Writing to you from the deep winter: when life is quiet, before the answers are found. Often before I even know the real question. Blogging myself to answers has always been one of my favorite things, and I’m excited to do more of that this year. Thanks for joining me here.
xo - Amber
If you haven't listened to the Christmas stories yet, please allow me to mention them again. Festive yuletide tales about dancing dormice, giraffes attempting to Christmas shop, and wintry celebrations for misanthropic bears. I love these stories so much, and I hope you do too.
Merriest of Christmases, my friends!
Turns out, bears don't really need to hibernate in winter, they just want an excuse to avoid the neighbors for a few months. This is the last of the recorded Christmas episodes and possibly one of my favorite stories in the whole book.
"Sukie felt herself loosened from the mooring that had anchored her entire life."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Building a business will yank up everyone of your demons and wave them, skeletons rattling, in front of your nose.
I’ve spent the last five plus years looking inward. Clearing out the gunk, connecting with my soul, going into the shadows so that I can trust the light.
But in order to build my work - both my writing and my work with writers - in the way I want and need to, I don't have the luxury of dancing with my demons any more.
Oh, they’ll show up, and stronger than ever. But I can’t give them as much of my time. In order to help people transform in the way I know is possible, in order to write the words I know will help, I have to ground myself in simple forward steps. I have to take care of myself. I have to pay rigorous attention to my thoughts and where my focus lands.
Last week was intense. I got sucked into all the swirling negativity of my head. You aren’t making enough money, you’ll never make enough money, too many things have to happen before you can make the money you need, you have to increase your audience by a zillion before you can do the work you want to do. Et cetera to infinity.
It happens. Especially when you’re pushing so far out of your comfort zone that you can't even remember the zip code where your comfort once resided. But I just don’t have time to let the brain gremlins brought forth by the demons get the better of me.
So they won’t. Resistance will be weeded out and the demon skeletons will be sent to rattle elsewhere. Because I have work to do.