If someone asked you "what were you born to do?" would you have an answer?
For a long time, I thought I did. It’s all about the writing, I'd say.
I would count myself lucky to be so sure. Some people take years to figure it out, and some may never know it all. I was one of those kids who understood why I was here, and all it took was putting words on paper.
"Writing" was the first answer and the easy answer. Sometimes we need to stick with the original impulse. Sometimes we need to celebrate that things really can be easy.
But, sometimes, we need to keep searching and honor the complexity that urges us to go deeper.
Writer is a tidy word to claim, so compact and understandable. (It can be a long journey to claim it, I know, but we'll get to that.)
It was harder to get my head - and my words - around the greater truth:
Writing itself wasn't ever the end goal. The act of writing didn't define or even fulfill me. It was about everything that writing made possible within me.
Ultimately, writing has always been about discovering what I really cared about, worried about, and wondered about. Writing is there to help me talk to the divine, to figure out my stand on social and political issues, and to help me sort through my feelings.
Writing is the sailboat, the sexy car, the horse drawn carriage. It's the vehicle that takes us where we long to go. This vehicle may offer great joy, but the whole experience is about so much more than the thing that transports us there.
But this “writing vehicle” certainly has carried me a long, glorious way
Last January, the Sovereign Writers Circle was formed. This was the digital gathering place where healers who loved to write discovered how they could use their words to heal others. We’ve gotten together to write every week in 2018. And it has been awesome.
But that's not all we did.
We laughed and cried. We shared stories that we'd barely ever spoken aloud. We talked about business strategy and what it really meant to care for and nurture ourselves. We explored spiritual beliefs the weight of our ancestral line.
We have always used writing to get us to the place of sovereignty.
Writing is our vehicle. Sovereignty is our destination. (And the most important part of the sovereignty journey is realizing we've already arrived in so many ways. There's never one destination anyway, we realize. We'll never fully arrive until this life journey reaches its end, and it likely keeps going on well after that too.)
The more complex, hard won answer to "what were you born to do?"
When the words flow through you like they’re being channeled from some cosmic source, it’s never as sudden as it seems. Something powerful has been incubating within, disguised by doubt and anguish and all the feelings of “everyone else has this figured out but not me.”
This fall when I recorded The Sovereignty Manifesto while driving to pick up my little one from preschool, I was a little stunned when I named myself “Word Witch, Story Healer, Priestess of Sovereignty.”
The first title was fun to say. I’d been playing with the second title for a long time after long study in energy medicine. The last thing? The whole “Priestess of Sovereignty” thing? That was as surprising as it was natural and inevitable.
Leading this group changed me. Leading this group named me.
Holding space for so many brilliant women who wanted to make writing a tool for personal discovery, professional growth, and deep, meaningful evolution helped me see my own evolution more fully.
And so, the group has been renamed too.
The Sovereignty Circle is here
This group is intended to help you write your way into “what is it you were born to do?”
To engage with this question is to begin to write your Sovereign Story. When healers, coaches, and creatives know and embody their sovereignty, the world begins to shift.
Really.
As I said, the Sovereignty Circle is built on a the strong foundations of the vibrant community we have built over the last year. The best aspects of the group remain unchanged. We still meet for weekly writing practice dates (Wednesdays at noon ET) with new prompts each time. We still gather for monthly writing coaching & story healing sessions. We still bring in guest experts each month who talk about self care, publishing, marketing, the spiritual journey, and more.
Now, the title is simply more honest and more complete. To call this group of brave, brilliant souls The Sovereignty Circle conveys the truth of what the mother of writing practice Natalie Goldberg once said:
To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.
And so, I invite you to consider joining us for the next season or the next half year.
The details about the group are all here, along with kind words from many of our members.
We’re closing the doors at midnight ET on January 1 because our first meeting of 2019 is on Wednesday, January 2, so don’t wait to apply!