Taking a Stick of Dynamite to Sad Island

Is there a Facebook group for women who want kids but whose partners are terrified-slash-ambivalent-slash-negative about the prospect of small humans? Because I can’t keep breaking up with people over this. But my friends mostly have kids or don't want kids, I end up feeling like I’m on my own sad island and I’ve had about enough of Sad Island for one lifetime.

I used to talk more about being sad. It felt important to be transparent about my feeling status, especially on social media, that bastion of Best Face Forward and My Autumn Decor Is Prettier Than Yours. But then I felt like I was just marinating in misery and it was all I talked about and who wants to be an instagram downer? So I stopped. But then my entire life stopped too. Because if I’m not expressing myself, I’m not happy, and if I’m not happy the mechanics of my existence grind to a halt.

So I’ll cry over baby pictures on Facebook and contemplate blowing up my entire life - again - over this issue and then ultimately decide that’s a terrible idea and go back to whatever I was doing, probably eating grapes or contemplating the nature of cats.

Even though my 42-year-old biological clock wants to set the world on fire over this issue, the rest of me just wants to relax about the whole baby thing. Yeah, I want one. Yeah, I cry when I see pregnant women. But also, I really like free time. I really like my boyfriend. Maybe I can just let life take its course without having to strong-arm it into doing what I want. Maybe I can just focus on other things that make me happy. Like finishing a novel, and contemplating the nature of cats.

The 2020 Pantone Color for Fall is "Smoke"

Petaluma has been filled with smoke since August. I’ve gotten used to breathing it. I’ve also started waking up at 4 a.m. again, which is the time connected with the lungs in Chinese medicine. So I place my hands over my lungs and send them love, I feel them filling up with air I’ve purified through the strength of my not inconsiderable will, and I imagine them filling with gold light.

I also bought some herbal sleep drops that I’m taking three times a day, because there’s hippie and then there’s hippie. (Herbal sleep drops are hippie, filing your lungs with golden light is hippie. In case you were wondering.)

I don’t know how new parents do it. Two weeks of five or six hours of broken sleep a night and I can barely function. And it’s not like I’m also caring for an infant. I’m just … not sleeping. Not sleeping means watching Netflix or reading a book or lying in bed praying for sleep to take me, not feeding a tiny wailing human or praying for sleep to take it.

Despite the hazy, wildfire-filled air, I’m so happy it’s fall. I’m pulling out my sweaters and painting my nails autumnal shades and putting pie spice in my coffee. While my boyfriend yells at the maple leaves that fall on his head, I’m super excited to pull out my furry boots and put them on my feet.

Work feels like it’s shifting, I feel like I’m shifting, but I’m not yet sure what we’re shifting into. I’m doing my best to just exist happily in the mystery and do whatever feels right in the moment, rather than worry about it incessantly as per my usual. The thing I do know: Writing has been feeling like a big focus again, after years of putting all my energy into the channeling / healing / and other intuitive hippie pursuits. Now I just want to write atmospheric novels like Night Circus and Candy Queen and take naps. While this particular pendulum swings wildly back and forth (one month it’s on one side of the spectrum, the next month is the polar opposite), it feels like I’m supposed to be channeling healing and guidance just for me right now, and not so much for everyone else. It feels like I’m meant to be going through my video archives and receiving all the embedded channeling and healing for me, and maybe repurposing what I’ve already created to share with people in a new way. That feels really fun right now. Like my creation is supposed to be sharing stories and experiences rather than channeling.

It feels like I just need to choose what I want and follow it - subtracting worry and over-thinking and weird self-esteem nonsense from the equation. It feels like I’m supposed to fill my cup and let that spill over into the rest of the world, rather than me trying to fix anything for anyone else.

P.S. Out of sheer curiosity, I just checked the official Pantone color for 2020. It’s blue. This feels wildly appropriate psychologically and wildly hopeful politically.

Seven lessons from five years of running an intuitive business

(Said lessons are wildly applicable to all life paths, in case you're wondering why you clicked on this post.)

Eyes on your own paper. 

When I first started, I didn't do it the way anyone else did it. I did things the way I wanted to do them - channel everything on the spot instead of planning? Perfect. Announce multiple things at a time because that's the way they're flowing through my brain? Done. 

I wasn't looking at anyone else, I wasn't doing it the way anyone else was doing it, and it felt so good. Until I started looking at other people's instagram accounts. Until I got onto a few email lists. I stopped focusing on the process that felt best to me and started to feel like I needed to Learn Things From People Who Knew Better Than I. This would have been fine, except that instead of cherry-picking the lessons I needed, I began to doubt the way I was doing things.

We do things differently because we're meant to do things differently. There are people who need things done the way I do them, who need to hear things the way I say them, who need the energy I blaze out. So I get to do it however the hell I want. So do you. 

Charge whatever you need to show up from a place of excitement and nourishment. 

Don't charge the industry standard (whatever that is), don't charge what you think people will pay, charge what you need to do the work you do. Historically, I have been terrible at this. Or, more accurately, I've been great at the excitement but not so hot at the nourishment. Because I want everyone who wants to work with me to be able to. Because I want to help people even if, especially if, money is a challenge. Because money has so often been a challenge for me. 

Then I burned out so hard I could barely work for a year. Since then, I've had multiple come-to-Jesus moments with myself. Am I serious about doing this work? Am I serious about taking good care of myself? Am I serious about seeing the possibilities and transformation and magic that can happen when huge investments of energy, money, and time are made? Yes, yes, and yes. Yes even when it feels scary.

I made the commitment to myself to raise my prices in October to what nourishes me. (After sitting with that promise for a week, I've decided why wait until October?) Because healers need healers. Coaches need coaches. Women who work a lot need support. If you are in the business of supporting humans (which is every job ever), you need, require, and deserve whatever you need to do that work.

Charge what you need to be paid in order to do the work and show up from a place of excitement and overflow. That number may be uncomfortable. Do it anyway.

Self-care times a million. 

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but as someone who teaches women how to take better care of themselves, to nurture themselves, to treat themselves as sacred, I was often kinda bad at that. Practice what you preach, Amber. 

We're living through a time that calls for maximum self-care. Whatever it takes to keep your own cup filled, do that. No excuses. 

Commitment to self over outcome. 

Focusing on anything external pulls focus from where your true power lives. (Pro tip: Your power lives within you. Here's a little rant on that.) Here are some external things that actually deserve none of your attention: numbers of followers, numbers of likes, numbers in your bank account, things happening the way you wanted. Because they're actually none of your business. External response to your work is not your concern.

Controlling the way things happen in the work as a result of your work is not your job. Continuing to go within, feel the feelings of what you'd like to create, and then taking the next soul-led action - THAT is your job. Focus on shifting your internal experience in the direction that feels good and you can't fail. 

Don't do anything from a place of "I have to do this", do it from a place of "I can't wait to do this, I must do this, I must do this now, sorry dinner dishes you just lost your place in line." 

Why do I work for myself if I post something just because I think I have to? Doing things because you have to do them is terrible and soul-shrinking and we all wanted to leave that behind in elementary school. 

Honestly, everything is optional. Even the things that don't feel optional. You don't HAVE to pay your taxes, you just have to accept the consequences of not paying them. You don't HAVE to stop at that stop sign, you just have to accept the consequences of blowing through it. You don't HAVE to do those dishes, you just have to accept dirty dishes. 

When I do things in my business because I think I have to, they straight up do not work. When I do things from a place of OH MY GOD THIS! THIS IS THE THING RIGHT NOW! it doesn't matter whether it works or not, because I am in my creative genius flow. (Being in that place usually means it does work, but also means I don't feel too bothered either way.) 

Hint: If nothing feels good, nothing feels exciting, it's time to go back and fill your cup. Don't write the thing because you feel like you have to write the thing, go on a walk or watch Harry Potter or do whatever feels like a soul-sigh of relief and keep doing the soul relief things until you feel that inspiration and excitement fire back up. 

Go all in. 

For a long time, I was in the space of "Don't give up." Which is a very different flavor than "Go all in, energy blasters blazing."

Going all in is the energetic transformation that shifts the whole universe in your favor. 

Heal whatever you need to heal to get where you want to go. 

I had to heal an energy of scarcity going back many generations. I had to ground fully into my worth and the worth of this work. I had to heal societal constructs I had sucked up around what it means to be a healer (you have to heal everyone and you have to do it for free) and a woman. I had to heal my own rabid codependence. I had to heal my addiction to emotional drama and struggle and misery and lack. All this work is ongoing. I have to use all the tools I teach and channel more tools weekly to keep myself on track.

Heal your shit. Catch yourself when it bubbles back up and gently remind yourself that we don't do that anymore. 

Being a healer, an intuitive, a channel, a writer, a leader, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a lover of humans is not for the faint of heart. You already know this. But if you aren't quite sure - in this moment - if it's worth the effort, allow me to say: Yes. It's worth it. Keep going. Go all in, if you haven't already. Your soul is yearning for that commitment. 

Love, Amber 

Sensitive Superwoman

My boyfriend finds me sobbing on the couch a lot these days. I need to make a sign that says “MAGIC IN PROGRESS” to put over my face when that happens so he can stop worrying.

Sometimes you have to go deep into the breakdown to get to the magic on the other side.

Because I forget this always, here’s how a lot of my life has gone lately:

I’ll need to cry, I’ll avoid crying. I’ll get all locked up and frustrated and everything in life will slam to a halt and I won’t know why so I’ll get more frustrated and the locks will turn to cement. I’ll finally break down into the serious ugly cry - and a few hours later get a fresh influx of energy, inspiration, and joy.

No matter how many times this happens to me, I’ll insist on forgetting, insist on Not Needing To Feel Things, insist that my sensitivity has gotten better, and then my whole life will turn into an escalator that’s just stairs because the electricity is out. As we all know, that’s super annoying. Who wants to climb stairs when you’re supposed to get a sweet ride to the top?

My sensitivity is my super power. When I let the feels out, the electricity turns back on and everything starts working again. When I insist on ignoring it, life gets real aggravating.

Moral of the story: When life stops and looks at you with exasperation, feel whatever’s clawing at your chest and trying to get out. It helps.

Demanding Spirit Children

One of the things I do is talk to people who aren't exactly on this plane. Like my dad, teachers who died thousands of years ago, and friends' dogs. (Sometimes the dogs are still on this plane, but they don't speak English.)

One of the people I talk to occasionally is my daughter.

Yesterday, she said "Faster."

My daughter isn't even conceived yet and she's already demanding. That better not be what she says to me when I'm making her a smoothie or we'll be having a discussion.

Now, most adults with their feet firmly planted in reality would say that I don't have any business having a baby right now, for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons I agree with, at least when I'm pretending to be an adult with firmly-planted reality feet.

But if we all stuck to what we think is possible, realistic, and responsible - what society has trained us to do and believe - nobody would ever get anything done, whether extraordinary or magically ordinary.

Maybe if we focus on what we really want, life rearranges around us to support it.

Just because we’ve been trained to belief that things must be done a certain way doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole universe of expansive possibilities, new ways to get what we really want, what would make our souls happy.

It’s not that I could never be happy without biological children. Life without children is great. Free time, travel, sleep, reading a novel cover to cover, parties with friends without securing a babysitter.

But I know that if I don’t at least try, no matter what the circumstances of my life, I will never forgive myself. I need to go after this desire as best I can and surrender the ultimate outcome to god/universe/flying spaghetti monster/whoever is up there. And trust that by devoting myself to this, my life will rearrange to support it in surprising ways.

All I know is that I can’t keep putting up barriers around what I really want. Because there is always a way. There’s always a way to have what you truly want, even if it doesn’t look the way you planned.

Hanging out with somebody else’s daughter.