Why I Broke Up with My Guides

You know that feeling of … desperation?

Yeah. It’s the worst feeling ever.

It’s the feeling of trying with all your might to get something you’re not getting.

It’s the feeling of being let down.

It’s the fear that you’ll never get what you want.

Sometimes your physical health can lead you here. Your traumatized brain stops working properly. Your gut lining breaks down and the happy chemical receptors stop transmitting. Desperation ensues.

Sometimes this feeling comes from a relationship. Which is never about the other person - whether they’re a physical being sitting next to you or a best friend in the ether - it’s always about you and your boundaries.

(Which I think we can all agree is egregiously annoying but also deeply empowering. Once we stop being annoyed.)

Sometimes the way out is through. Sometimes the way out is … simply by walking out.

A few years ago, I walked out on my guides.

It’s not you, it’s me.

I’m just not happy, and I’m sick of putting in the work and always feeling disappointed.

Obviously, this doesn’t have anything to do with them.

It was purely my exhaustion, my burn out, how I engaged with myself, and how I projected that onto my etheric guides who had only ever helped me.

Sometimes we need help in new ways.

So I stopped doing the things I always did: Talking to them a lot, translating their messages for myself and for others, asking for help.

Instead, I just … existed.

I let life show me what it wanted.

I stopped trying so hard, I stopped trying to get what I wanted, I let the desperation leak out of my life.

It was freeing. To not have to try so hard. To not have to beat myself up when things didn’t work out.

I could just … be.

It was more a slow tectonic drift than a dramatic rift of the stomping out the door variety.

I wasn’t exactly giving them the cold shoulder, I just wasn’t putting any effort in. And it was such a goddamn relief.

Like any good best friend, they crept back in. They sent messages in other ways. Through other people, through the internet, via my own life. I listened. But I didn’t try for answers. I didn’t grasp for results. I had been working too hard. Trying to channel them, trying to bring messages through, trying to get what I wanted out of interactions.

It wasn’t their fault, I was just processing through a lifetime of past patterns and accumulated false beliefs and trauma-fueled ways of being that I projected onto my innocent etheric guides. Sorry, Mother Mary.

So we broke up.

More accurately, we took a break.

We’re still friends. We still hang out, but it’s more unconscious.

Grasping is done, desperation is done. And I’m slowly, slowly opening to receiving instead.

I just needed a break from how I’ve done things in the past.

More ease. More rest. More relief. More support for my body and brain than my etheric life.

We’ll have forever in the ether. We have a finite amount of time in this body and this life. So this is where I want to focus. All help is welcome, but I’m not going to beg for it any more.

This probably isn’t forever. Maybe my guides and I will get back together. Maybe we’ll work together again. But I don’t want to do it because I feel like I have to, like it’s the only way forward. I want to do it because it’s fun, because we like hanging out. Not because I need something from them.

Birthday Angels

Who doesn’t want an angelic transition team?

Or maybe a squad of woodland squirrels to help you clean and offer squirrel-y life coaching.

I got angels for my birthday this year. No gift wrapping or angelic chorus from the heavens, but I did start seeing 7:11. A lot. Every time I looked at the clock it was somehow exactly 7:11. Since my birthday is July 11, I figured this was my own personal angel number. Like, my angels saying hi. Not a generic message from the universe, but a YO, HUMAN. HELLO. Just for me.

Which is a good gift, especially when there’s a lot going on. As there is for basically everyone on the planet.

I’m not even especially attached to angel numbers. Sure, I love a good 11:11 (WHO DOESN’T? I ASK YOU), but angel numbers have always been spiritual background noise as I rocket around my life trying not to forget things.

But 7:11 kept showing up and I enjoyed it and didn’t anything of it until my magical acupuncturist told me my birthday angels were in the room with us while I was on the table getting needles stuck in me.

She said it was a new set of angels, here to help me through this transition.

My first thought was “What transition?”

AND THEN I REMEMBERED THAT EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS IN TRANSITION. Kind of like most of the world.

My home is in flux, my work is in flux, my finances are a big fat question mark. My health has been rapidly improving since last year when I could barely get out of bed, but new layers and new identities show up every month or so. It’s a lot.

This month’s layer is “Hey, maybe my brain really doesn’t work like other people’s and maybe I should look into that so I know how to support it without beating myself up over not being able to do things the way other people do them.”

To be fair, I’ve gotten much better in recent years about not beating myself up, but I’ve been noticing the huge pile of shame that follows me everywhere I go, like PigPen with luggage and a few pets.

My brain definitely tends to work a lot of unpaid overtime.

It feels like a transition to stability within myself. Something that doesn’t rely on another person, or where I live, or what my finances are doing, or what my work looks like.

My foundation is strong, my stability is internally resourced, and that’s what this new crew of angels is here to help me with.

Which is great, because I just found out that my health insurance doesn’t offer therapy or psychiatric services.

SO ANGELS IT IS.

(Angels are free. You have some. You don’t even have to unpack your childhood for them because they already know, but not like in a creepy way.)

Happiness Asks, Joy Gives

Yesterday, I went to a birthday party. There was a pool, there was a barbecue, there were palm trees and cacti, and children running amok.

While you can’t accurately judge a person’s happiness based on observing them at a party, a lot of them looked happy. There was talk of the next baby, the next home, the next job. Which I think adds to happiness, because it isn’t necessarily a measure of not being where you want to be, but a measure of your expansion.

Humans live to evolve and expand and get excited about what’s next.

Because I like to sit alone on sunny outdoor couches at parties, I spent some time watching other people’s (perceived) happiness and thinking about what would make me happy. Getting a dog, my pilot’s license, getting out amongst humans more - something I’ve always been a bit tentative about, a tendency that tripled during the pandemic and my own health challenges. Shoes may have entered the thought process. My first word was shoes and nothing makes me happier than putting on brand new pink flats, don’t judge me. But I know these things in and of themselves won’t make me happy.

Happiness lies in my response to these things. Happiness lies in my attention to these things and my enjoyment of them.

Happiness isn’t a destination, happiness is a series of joyful moments that we string together over a lifetime, no matter what else is going on in our lives.

Joy is always available.

Even if you have two dollars in the bank, even if dreams don’t come true, even if people are being deeply annoying.

Joy is always an option. But it requires attention. Awareness. An ability to be in a moment, really in it, not thinking about the next thing or whatever’s on your plate at the moment.

When I stopped being alone in the sun because other people began to realize that I am the best at choosing spots to be and came to join me, we started talking about happiness - what it means, what it looks like.

Honestly, happiness feels like a loaded word to me. Possibly because I’m American and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has been etched on my brain. Like happiness is something to be chased down, lassoed, and dragged back to your lair on the end of a rope.

Joy feels easier. Because moments of joy are always there for the taking: a daisy busting up through the concrete, a dog licking someone’s face, a skateboarder doing something crazy on a fast moving plank before wiping out at the stop sign.

Joy doesn’t depend on achieved dreams or overcome challenges, it’s there in every moment like a gift the world is trying to give you. You get to choose whether you accept it or not.

For some, happiness is having kids. For some, happiness is not having kids. For some, happiness is achieving the financial security necessary to live a simple life. For some, happiness requires certain substances.

Happiness asks, joy gives.

Happiness, at least the way I hear the word, requires that certain conditions be met. Joy appears unexpectedly, out of nowhere, like a cat jumping on the bed when you thought it was outside chasing humming birds or those humming birds buzzing by the window on their way to visit the roses.

I want to dedicate my life to joy, instead of happiness. Happiness just feels stressful. It requires a certain amount of money and has quite the list of conditions. Joy gets to happen right now because there’s bacon in the kitchen and it’s sunny outside. Technically, those are also conditions, but it’s a much lower bar. Happiness requires years of work for uncertain pay-off.

Joy will give you everything it has right now, just because you exist.

Yes

I just finished the first draft of a novel.

This is big for me - a major celebration, really - because I have about eleven false starts scattered over fifteen years.

I’m just going to sit with that for a minute. I’ve been trying to do this for fifteen years. I have a 70-page attempt circa 2006. Do you know how many things have happened to me and to the world since 2006? A LOT OF THINGS.

Turns out, all you need to do to finish is...keep going. Show up every(ish) day to have fun with the words and let the book show you what it wants to be. All while refusing to judge yourself or what lands on the page.

(Even if you have seven new and what-your-anxiety-brain-declares-to-be-better novel ideas along the way.)

I got off social media a few months ago, not totally sure why, but sure it needed to happen. I’m not a cyborg, so I peeked. But I did my best not to post and to give myself a break - at least until the first draft was finished.

Yesterday I wrote the last paragraph. Last night, we popped champagne and ate cheesy pasta.

(Turns out, all you need to do to make amazing pasta is drown the other ingredients in a sea of butter. To finish a novel, just refuse to quit. To make delicious pasta, just add a stick of butter. I’m learning all sorts of life lessons over here.)

It was really tempting to push past this milestone without recognizing it - a first draft isn’t a finished novel, after all. A finished novel isn’t an agent. An agent isn’t a publishing deal. A publishing deal isn’t a bestseller.

What? Settle down, brain.

Success is not the point. It would be a very welcome side effect, but the point is to write books. And when this one is done - really done, ready to be read by other humans done - there are seven more ideas waiting in the wings.

The process never ends. Which means we can’t ever fail - because we’re never done. There’s something extraordinary in that.

So here’s to stubbornly refusing to give up, long-awaited accomplishment, the utter impossibility of failure, and having fun every single day.

The Many and Varied Uses of Imaginary Jellybeans

I’m not sure how to tell this story without sounding crazy, but if I worried about sounding crazy I'd never open my mouth. So here we go.

On Sunday, I was hiking. It was a beautiful day, with a view of the ocean, verdant valleys, and happy cows (also peeing cows) dotting the hills beside the trail. I wasn’t having any of it. I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t interested in anything related to living life at that time.

As I trudged up and down hike-related peaks and valleys, I finally got over myself enough to ask “How can I have a better time than I’m currently having?” Because I finally remembered that I do have some element of control over how I live my life. Maybe I can’t control the peeing cow, but I can certainly control how much I enjoy this actually very nice Sunday situation in which I find myself.

(Very nice Sunday situation.)

So I asked “How can this [general hand wave in the direction of life] feel better?”

Nothing happened. Because I was cranky, I didn’t really expect it to.

But as I focused on not thinking thoughts and instead on enjoying the view and the way the air felt on my skin, I started to shift out of crankiness and into neutrality and then some semblance of pleasure.

After a bit more plodding through the landscape, something opened up. Maybe I stumbled through a fairy glen or my whimsical brand of imagination fired up or guidance stepped in, I can’t say. And it doesn’t really matter. As I was walking, I got handed a silver basket full of jellybeans. Not the grocery store-corn syrup-red dye number death brand of jellybeans. These were fairy jellybeans. Some were midnight blue speckled with silver stars. Some were that particular turquoise of tropical island ocean. Some were peony pink. And I heard, “You can eat this one for calmness, this one for joy, this one to fall asleep, this one for more money, this one for creative inspiration, this one for delight,” and so on.

So I chose the imaginary jellybean that would help me get over myself and start enjoying my Sunday afternoon hike. I imagined eating it, and the fairy jellybean energy filling me up. It wasn’t like a miracle bean, where suddenly I was skipping through the hills and thrilled with life. But by the end of the hike, I was feeling much better. The day shifted into something absolutely lovely, including my favorite pizza and a really nice glass of wine that I got to drink in the sun. My week since has been significantly better than the week previous.

My point is, whether you believe in angelic support or guidance or your inner wisdom or the support of the universe or the power of your imagination, you always have access to a shift in perspective. You can always adjust how you view and experience things - all you have to do is ask, and trust that the answer will come. Whether that answer comes in the form of a silver basket filled with magic fairy jellybeans or something more prosaic doesn’t matter.

Your imagination is the portal to a better experience. So this is me reminding myself - and you, if that’s helpful - to use it wisely.