What you are supposed to do.

Originally written 1/4/2021

In 2009 Lucas turned a year old and I would discover the mysterious new world of online teaching. I signed up for a couple of courses from people I admired partly to try to understand how the whole thing worked because I wanted in.

The courses I signed up for had a similar feel. You would log in to a private page on the website and the material would be presented there and often you could print worksheets and information. You could chat in the comments and I honestly don't remember much else.

What I do know is that I didn't ever fully engage. I loved them, but it overwhelmed me. I would forget where to go, how to log in, I would get interrupted by kids and my ADHD brain just couldn't make it work. Mind you, I was still learning how to send an attachment on an email. I did not adapt to technology easily.

Not being one to go much further beyond what I can figure out on my own or with very little help I needed to adapt it in a Hannah way.

This is not a superpower, let me devote myself to the truth in this-it is not a way to get further than you are. But it also has a silver lining that I just do what I know. I do what I can figure out. I tend to be action oriented when I'm excited by an idea.

All this to say...

What I did was simply make a course, design it, write it and then I sent it out via email. There was no website, no other home, no passwords (other than for videos), no pdf, no worksheets, no complication. At this time Facebook groups were a magical way of gathering, your privacy was protected and there was ease to being together there.

If I had to define my work at that time, I might say that I grew a business through telling stories via email. Community grew, connections formed, I shape-shifted a thousand and three times. I went from pay what you can to $400 magic making sessions. I went from nursing my baby and typing with one hand to large sold out retreats.

There were times when I was running three courses at one time while single parenting with a debilitating bladder condition and drinking too much. Money slipped through my fingers as fast as I could make it. I just wanted to create. I just wanted to be validated.

My formula remained the same. Emails go out, gather on Facebook, eventually add Zooms. I worked a lot.

Dreams played out, many offered me stairs to enter them while seeds were planting for the next.

What I was supposed to do is expand, grow, add more followers, be a boss, retreat in Europe, start a podcast, make a worksheet, write a book, open a shop...whatever the obvious next was.

And here I was still sending emails, no worksheets or pretty printables or anything tangible.

I have fought against what you are supposed to do. I have burned things down. My one year old kid is now thirteen.

I am still pretty into the emails. I am over Facebook.

And so, beginning again. Figuring it out. Trying to find enough stillness to hear the longings of my soul and the reality of my basic needs.

Since 2009 I craved a small cozy intimate business. In 2021 it exists.

This week as people began to join SACRED ROOTS || AUTUMN, I felt it. I knew it.

Now, a chance to challenge myself to go beyond what I know, what I am able to figure out, into a land of learning, understanding, grasping where this saturated sea of online learning and gathering is headed.

I want to take my deeply embedded need to be different and actually be different!

In all my secret truth, I don't know what I want. I do know that I need to quiet the noise of what I'm supposed to do so I can source it.

And maybe, and the reason I write this, maybe you need to hear that I don't know so you don't have to know. Not knowing is supposed to freak us out, but I swear it is where the magic multiplies.

I have built a business on stories. I remember the first time I realized that. I received an email a from someone who had joined a course. She said, "So I'm trying to understand. You tell a story and then we are supposed to use it as a prompt?" If that was the case, she was leaving.

Yes, that is the case. She left.

After that I quaked. I was unsure. I kept writing.

I wrote a letter for SACRED ROOTS about beans. I am forever wooed by how a story can weave into a lesson, form a recipe, dive into a prompt and land back where it started with the simple noticing.

It can take days, long hours, lots of deleting, wanting to run away, cleaning the house, declaring myself a fraud and making another cup of coffee to get to that one simple noticing.

Other times it happens seemingly without me, as though it was always there and I just had to pen it.

Dreams feel that way to me, there are the ones we slide right into and those we refuse to get cozy with.

Maybe I am an inside-out dreamer, taking the supposed to dream and turning it until I can find the edges, the idea, the places that first inspired it.

I like it there. I like it there with you beside me.

I still have the invitations and the promise that I have no idea where I'm going if you'd like to tag along.

And. Thanks for being here,

xo H