Carolyn Elliott always creates juicy memory melds with life experience. This one comes from her Precise Desire Practice, and is the last of 5 components to making magick. How critical and often ignored is this practice of retreating! And retreating without having to lace it with any negativity when we have been satisfied or when someone is not. This personalization will not leave my imagination.

What if Valentine’s Day season were more of a global outreach initiative?

Oooweeee, the Valentine series. The passion of David through the words of a woman. He can mean anything here: God, lover, money, regret. Fill in your blank for He and His and discover your passion.

I’ve been experimenting all covid season with this idea that I can influence what is created in my day by releasing this antiquated idea that my day “happens” to me, as if I’m a victim of circumstances outside me. I’ve made magic. I spent a month imagining for some reason I don’t yet know, imagining what my ideal kitchen would look like. And soon, circumstances showed up where at no cost, my kitchen cabinets were redone, money came unexpectedly to buy new lighting, new furniture. It never touched my checking account. I imagined a new job by how it would feel, what I wanted to see myself doing, and most importantly that it challenge this old idea that it has to be painful to earn it. Out of nowhere, circumstances showed up where I received freelance work to create what has yet to feel like work, with people who would make me feel like I was magic. And the magic happened. Life feels like a thrill these days....and it’s come with nothing that feels like effort, but in fact, joy. It’s changed my life. And it’s frankly, left me grateful for this time to make beauty out of an unprecedented time of chaos. This quote comes from an interview that can be found in “What the Bleep Do We Know.”

What must it be like to sit bedside and keep a sibling company in the uncertain process of creating body reconciliation? And in the time of COVID-19 when loved ones around me have been hit with grief, I consider the need to plan for my calm abiding role, as I sit bedside, much like Frida Kahlo’s sister did for her hermana.

My fifth grade teacher made me memorize this poem. It was an assignment for which we got a grade. I’m not quite sure how we were graded, whether it was our performance, number of words correct to words incorrect, or if we bothered to do it at all. But I see now why that poem was so important to memorize. It’s been a recurring theme for me all my adult life. I wish that I could go back to my teacher and tell her how significant it was for me in reflection after unfruitful relating and in appreciation for the best of what’s out there.

I’ve never felt such a kindred spirit as I have with Warsan’s writings. They have broken me down to sobbing rivers-that beauty of feeling understood and feeling so misplaced in the world of relationships. But I found a home in that place and amazing company, embraced by her words

Sandra is my totem animal. Had it not been for her, I would have felt I was alone in the world, and would have probably convinced myself I would have to settle for being “normal” for a relationship worth sacrificing for. But I’ve found, a relationship of two thriving people who get to be who they are and still be happy-that’s the best alchemical wedding there is.

Happy new year! Nothing rouses the spirit like the call to do work that is filled with purpose. May your 2021 be filled with joy in your work, but most importantly, may it be filled with passionate significance.

There comes a time when you realize that your job is not to make your life whatever others will for you. The most rewarding thing about choosing yourself is that you attract others who choose themselves as well, without losing yourself as an exchange. I can still roll with whole people by choose me as my own dharma. It’s the greatest gift that can be offered to the world.