Hi writers! Did you ever have a map whose directions you no longer wanted to follow? Have you ever shredded one map and invented another? What do we do when our internal compass points one way, but society's compass points another?? 🌈🌈🌈 On Saturday, I’m turning 51. At this time last year, I was hosting 2 multi-day retreats, moving out of the house I’d just moved into, getting a divorce from my husband, falling in love with a woman, sleeping in the trees, dancing around fires, and searching far and wide to collect fragments of my scattered self hidden amongst the rubble. The year that followed was one of the most excruciating —and beautiful— of my life. I shredded the map I had drawn for myself and in its place received a murky crystal ball that’s refused to show me more than one step ahead. But each time I’ve taken that one step off a bottomless ledge, a hot air balloon or a flying trapeze or a wild turkey vulture swoop by and give me a lift. I have been offered sanctuary for days or weeks or months in the homes of extraordinary women. I have flown to far flung cities of this country, and all over the lush green state of Virginia—from the Chesapeake Bay to the Rappahannock to where I am currently, the mighty James River. I’ve been turned inside out, grieved, shedded, molted, lost a thousand skins. I also feel new growth—wings and a tail growing through my spine, deeper knowings and insights flooding in, a fierce new love I couldn’t have fathomed, parts of myself that would have stayed in the dark if I hadn’t decided to tear up the old map and take the plunge. On Saturday I’m turning 51. I still don’t know where I’m going next, or what it will look like, or how it will happen— or when! But I do know when I follow the sure quiet voice of my heart, I am led somewhere better than I could have ever imagined.

Hi writers!! I was using my Sacred Circle Writing Oracle deck to create our weekly Letters to the Fire newsletter and wanted to remind everyone that if you sign up, you will get a new oracle card with prompts in your in-box every week! Send me my weekly oracle card! Below is a card that includes one of my favorite writing quotes EVER: A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity, writes Franz Kafka. Writing is like bathing. We need to do it regularly or there’s a price we will pay. There are times when we need to take a break from writing, but if it is our time to write and we deny it, there will be hell to pay. Is it time for you to be writing? Start small. Sometimes the writer inside you needs to be coaxed sweetly, gently, without threats of whips or chains . Return to your writing, to find out who you are and what you’ve held in. The page will always welcome you home with arms wide open. How do you feel when you’re not writing? What are the benefits when you do?

I was flat ironing my curly hair. I was a tantrica, starved for touch. I was a mystical wanderer with a big mortgage and a bigger house. I was a free spirit with ankle weights, credit cards, china platters of cheetohs and ho-hos to dull the ache of living in the half-life. I was chasing windmills of love in locked up rooms without any wind. I was the heavy t-shirts and yoga pants from box stores I hid myself in, horrified by the silhouette of my own body. I was the shadow hiding beneath the brilliance of my soul. Then, the breaking. I split, I fell, I bruised, I bled, I excavated, I broke open, I grew. I discovered my wings and not only my wings but my tail, glimmering like a mermaid slicing through the furious ocean, the dragon serpent soaring with the wind. Now, I am in my warrior queen era with tight black bodysuits, lightning in my ears, sticks wrangling my wild curly hair. Now, my heart is a candle, a firework, a bonfire. Seen and loved, caressed and adored, lit up from inside out and the outside in. Now, my heart is my signature, tender, glowing, a fierce flame of love and creation. Now I love the flesh of this human woman body, the mountains and valleys, the curves and boulders, the creaks and crevices, the delights of the goddess. Now, I am in my medicine woman era, living with and talking to and making art with the spirits and the trees, mounting the spirit horse and taking the reins. I am squeezing that rich, powerful flesh between my thighs and digging her hide with my heels. Giddy up girl....now it's time to fly! (Written and shared in last night's True Story circle! What is YOUR then and now??)