Maplines of Story

The heat is pressing in today, inching closer and closer to 100 degrees. It’s March, but it feels like July. And my mind is on last summer and the ways in which my creativity and capacity took a hit.

Back in May, I was talking with my best friend. Women are a Dangerous Magic was weeks away from being published, I was weeks away from starting a new role at work, and my creativity was beginning to claw at my insides—begging for release. She’d been feeling the same clawing sensation, and had been writing short stories to satiate that inner fire.

Slowly, a story took shape in my veins.

“I might have something too.” I tell her. “I think I might try and write it.”

I didn’t tell anyone about it. At first, I approached it tentatively—like a wild animal. I thought I would publish it under a pen name. Completely separate myself from the mix; allowing room and space for the story to expand how it needed to unfold. May turned into June, and I started my new role at work.

“You sound different.” My women would tell me in response to voice memos.

And I did sound different. I heard it too. I felt calmer. Safer. There were so many reasons for this: getting out of a toxic environment, tapping into my creativity again, watching my latest book sprout wings and fly—June was, in all honesty, the best month I’d had in a long time. Every day I’d come to the page and every day the words would fly out of me. The story was showing herself to me but most importantly, I was having fun. I was playing with my muse and in response she was giving me ample room for inspiration to grow. Not only was I writing this novella, I had other ideas for other books. I was thinking to myself perhaps I need to create a publishing calendar. Perhaps I might actually have stumbled into a flow here.

And then the floods hit.

All at once, it was as if my flow had been siphoned.

But I knew the culprit. I knew it by the way it twisted in my gut and kept me caught in its snare.

//

Nine months later, I find myself finally writing the final words of this particular manuscript.

In this story, Olivia, my main character, is taking the long road home to reclamation. She’s lost herself along the way—letting go of love, letting go of her roots, letting go of her purpose. Instead, she finds herself settling. She’s returned home, but works at her best friend’s bakery. She also is still with her fiancé who she knows is cheating but can’t prove it. She hasn’t sang in years, can’t remember what it’s like to capture lyrics on paper, and is running from memories that haunt her.

And then her ex walks in the shop while she’s wearing a disaster of a wedding dress and such is the catalyst for her return.

She finds herself, through a lot of tears, and remembers what it’s like to believe in something bright and beautiful.

//

There were so many moments this year where I honestly thought—honestly believed—that somehow the words had left me. So many conversations I had with myself and my women where I struggled with the frustrating truth: when I step away from social media, when I allow myself to respond to Source vs the environment around me, when I get quiet and do the work to clear my channel so that I am receiving the words I know I am meant to share and not a reflection of someone else’s creativity, THAT is when the words return. THAT is when I feel most myself. And yet (there’s always a yet here, isn’t there?) what makes this so convoluted is that social media has been the de facto way that author’s get the word out about the books they’re writing.

So if I stay on social media, and engage, more people know about my books and perhaps I’ll gain more traction.
But if I step away from social media, and focus on writing what I know I am meant to write, eventually I tap into flow and my focus turns razor sharp. My intuition feels fuller—more robust and clear. My channel more alive.

It feels like a simple solution, but also, I am now breaking free from decades of scrolling. Muscle memory is a thing—and so is distraction. To say that it has taken a ton of grit to trust myself and these stories is a severe understatement. Especially with the constant noise of the horrors continuing to persist. It’s 8 of Swords energy. I know this is a web of my own making. I know the culprit is the blindfold I’ve placed on myself, and the trap is me getting lost in an endless scroll. With that scroll, a wall surfaces between me and my creativity. I cannot see the story anymore. I cannot hear the characters anymore. Everything is a fog.

And so when I find myself spiraling, when I’m lost in the sea of anxiety and endless breaking news, when I am overwhelmed by the ways in which those in power are following through long-held patterns of control and abuse—I kiss the wall.

//

I first hear the phrase kiss the wall from Stephanie Greene. She says that sometimes, there are places within us that grow hardened as a way to protect. Sometimes, a wall forms because we are not ready. We are not yet trustworthy with that piece of Truth that has been hidden. And so we wait. We listen. We kiss the wall. We show love and care and remind that part that there is no expectation, only presence. And even this, even waiting for the story to reveal itself, requires consent.

And so I wait.
I kiss the wall.

This looked like showing back up to my forgotten manuscript in January. It looked like purchasing a Brick so I would be locked out of the social media apps on my phone. It looked like letting go of the tight grip of control I had on what I should be doing as an author and I let my intuition lead this Leo Midheaven to where the Sun peeks behind the clouds. It looked like blogging again—letting my thoughts unfurl in a spiral.

It looked like reading through what I had written and allowing the story to show me where to go. I lay my hand on the wall keeping me from my story and I wait for the breath.

This paragraph feels wrong.
This chapter feels too tight.
There’s more here this character isn’t saying.

Slowly, I remember.
Slowly, the story begins to breathe again.
And like my character, I am thrust into a place of reclamation.

I am let through the cracks. I can see the expanse of this particular landscape and I know where to pencil in map lines to my soul.

That’s what writing is, anyway. Carving out map lines to your soul, letting the characters speak the Truth you might be too afraid to whisper, and trusting that the world you’re creating is leading you further in, deeper into your inner knowing.

//

I pull a card this morning as I process what to write today. It’s 3 of Wands. Believe bigger, the card says. And I think of these past nine months—a full gestation cycle. Birthing this story and creating something new, a series of novellas that center on a found family. Some exiled, some hiding, all reclaiming parts of their soul that have been lost and forgotten in their individual ecosystems. But together, they’re creating a mycelium network of care. A pulsing, breathing, organism of community. Inspiration is here, the card reads, but don’t forget to rest.

I laugh to myself, the reminder an echo of truth I’ve heard over and over again the past few years.

With rest, comes clarity.

There has been clarity here. A deeper knowing opening up and gathering me into her arms. A resting place.

There are other map lines I have yet to draw. Other landscapes where I know I must kiss the wall in a different way—show the story I am here, I am waiting, and I am ready.

It’s March, but it feels like July. The world is still on fire, but so is my creativity.

I let the fire burn, lighting the way in front of me.

The Cave of Alchemical Awareness

In her essay on Enchantment, Lisbeth White speaks of awareness within alchemy:

All succesful alchemy requires three elements: (1) a substance to be transformed; (2) a container to hold the alchemical reaction; and (3) energy. In the case of inner alchemies, the container to hold the transformation is awareness itself. Our attention, and how it is held, creates the very container for change.

This is why there is such power in following our creative obsessions, those relentless curiosities. Our awareness—our focus, our attention—becomes the vessel in which the possibility of a new knowingness can arise.

Our awareness ushers in our knowing.

//

My writing has never been linear. Instead, the stories and words loop around themselves in a spiral moving inward, closer and closer to the True Thing. It’s a fibonacci sequence—a coiled snake protectively wrapped around the clarity I’m moving toward. Sometimes, I get too close, too quickly. I rush the process, spooking the Truth into a deeper hiding space, safe from my excavation. Other times I hover, the awareness inching deeper and deeper into my sinew, until I am feeling the heat of knowing so intense I have to be the one who retreats. I am learning what it looks like to wait. I am learning the blueprint of my inner territory.

//

When I was a little girl, I hid in my mom’s closet. Dark like the womb, her scent permeating off the clothes around me, I would push myself back behind the sweaters and scrubs and rest my back against the wall—my feet peaking out from behind the fabric. I would sit here for hours, my mind full of new worlds and possibilities. Her closet was where I learned my poetic leaning. Her closet was where I was safest from the monsters that lurked elsewhere. I would rest in the silence, stories filling the space around me like golden threads, and I would weave them together—creating something completely new. When we moved, my mother’s closet turned into my parents’ closet and my cave of safety disappeared. It was large—there was space. But it wasn’t my expanse. It smelled different. I couldn’t go and hide and disappear; couldn’t close my eyes and weave something new into existence.

So I turned inward, constructing a cave of my own.

//

For the past 16 years, I have had a word carry me throughout the year. In 2019, that word was alchemy. At the beginning of the year, I thought it would be a year of magic. 2018 had been my year to rise—and like a seed pushing through the soil, I realized just how much grit came with finding the strength to get through the dirt and compost in order to bloom. If 2018 was the year I rose, perhaps 2019 in all of its alchemical properties would be the year I would burst into leafy and colorful growth.

I held this belief in my fingers, rolling it around my thumb and pointer as if sanding the edges of something sharp.

It wasn’t until December, when I was writing at a coffee shop on a sunny afternoon, that I fully understood the meaning of the word that had found its way inside my veins—particularly the piece that in order to partake in an alchemical transformation, the thing you are alchemizing is completely dissolved to create something new.

Unknowingly, I’d entered into a chrysalis of my own making. It was needed—but dissolution is never comfortable and often brings the pain of letting something go that has grown attached, calcifying with age.

I was still in the womb. Still in the dark. Still in the cave.

There would be alchemy here—there would even be clarity and awareness.
But I had yet to feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on my skin. I was not ready for this—I still had grottos of my inner territory to discover and the result was exactly what White predicted: with this additional clarity and awareness, a knowing was rooting itself deep into my bones. As the dawn of 2020 started appearing on the horizon, I was not the same person I had been 365 days before.

I was new.

//

I tell my best friend that it feels as if I am in the cave beneath the cave. This isn’t necessarily new for us. My women and I often send the signal that we are deep in the cave and when we do, we know it’s for multiple reasons.

• Wait for me at the entrance, like Ninshubur waited for Inanna. If I do not return, come find me.

• I am currently in the midst of creation. I will return; I just need to time to myself to birth something new.

• I am in the process of excavation. With Hecate at my back, I am traversing the underworld for pieces of my soul. Like Persephone, I will return with pomegranate stained hands and a deeper awareness of who I am.

This moment, when I tell Melissa that I am in the cave beneath the cave, is all of these things.

I haven’t been on social media much lately. I can’t. I tiptoe into the conversation, my head on a swivel, but the noise is too verbose—too glaring. The Truth on display for everyone to see and gawk at, I am aware that a new state of freeze is taking over the collective. We cannot move or act because we are in shock. We are in shock because what we felt to be True has been proven. And now that this proof is being shared widely over and over and over and over again, we are waiting for something to happen. We are waiting because something has to happen. We are waiting because surely that something, whatever it is, cannot be done by us.

//

I have this vision of a group of women in a circle, their backs to each other. Each of them have one hand holding the woman next to them and with the other hand, they grip a lantern so they can see in the dark. They are in the cave. Writing and images line the walls and every so often luminescent dust, glowing in the light, is loosened from the space above them. They are whispering to each other, their words full of magic and memory and power. They are waiting for the threat that is coming—the threat they feel in their bones.

But they are not afraid.
They know the dark because they are the dark—they are intimate with the landscape of this particular womb.
They are waiting, but with the knowing that they are the hunted turned hunter—and now is the time for which they’ve been preparing.

//

I am off social media because I want to remember.
Because I need to remember.

The hum of ancestral knowing has reached fever pitch since the beginning of the year, and I think of Joy Harjo speaking of the act of memory—how quickly we forget when we’re not willing to open our eyes and watch. How quickly we’re distracted. How effective they have been in making sure we have everything we possibly need to keep ourselves small and pliable and stuck. How our ancestors are whispering truths to us if we’re willing to listen, but how we cannot listen if we are allowing the voices of others to drown them out.

How now is the exact moment we must be aware, so that new knowing can enter our veins, and the alchemical process can transform the world around us into something beautiful—our pomegranate stained hands molding a future where caves will no longer be necessary for protection. Instead, we’d use them to commune with each other—weaving the golden threads of those who’ve gone before with the Mother who birthed us into being. That way, this time, we wouldn’t ever forget.

Kindling for Truth

It was a field trip day, and for my small private Christian school, that meant either three things: going to the symphony, visiting the nursing home next door, or walking a few feet further and spending the afternoon at the skating rink.

This day, we got to skate.

My mind wasn’t on skating though—not really. My mind was on him. My most recent crush, and a year ahead of me, I knew he would be going as well. We’d recently formed a casual sort of friendship with him being in band. I also knew his mother, who sometimes helped around school, and for the most part they felt like a normal family. Her, a quiet and submissive woman. Him, a quiet and observant 7th grader with whip smart sarcasm.

So my mind wasn’t on skating. No. It was on the thing that happens at every roller skating event; the thing so many of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s recognize: the couple skate.

Rumor had it he was going to ask me.
Based on the nerves tumbling over themselves in my gut, I very much wanted this to happen.

So when the time came for the couple skate, somewhere in between playing four corners and a chaotic rendition of the Hokey Pokey, I sat on the carpeted bench with my skates jutting out from underneath me, waiting.

I can’t remember what song was playing—knowing the time period, it was probably I Swear or some ballad by Boys II Men. But the opening notes rang out on the speakers and I could feel my heart in my throat.

Would he ask me? Was this another trick of some sort?

I never saw him engage in the cruelty of some of my peers—the relentless laughter at the expense of another was common place and usually stemmed from the other girls my age. I’d grown up with them, some of them since elementary school, and the lore we shared was ripe with hurt feelings and backstabbing actions. For me to worry that this moment was another one of their schemes wasn’t off base.

I’ll never know if he actually planned on asking me, though—because right as the song began and people started pairing up and gingerly stepping onto the rink for their turn at coupled bliss, a shadow filled my vision. I looked up. One of our teachers, a middle aged man with a receding hairline and slacks too big for his frame, was leaning over me—his hand out stretched.

“Would you skate with me, Elora?”

A small smile played at the corner of his lips. There was a look in his eyes that made something inside of me shrivel up and hide. I swallowed, desperately looking around for the boy. He could fix this. He could interrupt this particular nightmare and it would make sense for me to turn down this grown man, hovering—waiting.

Something shifted in the air around us and I could feel this man’s body stiffen because of my hesitancy. Fear sliced through my thoughts, making everything dull. I had to answer him. I had to acquiesce. I had to let that small piece of me that had chipped away by the look in his eyes hide for the moment, now exiled in the recesses of my memory.

“Um. Sure.”

I took his hand, my own palms sweaty with nerves and embarrassment. It was seconds before people noticed and began to laugh, pointing at us.

“Ohmigosh look! Elora is skating with him.”
”Ew, Elora. Didn’t know you liked older men.”

No one stopped him. No one stopped me.
There were other adults present, and they smiled and pointed and laughed alongside the students. But for them, this was a grand gesture. An adult reaching down and lifting up a bullied girl.
A 40 something year old, holding the hand of a girl barely 11 years old, and skating in circles to a love song meant for couples.

I did not know I could say no.
I did not know how to say no.

By this time, my body was very much not my own. I’d been sexually abused by family members and neighborhood friends. My body had imprinted the touch of others, and many of these memories wouldn’t surface for another 30 years. To this day I will feel the hands of someone else—or suddenly feel the suffocating weight of another body on my own but have no anchor of memory to solidify the experience. It’s all somatic.

Which is why my heart tried to beat out of my chest when I felt the threat of this man standing over me.
Which is why I said yes, when everything within me wanted to scream no.

I tell this story to my therapist. I frame it as one of the memories that have recently resurfaced in the wake of the Epstein files being released. I have not gone searching for the contents of the emails or truth of what happened to these individuals, but social media is full of ad hoc posts that contain the most triggering instances of reminders. So it’s no surprise I’m circling back to moments where this systemic approval of pedophilia ran rampant within my childhood—where I was victim and prey.

I tell this story, pausing in between sentences because even now this memory brings a certain nausea with it. And as I am telling it, I watch her face. I watch her mouth curve into a smile. I watch her eyes take on a gentle, approving gaze. She thinks, at first, this moment is sweet. She does not see it immediately as the inappropriate engagement of a grown man with a little girl. Her, an abuse survivor, siding with the perpetrator. I pause.

“This is not something sweet. This is something that has caused me distress every time I think of it. I can feel my body separating from my mind and the disassociation begin. I can feel the somatic clues that something is amiss: a rapid heartbeat, heavy limbs, cloudy vision. He was a grown man. I was a child. This is not okay.”

Her face shifts imperceptibly, but the damage has been done.

And I think of all of the ways we have been complicit.
I think of all of the girls who saw that smile and assumed they were the broken ones—the messed up ones—the ones who made something out of nothing.

//

Twenty years after that moment at the skating rink, I am sitting at my desk. Because of the work I do with a writing community, I am constantly on Facebook. The sun is shining through my office window and the fan above me whirs its steady rhythm that sometimes reminds me of the crash of waves. I see a message come through, and without thinking, I click on the notification.

I am a friend of ______, the message says. I know what you said happened. She told me all about it.

My skin turns to ice and immediately I am hyperventilating. I do not know this man. From his picture, he looks to be in his 50s. His message seems innocent enough, but there is a certain malice to his words that rake over my body. My story, my trauma, is just that: mine. And to have a grown man drop into the inbox of someone he does not know to brag about knowing feels disgusting and cruel and malignant in nature. Without even thinking, my fingers start moving on their own.

Who are you? I ask. Why tell me this?

His response is immediate.

I’m a friend of _____, he repeats. And she has told me how devastated she is about these allegations. About what you said she did. I work with her, and we talk all the time.

He is a threat, and my body reacts accordingly. I slam my laptop shut, pushing against the desk to stand and create distance from those words. He sought me out. He heard my story and searched for me. I do not know him, but he knows things about me—about what’s been done to me.

I burst into tears and run to the bathroom to throw up.

//

In a recent post, Meggan Watterson shares this quote by Audre Lorde—

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my nose holes – everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

In her post, she states that for her, the world ended when she read the contents of the Epstein files.
This is the correct response. The world should end for all of us when we realize the ways in which childhood has been preyed on by so many powerful figures. For many of us, the world has ended time and time again when the hands of those who should have protected us decided to use us instead.

She ends her post by lighting the bonfire of her words with this kindling—

I believe Mary. Which is to say, I believe survivors. Which is to say, I believe in myself.
At long last, I have returned my faith to its just place, my own body. My own sacred knowing. My intrinsic, inviolable worth in the world.
One by one, and together, we will know our power.

I read these words and felt the the spark of her bonfire light something within me. I read these words and was reminded of my own so many years ago: write fire and watch the world catch the flame. I read these words and a knowing rage filled my veins.

Enough.

I have had enough of those who belittle or diminish the story of those who have been devastated by another drawing maplines across their skin to claim.
I have had enough of those who hear the laughter of comedians talking about being aroused while holding their infant children and say that “there has to be a deeper context here.”
I have had enough of my own words being caught in my throat because they’re anchored by the stones of fear and shame.

From here on out, I echo Watterson in her benediction. We writers howl and heal porcelain bone, but only when we are brave with our truth—even when it’s scathing and especially when it costs everything. I am done placating men’s behavior because they’re just being nice or it wasn’t meant that way or you’re being too sensitive.

I am sensitive because I know.
I know because I have experienced the way a moment will be exiled and regulated as do not enter, the memory lost to the ether.
And now is the time to call our exiled parts home—to let them know they’re safe.
They do not have to come, but I am building a bonfire out of the words I’ve held inside, sending out the smoke signal of awareness.

I am here, and I believe you.
Which is to say, I believe in myself.

True Name

I've been seeking places of power in a land who can’t remember her own name

She lives
just barely
just weakly
a too slowly, too softly
heartbeat

fading quick
dissipating as I try to listen

And beneath Her dying things 
lies a boneyard 

Do you know the feel of land that has seen bloodshed?

Holy or unholy and 
you feel them both

Sacred and the gross darkness 
overlapping

Some land redeems its power
naturally
through fresh lives birthed on it, lived with it

This stolen land is not that. 
These trees are not that.
These rocks are mostly silent 

only the cries of the innocent
murdered and now
buried beneath her soil
ring out with hard truth 

we have been sold a lie

these handcuffs are not golden 
as we believe them to be
hated but 
accepted, acceptable, necessary

We cannot refuse to see
they are cheap brass tarnished
nickel turned green no
not made for our skin 
suffocating our humanity

For they know
we will stay chained if 
we don't know we are o(su?)ppressed 

if we think only the Other is in danger, not 
our family, our friends, our neighbors, 
our own souls 

if we hate our lives but believe 
what keeps us trapped

if we fear change, so we remain
complacent, compliant, complicit

The truth is

Our hope has felt mostly lost
but
what the they forgot is
what we must remember

Injustice breeds revolution 
and their market is now saturated
with it

We have not been the heroes of this story

we are an enslaved people 
to a broken system
only perpetuated by our own unwillingness
to believe what the rest of the world already knows is true

war is the machine of old men
wielding stolen power
to satiate unquenchable avarice
using the alchemy of our willing submission
to turn our blood into their gold

the oligarchs have consumed this land
and in our fear and apathy
we have helped them

No wonder She can't remember who She is
no wonder we can't remember who we are

And yet...

I can taste it
the thinly woven thread
still there beneath the longing
in the faintest wisp and whisper

Weshallbefree
Weshallbefree
my heart picks up the rhythm
Weshallbefree 
we shall all be free

and it is here I find what we seek 

life will return if we 
cultivate it, fight for it
reclaim it 
T O G E T H E R

so we
street corner protesting, neighborhood patrolling
feeding each other, protecting our neighbors,
singing songs of resistance, speaking truth to power

Hear me now, America
as I speak to this dry, dead, bloody boneyard
within us and without
calling

remember yourself, land of wonders and beauty
remember ourselves, people of joy and strength
remember freedom’s call to “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses longing to breathe free”

our hearts restart with courage 
our bones reknit with peace
our flesh resewn with grace

standing together we
dismantle what was not actually built for
most of us

hand in hand we remember
the true power of this land is found 
in us, Her people

By Melissa Hawks

Awake and Alive at the Death of Social Media

Something happened
when our world became smaller
and our lives became expansive.
Our gathering deemed a threat,
a shift began to happen—
a rift.
A separation.
Our attention spans turned
into gold—
bespoke currency of this particular
gilded age.
What’s real and not real mixed
into a 30 second soundbite,
reposted x5000
and just inflammatory enough
that our dopamine centers sparked
with new energy.
New energy sourced from stale energy.
New energy sourced from a mimic.

Forget Arab Spring,
let’s talk about the colors for spring—
color theory and
what shades you should wear
that bring out your natural beauty;
the beauty purchased from brands
positioned to send money to those who control
like puppeteers—
grabbing land and children and women,
their greed a vortex.
A black hole.
But only a few can wear black—
be careful it doesn’t wash you out and if it does
here is a new filter you can use
while we capture your face
for future surveillance
and control
because we the people is actually
a misnomer.

Forget lessons on how to blow a whistle—
instead enjoy this visit from
men in suits,
asking why you said what you did
in a space you thought was free
but has only ever been free
for a select few.
The world has grown so small,
we watch a father carry
his headless child
knowing that we paid for this.
That purchase—that beauty staple—
that coffee—that capitalistic urge to have more and do more and be more and TAKEMORE
created the monsters
ushering in the dystopian age
that has always been working and churning
behind the veil.

Forget connecting with like minds
and imagining a new world—
forget organizing.
Instead, check out this trauma-informed-thirteen-step-process-to-create-your-very-own-course-and-make-your-money-from-your-phone.
Shhhhh....
do not cry for the child
or the woman
or the people
or the land.
Raise your vibration to 5D,
know you are separate—other.
And you can show this by wearing the exclusive t-shirt expressing your awareness
for only 49.99
Who needs regenerative ideas—new ideas—fresh ideas—
when others can tell you what to think?

Our heads have been in the Cloud,
when we’re meant to have our hands
in the mycellium.
The underworld.
The pathways of soil and roots
leading us to collective liberation—
whisper networks that carry
on the wind.
We’re witnessing the choking gasps
of a system meant to connect
that has been turned into
a egregore for profit
meant to distract
disconnect
disassociate
But we can fight back,
listen for that voice on the wind
instead of the face on the 9in screen
dig our hands into the earth
until we reach
eachother

The Spiraled Roar

Originally published on Substack in July 2025

“I’m probably going to have to mind map this,” I tell Melissa, my best friend, over a voice note. My mind has been orbiting around disparate thoughts for weeks now, but I know they connect. I feel into the way they bend and sway in my mind, hoping for clarity. This is why I’m sending her a message. I need to find their connective tissue.

I do mind map. I begin with what feels central, and then move from there, my frustration growing because everything—and I do mean everything—feels interconnected. Before long, I’ve created a veritable conspiracy board, arrows pointing and swirling across the page toward their targets.

Why doesn’t this ever work for me? I write in the margins. I feel more tangled than before, my footing unsure. And then it hits me: I’ve never been one to outline or plan when it comes to writing. My words form spirals vs straight lines, and in order to find this flow I have to allow them to fall as my brain rushes to keep up, forming connections as the sentences turn into paragraphs. I’m like this with the characters in my books, the plots that reveal themselves on the page, and my life.

And so I do what I always do: I start to write.

I’m scrolling through TikTok when I see something that makes me pause. It’s a video on Scorpio Risings and the contradictory nature of their Leo Midheaven. Not every Scorpio Rising has Leo in their 10th house, but this Scorpio Rising does and alongside my 12th house stellium, it’s one of the pieces of my chart that befuddles me daily. It truly feels like oil and water, at least to me—and I also happen to have a Leo stellium. Being seen should feel like second nature.

But being seen terrifies me.

I think of the ways in which I started sharing myself online. How my heart pounded every time I hit publish. How I slowly became more comfortable with peeling back the curtain into my psyche until things crashed around me and my entire foundation—what I thought I knew—fell like the Tower. I tried to write about it. I succeeded for a good while. And then one night I was on the phone with a family member and he said, “hey so you might want to be careful about what you write about online. People might think you lived a life of turmoil.”

As if that wasn’t true.
As if him warning me about this wasn’t indicative of the very turmoil I was parsing through on my blog.

I’d been skirting around the topic for months—how I had recently had memories resurface that knocked me off kilter. I never mentioned names, but it didn’t matter. The people these posts were about had read them with their own filter of history and knew I was talking about them. And so, the warning. I’ll never forget that conversation. I’ll never forget the way the sun tried to break through our blackout curtain we had over the window or the way my heart started racing out of fear or how our dog’s tail thumped rhythmically against the wall in anticipation. I caught her gaze and she sniffed and fell against the ground on her side, almost as if she heard the conversation and was categorically dismissing the admonishment. I sat down next to her as I finished talking on the phone, my hand on her side feeling her breath move underneath me.

In, out.
In, out.

It was a reminder. A benediction.

A few months later I’m edging against the truth in another blog post, but this time it’s not about family, but about the church where we’ve been partners since before these memories resurfaced. I’m writing about shame. I’m writing about how words mean things. I’m writing about elders in the church saying that those who’ve experienced sexual abuse should and would feel shame and guilt about their abuse—and subsequently, we’ll need to have conversations with them around repentance.

I’m in a gospel counseling class.
I push back, horrified at the suggestion that those who’ve experienced abuse will have to repent of anything related to the violation.
My words are unheard, and so I write, and so comes another warning.

Like before, I don’t mention the name of anyone. I don’t specify that my story is about church. All I share is that I’m in a class and given the writers on the board of that particular site, it could have been any Christian university in the world. It doesn’t matter. I have messages from friends and women within the church who are worried about my heart. I’m called names like divisive and accused of making up lies so that I can clout chase. They demand I take the post down. I refuse. They say words like libel and responsible. I am invited to coffee. I walk around in a trance, triggered once again, my limbs numb from what my nervous system fears is an impending attack.

I don’t know until later that I am already in it.
I don’t know until later that what I am feeling: the racing heart, the blurred vision, the brain fog, the heavy limbs—it’s textbook C-PTSD.

It takes me at least a month to be able to even think about writing on my blog again.

I’d forgotten about these moments until I started seeing sound bites of the contradictory nature of Leo Midheavens.

“It can be hard for you to be seen,” the person says into the camera, “because you have wounds around visibility.”

I laugh to myself.

Oh, I think.

Because it’s not just the examples above. It’s being celebrated for my leadership only to have it turned on me as a threat. It’s pursuing my dream of fostering a writing community only to be labeled a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It’s having the same amount of Instagram followers for a decade—even though I’ve been doing everything my peers in the publishing industry are doing.

It’s barely hitting $100 in royalties for my books even though I’m literally talking about them all of the time on social media and have invested money in marketing campaigns.

It’s watching others do less, but get so far more in return.

It’s knowing that this post will probably either be lost in the algorithm or somehow be ostracizing in how it’s received. And I don’t mean for it to be—but somehow, that fear always inches closer and closer when I’m sharing a piece of myself online.

And that fear, when left unchecked, can be hard to swallow.

I tell Melissa in my voice message that there’s a through line in these disparate thoughts about social media. Maybe that’s the spiral—my place in it all. “Sometimes I can’t even hear myself think because I’m so focused on everyone else or getting my thoughts into a digestible sound bite,” I tell her. She agrees, and invites me to consider what that might mean.

She’s had her phone in airplane mode for a few weeks now and tells me she doesn’t even miss it—that she used to do this often in order to ground. “I’m so much less anxious,” she tells me.

And it makes sense. I feel it too as I try to extricate myself from the machine. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how it will remotely help my book sales. But I know something has to change.

I pull cards and am reminded in no uncertain terms that I am not here to do things like everyone else; and that when I try, that’s when I begin to feel stuck.

The 8 of Cups stares back at me, inviting me to that different way. I sit in the quiet, the blinking cursor in front of me, and wait for the words to come.

Magic has always been with me

Magic has always been with me.

I’m four, and climbing the cushions of our couch in order to stand on the top, eyes peering down toward our carpet. I breathe once, twice, and then it happens. I smile. The tingle rushes through my hands like electrical currents and I close my eyes before taking the leap.

I’m seven, and at the dentist. My mom works as a hygienist assistant, and I’m spending the day with her at work. I’m in the waiting room, reading the stack of books I brought with me to pass the time. I stand up to grab the next paperback when my vision blurs and my breath catches. My chest feels like it’s expanding ten times her size before the energy courses through my limbs and I blink back into focus. In that moment I know: I will find love. I feel him like I feel my own blood, pulsing in my veins. For a brief moment, the veil lifted and I saw everything. He will be my air, and he will be my roots, and loving him will feel like Truth.

I lost the feel of her for a while. From the time I was about eight until just a few years ago, the whispers would appear out of nowhere but nothing like the memories of when I was younger. The heat in my hands, the way my very being would vibrate with knowing — she would brush up against me only to have me blink before she disappeared, leaving me wondering where she went. But she never went anywhere, I was just spellbound.

Magic has always been with me.

Twenty years later I’m driving home from work and I hear something that serves as a key to my psyche. The door unlocks and she drops into my chest, the Truth knocking me sideways. She takes my hand and leads me into a cave.

Further up and further in, she whispers. And I know the descent will take me deeper into my own awareness — my own gifts. I grab a lantern and open the door, and then take a step down. My initiation has begun.

Meggan Watterson says that magic is a rebellion. This much is known, given the historical context of the word and the way hackles raise when it’s mentioned. But she also says that so often we rely on the mundane because what we aren’t told about our magic is that it’s a direct reflection of our power and that’s a lot to process when we’ve been fed the lie that our power is in our own weakness and submission.

Awakening the dormant power lying within feels a lot like rebellion to those of us who relied on others to tell us what to do and how to be good. When all along, that Voice has been inside of us. All along, she’s been there waiting for us to climb the mountain of our comfort and smile, waiting for her reveal before we take the leap.

Magic has always been with me.

I feel her in the way my breath quickens when I’m about to speak a truth. I feel her in the way the fire lands in my hands when a message is coming up and out before I can even censor the words. I feel her in the whisper of intuition that happens in conversation. I feel her now, in the way my chest constricts before expanding out out out into the ether of knowing. I blink, and she stays. I breathe, and she deepens. The fire in my hands and the Truth on my tongue — she has landed in between my ribs, settling in to her home.

There is No Limit to Love

“She asked me if you still love Jesus.” She tells me this, quietly laughing and rolling her eyes. She’s rolling her eyes because to her, this is a ridiculous question.

I wrinkle my forehead.

“Why?”

She shrugs.

“Apparently she thinks you worship the moon now?”

I blink, confused.

“Is this because I posted the picture about Mama Ocean and the pull of the moon?”

“Probably.”

I rock Jubal a little bit more, lost in my thoughts. Something about the question, and family members talking about my faith behind my back, rubs me raw. I suck my teeth and take a deep breath, trying to shake it off, but the feeling persists.

It persists because I know the truth. The question wasn’t really does Elora still love Jesus. The real question — the unspoken one — was does Elora still believe the same thing we do.

And the answer to that is most assuredly no. But I stay silent and I listen to my sister talk about the rest of the family and the things I don’t know that everyone else does. I stay silent, and listen, and fall back into the pattern I know well — the role I’ve played my entire life. Somewhere deep inside, I know this behavior comes from the little girl who realized quickly that acquiescing is so much better than questioning. I learned to speak in code from an early age because nothing was safe — even my journals were fair game and read on occasion, the discipline and grief and interrogation coming quickly every time my private thoughts were made public.

So I turned to metaphor.

It’s almost as if I’ve always been an outsider, even though our roots are tangled together.

//

I used to speak in code, but eventually I learned how to speak my truth. I practiced it often, spilling my words across the page, and learned how to articulate the feeling that wrapped around my gut just so. I pulled threads and pushed my hands through the dirt of my psyche and did my best to write my way out.

But then he told me to be careful what I put online, because others might think I lived a life of turmoil as a child. I think back to this now, having a few years of separation, and I laugh at the glaringly obvious deflection. Once again, what was said wasn’t what was meant. What was meant was don’t write about that online. If you write about that, I will have to reflect on my own involvement in this trauma, and I can’t look at myself in that way. I’m not ready. You speaking truth is threatening the family dynamics and so we need you to be silent.

And so I was silent.

For almost ten years, I’ve said nothing.
For almost ten years, I’ve censored myself.

But I cannot do it anymore.

And if this means unrooting the family tree, then so be it.

//

Do I still love Jesus?

The truth is I’ve never loved him more.

You tell me that he was always with me, but I already knew this. I felt him in those darkest moments. But I also felt her, and I had no way of knowing who she was until recently. The Wild Mother, Mary Magdalene, The Tower — the names she’s whispered to me in the quietest moments have been numerous. She is the one who helped me break free. She is the one who helped me see that while I was not alone in the moments of abuse, it does not negate the fact that those who should have protected me did not; some of them even perpetuated the pain.

She points me back to Love, every single time.

And so when I pray, I tap into the elements. I pull in the earth and fire and water and air. I look to the North and the South and the East and the West and remember all over again that there is no limit to Love. I go to the space in my mind where the waves crash against the shore and Jesus pulls me into his arms and kisses my forehead. I listen as he tells me it was him who sent Mary Magdalene to me. I watch as they introduce me to Morrigan, a protector with a crow on her head. And I let the tears wash down my cheeks as I feel them anoint me.

“Tell them I sent you,” Jesus says.

I feel the fire in my hands and in my chest and the breath in my lungs, the Spirit rooting me down to the depths of the ocean and I know that I know that I know…

it is time.

The Unknown Waters of Truth

I have a question for you.

What if you let it all go?

What if you made a list of all of the expectations you carry around your neck and set fire to the lies that burden you with shame? What if you finally stood in your power and who you know yourself to be creatively?

What if you let your own inherent magic shine through for everyone to see?

Does this feel threatening?
Impossible?
Scary?
Tempting?

Of course it does. Growing and taking the risk of stepping into our true nature feels like the biggest leap because up until now, we didn’t understand there was an internal compass that would show us where to go. But it’s there, and it’s showing us our True North in a way we cannot deny anymore.

You’re being asked to let go, and heal, and breathe in something new.

This is the energy for the week.

You’ve been spellbound for so long, unable to use your voice or harness your intuition without the voices of others reaching in and telling you where to go. It’s time to release. It’s time to unravel the Truth from the fray.

And only you know how to decipher between the two.

Here’s the catch: until you do this, until you release the grip of safety and belonging you have wound so tightly in your fist, your creativity will continue to sputter in and out of consciousness. Until you take that breath and let it all out — the residue, the toxicity, the filtration of false beliefs — you’re not going to be able to truly access your inner knowing or the Creative Voice that belongs to you alone because you’re breathing in someone else’s air. You need new air that’s not filled with the dusty remnants of another’s creativity and insight.

It will feel a little like stepping off a cliff and a lot like diving deep into unknown waters, but you were made for this moment.

So claim yourself, love.
Claim your power.
Close your eyes and breathe deep the scent of your own alchemy. Notice the way it expands around you and fills the places you thought were lost.

Burn away the lies and the expectations that have weighed you down for so long and believe that the bigger magic you were meant for will find you because She will. She will find you because She is already in you.

Do you hear Her?
She calls to you now.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.

And so it is.

A Grenade to the Chest

I’ve been restless all day.

Yesterday, hit with a wave of grief, I went under for a spell only to resurface today wondering about this new landscape I find myself. Somewhere inside, there is a piece of me still curled up in the fetal position — waiting.

For what, I don’t know.
Probably relief from the incessant knocking of a heart ripped apart.

There is a memory that keeps popping up in my head. I’m in high school, and attending a private Christian school located in a church. I frequent those halls more than I do my own home, and this week is no different. In fact, It’s a week I’m there even more than normal because there is a voice coach who is visiting the praise and worship director. He’s giving lessons, and because I am part of the worship team at school and church, I am there and listening to his instruction. It is here I learn to sing from my gut, blowing out the air and feeling the notes in my stomach rather than my throat. I’ve been singing for at least five years now, and in a few summers I will be traveling with my high school worship band across state lines and meeting people who will change my life.

But first, this memory.

I’m in our living room, pressed up against the wall. My mom is sitting on the couch, glasses on and a Diet Coke in hand. Her eyes reveal her exhaustion, and I know she’s about 30 minutes from calling it a night and walking upstairs to sleep. My dad though is lit from within, his eyes sparkling.

“Sing it again, honey.”

I glance at him, finding my breath. I open my mouth and let the words fall out, finding my rhythm. It’s a worship song I’ll be singing for the church in a few weeks.

Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing.

He leans forward and touches my stomach with his hand; I watch his hand and tighten in advance of feeling contact. I drop the notes, feeling them expand in my chest, centering in my lower gut. My breath rushes out and he raises an eyebrow.

“Good. That was good.”

I smile, basking in the praise.

I think of this moment tonight as I give into the restlessness and grab our dog’s leash. I need to walk. Whether I’m chasing something or running from something I don’t know — but I am hoping that putting one foot in front of the other under the fading colors of a night sky will crystallize something for me.

No one tells you about the way grief comes in and washes away everything you knew, reorienting your place in the cosmos. Prior to yesterday, I laughed off related topics. Nodding and shrugging my shoulders. My therapist would being to tip-toe around the issue and I’d sniff and quietly bring up another situation.

Sure, I would say. Who doesn’t have that trauma?

I never once mentioned that in order to talk about it, we’d have to accomplish the impossible because ask me anything about it and my words completely disappear, my mind and body stuck in a trauma response of freezing for protection. But then memories come crashing through my mental sky and I feel myself readying for the flinch — knowing the devastation this will bring. Maybe if I close my eyes and turn my head it won’t hurt as bad? But it still greets me, first thing in the morning, and I collapse in our closet and shove a towel in my face to quiet the sobs.

I feel them in my gut, blowing out the air and gasping for the words to describe what it feels like to have a grenade explode in your chest. Instead, I find myself picking up the shrapnels across my memory, each one a piece to a larger puzzle I’m not sure I want to complete.

Caught in a Web of Your Own Making

Sometimes, feeling stuck isn’t because of an outside force.

Sometimes, we’re caught in a web of our own making.

And this can look like backing ourselves into creative corner and refusing to see (or hear!) the direction our story is going or we ignore the very real intuitive nudges that come for us in the heat and magic of creation. We get stuck. Even though we know the direction we’re going, even though we can see the destination in the distance, we’ve caught ourselves in a sticky situation and can’t get out because we’re pretending to not know what we really know.

That’s the Creative Energy this week.

So how do we get unstuck? Well first, you have to acknowledge what you are pretending to not know. You have to dive in head and heart first into the reality that there is something in the discomfort of starting over in order to salvage the story you’re meant to live. What signs have you ignored? What messages have you received?

It’s time to be honest, love.

You have to look for where you’ve honed in on a single element, forgetting the rest. You cannot allow the fire to rage without also acknowledging the waves that wash everything away, showing us what remains. You cannot truly find your essence if all you’re doing is walking with your head in the clouds.

We need temperance.
So where are you resisting equanimity?

Every story of rebirth first begins with death. Maybe it’s time for you to leap. Maybe it’s time for your journey to the Underworld to begin. Who knows what you might discover if you finally lean into that intuitive nudge.

Sundays with Maggie, vol. 2

Lost you in the border town of anywhere
I found myself when I was going everywhere.

Listen to Back in my Body here. 

I realized the other day that I haven't been to a dance class in almost two years. I've danced, sure. I've even taken part in a number of online classes. But this morning as music filled my senses and I found myself moving my hips to the beat, I recognized the absence of clarity I used to feel when I made it a habit to consistently let everything go except for how my body reacts to music. 

When this was the norm, I finally understood what it meant to be in my body. 

Even then, I hesitated with certain moves. I doubted my own ability to let myself go and be in the moment. I knew, intuitively, how to do the moves and what it would look like and feel like to allow my body the fluidity, but narratives kept whispering in my veins, ones about the breadth of one's body limiting the ability to truly move. 

Until I started taking lyrical classes. 

I'd seen the video with Galen Hooks' choreography where the dancers poured every ounce of their soul into Bishop Briggs' song River. I was in awe and felt the tickle in my chest — my intuition prodding me to try it. 

I need this, my body whispered.

A few months later, I saw River on the list for lyrical dance and signed up with no hesitation, and the class proved my theory that emotion and story can be built into dance. 

I also realized that the more I embody myself, the more I allow the movement of energy to run through and release the stagnant pieces, the more creative I am in writing. 

Creativity begets creativity — every time. 
It also helps me heal.

"It's my job to go out and see the world and report back — to feel things fiercely... 
And it's my job to be present." 

- Maggie Rogers, Back in My Body documentary 

One summer I was on my way home from work and Back in my Body came on my playlist. I felt the tears come immediately. I was heartbroken, but hadn't really allowed myself to fully feel the extent of what this meant for me and where I needed to go next. This song, already instrumental in reminding me the importance of embodiment and being true to what I'm feeling in the moment, brought me back to my body in a way that was immediate and with an intensity I hadn't felt in a while. I cried the entire way home, and then snapped a picture so I could remember. I realized I hadn't been present to my own grief, I simply moved it away - pushed it aside for later. Knowing full well later wouldn't ever really come. I wouldn't ever welcome the reckoning. 

I never do.
But it always returns. 

A Meeting with Mary Magdalene

It’s early — or late — depending on how you view time.

I’ve been dealing with bronchitis a few short weeks after recovering from a sinus infection that turned into pneumonia. I’m tired of coughing. Tired of hearing the rattle within my chest. Just tired.

But I wake up coughing, and after taking a drag from my inhaler, I find myself jittery and awake. I do what most do these days when faced with insomnia: I scroll TikTok.

I stumble on a video of a woman in the woods, in front of a massive tree. Something about her smile has me pause the scroll. As I listen to her message, I feel my heart rate quickening.

This video was for me. It’s too coincidental to not be relevant and the messages are clear.

I close the app, sit up in my bed, and breathe deep once, twice, three times.

I call all of my power back to me now, I whisper.
I say it again, and again.

In my mind, I see tendrils of gold flying toward me and embracing my limbs. I’m glowing, my sacral on fire. I feel the fire in my hands and I smile. I know this invitation. I’ve come to recognize it as part of my magic.

I activate the power lying dormant within me, I say. My voice echoes on the air around me and I feel a chill down my spine. My hands tingle.

That’s when the meditation begins.

I find myself at the beach I know so well, the cottage to my right, the beach grass swaying in the breeze and lining the path. I walk my way toward the water, my feet feeling the sand beneath me. I assume I am headed toward the cottage with the redwood tree in the entrance, but instead, I see Him standing there leaning against the cliff.

“Hi.” I whisper.

He smiles at me and takes my hand.

“Hi, love.”

“I’m tired,” I lean my head against His shoulder and He kisses the top of my head.

“I know” He says.

I stand up then, facing HIm. I feel my chest rise and fall with frustration and I open up my arms waving around me. Suddenly, it’s as if everything I’ve walked through has come up to the surface and I feel the confusion and fight the disassociation. His eyes study me, always kind, always a hint of a fire hidden in the depths.

“So…what am I supposed to do with all of this? How am I supposed to move forward?”

He leans in and pushes some hair behind my ear.

“Tell them I sent you.”

I swallow. That seems like a tall order, and I feel myself shrinking all over again.

Surely you don’t mean me.

But He does. I hear it in His voice, and I know this version of Him. He continues, telling me I have targets on my back. That others are beginning to notice my power, and that they don’t like it. He takes His hands and outlines my field of energy and I feel contained.

He looks at me again and His eyes are blazing.

“They will not reach you, though. You are protected.”

We sit there for a moment, studying the waves crashing against the shore, holding hands and resting in each other’s presence. And then I hear footsteps and look up, seeing her walking toward us, the red robe blowing behind her. She’s smiling, and beckoning me toward her.

I look at Jesus and He smiles, nodding toward Mary Magdalene.

“Go, love. It’s okay. I sent her to you.”

So I walk toward her, noticing a fire burning. She sits next to the flame, and reaches for my hand. She tells me secrets of my lineage — of the ones who circle me and provide protection. Of the ones who are meant to witness. Of the one who is my mirror.

“You have been a fierce protector of so many people for so long — now it’s time for you to experience that for yourself. The power within you is awakening, and within that power is a need to rest on the ones who can hold you.”

And as we named the ones who are in my circle, I saw them in my peripheral vision begin to circle around us — their skirts and hair blowing in the wind, the thrum of magic channeling between all of us, like golden threads weaving in and out and connecting us.

A sacred circle; a chord of three strands.

And as I scanned the areas of my own energy needing a dose of that golden threaded power, I heard her whispering over me your breath is your knowing.

When Grief Comes to Visit

I wake in the morning with the familiar heaviness bearing down. It was a night of little sleep, so I lean into the exhaustion. My son is up, and wanting company in the living room, so I rub my eyes and grab my robe and tie it around my waist and pull it as close to my skin as I can for comfort. Once he’s settled, I whisper that I will be back, that mama needs to write.

I do not tell him what I need is to cry.

I do not cry, but I do get words out in my journal that won’t ever see the light of day. The heaviness lingers.

Words are spells, dear one, I hear as I spill myself on the pages and I remember. The night before, I saw something pass about a woman putting her daughter to bed and holding her close and murmuring, “you are so easy to love” as the breaths deepen and sleep takes over.

Ah. There is it.

I move over, give space for Grief, and offer a small smile.

“It’s been a while, friend.”

I run myself a bath, the steam rising as the water collects. I opt for the bath bomb I’ve been hanging on to for a special occasion, complete with a crystal marked for healing. Seems appropriate. I sink into the heat, my breath catching and serving as a reflex of the tears waiting to release, and I clear my throat. I scroll through the meditations and land on one I can’t move past, and press play.

The tears come, then. Welcome, aching, cleansing, heaving. I cry so hard a contact falls off my eye. I fold into myself, wrapping my body in the tightest hug imaginable.

I know, I know. It hurts. I know. I’m here.

I learn all over again how to mother the wound.

The ache doesn’t disappear. I don’t magically bounce out of the water ready to tackle the day. In fact, the ache eases into the next day, and I sob while watching TikTok videos about our inner child and continue while attempting downward facing dog and cat-cow. There is no saluting the sun this morning. There is, however, a little lion using my tabletop pose as an opportunity to give his stuffed zebra a ride. I smile through my tears and whisper thank you before quietly asking if mama can have some space.

I walk through my day as best as I can, most often wrapping myself in some type of blanket or sweatshirt or protective outer layer. I clean the boxes and books piling up on our kitchen table. I finally take the stack of mail and throw away the coupons we’ll never use. I do all of this while Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ blesses me through my AirPods, reminding me what happens when women sing over each other’s bones. I tend to my plants, pulling off the dead pieces and greeting the new buds and thinking to myself how this simple gesture, this simple care, is more than I’ve received for most of my life.

The tears come again, and I let them fall. I make myself some lunch and drink some water and turn on the Maggie Rogers’ album I know by heart and begin to write.

I start to sing, feeling the vibrations in my bones.

Come awake, love.
Rise up, dear one.

Further up and further in, I am becoming Someone new.

Recognition

I was listening to Glennon Doyle’s latest podcast episode around writing and creativity and something struck me.

She mentions something about her dual selves — how there was the Glennon for public persona and the Glennon at home alone. And so often, she masked herself in order to fit within the rules of girlhood: don’t be wild, don’t be hungry, don’t be animalistic. However, in creativity — and when she’s writing — she is true. Honest. Visceral. Her untamed self is calling out to other untamed selves.

She’s reaching for resonance. Her real self, unmasked, untamed, unleashed — is looking for others who understand.

I started writing for this reason. Initially on xanga, and then on MySpace and Blogger and Wordpress, I spilled my thoughts hoping for someone to recognize the words I was forming. But something happens when you do this consistently. You begin to recognize yourself. You begin to live integrated.

You begin to find your voice.

I have never stopped writing from those early days. We’re going on almost 20 years of sharing my thoughts on the internet. And even though I haven’t built a following like Glennon, I’ve come to know myself again and again, through words. Because even though there are hundreds of thousands of words I have written spread far and wide in this corner of the internet, I have just as many I’ve held close to my chest in journal and altered books and Notes on my iPhone that are locked away for safekeeping.

This is the magic — the medicine. It’s not sharing your thoughts and hoping for resonance. It’s sharing your thoughts and finding yourself. It’s being willing to own yourself when you come face-to-face with her in the sentences you’re crafting. It’s taking every imperfect sentence and every paragraph that makes you cry and every moment you’ve uncovered a deeper level of healing through letting yourself speak and merging them together.

The imperfect, the resonant, the intuitive.

A few days ago, I found my Awake the Bones instagram. As I read through the captions of posts I shared four years ago, I laughed to myself because there she was – right there for me to notice — the Elora who is writing these words right now. And maybe I noticed her. Maybe I saw and was afraid because of the wildness I recognized in her words. The audacity of demanding healing and recognizing the need for owning your place in this world. The questions of programming and belief systems that were set in place and rooted deep without any say of whether or not they fit.

She was there waiting, imperfect and resonant and intuitive as fuck.

I’m so glad I found her.

The Wild Mother

I took Instagram off the home page of my iPhone yesterday.

It’s been a long time coming. For the past few months, I have felt more and more inclined to share myself within the space of my weekly letter and dreaming about the days where I was able to post on my blog full-formed thoughts that allowed me to dive deep into the topic without fear of character limits.

I’m nothing if not verbose, and this is both a blessing a challenge.

And I’ve discovered, over the past few years, I have felt more and more constrained and self-edited within the space of those small squares. As someone who finds herself continually through words, this was problematic. So here I am, in this space, aiming for something that feels more True.

Welcome.

I’ve recently learned that part of who I am rests in this inner conflict of deep masculine drive vs a need for inner sovereignty and what it looks like to embody leadership within a feminine framework. I’ve been pulled toward the concept of matriarchy and midwifery for years, and it’s part of where the roots of my story coaching originate. However, what I didn’t recognize or prepare myself for was just how deep this goes and just how needed it is: both internally and collectively. But it makes sense, right? The patriarchy has wounded us and programmed into us the impossibility of a divine feminine within ourselves.

But she’s there.

I call her the Wild Mother.

This is where I’m at right now: learning, growing, de-programming, and understanding that maybe just maybe, my creativity is my worship. We need it so badly right now: the vision and dissonance of creatives and artists reminding us that there is a better way and a better world possible.

Maybe just maybe, helping others heal and find their creative voice within the divine feminine is why I’m here.

The Itching of Wings

When we were younger, I remember climbing the couch all the way to the top and waiting for the itch in our hands to appear before leaping toward the floor. 

We liked to see how far we could fly.

We followed that itch every where. Monkey bars. Swing sets. Backyard pools and tumbling gyms. The higher, the faster, the further? The better. 

We wanted to be a ballerina for a minute. Do you remember that? We loved the way they jumped and twirled and defied gravity in so many ways. We walked into the studio clad in gym shorts and a t-shirt, saw the tights and leotards, and went running the other direction.

I felt you, though. Despite the it's okay, I didn't want to do it anyways, the pinch was there. And when we had a best friend in elementary and middle school leave for ballet class and talk about finally reaching point, we'd smile and wonder. Remember? Instead, we took to cheerleading and became the base. The spotter. We couldn't fly, but we helped every one else get there.

I think that might have been the beginning of the Great Hiding.

There were other factors too—hands in places they didn't belong and words thrown toward you at volumes you weren't meant for—but eventually, the itching went internal.

And instead of your hands reminding you where your wings should be, your heart scratched your insides and begged you to stay safe. That's when you turned to the pantry. 

You learned early on that a cookie worked better to satiate that scratching than anything else. So you ate. You ate the cookies and the tortillas and the peanut butter and the pies in the freezer. You ate the chips and the turkey and the candy bars and the chocolate milk.

And soon, you didn't even try to fly because of how heavy you felt inside.

A few years ago, someone gave you a rope. Do you remember? It was like a piece of red thread connected between here and sanity. 

The Great Hiding looked dark. Lonely. It looked like you may turn to the wallpaper for friends instead of the world outside and that's just not the way to go, you know? And you wanted the girl back—the one who would jump from things without even looking because of course she could fly. She had wings! There was itching to prove it.

That thread was the first broken belt on the strait jacket of invisibility. Nothing was satiating the scratching inside and now you knew it was because it didn't belong there. It didn't belong there and this whole time you thought your heart was working against you but really, she was just trying to get you to hear her because she was caged. 

She was caged and begging to go free.

She knows we're meant to fly.

I found the key, little one.

It's right here. I'm holding it. Are you ready? We were born to risk—to jump—to celebrate the softness of landing in our dreams. 

And today is the day the itching returns to our wings.

Teaser Tuesday - Vol 1

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, where I will share with you a piece of the WIP I am working on before publication. If you want to catch the entirety of the (rough) draft as I write it, head on over to my Patreon and subscribe for updates. These posts will always be short — maybe a few paragraphs. But the point is to pique your curiosity. 😏 Currently, my WIP is about a stalker, so consider that before reading. I hope you enjoy!

We’re standing by the ocean, the foam washing our feet in a joint baptism, when you tell me  you can’t see me anymore. You give all kinds of excuses: it doesn’t make sense, there’s no more mystery, you aren’t attracted to me — but I know they’re all lies. 

I watch your eyes roam my face with desire. It’s obvious you want me, you’re just fighting innate impulses. I reach my hand out and caress your arm, but you pull away, a snarl on your lips. 

I smile. You’re so feisty when you resist. 

I watch you turn and walk away, studying the buckle of your sandal as you maneuver through the sand back to your car. You didn’t even offer me a ride, but maybe that’s because you haven’t broken up with your boyfriend yet and you don’t want to raise questions. 

I understand. 

I drove here anyway. 

I watch you until you turn invisible behind the sunset and then wipe my face. Fucking tears. I breathe deep and notice a starfish on the sand by my feet. I pick it up, fingering the indentations and grooves. I remember you telling me once that starfish symbolize infinite love...or was it vigilance? Either way, I lift the creature to my lips and give it a kiss before snapping off each arm and throwing it back into the sea. 

If you want to play cat and mouse, Juniper, we can play. 

But you need to know — I always win. 

Capturing Minutiae

Published from previous blog on April 20, 2020

I saw something in an email this week that mentioned our every day documentation during this season. I admit, sometimes I feel as if it’s not readable to post about Jubal climbing our piles of laundry on the couch in our bedroom and playing his iPad while I binge Outer Banks and try to get some words in for the day.

Or like last night, when Russ asked Jubal, “hey buddy you want me to teach you how to play guitar?” And Jubal snuck his way in between Russ’ arms and watched his hands pluck the strings as if it were the most important thing in his world, I snapped a picture but didn’t think about writing it down because this moment feels normal. Every day.

Just like it doesn’t feel significant to talk about the walks Russ and Jubal take every day, canvassing our neighborhood with the dogs, finding leaves that spark their curiosity, because this happens literally every time they’re walking. I forget about the conversations and the silly things Jubal says and only later when Russ and I are alone we look at each other and ask, “what was it that he said today that was so hilarious? Do you remember?

I don’t talk about the recent discovery that our son apparently prefers 1970’s Indie punk above all other musical genres. Or his insatiable need to have his blanket with him everywhere - even while making sandcastles with the dirt outside on our patio.

I don’t talk about the masks we got in the mail today and how now there are two hooks above our keys by the garage door so we won’t forget to grab ours before leaving the house on our weekly errand to the store. I don’t talk about the hand washing, the daily counting of toilet paper rolls, the Vitamin C intake and countless virtual trips to Target and Amazon and nearly any store that will deliver.

I don’t talk about how Jubal now mentions that his school is closed.

I don’t mention this stuff because it doesn’t feel monumental, but I know one day, it will be a welcome treat to read back and remember these days where we were learning so much about each other and our world was changing so exponentially.

The last time this happened, we were stuck on an island in North Carolina, waiting to come home with our new son. Every one then kept telling us to enjoy it — to soak up the time we had together because it would pass quickly and soon we would be wishing for those days of listening to nothing except for the ocean waves crashing against the shore. I believed them because I know myself. I know the atmospheres in which I thrive. And true to form, as we returned to our lives in Austin and the sound of ocean waves became more and more a memory, the ache deepened.

I missed it.

Because of the intensity of those days, I wasn’t able to journal. I couldn’t. There were too many emotions swirling in my brain and mind and all I could manage were small poems haphazardly scribbled in my notebook. Instead, I read. I read so many books.

But I wish I would have found some reservoir in order to write.

So now, as I hear Jubal’s giggles out front and know that any minute they’ll come rushing through the front door with treasures he’s found on yet another daily walk, I try to capture as many moments as possible.

Like yesterday, sitting out on the porch with little lion, I turn and ask if I can take his picture.

“Yeah, mama. You can.”

“Thanks, babe. Can you smile for me?”

“No. I think I just want to look at the clouds.”

And so he did. I’m so glad he chose that instead.

Sundays with Maggie - Vol. 1

Listen to Alaska here. 

And I walked off you,
And I walked off an old me. 

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to separate the Elora I was with the one I am becoming. I think about her often — the one who got me here. 

She kept me safe for so long - behind my mother's clothes in her closet where I could smell her scent, behind a smile so I wouldn't be seen as trouble, behind a list of rules so I wouldn't fall into rebellion and sin, behind a fear of expanding into anything other than what was expected of me. 

She wanted nothing more than to just be good. 

And then suddenly, it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough. One day I knew from the core of my being that if I checked all of these boxes everything would be nice and neat and perfect and easy I would fit the mold. I would fit. I would belong. But it didn't work. Everything fell apart. The entire story I constructed for myself felt like an ill-fitting jacket, suffocating me.

What was once my lifejacket had become the tightest straight jacket, impaling my senses and leaving me frozen and paralyzed, unable to remember anything about who I was in my core.

Hey now, breathe deep
I'm inhaling.
You and I, there's air in between.
Leave me be, I'm exhaling.
You and I, there's air in between.

The other day my therapist told me, "breathe through this," and it startled me into awareness. I closed my eyes and let my body feel oxygen in every square inch of her and when I released, the tears did too. I had no idea I had forgotten to breathe, but she saw my shoulders clench, my eyes lose focus, my jaw tense. 

Once again, I found myself holding my breath - waiting, anticipating, fearing the next thing to fall away. 

I hold my breath without realizing it. I've done it about two or three times while writing this. Suddenly, my chest constricts and it feels like I can't get enough air in and I can't remember the last time I felt breath fill my lungs and so I have to throw my arms back above my head and reach for the sky while reminding myself how to breathe — in and out, in and out, expand - expand - expand. 

I learned to not breathe by learning to fly under the radar. 

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