Tea and toast.

They have an elaborate bed time ritual. It starts with tea and toast. Sometimes warm milk. They are always starving at night. I pile a plate high with buttery toast and the four of them make it disappear in moments.

A tea pot we found at the swap shop at our transfer station holds their ritual of honey tea. The ones who want warm milk use either a small mason jar or a tiny green butterfly mug and heat their milk to the perfect temperature for them.

Then we move onto their drops. Calm and sleep, 4 drops on each tongue.

Once the little tongues have the sweet drops they hold out their wrists for sweet repose. Sometimes I add another to either calm their nervous systemsor love up their heart center using my intuition on what they are needing.

Then things get a little silly. The first time we rubbed the oils on their wrists one of them told a story about how lemurs rub their wrists together to secrete their scent and mark their territory. So now they become little lemurs as they rub the oils on their wrists.

Each of them then take turns laying down and getting their foot cream, which now is belly button cream and foot cream. A belly rub and foot rub with each head in my lap on a sheep skin rug.

Then bed. Kisses (often lemur kisses). Nightlights and library books. Sleeping bags and giant stuffed bears. I need to pee. Can I have a glass of water? I forgot to tell you something. Did we have dinner?

This is how we create gorgeous secure attachment. This is how ritual guides us and eases them into the transition of wake to sleep.

Usually at bedtime I am exhausted and wanting to punch the time clock. This ritual and time together is something I look forward to all day. It is snuggles, giggles, words of affirmation, sleepy smiles. They are my joy bubbles.

.......

In one of my sessions with one of my magical, beautiful healers, she said that my work now was to learn how to create secure attachment inside of myself. She pointed out how the security and safety and calm and independence that my kids held inside was what I was longing for in my own body.

To trust in me. To know that I will always come back to self. To be the first place I seek when I am lost. To mama myself.

To trust my intuition of which metaphorical oil I need to nurture my nervous system, my heart, my longings. And learn the practices that will get me there.

Leaning into my rituals of morning coffee and prayers. Attaching to my strength and beauty rather than on the expectations of others. Letting my needs be spoken without attachment on someone else fulfilling them.

.......

The second time we were together he brought his tool bucket and fixed a cabinet in my Loft that had fallen off the hinge. He told me later that his hands were shaking so much he wasn't sure he would be able to fix it because all he wanted was to ask if he could kiss me.

Later on the couch when he did ask I climbed on his lap, looked in his eyes, put my arms around his neck and had the most amazing kiss of my life.

Since that kiss our work together has been learning to create the security and safety inside of our love. Creating our tea and toast rituals of trust and love without conditions, because holy shit did we arrive with conditions inside of so much pain and this unsatisfied desire to love.

We are both terrified of this attachment that seems to have been created between us in stardust (my most magical manifesting story) before we ever met. He is my tether to earth as I float in the sky. I am his anchor in the water as his fire burns strong.

I started a ritual of making a pot of stew as I would wait for him to arrive at night under the twinkle lights for our weekends together. We would eat and share stories for hours and then find ourselves naked together in front of the fire, starving for the other's touch and taste and words.

Our attachment created inside of those rituals, the rhythm of time. Stew. Stories. The touch that heals.

.......

After I pick them up from camp they get to organize their afternoon. They decide when they will swim, how much time they will get for tech, what the afternoon snack should be, early dinner or late dinner and if they need a family meeting to talk about anything. And for all the bickering they do, on this they always agree.

The other day I picked them up and told them that we could go to the library for an ice cream social at 6:30 that night. None of them were excited.

"Do you all not want to go?"

"Well, we really like how we do things every day and our systems. We don't actually want to break our routine."

Tea and toast. Toast and tea.

Children coming together from two families now creating another branch of family together. Attaching. Finding safety. Their own little tribe of ritual and connection.

.......

He arrives tonight. My bleed started yesterday and I am feeling tender and raw. I have the ingredients for stew. I feel like that woman shaking in the Loft with the anticipation of a first kiss that would feel like forever.

We'll have two nights together before the kids arrive.

Stew. Stories. Naked touch time.

And then we'll ready for the chaos and noise of the little ones who keep time in our hearts.

The beds are made. The tea pot is ready. The attachment strong.

xo

{Being mama} 42 days of practices and stories of nurturing, home and love...

{Being mama}

A 42 day practice in nurturing attachments, making home and becoming all the love.

When :: September 1st through Oct 12th 

Cost :: $42.00 or $75 for you and a gift to a mama you adore

$42.00 for you

$75.00 for you and a mama you adore

The four of them pile into the car and I hear them talking about planning a camping trip after their hike. The little voices are telling of how they want to rough it and bring only basic needs.

"I need to bring an apple though, can I bring an apple?"

"Oh totally, we should all bring apples."

"I want pistachios, can I have pistachios?"

"OK, pistachios and apples, but the rest we hunt for."

"Tacos. I am totally bringing tacos."

Being mama is the drives to camp, the wiping of tears, the band-aids, the stories, the amazement.

Being mama is the creation of a vibration of self turned into another. And becomes the setting of love.

We went out for dinner on the one year anniversary of our first date. He told me what surprised him the most about me was that I was like a Mother Earth, that my mothering and nurturing were my superpowers. He said that it wasn't just the way I mothered our kids, it was the way I mothered everyone. How deeply important taking care of people was to me, how it made me who I was.

All I ever wanted was to be a mama. To have a big family. To learn how to love inside of nurture, attachment and freedom.

When I met him I had healed so much inside of me that allowed my mothering to flow again in the ways that brought me and the kids alive. When we are lost, our mothering can become strained and broken. 

When I met him I had found that place again, the one that could see myself through his eyes, and know that I was once again being mama.

Being mama was not what I expected. It lifted me up, shook me out, challenged my knowledge of who I was.

Being mama is a journey I am constantly learning, adjusting and in awe of.

I fell to my knees crying in the kitchen. The kind of cry that rips you out from the inside and the noises primal and aching. The child who had challenged me for years mixed with the heartbreak inside of a marriage threatening to fall apart left me yelling and losing it. A mother lost. A woman longing for herself to come back. The result, pain and screams and melt downs and anger.

He came into the kitchen. He told me the truth. That the mother I had always longed to be, the mama that was born inside of me, was no longer there. I was lost. She was lost. What was left in her place was someone who had no idea who she was or what steps to take next.

And her heart was ripping. And on the kitchen floor, filled with sobs that became prayer she knew that all she ever wanted was to be mama. And she would do everything she could to find her way back to joy so she could adore once again being mama.

Being mama is becoming empathy for the one who will crack open as she is no longer just herself.

Being mama is finding our woman-self who will rise inside of the mama and love deep, hard, strong.

As I was learning to parent in a home as the only adult, we would have mac and cheese night when they would return to me from their dad's house. I would set the table with candles and use our beautiful blue platter with a little chip in it to serve. I could feel myself growing back into the mama I used to be. Inside of magical rituals. Waking the kids up with dance parties. Adventuring on road trips. Reading The Alchemist in the big bed together. Playing best thing/worst thing. Creating chore charts. Laughing after the lights go out and meditating to avoid homework.

Being mama was now led by pure joy, even inside of the devastating loss of a marriage. The middle one, the one who had brought me to my knees on the kitchen floor put his arm around me one day and said, "Mama, we are better now. I can feel it."

Within a year his melt downs and the anger that was inside of him started to ease. Being mama is believing that when we are our amazing woman-selves, we can create practices and attachments and the love that allows them to become completely themselves.

That is the beautiful work of being mama.

The stories, the learning, the play, the failures, the tantrums, the snuggles - all are being mama.

"Dear moon, when I splash the water on me could I please be able to fly?"

Their favorite rituals are around the moon. Full moon magical water, their crystals soaking up the energy and the little love notes. One of my boys always knows the night before a Full Moon, his body becomes wired and alive and he will feel sleepless.

"Mooooooooooommmmm, is it a Full Moon, my body is so crazy right now?"

They make New Moon wishes around the fire. Hang their wishes on the Dear Universe tree. The rituals and ceremonies and celebrations that allow me to infuse myself with my spirit gift them with honoring their rhythms and feel deep gratitude for their choices and feelings.

Each week we find a reason to have a celebration. These days it is celebrating on Thursday nights when my love returns to us for the weekend from his work in the city. They blow up balloons, plan dinner and cook it, pick out a dessert (because dessert). 

What I have learned from the other mamas in my life is invaluable. They have taught me how to make home, to deal with transitions (especially now with parenting after divorce), to handle a tantrum that lasts for hours, to make the every day special, to celebrate just because.

Being mama is the inspiration and connection to the tribe of mamas who circle us, teach us, become the everyday shamans of nurture.

Being mama is creating the simplest bits of magic for our little ones and creating beauty in tiny corners and moments.

The five little ones called a family meeting. I gave them each an ice cream cone, knowing that when our mouths are distracted just a bit, we listen that much better.

One wanted to talk about how he feels like his brother is being a bit mean to him and it is hurting his feelings. Another wanted to talk about getting positive attention rather than negative attention. And then there was the one who wanted to make us all laugh because she so loves when we all laugh. 

I told them I was starting to feel like a maid, that I needed more support around the house to keep things in rhythm. 

"Well, mom, here is the thing. You feel like a maid because you walk around cleaning up after us, picking up every little thing. If you stop doing that, you might not feel like such a maid."

Wisdom from the babes. 

"So I think you are right. Who will be cleaning up then if I stop being one step behind you?"

"Um, usssssssss I guess..." (And then he emptied the dishwasher in full amazement that I do that every day...)

Being mama is intuition, open hearts and ice-cream-cone wisdom.

Being mama is learning to guide them in picking up their banana peel and returning their shoes to the shoe corner and leaving the lunch box on the counter each day after school, especially when it is so much easier to just do it ourselves.

This year on September 2oth I will turn 42. 

Often I still wonder when I will grow up. And how I got here.

The three pregnancies I lost before my daughter was born. The colic she had for months as we learned to become parents inside of the chaos of a little body struggling to find peace. The decision to stay home with her and learn how to eventually create my own business. The surprise baby years later. 

Co-parenting with their dad who supports my new life and theirs as he stepped into his. Witnessing the way he has dealt with his grief and is creating space for surprises and joy for all of them.

Co-parenting with my love, who we manifested into our life. The man who teaches us so much and gives us play and adoration and safety. Kids who call each other 'bonus siblings' as we blend our families together inside of our love. We are in awe of how blessed we are and the gems of wisdom these kids are teaching us about ourselves.

Watching them grow and change, learn to swim, have a first girl (or boy) friend, honor their needs while creating boundaries.

My love calls the moments we are inside of with these little ones, the stories of our lives. We are trying to write them down, record them, honor them, hold them tight as days pass and more are written.

Being mama is letting go of expectation of what it will all look like or feel like or become because there is no way we could ever have known how hard, how much love, how all of it will unfold.

Being mama is the wonder and magic of time and tooth fairies and endless laundry piles and all the stories that become memories to anchor us together.

42 days of practices and stories and a circle of mamas

• the magic of ritual
• the woman-self inside the mama
• making home
• every day celebrations
• the love language of food
• sensuality of being a mama
• deep truths of the struggles
• prayer as morning coffee
• who are you now
• the woman that came before the mama
• sibling dynamics
• rhythms that flip it all around
• tribe support
• healing our hearts
• story prompts
• playful creativity
• photos that capture the stories of our lives
• mamas nurturing mamas
• beauty in the everyday
• honoring our needs and desires
• all the magic and joy and gifts of being mama

Each day for 42 days

• a morning prompt will arrive in your email inbox
• a private Facebook group will hold all the mamas in our tribe
• we will share the stories of our lives through words, photos and deep truths
• support from other mamas in every space of life
• videos filled with the inspiration of mamas (Mara Glatzel, Persephone Brown, Jenny Dunham, Lindsay Annana Mae Wilson, Kathy Hajduk Stowell, Amanda Arthur Krill, Keri Kettle, Cynthia Lee, Danielle Cohen and more) who have changed me inside of being mama
• the village of mamas to lift, witness, inspire, hold, adore and inspire you
• a virtual tribe swirling with all the magic of being mama

A 42 day practice in nurturing attachments, making home and becoming all the love.

When :: September 1st through Oct 12th 

Cost :: $42.00 or $75 for you and a gift to a mama you adore

$42.00 for you

$75.00 for you and a mama you adore

Being mama is the drives to camp, the wiping of tears, the band-aids, the stories, the amazement.

Being mama is the creation of a vibration of self turned into another. And becomes the setting of love.

Being mama was not what I expected. It lifted me up, shook me out, challenged my knowledge of who I was.

Being mama is a journey I am constantly learning, adjusting and in awe of.

Being mama is becoming empathy for the one who will crack open as she is no longer just herself.

Being mama is finding our woman-self who will rise inside of the mama and love deep, hard, strong.

Being mama is this beautiful work.

Being mama is all the stories, the learning, the play, the failures, the tantrums, the snuggles.

Being mama is the inspiration and connection to the tribe of mamas who circle us, teach us, become the everyday shamans of nurture.

Being mama is creating the simplest bits of magic for our little ones and creating beauty in tiny corners and moments.

Being mama is intuition, open hearts and ice-cream-cone wisdom.

Being mama is learning to guide them in picking up their banana peel and returning their shoes to the shoe corner and leaving the lunch box on the counter each day after school, especially when it is so much easier to just do it ourselves.

Being mama is letting go of expectation of what it will all look like or feel like or become because there is no way we could ever have known how hard, how much love, how all of it will unfold.

Being mama is the wonder and magic of time and tooth fairies and endless laundry piles and all the stories that become memories to anchor us together.

When transitions hurt.

I watched him drive away with all 5 of them in our truck and I slowly walked down the stairs to the house that has become my favorite place on earth.

I waved. Then turned. He honked the horn and inside of that sound I knew it was as hard for him to be inside of this new transition as it was for me. I turned and waved again.

I made my way through the house and found myself on the deck overlooking the water. The tears poured out of me in that way where you don't even realize you are about to cry, you just are.

This would be my first week with myself. Out of The Loft. Home at The Magic Lake House. I was out of the industrial mill building I had been calling home for the last two years, where there are people all around all the time. The week's without the kids were spent with my love sleeping next to me each night and with his daily visits as he works in the building.

The Lake House is quiet. Private. There aren't people walking to the coffee shop down the hall or sitting on the little cement deck. Cars don't come and go all day. The talking bus that stopped right outside my window, and would wake us at 6am each day doesn't have a route here.

It is birds. And the gray fox. And the sounds of boats on the water. The occasional squeal of delighted children jumping into the lake. The wind and rain are the sound machines.

I realized as I could feel my body shaking with the cry that had come over me, that this was the first time since leaving my house, since starting to co-parent, since divorcing, since the biggest transitions of my life that I wasn't inside of fight or flight.

There was someone at my side, caring for me. Offering me space to heal, to change, to find my next steps without fear.

My life for the last two years has been electricity charged fear and chaos. The fear has propelled me. Made me a bit crazy and alive but what it has done to my body feels devastating. And as I cried I could feel the hurt and the loss and the fear that have been lodged inside of me whisper that they were ready to go now. Their job was done. They protected the parts of me that had to survive on my own, to support these kids on my own, to be in constant fear of failing everything and everyone. And my body was exhausted. My belly bulging from the cortisol fight or flight that came from months of not knowing, from months of the most stress I have ever been inside of.

I haven't felt 'me' in so long.

Here I was on the deck of my favorite place on earth, sobbing, in the sunlight, releasing fears into the Universe to transform into my next becoming.

And for the last few days I have gifted myself water. And long walks. And yoga. And meditations. And a little jogging. And tinctures. And vitamins. And sleep. And eating what I want, when I want. Or not. Daydreaming into the water. Working in the way I used to, not about struggle for surviving but because this work is my dharma. It is about love and change and openings. And I miss them. And this is the greatest gift I will ever give them. Healing me so that they-he-we, all become safe.

I look in the mirror 6 days later, after the transition. A transition born of transitions. I can see me again. I can feel me again.

Last night he arrived.

We spent the first hour tangled in touch and words of adoration and the sexual charge that comes from having been apart. That first kiss after days without any touch from another human is bliss wielding joy.

Then I got on the computer under the setting sun over the water to chat with my magic making circle and he went down the dock to fish. I watched him as the sun melted down and the bugs were buzzing in my hair.

This is my new life. We have co-created it together. It has been hard. Work. The tearing down of old stories and the shit that has kept us fighting the other.

Flames. Ashes. Pain. Pushing. Struggle. Heart-break.

I could feel their gift as I watched his body relax from the week. As I could see his body physically relaxing now that he was back in my arms. On our dock. With his magic fish. Home. Transitioned. Loved more than any man has ever been loved before.

This is my new life. One born of co-creation inside of the magic of love. I am not meant to walk without him.

This is my new life. Learning to let him offer me support and nurture while I heal and love our children. While I let the Universe guide my dreams into a reality that I know will be better than what I have yet to vision.

This is our freedom plan Transitions that have become our new life.

The kiss of ease. Peace. The touch of everything we are dreaming inside of God's hands.

The kids come on Sunday and we will transition. I will line up the lunch boxes and water bottles and write the little notes about room assignments and projects and ways to be helpful and magical chores. I will be back inside of what is most comfortable to me. Being mama. Being love. Being surrounded by chaos and snuggles and bickering and feeding and the feeling at night when they are finally asleep and that first breath you take...

...as you transition again.

Coming home to the lake.

One of the little girls came up to me as I was picking the kids up from camp. She pointed to the words on my shirt, then looked around the room.

"Hey, there is someone else with the same words on their shirt. And yesterday there was another one."

I told her that those were my boys and the shirts were part of our family business in helping people feel amazing.

I am the only mom who shows up wearing a utility belt, leggings, cowboy hat and crazy hair. I remember being 17 and moving from Europe to this same state and having a bit of a different look and vibration. I loved it then because it played into my dramatic need to be all of me. And I love it now, because for the first time in a long, long time, I feel comfortable to show up as just me, all of me, again. Finding the freedom inside of authentically arriving each day (as mama-nurturer-business woman-lover-partner-home making goddess) instead of the safety inside of hiding behind the differences.

.......

I made a deal with myself when I moved out of The Loft that from the moment I stepped onto the earth, the sand, the ground at the Lake House, that I would allow myself to explore my next iteration fully.

There are a few layers to the exploration. One is my relationship with my lover, my best friend, my twin flame.

A few months ago I found an amazing healer to guide me through some crazy tough edges we were having inside of our relationship, which is the most intense thing either of us has ever felt.

At one of our sessions she said that we were both still showing up as protecting ourselves first, fighting for ourselves, for our safety. That most of our explosiveness and fights were because in our triggers we cut off our connection to empathy and compassion for the other and just start to save ourselves from the pain and fear of losing the other. Or of the hurt that has come from past experiences.

And then she talked about the water as metaphor.

How we can look into the water when it is still as glass and see ourselves clearly. And in partnership this happens when we aren't judging, placing our own fears on the other or being mean or manipulative. When we allow our love to be held with compassion and empathy, they can see themselves so clearly.

And then there are the ripples, the waves that come over the water and all of a sudden their image is shattered, broken up, morphed. They can't see themselves or be themselves. This is when we aren't giving them space and we are placing our own fears above our love for them. We take away their ability to see themselves, to feel themselves, to love us unconditionally because their own image is gone.

And then I started to cry.

Because metaphors. Because water. Because shit, that is how I want to love. I want him to feel safe and held and supported and to see himself as the amazing human he is.

And I want that. I want to have the adoration and care that will allow me to stand on the dock and see myself again. Or, for the first time.

.......

This past Sunday I came home to the lake. I cleaned the Loft from top to bottom, got in my van and drove all 5 kids home with me. There were tears from my Lucas when I showed him pictures of the Loft without anything inside of it. There was a beautiful conversation about how this is our home for the summer and how blessed we are, because who gets to live at a lake house all summer??? There was gratitude. There was the question over and over about when my love would arrive, they all love him beyond words.

And when he arrived I made waves. I could feel my entire body splashing the water and making it so rough he couldn't see himself or feel himself or be himself.

I was triggered and scared.

Then I remembered the promise I made to myself. That when I stepped onto the earth, the sand, the ground at the Lake House, that I would allow myself to explore my next iteration fully.

Inside of this iteration, inside of the trust of letting him care for me in ways I am still wrapping my head around, I want to stop fighting for safety. I want to stop showing up as my fear and making so many waves because I am terrified of being left.

This level of iteration changes us completely. If I choose to show up fully as me, fully fully fully me, all of me ... then he will be able to see himself, feel himself, trust himself.

What if I stop making these huge waves in the water and instead climb into our truck with my crazy hair and let the waves spill out of me as vibrational joy?

.......

Coming home to the lake. The earth. The sand. The water.

All of us together. All of us safe. All of us held.

Showing up like that shirt we all wear says...

Love 
Is 
My 
Super 
Power

Love is my superpower. It is time the reflections in the water allow us to feel that.

Leaving The Loft.

“If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire.”

― Haruki Murakami

We had decided to separate. The thought of moving out of the house was more than he could bare. Our pain was deep. The kids. Us. How do we navigate this newness. How do I allow him to have sadness and regret and start to crack open without trying to fix it, to fill in the cracks so he won't have to feel it?

.......

I woke up at 4am with a jolt.

I saw a circle of women. We were change and love and fierce because we were creating together.

In this circle all of the magic that was happening would ebb and flow through a space that held beauty and faith and change. That held light.

My life in that one moment changed and I find myself sitting here now, in this space of beauty, faith and change.

I was stepping into such deep truth in my life and this was the answer that came from the surrender into faith.

.......

It is a story I have told for 4 years. Of our decision to enter a soft separation. Of my decision to get The Loft.

It is a story of a disco ball manifested and hung as a symbol of all that was coming. That already was.

It is a story of letting go. Of loving someone enough to know that we would be happier inside of a new soul contract.

It is a story of the first young, alive lover to find me after a marriage decades long. New touch. Taste. Breath. And how he would crack me open.

It is a story of lifting up. Women brave enough to walk through her doors and sit in circle sharing words they didn't even know were there. The way they infused their spirits into these walls. The way they trusted this space to hold them.

It is a story of surprise and gifts. The one who helped me dream the space, gave me permission to leave inside of a secret note in my vision book, to make the crate wall, the dance in my truth. The tuna and cracker dates and the beauty she infused. And the one that would become my partner, my nurturer, the magic of coyoteloon. Who would come to pack boxes and bring me tea. The one who would teach me to release control. Who will lift a canoe onto her car or my heart when it is broken.

It is a story of creamy coffee in handmade mugs. In bed with new babies, best friends, snuggles, tears, giggles. Co-sleeping with friends. Attachment friendship-ing. The way one would share stories late at night as we piled into the big bed with the cool white sheets. The enchilada pie the other one made as she mid-wifed me through loss. The vision pages. The giggles. The coffee sipped. The complete unconditional love they taught me.

It is a story of Friday nights and Sunday fun-days. The huge bug that crawled all over the basement floor before the bed frame and how I would crack up when she described it to me. The way she made me feel at home in my own home. The letters to the Universe we would write sipping cocktails and wanting more. The good-byes we have said together. The nothing is the same now and today is amazing and amazing.

It is a story of sunsets. An old brick building filled with stories, framing a sky that held magic. Sitting on the deck having wine tastings and thai food and their birthday parties and wondering how something so urban and quite ugly could hold such amazing beauty. Coffee dates and tequila nights and magic cookie jars and surprise friendships and beauty and tears and change.

It is a story of space becoming a home. The three of them in our tribal living space downstairs. Moving them in, the first Christmas, the hamster who was freedom, the scooters in the hallways of their industrial home. Mac and cheese served on blue platters under the disco lights with cloth napkins and tellings of their day.

It is a story of a man. Manifested from a jar and a sticky note and a moth and his name and his gorgeous gray hair. The one that would ask to kiss me on our second date. And how instead of saying yes, I climbed onto his lap, my eyes looking into his eyes. The moment I knew he was my fire, and I his earth. Twin souls. The kiss that felt like melting into the person who had been searching for you his whole life.

It is a story of a brick wall. Photo shoots, videos, the stories told and the way I look back now and see the change in who I have become. Lines in new places on my face. Stress wrapped around my jaw. Deeper wisdom that only can be born through the manifestation of a life lived inside of the trust of surrendering to God, to the Universe, to the stardust that wants magic for us.

It is a story of saying good-bye. Today as walls become bare and the truck fills with the contents of a magical space filled with twinkle lights and faith, today we are saying good-bye. As he fills the holes in the walls and I drink a pot of coffee. As we make love for the last time in the big bed, under the white sheets, his fire and my earth connected.

It is a story of the eve of my new life. We are terrified, sad and filled with promise of what is to be. The gifts waiting inside of our new life. Together. The magic that swirls at the lake and our dreams of what we now can create and give and manifest. It started as a love story, became a love story and ends a love story.

.......

And the voices that came back echoed over and over… trust yourself, trust yourself.

And the signs appeared as if out of bubbles of trust.

Disco balls, texts with yes, Buddha heads, smiling eyes, women radiating me to open and trust.

In a deeply personal retreat circling with soul-sisters my own words found hanging on a wall that I might have forgotten I wrote:

When we step into the deepest level of care for ourselves, meaning we claim it, the dreams we never believed could come true start falling as though stars from the sky.

Magic.

Fierce, fierce magic.

.......

It is a story I have told, once before and over and over.

Today we say good-bye to The Loft.

Today is the Eve of my new life. The dream. The good-bye. The trust.

It is a story of prayer, which today is simply...

Thank you.

A moment before.

For me it is the details. Functionality of the coffee and tea station mixed with the beauty of the copper bowl where the tea bags rest and the little pitchers of creams. The color story of the flowers. The white balloons. The quotes scattered on walls and mirrors.

I am in transition, while living a life of transitions. A week with the kids. A weekend with the kids and my love's kids. A week without the kids. A weekend with my love.

As I prepare for the first Lift Up at The Magic Lake House I am packing up The Loft. Deciding what I will bring with me for the summer, what will go in storage and await my new home (when I find it) in the fall.

The women coming to the Lift Up, the first in this space that we knew could hold my dream of retreats on the lake, are all perfect. Of course. The way they found me or my work online or through a friend. The way they chose to take a small break from their day to day to be here. In unknown. Because who really knows what happens at a Lift Up other than women on the other side of a Lift Up.

This one feels different. As they often do inside of the many iterations of time and knowing. This one feels like home. Like safety. Cozy. Fluid. Instead of nerves, all the laughter and connection and deep knowing that will carry us into our time doing the 'work.'

I am in The Loft looking at the jar of chopsticks. Obsessing. Do I bring the chopsticks to the lake? Do I pack them?

I wash out the jar and rinse each chopstick. I will bring them. No, don't bring them. Pack them. Or bring some. Well, if you bring some why not just bring the jar?

Details that help me not focus on the reality of the sadness of packing. Details that help me not focus on the unknowns. Details trying to keep me from the mystery of this transition.

I pack them. I can get chopsticks just for the lake. Maybe with flowers and gold on them.

The women coming to the Lift Up are blessing this space. They are my transition. They are the beauty of my work now flowing into a new physical space. They are the trust that sometimes I lack. They are the manifestation of wanting to fall back in love with my work. They are on their journeys. They are sunshine. They are stories. They are lifting up just by making the decision to be here.

The moment before they arrive snacks go out on the white tray. The moment before everything becomes magic.

I take a moment before to listen to the lake. To feel my transition. The antlers anchor me, connect me from what has been to this new life that I have wrestled with deserving, understanding, fighting against because I am so in love.

And that love scares me. Because it is endless. Unconditional. Filled with Lift Ups. The work. The women. The lake. The moments before. The details. The change. And probably some new chopsticks.

Catching your light.

I am inside of deep conflict with my body, my spiritual home, the place that is where I feel all the things.

I wrestle with the ups and downs of gaining weight and losing weight and I have since I was young.

I love the freedom I feel when my body is light and less and not bloated. I get addicted to the feelings inside of controlling what I eat and how I eat. These days it has become less about dieting and more about the foods I know make me feel like my best self. But. There is always that twinge of awareness that I get a certain kind of high when I lose the weight and am not obsessing daily about how big my belly is.

And then there is my stress. When I am stressed and inside of fear and struggle I am not able to control anything. I have too much wine. I eat at strange times, late at night, long after my body needs to be fed. I ignore the foods that make me feel amazing and eat a handful of chips for a meal and then more wine later. There is always the twinge of awareness that I am pushing myself away, deeper into all the validation of why I am not worthy of better care, love, affection.

When I am in the middle, I am catching my light. I drink water. I have lots of tea in place of wine. I move my body and sweat. And I laugh, seriously the most amazing tool for feeling gorgeous. I run until my breath is heavy. I have one glass of wine. I don't berate myself for the extremes, I simply flow in the now of who I love to be.

When I am in the middle, I force myself to look through my lens each day. As though it was mandatory, like those sips of water or each breath of sleep at night. And it is in my lens that I fall back in love with my soul. And my spiritual home.

When I am in the middle, catching my light, I don't care about the scale and I start to fit into my clothes again. Without the drama of deprivation.

When I am catching my light the person who I am putting first is the one who burns out when she nurtures everyone except herself. She is learning. She is 41, and learning this. Still.

I feel embarrassed that at 41 I still struggle with my body. That it feels out of my control or too within my controlling nature. I have the deepest empathy for others, I understand and hold their struggles. With myself the forgiveness is a battle. Lose the weight, then you are lovable. Repeat. Rinse. Wash. Dry. Ring out. Damn it. Exhausting.

In the middle I call myself back. I become white space, radiating light. My light is my confidence, my sanguine, my adoration of me.

When I am catching my light, I feel sexy. I lead with my sexy. I find my sexy each day.

I am thirsty. 
Hydrating. Fueling. Moving. Loving. 
I am thirsty. 
Calling myself back. 
Catching my light. 
In the middle.

I feel embarrassed that I circle back to this place. Of discomfort. Of wanting to go back into control. I feel ashamed and then I take myself back to the the place where I feel magical and beautiful and sexy and sanguine.

The middle. And I go back into the practice, the soul work of catching my light.

This last year has been harder on my body than pregnancy or chronic pain has ever been. The wear and tear from the emotional loss of a marriage and learning to parent as a single mom and stepping into the really hard work of learning to love again is obvious. I feel panicky leaving the house. I want to hide. The parts of me that judge my worth based on my physical self have been loud and running the show.

This discomfort is sometimes the only thing that will carry us into a deeper love. It is the vow to ourselves to take the truth of where we are and flip it into part of our joy at living this beautiful life.

I am going back into the practice. And I invite you to walk with me. To be honest and true and clear and thirsty together.

Saying Good-bye to Ollie

"We buried a shoe box in the back yard yesterday filled with stuff for Ollie in heaven. A couple bones, his collar, a leash, a ball and a remote. I think the ceremony of it was good for the boys, having a chance to say goodbye."

Their dad sends me the text about their ceremony. The tears have been many.

We watched him for weeks slowly stop eating and wasting away. It was torture. Mostly, selfishly, because I wasn't there. And I am no longer the woman of the house where he lives. I am no longer the one he cuddles with.

He was a hard dog. Crazy. A jumper and insane around other dogs and adults. Our middle son called him his twin, they have had a love affair over the last 4 years. He says it feels like he lost a part of his family. Because he did.

All I had to do was look him in the eye sternly and he would drop the remote control or the shoe or the toy. He would hang his head and look up at me, wondering if he would get love in return.

"Good boy."

His favorite words. Other than "walk."

The transitions and transformations we have been inside of are wild. The separation. The divorce. New partners in my life and their dads life. Our hamster dying. Preparing to move out of The Loft. One child going into middle school. One child about to close out her time in middle school. One child asking me to move him to a new school with "friends he can trust." All the unknown.

And saying good-bye to Ollie.

So. It isn't Friday. It is Tuesday night. It is a glass of wine. It is a wok on the stove ready to make dinner of zucchini noodles and mushrooms and carrots and onions and anything else I feel like throwing in. It is my partner walking in the door soon and letting me nurture him.

It is the connection that their dad and I were able to have with each other during this time with a sick dog. Our dog. Our new way of being together. The unknown.

It isn't Friday. So many of you reached out after not getting my letter on Friday asking if I was ok. I live and work in real time. This is possibly a problem long term. Or maybe it is the answer. The answer to living authentically and living inside of a business authentically.

I won't really know. But I can accept. And pray. And write on a Tuesday after saying good-bye to Ollie.

It is so much more than saying good-bye to a dog. It is embracing a becoming that none of us understand yet. A becoming born of loss and leaving and choosing and loving and patience (which I have little of) and prayer.

I wasn't at the ceremony. The cord from their life with him is no longer attached to my life.

I sit at the sushi restaurant the night we told the kids about the dog. After they went home with their dad.

I see my love texting. He hands it to me. My middle son, Ollie's twin is texting him. They are talking about the dog and the sadness and they are planning to have a ceremony at the Magic Lake House together, with our family, the one that we are growing and nurturing and loving up in the most beautiful ways.

My love says to him, "Would you like to do that?" And he says he would.

And I cry tears into my green tea on a Sunday. We have the most amazing families now.

I say good-bye to Ollie again.

I live inside all of the questions.

Today is Tuesday. The mushrooms are fragrant and sizzling. The wine is poured.

And again. And still. I think of my new life. The family I am growing. I feel blessed and sad and new.

Good-bye Ollie. I love you. We love you. Thank you for choosing us.

Sexy. Sanguine. And you.

What :: 4 weeks of sexy and sanguine soulwork prompts, challenges and explorations

Why :: Confidence is HOT.

When ::  June 13th

Cost :: $69

Sexy. Sanguine. And you.

Sexy and Sanguine $69.00 USD Magic Making Circle Members 2016 $49.00 USD

Your rogue ecstasy, your story of fantasy, your beautiful spaces?

Have you embraced the romance of waking up in your skin?

Can you feel the sensuality inside of grey, the rawness of an orange sky, the taste of a kiss full of red wine?

Do you reflect your light in others and draw their curiosity of pleasure into you?

Have you ripened? Have you ripened?

In a past life/future life have you stood in the blossoming of your sexuality with your senses exploding, in the gift of feeling?

And from that self that was or will be can you feel her guiding you?

Are you sexy and sanguine?

Do you feel belly passion?

Can you close your eyes and paint your beauty by numbers?

Is there a knowing in your toes, your ears, your breasts that each piece of you is loved and sacred and on the journey towards whole?

Is there a candle waiting to be lit that is celebrating you, celebrating her, celebrating this gorgeous life that you have claimed?

And where can you whisper ‘oh yes. oh yes. oh yes’?

Let me take you there. To the yes. To the roughness of your edges and the dance of your awakening.

Do you truly know her?

Sexy :: Stimulating. Erotic. Desirable. Appealing. Hot.

Sanguine :: Bloodred. Temperament of cheerfulness. Confidence.

When I was 22 I was out walking with a friend. I had long blonde hair, worked out often, was a champion dieter, known for really good skin and living in Seattle pursuing acting, 2 years away from marriage.

My friend said to me, “Whenever we are out I just watch men look at you, turn their heads.” 2 days later I went to a Salon and cut off all my hair. Not in the cute or sexy-declaration-of-myself-as-a-woman way, in the I-don’t-want-to-be-seen way. It terrified me. My sexual self, at 22, she scared me. I wanted to hide from her.

While many 22 year olds were out exploring their sexuality and beauty I found myself wanting to stuff it into a little box and find a hiding place for it. Part of my dieting history had so much to do with not wanting to be seen.

I was terrified of myself. Of my skin. Of my beauty. Of my yes.

This may not have been your 22 year old story. It may have happened after your marriage vows. Or when your first baby made her appearance. Maybe it was a story of a younger age or the fear of turning 50.

Or maybe your sexual confidence just slowly faded as the role of young woman turned into wife, mother, worker, nurturer, tender, multi-tasker.

Confidence is alluring, hot, sexy. Each year many of us choose a guiding word or phrase that will be the feeling we want to draw into our experiences, and it is a powerful practice. When I created this course last year my guiding phrase was gracefully sexy. All to lead me further into hot confidence.

Confidence is gracefully sexy.

Managing finances is gracefully sexy.

Feeling delicious in your skin is gracefully sexy.

Creating healthy boundaries is gracefully sexy.

SEXY AND SANGUINE WOMAN KNOW…

• boundaries are beautiful.
• dreams come true from feelings.
• closets are sanctuaries.
• the shade of lipstick that lights them up, or the perfect lipgloss to plump.
• just when breakfast is for dinner and that bubbly can happen anytime, anywhere.
• the part of their body they always hated can actually guide their pleasure.
• pleasure.
• how to hold a gaze.
• how to receive. Really.
• how to stand in front of a mirror naked.
• to kiss and say hello before listing off complaints.
• beauty is in the details.
• how to hold space.
• feeling sexy is inside and out.
• that iterative living is gorgeous.
• how to take risks.
• saying yes is a turn on, after learning to say no.
• that listening changes everything.
• how to follow their animal spirit guide or tarot card into sacred space.
• that hot confidence is a practice.
• how to walk into a room and really see.
• how to ask the questions that flip it all around.
• that hot confidence is fierce magic.
• that an awakening is non-negotiable.

What you’ll need for this course…

• A camera, iphone is great
• Some apps for your picture editing which I'll share with you at start
• A journal to poem and vision in, I love Moleskines
• Some white space, clear the calendar a bit for some sexy and sanguine prompts
• A hot date, with yourself, with a girlfriend or many, with your lover… in celebration

How it will work...

• One prompt a day for 28 days alternating between photo prompts and soulwork prompts
• Guest posts from women who have made a practice of loving and photographing their bodies
• A FB group where we will gather and share our photos and our soulwork
• An instagram hashtag for online sharing, though those photos will be the more cropped versions ;)
• 4 weeks of learning to feel incredibly sexy in our skin

I look at who I am now after two years of this sexy and sanguine guiding soulwork and I am blown away. I feel gorgeous in my skin. I take my really bad days and I flip them around by getting infront of my camera. I made some huge life shifting decisions in this last year that took me from an edge of pain and unknowing into joy and movement.

I learned to spend time with my belly, the part of my body that gave me the most angst, torture that I had carried since childhood.

I photographed my belly, spent time adoring it and let myself lead my sexuality with this part of me that for so long had been hidden as though it was what made me unworthy of love. I look at the pictures of me now I can't believe I am the same woman. I feel like I have grown new skin. Every part of my cells seem to have changed into something lighter and filled with compassion and adoration for my own eyes.

And then. There are still the days that challenge me. That take me back to the soul work. Over and over. Back to looking through the lens. Back to the compassion that can get so lost. And when that happens I run this course again. For myself. And you.

My invitation to you is to come along for 4 weeks but to know that this journey will last into your year of 2016. It will be the beginning of a practice into deep sexy and sanguine living. I believe it will change your life.

Looking at yourself through the lens, doing the soulwork prompts, letting other women adore you and see you, you will not leave the same woman. You will leave with your sexy and sanguine in your soul.

I KNOW, YOU HAVE SOME QUESTIONS...

Do I have to get naked? Nope. But most of the women do in some way start to look at their body, their skin, their nakedness through the camera. Often it is just the curve of a hip or their shoulder and arm in the sunlight. You absolutely do not.

Do I need to share all my photos in the group? You can share whatever feels good to you. Or share them with your partner privately. Or keep them all to yourself. This is about you seeing you through your lens. I will say one of the most life changing parts of this course is seeing other women's bodies and the words that flow back to them and lift them. I am  in awe of the beauty that I am met with each day inside of this circle.

I am taking your Magic Making Circle, will I be able to do both? You absolutely can. What I always suggest is that you carve out a little bit of time each day for this soul work, kind of like the ritual of a cup of coffee or morning shower. The MMC course is weekly prompts, giving us time to explore and take big actions and this course is daily. Tiny bites of prompts. I deeply believe that both work together.

We will also be able to use this course as a great reference for the work we are doing in circle.

I know you have more questions. Email me at hello@hannahmarcotti.com and I'll find an answer or two just for you.

Becoming she.

I cross my eyes and the brown wooden slats of the deck railing double. As they become two I can see through them. I can see the lake glistening behind each one. What seems solid now has this magical transparency and I imagine reaching my hand into them like when you slip your skin into water and you somehow are part of that water.

.......

The glass jar with coconut sugar is sitting next to the coffee jar. I eye it. Both my parents drink their coffee sweet. When my girlfriends stay with me one of my joys is fixing them coffee and serving it to them in bed or wherever they have cozied up for the morning. They like it sweet. I don't know how much sugar to add so I always sip it before bringing it to them. It feels like dessert in a cup. I don't drink sweet coffee. It is one of the rules that I forgot I had made, that is so deep inside of me.

I grab the jar and stir in a spoonful of this gorgeous brown sparkling powder. I sip. Add more. Stir. Sip.

The sweet coffee in one hand, my computer in the other. My ankle still aching from a sprain a few weeks ago won't allow me to sit cross legged, even though that is how I have always written. Cross legged. With my coffee with no sweet.

I tuck one leg underneath myself and look out at the water. I sip. It feels strange and my body is confused. I go inside and pour a second mug. This time without the sweetness. Only the familiar.

Sip. That one doesn't taste like the comfort I have remembered. It hasn't in weeks. As though something changed inside of me and the she who drank her coffee this way isn't inside me anymore.

.......

I went through my closet and pulled out my kimono collection. I fell in love with kimonos a couple years ago and started collecting them but never wore them. I told myself I was collecting them for retreat photo shoots or beach cover ups or...

The way the sleeves drape and the fabric folds feels strange on my skin. It is new. It is different. I take the kimono I have been staring at for weeks off. I try a different one. The only way to move through new feelings as a highly sensitive person is to let yourself be in them for a bit longer than you think you are able to.

I feel beautiful draped in their fabric. I feel hungry for feeling beautiful again. I feel. I feel. Oh boy, do I feel.

.......

Neither coffee feels right. The sweet one I keep coming back to, allowing myself to be inside of the change, the 'rule breaking' just a bit longer than I am comfortable with.

I adore coffee. It has been my warmth and desire for how I wake up since as long as I can remember. When I was pregnant was the only other time it didn't taste right. Because this being inside of me needed something different and I was in charge of listening and growing that little seed into a beautiful human.

Now it seems I am growing myself. The she who is on her way. Already here and asking me to be inside of her just a bit longer than I am comfortable with because that is the only way I can learn to integrate the newness.

She wants to wear her kimonos. She wants to do crazy things with her hair. She wants to eat toast and put sweet in her coffee even though, especially because, it is against the rules. She wants to break from patterns and behaviors that have her questioning who she is and her worth and value. She wants to be able to sit down and have a beautiful conversation inside of truth without falling apart or acting like a child. She wants to believe that she can slide her hand through the transparent wooden slats as she crosses her eyes but not her legs and that when she reaches through to the other side of whatever is beyond, she wants to believe that she will be held and safe and loved just as the water holds her body when she is able to trust. She wants to learn to put her face under that water and hold her breath and swim to her newest edges. 
.......

I sip each one again. Then put on water for green tea. The space between the two, the was and the becoming needs room to breath. My job is to love them both up. Release the discomfort I have been allowing myself to sit in for longer than I am comfortable so that I may feel comfort again.

The toast pops up and the mayo starts to almost melt into its warmth as the runny egg and soft slice of cheese top it. Toast. And tea. A kimono sweater. A hand reaching through transparent double slots to the magic beyond them, where only seconds ago stood solid bars claiming space.

I want to tell you the truth.

There is a row of birch trees lining one part of the lake that we like to play around and take pictures at magic hour. All four kids (the teenage fifth often does not join us) sing and dance on the thin little strip of road that now joins the island to land. This one spot feels like freedom to me.

And I am afraid of losing all of it. I am afraid of losing the family we are growing. I am afraid of the judgment being thrown in my direction because I am so different than anything that part of his life was accustomed to. I am afraid of our conflict and struggles, holding on to old old patterns that we are unable to break on our own.

.......

My seven year old is being bullied at school because of his shoes. They aren't up to standard it seems. I took him shopping for new shoes, before knowing this, but suspecting. He wanted shoes that tied so I guessed he was being picked on for the velcro. After trying on every pair in the store thoughtfully and with laps down the aisle to test them out, he settled on a pair.

He kept smelling them for the new shoe smell. He couldn't stop touching them and talking about them. He wore them to school and was bullied worse. He was punched in the feet and kids stepped on his shoes all day, making them dirty and hurting his heart.

And I am afraid I can't protect him. Make it better. I am afraid that I am the mama bear who loses her cub. I am afraid that this is just the beginning of something that will become much worse.

.......

In less than two months I will be moving out of The Loft. My furniture will go in storage and I will stay at the magic lake with the kids for the summer while they have their camp adventures. When August starts to wind down I am trusting that my next home will be known. I have an entire huge vision board all about home and space and 'the tale of a house.' I have some crazy new dreams around what will come next.

And I am afraid that I won't be able to manifest it. I am afraid of dreaming bigger, again. I am afraid that how I want to feel inside of this new life will be blocked by my fear of not deserving. I am afraid of not being able to provide for my children as a single parent.

.......

The truth is that I manifested the most amazing human being to come into my life to challenge me to work on healing parts of myself that have been crying out for years. And I believe I am here to challenge him around his. The truth is, this kind of intense love and intense history of fear and loss is hard shit to be inside of.

The truth is I want nothing more than to love him and care for him and become so much more beautiful and truthful and vulnerable inside of that love.

And the truth is that my little one's story of bullying is not mine. This is his journey and he is learning to make choices and understand his feelings and I can provide him with the tools and the support and be a mama bear in all the right places around this.

The truth is watching the innocence fade because you can never go back hurts my heart. Because I remember it. This is him walking into his next iteration. As I stand as close as he will let, while he leads. And I trust his steps.

And the truth is that home is my container of safety and beauty and where I work. I am a lover of my space, the textures, the pillows, the arrangement of beauty on the walls and the dishes stacked just so. It is where I love and nurture and host and play and create.

The truth is manifesting this space is part of the freedom that I have claimed. And I am really good at manifesting. Like, really good. The truth is, I will find this home and it will become part of the joy and ease and surrender.

And the truth is that I am exhausted. Deep in my bones, down to my toes and in my elbows and dreams, exhausted. The truth is I can't do this all alone. The truth is I don't want to. The truth is I am ready to now peel away the next layer of my fear, by standing in it. Telling the truth of the fear. And the truth of the truth on the other side of the fear.

I can feel the other side. It is pulsing below my feet.

.......

And we walk down to the birch trees. I root down into the magic. The fear. The truth that must be told so the future will be born of the dreams of love and trust and home. I am afraid. While I trust each step under my feet.

Raining Tears

I was excavating into my past worlds, past self.

I found things I had forgotten. Memories. Times faded and only brought forth through the recordings that hold them.

She wrote, five years ago...

FIRST THERE IS THE DREAM. THEN THE FEAR.

DREAMING ABOUT -- WE SEE THE LOVE WE COULD HAVE, THE PLACES OUR FEARS COULD TAKE US.

DOING, FEELING, ACTING -- WE SHOW OURSELVES THE AMOUNT OF LOVE WE CAN HOLD. FOR OURSELVES.

ARE WE ALLOWED TO LOVE OURSELVES THIS MUCH THAT WE UN-BURRY EACH FEAR, UNWRAP THEM LIKE LITTLE PRESENTS?

FEAR OF OWNING OUR BEAUTY.

FEAR OF NOT BEING ABLE TO FEEL LOVE FOR ANOTHER SO DEEPLY THAT WE CAN REALLY LISTEN TO THEM. AND ALLOW THEM TO GROW AND BLOSSOM.

FEAR OF SUCCEEDING, FEAR OF BEING AMAZING. FEAR OF KNOWING JOY IN ITS SIMPLICITY.

FEAR OF BEING TRAPPED AWAY FROM ACTUALLY.

CAN WE LOVE OURSELVES THAT DEEPLY? AND IF SO, WHAT THEN?

THE DREAMS CONTINUE. AND THEY ARE SO MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL.

She was the one who taught me to dream. She was the one who brought me to this place of so much change and light and chaos.

And now I am raining tears. I am radiating energy. 

I am choosing to remember the woman who was so brave, so brave I can barely believe she exists inside of me.

The losses from the past want to creep in and do the talking. But she wants me to see the dreams. Feel the dreams. Retrace them. Play dot-to-dot and connect to the ones that are about to come.

She was the one who taught me to understand joy. To teach it. To find words for it.

.......

I've been trying to go back into my old home, excavate the past from the basement and the attic and the walls and the shelves. So much of me still resides in a life that is no longer mine but holds so much of me.

I have to do the work slowly. I get so overcome by emotion that I feel lost for days, weeks. It is a shedding and remembering and moving through all at once.

It is raining tears that are growing the sprouts of my becoming.

When the dog got sick last week, he lost about 15 pounds in 2 weeks. We got scared. He has become a burden for my ex and quite lost to me as I no longer live with him. My 10 year old says that he and the dog were separated at birth and then found each other again. (The dog is half his age.)

I sat at the vet for hours on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. I waited for blood work. Every time the vet would talk to me I would tear up and my voice would catch with the emotion I was trying to force down into my throat. Into my heart. Into somewhere that could help me hold it.

I felt like I was a part of him again. Of the family I had left, that included the dog and the man I co-parent with. I am at a loss for how to be in relationship with this man now. How do we talk? What do we share? Should we be spending time together with the kids? Who are we to each other now. The sadness and hurt in his eyes when I am with him, push me away because I feel the guilt. Still now. More now. That I left.

.......

I made him turkey and sweet potatoes at the house and fed him and snuggled with him. He made the noise he used to make when he was so happy and in love and sleepy.

He didn't throw up, kept it down. Progress. 

Then back to the vet in the morning. I bring the kids to school so he can bring the dog in. We text about how he is doing. 

Five years ago I would have been crying into his shoulder. Now our communication is a life time of together inside of the few words in texts and brief encounters.

Because I don't know yet who we are. 

She brought me to where I am with no trail of how to move forward. I need to own how much still frightens me about all of this. I need to listen to him more and watch him grow into his new life. I need to ask him how I can be more supportive. I need to ask him who we are becoming. Because I don't know on my own.

.......

There is this intense longing to reconnect with so many from so long ago who were part of the chaos of burning it all down. My world got smaller and smaller as I opened the door of separation. The boundaries and the bubbles around myself tighter and tighter so that I could take one more step into unknown.

I could not hold all the people who I loved. I had to trust that they would understand and let me walk through the messiness of my life, let me crash and burn and ache and fall.

Trust that they would let me have the feelings I had to feel. 

FIRST THERE IS THE DREAM. THEN THE FEAR.

Raining tears. Radiating energy. Calling forth. Cycling from the dreams into the fear and then back again.

I want to walk with my eyes back open. I want to figure out how to do this all differently. I want to not be afraid of saying, "I'm hurting. This isn't working. What can we do differently?"

I want to ask for what I need. I want to snuggle the dog and hear the noise he makes for me.

The intense change I am craving is going to create some crazy-making for a while. The highly sensitive parts of myself are smart enough to know that. The fears will follow.

FEAR OF BEING TRAPPED AWAY FROM ACTUALLY.

CAN WE LOVE OURSELVES THAT DEEPLY? AND IF SO, WHAT THEN?

THE DREAMS CONTINUE. AND THEY ARE SO MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL.

Once I was 17

I remember the first time I lived inside of questioning my body. When I was 8 years old or so. I was taking a ballet class and I wore a t-shirt over my leotard. I was the only girl who did this. I wanted to cover my belly. Since a child I have had this lower belly bulge. It has made me question my body and my beauty my whole life.

Isn't that amazing? That one spot on our entire gorgeous selves can make us question everything? Worth. Value. Love. Beauty. Desire. Longing.

As we got closer to the recital the teacher came up to me and said that for the final rehearsals I would have to take off the shirt. All I can describe that feeling as, is fear. Deep, fear.

Of being judged. 

.......

In high school I flipped that fear into full blown rebellion. I was a vegetarian-peace loving-outspoken actor who would protest wars and wear black and listen to The Smiths. In an army school. I took my fears and my shyness and my sensitivities and let them lead my next iteration. Living in Europe was comfort to my feeling different as I never once felt weird in my time off the base or outside of the army school.

I decided if I was going to be judged, then why not do it up. I loved the feeling of being different. I was 16 and free.

.......

I returned from Europe at 17, started school in New Hampshire. I wore leggings every day with clogs and big wool socks (to serve as leg warmers, at this time finding leg warmers was not easy) and a scarf that I wrapped around my head to hold my hair back every day.

Patrick, my kids dad, said the first time he saw me, he had never seen someone like me. And he knew that I was different, which is what drew me to him.

Once when I was 17, I never questioned myself.

.......

My friend Chelsae and I were looking at photos and videos of me when my third little one was 2 years old, I was 36, and we were talking about how different I was. I had been trying to become the perfect mother and wife and health coach. I cut all my hair off. I straightened it instead of wearing it in the waves and braids and messiness that I had when I was 17.

I was playing a role. Trying on something new. Iterating again.

Chels is an artist and much younger than me. She started giggling and said, "Isn't that funny that we met and loved each other then? Because that you was so not who I am drawn to."

I was playing a character. I had iterated back into the fear of being judged. I longed to fit in. To blend. To take a break from being the one who stood out. Who was different. 

Who was judged. Because being different is a set up for judgment.

I needed a break. As I often do. I have iterated back and forth my entire life. Changing to please others or to please myself.

.......

At 36, I started to grow my hair out and I pierced my nose. Something I had longed for since I was 17 years old.

At 37, my first tattoo.

At 38, a soft separation from husband.

At 39, an epic scavenger hunt around Providence to celebrate who I was becoming.

At 40, a new home, a new start. 

At 41, I find myself once again questioning everything about who I am.

My choices. My body. My lifestyle. 

I am afraid that I bring more negativity and stress to my new love's life than I bring him joy. I am afraid that I have gained too much weight from the stress of this last year to be seen as beautiful. (Circling back to the belly.) I am afraid that I can't sustain supporting my children on a business that I am creating each day. I am afraid that I am more alone now, in the midst of so many that I am trying to love up and nurture and hold. I am afraid that I am going to lose all my hair. I am afraid that those who judge me will make me question everything about who I am. 

Like the little girl who was terrified to take off her t-shirt.

And be judged.

.......

Once when I was 7 years old, I was fearless. I didn't know that I might look different or be different or ever be judged.

Once when I was 17 years old, I felt a freedom in my belly, in my center, and I longed to be loved, held, taken care of, told I was beautiful.

Once when I was 41 years old, I was afraid. I had so much unknown before me, and all I could, can do, is pray. 

Once when I was another age, in another time, she will know what I didn't know. I will have iterated over and over. I will have learned in my past from my future self. And my future self will love up the one that was.

.......

The t-shirt goes on. Then off. In fear. Fearless. Judgement. Shining.

I am the wing that you can see, bold and bright, and the one that is the shadow. That is yet to become. That is becoming.

Once I was 17 years old. I felt beautiful. And all I wanted was to be loved. To have someone to love.

Once I was 17 years old with the desires that have all manifested.

And so I must begin again. Iterate. Question. 

I fear my body. I fear the future. I fear the choices I am making. I fear that I am not beautiful or able to bring or be loved.

In this fear of judgement, I begin again. At 41. And once and still and now, I learn to be free and feel the joy that knowing who you are will bring.

.......

Once I was 7 years old and I wanted him to find me. To find him. To have all of our babies. To grow plants and play house. To find my house. To love them up. To be adored. To spend the rest of my life taking care of him as he takes care of me.

To watch our children grow into 7 and 17 and 36 and 38 and 41.

While we sit, holding hands, remembering when we were 7 years old. 

I am questioning everything. The only feeling I can describe it as, is fear.

Once I was 41 years old. And everything before me was unknown. And filled with more joy than I ever thought possible.

Why women should fear circles of women.

When I was in 3rd grade I was on the edges of a circle of girls who were friends. I was always a bit 'different' and fitting into a group was never my strong suit. I was highly sensitive and wanted adoration from my teachers over all else. I always had a crush on a boy, and would shyly adore him from afar. My young life I always had one close friend at a time, often who would move in and out over the years depending on if we were in class together or not, or who our other friends were at the time.

I remember one fall day we went outside, I think to research leaves on trees or something, and we could bring blankets and towels out to sit on while we worked. When we came back in the girls who I had been sitting with, who I thought were accepting me into their friendship circle, shook out their blanket on the floor and brown dry leaves got everywhere.

The teacher became angry and asked who had done it. One of the girls said it was me. And then they all agreed. 

And then the girl who never got into trouble, was in trouble. My sensitive heart was beating so fast and I started to feel tears in my eyes. I wanted to disappear, to go somewhere that would save me from the feelings, the hurt.

They laughed. They put me on the outside. I don't believe to this day any of them would have done that if it hadn't been the collective strength of them as a group.

From then on my story with friendships with groups of girls mimicked that moment. I would trust, then become bullied and made fun of. I wasn't adept at sports so the ridicule continued well into junior high and high school. I couldn't speak up for myself or defend my emotions and so I would run and hide, usually deeper into myself.

.......

But I craved these circles. I needed them. I could find ways to nurture them and hold them and guide them. And then the mean girls would surface and blow it all apart. Repeat.

I wasn't the picture of perfection. I would get mean too. I would get hurt and say things that I wished I could take back. This crazy fight or flight would come up inside of me, and usually I would do both.

.......

My mom tells the story of me as a young child sitting on the porch with some of the neighborhood kids. I came inside and starting getting a bowl of ice. When she asked what I was doing I told her that everyone was fighting so I wanted to give them something else to do with their mouths to distract them.

And it worked. Maybe the first prompt I ever gave. Ice meditation.

.......

My eating disorder started in High School. I realized that if I restricted my food intake my body started looking more like what women believed they should look like. I loved the control I had over my weight.

I had a friend who I would silently compete over losing weight with. We would go on the same diets, compare our numbers on the scale. She was so gorgeous and I kept trying to look more like her. If I lost weight she would notice every time and point it out. I could feel myself being 'weighed' every time we were together.

I still believe that the skinnier I am, the more people will like me, want me. I know better, I truly do. I also know how many times I am sitting with a group of women who look amazing, who are gorgeous, and I listen to them talk about what is wrong with them. What diet they are on. How they restrict themselves. How they torture themselves with the scale. And as I sit and listen, I go right back into the questioning of what is wrong with me, of why I have put on the same 10 pounds over and over.

Because when they talk to themselves that way, they are talking to me. If I talk that way, I am talking to every other woman listening.

.......

I should fear circles of women. You should fear circles of women. And we do.

.......

What I have learned about fear is how powerful it can be to keep us away from something or to pull us towards it and wrap us inside so we can explore from the shadows just what we desire and what to become.

My fear of circles of women created over the last 6 years thousands of women circling together, riding the edges of their fears of sharing in fullness, of the vulnerability in their truths, of being seen.

My fear of circles of women created communities where we have learned that truth and trust and listening without judgment (or being honest about our judgement so we may learn from it) have become places to be lifted and lift.

My fear of circles of women created what has for me become home. Home in the safety of other women holding space, telling others how beautiful and kind and brave they are.

My fear of circles of women created the kind of change we search for in self help books and gyms and diet programs and therapy and addiction. Change that isn't found in any of those things because they are all about what is wrong and broken. 

My fear of circles of women created change that I bear witness to when a man writes me an email thanking me for what has happened inside of his relationship with his wife since she found these circles. When a young woman writes to me and tells me that what I teach has changed the way she breathes. When a woman whose bleed has stopped and she didn't know who she was anymore until she circled, tells me that she has found her two female soulmates in the world and herself again inside the circle. And when someone tells me laughing loudly that I could have saved them thousands of dollars in therapy bills if they had found these circles sooner. 

.......

So, am I afraid of circles of women?

Yes. Yep. I am terrified every time we start again. And that fear is the breath of everything that is God, whispering in my ear to trust myself, and begin again.

I pray a lot before a new circle. I pray that it may become healing, trust, faith, joy and love. I pray that I will have the downloads to guide and prompt with the same intuition I did as that child on the porch discovering the ice meditation. I pray that my work will continue to provide the space and freedom and gift to love and take care of my beloved and our kids. (The other part of my work in this world.)

.......

Something feels different to me as this new circle of women has started gathering. I have yet to put words to it, but I can feel it.

I felt it when I for the first time in weeks felt like doing the things around my Loft that needed tending to. Moving things to change the energy, dusting, shifting, sorting, purging.

I felt it when I went to the market and bought nappa cabbage and mushrooms and zucchini and spaghetti squash and lemon to make something that would lift my body from the numbness of winter.

I felt it when my love kissed me, deeply, and reminded me of one of my beautiful dreams that I discovered in one of the circles... deep kisses. 

I am ready to dream inside of this new circle. To be afraid together. To create magic, which is our knowing and connection to our stardust.

I am ready.

Dreams that aren't ready.

"Mom, is there like a New Moon or something?"

Eli (my 10 year old) was filled with energy and spunk. He wasn't able to settle down.

"Yes, tomorrow, the most amazing New Moon of the year, the start of the astrological New Year. You can feel it huh?"

He started piling pillows up and throwing his body on top of them.

"Yep. I feel happy and alive and I don't think I can sleep tonight. That's how I always know it is a New Moon."

He is also the one who tells us stories of turning into a werwolf every Full Moon and going on adventures.

Infinite wisdom. 

.......

We got out all the cardboard I had been saving. Magazines. Lucas (the 7 year old) got us all glue sticks and scissors. They know I make one every year on the Aries New Moon, but it isn't something that they have ever really asked about. Vision boards are part of their life and their visual experience in our home. I have traditionally hung the Aries Moon Board in the kitchen. The space where I spend the most time.

This year the board is all about space. A familiar mantra and desire.

I have spent months talking myself out of the dreams that I hold. First feeling the disappointment that they weren't going to come when I hoped.

Then, realizing my dreams were deeply connected to another. And this is when things get sticky.

Inside of all the feelings I ended up in California sitting in circle with a group of women magically loving our lives inside of a New Moon circle. 

And I was reminded of something.

How powerful my dreams become when I focus on what I want with no other stories in the way. When I manifest the hell out of my life by seeing where I am going and then feeling it. Feeling it every day.

When I commune with the Universe and we talk vibration and I am clear and grounded and allowing my intuition to fill me up; this is when it becomes.

.......

I am returning to my knowing. To how I got to where I sit now. Instead of worrying about anyone else, I am thinking about me. Knowing what I want after I ask myself and she connects to a future part of herself for the download.

If I am connected to my dreams, I can love deeper, harder, stronger.

I know how and who I want to love. I know that I am ready for a new home. I know that the kitchen is the most important room in the home for me. I know that I am in love with my mothering and my loving. I know that nurturing is my jam. I know that new space is about to be a part of my life.

I know that I was terrified of the dreams that aren't ready. I didn't know what to hold onto until I remembered that dreams don't die. They simply change form. And when we hold them inside of pure faith and focus not on what isn't but on what will be everything changes.

.......

He told me on our year anniversary that the most surprising thing about me for him was how I mother. Not just my kids or his kids. But him. And women. And everyone. He said that I am like mother earth.

And it is that woman who is dreaming tonight. It is that woman, connected to the earth through how she mothers, that is going to manifest her new life. Because she is powerful in ways the future only knows, and sends signs that this is all so right.

All through the house with a golden aura around her. 
The art of our love is my business. 
Gently down, every so often. 
Simply make it bigger. So, farmhouse made with love. 
Tale of a house. 
I had made a very personal decision. 
Let it rain. 
In the sunset kitchen. 
Chapter 3. Romance. 
Into one revolutionary jar. 
In one week. Dreams. 
I was in love, she explained.

.......

I am in love with my dreams that aren't ready. They are gorgeous and glowing and vibrating inside of me. They are layered. And the timing isn't mine, but the faith behind them and the nurture to make them true are.

The surprises inside of the images and the words will be my magic this year. I can't wait to see what is going to unfold.

I will lay my dreams gently down, every so often, and remember what I knew.

How powerful we are when we know, really know, what we want. And then stay open to the half of the calling forth that isn't ours, that belongs to the vibration that is our feeling inside the dreams.

No, I do not sell windows. {And the mortal to the story}

My kids do their best talking in the mini van. I learn all their stories and they do 'fun' things like quiz each other in Spanish and math. (Honestly, not sure how they are my offspring.)

Some mornings it is dinosaur puns. Mixed with World War One stories and reenactments with dramatic scenes.

They fight over what station to listen to. My teenager gets really teenage. 

The other day on the way to school Eli says, "Hey, I have a good idea. Let's have a silent ride. (insert dramatic pause) Or. I could tell stories. So..."

The teenager and I scream for the quiet ride. He starts telling stories. So then she tells a story. Which makes the 7 year old who gets left out of everything want to tell a story.

He starts his and I think I start to tune out to their chatter. I do my best thinking in the mini van.

Then I hear Lucas scream, "Guys, I am not done. I am not done. Wait. The mortal to the story is imaginate."

Now story time ends with each of them saying, "The mortal to the story is..."

.......

My lover and I both have first graders named Lucas. They have each claimed a new name when they are together which truly has helped keep track of them much easier.

Bobby and Evan were playing Simon Says in the mini van on the ride home. It was getting a bit chaotic, as 4 kids in a mini van can become.

Bobby says, "Evan, pause. I need a pause so I can process this in my head."

Pause. Process. Download. Integrate. 

Rinse and Repeat.

.......

I am sitting in the mini van waiting for the littles to get out of school. I go into my usual loop. 

Instagram. 
Facebook. 
Email.

I see an email from Hannah's Harvest. My first business name from 7 years ago. I sent myself an email? From back in time?

My head and heart had a moment of confusion and a bit of panic. Seems someone bought my old URL and the feed burner is still attached to my email. Never occurred to me that this could happen.

I am unable to get into feed burner to fix it. So I read my email. Apparently my Harvest is all about windows. Kinda boring. Not sure who Hannah is or how she has so much to say about windows.

Clearly, I love windows. My loft. My entire building floor to ceiling windows along brick walls.

I wonder how I could make it more interesting, seeing as how I am sending out these emails to everyone who had ever read my old blog.

My mind still racing, feeling a bit annoyed that I have to add this to the 'deal with' pile of lists.

I decide to release it. Kick myself for letting the URL go un-renewed. Move on.

Messages float in telling me about the window emails. I want a cup of tea with a side of a nap.

.......

The brake pads seem to be going, again, in the mini van. I remember the day I bought that car, the 2003 van of my dreams, 6 years ago. I had two car seats and a booster and an enormous dalmatian all inside a Volvo station wagon (my favorite car ever). I never thought I would drive anything other than a Volvo but my family was growing and buckling those seat belts was becoming impossible.

We didn't have the money but we found a way. All of a sudden I could breathe. I had space. The thing I craved most.

I love driving and feeling like I am up high. The van is where I process. Download. It is where I pause.

My first videos for my programs were made in the mini van while Lucas slept. I would go through the Starbucks drive-thru. Park. Connect to their wifi and work as he napped. I propped up my computer on the steering wheel and turned on my webcam and would chatter away.

Now my growing family, all 7 of us and a hamster and 2 giant stuffed bears all fit inside this van.

My gratitude for it runs deep. Memories of all the flat tires, almost running out of gas, driving gold fish buckled into the passenger seat, the grass seed that spilled all over the front seats and I swear started growing and the coffee stains everywhere. (Fertilizer?)

This last year has tested me in ways I didn't see coming. Now as finances are tight I am praying it will hold me for one more year while I recover from the financial hits of divorce. I am asking it to take me through my next transition as I move into a new space. 

A new home. All the downloads. The stories. The laughter. The puns.

So many mortals.

Imaginate. 
Pause. Process. 
Release. Love. 
Feel the gratitude.

And. I don't sell windows. If you are getting emails from Hannah's Harvest, go ahead and unsubscribe.

Please, stop reading my words.

My ex-husband's mom sent me an email letting me know that I would always be considered part of their family, a daughter to them.

I had been wanting to reach out to them. Patrick and I both unsure how to navigate the loss of the other's family in so many ways.

I was for the first time nervous about what I was posting. What I was sharing. Patrick and I agreed when we separated that we would stop following each other on social media so we didn't feel 'watched.' (Well, truth is, he would stop following me, because I use social media for my business, and my business is so much a part of the truth telling of my life.)

My compassion and sensitivity to what others in his life would see made it hard for me to post, to share. And yet, if I stopped sharing, the person I was, the person who guides women to be their authentic self would be squashed. He didn't want that. And neither did I.

I am not sure what his family sees. I am not sure what he sees. We are open with each other about the new people in our lives and he adores my business and is one of the biggest supporters of it.

But. And. It is all weird right now. Strange. Changing. Sensitive. New. Raw.

And I am so proud of us. And sometimes really fucking sad and hurt. I think about how we have walked this confusing and unchartered path with our three kids together. We don't do it well all the time. We have baggage. And we struggle.

One of the most common things that the women I coach are afraid of is who is reading their words and seeing their photos. They are in a paralyzed place often of not being able to be seen or show up as themselves because of this fear of being judged.

I get it. How do you write things that are about you without other people judging you?

Here is what I know now.

You don't.

Recently I went through hell inside of my online life touching those I love. The judgement fierce and swift and threatening to destroy the love and life I have built.

It knocked me over. It knocked my love over.

I tell my kids all the time that my online life is not theirs to view or read. Not now. When they are older, yes, of course. And they ask why. And I tell them. I explain the work I do. I explain that there are things that are sent out for adults that are not for kids. Like a rated R movie. They are not to follow me on Instagram or read my blog. At some point, they will. And I will be ready to talk about anything that comes up.

They secretly think I am a pretty cool mom. They each have a different understanding of what I do, of my work. And I love that. I love how they self monitor and ask and how I have chosen to raise them.

I love my life now.

When people who don't know me. 
Who have never met me. 
Who have decided to question who I am or who I am for my love or for my kids.

When people who don't know me decide to judge me based on the hurt they wish to spread to those I love because they believe they know best. 
Who have never met me. 
Who have never taken time to ask me questions or reach out and explore with me what I do, what I bring to the world.

When people who don't know me, decide that I am less than. 
Who have never met me. 
Who have decided that I am target practice to hurt those I love.

When people who do know me, who decide I am less than. 
Who do know me and decide to judge me. 
Who have decided that I am not who they want me to be.

When those people show up to my online home I will politely ask them, in my online space, to stop reading my words.

I do not write for them. I do not show up for them. If they were the people I was focused on I would not have been a part of the change inside of the lives of hundreds of women. Thousands now. But hundreds is less scary to think about.

So now I understand why the women I work with are scared. Because it is fucking scary. To be judged.

Based on my words. My tattoos. My body. My love. My compassion. My adoration of being inside of a woman's body. My desire to lift up other women. My realness, my flaws, my humanity.

And yet. It is my words. My tattoos. My body. My love. My compassion. My adoration of being inside of a woman's body. My desire to lift up other women. My realness, my flaws, my humanity.

It is all those things who make me who I am. And why I love this life now. Why I love who I am and what I have created.

The last few months have felt like the Universe as I know it collapsing down around me. Burn it down. Sit in the ashes.

The place that has always felt safe to me was my online home. Because it is me. All of me. My heart. My soul. My dharma.

So now it is all burning down. I get to choose.

I choose to be more. 
I choose to ask those who judge me to hurt others to stop reading my words. (Or, ask me out for tea or coffee and ask me what I do and why and I think we might actually get somewhere.)

These words aren't for the people who are out hurting me and those I love. They won't hear them or use them.

This post is for the women who are terrified. Of being who they are. Of being seen. Of showing up.

This post is for the women who I love and have yet to meet. Or sit in physical or virtual space with.

This post is for the women who are changing the world because they have decided to be brave. Tell the truth. To be seen.

What I have discovered over the past year is a compassion I have never known before. The compassion is for me. For my kids. For my ex. For my lover. For the women who adore me and the women who judge me. For my best friends. For all those who judge me, who have yet to sit with me and ask me why, or what, or anything they want to know.

I was angry. Then hurt. Then sad. And then I was back to my spirit. Which is love.

Love is all I want to embody.

So, please, please, stop reading my words. Unless those words fill you with faith and joy bubbles and inspiration and sameness.

Please, stop reading my words.

Falling back in love... with magic.

"It is like magic making mothering."

One of my wishes last year was to be the most amazing mom I could be, meaning less anger and exhaustion and more fun and loving moments. I could see her. She used to be part of me. She is fun and spontaneous and she includes her kids in all the parts of her life, including her business dinners.

I wanted to fall back in love with my mothering.

The 7am wake up became dance party time. I would sing and dance and coax their eyes open with high vibration music (Katy Perry, ahem). They would groan and bury their faces under the pillows. My youngest would start to move his body, dancing half asleep laying in bed. That kid can't not dance.

They seemed to be annoyed with me. I changed my tactic. The alarm. I got up, made coffee. Then I would call from upstairs to them that it was time to wake up.

The other day my middle son says, "Mom, I don't really like the shout out from the kitchen to wake up. Remember the dance party and you being all annoying and loud? Can we do that again?"

Yes. I am in love again. It is like magic making mothering.

.......

"Do you realize that you have created the most amazing life for yourself? Do you realize really what you have done?"

This last year spent in the reality of divorce, single parenting, surviving (supporting us) on my own and for the first time living alone without a partner or parent was exhausting. There is no other word for it.

And now I am the happiest and joy-filled and often the most miserable and scared I have ever been.

Yes. The two together. Like dance partners moving from song to song, changing speed and breath and rhythm over and over. Steady. Wild. Vulnerable.

So, I do realize I created the most amazing life. I manifest the shit out of life. But right now I feel so far removed. All I want to do is write and love and I am scared.

Yes, I realize what I have done. I am so proud. So filled with faith. And burning everything down. Tearing down all that I built.

Tearing it down is the most terrifying move you can make. We do it so we can fall in love. Again.

I need to fall in love in the ashes. With my work. My teaching. My writing. My words. My home. My body. My prayer.

My return to the soul-work and ritual found inside of past words written for me now. So I may shape-shift into teachings that are for the future.

I read the words from another. The gift. The beckoning to fall back in love. To once again cast out the invitation to sit in circle together as we tear down so we can lift up, lift up.

"Hannah walks her talk, follows the path so that it is illuminated for the souls she guides. She has her finger on the pulse of the universe, and embodies the sacred feminine."

I am understanding I don't need the answers. I just have to keep plugging in the twinkle lights and sitting under the stars while my body rains tears as it radiates energy and feels its connection to the stardust that is our bond.

"For maybe the first time, I feel worthy of having love and abundance in my life. Believing this, deep down in my soul, has changed everything. I’m so grateful to you, Hannah, for guiding me to my own light."

This is why I am falling back in love. The magic of women believing. Circling.

Because this works. Magic Making works. It leads us to our own light. And every time I fall out of love, it is waiting for me to return.

One blessing or prompt or adventure or word at a time. 
.......

This circle is creating sacred space, alignment of relationship, cleansing spirit and body (some of my favorite recipes/methods will be included), trust and faith, ritual, the unknown, expansion and contraction, parts of self, our yeses, fears that help us fly, rest inside of change, our becomings, soul dreaming, magic slips, magic jars, guiding words and spirits, inspired adventuring, spaces between, spirit guides, magical mothering/loving/businessing,

Each week will start with a Sunday blessing and then move into a prompt and video for the week. Every other week we will circle on the phone for some lifting up in real time.

We will start with one exhale where we let ourselves fully empty of breath.

The exhale will be the release of fears, anxiety, struggles. We will look at the different parts of who we are and how we are showing up. Boundaries. Expectations. Truth and lies.

That space between where we start to feel the life force that is our breath is where we will lift, dream, connect, spark and say oh, yes. This is where we will learn a new way to breathe spirit and magic and sensuality into our lives.

We will do the work of expansion and then pull it all together and inside of us to integrate and process with a deep, slow inhale.

Our breath which is our life force will no longer be the same inside of our magic making.

We begin April 3rd.

balance.

.......

She sent me my horoscope from Aquarius Nation's Instagram feed.

"Okay so with this time right now you are feeling very driven to move towards creating a nourishing foundation that can provide an anchor in your life so that you can put more focus into your relationships AND with giving more of yourself to the world. So this is about cleaning up all the imbalances on the foundation so that you are not always thinking about what is OUT of balance."

I accuse her every month of writing these horoscopes, "You can no longer pretend this isn't you writing them."

.......

Days before we are at a New Moon Temple Circle in California and I pull the balance card.

Hours before he texts me, "Babe, I just rode around the reservoir. I stopped to meditate with the sunset. I need more balance in my life."

.......

Divorce can woo you into a false sense of freedom. Especially divorce times two. Cigarettes on the deck late at night. Too many drinks in the name of de-stressing. Your body becomes exhausted. You try to combat the emotions that want to swallow you up with everything you can think of to numb. You lose yourself for a while.

This is all normal.

And the balance, even if you have waxed poetic on not believing in balance, is lost. You have no anchor of vitality. You go from soaking and sprouting your almonds to forgetting to eat meals and grabbing a handful of potato chips to keep running.

.......

In the New Moon Circle we created anchor archetypes. (You see why I think she writes my horoscope?)

I found storyteller-alchemist-servant-preist. Yes, this.

.......

We go for a walk down the boulevard, holding hands, feeling a summer day in March. I tell him more about my time in CA. He listens, beautifully. Allows me to download.

He tells me that he could feel my shift from across the country. He knew it had happened. We feel each other. It is as though something has happened inside of us. I can feel his ecstasy, his fear, his joy as if my own.

He was able to feel the green juice I sipped in his cells.

We were craving balance at the same time. He meditated on the water as I was meditating in circle. He called in balance and I drew the card. Our card.

Twin flames that have spent the last year in the push and pull of our connection.

"Remember that time at the lake house that we broke up?"

"Which one? The one where you left in the middle of the night or the one around the fire pit or the one at 3am?"

Yep.

"The entire purpose of the twin flame experience is to challenge one another and wake each other up to be the best possible version of ourselves—but not everyone is ready to be awakened.

Not everyone is ready to dive to the depths of their soul, to see what lurks there—and sometimes, no matter how our hearts feel, in the end, it is sometimes easier to run away.

The major theme to a twin flame connection is that no matter how many times we part ways—we always seem to find our way back to one another.

Time becomes irrelevant—because souls don’t understand the concept of months or years—we only understand the feeling of powerful eye contact and of the incredible soul shaking energy when our chakra points line up with another.

And it’s because of these intense physical responses, that everything else just drops away when two twin flames come into contact with one another." (Elephant Journal)

.......

This last year I have struggled to find the balance of wanting to give every bit of my soul and nurture to him and our children (I crave taking care of them) while still maintaining two businesses. One business that was iterating beyond my ability to catch it and the other that is growing so slowly and beautifully, I am catching my breath in awe of what it is becoming as we almost seem to be watching and listening to what it wants from us.

I remember a few months ago how much business and marketing light me up. I create a new program. I am starting to fall in love with my work again.

There are clear downloads of how I am shape-shifting into new areas. The money/sex connection. The ending of a soul contract inside of marriage. The newness of the most intense love. A growing family. My crazy passion for self led businesses of the heart.

.......

"And right now you are VERY aware of what is out of balance and no longer nourishing and supportive. You are aware of what is not having you feeling comfortable. And at this time you will work to MOVE towards breaking up some of those blocks. And honestly my love, this is all about you communicating with others, or being clear about what you need, or asking that adjustments be made. You are actually looking for ways to compromise. You are about bringing something forward so that they HAVE the opportunity to come together and know compromise. "

.......

We stay up until 1am making secret message cards for the circle in our hotel room.

She was.
In one week.
Persuasion of ease.
Of spirit.
It's not just a place.

Future selves beckoning us forward.

I am only just learning that I can ask for what I need and those needs might very well get met. And heard. Held.

"And you are being asked to be SOFT and speak CLEARLY, while at the same time expecting corrections to occur. Expect everyone to oblige to whatever you need when you finally ask for it. Face the imbalance with the knowing in your heart that you CAN balance it back out. Try that."

.......

I return to the East Coast and everything feels new, different. It is calmer than I am comfortable with. I don't feel the push or pull. I am clear. Grounded. Loving being in my skin again.

The first thing I do is soak my almonds in filtered water with pink himalayan sea salt. I watch over the next day as they start to sprout and I change their water.

I make him ginger-turmeric tea for his cold. I rub his feet with flower essences. I drink a glass of organic wine, and each sip becomes a meditation. Slow. Thoughtful. Gorgeous.

I dream of the someday Farmhouse, the place (that is so much more than just a place) with the disco ball hanging in the barn and kissing each of their foreheads every night before bed. I pray under the New Moon. I am so relaxed I don't recognize myself.

My heart is bursting with trust.

She was.
In one week.
Persuasion of ease.
Of spirit.
It's not just a place.

Secret messages becoming story. And I am a story teller. I snuggle into a sheepskin and I can feel him. I know now what the push and pull was for both of us. I finally understand it.

.......

storyteller-alchemist-servant-preist.

Now we balance. This story started at the push and pull, the angst, the passion, the fire. Now we balance.

.......

{Friday story prompts...she was...in one week...persuasion of ease...of spirit...it's not just a place.}

a boat on the water.

Jenny walked into the Loft and filled me with calm as she always does. She always has a few things with her, just as I do when I visit her. A bag of groceries, a given. Some tea. Often little gifts.

And on this day, some clippings to add to my vision board that was all about drawing in love.

She puts up this gorgeous picture of a man and woman walking out of a lake pulling a red canoe. The couple was pure beauty and the scene was what I was dreaming of, having just bought my sweet canoe, with nowhere for it to live other than Jenny's house in VT.

"But Jenny, my canoe is blue."

"I know, but his is red."

I am pretty sure I laughed. That picture became part of the story of how he came to me, or how I found him.

.......

The first time I visited the Magic Lake House we only had a few overnight hours. It was April and there was no running water. The only heat the wood stove which I now have learned to light.

We made love for hours in front of the fire and slept until the early hours of the morning. Before we left we walked out onto the deck, the deck that would become home for me, and we stood looking at the lake, falling in love with every breath we took.

He talked about the kayaks and his boat and then mentioned his canoe.

"You have a canoe?"

"Yes, right down there."

"Is it red?"

"Yes."

"Of course it is."

.......

I tried to tell him all the stories of how I found him. The puzzle pieces that all connected and wove the words that now want to fall out of me.

He would get frustrated when I would say, but that's another story for later.

My fear was that if I explained to him how I had manifested him from a blue canoe, his gray hair, my man jar, the moth, his name and down to the month we would meet that he might have trouble holding all of me.

.......

"There are magic fish in this lake."

"Magic fish? Did you really just say that? Why are they magic?"

"Because all you have to do is stand in the water and they come up from everywhere and kiss your ankles. They are our magic fish."

"Do you know I teach magic?"

.......

A boat on the water in Mexico, our first trip away together, holding red and blue. We walked a few miles in our swim suits to 5th Avenue and back along the water.

A boat on the water that he is teaching me to drive so I will be able to feel the freedom on the lake this summer.

A boat on the water from the song he texted one day was 'our' song. The one that makes my heart skip a beat, remembering the early days of how just seeing his name on a text would make my stomach flip flop. (Actually it still does.)

A boat on the water that sent out the vibration to the Universe that I was ready to be brave and find him. The one I found when I was holding the biggest question of my life. And the one that he would become the answer to.

.......

"What did you write about before you met me?"

I wasn't sure. I had to go back and look. I spent time reading the stories from before April 2nd, from before he came to me and within hours changed my next steps.

I read about the doubt and the moth, the taste of a cigarette, the demons of satisfaction.

And Chewbacca.

And when I met him, I started to write the stories of our new life.

.......

I am a story-teller. A manifestor. A magic-maker. I am the one who records the details in photo and words and then spins them into the tellings of the shaman-like bending of elements and future becomings in the feeling world.

I teach from story. I iterate from story. I fall in love from story.

A  story of a boat on the water; a story of a new vibration in time.

.......