Allowing the compost within the cave of creativity
It has been raining this week.
Normally, rainy days are alchemic for my creativity. The rhythmic patter of rain on my windows and the slower pace leave ample room for my psyche to unfold and play within words. This week though? This week it feels as if my energy has drained completely.
I sent a voice memo to my best friend on Tuesday. “I feel like I have energy!” I exclaimed, exuberant. Monday was a difficult day for me. I drew boundaries, released anger, said no more concerning a few things that I knew were draining me of my life force. So when I walked out of my office on Monday and realized I actually had energy to stay up and not collapse into bed, it was celebratory.
That feeling of exuberance inched into Tuesday morning. I was off after a long stretch at work and I didn’t have to look far for why I felt so alive and focused. Around noon, I logged on for an important meeting I couldn’t miss, and immediately my energy disappeared.
Ah, I thought. I see.
//
We talk a lot about burn out these days. We express the seriousness of work life balance and creating in the margins of our life. But what happens when you’ve done everything you possibly can to avoid that feeling of being pressed down into the earth and it still happens? The soil has her way with you and before you know it, you’re running dirt through your fingers and sinking deeper-deeper-deeper into the compost. You are the little girl on the beach, her swimsuit muddy with play, and you’re whispering I go to sleep right here.
Who cares about propriety or to-do lists or creation.
You will not be creating any time soon because you are the creation. You are in the midst of transmutation. You couldn’t get up if you tried.
//
I thought this week would be different. I say that often. You would think after 41 years of living, I would know that even if we have a sense of something, that is merely a thread — a possibility. We might know and see, but are we looking with our eyes or our soul? The soul is the one who can point us where to go. The soul is the one with the answers.
And this week, my soul couldn’t be more clear with her question: are we weaving a life of expectation or one that truly lights us up?
//
On Tuesday, we entered Gate 41 in Human Design. It’s the one of the imagination — where we see those threads and the potential outcomes and know from our soul which thread to pull. We use our imagination as a portal for power and manifestation. And not power as in dominion. Power as in owning your full self and claiming your full creative personhood. Power as in autonomy.
Power as in recognizing the threads that are sucking you dry and not hesitating to cut them off at the source.
We entered this gate right as the moon stretched into fullness. And today, January 25, we allow her to illuminate the parts of us that we must let go in order to pursue that power we tapped into on Tuesday. What a potent combination for creativity.
We cannot speak our truth or live into our purpose unless we let go of the things that are keeping us stuck. And we cannot know where we are stuck unless we allow the light to shine in the spaces we have purposefully kept hidden.
It’s a creative leadership that gives us the strength to look behind the veil knowing that with this pulling back, that which we hold onto for fear of letting go will be revealed. Even though we know this thing, whatever it is, not for us. Even though we see the threads and this particular one points to darkness or frustration or that quiet no we hear when we know we need to take another path. It is part of us, and we fear the cutting back regardless of the life that will spring from this moment of death.
//
It has been raining this week, but today, the sun shines behind the clouds. You feel her rays as you walk outside, the cloudiness a mirage to the brightness that blinds you. And yet, winter still has her grips on the earth. The plants dripping with rain water and lilting toward the earth, signs of life only seen in the tiny buds beginning to sprout on the bare branches. They are waiting. Biding their time for the moment they know to bloom — full color, full vibrancy, stretching toward the sky with newness and rebirth.
But first, they had to drop their leaves.
The lavender had to go limp in the cold.
The roses hiding underground, protecting their roots until spring breathes life into our bones.
//
Perhaps this is the way of the Underworld. Less of a place to fear and more of a place where we can rest until the time is right. A place where our true essence — the element of our creative spirit — is illuminated. Where we can drop into this truth with ease and allow the integration, the dead pieces falling off and transmuting into something beautiful.
Something new.
What is it you need to say or write? What story in your bones is trying to stretch into newness? Where do you need to breathe life into your creativity, allowing the pieces that don’t fit anymore to fall off and shift into something new?
It is time.
Weaving New Constellations
“I wonder what would happen if you asked show me blueprint,” she said. There was a small lilt to her question that pointed to a knowing. Like she knew and saw but wanted confirmation.
I paused for a moment.
“It’s a nebula,” I said. “Like the cosmos.”
She reminded me of the colors I pinpointed earlier in the session: blues and purples and light pinks. Effervescence that shifted seamlessly into deep and rich and never-ending: a tapestry of my soul. They were the colors of the blueprint, speckled with stars. I saw myself reach out and pluck a constellation from the sky and weave it into something all together new.
You have the power to create worlds, I heard. What is the world you are wanting to create?
Tears started to fall then, because I have felt less than creative for a while now. In September, I started working on two manuscripts and quickly fell in love with the plots and characters. And then life sent me on a tailspin and the words dried up, leaving my bones feeling hollow.
//
In her book Mirrors of the Earth, Asia Suler speaks of that which every artist knows: with death, comes rebirth. A fallen tree becomes the home and ecosystem of mushrooms. Entire forests are known for their reliance on natural firestorms to push their regeneration outward.
We know this, cognitively. And yet, all too often we fail to acknowledge this truth within our own lives and creativity. Using our life as compost and trusting the process feels off-putting at best and negligent at worst. How do you allow the space to heal? How much time is needed for words to fully form? What does it actually look like to hold space for death and rebirth within your own creativity?
//
I am in a period of rebirth.
I’m a Scorpio rising. My Pluto is in the 12th house. I am not brand new when it comes to regeneration. And yet this process feels excruciating. I buck and kick as much as possible, resisting the ways in which my skin is shedding into something new. I try and wield the change, forcing my hand into spaces no longer a fit. I bend and break myself into tiny pieces in order to fit the mold of someone else’s expectations because this is comfort — the acceptance. Let me be your chameleon and I can show you all of the colors in the world. I will blend and acquiesce and swallow my words until they are lodged in my throat, their sharp edges like shrapnel.
I will smile, because it’s what the good girls do.
All the while the expanse of my soul calls out to me — you know this is too small for you. You know you cannot breathe. Why must you continue to resist the awakening?
I see the expanse before me, colorful and magical and full of possibility. I move to take a step — the leap — but the chains of what was tighten around me.
Do I have the strength to free fall? Do I dare?
//
We expect regeneration to come naturally. Like blinking or breathing or noticing the way the leaves sway in the breeze, we assume that creativity will fall into our laps and all we have to do is wait. And in a way, this is true. In a way, there is nothing we necessarily have to do because we are inherently rebuilding and reframing and reassessing our worldviews. But breaking free of what was is just that: a breaking. It’s not stasis. It’s active. It’s a choice we’re faced with: will we allow the transformation, or will we resist and stick with what’s comfortable even though it’s tattered and bruised and falling apart, a rotten version of what could be?
We like to think that we’ll do it.
We’ll take the leap or allow the mini deaths to come for us and our psyche, pinpointing the programming we’ve bought into without even realizing it.
But what happens when the expanse comes calling and with it, everything we knew as truth stumbles into uncertainty? What happens when our soul raises her hand and whispers there’s another way, if you let me show you.
Will we answer then?
//
Here is what I want to tell you: as much as I resist the rebirth, I know it is for my good. As much as I balk at the expanse, laughing in disbelief at my soul’s inclination to reach for the cosmos, I know that I cannot write from my core if I do not allow the breaking. I cannot get to the Truth if I am constantly running from the light. My words hold no weight if I am comfortable in my smallness. And if I am really honest, it’s not comfortable remaining small. Like an infant breaking free of their swaddle, I want to experience the liberation of taking up space. I know the suffocating feeling of living life bent into a shape that does not suit you. I may bend and break myself into a million pieces in order to gain approval from you, but in the process, every single one of those pieces will be crying out for wholeness.
And the same is true for you.
Consider where you’re breaking yourself down in order to fit someone else’s mold. How does this feel to you? Truly? What would it feel like to answer the deepest call of your soul — the expanse you’re meant to inhabit creatively? What would it look like for your words to come from your core vs what you think someone else wants you to say? What if you let your words fall hot and true, the tendrils of energy falling off of them and weaving together to create a world full of beauty and luminescence and depth and intention?
I imagine it would feel a lot like plucking a constellation from the blanket of stars and creating something all together you.
On Ownership
“I don’t know if I can really explain it,” I say. “It’s basically this: those first few days felt incredibly lonely. And very emotional.”
I blink back tears, surprising myself with the strength of feelings still lingering. I glance at her through my computer screen and she smiles slightly, encouraging me to continue.
“I wasn’t actually alone. I had support and I felt that support. But there was this…other thing. This persistent thing. It felt like loneliness.” I look up at her again. “It was hard.”
She nods slowly.The look in her eyes tells me she knows what I’m taking about — that she’s felt it too.
“It’s ownership,” she responds, leaning into the computer screen. “You were feeling ownership, Elora.”
My breath catches with the truth, the vibration ringing through my veins. Yes, I think. Yes. That’s it.
It was early July. A heat dome was holding the temperature in central Texas to a steady boil. And here I was, in my office that faces the morning sun, sweating with nerves and grief and heat while trying to fill my boss in with everything that happened while I stepped up to fill her spot while she was on vacation. I’d been the functional area manager for two lines of business for three weeks. And this loneliness — and her peeling back the layers of the root of that loneliness — was the beginning of the letting go.
//
I was sitting at the computer when the email came through, the ping of the notification causing my heart to race. That was the norm now. Ever since the fallout, I’d check my social media with one eye open, terrified of what messages were waiting for me. Terrified another notification would be pointing the blame, the mob out for blood.
Against my better judgment, I opened the email to see it was the husband of one of the coaches. How convenient you registered your business as an LLC. It’s almost as if you knew you wanted to screw people out of money and protect yourself — because you know you’re liable, right? You know you could go down for this, right? You’re such a liar. An abusive wolf in sheep’s clothing. I wish my wife never met you.
Tears ran down my cheeks.
Honestly, I felt the same — I wish she’d never met me either.
A few weeks prior, I’d dissolved the coaching arm of my business, The Story Unfolding. It wasn’t lucrative for the women who’d been part of it, and while it was devastating to admit that particular failure, I knew it was the right decision by the way my shoulders loosened as soon as I shared the message. They’d still be coaches. They could even promote their offerings in the community I ran if they wanted — they just needed to collect the money themselves. Host the courses themselves. We all had Zoom at the time anyway, so there was no net new investment on their part. All it meant was a shift in approach and honestly, it felt more true: you don’t have to be a Story Unfolding coach to be a coach, I said. You know what you’re doing. Now you get to do it without constraints.
The only problem was, I had horrible advice on how to go about it.
An email would be best, my business coach told me at the time. This way, you’re giving them time to process on their own.
So I sent an email with the news, and before I knew it, the torches were lit. It sounds dramatic because it was dramatic. Hand the reins to a narcissist and that’s what you get — drama. The coach who gave me the advice to do this via email ended up kicking me out of the leadership cohort I started for our development because it’s for the best — they’re all just really tender right now, Elora. One of the coaches — the one I unknowingly gave the reins to — created a Facebook group titled We Need to Talk about Elora. She started messaging people in my community, letting them know that Elora isn’t who she says she is — don’t trust her. Don’t believe what she says.
Had I not been the target, had this been a show I was binging or a story I was reading, I would have thought it brilliant: get out first so you can control the narrative.
The thing was, I never was going to share her dirty laundry. I wasn’t going to share any of their dirty laundry. I had no intentions of letting the women know about the moment she looked at me and screamed get the fuck away from me! only to explain that she was screaming at the lies in her head and it had nothing to do with me. Even though my nervous system never lies, and I felt those words in my bones.
I didn’t want to explain how she called me her Elora, how she pulled one of the women aside and told her she had spiritual parasites and because of that, didn’t deserve affirmations because the parasite would simply devour them and turn them into lies.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
None of it was supposed to happen this way.
//
On August 25, 2013, I published Every Shattered Thing. It’d felt like hell just getting to that moment — from almost winning a publishing contest, to being published by that publisher anyway only to have them crash and burn with a year with no royalties to speak of — I couldn’t believe it finally happened. But I did it.
And then everything fell apart.
It happened slowly, and then all at once.
At first, the release was magical — miraculous even. My book launched as one of Amazon’s Hot New Releases and reviews were pouring in — people loved it. An acquisition editor from Simon & Schuster bought it. Friends in the industry were connecting me with their agents. I walked around with my veins buzzing, feeling as if I was choking on goodness and beauty.
It wasn’t just my writing.
I was invited to a retreat of women leaders and I took the leap and went, suddenly brainstorming and laughing with people I’d admired from afar. I had the first retreat of Story Unfolding and it was a huge success. I was adding eCourses to my repertoire and consistently selling out every time I launched something. My community of women was pushing 100 members. At the time, there weren’t many online communities. Membership sites hadn’t really hit mainstream yet. So my near-100 group of women felt rich with talent and support and sisterhood and potential.
First, my agent dropped me. We’d worked together for the better part of a year, and when she’d read Every Shattered Thing she contacted me immediately. I’ll never forget that phone call or the particular shade of light my lamp reflected onto the wall in our bedroom. I stared at that glimmer of light the entire call, my heart beating out of my chest and my eyes filled with the tears that bubble up and over when you’ve crashed into something too beautiful to process. It was there she took a breath and spoke the line I would write in my art journal later that night:
Elora, you’re going to be a star.
It wasn’t that I believed her. It was that she believed in me.
Even still, our partnership ended faster than I anticipated, both of us realizing at the same time that publishers weren’t ready for The Shattered Things series and my writing was taking me to the indie market. Mutual as it was, that separation still stung.
Next was the retreat.
The one with the women.
This is where everything converged. Where I began to lose credibility. From the moment I opened my doors for coaching and I found myself successful, I would say this won’t last. This just fell into my lap and I’m terrified it’s all going to disappear one day. Like, I’ll blink and it will all be gone.
If anyone has never told you, let me be the one to say it: your word is your wand. Within four months of that retreat, my monthly income dropped to a fourth of what I made before, Somewhere Between Water and Sky released without fanfare, and Russ lost his job. I tried to make it work — I invested in a branding eCourse, fully pivoted my business, and continued to stay silent, choosing to swallow the poison instead of spread it.
Within a year of the retreat, I would release everything but the bare necessities of Awake the Bones and return to work, taking a temporary contract at a tech company.
I’d owned a business.
I’d led a community.
And I failed at both.
//
A few days ago, I interviewed for a role at work. This role would be a promotion, something I’ve been working toward for two years. After the interview, I walked out of the room with a smile on my face. Within a few hours, I would be limp with exhaustion, and heavy with a grief I couldn’t name.
Yesterday it was practically paralyzing.
I sobbed in the bathtub last night, desperate for some connection to what in the world I was feeling. I knew it was grief, but it didn’t feel as if it were attached to the interview or the role. Like I always do in these moments, I thought about the magic of time and how our bodies serve as reminders of things we’re still carrying. I thought back through previous summers — why was it always June and August that hit me like this? And suddenly, I remembered my conversation with my boss. With the loneliness I felt as I covered for her while she was on vacation.
On her naming that loneliness ownership.
I am closest than I have ever been to owning a line of business at work. That’s the terminology we use for this level of leadership — you own it, even though we all know who gets the revenue. That’s not what it means though. Here, ownership means responsibility. It means empowerment. And in order to do this well, you have to harness and fully own your power.
And tonight, I realized I would not be able to fully step into this season of leveling up my leadership until I let go of the fear and self-doubt and need for validation that comes from the devastating blow of failure. Because the last time I owned a business — truly owned a business as in it was my only job — it didn’t work out because I trusted the wrong people and not the internal compass that has never steered me wrong. It was in a summer much like this one — where the very air feels combustible. Only it wasn’t the air that exploded, it was my business.
And that type of wound can be gutting — nearly impossible to heal.
//
Yesterday morning, I pulled out one of my decks that has been with me for a few years. I needed direction, something to point to why I felt so heavy, the grief so potent. I pulled The Crumbling and it spoke about how what’s happening — this release — it’s all for my good. I can allow the crumbling to occur so within the rubble I find my Northstar.
It reminded me of The Tower card in tarot.
And it reminded me of Mary Magdalene — the Tower.
How she stood up and began revealing things that had been hidden, and in that, offered freedom and release to others.
I’ve worked through a lot of 2014 and the Crumbling that came with it in therapy and a sisterhood that feels more solid and true than anything. But last night, I realized there was one last piece to tear down — one last persistent chunk of rubble that kept bumping into me and my growth, rendering me frozen and heavy with grief.
That piece is this: if I couldn’t own a business by myself, in a field I love, what makes me think I can step into this ownership now? Who’s to say I won’t mess this up as well?
A quiet voice echoes across the breeze, filling my senses with the hint of roses.
It wasn’t your fault, love. It never was. And yes — yes you can absolutely step into your full power without fearing the repercussions. Let the earth quake with your truth — it’s how new mountains are born.
Take it Further
Where are you needing to take ownership in your life?
What desires are being held under an immense amount of pressure to perform, and how can you release those expectations?
What would happen if you took ownership of your power, standing barefoot and confident in what you know to be yours?