once upon a time there was a sad little lump. she had always been this way, or so it seemed to her. and she felt, in the way that sad little lumps do, that she would never be anything different.

all she had ever known was sadness, and all she could ever imagine was sadness too.

one day a little dapple of sunshine, making her way across the sky with her friends, happened to see the sad little lump sitting all alone in what had become a wide, dark moat all around her.

she appeared as a small stone castle, surrounded by water so dark it wouldn’t reflect the little sunbeam no matter how hard she tried to make it sparkle and dance.

soon her sunray friends began to call her back up into the air to continue their journey across the sky. not wanting to be left behind, the little sunray swooped up to frolic with them, dancing and soaring onward.

as she flew off, she looked back one last time at the sad little lump. and the sad little lump looked up, for the first time in what felt like eternity. for one small moment, something fluttered and stirred through the wet and heavy strands of her being.

but soon the sunrays were gone from sight. and as the sad little lump stared into the dark water around her, she felt herself sink deeper and deeper still.

a tear trickled down her cheek. she let out a soft sigh.

all she had ever known was a sadness so deep and raw it spiraled down down down a bottomless well.

oh well, she thought.

was there ever a time when i wasn’t a sad little lump?

she sat and thought and thought. the sky turned from day to night and the seasons folded one into the other. and still she sat. and still the dark water held its silence around her.

one day, while the sad little lump was busy feeling as hopeless as can be, the same little sunray swooped back down. but this time she brought many friends. they were laughing gaily and dancing in a fairy ring.

as they landed on the little lump, their laughter and dancing began to wake her from her long sleep. she felt a tickling and a tingling all along her surface.

she couldn’t help but feel a lightness settle into her being, a gentleness she had almost forgotten. and before she knew it, more sun sprites arrived, and with them came merry little breezes dancing so happily, singing the softest melodies, touching the sad little lump in a place deep inside she had forgotten existed.

it was as if from the bottom of that endless well, something soft had begun to rise.

slowly. tenderly. up and up it came.

and as it rose, so too did a great sob. it gathered in her, growing stronger and stronger, trembling through her like something long held. she felt it before she understood it. she felt it the way you feel a storm before it breaks — that stillness, that held breath, that terrible gathering.

and then she cracked.

the sob broke free, immense and total, and the shaking grew so wild that pretty soon the little lump was no longer a lump at all. she was a million pieces. the dark moat that had surrounded her scattered far and wide, swept away by the force of that cracking open.

all at once she began to feel for her old form, to search for the well at the center of her being. but there was no well. there were only pieces.

for an instant she panicked. what did it mean to be a million pieces strewn in every direction? did she even have a self anymore, or would she simply dissolve?

she sobbed again, deeply, from somewhere among the wreckage. and in that sobbing she realized something: letting the sadness go was the scariest thought she had ever had. but she had no choice. all she could do was sit with all her pieces and gather herself back, in whichever way she could.

and then, all at once, the merry little breezes and the gentle sun sprites began to move around each and every piece, and ever so tenderly wove them into their dance of soft radiance and quiet breeziness.

and she realized she had transformed.

she was no longer on the ground. she was stitched together with a soft radiance all her own. and though it felt like the sunrays’ light, it was also clearly shining out from within her, from the very places where she had been woven back together. this lightness lifted her, and she floated freely along with the breeze and the sunshine.

she looked down at the place where she had spent what felt like eternity, and saw that it had passed like a dream, in the blink of an eye.

with one last gaze below and a gentle sigh that rippled outward from her being, she floated up up up toward the light.

sadness was just a different way to hold the light. she understood that now. a heavier way, yes. but still hers. still part of her, and always would be.

and then she smiled. a smile so large it made a rainbow across the sky.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

think for a moment about what it actually means to be a human being on this planet.

the waterfalls, the forests, the wind that rages, the fire that burns.

the juicy fruit we pick right off a tree, still warm from the sun.

that awakened feeling of being an alive being who can experience ecstasy.

that is the upper range of what being here can feel like.

that is what we signed up for when we came into these bodies.

but almost all of it has been co-opted.

so we rarely get a chance to feel this free.

mostly we feel stress.

mostly we feel fear.

mostly we feel lost.

so i’ll start with the most obvious and the most loaded one:

sex.

we live in a world absolutely saturated with sexuality. and yet most people feel cut off from their own erotic life, their own body, their own pleasure.

the porn industry has sexuality all ensnared.

we’re still having orgasms, sure we are.

but they have been smashed down into our reptilian brain.

just f*****g, basically.

and i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that raw desire and innate pleasure of f*****g. i’m definitely not.

but when that’s all we have, when that has been made to seem like the whole story, we are being cut off from something way more powerful, way more enlivened, way more divine than what we’ve been handed.

our sexuality in its full expression is not separate from our spirituality.

it never was, and every ancient tradition, that hasn’t been scrubbed clean by the empire, knew this.

the body in ecstasy is the body in prayer.

they are the same frequency moving through different doorways.

what happens when you smash it down to just the one note is that you lose the whole song.

and then there is the matter of how we have been so deeply conditioned to override our own knowing.

to consume what we are told to consume, feel what we are told is appropriate to feel, want what we are told is worth wanting.

from the food we eat to the news we absorb to the beauty standards that make us strangers to our own reflections, we have been taught, methodically and for a very long time, not to trust ourselves, not to listen inward.

not to ask: what does my body actually need right now?

what feels nourishing and what feels like it’s slowly making me sick?

what do i actually desire, underneath all the noise?

i think about roundup being sprayed on the land right next to my property line. agent orange, rebranded. a known neurotoxin, still being sold all over the world, applied to the ground we grow our food in.

i live on acreage in what is supposed to be a liberal county and i watched it happen in my backyard.

i think about my husband dying of cancer.

i lost my true love to cancer because of how sick this world is.

sick in terms of all the different layers.

and this is not abstract. this is what it costs when we stop listening to the body. when we let the systems that profit from our sickness tell us what is safe.

keeping things sick allows the warped system to continue.

a body that has been cut off from its own pleasure, its own wisdom, its own sovereignty is a body that is very, very useful to the people and powers that need us small.

the baby boy billionaires, the world leaders, and the ones behind them all are all part of the power structure that feeds off us.

it behooves them to keep us afraid and to keep us sick.

and most of us, a good majority of us, in fact, have also been abused.

as children, as women, as bodies that have been treated as objects, as property, as something to be used and managed into silence.

and abuse doesn’t just leave a psychological and physical mark, it changes our frequency. it leaves a story running underneath everything that says:

my body is not safe.

my desire is dangerous.

my full aliveness is too much.

and it is really hard to free yourself from that.

it is f*****g hard.

i know because i am in the middle of freeing myself from it all. and the first step, the one we maybe don’t talk enough about, is just to open our eyes.

eyes wide open.

eyes wide shut.

we have to open our eyes first.

because once we can see it clearly, the shame and the smallness and the numbness and that they are not ours, they were put there, they were installed by a system that needs us disconnected from the full force of what we actually are, it starts to lose its grip.

what i feel like i came here to question in a thousand different ways this lifetime, is this:

what do we allow and what do we not allow in our sacred, divine space?

what is feeding our growth, and what is slowly killing us?

be it people, places, or things…

and once we start to awaken, the real trick is how do we get back into our own bodies?

how do we become sovereign beings?

because that is what it’s all about. the whole entire point of earth school is to become ourselves.

fully, unapologetically.

our full aliveness that got co-opted, is still very much ours.

it didn’t get destroyed, it got buried. and there is a difference.

because what gets buried can be found.

and what gets found can be reclaimed.

and what gets reclaimed becomes ours in a way that no system, no power structure, no amount of carefully engineered shame can ever take from us again.

the waterfall.

the wind.

the fruit warm from the sun.

our own bodies,

finally…

become home.

a friend here recently wrote the sweetest note about me.

she called me a sassy saint.

let’s all be sassy saints together.

we can be both.

we already are.

we just forgot.

and the forgetting allowed others to profit off our amnesia.

not anymore.

we are waking up to our fire, to our birthright, to our sacred sexuality as a choice to embody…

while we are still living, breathing humans on this beautiful planet we call home.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

they haunt by nightand sleep by day

not really asleep,just changing shape,perfecting the play

being boss,playing king,billionaire baby boys,psychopathic wannabes

it’s not just themso don’t pretend

it isn’t everywherecan’t help but stareat all the names,the endless names

and don’t forgetthe women who stayedsilent — oh so silent —holding the camouflage steadyso their thrones remain ready

not just the elitedon’t tie this up neatinside a pretty bow

such endless dark lustto steal without fuss,breathing rancid breath,lurking where trustshould have been kept

daily, hourly,minute by minute

babies still in diapersyes —you heard me right

don’t pretend to be appalledthe writing’s on the wall

written in the bloodof all the girls and boys

who couldn’t make a sound,so they swallowed it downand tried not to drown

sorry, not sorry

this is hard to readit’s nothing comparedto the soft parts that bleed

pierced by the devil’s darkest creed,sharp enough to carve the soul,to swallow every howl

gorging on silence,forging alliance

the innocentwill be free

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

a cathedral opening,a flower blossoming,a rose becoming

bubblegum pink,cotton candy dream.

taste it, drink it,nectar divine,my honeyed wine.

sunrise and sunsetarise inside me,

alive from within,pleasure, not sin.

what sweet joy—

the cathedralthat breathesheaven into being.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

i have decided that valentine’s day is officially self-love day.

why?

because we don’t have enough self-love, while romantic love is splattered all over pop culture and commercial culture, and valentine’s day has been co-opted.

i know some women have tried to rebrand it as v-day for vaginas. and i respect the rebellion, but i like the idea of self-love day better.

because we could really actually get somewhere if we did that instead.

imagine a whole world where we all went around loving on ourselves in visible ways: treating ourselves to something special, talking to ourselves in the most loving and encouraging ways, being self-indulgent in all the best ways.

you get the vibes. it would be delicious.

instead, we get this romantic love circus.

and it’s not that i am against romantic love, don’t get me wrong.

but i am against the f*****g patriarchy going after yet another beautiful thing with its greedy, grimy hands and convincing us we have to buy s**t because of it.

sorry for my potty mouth. but sometimes i just have to swear to get my feelings out on the page properly.

and don’t tell me you haven’t felt the pang of “oh no, not this holiday again,” since it asks us all to fit inside some predetermined mold.

at best, it’s awkward. at worst, it strips us of the truth that every day could actually be valentine’s day.

there you have it.

venus’ take on valentine’s day.

but now it’s time for a little story about valentine’s day and where it originated.

it’s the part i remember from my waldorf teaching days, when i told the stories of saints and holy ones to my second graders, while a beeswax candle flickered on my desk.

there were several early christian martyrs named valentine, but the one most connected to this day lived in the 3rd century in the roman empire. around 270 a.d., when rome was at war and the emperor believed single men made better soldiers than married ones, so he outlawed marriage for young men.

valentine, a priest, thought this was cruel and unjust. so he secretly performed marriages anyway, believing love and sacred union were worth protecting.

but then he was discovered and he was arrested.

legend says that while imprisoned, he befriended, or even healed, the jailer’s blind daughter.

and before his execution, he wrote her a note signed:

“from your valentine.”

on february 14th, he was executed for refusing to renounce his faith.

later, the early church honored him as a martyr. and over time, this date became associated with his name. but the romantic angle came much later, in the middle ages, when poets began linking saint valentine’s day with courtly love and springtime longing. and from there, it slowly evolved into the holiday we know now.

what i love about this story of st. valentine, is that it is about protecting love in a culture that suppresses it, choosing one’s own conscience over the dominant power, and honoring sacred union even when empire says no.

my beef with valentine’s day isn’t with any of that. it’s with what capitalism does to everything sacred.

and it’s with the subtle message that we must live in perpetual longing, that we need someone else to complete us, when really, we are the ones we have always been waiting for.

so yes, love your partner, love your spouse, love your crush, and write the card, or buy the flowers, if that’s what delights you.

but please, for f**k’s sake,

love yourself first.

pretty, pretty please, love yourself first.

love yourself so fiercely that you would stand up for yourself the way valentine stood up for love.

just please don’t die for it. cause you gotta stay. even though i know that it’s hard as hell sometimes.

but maybe there’s a rainbow waiting for us, if we can just stick it out a little longer. and maybe the awakening starts with how we speak to ourselves in our private moments, like now, at 2:00 a.m.

and in this way, february 14th can become the day we say:

no more to the myth that we are lacking.

no more to the billionaire baby boys squeezing the precious life force out of us all.

no more to the old scripts that run with their constant torturous systems of oppression.

how about we choose love instead?

and maybe it starts with self-love day for valentine’s day.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

clean the kitchen.

it’s a mantra in the back of my head that plays on repeat.

doesn’t mean i do it, though.

i used to keep the house so clean as a mother and wife. i did it for my husbands—the one i married out of suppressed fear and trauma, and the one i married for love, my soul mate.

both ended so intensely. one by trying to kill me, or at least hurt and scare me enough that i believed that was his intention, and the other to cancer.

two different beasts, claiming two different men.

and in both of these marriages, i cleaned.

why did i clean? because that’s what we are programmed to do as women.

we clean.

and if we are heterosexual and our partners help too, then we consider ourselves lucky indeed. but the hard truth is this: even when they help, the roles are never equal.

our world has set it up so that when we do it as women and caregivers, we do it because it’s our job—to love the kids, to cook, to clean, and to hold down jobs too.

make the meals, clean the mess, nurse the baby or the sick family member, sign up for the activities, drive back and forth to said activities, buy the groceries, help with the homework—and don’t forget about your own self-care.

because if you do forget, your ship is going down. so you schedule that in too. and you rally to work that into the chaos.

and then you wonder why you need to stare at the wall for hours on end at midnight, or endlessly scroll, or why you want to crawl into bed and not leave again, the moment you get a second to yourself.

and the irony of all of this is that when our partners do help out, they do it and it gets appreciated and acknowledged, because the expectation is not that they have to in the first place.

so when they do, we all jump up and down. what a supportive husband!

and it’s the same with our children. we ask them to help, but we will do it if and when they don’t, for various reasons.

maybe they’re little still, and asking and getting the follow-through isn’t worth the effort. so we train them to help a little, but then we do the rest.

or maybe the kids are older, and so we ask and they give, but from a place of helping out mom, and then it’s back to their busy teenage lives.

the lives we are so thankful they have—if we have teens who are busy and productive and not struggling to even stick around, as i’ve been there too.

but maybe you’re one of those moms who reads all the personal growth and parenting books about how to be a more awakened human, and learns to do it like the moms in—insert other place here— who do it better. or how we could raise our children the right way by following—insert famous name here—and then they would learn to help more.

and if you have read these books that therapists or classroom teachers suggest we read, you know what i’m talking about. the how-to-parent-better-so-you-don’t-f**k-up-your-kids books.

because the entire world knows it’s the woman’s job to clean and care and ultimately be the endless source of love for all, when the other family members can’t or won’t.

i know, i know…

why rant about something that’s already been written about so much?

because i feel like i’m drowning in it.

and because i told myself i would write uncensored.

and because i know that the other wives and mothers reading this can relate, and my male writer friends can too, even if they see it from another perspective.

perspective.

that’s what it’s always about. and i have it now. because as trapped as i was in both an abusive and then a loving marriage, i miss the loving marriage and the man who went with it every second of every day.

can we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, walk a mile in them before we cast our judgment?

but let’s be so for real here—who actually does that?

we all think we’re taking time to see it from the other’s perspective, but to truly understand another takes time, care, patience, perseverance.

something we are rarely afforded when the patriarchy has us marching to the drum of their incessant beats: faster, stronger, show up more!

you must buy into—fill in the blank—whether it’s a cause or a product we’re expected to believe in.

but i say,

f**k it.

and my house is paying the price.

thank you for being here to support my work—it means the world. i also love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

that kind of tired.

f**k. this life is hard.

and yet, here we are. showing up. day after day.

i woke up to the sound of the chickens squawking in distress as i bolted upright to look out my window, only to see two coyotes chasing them, one with a fat white hen in its sharp jaws.

the cycle of life.

my middle daughter and i are upset. between the two of us (i have four kids, but we are the ones who self-selected to take care of our feathered pets), we both have adhd, so it happens often that we forget to close them in at night. and this is the result.

nature has its way.

be the hunter, not the hunted.

a phrase that keeps circling in my awareness lately.

i’ve crawled back to bed to write this. my kids are at school and the house is a wreck.

it’s a privilege to be able to crawl back into bed.

so why do i have tears ready to spill at any moment? some already have, as i sat on the toilet when i got home and then just stayed there an extra long time. feeling all the feels.

like, why am i so sad when i have so much to be grateful for?

my oldest told me yesterday i should go on antidepressants and adhd meds.

i shook my head. no, i don’t need them.

then why did you say last week that you sometimes don’t feel like you want to be here? she asked.

i only said that because it was officially confirmed that the break with my family is real now, and it finally hit me, i replied.

that set her storming off ahead of me.

stop it, she cried. you just reminded me, and now i’m triggered again.

we continued through the frozen courtyard, making our way back to the car through the maze of hospital buildings after her checkup, where the doctor said the skin where her tonsils used to be is healing fine. it’s healing like we are learning to do now that the scalpel has cleaved away my family, as they took sides against us when our truth emerged.

i look up to try and stay present as she stomps off ahead of me. i see the long porch where cancer patients go to sit outside during their chemo treatments. i remember finn and me being there too, as they pumped his veins full of poison in a futile attempt to save his life.

i look back down and start to name all the colors of the gravel i am stepping over. it’s a dbt skill i picked up during the parent groups, from when my oldest was in a treatment center after her mental health crisis. that’s the pc way of describing what she was surviving back then while finn was in treatment.

so i say aloud to myself: grey, pink, white.

then i notice some bright blue ones that must have been spray-painted for road markings. artificial color, like artificial intelligence splattering its way across human consciousness.

i am typing this as it comes, and i don’t have to run it through ai chat anymore.

i did when i started writing these more journal-style entries, because how could my thoughts possibly be coherent or good enough to publish alone?

but now i crave the texture of sentences untouched by ai. so i use it only for spelling and punctuation.

because i have read so much of it, both my own and others here. and i don’t judge anyone for doing what i did as well to get the stories and thoughts out of their heads.

but now i treasure our human rawness that pours onto the page uncensored and before it’s turned into machine writing that permeates our pages here and everywhere.

i am here typing away... and i have started crying. why?

in pausing for a second, the tears that have been held in are right there again.

but why am i so sad today?

isn’t it such a luxury to be in bed typing to you all?

yes, it is.

but it’s always sadness i come back to when i feel the loss of betrayal.

the loss of not being able to keep my oldest baby girl safe.

the loss of my beloved to cancer.

i hear her getting up now. she gets to sleep in, as her heart-based private high school worked with us upon hearing everything we are navigating behind the scenes.

always navigating so much behind the scenes.

i can’t even write openly about most of it, so i just dance over the surface—much like we all do with our lives. running two programs at once.

the one we’ve been conditioned to run that politely greets with,

hi, how are you? and fine, thank you,

as we run our errands, pick up our kids, go to work.

and then there’s the other program. the one running the messy thoughts, the tears that wait, the fears that bite.

that program.

i guess i am lucky, though. while i am still learning how to live in a world where the people i came from are no longer part of my life, and the love of my life is actually dead, my oldest is doing so well.

she is in a supportive relationship, heading to italy next year, working, getting all a’s—not that i’ve ever pushed grades as a waldorf teacher and alum myself.

grades are just another symptom of our broken education system that trains humans to feel badly enough about themselves that they will fit nicely into the cages society has built to keep us in—running on hamster wheels and consuming what they sell us.

but here we are. here together at last on this platform.

it’s built just like so many others, but we are making it our own.

it’s a quiet revolution.

a softness revolution.

where we linger on words spun by human hearts. where we offer a heart back through the like button, and offer words of encouragement through our typing fingers on our keyboards and phone pads.

and in this way, we help keep each other afloat in a world drowning in tears.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

let them eat cake!we’re here again.

what to do—flee or stand?

if you stand,make sure it’s notin the quicksandof their rot.

place each footon solid landwhere beauty breathesand truth is felt.

what brought us here?

no way around,we must go throughthe birth canal,a world brand new.

the great dividewhere we decidewho livesor dies.

we must not forget,one world we are—a freedom star

thanks for reading and listening to venus consciousness! subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

she loved to chase and play, to tumble and pounce, to invite the other kittens into her exuberant expressions of joyful wonder. but the more she reached for them, the more they scattered.

some lingered just long enough to tease her, pretending at friendship, though in their hearts they were not kind. she was different from them, and different meant scary to some and intimidating to others. so they pretended to like the little kitten who loved so deeply, but underneath their meows and their kitty laughter, distrust shone from their eyes.

this was hard for the little kitten, and eventually she grew lonely and downtrodden. she began to wonder what was wrong with her, why loving so openly never seemed to work.

one day, she wandered far from her den and into the forest. there, among the lush green trees, she met a kind fairy with golden gossamer wings and a dress made of soft jasmine petals. she smelled of sunshine and softness and joy all bundled into one delicious scent, and the fairy was so warm and radiant that the little kitten felt immediately at peace.

sensing safety with the kind fairy, the little kitten padded timidly out of the underbrush, while the fairy floated down from the branch where she had been perching.

landing on the tip of her nose, the kind fairy gazed lovingly into the large yellow eyes of the little kitten and spoke in a voice like the dancing of water over shining stones, “the other kittens won’t play with you because you are not a kitten at all.”

“no?” said the little one, startled. “that can’t be. i run and jump and hide just like them. i have fur and whiskers and paws and—”

“yes,” said the fairy, smiling. “but have you ever noticed your shadow when the sun casts his golden rays over your sleek little body? how it stretches larger than the shadows of the others?”

the little one paused. “yes,” she said. “i thought the sun was playing tricks on me. he does that sometimes. but i know he loves me dearly.”

“that he does,” said the kind fairy. “for your heart is made of sun-gold. that is why your fur shines so brightly. and the black stripes upon you are there because your darkness is woven into your light, like a magnificent tapestry.”

the kind fairy looked at her with great tenderness. “you have been lonely because you are a baby tiger. and kittens are afraid of tigers.”

the little tiger felt something settle in her chest. “i see now,” she whispered.

after a moment, the kind fairy asked, “would you like to play with your own kind? you were lost as a tiny cub, but there are others like you. they are not afraid of your roar. they pounce with the same wild joy.”

“yes, please,” said the little tiger, her body squirming with eager anticipation.

so the kind fairy flew on ahead, guiding her through the forest until they reached a forest glen where the bright green foliage opened into a clearing. there, nestled behind a canopy of softly waving leaves, was a dark and mysterious cave.

the little tiger stopped and peered into its depths, smelling earth and warmth, feeling a gentle, cool breeze ripple through her fur.

and there, stepping into the light, stood the most majestic and regal cat the little tiger had ever seen.

“this is the queen tiger,” said the kind fairy. “and she is also your mother. she has been so sad since your disappearance. she believed you drowned in the river.”

the little tiger looked up at her strong, magnificent coat, her giant paws with claws like daggers, and her wise eyes like two full moons shining from the most radiant face she ever laid eyes upon. and she let out a small, squeaking meow. at that, the mother tiger leaned down and gave her a giant lick with her rough, scratchy tongue, at which point both tigers began to simultaneously rumble and hum with a delighted purr.

before long, the other tigers came to see who this newcomer was. the reunion that followed was full of wild merriment, their laughter ringing through the land in joyful growls and roars of belonging, as the little tiger played at last with those who knew her strength and loved her for it.

from that day on, the little tiger never wondered what was wrong with her again.

and in time, she grew into a queen of her own,

just as she was always meant to be.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

but who would want to read these thoughts just poured onto the page without careful curation?

it turns out many people.

and many of my writer friends write this very way all the time.

that’s the thing. we are all so different.

some people edit and edit and edit and write from a highly formulated place.

i have done that too.

while others pour it all out just as it comes.

just like us, our thoughts are all so different.

and different doesn’t mean one is better than the other.

it’s just a matter of trusting our own voice enough to share it unfiltered.

unfiltered and unedited are two very distinct things.

if you are trying to communicate clearly with your readers, you’ll at least need minimal structure and editing.

but if the purpose of your writing is to unleash the human capacity in its rawest, purest form, then you must also learn do the opposite.

you must learn to let the unfiltered lead the way.

one is truly not better than the other, it’s just that everything has its role, everything has its purpose.

societal conditioning would have us believe that we are better or worse than each other.

divided, they conquer.

divided, we fall.

so i’m here to say,

hey, guys, there is a better way.

and it’s not because i thought of it, but because we are all remembering it as a collective.

an uprising.

it is time.

it was always meant to come from us.

we had to be ready first.

those from the stars have been watching and guiding from the sidelines.

but humans are ready now.

though the vast majority are still asleep, the rest of us rebel rousers are waking up together.

and since creativity is our true nature, it is happening through writing, art, and all the ways we beautifully magnificent humans create!

new birth. new roots. new shoots. new life.

at long last.

and many days still suck ass.

but most days i’m feeling inspired because of this gathering place for humans with heart and the courage to share.

last night, this feeling of inspiration led me to ponder the nature of life itself and how finite and fleeting life here on earth truly is.

we have to enjoy the merry-go-round while we’re here.

joni mitchell says it best in her song,

the circle game~and the seasons they go round and round,and the painted ponies go up and down,we’re captive on a carousel of time.we can’t go back, we can only look behind from where we came,and go round and round and round on the circle game.

because one day, you’ll wake up and realize this life passed by in the blink of an eye.

and those who’ve had near-death experiences often say, when they leave their earthly vessel, that there’s a reunion of soul family and spirit guides, and it feels like they stepped away for a moment and then returned.

here is a poem about the transient nature of this human life:

life is a merry-go-round

spinning faster than ever, from childhood to now.

moments as painful as hell.still, you’re making it through.

somehow, time bends anew.

so love with your whole heart,as if today might be your last.

and when the path feels weary,do not forget to ask—

from loved ones…who’ve passed,from spirits, from god,

from whatever source you trustto walk beside you, love.

because you are never alone.not even on your darkest days.

and when it’s all said and done,you’ll look back and seehow precious,how fleeting,this one life can be.

life is a crazy ride.

we can learn to surf the tide by showing up as our most authentic, messy, majestically creative selves.

creativity is one of the strongest forms of resistance.

and it can look anyway you want.

learn to ride the merry-go-round of time just like you ride the waves of life.

my daughter’s amazing picture captured this essence perfectly during our recent trip to costa rica.

pura vida lifestyle means so much.

mostly though, it is a verbal signal to relax and enjoy the ride.

thanks for reading and listening to venus consciousness! if you feel called, subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

what?

i said sex.

you mean the kind that gets everyone all turned on and turned around, the kind some people don’t need but most love?

yes. that kind of sex.

so why are we talking about sex?

because it’s a hot topic.

because it feels good to write the word sex.

because…sex sex sex.

ok, i get it. you like to write the word.

but how does it make you feel, sex?

do you feel sexy saying sex over and over?

sex is tricky though, you know.

yeah, it is.

why do you think that is?

because it’s been projected as dirty?

partly, yes.

because it’s considered sinful by many religions, unless it’s for procreation?

maybe that too.

because it’s the root of our sacred power, so it’s controlled for a reason?

for sure.

because it’s intimate.

because it’s raunchy and hot and kinky and uncontrollable—how you’ll feel before, during, and after.

because you meld juices and essence.

yeah, probably all of that.

but i always knew i would talk about sex one day.

i grew up with a lot of confusion in my body.before i had language for what had happened to me, my nervous system was already responding.i thought that meant something was wrong with me, that i was just wired that way.

it wasn’t until much later—after loss, after memory, after healing—that i understood those responses were survival, not desire.my body was trying to make sense of something it never chose.

once i could see that clearly, the shame began to loosen its grip.

what about men?

yeah, i had a lot of sex as a young woman with lot of horny young men. not crazy amounts, but i was open to seeing where things went—and because most men are horny, so that was often all the way.

but i never liked anal sex.

yeah, that makes sense. it can be uncomfortable.

my first love was gay, so he was very sweet but ultimately unavailable.

then there were other relationships—shorter ones, longer ones, and some one-night stands.

but sex was always performative. i could orgasm, but i couldn’t ever really relax.

not until i met my second husband, finn. being with him felt natural in a way i hadn’t known before. he was my soulmate, even though he’s passed on now.

it took finn dying and remembering my childhood trauma to understand why i always went into such hardcore fawning and pleasing mode with men.

plus our porn-heavy culture has men thinking it’s all about their cock.wham bam, thank you ma’am.

it’s actually all about the pussy.or it should be!

yeah, i hear you on that.

before college, i spent a gap year on an organic farm in wales.there were young adults from all over europe working there, living close to the land and to each other.i slept with several of them.i also experimented on my own.let’s just say i worked in the garden and got creative with the english cucumbers.i remember being very horny then—curious, alive, and physical in a way that felt instinctive.

my sister-in-law got me a lemon for christmas though, and i love it.

it’s a little sex toy that looks like a lemon.it has suction and works really well because it imitates sucking.and it’s cute too.

i haven’t owned many sex toys.i bought a dildo in college and named it big red.

but i ended up preferring organic objects over the plastic.

you’re so silly.yes, i am.

my friends and i used to joke about big red.

i had a roommate in college who was always masturbating.she’d do it up to twenty times a day—she’d just leave the conversation to go do it.

that’s kind of funny and silly too…

i know!

more often than not, many of my friends back then couldn’t even orgasm.they never learned how. i still think it’s sad how many women have never been loved in the right way or taught how to self-pleasure.

and in a wham bam thank you ma’am culture, that’s kind of how it works.

but i could always have multiple orgasms and was really frisky in my youth, that’s a term my mom used to use. she was a midwife and a nurse in women’s health, so she was the one my friends came to for advice.

but after college, i got pregnant after moving back to the u.s. from italy.i married, and later divorced because of domestic violence.i fled, went into hiding for a time, and rebuilt.i’ve written about this elsewhere.

so basically, i’ve only been with my two husbands plus one other man since i was twenty-eight.and i’m about to be forty-eight.

only three men in two decades.i’ve never thought about it that way before.

since finn died, i tried online dating.it went terribly wrong.i’ve written about that too.

lately, i think it might just be me and my lemon for a while.maybe forever in this life.

and that actually feels good.

the orgasms are delicious.

and i get to control it all.

soft and sensual and all me.

because i’ve healed so much trauma and shame,it feels clean.and innocent too.

i used to fantasize about being used during sex.i think that came from early wounding.

now i just stay with sensation.with myself.

it’s simple, really.

i’m not lonely anymore.and i don’t feel unworthy or lacking.

it’s just simply… here.

yeah, i bet that’s pretty awesome to feel.

it is.

and it’s enough.

i’m enough.

that’s beautiful, my love.

i think so too.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

this christmasmy biggest present is me

the gift of presence

almost feels as exciting as sex

as delicious as ice creamwords cascading like waterfalls

splashing and dancingall over the page

guilt-free pleasureto see and be seento feel and be felt

it’s much like a dreamit’s now just beginningthis fall into grace

my whole life was a marathonto get to this place

and now there are new vistasopening up from within

is this what it feels liketo dance without sin

sin being painnot the dogma they preachjust a longing of soulswhen their sovereignty’sbeen breached

love be my witnessand darkness my vaseas i flow into purenessas soft as new lace

thanks for listening/reading venus consciousness! subscribe for free to support my work.

i first recorded this song on the winter solstice in 2023.two years later, i’ve shaped it into a new creation—offered as a prayer for peace.

throughout the piece, i’ve woven in the song’s lyrics,blocked as quotes within the text below.

if you can, listen.the words feel different when the music is surrounding them.

poem for peace

we didn’t come here to kill each otherwe didn’t come here to hate

we came here to be freewe came here to love

and love we will

murder in the name of glorymadness disguised as holya lesson in the fablecain killed his brother abel

the madness disguised as holycain killed abel out of jealousy,out of misunderstanding

but they were brothers

we are brothers and sisters

yet another day of genocidebut we, the people, can decidefind truth in the talebreak free from our mental jail

the genocide will continueuntil we, the people, decide otherwise

it’s up to usit was never up to the few

find truth in the talesbreak free from our mental jails

it won’t happen alone

don’t trust the madman’s lieswe can create a paradiseawaken from the spellwar’s an inside job as well

we will create a paradisewhen we awaken and seewar was always an inside job

yet another day of genocidebut we, the people, can decidefind truth in the talebreak free from our mental jail

another day of genocideuntil we, the people, decide

we have what it takes in our heartswe have what it takes in our minds

we must break free from our mental jail

and i know the day will comei feel it in my bones

the day we end all waris the day we say no morerise up as one voicein peace, rejoice

the day we end all warthe day we say no more

rise as one voiceon this solstice

rejoice!

i know we have what it takes—

yet another day of genocidebut we, the people, can decidefind truth inside the talebreak free from our mental jail

the genocide will continueuntil we, the people, make a choice

we can decide to do it differentlywe can listen to the truth

of the tales we were always toldunderstand the lies from the truth

and we will break freefrom all that bound us

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞

trauma— forged you into a sword for the divine. the wounded empath who reached their inner sun.

it was not without pain.you bled to get here,and your gain is real.

this is not the end—it’s the beginning.

the hypervigilance, the chronic scanning for danger, the self-doubt and comparison. the fear that you would never make it out

of the deep, dark hole.

all of it, like a shadowed tree, growing from twisted roots in a forest with its hidden understory.

the brainstem of a nervous system hijacked— far too young.

it ends now.

a tree falls in the forestwhere not a sound is heard.

it is done.

in this place, a living sapling takes root—

heart-led,truth-filled,alive.

no longer alone.

a tree of lifeamong many.

yet upon the gnarled, fallen branches,a million chrysalises waited,woven through the tangled giant.

butterflies forged in pain,wounded yet whole,now rise as one.

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞