Category: Creative

I love myself.

I approve of myself.

I am surrounded by love and support.

I have my dream job.

I have the partner of my dreams.

Everything I want is waiting for me to claim it.

What if I told you repeating these affirmations to yourself could change your life? What if I told you that you could manifest anything you desire simply by repeating these affirmations until you fully accept them as truth?

Sounds too could to be true? It is. 

Let’s talk about “manifestation” for a moment. I grew up in a spiritual household where oracle cards, spells, and guardian angels were the go-to solution for many larger-than-life problems. When life confronts us with so many sticky situations that are largely beyond our control, sometimes it’s helpful to turn to the Beyond for solutions. 

Remember when you were a child and you fell and scraped your knee on the asphalt? Blood ran down your leg, tiny pebbles embedded in the folds of your skin. Raise your hand if the adults around you said, “You’re okay!” Or some variation of the sort? Were you okay? No! The only people who would be okay in that scenario are people with nerve damage or abnormally high pain tolerances. And it’s okay to not be okay when you’re hurt. That’s human nature. In an attempt to ease your pain, the adults around you quite literally gaslit you into thinking that what was happening wasn’t a big deal. And you learned to gaslight yourself. You weren’t magically better just because they said, “You’re okay!” What they did was taught you to minimize your experience and pretend it was something it was not. 

Now, it is true our frame of mind has a lot to do with how we perceive the world. If I’m hungry and I walk down the street, I’m gonna notice restaurants everywhere I go. If you’re nervous about seeing someone in public, you’re going to anxiously scan the crowd for familiar faces. Same street. Different experiences. In a study where adults took an introduction to Spanish course, the participants who went into the class with an optimistic frame of mind tended to score better on tests. Those who did not believe they could do it from the start scored lower. Sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. But these participants did not say to themselves every day “I am fluent in Spanish” until magically one day they woke up speaking Spanish. They worked hard, and their results were an accurate reflection of that. 

I have some qualms with manifestation experts who make these daily affirmations their business. What it is teaching us is to reinforce our insecurities, but if we just buy this product, take this class, practice this simple method, then somehow our lifelong traumas and deepest wounds will be cured for good. If we repeat to ourselves, “I release the past” or XYZ statement, it puts us in an excellent frame of mind to begin to do the work that requires actually manifesting our desires. 

But I don’t see a lot of courses teaching how to put in the work. I don’t see a lot of teachers or people leading by example showing us how to put into practice all these wonderful philosophies. I mostly hear “As long as you believe it, it will become true. Keep practicing your affirmations until you convince yourself of them. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” 

But what if I’m not? What if it’s just a bad day? What if I am not happy in my job, I don’t have enough money, I’m not surrounded by love and support, I struggle to love myself, I struggle to find happiness and joy in my daily life? If I keep gaslighting myself with these affirmations, will I somehow manifest the life I so desire in the bones of my soul?

Manifestation isn’t all woo-woo bogus. Not to me at least. I am a firm believer in the power of our thoughts to shape our reality. But sometimes we need to call things for what they are. Acknowledge the undesirable, the dark underbelly of things. Call if for what it is. Then, soften your gaze. Let the tension in your forehead release. Clench and unclench your fists. Take a deep breath, and blow out through your mouth until your cheeks puff out. Watch as this breath, your spirit, disintegrates the undesirables and sends it flying through the sky. It will settle in some garden somewhere and fertilize the soil for new flowers to grow next spring. 

Visualize the life you want, the person you want to be and the people you want to surround yourself with. Be reasonable. Start broad, abstract, focus on what it will feel like. Then get detailed. Imagine what clothes you will wear, what food you will eat, what the weather will be like, how you will wake up. Then, every day, make choices that align with that vision. Set yourself little goals that build to that big vision. Make checkpoints along the way. 

I’m not saying I’m an expert by any means, but this method has worked for me in many ways, so if you try it let me know how it goes. 

I love Love. 

It is the great treasure of life. It’s the rosy pink watercolor splayed across the sunset and falling into your eyes. It fills your body with tiny bubbles that lift you up and up and up until you’re floating among the spirits of the clouds. It is the crispy bite of apple and the sticky juice dripping down your chin. It glows inside you, nourishes your entire being from the inside out. There is much cruelty and confusion in the world, make no mistake. But there is also great love hidden in the cobble stone paths, waiting under the grooves in your tongue for you to accidentally spit it out. 

Love allows you to, for a moment, make sense of everything. To accept everything as it is and appreciate its innate beauty. And you are apart of it. You belong in this pool of infinite love, too. 

The catch comes when we attach this love to another. Another place, another food, another favorite sweater, another song. A human being. It is futile. It evaporates as soon as it hits the ground. Life is ever-changing, ever flowing. Love is like trying to hold sand; as soon as it takes shape, it slips through your fingers. It’s like trying to stay in one place while swimming in the ocean. When you experience the absolute treasure of love, hold it as long as you can, and let it go. Because let it go you must. 

You deserve Love. True Love. It is your divine right. It is your gift from life. There is too much pain and too much sorrow to neglect the simple pleasures in life. 

Let Love in like an old friend visiting from out of town. Invite her in for a cup of tea and fresh fruit. Talk about the weather and reminisce about old times. Hug her and kiss her and stand in the doorway as you wave her goodbye. And trust that she will come back again. 

The following is a draft of an excerpt from my latest novel. It is a fantastical story that takes place here on our home planet thousands of years after the fall of the human empire. The book is far from finished, but I’m enjoying writing it so much that I’m in no rush. I hope you enjoy the final segment from this three part series.

The Ocean

There was a wooden ferry at the estuary for those who wanted to cross. Renée detached its rope from the wooden pole and rowed across the calm stretch of water. It was barely daybreak. Renée still had a long way to go. Along the North-Western coast, the North fork of the river split and led to twin tidepools side-by-side which seemed to spiral downwards to the bottom of the ocean, maybe to the center of the planet. Renée had frequented these tidepools and figured it was as sacred a place as any to meet a goddess. How would she appear? He walked until the sun was rising over the coastline and the pools were in sight.

The Pools of Hypnotic Eyes were aquamarine around the shallow edges and gradually faded into blue, indigo, purple, and midnight black. Starfish, sea urchins, coral, crabs, eels, and various tropical fish lived in these sacred tide pools. The bioluminescent plankton lit up the water in a way that it looked like the reflection of the galaxy.

Renée knelt down by the pools and dared not look too deep, as their magnetism is said to draw in wanderers who never return. Renée focused his attention on his pack where he removed the offerings for the goddess and laid them upon the sand on the edge of the tide pool. Renée knelt with closed eyes and open palms. Hands and knees trembling, uncertain of the existence of such a divine being, Renée spoke aloud,

“Goddess of the West, keeper of water and fluidity, of rain and rivers and oceans, co-creator of clouds and relationships with the Goddess of the East, guardian of emotions from sorrow to joy, I am Renée, a sprite from the Western Woods. I humbly ask for your assistance in finding your Eastern Sister so that I may save my forest, my home, and my family.”

Silence. Wind, waves. Seagulls. Waves, wind. Heartbeat.

“My dearest Renée,” a deep voice bellowed from the center of the tide pools. “Few creatures have conversed with the Goddesses of the Four Corners in thousands of years. Even fewer are as humble as you are. What disastrous fate plagues your forest?”

“I have good reason to believe a wildfire is coming. The stars told me so,” Renée’s voice trembled. The goddess was quiet for a moment.

“So it is told by the stars,” she said. “Renée, do you know what comes for all forests? What comes to all creatures of the planet?”

“Yes,” Renée’s voice quivered.

“Then, do you know the price of magic? Of rearranging the webs of fate?”

“I will pay any price to extend the life of my home so that I may never see its demise. I know what comes for all forests and all creatures of the planet. But I will sacrifice anything to protect the Western Woods as long as I live!” Renée spoke with more power and conviction than he ever felt in his life.

“It is not I who dictates the worthy exchange,” the ocean bellowed. “It is my sister, the Goddess of the East. At this moment, my sister is … in an unusual form.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our Northern and Southern sisters are at odds. This is not what is unusual. Our sister of the South wanted change and upheaval to our Northern sister’s ancient structures and customs. The Goddess of the North is the eldest and first connected to our Mother. She holds the most ancient wisdom of us all and ensures order and balance in the collective ecosystem. The Goddess of the South sent flames to rampage the order, change the landscape, and leave behind a fertile planet from which to start. Our sister of the East sought an answer to their dispute. She believes in a way of life that embraces both structure and evolution. So, she took the form of a human, or what your folktales call Titans. She resides on the edge of the Eastern forest. You may seek her there.”

A Titan. A chill went through Renée’s body. She must be the only one in existence.

“Goddess of the West, thank you for your wisdom. I shall never forget your generosity in helping me. Please accept my humble offerings in return, and I shall care for the water everywhere I go.” 

Renée bowed to the sea and waves splashed up on him. He wiped the Goddess’s salty kiss from his cheeks as he turned inland and made way to the Eastern Woods.

The following is a draft of an excerpt from my latest novel. It is a fantastical story that takes place here on our home planet thousands of years after the fall of the human empire. The book is far from finished, but I’m enjoying writing it so much that I’m in no rush. If you missed the first segment, revisit my stories and read “Renée: Part 1.” I hope you enjoy and tune in next week for the final excerpt in this series.

The Fire

It was somewhere between the summer solstice and autumnal equinox. The forest was dry and brittle after a scorching summer. The clouds had not opened up with rain for five moon cycles.

Some days, Rosemary felt the pull to the West stronger than others. Try as she might, she could not ignore it these days. A voice surged through her blood with each pump of her heart, demanding she walk into the sunset until she found the planetary womb from which all life originates and returns. What this meant, Rosemary hadn’t a clue, but it frightened her to her core. She was scared to find out and scared to never know.

Every year, Yarrow dedicated two weeks to exploring nearby caves before the snow closed their entrance for the season. He studied the minerals and brought some home to introduce to his family. He brought the bats and salamanders fresh berries and flowers from above, and they gave him medicinal herbs that only grew where the sunlight could not reach them. Yarrow left when the moon was dark and promised to return when its light shone through the cracks of the cave. Rosemary agreed that she would not go looking for him unless he had not returned by the full moon.

Renée spent his days frolicking with the honeybees and trailing the elder sprites in their village. He lived the life all children deserve: one of peace and prosperity, community and contentment. His aunts and uncles adored him, and taught him the games and stories all sprites learn in their youth. Renée knew nothing of change except for the growth and harvest of spring and summer. He had not yet lived through a full cycle of the seasons. His mother prepared him with the knowledge of winter, how they must preserve berries and dry mushrooms for days when the ground would freeze over.

The nights were too cold to sleep alone, and Renée often slept between the crook of his mother and father’s arms. While Yarrow was away, he curled up against Rosemary’s abdomen and tucked his nose under his paws to keep warm. The wind whipped against his exposed back, jolting him back to reality after a most pleasant dream. The bright light illuminating his eyelids was not the sunrise but the full moon perched atop the midnight blue sky. 

Renée blinked twice, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark. He scanned the boughs of the tree for any sign of his mother. Perhaps she left to sleep with her siblings, as they often slept together as the nights grew colder. Renée scurried up and down the tree trunk, checking the hollow nooks where his aunts and uncles slept. The tree was empty.

An orange glow on distant tree roots caught his eye. The sprites must have gathered for a midnight full moon ceremony. Renée scampered through the underbrush, dry leaves crunching under his paws as he ran with excitement toward his waiting family. 

“Renée!” Rosemary shouted from the darkness. “What are you doing? I thought I left you in the tree!” Renée’s excitement melted into anxiety hearing the tone in his mother’s voice. Before he could explain and apologize, she clenched her teeth around the scruff of his neck and threw him on her back. Rosemary ran away from the orange glow with the ferocity that only comes from maternal survival instincts. Renée’s cries of where they were going and what was happening went unanswered as Rosemary sprinted along the forest floor farther than either of them had ventured before. 

Their final destination was a patch of blackberries wrapped around a sturdy pine tree. Rosemary flattened her body under the vines with Renée clasping his arms around her neck. Deep in the lush green brambles, Rosemary unhooked her child’s desperate grasp and laid him down against a tall stone.

“I’ll be right back,” she promised. “I have to find your father.” She kissed his forehead and wiped her thumb across the tears on his cheek before running back the way they came. Renée wanted to chase after her, beg her to stay, but fear glued his back to the stone. He would stay in that same position through that night, the next day, and the night that followed before he allowed himself to collapse with exhaustion.

Renée thought it best to stay put until his mother returned. After all, she promised, and she was not one to break promises. As the days went on, he wondered if she had forgotten where she left him. Was she still looking for his father? Was her promise to return a kindhearted lie to keep Renée from following her?

Seven seasons came and went, Renée lived under the same blackberry brambles, and Rosemary had not returned.

My grandma lived in New York during Woodstock. She was 19 in the summer of ‘69 working in her family’s Italian restaurant. She was one of six siblings: three sisters worked the floor and three brothers worked the back. She never speaks of this time in her life with malcontent. 

I imagine her sweeping in an apron, her curly brown hair cut above the shoulders. The tables are empty except for one man drinking black coffee and eating a cannoli while he reads the daily paper. Her mother– my great-grandmother– sits at an adjacent table, appearing busy with paperwork while keeping one eye on her children to make sure they behave. The radio blares in the kitchen, and one brother’s voice echoes through the dining room as he sings Willie Nelson and kneads dough. She doesn’t think much of the red pickup truck pulling into the parking lot, but when the bell chimes as the front door opens, her head perks up. A small group of her girlfriends skip into the restaurant, their loose clothing drenched in marijuana smoke and braided hair adorned with flowers.

“Jo Ann! You have to come with us. There’s a concert over in Bethel, everybody’s going. We’ve got one seat left in the truck.”

My grandma glances at the mound of camp supplies in the truck bed and then back at her friends’ pleading faces. She doesn’t need to look behind her to feel the burning glare of her mother’s disapproving eyes. Even though the restaurant was slow, even though someone could have filled in, even though this was the concert of the century, she had an unspoken obligation as the eldest daughter to an immigrant family.

“You guys go ahead without me. My shift doesn’t end until 8 o’clock. We can go camping another time,” she reassures them with the kind of conviction that only comes from lying to yourself. The bell above the door chimed again as her friends left as suddenly as they came.

I imagine my grandma swept her envy and regret away like the crumbs on the floor as she watched her friends pile into the truck and speed out of the parking lot. A freedom she could only dream of having.

She laughs when she tells this story the way one laughs to hide their true feelings. She never shared the moral of her story, but I intuited it on my own.

Opportunity doesn’t come all the time. In fact, nothing will happen on time at all. We get so caught in the comfort of routine and obligation to social structures that we fake contentment. Life is short, but it is also long. Why spend our precious time doing what we think we should do? There will be plenty of opportunities to do things for others and fulfill your obligations to what you “should” do. The moral of the story is don’t miss out on seeing Jimi Hendrix to finish your customer service shift.

I didn’t meet my grandma for another 32 years, and her character was vastly different from the person she describes in this story. The grandma I knew was a master of subtle rebellion. She let me sit in the front seat of her truck before I was old enough to be out of car seats. When I buckled my seat belt (because my parents taught me good habits), she waved her hand and said, “You don’t need to wear that. We’re only going down the street.” She wouldn’t slow down when the stop light turned yellow. Instead, she would speed up and make it through the intersection just as the light turned red, calling it a “pink” light. 

At the grocery store, she would eat pieces of fruit right out of the produce bin. She snacked on apples, grapes, peaches, anything she desired with the same casual demeanor she had in her own home. I thought about how dirty the fruit was, how many pesticides and germs were on the fruits’ outer skin as she bit into it. She insisted I eat a nectarine right out of the wooden crate as if she were picking it off a tree. Isn’t this stealing? my child-conscience echoed. But my grandma is doing it, and no one around us seems to mind. So, even if it is stealing, it can’t be that bad. 

My grandma is the one who taught me to lie– no, encouraged me to lie. She always offered to call in sick for me or come up with some elaborate excuse for why I couldn’t go to school, a friend’s house, sports practice, or anywhere. “You can blame it on me,” she said with pride. Lying was her act of service to me. It was her way of showing she cared, and it brought us closer together. It took many years to piece together the art of lying was a complex inheritance passed down through generations.

I did lie. A lot. I lied as a child, a teenager, and a young adult. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I realized I was lying subconsciously. I was lying to myself, which is the most effective form of lying. If you convince yourself of the lie, you can convince everyone else it is the truth. I lied about liking things when I really didn’t. I lied about being happy when I really wasn’t. I lied about forgetting things when I really remembered. I lied about saying things when I didn’t. 

I lied like my grandma lied to her friends when she acted like she didn’t mind missing out on Woodstock. I lied like my great-grandfather lied when he committed insurance fraud. I lied the way I watched adults around me lie to themselves and each other about how happy they were. They taught me to lie, but when I was caught lying, I was punished. Talk about hypocrisy.

I didn’t lie about everything, but when society pressures you to be and act a certain way, lying is a natural form of self-preservation. In most communities, if you don’t uphold the standard people expect of you, then you will be outcasted and punished by those you hold most near and dear. That’s why I lied. It was a survival mechanism. It was figuring out who I was. It was ingrained in my DNA.

In retrospect, these traits my grandma passed down to me are not the most desirable nor are they healthy behaviors to bring into any relationship. We should be honest with the ones we love and do our best to keep them out of harm’s way, especially children. But I loved my grandma, and I still do. How can I reconcile these fond memories with the knowledge that she was teaching me harmful and destructive habits?

“We can’t choose where we come from, but we can choose where we go from there.” – Stephen Chbosky

There are a lot of things about my grandma that I see in myself. Thankfully, as a self-aware adult, I can pick and choose which parts of her I want to replicate and which ones I want to release. I don’t hold any anger toward my grandma for teaching me how to lie. She was giving me the same patterns, behaviors, habits, and neuroses that she inherited from her ancestors. She was loving me the same way she had known love, which may not have been true love, but it was the best she had with the tools given to her. None of us knew any better. But now, I do. 

A part of me will always be a liar, just like a part of me will always have brown hair. I don’t see it as something to be ashamed of now, rather it’s my style. I am practicing radical honesty with myself and others, and it is bringing me closer to the true love I know exists in my soul. But the lying part of me has a productive outlet I can always turn to. I think that’s where my writing skills come in. I have evolved from a liar to a vivid storyteller.

From the Work Your Light Oracle Cards