2. Organizing (and pulling off!) a surprise birthday party for one of my dearest friends. We took a flower arranging class (very meditative), and I conducted a manifestation ritual for the group which seems to have created magic for the Birthday Girl within 24 hours. (more on that to come, but in the meantime, here’s the playlist).

2. The gorgeous flower arrangement I brought home from that birthday greeting me every morning and evening, courtesy of Emily of Pyne Florals.

3. Noticing the sun shining through my bathroom window into my shower, and actually stopping to feel it. The light filling the space, the sparkle in the shower water, its warmth enveloping my body.

4. Coming up with a killer tagline for BEHAVE’s upcoming retail launch. I’ve been finding a space of joy, play, and hopefulness around this upcoming launch, rather than doom, anxiety and gloom like I’ve experienced ahead of big launches in the past. Nervous system regulation is real, it works, sorry I’m a broken record but it’s true.

5. Feeling an energetic shift in my bones, body and Spirit this week, as we transited the Lunar New Year, the start of Ramadan and the solar eclipse all within 24 hours.

6. Experiencing my first “breakthrough” – whatever that means… for me it’s understanding something deeply, in a new way, for the first time – with my new therapist. A couple weeks ago, I started a new form of therapy called AEDP: Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. The modality feels noticeably different from past therapy experiences, which is what I was looking for when I sougt out a new therapist. Something that would feel new and disruptive to my system, to my patterns, and to my old ways of being.

7. Watching Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater) for the first time

8. Attending a workshop hosted by Danielle Robay and Suzy Welch, the NYU Professor who created the most popular course at the Stern School of Business: Becoming You. And through her experience teaching that class and her own Doctorate research, created the Values Bridge: a simple questionnaire that outlines 16 core human values for you in rank order. My top values: tied for #1: Eudemonia, Voice, and Cosmos. My bottom value: Workcentrism 😂

9. Making all my annual doctor and dentist appointments. Also, signing back up for One Medical now that I’m back on a health insurance plan that they accept. Also, having “good”, widely-accepted health insurance after 2 years without it.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

~

If you’re curious about the Values Bridge, the questionnaire takes about 15 minutes. Your initial results are provided free of charge, and there’s a membership experience that allows you to dive deeper. You can use my code, MAYSSA20, for 20% off.

~

I drank this up. I needed this! But I also do believe it. I think there are forces beyond our comprehension, including planets and lunar transits and ocean tides affecting our human existence, and it’s wise (and at the very least, fun) to pay attention to what ancient wisdom and elders and astrologers and intuitives and medicine women from all cultures and traditions have to say about them.

Today, Feb 17, marks the start of the Year of the Horse in the Chinese Zodiac. I’ve been reflecting on what this means. Of course, to some extent the whole point is that forces beyond us are at play, and if we surrender to them they can guide our lives with little effort on our part. But I think being aware can catalyze (or maybe just create a useful placebo) to help the whole process along. And even better still, I think becoming a co-conspirator with those forces can put additional horsepower (see what I did there) behind those cosmic forces, and turn you into you a mover & shaker of energies like you’ve never experienced before.

Here are a few things I’m doing to co-create with the universe as we step into the Year of the Horse:

1. Looking for the signs: I have made agreements with the universe about what signs to send me when I need a message. Some are simple and on-the-nose, like white butterflies and lady bugs. Some are complex and private. The universe has an array of methods of communicating with you, and signs are one of them. You can agree to one or several signs (be as specific as you want, the universe dgaf), and notice when the universe speaks to you through them. Make sure to pay attention! They’re all around, and usually closer than you think.

2. Letting go: the year of the snake was the final shedding, so make sure you shed. Let it go, let it all go. What are you still holding onto? Is it a bad habit, is it a thought pattern? Is it a person or relationship? A job? That old hat you need to toss in the donation pile? What just popped to mind as you were reading? Without second guessing it, whatever that was, that’s what needs to go. Don’t walk out of the Year of the Snake with dead skin hanging off your shoe like toilet paper. You can lean into ritual — writing, burning, speaking into a glass of water then flushing it — to help you move through that final attachment, and let that thing go for good.

3. Getting crystal clear about what I want: that vision board with 100 photos of random outfits and trips and money spreads, à la poubelle! (to the trash!) We are moving into this year with clear, actionable, & realistic goals. I don’t mean realistic by your parents’ or society’s or your shitty high school English teacher’s standards; realistic as in they can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, using the gifts and talents you possess, along with a little help from the cosmos. I created a lot of suffering for myself following manifestation advice that said if I put “$100 million” on a vision board and closed my eyes and counted to 10, I’d wake up in the near future with that figure in my bank account. Despite being at $0 and ever having touched $100 million, let alone $1 million, let alone $100,000 at that point in my life. If you’re at $0 today, you could start with a goal of $10k, or $50k. And I believe with every cell in my being that you manifest that in 24 hours. Or maybe in a month, or a year. Then your next goal might then be $100k, and you might get that in a week. Then $1M, etc. etc. Set goals that feel exciting, that stretch you, but that you can taste. That feel energetically outside of your current orbit, but not in another galaxy. I personally am taking “$100m cash” off the board, and putting “debt-free” (which is ~mid-5-figures for me right now) and “enough sponsorships to fully fund my podcast” on.

4. Finding joy: I’ve set goals and made plans this year for joy. It’s the thing that got the most lost as I’ve made building a business and healing my soul my main focus for the last couple of years. So now, both my goals lists and my to-do lists include things like tennis lessons, dancing (at the club), dancing (at Forward Space), laughing uncontrollably (and spending time with the people I do that with most), and laughing out loud when I find something funny (even if I’m watching TV at home alone or listening to a podcast on the subway, insane allegations be damned!).

5. Removing obstacles: if we’re running, nay (see what I did there again), sprinting, into this next year, we cannot afford roadblocks, traffic cones, clowns (ie your toxic ex), or obstacles tripping us up. I am clearing the track, so that when I catch my stride, I can hit an all-out sprint. For me, that has looked like hiring more help at BEHAVE (we’ve made 2 full-time hires and brought in a handful more freelancers), hiring a cleaner for my apartment weekly, carving out dedicated time for life admin so it doesn’t pile up, cancelling any trips or social activities that don’t align with my goals (remember, joy is a goal for me, so that night out shaking ass stays). cutting all ties with people that give me an ick, unfollowing anything on social media that gives me an ick, basically distancing myself from any and all icks.

And, we’re off 🐎

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

~

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You can try GEM today, with the code MAYSSA for 15% off your order. Or visit dailygem.com/mayssa.

~

2. This Vanessa Raw exhibit at Georgina Pounds Gallery, which featured a world of women; together, intimate, resting in nature. The sun shining in on them through the window was a paid actor.

3. Charging my silly little body up with vitamin D every chance I got while in Mexico City for the weekend; including 2 hours in the meditation garden in Bosque de Chapultepec in 70 degree weather.

4. Noticing that after a long day of socializing, I felt drained, negative and insecure. Instead of sinking into that, remembering that when I interact with new people, old, negative stories about myself, others, & the world can surface. Instead of letting those stories fester and grow — feeding the parasite with false evidence everywhere I looked — I pulled out my notebook and made a list of all the negative stories that had shown up.

   1. These included: people think I’m annoying; I am annoying; I’m boring; I’m irresponsible and make bad decision which I get punished for (bc I stayed out til 5am, which was so fun btw).

   2. Then I went through the list one-by-one and asked myself if each story is true. Not if I think or feel or worry that it’s true. But is it factually correct in a way that can be proven. It was a no to all of them. I felt lighter after. Shining the light of awareness stopped the spiral before it could start.

5. Watching Coco (the Pixar movie) on the plane.

6. Someone I love confronting me about something I’d said that upset them, and I actually noticed myself getting defensive and panicked (this is usually an automatic, unconscious response, and I sort of go black once this cycle begins). But this time I noticed it, and I actively, in the moment, decided that I could make a new choice to just listen. And with that simple shift, the conversation ended in repair instead of shut down and avoidance like it normally would have.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

~

I’m excited to introduce you to GEM, a female-founded, real-food supplement I’ve been taking for over a year. They make functional daily multivitamins formulated for proper absorption and packed with 20+ vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics — all in one delicious real-food Bite for foundational health.

You can try GEM today, with the code MAYSSA for 15% off your order. Or visit dailygem.com/mayssa.

~

Setting an alarm that plays a singing bowl sound every hour, to bring me back to the present moment. When I hear the gong, I check in with my thoughts. If there is any false story, narrative, pattern, or loop running in my mind, I simply become aware of it, which does 90% of the work to evaporate it.

Adding the screen time widget to my Home Screen, which has reduced my screen time by almost 50% in one month

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

~

I’m excited to introduce you to GEM, a female-founded, real-food supplement I’ve been taking for over a year. They make functional daily multivitamins formulated for proper absorption and packed with 20+ vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics — all in one delicious real-food Bite for foundational health.

You can try GEM today, with the code MAYSSA for 15% off your order. Or visit dailygem.com/mayssa.

~

Here’s what I wrote in my journal after that conversation:

I am now praying for the courage and strength to let go of my old self. It’s time. It’s now time to choose. Will I stay in the story and hence the manifestation and the creation of: “something is terribly wrong (with me, with my life, with the world, with other people). I’m just not lucky. Everybody gets to have what I can’t have. I just can’t figure it out”?

Or are we ready to wipe that slate clear with one swipe of the giant magical paint brush of spirituality and presence?

Spirituality: finding the new, spiritual story behind whatever shows up. Replacing the old, egoic, programmed, repetitive, patterned story with the spiritual one. The spiritual story sounds like: all is divinely timed. I’m on my path and whatever shows up is part of that path. Everything that happens is karma; no good or bad, no punishment or reward.

Presence: everything is as it is in this present moment. There is nothing wrong (or right), there is only what is. I can accept what is, no matter what, especially when I realize that I have no other choice. The universe chooses for me in whatever appears; and I can play my role by keeping my focus on the spiritual and the present. Choosing to fight against, resist, abhor, resent the present moment is the creation of suffering. It doesn’t help.

Find the present moment, and in it you’ll find the information about what needs to be done as well. Here, in presence. Not in the mind, thinking. Not in placing your attention on past or future. This only creates anguish because we become trapped in the mind rather than one with our soul and body. We become of the mind when we are meant to be of the Spirit (Ram Dass).

According to Alan Watts, we are currently experiencing a sort of evolutionary glitch. I guess “glitch” is the wrong word since whatever we go through as humans and as a collective serves our evolution. But our minds, our brains have become functional in a way that is harming us. This brain function initially helped us immensely, until humanity and technology and our ability to survive shifted in other ways, and very quickly. And then the tool of thought — forethought and afterthought — became as much of a danger and a nuisance to the idle mind and body as it was a gift. To the person whose survival was so minimally at risk on a day-to-day basis, thought became a source of torment more than it was a source of survival.

Here’s what can be done about this:

1. Let the old self fall away

• Notice and note old stories

• Call out the lies we tell ourselves

• Return to the present (three deep breaths should do) when the stories try to take over

2. Commune with the Spiritual Self

• Look at everything that happens through the spiritual lens

  • Gratitude

  • Compassion

  • Acceptance

  • Nonjudgement

  • Detachment

  • Understanding

• Realize that whatever shows up is a gift from the universe, as all of it is my life, which is the greatest gift of all

3. Return to the present moment

• Whenever possible, notice the mind’s wandering away from here/now, and gently call her back

• Meditation will solidify this practice

• Notice when you are triggered, and breathe your way back to here/now

• Ask: am I safe in this present moment? Is there any problem right here in this present moment?

I have to decide, to choose. Will we keep on letting the dysfunctional mind defeat the Spirit? It’s crazy to fathom that it even could, given the strength of the Spirit / Soul, versus the house of mirrors that is the mind and ego; the Wizard of Oz of it all.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

~

I’m excited to introduce you to GEM, a female-founded, real-food supplement I’ve been taking for over a year. They make functional daily multivitamins formulated for proper absorption and packed with 20+ vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics — all in one delicious real-food Bite for foundational health.

You can try GEM today, with the code MAYSSA for 15% off your order. Or visit dailygem.com/mayssa.

~

• We avoid eye contact because someone told us there’s something wrong with us and that we should fear other people.

• Witches need to look directly into people’s eyes so that they can see deep into their souls.

2. Use candlelight or dim lighting at night

• Witches rest after sunset. Also, candlelight and flame can be used for prayer, to call Sprit into your space, to ask Spirit for a message, for burning and disconnecting rituals, or to light the sage you’ll also be keeping on hand from now on.

• Some great swaps: stained glass light bulbs, Edison light bulbs, pillar candles, skinny beeswax candles (require a witchy candle holder)

3. Keep cards at home

• Tarot, oracle, animal spirit, doesn’t matter. If you don’t know how to use them yet, doesn’t matter. A witch turns to forces beyond herself for guidance and answers. This helps keep her nervous system calm and reminds her that she’s part of a larger design.

• If you’re new to cards, not to worry! Just keep the deck on hand. The next time you need guidance, instead of calling that person you always call or scheduling an emergency therapy session or asking ChatGPT, pull out the deck (great to light one of those candles for this), shuffle, ask your question, split the deck however you’d like (I split into 3) and pull a card. You can use the guidebook that comes with the deck or Google to get the card’s meaning. I also like to try to interpret a message from the card itself before looking it up. Over time, you’ll gain an intuitive sense about the cards, their meanings, and what they’re trying to tell you.

• A few decks I love: Modern Witch Tarot, The Realest Oracle, An Almanac of Birds

4. Find witch role models

• Remember, every woman is a witch, but some women have reconnected to that in deep ways and can help guide us on our own journey. Observe them, read their writing, learn their practices, listen to them speak, and love them.

• My current favorite witch: Erykah Badu. Here’s her giving a tour of her Spiritual Home Studio for Vogue.

• Other witches I’m loving right now: Olivia Dean, Mollie Adler, Lizzie Tilia, Teyana Taylor, & Ms. Rachel, and of course all my own witchy friends.

5. Be naked

• They taught you to hate your body. It’s time to unlearn that. Roam naked around the house and into the ocean and whenever possible.

6. Eat whole foods, drink more water

• This connects you back to Mother, through food she created and through the water that connects our bodies to hers.

• You can also speak prayers into your water before drinking it.

7. Female friendship

• There’s a witch-hunt going on, and we were all raised to be witch-hunters, not witches. So we all have witch-hunting tendencies. This is not our fault, but something we need to be mindful of. Fight against it; commune with and fall in love with other women/witches.

8. Do not gossip

• Gossip is ungrounding and lowers your vibration. Witches are grounded in their own center of gravity, not pulled into others’.

• Also, when you speak negatively about others, you communicate to the universe that you despise what they are / have, including their good parts / blessings (love, beauty, ease, money, family). This communicates to the universe that you don’t want those things, since you despise them so much.

• You also communicate to the universe that you are OK to then also be criticized and despised for those same things (whether gifts, like beauty or wealth, or simple human flaws, like being annoying or making a mistake).

9. Give Away Money

• Witches make a practice of giving things away. A witch is unattached to the material world, and she creates small rituals to remind herself of this.

• Whether it’s a percentage of her income to charity, feeding a neighbor, giving an item off their back to a stranger who compliments it, tipping extra on every coffee order, or just the cash in her wallet to someone in need, she is in a constant state of giving.

• Which, by the way, is one half of the giving/receiving cycle. You can’t have one without the other.

10. Dance

• Go shake ass, immediately!

• Movement helps your soul separate from your physical form. It’ll help you start to see / feel the two separate entities (the body, physical, material vs. the conscious, Self, spiritual). And to not confuse one for the other.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

~

I’m excited to introduce you to GEM, a female-founded, real-food supplement I’ve been taking for over a year. They make functional daily multivitamins formulated for proper absorption and packed with 20+ vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics — all in one delicious real-food Bite for foundational health.

You can try GEM today, with the code MAYSSA for 15% off your order. Or visit dailygem.com/mayssa.

~

In all honesty, I am leaving 2025 and stepping into 2026 exhausted. I’m extremely burned out. I’m lonely, but simultaneously drained and isolating. I’m in debt. I’m sick & tired. Disappointed. Unsure.

I usually use the last week of the year to harness all the positive energy I can muster and do all the things: visualizing, manifesting, dreaming, intention-setting. And look, old habits die hard and I did make a few lists and attend a sound bath. But for the most part, I simply didn’t have the energy this year.

And I think I know why. I have operated from a state of crippling fear for most of my life. I can’t remember a time when my neck and jaw weren’t clenched, my stomach wasn’t turned, and there wasn’t a hot flame inside my throat. I’ve been on 24-hour watch, constant high-alert for immediate or imminent danger since I was 4 years old.

And living in constant fear makes one thing certain: you have no idea who you are. All you know is fear. Your every thought, feeling, and action are reactions to your environment and to other people. You’re constantly grasping for control, but it’s always slipping through your fingers. You’re in survival, and there is no humanity in survival - just raw, animalistic reactivity.

So these last few years that I’ve spent healing, excavating, calming, nervous system regulating, tripping and breathing, also meant meeting myself for the first time. I still feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface, but some things are coming into focus. I love to dance, I like to write, I can talk to an interesting person for hours, I cry a lot, I want to walk in nature for hours at at ime under a beating sun, I need to be in the ocean a lot.

You build that initial foundation needed to meet yourself again by doing what they call “The Work.” And holy shit did I do The Work. I was doing The Work’s best student; the teacher’s pet. Desperate to be liked, to be at the top of the class, to do the homework right, to ace the test and complete the extra credit.

And that’s OK. Our adaptive patterns are part of who we are, they serve us in some ways and they harm us in others; they help us move through and make sense of the world based on the paradigms we learned to operate within. We can adapt and change and morph those paradigms, but we can’t abandon our paradigms completely, point-blank. It’s nearly impossible, and if you do manage it it’s extremely disruptive and can lead to psychosis.

So, embarking on the healing journey activated one of my oldest patterns. I had heard, and read and watched 100s of hours of videos telling me that could fix my life, my problems, the problem of my life, by doing this so-called “Work”. So I became a diligent student of this healing work. And that was a good thing - it allowed me to lay the groundwork to even have the regulation needed to start figuring out who I am. To feel myself, possibly for the first time. To experience a present moment, something that felt uniquely foreign to me despite 30+ years on this plant existing no where other than the present moment. Shoutout psilocybin mushrooms btw for helping introduce this state of presence, so we can touch it before we even fully understand what it looks or feels like.

And that’s what I’ve spent nearly every waking moment outside of work doing since the end of 2022; 3 years. The Work.

But I think the time has come to hand in my final exam, accept whatever grade I get, and walk across the stage at graduation. Healing is a lifelong practice, but the kind of full-throttle, X-Games Mode healing I’ve been partaking in eventually has to end, and life has to begin. I think that’s why I experienced a full-body rejection these last couple of months. Something is trying to tell me that it’s time to try something different.

I guess this is all to say, I got so caught up in doing The Work that I forgot that part of healing is to stop working so hard. To stop slave-driving yourself and relax into your life. To stop seeing yourself as something to fix. To stop finding problems and disagnoses and prescribing new remedies to new ailments.

Eventually you reach a fork in the road, and the darker, lesser-known path — the one that feels uncertain, insecure and out of control — is the one you need to take. It’s the one where you just wake up and be you, and to be OK with that. Nothing to fix, no list to make, no rebrand loading, no lock-in or productivity hack or winner’s mindset needed. It’s the one where you finally get to feel safe in that, despite the uncertainty. Or maybe because of it. Where you get to feel good. Or bad. To just feel, to just live. And to not have to do anything about it.

So this year, 2026, I am manifesting strengthened intuition. Of course I have goals and I made a cute little list (don’t get me wrong, I still believe in manifesting your dreams). But this year is about working less and being more. I’ve glimpsed presence, I’ve had a peak into me. I’ve seen me. Not my face, not my concept of me, not whoever the world thinks “Mayssa” is, but me. My existence, my essence. From time to time, I’ve felt her. Now I just need to keep inviting her back.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

Committing to consistent habits changed everything. I was able to make massive strides forward in my life. I saved my failing business, I crawled out from almost $70k in credit card debt, and I started feeling extended periods of peace for the first time in my life.

Walking into 2025, the plan was simple: keep up these good habits, and the positive effects will compound. And on the surface, positive change came: business has been amazing; I repaired fractured relationships with both of my parents; I launched my podcast; I had steady income for the first time in years, allowing me to pay down debt + pay my rent on time; I spent 2 weeks in my motherland celebrating my sister’s wedding; I got to work with my sister on multiple projects, including collaborating to launch her new agency, which is thriving; plus, she moved to NYC (if you’re new here or can’t tell, I’m obsessed with my baby sister).

But reflecting on 2025, I am grappling with the fact that the lived experience of it was very painful. Emotionally charged, confusing, disappointing, and full of grief. I’m ending 2025 with more unanswered questions, a stark downgrade from the clarity I felt walking into it. I am ending the year feeling burned out, pessimistic, depressed, disconnected, and broken. I’ve literally worried if all of this “healing” — the breathwork, plant medicine, healers, therapists — might have broken my brain somehow.

Taking a moment now to reflect, here’s what I think happened. The new habits of 2024 ignited a process of metamorphosis, of becoming something new. And this change didn’t bring the immediate relief I expected, but instead, lessons. Lessons that needed to be integrated through emotional, ancestral, and spiritual experiencing. These lessons couldn’t be understood by reading them in a book or in an inspo post on IG. I needed to feel my way through them, chew on them despite their foul taste, digest them, and finally, metabolize them until they were calcified in my bones.

These change sparked by those new habits initiated tectonic shifts far beneath the surface, at the cellular level. These shifting plates were imperceptible to the human eye when they started, but eventually they manifested above the surface in a tsunami, which I have been trying to contain and clean up after for much of this year.

As I down-regulated, became a safe space for myself, and strengthened spiritually, the time came for difficult truths to be revealed to me and finally understood. Through pain and suffering and tears, but eventually, on the other side of that, understanding.

So today, I’m reflecting on those lessons. I asked to become someone different, a woman with a different life, a different nervous system, a different mindset. And here’s what the universe needed to teach me this year in order for that shift to truly become possible.

Lessons

1. Forgiveness

Forgive your parents. In so many ways, they were wrong. Acknowledge and allow that for yourself. But in order for someone to be wrong, they have to have been wronged. If your childhood was marred by pain, so was theirs. Can you finally acknowledge that, now as the empathic adult you are becoming? You are a link in a cosmic, generational chain, where everyone has, can, and will do exactly their best, nothing more and nothing less. Find compassion. This is not condoning, it’s letting go. It’s not freeing them, it’s freeing yourself. It’s not hoping or trying to force them to become your safe space, it’s finally becoming your own. And in doing so, you don’t have to be so mad at them anymore.

2. Pain

There will always be pain. Stop fighting it. It’s the opposite side of the coin to pleasure. You can’t have one without the other.

3. Purpose

If you don’t have purpose, you have nothing. Find and understand the purpose behind everything you do, or don’t do it.

4. Money

Money is simply a tool to do the things you came to Earth to do. There is always enough, and there is always more. The money you need to execute your purpose will always show up, exactly on time. Stop sweating money. Become receptive and it will find you.

5. Dating

When it comes to dating, you might be the problem. You always find yourself feeling rejected, but can you recognize the ways that you are rejecting? You always find yourself feeling hurt, but you have to take ownership for the ways that you are also hurtful. The ways you are punishing, curt, cold, closed off. The universe reflects back to you whatever you are. You get back exactly what you are putting out.

6. Help

You need help. Don’t be a martyr. Ask for help. Pay for help. Tell people what you need. Ask for what you need, be clear, be humble. And remember that help can come from both the human realm and from the spiritual realm.

7. Home

There’s no place like home. There’s always another trip or escape that you’re convinced is going to cure all your ails (Sag here 👋🏽♐). I’m writing this a few days back from a last-minute, week-long solo escape to Ojai. And as lovely as it was, it did not cure all my problems. You went to Mexico for the winter, it was lovely but it did not solve all of your problems. Wherever you go, there you are. Focus on home. Create a home space and energy that you can live with and that you are in love with. Chasing happiness “over there” does not work, as much as your adventurous heart tries to convince you it might this time around.

8. Chord Cutting

You have to cut chords. Do the ritual, send the letter, tell them what’s on your heart. Otherwise, you walk through the world with other people’s energetic chords attached to you. They are keeping you stuck to old people and situations. Face your past. Let things go. Release yourself. Which means releasing them.

9. Habits

The habits and discipline that got you here are not what will get you to where you’re going. In fact, the rigidity that was needed to create the inertia for the initial shift will hold you back going forward. You will become stuck and enslaved if you cling tightly to routines and discipline that no longer resonate. Allow for flexibility, allow for spontaneity, allow for intuition. Last year, you needed to isolate. This year, you needed friendship — but you kept on isolating. Last year, you needed militant dedication to morning meditation. This year, you needed meditation when it felt right, or a morning walk if that felt right, or morning journal pages if that felt right — but you forced the meditation, even when it felt out of alignment. You have more tools now, you can let go of rules and step into autonomy and flexibility.

10. Fixing

You needed to find awareness of the issues that had you stuck in the dark for decades. But then, you got stuck in different dark hole, this one centered around “fixing.” This signaled to your subconscious (and the inner child who lives there) that something is deeply and perpetually wrong with you. And that there is an endless amount of work, workshops, healings, mediations and mushroom trips that we have to do. Only to end up disappointed to discover that we never end up fixing this perceived problem anyways - the “problem” of our very existence. Of our very nature. This has created a lot of angst and it’s time to move forward from the idea that we and our life are a problem to be fixed.

11. Block Them

Sometimes a relationship reaches a point where the disturbance it creates becomes too severe. It impedes on your daily life, your brain becomes fixated on this person as a problem in your field, and you struggle to see past it, escape those thoughts, and come back to the present moment. Your mind constantly drifts back to them. Social media and digital communication aggravates this. You need to block them. Last February, I woke up one morning to a text from an ex, and in that moment something clicked (or maybe snapped). I blocked a large group of people who I was disturbing my own peace by staying connected or engaged with. This included friends, exes and close family members. Within a few days, several massive, exciting developments unfolded for my company. This is no coincidence. Disruptive relationships are taking up space in your energetic field, they are holding up the line. When you let them go, you clear that space, and it creates a vacuum and opens a portal. Blessings you’ve been waiting and praying for come flooding in. It is time to finally chose your own feeling over other people’s, just this once. Nothing is permanent, the unblock button is right there when you’re not so activated.

12. Play

You have to play. You have to do things that aren’t work; read a book that’s not self help, go somewhere new. Make a new friend. Dance. Holy shit do you need to dance! You need to dance every chance you get. In the morning, in the mirror, in the office, at a concert, at a club you go to alone to hear your favorite DJ. Just start dancing and don’t stop, everything will start looking up.

13. Nature

Go outside. Being inside is killing you. And not just sitting on a park bench on your phone or laptop (although working from the park is highly recommended whenever possible). Be outside with God. Feel her warmth, feel her breeze, touch her grass. Hear what she wants to whisper in your ear. She has something important to tell you.

14. The Phone

It is that damn phone.

15. You Already Know

The answer is within — I know that’s super cliché, but I will be reminding myself of this until the day I pass on. You are a perpetual seeker. And that’s ok; book the reiki, call your friend or therapist, take the shrooms. But don’t fool yourself that something outside of you knows something you don’t know. Or that any of that fancy, expensive, external stuff will tell you anything you couldn’t have accessed by sitting alone in a dark room, closing your eyes, taking a few deep breaths, asking a question, and listening with an open heart for the answer.

16. Mother

Connection to your higher power is everything. I found myself trapped in so much human pain and grief this year, my connection to Source was dampened. I struggled to pray, to ask for guidance, even just to feel gratitude and say “thank you, Mother.” Last year, I was so steeped in my connection to Mother (Mother is how I refer to my Higher Power / the Universe by the way), I even got multiple tattoos honoring that connection. Losing it, and falling into the despair that came with the confinement of my humanly existence, affirmed how important is to live in that connection. It’s where you find relief, guidance, miracles. It’s where you find magic. Come back to this. Come back to Mother.

Come back. Come back. Come back.

disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

This also means the disappointment came while I was on the road. When I was already off my routines, and so more sensitive and more susceptible to negative thoughts and patterns.

The bad news hit me hard. The thought process and descent into despair goes something like this:

• building this company is so hard

• it’s too hard

• why am I doing this?

• i’ve been doing this for so long, does it ever get easier?

• when?

• what if it never does?

• what if we fail?

• i’ll have wasted so much time

• building this company takes so much out of me

• my finances are a mess

• but I can’t make more money while pouring all my time and energy into the company

• i feel lonely

• maybe i should go on a date

• i haven’t been on a date all year

• i can’t date right now

• i don’t have the energy for it, and I feel like whenever I try it just drains me and takes away from building the company

• so I’m broke, chronically single, with a business that constantly feels like 1 step forward, 3 backwards, on repeat

• what am I doing with my life?

• i’m turning 34 next month

• that’s almost 35

• that’s almost 40

• what if I wake up on the eve of my 40th birthday and I’m still doing this song and dance with the struggling company, still haven’t gotten anywhere, still can’t make money, still can’t have a relationship, still can’t get my life together

• i hate it here

• how did I end up here?

• how do I get out?

• i can’t see the way out

• i’m trapping

• i’m suffocating

• i can’t breath

• i can’t breath

• i can’t breath (panic attack)

This is the inside of my brain on despair. This is the loop I found myself sinking into (quicksand) 2 weeks ago. It’s a thought loop, a downward spiral I’m familiar with, and it was knocking on my door to pay me another unwelcome visit.

I became so overwhelmed that at the airport, 2 hours before the flight that was supposed to take me from our factory to a conference in California, that I changed flights and came home to NYC instead.

I took 2 days off work, but spent most of those days looping, spinning, spiraling (see above). I had a session with my spiritual teacher booked for Saturday, but it’s only Wednesday when I get home from the factory. This is when the healing shopping spree begins.

I book a session with an energy reader I see occasionally; I’m so relieved when I see that she has a same-day opening (rare) on Thursday. I see my spiritual teacher Saturday. Acupuncture Saturday. I book a mantra meditation class for Sunday morning. I book a reiki body work session for Sunday afternoon. When the next week rolls around and I still feel like shit, I call up a very expensive therapist I’d been recommended who I’d put off contacting because of her high rates. In my desperation, I book an intro session with her for Thursday. I see my spiritual teacher that Thursday as well. Add another body work session somewhere in there and I’ve spent over $1,500 in the span of a week trying to feel better.

I don’t know how to feel about this. I’m not sharing this to say that I regret it or that I recommend it, that it’s good or bad. And this isn’t a flex either, this is money I don’t have (shoutout American Express). I’m just sharing because this is what happened. This is the diary of a depressive spiral and my desperate attempts to find my way out of it.

Ultimately, none of these things made me feel better. But I did start feeling better. After the session with my spiritual coach on Thursday. So I think it was the culmination of all these things. Coupled with a recommitment to a few simple good habits: getting outside and walking daily, eating clean, a 36-hour fast followed by a sugar detox, and spiritual reading every morning. That eventually pulled me out.

There were 2 major turning points, where I felt decidedly lighter and more optimistic after. First was the second (Thursday) session with my Spiritual Coach, during which she led me through a 30-second guided meditation. She told me that in these dark moments, I should get quite and try to ask myself / my guides / my higher power what is happening, and get an answer from within.

So we got quiet together, and she started the meditation with a simple question: this sadness and heaviness, is it yours? I immediately heard (in my mind), no, it’s my mother’s.

And there it was. I was feeling so confused as to why I felt so heavy, because on paper things in my life were somewhere between status quo and positive. But as soon as I heard this message, it was like a weight lifted off my chest and everything could start to make sense. I could start shifting from confusion to clarity.

I’m the first daughter, and I have an extremely enmeshed and codependent relationship with my mother (common of immigrants and the part of the world / culture my family is from). I am connected to my mother on a psychic level. I spend a lot of time trying to distract myself from her world because it can feel so intense and I can get so easily pulled into the vortex with her. But it’s always there, connected to a deep subconscious part of me, rattling me around whether I want to look at it directly or not.

Just understanding this helped me immensely. I started to feel better. On Sunday, a couple days ago, we had the most beautiful Fall day and I drove an hour upstate and went on a solo hike. No headphones, no music, no podcasts. Just me and my thoughts.

On the hike, the spiraling thoughts came, but I just let them. And then they went. And then I was left with quiet. And then I felt my higher power, which I’ve been disconnected from for at least these 2 weeks, but really quite a bit longer. But she came, and I heard and felt her. And I sat on the mountain ridge and closed my eyes and felt the sun and the breeze on my face, and I felt like myself again.

I drove back to the city, playing Olivia Dean’s new album the whole way. And I could finally feel again that everything is going to be OK.

I guess that’s kind of the point of all of this. How do we find that feeling? OK-ness. We don’t always have to be great, or elated, or joyful. But how do we find trust and faith in OK? OK means safe. OK means alive, here. How do we build and sustain confidence that we’re OK? And keep coming back to it.

What tools can we reach for? Who are the guides who can lead us there? What takes us away from OK, and how do we reduce or remove those things? What habits remind us that OK is always within reach? How do we touch or talk to or feel that spiritual presence that helps us know for certain that we are, and that everything most certainly is and will continue to be OK.

It’s the hike. It’s the Olivia Dean album. It’s cancelling plans. It’s laughter if you can find it, even just for a moment. It’s putting away your phone (I finally bought an alarm clock and started sleeping with my phone in the living room last week). It’s reading a spiritual book, listening to a spiritual talk. It’s being kind when your negativity wants to feed on being mean, cold, or short. It’s being honest when the white lie feels easier. It’s looking up and noticing the sun, sky, clouds, birds, trees. It’s cleaning your house. It’s burning your favorite candle. It’s handing out candy to smiling children on Halloween.

It’s $1,500 on healers and doing your best.

~

It’s not lost on me that I got divorced 5 years ago. That ending was the beginning of my descent into rock bottom that would feel like free fall for 3 years, culminating in a New Years Eve spent sobbing in the bathtub of my best friend’s luxury high rise apartment, trapped in a tower of isolation (both literally and figuratively).

After hitting that low, I had to look myself in the mirror and make a decision: was I going to get stuck here, or maybe even descend further into the prison of my own bitterness and victimhood. Or was I going to find my way out?

I decided to pack my things, fly towards the sun in Mexico City, and figure out how to put the pieces back together.

It’s not lost on me that today, I feel like I’m living inside of the miracle I was asking the universe to deliver me during that rock bottom. The miracle that I – once a disinterested atheist – started clasping my hands in prayer every night to deliver me, having run flat out of other options.

And here I am. Living inside of that miracle. But I didn’t just blink my eyes and wake up here. I spent the majority of the last 2 years painstakingly returning to the scene of the crime: my childhood. And trying to figure out how to become the 30-something adult I apparently was supposed to be, but certainly didn’t feel like.

This took me deep into devotional, deliberate, and consistent routines and practices: meditating, reparenting, soothing, somatic experiencing, breathworking, plant medicining, celibacy-ing, reiki-ing, TBM-ing, nature walking, Hoffman-ing, spiritual reading, dancing.

The new rule: the spiritual body eats first. If it took me 3 hours in the morning, then work started 3 hours later. If I had to cancel all social plans to sit under a tree every weekend for a month, then nobody except for that tree saw me that month.

It’s not lost on me that this week, I launched my podcast: ROCK BOTTOM. This project was birthed from the pain of my own rock bottom, my journey out of it, and a curiosity to hear others’ stories of the same. From the experience of killing off an old, egoic part of myself, the one that was trying to kill me, and emerging as a new woman. Lighter, freer, present, hopeful, faithful, trusting. Detached and accepting.

It’s not lost on me that my first guest on the podcast is Babba, the godsent friend whose bathtub I laid in that lonely New Years Eve in 2022.

It’s not lost on me that my ex is getting remarried this week. It makes me realize that the karmic cycle that we were in, the one that may have seemed to end when we separated in 2020, is actually ending now. This week, in fact.

This karmic cycle was heavy. It was all the unconscious baggage, strapped to my back without my knowledge or permission as a child. Psychic trash, dumped on me that I eventually got buried under. Stinking up my every decision, pattern, my every thought and emotion.

My every action was creating ripples and waves and tsunamis. I regret nothing, and I accept every version of me I’ve ever been. But I can now see that my whole life — until i was awakened by the thud of hitting rock bottom — was being created from the prison of my lower consciousness.

Let me be very clear - this is not to say I’m healed, this is not to say the suffering is over, this is not to say I’ve ascended or that I’m the pinnacle of presence and consciousness. In fact, the more conscious I feel, the more I see that healing is also about accepting where I still lack consciousness.

But as I launched this new project this week, I took some inventory: BEHAVE is growing; the podcast has been a labor of pure love and joy and is now out in the world; I am healthy and also, plot twist for the 30-somethings out there: I feel like i’m getting hotter by the day (just saying); I am surrounded by incredible friends and community; I usually feel spiritually tapped in and connected.

And most importantly, I feel like I’ve become that 30-something adult. The one that child-me, both past and present, was searching and crying out for. I’m here for her now. And that’s truly what everything good lately – the miracles and the good feelings and the alignment – was birthed out of.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

Yes, I’ve been a drama queen since the 4th grade.

I’ve always been an all-consumer crusher. A full-time plus overtime crusher. A crushaholic. My crushes would colonize my every thought, mood, and behavior. I’m really outing myself here, but I was the type who’d memorize my crushes class schedule, and then plan my routes around school to maximize my chances of running into them.

My crushes weren’t always unrequited, but they usually were. Probably because I have never, ever dared to express even an ounce of like, lust or love towards a man I was interested in before they made it abundantly clear how they felt about me. And shocker: most people don’t want to profess undying love to someone who’s been performing disinterest towards them.

I hate having a crush. They always seem to bring pain, distraction, self-consciousness and world-shattering anxiety. I’ve basically avoided them at all costs for the past few years.

I had one simple, lovely crush throughout my entire 20s, but he was my boyfriend and eventual husband. After we got divorced, I had my rebound phase but I was partying a lot and basically just lusting after whoever I thought was the hottest person in my orbit at any given moment. I wouldn’t call those true crushes, although obsessive spiraling thoughts and anxiety did abound.

As that chaos chapter closed, I entered my nun era. These last couple of years, I’ve been taking long breaks from dating and romance, going so far as celibacy as I focused on healing, spiritual growth, building my business, and various creative projects (ROCK BOTTOM podcast is dropping soon btw!).

But recently, I encountered that rare bird again: a crush!

That glimmer of attraction, wonderfully platonic at first. Then, long walks, long talks, late nights, never-ending text exchanges, thoughtful gifts, spotify links (revealing good taste), and witty inside jokes.

The weeks waned on, the flirtation built, the heat rose, and the conversation widened and deepened. But eventually, I had to face the harsh truth about my crush - he was never going to ask me out.

Before I share some more rational, and possibly / hopefully even insightful thoughts on crushes, here is where the lack of romantic initiative on the part of the love of my life — I mean, a crush I’d met a few weeks earlier — left me: he hates me. I’m despicable. What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with him? Nothing, he’s perfect, I love him, I’m definitely the problem. Is there something in my teeth (in a cosmic sense)? Do we need to conduct a seance? Let’s pull tarot. Let’s book an emergency session with our energy reader. Let’s write a letter and burn it and cleanse ourselves of this energy once and for all. Maybe if we manifest a little harder? Or maybe we should let this go? Ok I’m letting it go, but I definitely need to know why. Fuck, I’ll never know why. Let’s ghost him. Wait that’s immature, let’s tell him how we feel. No, abort mission, I’d rather die. Let’s come up with 100 ways to subtly manipulate him into asking us out. Nevermind, we don’t want someone who doesn’t want us and we shouldn’t have to work this hard for a date. So let’s come up with 100 ways to subtly and silently punish him.

This is my brain on crush. And for those reasons, I have banned myself from crush. I need crushers anonymous. I can feel the fear mounting when crush starts to set it, and I can feel the anxious sweat on my brow as I accept the reality that crush is taking over my brain. This is why I felt I had no choice but to make work my crush for the last 3 years. I’m completely perplexed how anyone can date / crush and run a business at the same time, that’s a true multi-hyphenate.

I want to be clear - I do not share this for sympathy or fishing for compliments. The strangest part about all of this — to me — it is that by taking that by solid chunk of time to myself, exploring celibacy, and focusing on my spiritual life, I have actually developed a strong foundation of inner-confidence. Not the surface level kind of “confidence” I used to trade on because people would tell me I was pretty and smart (I never believed them, to be clear).

But the kind of confidence forged through fire; hard-earned, through living alone and solo travel and paying my own bills; through building a business; through talking to my ancestors while on shrooms; through deep love and community and female friendship; through re-parenting my inner child and parts work and therapy and consistent meditation and breathwork practices; and through generally becoming the person who takes care of myself and does a pretty good job at it.

So when this recent crush knocked me off my horse, and I reverted to my 12-year-old self – the girl who used to play sad R&B on on her red Sony Walkman and look out the school bus window longing for her crush to love her back – I was surprised. And so, so disappointed in her.

I think the disappointment of the regressive behavior honestly shook me more than the sense rejection from the crush itself. It terrifies me when I fall into old patterns, but then that frustration in my emotional reactions to the situation (crush) at hand ends up causing more pain and stuck-ness than the actual source (the perceived rejection).

Someone today said to me “dating is a process, there has to be a level of tolerance and grit for all the uncomfortable, annoying stuff that happens in any process”

And I think this is what it’s time to get on board with. I think my mindset up until now was, I will not tolerate any disturbance or discomfort. Why should I? I can isolate myself straight to hell, you can’t get to me. And I have done an incredible job, A+! By abstaining from everything (including life itself) I’ve shielded myself from all of my anxious, reactive, regressive habits and patterns around dating, love and romantic partnership.

But if I want to fall in love again — as I claim I do — there’s going to be discomfort. That 12-year-old angsty bestie with her walkman is gonna show up. She’s gonna feel scared, sad, rejected, hyper-vigilant, obsessive, and she’s gonna want to wallow to a playlist full of Frank Ocean, Mario, Rihanna’s ANTI, and sad piano music.

And I might just need to make some space for her.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

In fact, spiral faster. Spinning out gets a bad rap. It feels uncomfortable because something is dying - let it.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

What are you asking to hold? A platform? An audience? People’s hope, people’s hearts? Their attention? People’s stories, their vulnerability? Their healing, and your own. Their breath, and yours. Energy - more of it. Clean and pure and light energy. Power, influencer. Resources, money. A team, people’s livelihoods, their careers. A company, a thriving business. Revenue, stakes. Higher and higher. Wealth. Trust. Integrity. Love, family. Someone’s heart. A man, all of him. A family, all of it. A child. Your bloodline, its evolution, its progression. Beauty, creation. Health. Sexuality and sensuality. Softness. The feminine. The masculine. Spirituality. Divinity.

Forget about all of these things. Don’t worry about any of them. These are the spoils.

You get nothing focused on the spoils. Except for the pain and suffering of wanting. Of striving. Of being disconnected from something you don’t have. You get the feeling of “not having”. You become a person who wants, a person who strives, a person who doesn’t have. And this person is not the person who does, the person who has. Not the person who is.

Focus on the vessel. It’s the only thing you have control over, and expanding it is the path to receiving anything you want that you don’t currently have. Everything you have right now is exactly what you have the capacity to receive and hold. Everything you don’t have will require more space, capacity, expansion, frequency, vibration, and magnetism in order to be able to find you, connect with you, and stay with you.

Your vessel needs expansion, magnetism — and this will create a vacuum. And whatever is for you comes rushing in. With zero effort. Without a plan. Without controlling, begging, or chasing. No wondering. No confusion.

As the vessel, you simply take one breath after another, and each moment is perfect. And you feel - you experience deeply - the fullness of every single moment. The exactness of it. The synchronicity, the divinity. The part of the whole that it is. The next step on the pathway. The inevitability of it, no matter what it is.

You stop questioning. Stop wondering. Stop worrying. Because no imperfect past, no disappointing future exists. You understand all those nightmarish worries as figments of your imagination. And you recognize that the present moment is the only thing there is.

And so you merge with it. And you call in all of your power, and all of the power of the universe, and all of the power of your ancestors. You call it back from all the places you scattered it: shame, fear, future-tripping, catastrophizing, regret, spiraling, looping, despair, anticipating, self-pity, victimhood.

And you harvest it now, in this present moment. And you pour this invaluable resource - your power - into creation, manifestation, vision, focus, understanding, light, clarity, and love. You pour every last drop of it into this exact moment where you are.

This moment you currently sit in.

You stop fighting against it. You merge with it and your life becomes as simple, as straight forward, as intuitive, and as uncomplicated as the breath you are currently breathing.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

So how did I end up here? Sobbing, depleted, confronting a type of pain I didn’t know my body contained - or could even survive if unleashed. The last month I’ve been edging panic attacks, raw-dogging misery.

A month ago, I checked into the Hoffman Institute’s week-long retreat. I had done so much healing work, and spiritual work, and therapy, and inner child work. I thought this would be the final capstone project in my senior year of fixing my life. And I was determined to get an A. Graduate as valedictorian.

And all signs were pointing to this triumph ahead of me. In the month leading up to the retreat I felt as good as I’ve felt maybe ever. I had finally calmed the incessant negative and catastrophic thoughts that have plagued me since childhood. My anxiety was low and manageable. I felt a strong spiritual connection to myself and my higher power. I was operating in a sort of creative flow that felt not only fun and full of inspiration, I was birthing new projects, and I felt the most productive I’ve felt in a long time.

I was going to walk into this final exam (Hoffman), hand in my phone for the week, ace the test, and walk out tossing that graduate cap into the sky shouting “I did it!”

Hoffman, and the exercises, and the spiritual excavation I experienced there, unearthed a new layer of generational and ancestral pain that I was not aware lived in me, in my bloodline. I guess in hindsight it was there all along. The melancholy child, the worried teen, the numbing young adult. The pain has been there. In me, in my mother, in my ancestors.

And look, I’m not entirely new to this - I’ve been poking around for a few years now. Asking more questions, praying, seeking spiritual guidance and direction. And answers have come, information has revealed itself, signs have pointed me this way or that. So I wasn’t expecting to find something entirely new, something big and ugly and heavy and murky.

But this intensive 7 days spent asking the deepest, sometimes darkest question: why am I like this? And to understand that question: why is Ma like that? And why is Pa like that? What were Mami (grandma) and Papi (grandpa) like, and why? And so on…

What came up flooded me, and I’ve been reaching for a gasp of air at the surface ever since. I’ve been picking up the pieces, slowly sifting through the aftermath.

I don’t mean to be cryptic, but it’s hard to put into words what exactly it is that came up. Some of it is about family members and ancestors, so it’s not mine to share. Some of it is more abstract than literal. Some of it is literal but this is not the time or place to speak on it.

Some of it even had me questioning where truth ends and imagination begins. Did I dream the whole thing? Did I take a forgotten comment or fleeting memory and expand it into a bigger story? But I have a new rule: I don’t question my truth anymore. I don’t call myself crazy.

I thought I’d be leaving Hoffman to a metaphorical graduation pizza party with all my friends and loved ones cheering me on. Kaytranada would DJ and we’d dance into the morning sun. There was no party. Instead, I struggled to get out of bed, to work, walk, breathe, and get through my days.

I keep encountering this dichotomy: regret that I went searching, and gratitude for the privilege it is to get to search. To get to ask questions. To get to cry. To get to see and feel and understand. Because I know that this is ultimately how it’s transmuted. We can’t transmute karma and traumas and lessons and curses that we can’t see, that are buried deep and forgotten or avoided or both. If we leave them buried, we still carry them, weighted shackles around our ankles, though this life and the next. And we’ll pass them down so that these curses plague our children and their children and theirs and theirs.

The only way to break it is to face it. Then feel it (which comes with pain, confusion, and suffering, but also joy, relief, and peace). Then expel it. This is the purge. This is the transmutation. This is the transformation. This is the change.

You can’t ask for things — your life, yourself, your thoughts, how it all feels — to be different, and then be upset when the path to different is hard. If it wasn’t hard then no one would ever stay the same. Everyone would be their best, highest self. We all would have changed a long time ago. But we didn’t, because we couldn’t then. But we can now. And we will.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

first, talk it out, go to couples therapy, go to a remote beach and look up at the stars together, seek spiritual counsel, see a sex therapist, meditate on it, pray on it, try to reconnect with the love that made you want to marry each other in the first place. But after all that’s been done, and you feel done, you’re probably done.

2. Don’t believe your cultural, familial or religious programming about divorce

many of us were told a story that divorce is bad. It’s bad for you, bad for the kids, bad for business, bad for God. And so if you do it, you’re bad. Or maybe it’s a bad look. Or maybe it means you’re a loser, or you couldn’t “tough it out”.

first off, one thing I’m not “toughing out” in this lifetime is romantic partnership. second off, all of this is made up. These are boogeymen in the closet. Divorce in and of itself doesn’t really mean much. It’s a legal process to nullify a paper you signed back when you thought things were gonna go well.

it’s like buying something with an amazing return policy, then realizing after years of use that you don’t want it anymore, still having the receipt, taking it back, and they accept the return no questions asked. Be thankful for the relatively forgiving return policy on your marriage.

let go of programmed shame — it’s not yours, someone else gave it to you and you can give it back. And come up with your own story that brings you peace instead. Not that they’re a piece of shit. More like, we shared a beautiful season of life together, and that season came to a close. I can feel sad that it’s over, grateful that it happened, and ready to move forward all at the same time. Hold onto the new story for dear life. Make sure the new story feeds your soul, not your ego.

One of my favorite stories I came up with as I moved through it: being divorced is chic.

3. Don’t let people project their divorce shit onto you.

everyone has their own story about divorce. Mommy and daddy got divorced and it ruined my life. My priest gave a sermon once about the sanctity of marriage with the subtext that if you get married you later decide to end it you’re a stupid, irresponsible piece of shit who’s gonna burn in hell for all eternity. Divorce is for the weak-willed, I’d work hard enough to make sure it never happened to us. If you loved each other more you could’ve avoided this. And so on…

they will come to you and project their shit onto you. Because you have now become a mirror, reflecting a great fear back to them. That relationships end, that people - even people I know, even couples that seemed great together - get divorced. That love can shapeshift and even whittle away, or that love can be very strong and yet still not strong enough to hold a marriage together.

so they will project. They’ll ask leading questions like, well what did your parents say? And you might respond, well my parents were loving, supportive, and proud of me for making the best decision for myself. But please, tell me more about how terrified you are about what your parents would say if you were in my shoes.

and don’t forget #2: make up your mind about your story and stick with it.

4. Do get excited about the future

the future is unknown. That’s scary. And extremely exciting! I had no idea what my life held when I separated from my partner, but I was excited about the possibilities. Here are some of the things I’ve done that I don’t think I would have if I hadn’t gotten divorced:

lived in Mexico City, gotten more piercings, gotten tattoos, done mushrooms, discovered spirituality, started healing my inner child, gone viral on TikTok, launched this substack, posed nude for an artist, lived in LA, had lots of fun with lots of new people, stopped drinking alcohol, travelled alone to remote beaches, deepened existing friendships, and made lots of new life-altering ones.

5. Do build a support system

first, you’ll wanna cut out those negative, fearful voices. These people usually mean well, but they’ll erode your confidence in your decision, and infringe on your right to live in the new delusional stories you’re telling yourself about your divorce (eg, that now I can marry my celebrity crush, since my marriage was previously the only thing standing in the way of that).

next, build your team. there will be a void, oftentimes a massive one, where you used to turn to your partner for support, guidance, or just company. Find a safe network of friends, therapists, healers, yoga instructors, massage therapist (there can be a period of touch deprivation to work through), financial advisors, executive coaches, mentors, fitness coaches, life coaches, spiritual guides, an old man on a park bench you can regularly see for unplanned chats.

and it can’t just be friends. They didn’t sign up for you to trauma dump on them and complain at them. You’re probably gonna need to pay one or a few people to be nice to you, hold space for you, commiserate with you (9 times out of 10 your therapist does hate your ex, or at least thinks they’re problematic. don’t get stuck here, but this will help for a bit), and soothe your body and your spirit, at least at the beginning.

6. Don’t be bitter

it’s like drinking poison hoping it will kill the other person.

7. Do plant medicine

plant medicine (read: the grown up way of saying shrooms) done in a safe environment with the right tools and support around you can help you find clarity and reconnect with love. Even the best of endings will have to trudge through some amount of grief, resentment, bitterness, and anger at the end. You want to find shortcuts back to the loving part of yourself, which plant medicine can help with. You can take love and gratitude with you as your final memories of the relationship and walk away from it.

you’ll feel silly, childlike, and realize it’s not as serious as you or others are making it out to be. You’ll realize that you can take care of yourself, you have everything you need (you always did) within yourself, and you are divinely or at least self protected in every way.

8. Do post a divorce post

if you feel so inclined, post a divorce post. First off, it feeds the divorce is chic storyline. It’s very celebrity-coded, very “I’m releasing this statement which was pre-vetted by my PR team,” very “I need to get ahead of the tabloids.”

more practically, it’s a simple way to let everyone know in one fell swoop that you and your ex partner aren’t together anymore. It will save you a lot awkward conversations (usually awkward for them, see #3 and people projecting) when people ask how so-and-so is doing.

see also: don’t be bitter. Keep it short, sweet, light, positive, and optimistic.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me

As long as there is a woman on the planet who is so embodied in herself, living in her purpose, manifesting abundance, building wealth, harnessing inner and outer power, gorgeous, creative, nurturing, soulful, political, and divine, I know that I can be all of those things to.

In the manifestation practice that I follow, To Be Magnetic, there’s a concept called Expanders. An Expander is someone who embodies a manifestation, life, or way of being that you desire. Exposing yourself to Expanders literally expands your subconscious and your belief matrix about what’s possible for you. If you’ve never seen someone like you having or achieving the things you desire, your brain may not truly believe (at the root level) that it’s possible for you.

Beyonce is an Expander in many obvious ways, but that’s not what I want to talk about. Yes, she has money, romantic partnership and family, talent, success, fame. But the reason Beyonce is one of my favorite Expanders is because she is living in her purpose. And if you watch her closely or see her perform live, it’s undeniable.

She doesn’t smile through pain, she is genuinely elated to be on stage every night performing for her fans. She doesn’t see the fandom as a necessary evil of her profession, she has genuine gratitude and love for her fans - calling them out by name and doing arial fly bys to get close enough to see their smiling faces up close. She doesn’t see motherhood as a burden that she doesn’t have time or energy for because of her demanding career, she sees her children as a gift and brings them along in her journey.

She’s fully embodied. That’s why we are magnetized and mesmerized by her. She exudes a life lived from purpose. And that’s something we all deeply desire. And the cherry on top - living in this purpose has also brought her wealth, love, beauty and those other material things. But note: they are the side effect, not the cause.

The other aspect of life lived in purpose that we can take away from Beyonce - she is known as one of the hardest working, most talented people in the entertainment industry. But when you are living in purpose and alignment, working hard isn’t hard. You’re in flow. Music producers tell stories of 36 hours straight in the studio with her, churning out multiple Billboard charting hits back-to-back-to-back.

This is what work looks like when you are working from alignment. When you have surrendered and become a channel for your art and creation. You are no longer a human trying to control and “make things happen.” You are a vessel, and the divine can work and speak and create through you. You’ll never create and produce more effortlessly and at a higher caliber than when you surrender to the divine, and let creation flow through you from the spiritual realm into the physical realm.

That is what I see in Beyonce. The 18 hour days, the theater and production of it all, the level of detail and perfectionism she brings to everything she does is hard work - there’s no denying that. But living it is not hard when you operate from purpose. You’re the pebble being carried down stream in the river.

This is the dream. And this is why Beyonce is so expansive. This is why being in her presence feels like being in the presence of something otherworldly. When we see Beyonce, we see our Highest Self. There’s a Beyonce in each of us. We were her when we were born. We can reconnect to that part of ourselves, which all of us desperately crave. We get there through unlearning, rewiring, and building new belief systems that validate that a magnetic life lived from purpose is possible for us too.

Then we must build and strengthen the new belief system — wiring and firing new neural pathways, reinforcing them through trust and belief. This requires Expanders. Like Beyonce, like that friend or classmate who seems to have it all with effortless ease, like your wealthy (in all aspects, not just financial) sibling/cousin/aunt/uncle. Find those Expanders, and watch them closely.

But fight urge for the jealous response. Fight the urge for your mind to tell you why you can’t be that, have that, become that. Find the ways that you’re just like them. Find the tiny similarities between their story and yours. And cling to those congruencies for dear life. Because they pave the bridge from, “I can’t be Beyonce”, to, “if she can become that, and live in her purpose, and be this magnetic, I can too.”

And can we add: body tea, face card never declined not once in her life, smile that makes you feel like you’re her best friend in the world through the Jumbotron. When you operate from purpose, those little material details seem to fall into place as an afterthought.

This is available to all of us. And we all know it, or we wouldn’t pay $100s to go see her and to touch it and be in its presence for a few short hours. We just tend to forget shortly after. Don’t forget. If Beyonce can be Beyonce, so can you.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

As the mushrooms hit, I sank into the hot tub. And there, I experienced the womb. From the warmth of the water, my mind drifted to an outer realm - it looked like outer space, or I’ve since heard it referred to as an astral plane. Wherever I had been transported to, I saw — or rather, experienced — my soul being ushered into my tiny body in utero, by arms and hands that possessed a strong, distinctly feminine energy.

I didn’t know who the arms belonged to - it felt like female ancestors, but it also felt like an all-knowing, nurturing, protecting force. I felt profound relief. And for the first time since I was a small child, I felt a deep knowing that I was safe.

At the time, I had few words to describe this experience. But in the 5 years since then — and many mushroom trips, ceremonies, prayers, and meditations later — I have seen, heard, and felt this entity that birthed me, that brought me into my mother’s womb, into this body, many times. I have heard her clearly. She has spoken to me in the midst of psychedelic ceremonies, breathwork journeys, and while dead sober floating in the Mediterranean Sea.

And in our many encounters, as I’ve come to know and understand and converse with her, I’ve understood her as Mother. Source, Universe, God/Goddess. But to me, simply Mother.

Our culture and society trains us from a young age to worship things outside of us: money, houses, cars, boyfriends and girlfriends, friends, celebrities, likes and followers. And chief among them: our parents.

We arrive here quite helpless physically, so there’s an intrinsic reliance on our parents for the sheer fact of our body’s need to survive through the day. But unbeknownst to us — and unrecognized or acknowledged by most parents, caretakers, and the world around us — we are spiritual beings. We arrive here with wisdom and knowing in our DNA. Generational and ancestral power. Psychic and perceptive abilities, rooted deep within ourselves. Fed by the umbilical chord that connects us to something beyond the human or material - the mycelium network that sends messages between us and the Source we came from.

But with time, programming, social conditioning, misguidance and miseducation - we come to worship the outer, at the expense and diminution of the inner. We look to what’s outside of us - a parent, a partner, a job, a bank account - and we lose our connection to the divine power within us. Which gets buried deeper and deeper as time passes.

We forget the Mother that we were born from. Source. The single consciousness that each of us sprouted from, popping into this experience, into this body, into this realm, for a short blimp of time, only to eventually and inevitably return back to her. Mother is life, she is wisdom, she is earth air water fire. Mother is safety, divine protection, manifestation.

So this Mother’s Day, I’d like to acknowledge this Mother that I met in the last couple years. My higher power, my higher Self, the one I can trust no matter what direction life takes me. I am born from her, I am protected and watched over by her, and I will return to her.

Connecting to her has been a gift. I don’t claim to understand her or it or life or anything really. And I surely don’t share any of this to preach or tell you that this is right or true or even that I recommend this belief or practice to anyone else. Just to share that this is where I’ve landed, after decades of intellectual elitism and my nose turned up at anything religious or spiritual, skepticism seeping from my every pore.

Every morning and evening, I start and end the day with a short prayer that starts with “thank you, Mother.” And on this Mother’s Day, I’ll do the same. Thank you, Mother.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

The youngest part of me knows with every fiber of her being that she is not crazy. She is pure intuition, pure light, pure love. And everything she feels, everything she understands, everything she sees is ultimate truth (our truth, at least). But the adults and the world and the social norms tell her otherwise. It’s normal for adults to yell at, or even physically harm, children. And each other. It’s normal for some people to have everything and others to have nothing. It’s normal for cruelty and materialism and impatience and emotional dysregulation to rule all of the adults around us.

The intuitive child asks: why is everyone so angry? Why is everyone screaming? Why am I being punished? I feel sad, I feel angry. I see injustice around me. Don’t you see this too?

And the conditioned adult says: no stupid child. This is just how the world is. Don’t feel sad. Stop asking so many questions. Stop questioning me and my actions and my hypocrisy. If I make you feel bad, you should let it go. If you make me feel bad, you will be punished.

And with time, that intuitive child who understands everything so well, who has psychic abilities in how clearly they see, begins to question her sanity. Am I crazy? Did my parents just have an explosive fight that boomed throughout the house, or are we sitting around the dinner table like a happy family as though nothing happened. Did I do absolutely nothing wrong - besides maybe get up to use the bathroom during class, or wear a piece of clothing I liked, or kiss a boy, or stay up late laughing with my friends - but now I’m being punished on the basis of school policy, some God or religion I understand nothing about, or some adult’s inherent authority?

And eventually, with enough reinforcement, reiteration, stressful encounters, and threats of punishment or death or social ostracization, “am I crazy?” becomes “i’m definitely crazy.” And the intuitive child within is buried. And she’s replaced with the questioning. The constant questioning. Is it this, or that? Do I feel sad, or am I misunderstanding my reality again? Am I being mistreated, or is this just how the world works? Should I speak up, or should I shut up before my (clearly unreasonable) expectations - like communication, kindness or empathy - land me abandoned and alone.

I can hardly remember my intuitive child. But I know the questioning so intimately. We’ve lived together for almost 3 decades now. But this past month, as I did mental gymnastics trying to decipher what had really transpired in an experience and relationship I’d shared with a friend, or if it was all a figment of my insanity and imagination - my intuitive child emerged. And she was fucking pissed.

She told me: run this situation back in your mind. Now try to tell me that this whole thing was imagined. You can’t. So stop. I’m sick of your bullshit. Be so fucking for real. You act like I’m the delusional, optimistic, head-in-the-clouds child, but you’re the child. You’re the petulant child living in denial.

Guys, she’s so pissed. And now she’s broken out of her cage and she’s screaming at me about all the ways I deny reality in order to feed all of my bullshit stories - that I can’t have what I want, that I can’t be successful, that I can’t have any money, that I don’t get love, that something is wrong with me.

And by the way - if someone is going to deny our reality, let’s make it be other people. Don’t let it be me. Even if it turns out I’m completely insane and everything I see and believe are delusions and distortions - fine, let someone else deny me. Why am I so hell bent on denying myself? That’s the deepest betrayal. And that’s why I find myself betrayed and denied by others, because I’ve built my own house on betrayal and denial of my own self - so when people come over they catch the vibe and join the denial and betrayal party.

This marks the end of treating my intuitive child like she’s crazy. And you know what, there will be times when we are the crazy one. And I’m OK with that. I’m gonna have her back then too. Because I’d rather be crazy once in a while, than feel crazy all the time.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

1. Tuesday morning yoga at SkyTing with Christopher who plays Frank Ocean and classic R&B in his class

2. Aguila de Oro by Little Whale

3. Breathwork with AJ on the 17th floor of the PUBLIC hotel early Friday morning

4. Taking it all in as I signed the lease and moved into our first BEHAVE office, and realizing how far we’ve come and how fun and rewarding this journey has become.

5. How beautiful and restful our new office feels

6. Mornings spent at the beautiful, usually empty office gym doing pilates and stretch videos in the FORM by Sami Clarke app

7. Floating in a Dead Sea salt tank and asking my higher power (Mother) for a message

8. Browsing the catalogue for Arantxa’s paintings

9. A chill Saturday night at the movie theater with my baby cousin (who’s apparently 23 years old now….) and laughing out loud throughout the movie

10. Laughing out loud in general. When I find things funny, I’ve started letting myself laugh out loud. Even if I’m alone. I’m sure someone watvhing through my window would think I look insane, but they’re the insane one watching me through my window wtf

11. Stopping by a friend’s apartment on my walk home from work on Friday evening and crawling into her bed to get the download about her new crush and their date

12. Doing my skincare every night and feeling my soft hands and the silky products on my face, neck and chest

13. Asking my higher power to take care of the things that felt out of my control and to protect me + align me with abundance, joy, and play

14. Listening to Eckhart Tolle talks, especially this one

15. Starting a sugar detox, and therefore not eating any sugar

16. Cancelling plans to attend a 16-person dinner, and instead staying in, watching Abbott Elementary, and getting my Oura ring score up to 89 instead

17. Discovering some incredible Gnawa music while working on the playlist for the next breve event, which is happening this coming Sunday March 30, 9-11am at the PUBLIC Hotel if you’d like to join. RSVP HERE.

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.

Here’s the problem: what that little girl really wanted and needed - once a space of love and safety was established as a consistent and reliable baseline - was to have fun. To play. To scream and run around and touch grass. To frolic naked in the sun or the rain. To swim. To create - paint, sing, write, dance. To clown around and laugh and find stupid things hilarious. To do dumb shit with her silly little friends.

But when it comes to the inner child healing process, adult me is the project manager. And adult me runs a tight ship. She’s a type A perfectionist riddled with fear that we’re fucked up beyond hope, so we need to get to work! There’s so much work to get through. We need to dig up those memories. We need to sit still for an hour every day and sink deep into the inner child healing meditations and work the process and succeed at healing.

So that little girl, who already felt stressed out and overworked (I sometimes imagine her as a little tiny defense lawyer at trial, stacks of paper piled high as she tries to plead our case and prove our innocence before the court) — that frantic little Mayssa got conjured up in this process, and got more work put on her plate. Hard work, sad work. Work that’s about reconnecting to pain and then finding a place deep within to let it go and to heal it.

But she’s so tired of working. She wanted to play then, and she wants to play now. But I haven’t had fun in months - maybe years. I do all the right things. I stopped partying, I stopped drinking. I went celibate. I spend most nights alone at home in order to keep my nervous system calm and regulated. I meditate, go to yoga, go to breathwork. I go for hours long walks and bike rides alone for contemplation. I go to healing retreats. I do my plant medicine rituals and ceremonies. I do my gratitude practices. If I read, I read something that can fix me. I don’t eat sugar, I drink my water. I pray every morning and every night.

When I do socialize, all I seem capable of talking about is healing and therapy and my spiritual teacher and how breathwork changed my life. When I do spend an evening with a close girlfriend, I take the opportunity to get a second opinion on whatever life situation is currently triggering me and hear her take on why did I attracted this situation and what’s happening and what should I do. Despite the fact that I’ve already played the situation through with my therapist, my spiritual teacher, an energy reader, a reiki healer, and in my mind and my journal about 100 times.

But what about fun? What about FUN?! It’s like I disturbed this little girl who was asleep deep in my psyche. And yes, she was in fact stressed out and scared and needed some love and guidance. But then I locked her in a room with me for 3 years and forced her to explain to me every single pain and negative emotion she’s experienced so that we could hash out how we are going to fix it all. And how we’re going to fix it now. When literally handing her a Barbie and a boombox with a Britney Spears CD in it probably would have done the trick.

The time has come to have fun again. Play. I want to play. I want to make it through a dinner without talking about healing or therapy. I want to go out dancing but not tell myself it’s a good use of time because it’s a somatic release. I want to kiss a boy and not spend weeks dissecting and analyzing why I magnetized this person and what it means that I’ve chosen to engage with this type of energy and what karmic cycle we’ve become entangled into with one another.

I have a sense that the next phase of the journey is less about healing, and more about play. But also that the two are inextricably linked, so my adult mind can rest easy knowing that if I play, I’ll be healing too. Maybe that defeats the whole purpose, but baby steps, you know?

Disclaimer: I know nothing, don’t listen to me.