Love Letter Creative

The Ripple Effect of Being Seen

eveeh — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

A night of music, community, and the kind of vulnerability that opens doors — for the ones on stage, and for everyone watching.

Earlier this month, I went to watch my friends’ band, The Flamin’ Flannels, perform in their first live show.

They decided to form the band in February, of all places, during one of our flag football tournaments. They started practicing in April. Within three months of playing together, they performed their first concert to a packed bar, and they were amazing. I am so freaking proud of the three of them. Kimber is the lead singer and guitarist, with Ang on the bass and Bacon on the drums.

They played a forty-five-ish minute set that had everyone singing and dancing along to their country covers the entire time. It was such a heartwarming experience to see their community come together in support of these beautiful souls. The vibe was high and loving all night, laughter and joy infusing every corner of the bar.

Country music has never been a favorite of mine, a lot of it due to the culture and lack of diversity within the genre. Getting to support a queer band within that space was healing and exciting in a way I didn’t fully expect walking in.

What It Means to Witness Courage

Having spoken with Ang, I knew this has been an extremely healing journey for her. She hadn’t played the bass since high school, and picking it back up brought a lot of emotion to the surface. There’s something about returning to a version of yourself you set down years ago — you don’t just pick up the instrument again, you pick up everything you were carrying the last time you held it.

Watching the three of them on stage, I was in awe of their courage and their willingness to push past fear to do something magical. Because it was definitely a magical night. They were vulnerable in their performance, and that vulnerability is exactly what allowed the people who love them to step up and show their support. You could feel it in the room — the way a crowd meets you differently when you’ve actually let them see you try.

It’s a beautiful and inspiring thing to witness. How many of us don’t step outside of our comfort zone because we’ve convinced ourselves we need permission to be seen? We wait for the moment we feel ready, polished, certain, and that moment rarely comes. Kimber, Ang, and Bacon didn’t wait for certainty. They practiced for three months and then stood in front of a packed bar anyway.

Standing in front of a crowd and being willing to be seen and vulnerable is powerful. And the reward, at least the parts I could see from where I stood, was that they received an enormous amount of love and brought real joy to so many of us in that room. The ripples of their choice to perform will be infinite and enduring, whether they ever get to trace them or not.

The Ripple We Rarely Get to See

Here’s the part that stayed with me longest: their choice to perform made way for me to write this post. And this piece will reach you, carrying its own ripple forward. That’s the power of vulnerability. It creates change long after the original moment has ended, in places the person who started it will never see and could never have planned for.

Their willingness to move through whatever fear they carried opened the door for so many things to happen that had nothing to do with them directly. It inspired me to take action I’d been avoiding out of fear this week. And who knows how many other people in that bar were impacted, and in what ways, simply because three friends decided to try.

We tend to think of impact as something we can measure — applause, likes, a direct thank-you. But most of the change we create moves through channels we never get to witness. A friend in the crowd goes home and finally starts the thing they’ve been putting off. Someone finds the courage to reach out to a person they’ve been avoiding. A stranger two rows back remembers, months later, that being seen didn’t kill anyone after all.

It’s easy to forget how powerful we are and how much influence we have on creating change. We might not always know how we’ve created it, but it’s guaranteed — especially when it comes from a place of love, vulnerability, and joy. The Flamin’ Flannels didn’t set out to inspire a blog post. They set out to play a country cover set for their friends. And yet here we both are.

That’s the thing about choosing to be seen. You never get the full list of who it reached, or when, or why it mattered. You just have to trust that it did — and let that be enough.

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Learning That Rest Doesn’t Need to Be Earned

eveeh — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

A line from a book cracked open an old memory about anger, bedtime, and unlearning that rest has to be earned.

There’s a line from a book I read recently that I haven’t been able to forget, even after I finished the book. A character, finally somewhere safe, says: “It’s such a small thing. Sitting in quiet with someone who doesn’t need me to fill the air with proof of my worth.”

I read it once. Then I read it again. Then I sat with it for a long time, because I realized I didn’t know what that felt like. Not really. Not for most of my life.

It’s strange, the way a single sentence in someone else’s story can reach into your own history and press directly on something you didn’t know was still tender. That’s what this line did. It didn’t teach me anything new, exactly. It just handed me language for something I’d been living inside of for years without a name for it.

The Room I Kept Decorating

For years, quiet was never just quiet to me. It was a room I had to keep decorating. If the air went still, I filled it — with explaining, with proving, with making sure whoever was in the room with me knew I was still worth having there.

I didn’t think of it as anxiety at the time. It just felt like attentiveness, like care, like being a good presence in someone else’s space. It took me a long time to see it for what it actually was: a quiet, constant performance. Proof-of-worth, running in the background, even in moments that were never asking anything of me at all.

What Rest Used To Cost

Rest wasn’t restful either. I’d fall asleep somewhere I hadn’t consciously planned to — usually the couch at night, watching TV — and I’d be angry before I even opened my eyes when I was woken up to go to bed. Sometimes I’d swat away the hands that woke me.

For a long time, that got met with judgment instead of curiosity. My memory of those moments is filled with shame, confusion as to why I was angry, and a pain I didn’t understand. I just learned, again, that even my body’s most basic need — to stop, to close my eyes, to be unconscious for a minute — came with a penalty attached.

Tracing It Back

It took years of healing to trace it back. To understand that waking up swinging wasn’t a character flaw. It was a nervous system that had learned rest was never fully safe. That falling asleep meant skipping something, missing something, failing at something. And being woken to go to bed meant I had to fulfill the entire bedtime routine I had created for myself. I had to put the weight of that system back on my shoulders, half-asleep, every single time.

My body was still defending a version of bedtime it never got to fully feel safe in.

From Why Do I Do This to Oh, That Makes Sense

Once I understood where the anger at being woken came from, it stopped being a mystery I was ashamed of and became a story I could finally hold with some tenderness. Naming a thing changes your relationship to it. That shift from why do I do this to oh, that makes sense is its own kind of medicine.

It didn’t undo the years. But it meant I could finally stop treating my own reaction as evidence that something was wrong with me, and start treating it as evidence of something that had happened to me. Those are very different stories to carry.

What Quiet Gets to Mean Now

I’m still unlearning the reflex to fill the air. Still, sometimes, catching myself performing okay-ness in a silence that was never asking anything of me in the first place. But more and more, I’m finding moments — with the right people, in the right rooms — where quiet is just quiet. Where I can rest without needing to have earned it first.

It really is such a small thing. And it took me a long time to learn it isn’t small at all.

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Freedom: A Heartfelt Reflection on What We’re Really Reaching For

eveeh — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 01:47:28 +0000

There is a word that carries more weight than almost any other in our human experience. More hope, more longing, more grief. More wars fought in its name. More prayers whispered toward it in the dark.

That word is freedom.

Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Financial freedom. Freedom to love who you love. Freedom from oppression. Freedom of your time. Freedom from injustice. Freedom from war. Freedom from the past.

These are but a handful of the motivations that underlie the actions we take to better the lives of ourselves and others every single day.
We make choices in pursuit of freedom constantly — often without naming it. Choosing to work a job so you have the freedom to rent or own a home, to pay your bills, to travel, to go to concerts. Choosing to heal so that you gain freedom from patterns of behavior that were keeping you small, or stuck, or in pain.

Freedom is the quiet “why” beneath so many of our loudest decisions.

When Freedom Feels Like an Illusion

And yet, so many of us feel restrained. We move through moments where freedoms we thought we had turn out to be merely illusions: fragile things, contingent on forces far beyond our control.

Our societies operate by limiting certain freedoms of those they govern. It might be considered necessary — a way to reduce the chaos, to keep some thread of order intact. If people had the freedom to kill or to steal without consequence, our world would look profoundly different.

And so we have collectively agreed, in many ways, to certain structures. Certain limits. Certain traded freedoms in exchange for safety, for community, for the possibility of living alongside each other in something resembling peace.

But how do we determine which freedoms should be restricted? And how have we become so removed from our shared humanity that some among us believe certain groups of people deserve no freedoms at all — including the freedom to exist?

It is heartbreaking. It is devastating. And yet so much of it filters back to this one word: freedom — who has it, who doesn’t, and who gets to decide.

The Quieter Question

I have been sitting with all of this lately. Feeling the weight of what is happening in the world, and asking myself a quieter question underneath all of it:

What does freedom mean in the context of my own life? My own choices? My own days?

Because even when outer freedoms are threatened — even when the world feels heavy and uncertain and heartbreaking — there is something inside us that remains ours to tend. The way we choose to move through our days. What we reach toward. What we protect. What we refuse to let be taken from us.

Creating From Freedom, Not Fear

One of the most important elements of love letter living, I believe, is understanding what kind of freedom our actions are reaching toward.

Are you creating from a place of fear and restriction? Or are you building from the hope of a better future?

This is not a small question. It is, in many ways, the question. Because the energy we create from shapes everything — the decisions we make, the risks we take, the lives we build, the way we show up for ourselves and for each other.

Freedom, at its most essential, might just be the practice of returning to ourselves, again and again, in a world that often makes that feel like the hardest thing to do.

And maybe that is where love letter living truly begins. Not when everything is resolved or certain or safe. But in the quiet, courageous act of choosing yourself anyway.

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The Frequency of Shame (And Why It Keeps Us Small)

eveeh — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000

A minor mistake. A knee-jerk lie. And everything that surfaced in the conversation that followed: shame, triggers, and what healing actually looks like in real time.

Shame is a sneaky emotion. It can slither into focus as if by magic, at the most innocuous times or the most impactful. Appearing in ways that don’t always immediately make sense.

It can creep in so subtly you don’t even realize you’ve reacted from it — or it can feel like being caught by a wave and dragged underneath, not sure where the surface is.

Shame is something we absorb. From the relationships that shaped us, the messages we received about what was acceptable, the moments we were made to feel small for being human. Children arrive in the world without it. It gets layered on — by parents, by peers, by the world at large — and the marks it leaves become so familiar, so transparent, that they’re easy to miss. Until a moment brings them back into the light.

That happened to me this week.

When Shame Shows Up in the Small Moments

I forgot to put food away. When someone asked if I had, my knee-jerk response was to lie and say yes. A wave of shame rolled over me before I could think — my inner child, terrified of getting in trouble, spoke before I could say anything different.

It led to a challenging, necessary conversation about triggers and accountability. I work hard to understand my triggers so they don’t move through me unchecked. And yet this one arrived without warning. I’m a recovering perfectionist — slowly, intentionally learning to let myself be human, to make mistakes without letting them mean something about my worth. So feeling that old, visceral pull to hide an imperfection, to preemptively avoid punishment over something so minor — it surprised me.

I’m still moving through the emotions, memories, and thoughts that surfaced from that interaction and everything that followed.

This is one of the things that makes shame so disorienting: it rarely announces itself with fanfare. It slips in through a side door — through a forgotten task, a misplaced word, a moment of self-protection that happens faster than thought. And then you’re standing in the aftermath wondering how something so small managed to unearth something so deep.

The Long Roots of Shame

Shame over mistakes is a long-standing pattern for me. It goes as far back as I can remember.

It settled into the small cracks and fissures exposed each time I made a mistake and felt belittled or punished for it. Each time I let it take root without questioning it, it covered a little more of what I knew, deep down, to be true about myself.

That’s the insidious nature of shame — it doesn’t arrive once and leave. It accumulates. It finds the places where we’re already tender and makes itself at home there. It whispers things that start to sound like truth over time: you should have known better, you always do this, something is wrong with you.

And the longer those whispers go unexamined, the more they shape the way we move through the world. The way we shrink. The way we hide. The way we lie about putting food away when we already know the answer.

Understanding our shame — where it lives, where it came from, what it’s been trying to protect us from — isn’t about wallowing. It’s about recognition. Because what gets seen can begin to shift.

The Science Behind Why Shame Keeps Us So Stuck

Here’s something I find remarkable: shame is considered the lowest frequency emotion we experience. Researchers who study the energetic frequency of emotions place it at the very bottom — around 20 Hz — below grief, below anger, below apathy. When we’re operating from shame, we’re functioning from the most contracted place possible. There is very little room for clarity, creativity, or forward motion from there.

This reframe matters. It means that the moments when we feel most frozen, most reactive, most unlike ourselves — those moments aren’t evidence of weakness. They’re evidence of operating from a frequency that makes expansion nearly impossible. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a physiological and energetic reality.

Which is why the work of moving through shame, slowly, compassionately, with curiosity rather than judgment, is some of the most important inner work we can do. Not because shame is something to be fixed, but because we deserve to live from a frequency where we can actually breathe.

What It Looks Like to Learn From It

I’m grateful the trigger happened. It gave me the chance to learn something new about myself, to love myself a little deeper, to heal a little more.

That’s the invitation inside every shame trigger, if we’re willing to look: what is this showing me, and what does that part of me need?

It’s not always easy work. Sitting with the emotions, the memories, the thoughts that surface from an unexpected moment of exposure takes courage. It asks us to stay when everything in us wants to run or defend or disappear.

But the release and the growth that come from it will always be worth it. Every time we turn toward the shame instead of away from it, we reclaim a little more of what it covered. We return a little more to what was always true about us — that we are already whole, already worthy, already enough. Even when we forget to put the food away. Even when our inner child answers before we can.

The path back to ourselves is rarely dramatic. Often it’s just a moment of honesty, a hard conversation, and the willingness to look at what got lit up — and love that part of you anyway.

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The Pace Is Not a Problem

eveeh — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:33:05 +0000

There’s a particular kind of week that doesn’t announce itself as hard.

Nothing is wrong. Nothing is urgent. There’s just a kind of… fog. A quiet scatter. You sit down to do the thing and the thing won’t come. You move through the hours but can’t quite account for where they went.

I’ve been watching the World Cup, enjoying the fact that I am no longer drowning in pain from the grief of a path that wasn’t meant to be. I am at peace with it and for the first time ever, I am simply having fun watching the sport I will always love.

My head hasn’t been focused on much else. I’ve worked on projects with little progress and a lot of daydreaming and pulled attention.

And the old version of me would have made it mean something — that I was falling behind, that the momentum was gone, that I should be further along by now.

But here’s what I’m learning to trust: the pace is not a problem to solve.

Sometimes slowness is the season. Sometimes scatter is the nervous system saying rest before the next thing comes. Sometimes the fog isn’t blocking the path, it is the path. And you’re in it, which means you’re moving, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

There’s a version of trusting the pace that sounds spiritual and serene. And then there’s the real version, which is sitting at your desk on a Tuesday, unable to focus, and deciding not to punish yourself for it.

That’s the practice. Not the pretty kind. The honest kind.

It’s not about trying to speed up or slow down or optimizing anything. Because the life you’re building isn’t just made in the doing. It’s made in the trusting, too.

When “Nothing Is Happening” Is Actually Something

We live in a culture that measures worth in output. Finished things. Checked boxes. Visible momentum. So when a week arrives that produces none of those things — when the work feels like wading through water and the ideas won’t come and the hours just sort of dissolve — it’s almost impossible not to read it as failure.

But what if the slow week isn’t a gap in your progress? What if it’s part of the process itself?

The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between rest and laziness. It only knows whether it’s been given space to regulate, to recover, to prepare for what’s next. The scattered, foggy, low-output weeks are often the body’s way of building capacity — quietly, invisibly, below the surface of what you can see or measure. Trusting the process when nothing seems to be happening isn’t passive. It’s one of the more courageous things you can do.

The Stories We Tell About Slow Seasons

The hardest part of a slow week isn’t the slowness itself. It’s the story that attaches to it.

I’m falling behind. I’ve lost my momentum. I should be further along by now.

These narratives arrive quickly and feel true in the way that fear always feels true: urgent, certain, loud. And they’re almost never accurate.

Seasons of slowness are not signs that something has gone wrong. They’re not evidence of failure or lack of discipline or wavering commitment. They’re just seasons. Every creative person, every business builder, every human being who has ever made something meaningful has moved through them. The difference between those who keep going and those who don’t often isn’t talent or strategy — it’s the willingness to let a slow week be a slow week without catastrophizing it into something it isn’t.

What Trusting the Pace Actually Looks Like

Trusting the process rarely looks like graceful surrender. It usually looks like sitting at your desk on a Tuesday, unable to focus, and deciding deliberately and quietly, not to punish yourself for it.

It looks like watching the World Cup instead of forcing productivity that isn’t there. It looks like noticing the daydreaming and the pulled attention without labeling them as problems. It looks like letting the fog exist without immediately trying to clear it.

This is the honest version of spiritual trust — not the serene, aesthetically pleasing kind, but the gritty, ordinary, unglamorous practice of choosing not to make yourself wrong for being exactly where you are. And in that choosing, something shifts. Not dramatically. Not immediately. But the life you’re building isn’t just made in the doing. It’s made in the trusting, too.

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The Dream I Grieved and the Miracle I Became

eveeh — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000

The World Cup is now in full swing — and with it, a flood of memories about the sport that shaped me, the diagnosis that shattered my dream, and the miracle that changed everything.

The FIFA World Cup started last Thursday. Millions of people have and will continue to gather to watch their countries play, celebrating the same way when their team scores a goal and feeling the same heartache if their team loses.

These types of events are a reminder of our humanity, of our collective power and strength as a community. Strangers turn to each other in support of their nations, hugging and cheering during triumph and groans and tears during disappointment.

Soccer holds an incredibly special place in my soul. It’s the dream I held as a little girl that one day I’d be on a global field playing the sport that always felt like home. And it’s the sport I walked away from when I was diagnosed with a muscle disease in high school, that I was lucky I hadn’t already died from.

I used to cry in pain and heartache every time I watched a game because I wanted to be able to play. That pain was so deep and scorching that it became deep rooted anger.

And this rage created a series of self-destructive thought patterns and decisions that only added to the underlying pain rather than healing it. It took years before I made the decision that the diagnosis I received wasn’t going to be an anchor I dragged around for the rest of my life.

When Grief Becomes Armor

Grief has a way of shape-shifting. What starts as sadness quietly hardens into something else — resentment, avoidance, a slow burning rage at the life you imagined and didn’t get. For years, my relationship with soccer was exactly that: a grief I didn’t know how to hold, so I turned it into armor instead.

What I didn’t understand then was that the anger wasn’t the problem. It was a signal. It was pointing me toward something I hadn’t yet learned to do — grieve the dream cleanly, without letting the grief define me.

The Miracle I Never Believed I Deserved

In 2023, I chose to stop drowning myself in the grief, choosing to heal rather than destruct. That decision allowed magic to start happening. The path I had chosen to walk led me to a truly wonderful human, Yolanda, who practices somatic hypnosis and my life was forever changed.

A week after my first session with her, I realized that the work I had done during that session had healed the muscle disease I’d had my entire life. I became a walking miracle in a way I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to experience.

You hear stories of people whose cancer is suddenly gone or can walk after being in a wheelchair. And I believed miracles could happen, but I truly did not believe I was deserving of such a grand one.

My entire perspective was shattered the day I realized what I had done and I have never been the same since. It’s become a way to ground myself when I start to get lost in emotions or doubts. I remind myself that I did what most would view as impossible. It helps me stay grateful during difficult moments. Because I can now move my body in ways I couldn’t before.

Through the choice to no longer hate myself and my circumstances, I opened myself up to blessings and possibilities beyond what I ever imagined.

The Slow Sacred Work of Choosing Differently

That’s not a small thing — choosing to shift. It doesn’t happen in a single session or a single decision. It happens in the accumulation of small moments where you choose differently. Where you choose to stop punishing yourself for what didn’t happen and start asking what might still be possible.

The miracle wasn’t just physical. It was the permission — the one I finally gave myself — to stop being the person the diagnosis said I was.

Learning To Hold Both

I could love soccer again without the incredible pain when watching it. And as I’ve been watching the games, I’ve enjoyed the global community that the World Cup creates, rather than drowning myself in sorrow and anger at what I wished had happened for me.

I know my past was exactly what I needed to experience to create who I am today, and I am so grateful for each and every version that was strong enough to get me here.

It can be challenging to hold the duality of celebration for a sport and the sorrow for the wars and pain happening around the world. But it’s this duality that makes life worth living. Life is not an either/or situation. It is always both.

And learning to hold both is where the healing is done. I can get teary-eyed over the opening ceremony song performance and the joy of the competition while holding grief for atrocities happening at the same moments around the world.

Because if these events show us anything, it’s the endurance of the human spirit. The determination and perseverance of the players to get to this world stage and the community showing up in whatever way they can to be a part of this journey.

Our differences make us interesting and our similarities ground us in our shared humanity.

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Death Is But One of My Names: Learning to Embrace Change

eveeh — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:49:41 +0000

What happens when death keeps showing up — in books, in cards, in music — and you finally stop to listen to what it’s really saying?

Death is but one of my names. My real name is Change.

This past week, I’ve had death arise in a variety of ways. I started reading a book series revolving around a woman who can see spirits and helps them to move on. I’ve pulled the Apocalypse card from The Wild Unknown Archetypes deck. A character on a TV show died. I’ve been drawn toward remembering those I’ve known who have passed. As I started writing this, the song Born to Die by Shaboozey came on.

It felt like the universe was trying to get my attention.

And I’ve learned — when something keeps showing up, it’s worth pausing to ask what it’s really pointing to.

When Death Keeps Knocking

There can be a lot of fear around death. Losing loved ones. Ending of relationships. Closing of chapters. Our personal death in this lifetime.

For myself, I can say that I’ve never feared physically dying. Not stemming from a belief that I’m invincible, but from a place of disconnect from my life. From a longing for relief that the pain I carried would be released.

I was the tortured soul on the inside while appearing as an empathic ray of sunshine on the outside.

Physical death has almost felt familiar while living has always felt uncomfortable. And the wild thing is that life always includes death. In lots of ways. You cannot have one without the other.
And while I was okay with leaving this life, I have disliked death as its true name: change.

The Thing I Actually Fear

Growing up, I avoided change as much as possible in the ways I thought I had control over. Thought being the key word since the only true constant is change.

If I thought any kind of relationship was going to change, I’d pull away first. I’d find ways to disappear or blow them up so that I could walk away angry rather than hold the pain.
I wouldn’t watch the last episode of series finales. It took me 8 years after Psych ended to finally watch the last episode. I hated endings — whether from fear that they’d be disappointing or the ache of it no longer continuing.

I held tight to perfectionism and tied myself in knots trying to predict life while still feeling like I was getting shocked by the unexpected.

I felt so out of control internally that I did everything I could to control my external, which actually created more external chaos that then added to what was happening within. It was a cycle I spent many years in.

The Decision to Flow Instead

Until I decided that I didn’t want to exist in that cycle anymore. I didn’t want to fight change since it always inevitably happened. I wanted to flow with it. I wanted to learn to regulate my emotions, feel safe in my body, and dance with life rather than trying to control it.

I still find myself on occasion wanting to fight the flow rather than be guided by it. And during these times, I turn toward the tools I’ve gathered on my journey.

I journal. I talk to myself with my hand over my heart. I move my body. I create.

These aren’t just practices — they’re the way I come back to myself when change feels like too much. When the ending is arriving faster than I’m ready for. When something I loved is shifting into something I don’t yet recognize.

What the Synchronicities Were Saying

I’m not sure if there’s more to what all of these synchronicities are pointing to, or if it was simply to inspire this post.

It’s what makes this life magical — the beauty of witnessing all these messages and flowing with them rather than fighting them, or being so lost in my head that I don’t see them at all.

When we can stay present enough to notice what keeps showing up, life becomes a conversation rather than something happening to us. The cards, the songs, the storylines — they’re not coincidences. They’re invitations.

The Invitation

If you can truly embody change in all its forms, you master this human experience. I know I won’t achieve that in this lifetime — I’m not meant to — but I am devoted to doing the best I can. One day at a time. Minute to minute. That devotion is its own kind of love letter.

For death is but the beginning of something new. And change is the invitation.

So wherever change is finding you right now — in the ending, the relationship shifting, the chapter quietly closing — I hope you can soften, just a little. Let it name itself. Let it move through you.

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What the Shore Knows About Love

eveeh — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the most profound reframes come from the most unexpected places — a couch, a weekend, a character carrying words her mother left behind.

I watched the first season of Off Campus this weekend, the popular show based on the series written by Elle Kennedy, and found myself turning inward long after the credits rolled.

One of the most lingering moments came when Allie, the best friend, tries to untangle what to do about her ex-boyfriend. Her mother told her to never give up on love before she passed, and Allie has been carrying that ever since — watching her father stay devoted no matter how difficult things became, wanting that kind of love for herself. She wonders if walking away means she isn’t listening. If choosing herself means she’s breaking a promise to someone she can’t ask anymore.

I sympathized with her immediately. How a phrase meant to offer guidance can become its own quiet battleground — the words the same, the meaning entirely shaped by where we stand when we hear them.

A younger version of myself would have interpreted those words exactly the way Allie did. That I needed to keep giving and giving no matter how empty I was, fighting for something that no longer was aligned.

The Fear Underneath the Holding On

I was so afraid of being unlovable if I didn’t sacrifice myself for others. Rather than understanding that loving myself should always come first, and that the right people will stay and the people not in alignment will fall away in a variety of ways.

I’ve had relationships I always felt not quite connected to and yet held on to tightly out of fear. And yet, looking back, I know I was asking for them to be removed and they were. Sometimes more painfully, the harder I was gripping. Other times more gently when I released without grappling to keep what was meant to flow out.

The holding on was never really about them. It was about what I believed I deserved. About the story I was telling myself — that love was something I had to earn by showing up for everyone else first.

That story kept me tethered. And it kept me small.

What the Shore Knows

I try to live my life the same way the shore holds the ocean. Embraces what comes in, loving it while it’s there, and then releases with grace when it’s time — knowing what was once there will be replaced with another wave soon.

The shore doesn’t fight to keep the ocean and the ocean doesn’t fight to stay on the shore. There’s a trust, a deep knowing that what’s meant to be will always find a way. And as long as the moon lights the night and speaks to this earth, the ocean and shore will find each other time and time again, experiencing each other in a new way every single time.

For the ocean never witnesses the exact same shore, nor does the shore embrace the exact same piece of the ocean. There’s a beauty in the endless faith that comes from trusting their own journeys. From loving their own path and how they experience one another.

This is what releasing what no longer serves you actually looks like in practice. Not detachment. Not indifference. Full presence, full love and then full release.

The Reframe That Changed Everything

Learning to let go of what’s meant to leave is a form of loving yourself. Holding on to things that no longer resonate only hurts us, keeps us tethered to the past rather than aiding in our expansion.

It took me a while to realize that. And though it doesn’t strip away the pain of endings, I choose to trust that when they occur, it’s for my greatest good. It’s not about eliminating pain, this human life is about experiencing the entirety of emotions, but in knowing that the pain serves a greater purpose. And having faith that if something leaves, something greater will take its place.

And to me, that’s the epitome of never giving up on love. Because it’s easy to allow the pain to take up permanent residence and transform into bitterness, anger, and isolation.

So to be able to hold the pain and allow it to happen and then flow out again is an act of love that will return new love to us time and time again.

What would it mean for to never give up on love, starting with yourself first?

The post What the Shore Knows About Love appeared first on Love Letter Creative.

When the Fog Rolls In: What Creative Blocks are Trying to Tell You

eveeh — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:08:38 +0000

There’s a particular kind of cruelty to creative blocks. They show up when you’ve stretched, when you’ve done the work, when you’re ready — and then they settle right on top of all that readiness like a thick, heavy fog.

That’s exactly what happened to me recently.

I had stretched just before sitting down to write. My body was feeling loose and good. I had so many ideas bopping around in my brain over the past few days, and I was genuinely excited to see what unfolded.

I sat down to write and then the fog settled right on top of my brain, making me sleepy and erasing every idea I’d had. They disappeared as if they’d never been. And in the empty space where inspiration had lived just days before, doubt arrived.

Why was I doing this? What if I can’t come up with something? What if it’s all pointless?

If you’ve ever sat down to create — write, paint, build, record, make — and had that exact sequence happen to you, I hope my words of what I’ve come to understand about it help inspire clarity for you.

Those questions aren’t your intuition. They aren’t who you are. They are scared. And they’re doing exactly what they were built to do.

Why Creative Blocks Are Rarely About Creativity

Here’s what I’ve learned: creative blocks almost never have anything to do with your actual creative capacity. They’re usually about visibility.
When we share our vulnerabilities, our creativity, our spirituality, the soft aspects of ourselves — other parts of us get terrified about the ramifications. The doubt and the fog? They’re not obstacles. They’re protection.

My body and nervous system are still unlearning that existing small equals safe. That’s a carry-over from childhood and, I believe, from lifetimes before this one.

Because this knowing — that being seen is dangerous — isn’t new. It’s ancient.

I know that I’ve died many times for speaking my truth in past lives. As a mystic, as a witch, as a leader. Time and time again, I experienced death at the hands of those who feared my authentic being. And in this lifetime, I brought all of those fears into a childhood that added to them.

So when I sit down to write something true and real and mine, and the fog comes? That’s not a creative problem. That’s my nervous system doing its oldest job — keeping me invisible so I stay safe.

The thing is, I’m not in danger anymore. And maybe you aren’t either.

The Transition Happening Underneath

I’ve been more tired than usual lately. I fall asleep quickly and wake up still tired eight hours later. I’ve been taking naps, something I didn’t used to allow myself to do.

I know this is part of a transition process — the ramp up to crossing a threshold, walking through it, the free fall, the reorganizing of your systems with the new information, and then the embodiment of it.

Our systems get upgraded every time we expand beyond where we’ve ever been. Every time we choose a new pattern. Each step we take along the path we’ve never walked before.

And some of our oldest patterns will work very hard to come back.

The creative block isn’t separate from the transition. It is the transition. The fog is the nervous system catching up to the choice you’ve already made. The doubt is the old pattern trying to regain its footing before the new one takes hold.

That doesn’t make it less uncomfortable. But it changes what it means.

Befriending the Word “Polarize”

I drew a card from The Sacred Creators deck this week that said: Befriend the word Polarize.

I laughed when I read it because that’s exactly what I’ve spent so much of my time not doing. I’ve pushed hard against the concept of polarizing people. Some of it stems from old co-dependency patterns. Some of it is my soul wanting to help as many people as possible — so the thought of polarizing some people means I might not be able to help them.

But I’ve learned through my own journey that we cannot help those who are not willing to accept what we’re offering. So why twist yourself into a version that’s palatable to people you have no desire to actually be like?

Not as a judgment — we’re all on our own journeys, learning different lessons. But I don’t shine brightest when I’m fighting against barriers that the people on the other side of have no desire to bring down.

That’s been a hard lesson for the healer in me. I can see people’s pain and I want to help. But if they aren’t willing to meet me halfway, I will only ever be pouring into a colander, never a cup that can hold what I’m offering.

And that’s okay. More than okay, actually. I don’t want to be everybody’s cup of tea. I want to help create a future that’s more equitable, more just, and more accepting — and that isn’t everyone’s desire. At my core, I’m perfectly okay disagreeing with them.

The surface fears want to think it’s the end of the world if someone disagrees with me. And yet I’ve survived arguments and people not liking me, and I’m still standing.

Showing Up Anyway

As I sat there in the fog, I made a decision: I was going to write anyway. Not because the fog lifted first. Not because the doubt quieted down. But through it.

And slowly, as I made that decision and kept making it, the fog started to dissipate. The normal energy began to rise again. The excitement to share myself with you. The hope that you’ll feel connected, inspired, a little less alone.

Resting and giving space to move through periods like this is not what our society teaches us to do. We’re taught to push through, produce more, optimize the resistance away. But some seasons require a different kind of devotion — a devotion to the process itself, not just the output.

I’m learning that showing up anyway doesn’t always mean producing something perfect or polished. Sometimes it means sitting in the fog long enough to find the thread. Sometimes it means writing a sentence that leads to another sentence that leads to the thing you didn’t know you needed to say.

The fog is not the end of the story. It’s usually closer to the beginning.

If You’re In Your Own Fog Right Now

If the doubt is loud and the ideas have gone quiet — that’s not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. That’s the pattern asking to be seen.

Write anyway. Rest anyway. Show up anyway.

The energy always rises again.

The post When the Fog Rolls In: What Creative Blocks are Trying to Tell You appeared first on Love Letter Creative.

When the Chariot Stops: The Season After the Leap

eveeh — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:00:00 +0000

My experience about what happens after the leap — and why your slow season might be the most important one yet.

There’s a card in the Tarot called the Chariot.

If you’re not familiar with Tarot, here’s what you need to know: the Chariot is all forward momentum. Willpower. Drive. That season of life when everything is moving fast, you’re building something, and the energy feels almost electric. You know those stretches where you’re in it — really in it — and the output just flows?

That’s the Chariot.

I lived in that energy for months while building Love Letter Creative. Designing, writing, strategizing, launching. The site went live on May 5th and I felt the rush of it — the culmination of so many late nights and early mornings and decisions and details finally clicking into place.

And then, almost overnight, the Chariot stopped.

The Week the Words Wouldn’t Come

I sat down to write last week’s Soul Notes — my weekly love letters to the LLC community — and felt something I hadn’t expected: a dam. Not the creative kind that breaks open into something beautiful. Just… stillness. A kind of slow-moving quiet that felt almost foreign after the pace I’d been keeping.

I was tired. Moving through the week like I was wading through something thick. The sharp, productive energy I’d come to rely on had receded, and I didn’t quite know what to do with that.

My first instinct, if I’m honest, was to judge it.

What’s wrong with me? I was so productive before. I had so much energy.

Maybe you know that voice. The one that treats a slow day like evidence of some personal failing.

What the Tarot Actually Teaches Us About Rhythm

Tarot, to me, isn’t about predicting the future — the future is always too alive with possibility for that. It’s a mirror. A way to hear ourselves more clearly and connect with the spiritual support that’s always present. It’s a language for the seasons we move through.

After the Chariot, I recognized three other cards showing up in my energy:

The Knight of Pentacles — not a standstill, but slow and steady. Methodical. The energy of showing up consistently even when nothing feels dramatic or fast. Progress that doesn’t announce itself.

The Four of Swords — a figure at rest. Not defeated. Resting on purpose. Gathering strength.

The Hanged Man — a pause that changes your perspective. The willingness to wait, to see things differently, to trust that the stillness is doing something even when you can’t see it yet.

Three cards. Three different flavors of the same invitation: slow down.

You don’t need to know Tarot to recognize this pattern in your own life. You’ve felt the Chariot. And you’ve felt the moment it stops. The question is what you do next — whether you fight it or listen to it.

We Are Not Machines (And We Were Never Meant to Be)

Our culture has a complicated relationship with rest. We celebrate the hustle, the output, the momentum. We treat slowness like a problem to solve.

But the human experience has always been one of rhythms and cycles. The tide goes out. The moon wanes. Seeds spend months underground before anything breaks the surface.

For those of us who have menstrual cycles, we know this in our bodies: there are phases of high energy and phases that ask for more care. The same amount of effort doesn’t produce the same results in every season — and that’s not a flaw in the system. That is the system.

The same is true in the longer arcs of our lives. After a massive leap — launching something, ending something, beginning something — the body and spirit often ask for a fallow period. Time to integrate what just happened before the next thing begins to grow.

That’s not stagnation. That’s wisdom.

The Dangerous Comparison

What makes slow seasons hard isn’t the slowness itself. It’s the comparison.

We compare this week to last month. This season to the one before. We hold up the Chariot version of ourselves as the standard, and then wonder why the Knight of Pentacles version falls short.

But that’s not a fair comparison. That’s like expecting winter to look like summer.

Each season has its own intelligence. Each phase has its own purpose. The Chariot couldn’t ride forever — and if it did, you’d burn out. The pause isn’t a detour from your path. It’s part of it.

I was so productive before is a thought. It doesn’t have to be a verdict.

What to Do When the Chariot Stops

If you find yourself in a slower season — less output, less energy, less of the momentum you thought you’d have by now — here’s what I’d invite you to do instead of pushing through:

Get curious, not critical. Instead of asking what’s wrong with me, try asking what am I needing right now? These are very different questions. One looks for a flaw. The other looks for information.

Listen to what comes up. When you slow down enough to actually hear yourself, the body often knows. It might be rest. It might be community. It might be more time outside, or a day with no agenda, or foods that feel nourishing. Whatever surfaces — trust it.

Stop measuring this season by another season’s metrics. You are not behind. You are in a different phase. Slow and steady is still movement. Rest is still part of the journey.

Let the pause do its work. Something is integrating. Something is regenerating. Something is getting ready to grow. You don’t have to see it yet to trust that it’s happening.

A Different Kind of Devotion

Here’s what I’m sitting with this week:

Devotion isn’t only the fast seasons. It’s not only the output and the momentum and the visible progress. Devotion is also the willingness to slow down when your body and spirit are asking for it. To witness yourself with care instead of judgment. To meet your own needs without making them wrong.

Where can I show devotion to myself today?

That’s the question I’m holding. Not as a productivity prompt. As an act of love.

The Chariot will ride again. But right now, I’m learning to trust the pause.

And if you’re in your own slow season — if the words aren’t coming, the energy feels different, the momentum has softened — I hope you’ll consider that this might not be a problem.

It might be exactly where you’re meant to be.

The post When the Chariot Stops: The Season After the Leap appeared first on Love Letter Creative.