Return of the words + the sword I will die on

I'm writing my poetry again...

It has felt like a long winter since the release of Paddle Home back in 2021, but they're moving through me again and it feels like magic.

I know better than to let them miss the page, so my journal is filling day by day, and I am very clear that this next book isn't going to be anything I had planned. 

It's new. 

It's honest.

It's the truths I'm ready to tell.

I had a podcast interview with my dear friend Tracy Litt on Thursday and after we finished recording I said to her, "I just realized that my keynote talks are supposed to be my poetry & prompts." 

Her response - "What are you doing next October?" (Her next live event date)

Her excitement about my words and work was the real time conformation I needed most...

And it got me thinking about what it feels like to serve in the MOST authentic way possible and how different that looks for all of us.

I believe it's one of the glaringly mixed up elements most people are getting seriously wrong in their businesses.

We have been fundamentally conditioned to seek out others' formulas for success - as if success has a duplicatable formula!!

We then take these formulas and, inevitably, fail - and then make them mean something about us, our art and our gifts.

gahhhh! 

I need you know that no one can do it like you can.

I will die on this sword...

And the absolute full send immersion of our own artistic expression and experience is the only thing that actually works in the end...

Talk about true success, babe.

So I'm writing....and the next steps for my life, business, coaching work is coming forth with wild clarity.

ELEVATE Retreats are back in 2025. 

My next poetry book will be out in 2025. 

There are some exciting shifts coming in IYB and beyond...

I am the creator of my own world, after all. 

The chips are falling right into form...and it's so exciting!!!

Ok, here's a poem for you: 

How to survive

Feel it all, feel everything.
Let it run through you like a raging river breaking its banks,
tearing down everything,
every. single. thing. in its path.

Let it bring you to your knees
and feel each tiny muscle you never knew you had
ignite as you rise up to meet your new self.

"Do you know what you’re made of baby?"

"Magic," she said with glittering 10-year-old eyes
as she rode her stick horse named “Leila” around the backyard.

Listen, you've gotta be the one to crack your own shell.
Let what’s inside drip down your entire being.
Sit in the pieces of old protection that fall away.

Pick them up, one by one, and wear them like a crown.

........

Journal prompt for you: 

+ What have you overcome that you can, now, wear like a crown?

+ What has been trying to get your attention that you haven't had the space to see/feel/experience?

+ What do you really want next for your life? 

........

Here's to simple truths & courageous pens.

xo 

Amber