Blogging Like it's 2005 and I Haven't Aged Twelve Years

Shasta is one bossy mountain. My boyfriend and I went up last weekend and we caught the first snow fall, which was pure frozen joy - even before the golden retriever in a bright orange jacket started bounding ecstatically through legit winter wonderland.

Legit winter wonderland. Well-suited to ecstatic bounding.

In addition to the snow and donuts - not to mention the snow donuts that my race car driving companion took it upon himself to pull at the top of the deserted mountain, scaring the absolute shit out of me, because he didn't share his plan before starting to spin out - the mountain also gave me an assignment. (See: bossy mountain top.) 

Stop everything and write for 21 days straight. 

Also some stuff about silencing my brain and drinking green juice and exercising and, let me just say, I have not been as diligent as the bossy mountain probably intended. 

Mostly because all of this is terrifying. Doing nothing but writing when you're self-employed and "doing things" is where your money comes from is terrifying. Moving after months of sloth is terrifying. Writing after being in a creative funk for years is terrifying. Silencing my brain is terrifying. (My brain does not enjoy being silenced and becomes exponentially more obnoxious whenever I try.) 

Drinking green juice is actually pretty easy so that's fine. 

At this juncture, I should probably note that I am a super sensitive human and as diligently as I try to unhook myself from the collective emotional energy, sometimes I still end up in fear and, ya know, faintly hysterical terror. 

That said, getting back into this writing game is not going smoothly. 

Pushing myself doesn't seem to be working. Starting yet another novel and getting four pages in before abandoning it doesn't seem to be working. Journaling mostly just turns into all-caps yelling as I let my brain throw a tantrum to unleash all the feeling I've carefully hoarded thanks to that aforementioned sensitivity - so that doesn't seem to be working either.

Maybe the solution of my bright-eyed twenty-something self will work for me now. Back in 2005, at the virtual dawn of personal internet musings, I started a blog as a way to write daily. It worked and I loved it. But that was when we were just talking about our lives without much expectation and our friends were doing it too. It was a big ol internet party in those sweetly naive pre-social media years. 

I mean, the technology still exists. Where did we all go? What happened? It feels like it wants to come back. Some of the bloggers of yore are at it again - and some never stopped. (Who's still doing this? If you are or know of people who are, please share.) So here I am too, doing my utmost to silence the plague o' self-doubt and use my voice. 

Going back to conversational writing and less curation sounds like a goddamn breath of peppermint-flavored arctic air. Overthinking is choking the life out of me and my poor beleaguered words. 

Who would want to read this? - my brain 

You've lost your special spark and I refuse to subscribe to this claptrap. - person who unsubscribed to my newsletter and felt it necessary to tell me why

Should I be talking about this? Am I complaining too much? How is this adding to the world? - my brain

HEREBY BANISHING THE BRAIN HAMSTERS. AND NEVER READING PEOPLE'S REASONS FOR UNSUBSCRIBING EVER AGAIN. There. Problem solved. 

We'll see what happens. Whatever it is, I will do my utmost to squash the brain hamsters, unhook sticky emotion, and speak what is true and loving. And possibly annoyed and cynical. But that's the beauty of not over-thinking. You get to just be. 

So here's to just being. Like it's 2005 and we're in the first flush of internet sharing and I don't yet have that alarming trench between my brows. 

Hi, I'm Amber and I Talk To Unicorns

Unicorns aren't just the province of pre-teen girls - or 39-year-old women who buy glittery silver horns and strap them to their head. Unicorns have powerful and sacred energy - and a lot to teach us.

Now, I do hear myself when I say things like this. And that's always about the time I ask myself, "Wait. Have I gone actual crazy? After years of impersonating moose and pandas on the internet, of being entirely too attached to a stuffed therapy otter, has it finally happened? Have I officially circled the bend and taken up residence?" 

I might have. Honest to god, I might. But if I'm going to be in the nut house - whether between literal padded walls or the metaphoric nut house of this ever-more-histrionically-surreal-world - I definitely want the unicorns in there with me. 

Unicorns ride Harleys past me on the freeway when I'm cranky. Dance conga lines through my head - with extra glitter! - when I need cheering up. Join Jesus on the trampoline at my birthday party, tumbling and flying like equine rainbow gymnasts. 

When I'm in a particularly human moment and need a lift, the unicorns show up as cartoons - complete with candy colors and goofy horse grins. When I'm tapping in to their energy and channeling their power, they appear as the glowing silvered magical creatures of fantasy.

This is when I begin to think that I can't be the only one who sees them. There's a reason they're all over the internet and prancing down hundreds of streets on Halloween. There's a reason so many of us are drawn to them. Even Starbucks tried to blend them up and shove them into a frappuccino.  

Magical creatures - like unicorns, like dragons, even giraffes - have a profound and sacred power. Hidden for eons because humanity had contracted to the point where we just couldn't handle them outside the realm of zoos and myth and basement D&D tournaments. But we're expanding again. Our darkness is rising up to be seen and felt and, yes, honored. Our light is busting open the seams of this reality so that the reality we've known will never look the same.  

One thing I have learned - amongst the many lessons I'm pretty sure I'm still missing - is that when I flow with what feels good, life gets easier. And when I let myself be swept away by the unicorn crazy, I feel better. When I resist it, I feel worse. So the path forward is clear. It leads straight to unicorns and the other magical animals I've been channeling. 

Am I crazy? Maybe. But aren't we all a little crazy? Even those of us with relatively normal-looking lives - something I profoundly wish for on occasion - have some crazy in us, whether it's latent, emerging, or flying proudly on a flag. 

Fist bump to everyone who's ever felt crazy! While wearing a unicorn horn or not. 

Grinch of Las Vegas

My heart grew three sizes this weekend.

While I’m definitely the Grinch of Las Vegas - my 70-something mom and aunt both out-gambled and out-drank me - it was more than just fleeing the Strip for the rocks and the lakes.

Vegas has nice rocks. 

It was seeing my brother happy. It was exploring caves and riding a train with a stuffed fox-toting seven-year-old, and buying his love with vanilla ice cream. Sitting by a lake in the twilight while bugs hummed, kids ran, and a new baby kicked.  

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble. I go to sheep-gaze.

It was wholly unexpected and so perfect. My heart definitely grew bigger, and that gives me more faith in myself and my capacity for love.

Before I left, I was telling a friend that I 100% expected this trip to be epic, I just wasn't sure what that epic would entail. Las Vegas epic makes most people think of slot machines and unexpected marriage certificates under an empty tequila bottle on the bedside table - not freshly-hatched babies or a field full of big horn sheep. But that's the kind of epic I prefer these days - and it doesn’t even require a hangover.

But going to Las Vegas with your family will definitely test your empath boundaries. I started to see where some of this grief I've been carrying around for years isn't my own, and realizing anew how hard I have to work to stay clear of what's not mine. When you feel it, you assume it belongs to you, especially if you've been sponging up other people's pain all your life.

It's the challenge of the empath - to remember to ask to whom this emotion belongs. Even when your brain can logically assimilate it to your own experience, pointing to a specific event and saying, "This. Yes, this is why I feel this way. It makes perfect sense." When, in fact, it isn't yours at all - and there's no sense to be made. 

God love you, smart empaths. It's not an easy road. Someone told me recently, "You're very smart. But more often than not, your brain completely fucks you." Well...yes. 

Luckily, having a stuffed therapy otter in your purse helps.

As we circled Las Vegas, getting ready to land, I got the hit that my father had just reincarnated in India, because he doesn’t want to miss this time, this rebirth of ancient wisdom that's beginning to sweep us clear of multiple dark ages. He hit the re-set button and landed back on planet Earth, ready to go. 

Honestly, who knows. As with most intuitive hits, they’re impossible to fact check. You just have to trust - and realize that, in the eternal sense, it ultimately doesn't matter. But it was fun to think about, in those last moments before we landed.  

We're all connected to our people - those we know and those we don't yet remember - on this plane and beyond it. It's like my relationship with my brother - fathoms deep and about half an inch wide. Like, we had no idea he had a girlfriend. He just...showed up with her. There was a lot of frantic rearranging of facial expressions, let me tell you. 

In the small talk sense, I know more about most of my first dates than I know about my only sibling. But it ultimately doesn't matter - I can feel his heart and so it makes my heart happy when his is happy. 

Maybe that's the reward for being an empath. I got to be so happy this weekend in Vegas because he was so happy. When there's that much love gathering, each heart reflects it like a hall of mirrors reflecting a lightbulb. And I got to feel it all - and feel my heart expand with it. 

Going to Mount Shasta So Jesus Can Roll His Eyes at Me

Mount Shasta has been tugging at me for months now. Sometimes my soul gets really insistent, and I've found that it's best for everyone if I give it what it wants. So last weekend I drove five hours toward what I've been told is one of the biggest energetic centers on the planet. 

Most of me is on board when I hear things like that, but there's still a small portion of my East Coast lineage and education that says, "Yeah, okay, whatever." 

My still-clinging cynicism was firmly chastened when I hit the town of Shasta and got so dazed that I almost hit a pedestrian. 

Whoops! Sorry! You're right, that was a crosswalk! I'm very glad you just got mad instead of covered in tire treads!

Between the sun in my eyes, an unfamiliar town, and the kind of energy that I only experience after I've been channeling for long periods of time - after which I have to walk and eat mashed potatoes and not be around other humans - I most definitely should not have been driving a heavy metal box. 

Once after a healing, one of my clients said "This is my favorite drug." That's the kind of energy infusing Mount Shasta. So deeply healing that you feel like you just popped a horse tranquilizer. It's the kind of energy that lifts you out of your body and into another dimension. A lighter, far more awesome dimension, unless the you in this dimension stops obeying the laws of traffic and common decency. 

Wandering around Lake Siskiyou, I gazed at the light playing on the water and was so entranced, I felt like a three-year-old who got into the pot brownies. I kept listing sideways, tipping into walls, people, and almost over a cliff. 

The next day, I met up with a friend and we went to the mineral baths and dunked ourselves in the freshly melted river. I felt myself leaving heartbreak in creek beds and felt old patterns and beliefs melting into the mountain. It was like a car wash for the soul. 

I also had the most literal Come-To-Jesus moment of my entire life. 

Now, Jesus has been showing up a lot lately. He made an appearance when I was walking down the street a few months ago. I was asking for information about the next round of Activate, the six month group healing thing I run, and he stepped right in and waved and said he was one of our guides. My reaction was basically "what the fuuuuuuck?" As you'd expect when Jesus walks up to you and says, DUDE, WE'VE GOT SHIT TO DO. 

I always thought Jesus was pretty cool. Whatever thought I gave him was split between being deeply annoyed on his behalf at the way his work got twisted up by power-hungry patriarchal agendas and being super into Christmas. Not just because of the presents and cookies - though I never turn down presents and cookies - but because it always feels infused with love. Christmas actually does feel holy to me, and also I like Christmas carols. Like, a dumb amount. Sorry, anyone who has ever spent time with me in December. 

That was about it until he basically accosted me on the street, because that was apparently the only way to get my attention. (He notes that I'm being melodramatic again - there was a gentle wave and zero accosting - and I say, Who's telling this story, you or me?) 

Like any good light worker and way-shower, I've been dutifully ascending. Dealing with all my old shit - and a lot of other people's old shit, damn it - so that I could be good and ready to do my work here. Because I'm here for some pretty specific reasons. You are too, if you're reading this. 

Apparently, if you do your energetic housecleaning well enough, you start having visions of Jesus. 

Yes, I do hear myself when I say these things. But I figure if Jesus takes the time out of his busy schedule to show himself to you as you're walking down the street, more or less minding your own business, you should probably pay attention. 

So I started paying attention.

(Though, apparently, not enough attention. One of the biggest messages from my Shasta trip was Jesus telling me that I haven't been listening. Damn it. SORRY, JESUS. I thought I was listening, but there have been some things I admit I don't want to do. Mainly in the area of eating vegetables.) 

When I do let him in, he does a stellar job at lifting me out of my drama and getting me back on track. A few weeks ago, I was driving and feeling super cranky. Until Sly and the Family Stone come onto the radio, and I get a vision of Jesus lip-synching "Everyday People" with the Marys (Mother and Magdalene) as backup dancers and I start laughing so hard, I almost had to pull over on the freeway. My entire energy and mood shifted to absolute joy in a hot second. 

But apparently, he's got a lot to tell me about my work and I haven't been paying attention. I'm like that annoying co-worker who ignores your emails until you have to get up, walk over to their cubicle, and smack them upside the head. Maybe that's why my soul was so adamantly shoving me toward Mount Shasta. So Jesus could smack me (gently, of course) upside the head. 

After a guided meditation at the base of the mountain, the friend I was with said, "It's like you're homies. Like you and Jesus have lived lives together."  Insert wide-eyed emoji right here. The energy she got was that we were friends and coworkers. Family. "Whatever he's been telling you to do, do it." 

According to the messages she received for me at the base of the mountain, I've only just begun to scratch the surface of my powers and gifts - and now it's time to get serious.

Unfortunately "get serious" seems to mean "stop it with all the fried chicken and TV." Give your body what it really wants. My body wants running lots of miles and green juice. My brain wants naps and fried chicken. But I am serious about this, so vegetables and miles it is. 

Besides the "be healthy" thing, I do tend to get confused because the messages I receive are along the lines of "Have fun! Have sex! Have more adventures and write about them!" Sex is my spiritual assignment? And road trips? Really? Well, that sounds too good to be true. 

And then I remember the broccoli. And Jesus rolls his eyes at me because he didn't specify broccoli and I know it, and if I'm going to go around telling people that Jesus is making me eat broccoli he says he can't help me. (Yes, I think I'm hilarious.) 

But basking in the powerful and pulsing healing energy of that mountain, where I'm so much lighter than I'm used to being, I remember that writing is the basis of my work - and writing my joy has always been the way I've moved into that lighter space, with or without Jesus and big mountains. 

He says, "Write. Write your adventures. Write whatever sounds fun. Because writing is where your love flows and you are finally loving yourself fully. So writing about yourself in the service of others is one of the best things you can do right now." 

Then I say, "Thanks, J-Dog" and he rolls his eyes again and told me I am the whitest individual ever and what is up with all the pink shoes. I say the pink shoes make me happy and he says, "Well, that's okay then." 

The veil really is getting thinner and I am so very thankful for that. It's reminding me that the density of this reality isn't all there is, and if I keep moving - if we keep moving - toward the light, we'll all get lighter.

Even if Jesus has to spend a lot of his time rolling his eyes at me. (Heh.) 

My Heart Feels Like Charlie Brown Trying to Kick a Football

Plowing forward, filled with hope, leaving the ground with the high of the kick as you look up to the sky ...and then the nausea-inducing spinal trauma of crashing flat into the ground. Yup, my romantic life most accurately resembles Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.

This is mostly my fault. If I try to date out of fear that I'll miss out, or because I'm bored, or because I want the quick hit of validation, or because I think I should, or before I'm completely out of the grieving cycle, that's when I get stood up four times in two weeks by four separate people or end up unraveling a tangled mass of karma. 

So I vow to be more careful a dozen times a week, to guard my heart better. But that’s not really what I want, and I know it. Even when I’m carefully instructing myself to just go ahead and be a different human this time. 

Being in a relationship with me means you occupy a portion of my heart’s real estate and you get to live there for the rest of your life, whether you want to or not. Luckily, my heart is growing bigger every day, so I don't begrudge the space. Construction is ongoing.

So far, three people have annexed a corner of my heart. As much as it hurts in the healing stage, if I love someone enough to assign them a lifelong corner of my left ventricle, how could I pass up that love for as long as it lasts? I can't, and I wouldn't want to, no matter what I tell myself in the getting-over-it process. 

Minor heart fractures do fade. Karmic entanglements do drift right back out again. Melt like ice cream on a hot sidewalk, leaving only a sticky residue to eventually wash away in the rain, the cement no worse off - and maybe even retaining a hint of that invisible sweetness.

But the big cracks, the breakages, those don’t recede as easily.

Two major heartbreaks in one calendar year strike me as more than plenty - and explains all this hard-felt keening and flopping in my ribcage over the past few months. 

(This is what keening and heart flopping looks like.) 

I was wrangling last year's heartbreak around this time in Hawaii. Hey, if you have to get over something, you might as well do it on a tropical island. The big energy of those islands had me rolling through vision after vision of my not-on-this-plane-but-still-very-persistent daughter. 

As these visions drove saltwater into the cracks to unapologetically bust me wide open, I saw my heart being knit back together with gold light.

Heart breaks open, you put it back together again. With Elmer's glue, if you have to. 

A friend once called me a dating warrior. “You just keep throwing yourself back out there to get trampled.” I'm an enthusiastic warrior, but apparently not a very good one. 

But every time I hurl myself into the ring, my heart does grow bigger. It has to. 

Feeling big clears out big space. Space for unconditional love to flood in naturally, replacing the sadness and the anger and the “here are seven reasons we both royally fucked up” judgment parade marching through my brain in an alarmingly predictable loop.

When the unconditional love starts sweeping everything clean again, the space that lets everyone have their own experience and knows that the love doesn’t go away even if the people do, that’s when I start having more trust in the process.

Trust in myself - that I haven’t profoundly fucked up this time, even when my brain is pretty certain I have. Trust that the right relationship will work out at the right time for everyone involved - and that I don’t have to hurl myself warrior-style into the coliseum to be gnawed on by a tiger for the privilege.

I do want to be kinder to my heart. I'm learning what that looks like, slowly but surely. It means not proceeding out of fear or need for validation. It means giving myself plenty of space and room to nurture me and my relationship with myself. For now, I'm just thrilled that my heart is finally feeling less raw. Joy is starting to feel more natural, and all the I'm-in-a-grieving-period bad decisions and massive karmic tangles have finally stopped. It kind of feels like a hot shower and big meal after running a marathon - routine experiences that suddenly feel like Christmas morning, simply because you put yourself through the wringer first. 

It's like the universe is asking for my faith, asking me to just surrender. Because the more I try to control, the harder everything gets. But if I just trust what comes my way, and trust myself to handle it, everything simplifies.