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. 

Light The World

Go softly and gently into the darkest time of the year. Winter solstice is when you feel the light you have within and allow it to reflect out into the world, for these dark times need all your light.

Your light is what will shift us out of the dark.

It takes only you. It takes only you recognizing your own light and turning it in the direction of any darkness you see. Even the blackest night can be lit by one small match.

As you shine your light into the dark, others will be inspired to shine theirs as well. This is how we light the world.

How To Talk To Your Soul

A friend texted me for advice today. He asked what my intuition was saying, which is often an exercise in frustration for everyone.

My intuition: "Tell him to ask his soul."

Me: "Ask your soul."

Him: "My soul and I don’t have a great track record with communication."

Me: "Fistbump, bro."

My intuition: "I have a list." 

I’ve spent a reasonable portion of the last five years exploring this very question and I still don’t always feel altogether confident that I’m interpreting my soul correctly. Souls can be tricky.

But we’ve all got one and it’s the part of us that holds our ultimate life plan, as well as all the wisdom and answers we could ever need. Our soul is basically the google search bar for our life’s journey. Your soul is ready and eager to give you the answer, you just have to learn how to type the question. It doesn’t promise you’ll like the answer, but it’s got it.

How to Talk to Your Soul

Ask for clarity.

Setting an intention to receive an answer is ninety-nine percent of the process. If you intend to receive the answer you seek, you will get it. Your soul really wants to talk to you, but free will says you have to give it permission. It can’t just break down your door and hand you instructions. You have to open the door and invite it in. (So your soul is like a vampire, I guess?) How fast you get your answer depends on your soul’s timing - which we don’t get to control, sadly.

You can help the answer find you by doing the next few steps.

Release attachment to the outcome.

Visualize handing any attachment you feel to the answer or the outcome over to your soul, your guides, or whatever higher power or universal creationary force resonates with you. Or send it out into the ether to explode in a shower of sparks. This may sound a little simplistic but it's an astonishingly powerful practice. 

Get out of your head and into your body.

When your brain is talking to you, you can’t really hear what your soul is saying. Your head yells like Trump reincarnated as an angry Little League Coach, your soul speaks in a nicely-moderated and aesthetically-pleasing indoor voice. So take a walk, go on a hike in whatever nature is in your vicinity, do whatever exercise makes you happy. Pay attention to your thoughts and what they’re screaming at you. Not to lend credence to their nonsense, but just to notice. It’s totally fine that they’re yelling and trying to drown out your soul, they’re prone to that, but don’t take what your thoughts are saying as truth. Just observe and let the thoughts pass.

See what comes.

Your answer may take a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month. But you’ll get your answer in the right time. If the answer is taking longer than you like, just keep doing the above steps and trust that it will show up in the perfect time. Sometimes there’s more life to be lived or information to be gathered before it’s time to know.

So just keep handing over any attachment or judgment that shows up, keep moving your body, keep clearing your mind, and stay open to what your soul says. The answer will come.

Light in the Winter's Dark

As winter deepens and the moon darkens, allow yourself to rest. Allow yourself to sink into the dreams of what’s possible, of what will blossom and bloom as we move into spring. But for now, allow everything you’ve done so far to be enough. Allow everything that has happened for you to be for your highest good. Allow yourself to breathe and open and welcome what will show up next - whether it looks the way you want or not.

Sometimes what we think we want isn’t what our soul truly longs for. If what’s showing up for you doesn’t look the way you’d like, allow yourself to move inward and feel what is asking to be shown, asking for your attention.

Your attention is your true power and is fully within your control. You can guide your attention toward what you want, toward what you long to create for yourself and in your world.

As the days grow shorter, you are being offered a beautiful space of reflection and shown how to create light in the dark. For your ability to create light in the dark is true magic and will light not only your life but the lives of those around you.

Carried

You are loved.

You are supported in your dance with life and change.

You are given everything you need, if only you ask.

Your requests don’t need to be sent to a person, they can be sent into the sky, into the wind, into the ground beneath your feet.

You are supported in every way possible, and those ways are far more than you could ever know.

So don’t question how it will be done, only ask that it is.

Your only job beyond that is to trust. Trust that you don’t need to steer the ship of your life.

You don’t need to plot and curse at the stars and wrench at the wheel. You simply need to choose the direction and allow yourself to be carried by the ship.

We are all bigger and brighter than we know.

We are all built for more than we can currently envision. We are all reaching for the place where what we can't yet imagine has popped like magic into our lived reality. 

We're all just looking for magic. For love. For truth. For peace. For what we feel - down to our bones, down to our souls - we're truly meant for. The irony, of course, is that magic exists inside of us, fully formed, just waiting for us to dig deep enough to see it. We already have more access to more love than any human can hold. We have access to truth and peace in every moment.

I believe this more than I've ever believed anything. 

But I am also just a person in my own body and my own experience and my own brain and sometimes what I know to be true gets clouded in a haze of humanity. We're all in a haze of humanity. Those who blast through the haze create genius. Those who peel away the wispy layers of fog reveal brilliance. Those who make it their sole mission to know who they are realize that they're already everything they ever hoped or dreamed. 

So here's a toast. To blasting, to peeling, to lurching and soaring our way through this human experience. To becoming so fully human that we feel the divine and lifting so high into the divine that we realize how deeply lucky we are to be human. 

Whatever's holding you back, blast through it. Whatever's asking for your courage, show up as the mighty being you are. Whatever wants to be expressed so strongly that it burns you up if you don't let it out, commit yourself completely and fully to that creation. Commit yourself, know yourself, be yourself. For you are mighty and brilliant and strong and a blazing star through this human plane. 

Cycles of Receiving

Sit back. Settle. Read. Know that all is happening in perfect time. Know that you don’t need to force or push or plot or strain or strive for what you desire. There is a time for action and a time for reception. Now is the time to receive. Receiving looks like putting aside the to-do list and letting yourself flow through the day, as you feel prompted both by joy and by nudges toward what’s necessary. Receiving looks like valuing insights and quiet over hustle and check lists.

You aren’t being given more than you can handle, you aren’t being given more than you want or need. You are being given exactly what is needed now. Now is the time to allow the cycle to flow - you have given, now you receive. Now you settle in for a few days and let life show you what’s next. Follow the steps and the sparks of light that are being laid out in front of you and practice being with your intentions and your desires, rather than doing them.

You can’t force receptivity. So if you’re always pushing and striving, you can never receive in the way you long for because you never slow down long enough for that bounty to catch up and walk in. Slow down and let what you want and what’s needed now catch up to you.

Fear Is Only a Shadow

Fear grinds slowly and painfully or hot and quick. Fear is that subtle sense of danger, that roiling blackness in your diaphragm or running rampant through the folds of your brain. But fear is a choice. You can choose to give your energy to fear and its agenda or you can choose to ask what purpose that fear now serves. Is it to keep you out of clear and present danger? Did that quick sense of danger prompt you to jump out of the way of a speeding bus? Or is that fear the product of some long-ago decision or some family system?

Ask if that fear is necessary now. Ask if feeling that fear is in your highest good. The answer you get back will probably be a soft but firm no. But whatever answer you receive - listen. Question it. Fear doesn't like to be questioned but your higher wisdom adores it. Your higher self, the self that has access to so much more information and assistance and knowledge and wisdom than we can imagine, wants you to question it, to ask for what it can share, what it can offer you. It lives for this. It loves it. It wants you to understand more fully what is truly available to you.

Fear wants to stifle. Wisdom longs to share.

So if you're ever in doubt - fear or wisdom, blocks or intuition - ask yourself how it feels. Does it feel open and expansive? Or does it feel like it's pressing in on you, forcing you into a box, telling you to take up less space? Does it welcome your inquiry or does it want to shut you down?

Fear dissolves in the light of your true self. Fear disintegrates when you shine in its face. So do whatever it takes to light yourself up, to shine fully. Because that will show you that what you fear is only a shadow.

Trusting Yourself

Sometimes things happen that we don't know how to handle. This is a part of life. You handle it the best you can in the moment, you ponder what else could be done later, and you move forward with the lessons you've learned. Nobody knows how to handle life at all times. Nobody has all the information they need at all times. We all have connection to the source of the best information we could have, but it can sometimes be hard to tune in at the precise moment you need it. With practice, it gets easier.

Trust that every action that comes from your best self is enough. Trust that any help you offer is enough. Trust that you are enough. Trust that you being you in this world is the best thing for all of us. 

You Are Your Own Best Guidance System

Usually I type the channeling and pretend I'm a giraffe, but sometimes I have to admit I'm a human and use my vocal chords instead.

Drink water. Dream bigger.

What is needed today? 

Rest, care, whole foods that grew from the ground, water with lemon. What is not needed today is recrimination, self-doubt or amorphous worries about things that are beyond your control. Just for today, assume that everything is beyond your control - except your own self-care.

How do you best care for yourself? Do you meditate, do you get slammed into the jiujitsu mat, do you write, do you make a big salad with an expensive ingredient that makes your taste buds mambo? Whatever it is you do that is truly loving for your mind, body, emotions, and spirit - do it today. Allow time to be made. Allow whatever it is you truly need to be your first priority.

Because when we deeply love and care for ourselves - as a verb not a noun - we are coming into alignment with the fullness of the universe. When we are in synch with the powers that are both greater and completely integrated with ourselves, unimagined opportunities appear. Money knocks on the door. People flock to us in wonderful and astounding ways. New truths and clarity about ourselves and our lives float in on a quiet breeze.

And sometimes none of these things happen. Sometimes we must continue to care for ourselves - deeply, tenderly, and with loving intention - as we keep putting one foot in front of the other. As we keep trusting that what looks dark now will brighten and that what we would like to experience will show up. While keeping our minds and hearts and bodies open to the idea that there might be something greater out there than our current information allows us to imagine.

What is needed today is full and loving care of ours minds and bodies and emotions, while expanding our imaginations and allowing ourselves to dream bigger than feels possible.

Life-Shifting Questions

What is needed today? 

Gentleness. Tender care of your life, your body and your soul. It's easy to push forward, to try to get ahead, to attempt to cheat time and move faster than you're meant. But this road only leads to fatigue and burnout. Nourish yourself. Care for your home, care for your body, care for your emotions.

Ask yourself, What do I need today? Wait for the answer to rise up in you. If nothing comes, ask yourself, What do I feel drawn to today? What would I do today if the factors of time, money, and what-I-think-should-be-happening didn't exist? Whatever comes to you, investigate it by asking if this would truly feed your soul and your body. If the answer is yes, allow yourself the space to do it - even if only for a short time.

You are worth it. Your life will shift into greater happiness and alignment as you expand into what brings you joy and what feeds your spirit.

Self-Care for Humans

Self-care is not optional. It is necessary. You do not move forward without self-care. You do not establish yourself in your true worth and your true potential without self-care. There is nothing that is more important than caring for yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Anything you do that raises your vibration is self-care. Anything you do that makes you feel joyful is self-care. But be careful here. Sometimes we can fool ourselves into thinking that the joy of a donut is self-care. Sometimes it is. Sometimes that perfectly frosted confection is precisely what you need. But sometimes it's also a way to pretend to comfort yourself when you don't understand what true comfort looks like, or don't feel you deserve to have it. Sometimes it's a way to numb yourself. Sometimes it's a way to fit in with those around you.

As you learn what true self-care looks like, you will discover full awareness around what is true self-care and what is false comfort. When you notice the patterns and behaviors of false self-comfort, don't berate yourself for them. You were doing the best you could with the information you had at the time. Instead, gently reassure yourself that you have better tools now and it's time to play with using them.

Self-care should feel like play. It should feel fun. Sure, sometimes heaving yourself out of bed to go for a run doesn't match your precise definition of "fun", but if that's the case, look at where you could adjust your routines so that the activity you know raises your endorphins and smoothes out the wrinkles and puts the gremlins to sleep becomes a joy, rather than a burden.

Self-care looks like being gentle with yourself. It looks like accepting yourself fully. It looks like investigating where you don't accept yourself and bringing the old voices and the old patterns and the old decisions into the light. Often, when we shine a light on our darkest places, what we feared simply evaporates. Sometimes what we fear comes out to waltz with us for awhile. This is when the deepest self-care is necessary. It's when we need to trust that we are dancing with our demons so that our demons will leave us in peace.

When you're tired, sleep. When you're hungry, sit down for tasty nutrition. When your brain has stopped functioning, allow it to rest. When you sense that your life or habits or routines need an upgrade, ask yourself how you can create something that serves you better. When your emotions are calling for attention, give them some love. When your back hurts, take yourself to someone who knows how to handle painful lumbar regions.

Allow others to support you in your self-care. Many dedicate their life's work to helping others feel better, helping others heal, helping others find what they need to do their own life's work. As you step into nourishing yourself and releasing the self-judgment around this kind of work - for self-care is work - you will find the perfect people to help you find your way.

You are valuable. You are worthy of being cared for. You are allowed and encouraged to care for yourself. Caring for yourself is one of the most necessary and defiant acts of service. Defy the voices that whisper otherwise, defy cultural assumptions that tell you how to be in the world, defy what informs you that you aren't worth this kind of space and care and love. Those voices are only speaking from their own pain, from their own sense of lack. 

Fill yourself to the brim, so that you do not feel that lack. If you begin to feel lack again, know that it's time to refill the well. Fill it as best you can. As with anything else, the more you practice caring for yourself, the better you'll get and the easier it will be. Self-care is the easiest and happiest road to the life you desire, and the one you were meant to live.

Our Stories

His story is not your story. Her story is not your story. Your story is yours alone. Yes, you share your story with others, others play a role in your story as you play a role in the stories of others, but you are ultimately responsible for your own life and how you view your life. You have power over your story. Yes, you can be hurt. Yes, you can be sad and afraid and worried. That can be a part of your story. Once you have allowed your feelings, heard them, asked for what they have to share with you, your story is allowed to change. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to feel what's sad, feel what's painful, feel what's hard, you're allowed to rage against the universe, and then see what that release brings you. Once you send your pain and your fear out into the air, into the space that is meant to take those feelings and transform them for you, your story will change.

Listening to another's story without judgement, without equating it to your own story, is one of the best services to humanity we can provide. We all want to feel heard. To know that our story matters. To know that our story matters every bit as much as another's story. To know that your story does not negate my story, even if we have different experiences.

This does not mean we are required to forgive the unforgivable or sacrifice our own wellbeing on the altar of another. It simply means that we release that which does not serve us so that we can focus on the sweetness of life, the tart lemon of experience, and the heady joy of swirling it all together.

Every person's story matters. Every voice is crucial. Every life is a light and when we can accept our own light and the light of our fellow humans, that light will power the universe.

The Power of Five Minutes

When you're flying apart - not in a dire way, not in the life-has-just-crumbled-around-me way - but when you feel like you have too many things to do without sufficient clock-time to do them. This is when you sit quietly for five minutes.

Yes, it feels like the absolute very last thing you should be doing. But this is when it's most important. When the world is tugging insistently at your hem, you need to sit down and listen to you. What truly needs doing now? What's your best next step? How can you care for yourself when so many things are happening? These are the questions to ask and, if you listen, the answers will become clear. Allow yourself the space to expand your ribs with quiet air and the time to allow your brain to draw in all its thoughts, pull them to the center of your head, and drop them into your heart space. In that moment, you can allow your heart to lead you into what needs to be next.

It may be the next thing on your to-do list, it may be something entirely unexpected. That quiet voice inside you may say, Now is the time to work. Or it may say, Now is the time to rest. You may even get lucky and hear, Nothing you do today will turn out well until you take the time to walk on the sand or shift your feet in the cool grass.

If that voice tells you to do something, life will be smoother and kinder if you do it.

If you're worried about listening to the wrong voice, use your feeling center as guidance. Does the advice bring you peace? Or does it make you agitated? If you feel agitated, you're probably listening to fear or one of a hundred voices in your head and your life that have their own agenda. If it makes you feel peace, then it is most likely your intuition. If you still aren't sure, ask for confirmation.

If it still feels haywire and awry and you're not sure what to listen to or what to pay attention to, that's okay. Intuition is a muscle - the more we use it, the stronger it gets. Five minutes every day will take you far.

And it may take a mere five minutes to realize that your to-do list isn't the hell-frazzle you suspected. Maybe it's now full of ease, even joy.

Let Yourself Be Surprised

You are not as hemmed in as you believe. You are not a tiger roaming a tight cage. You are not required to perform for anyone. You have a great wide field to roam. You have plains and mountains and oceans to explore. You have more than you ever dreamed possible. The world is now new. Don't bring your old habits and feelings and patterns into this new place. Decide to check them at the door and then step out into the sunny field, ready to be surprised by what appears to dance before you and beckon you forward.

Let yourself be surprised. Let yourself love and be loved. Let new experiences find you. Meet it all with the excitement of a caged lion freed or a sailor meeting new horizons.

Everything is waiting for you.

What To Do When You're Cranky

Be cranky. Don't desperately try to snatch at some feeling you think you should have instead. Allow yourself to be cranky. Maybe you need an hour of being cranky. Maybe you need to kvetch to a friend for twenty minutes. Maybe you need a whole day. Whatever you need, take it. Don't try to wrench yourself into some state of being that you think is better or more appropriate or not so inconvenient. Be inconvenient. This is not to say that you should wallow. You know if you're prone to wallowing or if you're more inclined to soldier through. If you're a soldier, ready for action at a moment's notice and never offbeat: give yourself some space. Take an hour off from your life to feel, to take care of yourself, to do something that brings you joy. If you're a wallower, take some action: write an angry letter and rip it up, stomp around for awhile, take a walk. Search for the feeling below the cranky. Your crankiness is probably hiding something deeper. Maybe anger, maybe jealousy, maybe sadness. Allow that emotion to float to the surface and just feel it for awhile. If your emotions take you to a real place, take care of yourself once they're done whipping you around. Take a bath, take a walk, go see a movie. Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself. Feelings can be hard work, but they're some of the best work you can ever do.

What to do when you're cranky? Be cranky. Until you aren't cranky any more. But recognize that crankiness is no greater or lesser state of being than any other. It simply is. When you can simply be with the cranky, you may find that it dissipates that much faster.

Quest for Romantic Love

Sometimes I write letters for my friends, addressing whatever issue they're currently dealing with. The information comes from the same place as these blog posts, the voice in my head that's often much wiser than I am. A friend asked me to address his difficulty in finding a romantic partner. After I sent it off, I asked if I could share the letter I wrote him, because, while it is specific to him and his situation, it might also apply to something you're seeking or going through right now. So if you're in search of love, see if any of this resonates!     xo Amber

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There is an illusion of control operating on you now. We cannot control when we meet our partner because too many decisions and the self-determination of too many people are also operating.

"When" is italicized because you can control - or, more accurately, choose - to experience that sort of relationship. You can ask for that relationship and decide that you would like to have that experience in your lifetime. But part of the choosing is to express your desire and release your attachment to the outcome. The outcome of what that relationship looks like, who it is with, and when it appears. Your desire to have it yesterday is operating as internal resistance within you that only slows the process down.

Your work now is to go into the shadows of this love that you seek and unhook the resistance, unhook anything that is slowing your flow.

Your work is to access that state of pure love and acceptance and delight that you hope to find in a relationship and create it for yourself now, independent of that relationship. You cannot receive the relationship - the one you truly want, that is - without doing this work. Because to receive it before would put your relationship at the mercy of your need. If you know how to fulfill your needs outside of any relationship than it will be healthier and stronger and full of the pure unconditional love you long for.

This is not to say that people can’t learn that unconditional love within a relationship, but that doesn’t seem to be the path you’ve chosen, that was chosen by you before your birth.

So find a space of feeling where you are already experiencing the emotions you long to feel in a relationship. That in and of itself will magnetize what you want.

Respect

Our job as humans is to respect the other humans around us. Respect where they are, respect their choices, respect who they want to be. It is not for us to judge, even though we do, because we're human. It's not for us to make them wrong, for any reason. Though we will, because we're human. Being human means fighting the lizard brain, the one that prompts us to filter and categorize based on what we see as helpful and safe. Our survival instincts our strong. But now that it is no longer a matter of survival for most of us, we need to rise above our quick decisions of who is worth our time and who isn't. Who is worthy and who isn't. Who is capable and who isn't.

We need to trust that what is on the surface isn't all their is. We need to trust that everyone truly is fighting their own battle, and that battle is probably remarkably similar to our own.

We all crave love and connection and security. We all want to reach our potential, we all want to survive this place, we all want to find what we're looking for. We all want to, eventually, stop looking.

We do what we need to do to decide who we want in our life and who we don't, but under each decision must be a deep, fundamental respect, no matter what their life circumstances, their bank account, or the measure of worldly power they can claim.

What we judge in others is often what we are judging in ourselves. How we measure the worth of another is often how we're measuring ourselves.

Everyone here has the same light you do. And it's the responsibility of each one of us to uncover that light.

When You Feel Like You Have To Hustle For Worthiness

Allow yourself to stop hustling. Allow it to be okay to step away from that ceaseless, soul-sucking grind of proving yourself to others. Your own view of your worthiness is all that matters. Since the mantra of "worthiness comes from within!" is less than helpful, here's how you can truly feel the worth that you were born with. Removing the numbing layers and piercing wounds around your self-worth will show you that you are every bit as valuable today as you were when you arrived.

Step into yourself and ask when you first felt unworthy. Were you a child? Is some memory or age called up? Go with whatever pops to mind and travel back to that moment in time. Ask the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal that wound. Ask that healing to travel from the moment the belief was formed all the way to the present, where you stand now. Feel this as it happens. When it reaches you here in the present, extend it into your future, a future where you truly feel your full, intrinsic worth.

Ask if there are any other spots in your life or childhood where you felt like you weren't enough, weren't worthy, weren't whole. Go back in and allow the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal each one and extend it up the line of your life to the present and into the future.

Give yourself time to integrate. Give yourself time to notice that you are worth everything and there is nothing that can be held from you if you choose to reach for it.

Let yourself see that when you radiate worthiness from within, the outside world can't help but reflect it back to you. This is when the hustle becomes either obsolete or so joyful that you're eager to dive in.