Hi Reader, I’ve been dancing for years, but I still take classes, because there’s always more to learn. One of the reasons I love dance so much is how literal it is as a lesson for life and relationships. The other day in class, the teacher was explaining how the follower should surrender into the arms of the leader, but keep one foot back for stability. That way, if the leader doesn’t know the move or loses balance, the follower still has their own grounding. What I heard was:Yes, surrender...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, There was a night, many years ago, when I was sitting on my kitchen floor, wailing, as one does when one’s life has just imploded. My boyfriend had dumped me, my physical health was absolute crap, and I had no clue what I wanted anymore. I had two choices:Keep numbing, blaming, spiraling.Or remember what my grandmother taught me: magic is what you reach for when nothing else works. And here’s what happened: I didn’t get an overnight miracle. But slowly, I learned how to stay calm...
27 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Last week, I explained why working magic on other people, even the most idiotic of authoritarians, is not the best use of my magic. That’s because the deepest, most effective magic isn’t about bending the will of other people. It’s about transforming your own. That’s where liberation begins. I’ve seen it again and again: the people who change their lives, their relationships, even the course of their communities, are the ones who learn to work magic on themselves first. Because:...
29 days ago • 3 min read
The other night, my partner Jeff and I went to dinner with a friend who wanted us to meet his new girlfriend. He was clearly smitten, all smiles and glowing. It was so cute!! The kind of happy you can’t fake after being single for too long. The conversation was light, easy, a little bubbly… and then it drifted into unexpected territory: magic. This friend has been curious about Bruja School for years. He’s asked me to explain Liberation Magic before, but that night he wanted to hear it again....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
If you’ve been around my work, you’ve probably heard me talk about the three magical axioms. They’re foundational to Liberation Magic. And today I want to talk about one of them: Paradox is life’s organizing principle. This one can be hard to wrap your head around, but it’s everywhere in magical practice. And one of the most powerful paradoxes is this:Magic only works when it’s rooted in reality. People often assume magic is all fantasy - wishing on candles, saying pretty words, hoping the...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
For a long time, I hesitated to write these newsletters.To post quotes or share my spiritual practice online.To be more open about the path I walk and the work I do. Not because I didn’t have something meaningful to say, but because so much of what I was seeing out there didn’t resonate with me at all, and rather than deciding I would show a different way, I got stuck worrying that people would lump me in with everything I was trying to get away from. What I saw out there often felt...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I’ve been working a lot this year, and sometimes I wonder if I have my “work-life balance” right. But then I remember that work-life balance never made any sense to me. Because “work” and “life” are not two separate weights on a scale. They’re not even two different things. So many of us have been taught to chase some perfect formula, the right distribution of time and energy that will finally make everything feel “balanced.” But what are we actually balancing? Technically, balance is “an...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I just got back from a trip where I spent time with a brilliant, beautiful, straight and single younger friend, and like many women I know, deep in the wilds of dating. We hadn’t caught up in a while and when I asked her about her dating life, she pulled out her phone to read me the list that another friend had created for her: a running log of the men who’ve crossed her path over the last year. Each one had a nickname, some funny, some alarming. There was “guy whose wife had an affair with a...
2 months ago • 2 min read
A few days ago, a thoughtful reader sent me this question, that came up when she read last week’s Liberation Letter: “I was born and raised in the Southern Hemisphere, where the sun rises in the east and peaks in the north—so to me, north has always been fire. But now I live in Portugal, in the Northern Hemisphere, where the sun moves through the south instead. So is fire still in the north because that’s what I’ve always known? Or does it switch to the south now that I’m here? In other...
2 months ago • 3 min read