the early twenty-first. I suspect they didn’t know they had trauma. Even if they suspected, they wouldn’t have had the tools to treat it.

We have the tools now, but they’re often hard to come by. Mental health coverage within most insurance plans is sketchy at best. Going private is often much more effective (oh, the things I would spend lots of money on), but is inaccessible to all but the top few. By all measurements, I’m in a tip top percentage of lucky humans and a lot of what I need is currently inaccessible to me. This is why I end up in the etheric healing realms. BECAUSE THEY ARE FREE. (Ha!) But that’s a rant for another day.

Because I have a family history of alcoholism, my genes are constantly trying to lure me in that direction. This is where my extra sensitive nervous system is a help and a hindrance. It’s a help because I know when I’m starting to go a bit too far down the alcohol path. It’s a visceral feeling and an intuitive knowing. It’s a hindrance because when your nervous system is overwhelmed or totally shot, you veer in the direction of numbing - sugar, television, alcohol, drugs. (I have never allowed myself to go anywhere near drugs for this very reason. I cannot be trusted. Or at least my delicate peony nervous system can’t be.)

Why I Do my best to drink as little as possible:

Alcohol does bad things to your brain.

Alcohol screws with your gut, which is your second brain.

Both of those facts mean that alcohol can really affect your mood and life.

And…alcoholics in a family can seriously mess with that family, down through every generation until it’s dealt with.

I’m the generation that has to deal with it, and frankly it’s a pain in my ass.

Healing PTSD is a thing. Being vigilant about any kind of alcohol consumption is a thing. Learning how to feel what I learned early to repress is a thing. Learning how to soothe myself and not make any lasting decisions while in an activation loop is a thing. Learning how to not react the way I really want to react is a thing. Learning how to heal things that aren’t mine but have been passed down through my family line, from my parents’ generation to many generations before that, is a thing.

THERE ARE JUST SO MANY THINGS.

When I have a drink, even just one, my mood and thought patterns and decision-making ability will be adversely affected for at least three days. My partner and I are more likely to fight, and that fight is more likely to not go well.

(This is a little less likely to happen in the first half of my cycle and almost certain to happen in the second half of my cycle, which I find fascinating.)

Essentially, alcohol fucks with my health - mental, physical, and emotional - and it does my life zero favors. Except when I’m dancing in the back of a car in San Francisco on the way to a birthday dinner in that sweet moment of buzz hours before the repercussions begin. That’s the moment people drink for and, yes, it is fun.

Alcohol is a coping mechanism, pure and simple, in a world where coping is far more available than real healing.

If I have any mission in life, helping the shift from coping to healing is probably it. But I’m still trying to get my own house in order, healing my own shit and doing the healing for my family that has apparently been assigned to me and trying not to make too many messes in the meantime. Maybe the only way I can help the world in this is by helping myself.

If you’ve been wondering why you seem to have a lot of trauma and you’re not sure why, you aren’t alone. If you’ve been noticing that alcohol fucks with your week or your life, that you’re not alone.

If you’re keeping an eagle eye on your substances because things go way south when you don’t, fist bump. If you’re healing things from your family, fist bump. If you’re healing your own things, fist bump.

If you’re excited for the moment when coping shifts to healing shifts to thriving… me too, friend.

xo - Amber

Why I Broke Up with My Guides

You know that feeling of … desperation?

Yeah. It’s the worst feeling ever.

It’s the feeling of trying with all your might to get something you’re not getting.

It’s the feeling of being let down.

It’s the fear that you’ll never get what you want.

Sometimes your physical health can lead you here. Your traumatized brain stops working properly. Your gut lining breaks down and the happy chemical receptors stop transmitting. Desperation ensues.

Sometimes this feeling comes from a relationship. Which is never about the other person - whether they’re a physical being sitting next to you or a best friend in the ether - it’s always about you and your boundaries.

(Which I think we can all agree is egregiously annoying but also deeply empowering. Once we stop being annoyed.)

Sometimes the way out is through. Sometimes the way out is … simply by walking out.

A few years ago, I walked out on my guides.

It’s not you, it’s me.

I’m just not happy, and I’m sick of putting in the work and always feeling disappointed.

Obviously, this doesn’t have anything to do with them.

It was purely my exhaustion, my burn out, how I engaged with myself, and how I projected that onto my etheric guides who had only ever helped me.

Sometimes we need help in new ways.

So I stopped doing the things I always did: Talking to them a lot, translating their messages for myself and for others, asking for help.

Instead, I just … existed.

I let life show me what it wanted.

I stopped trying so hard, I stopped trying to get what I wanted, I let the desperation leak out of my life.

It was freeing. To not have to try so hard. To not have to beat myself up when things didn’t work out.

I could just … be.

It was more a slow tectonic drift than a dramatic rift of the stomping out the door variety.

I wasn’t exactly giving them the cold shoulder, I just wasn’t putting any effort in. And it was such a goddamn relief.

Like any good best friend, they crept back in. They sent messages in other ways. Through other people, through the internet, via my own life. I listened. But I didn’t try for answers. I didn’t grasp for results. I had been working too hard. Trying to channel them, trying to bring messages through, trying to get what I wanted out of interactions.

It wasn’t their fault, I was just processing through a lifetime of past patterns and accumulated false beliefs and trauma-fueled ways of being that I projected onto my innocent etheric guides. Sorry, Mother Mary.

So we broke up.

More accurately, we took a break.

We’re still friends. We still hang out, but it’s more unconscious.

Grasping is done, desperation is done. And I’m slowly, slowly opening to receiving instead.

I just needed a break from how I’ve done things in the past.

More ease. More rest. More relief. More support for my body and brain than my etheric life.

We’ll have forever in the ether. We have a finite amount of time in this body and this life. So this is where I want to focus. All help is welcome, but I’m not going to beg for it any more.

This probably isn’t forever. Maybe my guides and I will get back together. Maybe we’ll work together again. But I don’t want to do it because I feel like I have to, like it’s the only way forward. I want to do it because it’s fun, because we like hanging out. Not because I need something from them.

Birthday Angels

Who doesn’t want an angelic transition team?

Or maybe a squad of woodland squirrels to help you clean and offer squirrel-y life coaching.

I got angels for my birthday this year. No gift wrapping or angelic chorus from the heavens, but I did start seeing 7:11. A lot. Every time I looked at the clock it was somehow exactly 7:11. Since my birthday is July 11, I figured this was my own personal angel number. Like, my angels saying hi. Not a generic message from the universe, but a YO, HUMAN. HELLO. Just for me.

Which is a good gift, especially when there’s a lot going on. As there is for basically everyone on the planet.

I’m not even especially attached to angel numbers. Sure, I love a good 11:11 (WHO DOESN’T? I ASK YOU), but angel numbers have always been spiritual background noise as I rocket around my life trying not to forget things.

But 7:11 kept showing up and I enjoyed it and didn’t anything of it until my magical acupuncturist told me my birthday angels were in the room with us while I was on the table getting needles stuck in me.

She said it was a new set of angels, here to help me through this transition.

My first thought was “What transition?”

AND THEN I REMEMBERED THAT EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS IN TRANSITION. Kind of like most of the world.

My home is in flux, my work is in flux, my finances are a big fat question mark. My health has been rapidly improving since last year when I could barely get out of bed, but new layers and new identities show up every month or so. It’s a lot.

This month’s layer is “Hey, maybe my brain really doesn’t work like other people’s and maybe I should look into that so I know how to support it without beating myself up over not being able to do things the way other people do them.”

To be fair, I’ve gotten much better in recent years about not beating myself up, but I’ve been noticing the huge pile of shame that follows me everywhere I go, like PigPen with luggage and a few pets.

My brain definitely tends to work a lot of unpaid overtime.

It feels like a transition to stability within myself. Something that doesn’t rely on another person, or where I live, or what my finances are doing, or what my work looks like.

My foundation is strong, my stability is internally resourced, and that’s what this new crew of angels is here to help me with.

Which is great, because I just found out that my health insurance doesn’t offer therapy or psychiatric services.

SO ANGELS IT IS.

(Angels are free. You have some. You don’t even have to unpack your childhood for them because they already know, but not like in a creepy way.)

Happiness Asks, Joy Gives

Yesterday, I went to a birthday party. There was a pool, there was a barbecue, there were palm trees and cacti, and children running amok.

While you can’t accurately judge a person’s happiness based on observing them at a party, a lot of them looked happy. There was talk of the next baby, the next home, the next job. Which I think adds to happiness, because it isn’t necessarily a measure of not being where you want to be, but a measure of your expansion.

Humans live to evolve and expand and get excited about what’s next.

Because I like to sit alone on sunny outdoor couches at parties, I spent some time watching other people’s (perceived) happiness and thinking about what would make me happy. Getting a dog, my pilot’s license, getting out amongst humans more - something I’ve always been a bit tentative about, a tendency that tripled during the pandemic and my own health challenges. Shoes may have entered the thought process. My first word was shoes and nothing makes me happier than putting on brand new pink flats, don’t judge me. But I know these things in and of themselves won’t make me happy.

Happiness lies in my response to these things. Happiness lies in my attention to these things and my enjoyment of them.

Happiness isn’t a destination, happiness is a series of joyful moments that we string together over a lifetime, no matter what else is going on in our lives.

Joy is always available.

Even if you have two dollars in the bank, even if dreams don’t come true, even if people are being deeply annoying.

Joy is always an option. But it requires attention. Awareness. An ability to be in a moment, really in it, not thinking about the next thing or whatever’s on your plate at the moment.

When I stopped being alone in the sun because other people began to realize that I am the best at choosing spots to be and came to join me, we started talking about happiness - what it means, what it looks like.

Honestly, happiness feels like a loaded word to me. Possibly because I’m American and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has been etched on my brain. Like happiness is something to be chased down, lassoed, and dragged back to your lair on the end of a rope.

Joy feels easier. Because moments of joy are always there for the taking: a daisy busting up through the concrete, a dog licking someone’s face, a skateboarder doing something crazy on a fast moving plank before wiping out at the stop sign.

Joy doesn’t depend on achieved dreams or overcome challenges, it’s there in every moment like a gift the world is trying to give you. You get to choose whether you accept it or not.

For some, happiness is having kids. For some, happiness is not having kids. For some, happiness is achieving the financial security necessary to live a simple life. For some, happiness requires certain substances.

Happiness asks, joy gives.

Happiness, at least the way I hear the word, requires that certain conditions be met. Joy appears unexpectedly, out of nowhere, like a cat jumping on the bed when you thought it was outside chasing humming birds or those humming birds buzzing by the window on their way to visit the roses.

I want to dedicate my life to joy, instead of happiness. Happiness just feels stressful. It requires a certain amount of money and has quite the list of conditions. Joy gets to happen right now because there’s bacon in the kitchen and it’s sunny outside. Technically, those are also conditions, but it’s a much lower bar. Happiness requires years of work for uncertain pay-off.

Joy will give you everything it has right now, just because you exist.

Yes

I just finished the first draft of a novel.

This is big for me - a major celebration, really - because I have about eleven false starts scattered over fifteen years.

I’m just going to sit with that for a minute. I’ve been trying to do this for fifteen years. I have a 70-page attempt circa 2006. Do you know how many things have happened to me and to the world since 2006? A LOT OF THINGS.

Turns out, all you need to do to finish is...keep going. Show up every(ish) day to have fun with the words and let the book show you what it wants to be. All while refusing to judge yourself or what lands on the page.

(Even if you have seven new and what-your-anxiety-brain-declares-to-be-better novel ideas along the way.)

I got off social media a few months ago, not totally sure why, but sure it needed to happen. I’m not a cyborg, so I peeked. But I did my best not to post and to give myself a break - at least until the first draft was finished.

Yesterday I wrote the last paragraph. Last night, we popped champagne and ate cheesy pasta.

(Turns out, all you need to do to make amazing pasta is drown the other ingredients in a sea of butter. To finish a novel, just refuse to quit. To make delicious pasta, just add a stick of butter. I’m learning all sorts of life lessons over here.)

It was really tempting to push past this milestone without recognizing it - a first draft isn’t a finished novel, after all. A finished novel isn’t an agent. An agent isn’t a publishing deal. A publishing deal isn’t a bestseller.

What? Settle down, brain.

Success is not the point. It would be a very welcome side effect, but the point is to write books. And when this one is done - really done, ready to be read by other humans done - there are seven more ideas waiting in the wings.

The process never ends. Which means we can’t ever fail - because we’re never done. There’s something extraordinary in that.

So here’s to stubbornly refusing to give up, long-awaited accomplishment, the utter impossibility of failure, and having fun every single day.

The Many and Varied Uses of Imaginary Jellybeans

I’m not sure how to tell this story without sounding crazy, but if I worried about sounding crazy I'd never open my mouth. So here we go.

On Sunday, I was hiking. It was a beautiful day, with a view of the ocean, verdant valleys, and happy cows (also peeing cows) dotting the hills beside the trail. I wasn’t having any of it. I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t interested in anything related to living life at that time.

As I trudged up and down hike-related peaks and valleys, I finally got over myself enough to ask “How can I have a better time than I’m currently having?” Because I finally remembered that I do have some element of control over how I live my life. Maybe I can’t control the peeing cow, but I can certainly control how much I enjoy this actually very nice Sunday situation in which I find myself.

(Very nice Sunday situation.)

So I asked “How can this [general hand wave in the direction of life] feel better?”

Nothing happened. Because I was cranky, I didn’t really expect it to.

But as I focused on not thinking thoughts and instead on enjoying the view and the way the air felt on my skin, I started to shift out of crankiness and into neutrality and then some semblance of pleasure.

After a bit more plodding through the landscape, something opened up. Maybe I stumbled through a fairy glen or my whimsical brand of imagination fired up or guidance stepped in, I can’t say. And it doesn’t really matter. As I was walking, I got handed a silver basket full of jellybeans. Not the grocery store-corn syrup-red dye number death brand of jellybeans. These were fairy jellybeans. Some were midnight blue speckled with silver stars. Some were that particular turquoise of tropical island ocean. Some were peony pink. And I heard, “You can eat this one for calmness, this one for joy, this one to fall asleep, this one for more money, this one for creative inspiration, this one for delight,” and so on.

So I chose the imaginary jellybean that would help me get over myself and start enjoying my Sunday afternoon hike. I imagined eating it, and the fairy jellybean energy filling me up. It wasn’t like a miracle bean, where suddenly I was skipping through the hills and thrilled with life. But by the end of the hike, I was feeling much better. The day shifted into something absolutely lovely, including my favorite pizza and a really nice glass of wine that I got to drink in the sun. My week since has been significantly better than the week previous.

My point is, whether you believe in angelic support or guidance or your inner wisdom or the support of the universe or the power of your imagination, you always have access to a shift in perspective. You can always adjust how you view and experience things - all you have to do is ask, and trust that the answer will come. Whether that answer comes in the form of a silver basket filled with magic fairy jellybeans or something more prosaic doesn’t matter.

Your imagination is the portal to a better experience. So this is me reminding myself - and you, if that’s helpful - to use it wisely.

Nooses Beat Masks in Old Hang Town

If you’ve ever been to Gold Rush Country, you may have wandered through Placerville, a relic of the Wild West. If you’ve ever been to Placerville, you may have noticed the town seal as you drove in. On this town seal is a man mining for gold in front of a tree. Dangling from the tree is a noose. 

“Maybe it’s just a really short tire swing,” I said, ever full of optimism. 

“Nope. Look, the town’s nickname is Old Hang Town.” 

“So it’s definitely a noose?” 

“It’s definitely a noose.” 

People in Placerville are apparently super proud of the Old West justice they used to mete out from their historic hanging tree. At least according to the flier I saw hanging on the door of Bones Roadhouse when we stopped for lunch, declaring “It’s not racist, it’s historic.”

(Just as a general note, any time “it’s not racist” appears in a sentence and that sentence keeps going, whatever follows is definitely going to be racist.)

We happened to be in Placerville the day after the town council (or whoever is in charge of such things) voted to take the noose off the seal because it’s a little too reminiscent of lynchings, something I think we can all agree were never good. 

According to a cursory google search, the only people hanged in Placerville were two Frenchmen and one Chilean, so the townspeople up in arms over getting their seal changed might be technically correct in that the seal is less Strange Fruit and more We Don’t Have a Sheriff’s Department Yet. But why you’d want to fight for a noose is beyond me. Especially when you could be We’re An Adorable Relic of the Wild West and You Should Definitely Spend Money Here instead.

The other intriguing thing about Placerville - aside from the old west main street (I do love me a good old west main street) and the abundance of witch-y shopping options - was the attitude towards masks. 

The second thing I noticed about Bones Roadhouse, after my eyes adjusted to the dim light after being in the bright sun and my brain stopped processing the “it’s not racist” flier,  was that no one was wearing a mask. No one. People were just hanging out squashed together at the circular bar like it was 2019 and pandemics were as historic as the town.

After lunch, we went shopping, because that’s what you do in an adorable town. We went to the oldest hardware store west of the Mississippi and bought chocolate in the Toy and Candy store because I insisted. When we got a little further down the street, we were told in one of the stores that they actually prefer it if you don’t wear masks inside. 

Oldest hardware store west of the Mississippi.

Coming from the Bay Area, where people are meticulous about mask wearing, this was very strange - though maybe not as strange as the effigy hanging from the second story of one of the buildings on main street, neck encircled by - you guessed it - a noose.

If we’re speaking historically here, I would have expected masks to be more popular. Presumably bank robbers of the Wild West would have loved the current world-wide mask credo, as wearing a mask would no longer be a dead give away of your intent to rob an establishment. 

And let me tell you, there were some places worth robbing. 

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

One of the best things about the internet is learning about what people love. What small thing they bought or found for free that has a big impact on their daily life. So here are some things that have improved my life enough that I want to tell you about them, yell them into the ether, just in case this is exactly what you’ve been looking for or didn’t know you needed.

(I’m getting paid to talk about none of these things. I just love them and use them daily - with the exception of the novels, all of which I have read a few times but not, you know, constantly. Everything is free or under $40.)

Work

I’ve been working for myself and from home for over a decade now, but it wasn’t until my friend, client, and baller writer Simone Paget told me about these two things that my routine really clicked in and my big dreams started moving forward.

Cave Day

Zoom co-working at its finest, showing up regularly for three hour work sessions gives form and a solid container to my work goals. Every day, I show up to my writing - random writing in the morning and novel in the afternoon - and this is how I get drafts done in mere months and also soothe the “OH MY GOD HAVE I DONE ENOUGH” fears that are prone to creeping in when you’re your own boss. (Yes, you have done enough. Even if all you did is lie on the couch, you have done enough.) If I show up for one Cave session a day, I’m a badass. If I show up for two Cave sessions in a day, I’m ready to declare myself queen of the world.

(If you sign up for their newsletter, you can get a free week of membership to try it out.)

Brain FM

While this harnesses brain science (or something), I mostly just tried it because Simone recommended it - and then I noticed how much I was getting done when I used it, and how effortlessly I dropped into a flow state, something that had been eluding me for [muffled mumble] months.

In the morning, I use it for a fifteen minute meditation session and then any time I’m working, I click over to focused work or light work or whatever I need and let it harness my brain waves to getting shit done.

(You can try it out for free for a few days to see if it works for you.)

Health

Abraham Hicks

Ever since I got slammed by some serious limiting beliefs plus anxiety plus insomnia plus pandemic, I’ve been working to re-wire my brain and tighten up my thought patterns, so I can use my brain for good instead of awful. Listening to Abraham Hicks has been one of the primary ways I’ve been able to shift things and get my energy flowing again. Youtube is stuffed with fifteen-minute segments of Esther Hicks channeling Abraham and it’s the best no-nonsense and often hilarious manifestation and life guidance I’ve ever heard.

(If you want to ask your own question, Esther is doing weekly livestreams here.)

Bluetooth headband

Because I have turned into my mother and only recognize and adopt technology ten years after everyone else (ask my mom about using an ATM in the ‘80s), I didn’t even know this was a thing until my boyfriend sent me a link. When I lived alone and woke up at 3 in the morning fueled by anxiety and insomnia, I could just turn on whatever I wanted and fall back asleep with Trevor Noah echoing through the room. But when there’s someone next to you, turning on Netflix in bed at 3:30 in the morning is considered rude. Listening with my ear buds was not ideal - the cord was obnoxious and the hard plastic of the ear buds was uncomfortable if I wanted to turn over. So finding a soft headband with bluetooth speakers - no cords! comfy on my side! can pull the headband over my eyes like a sleep mask! - was a legit WHERE HAS THIS BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE moment. And it was only twenty bucks, which is a life-changing investment I can fully get behind.

Using this headband is how I listen to the Brain FM meditations and Abraham Hicks and all the stand-up comedians that soothe my soul when I wake up at 4 in the morning and need to escape the workings of my own brain.

Elation tincture

Back before contagion was running rampant and we were all just hanging out together indoors willy-nilly, I would drive to San Francisco to visit my favorite healer who was studying acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She would stick me with needles and figure out the weird health issues that stump Kaiser and send me on my way with a paper bag full of Chinese herbs. She made me a blend for anxiety that I called my Chill Out tea. When we went into lockdown, I sent her a flustered email because I was due for more Chill Out herbs and everything was all STAY HOME AND STAY ALIVE. I wanted to stay alive but chilling out was also essential at that time. She sent me the link to this tincture, made from the same formula. Used daily, it has the same chill out effects, and I love it.

Fit On

I haven’t been to a gym in a really long time. I also can’t fit into half of my clothes right now, which is not my favorite thing because oh my god the laundry. This is the best free workout app I’ve found, and the days I use it are always better days than the ones where I consider walking to the kitchen for kettle chips or chasing the cats away from the lizards my exercise. (Both do count as exercise, but you don’t get to be quite as smug about it.)

Yoga with Adriene

Who doesn’t love Yoga with Adriene? She has the kind of energy you just want to roll around in and she’s a fantastic yoga teacher. She’s my youtube go-to any time I need some yoga.

Fun Things To Read

I just want to spend my life reading and writing novels. Novels that make me happy to be alive, that make me believe in love in a new way, novels that help the world feel delightful again. Here are a few that fit that bill for me:

Anything by Sarah Addison Allen. I read The Sugar Queen first and got hooked. Reading all her novels became my mission, one I’m proud to say that - with some help from Christmas gifts - I have accomplished.

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman. Like Harry Potter, this book is mashed potatoes for my soul.

The All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness. If witches and vampires aren’t your thing this may not be for you, but there’s also history and magic and time travel and wine and libraries and many other wonderful things.

The Friend Zone series by Abby Jimenez. The third one comes out next week and I like these books so much that I’m calling Copperfield’s to ask them to set one aside for me, so I don’t make the trip and then have to cry in the romance aisle because all the copies are gone.