In the last decade, I've helped clients make $45,000 in a single weekend flash sale (with a $47 online course!) as well as launch their first-ever Substack post, publish a workbook for print, and transition from one business to another.

I believe that the money we make matters — but it starts with the heart of why we do what we do.

In December I had a second miscarriage, four months after the first (and two weeks before Christmas). And both its discovery and its loss happened in the single span of the week my husband had COVID.

I didn’t mourn the loss of this pregnancy in the same way. I didn’t have time enough to grasp the reality of a new pregnancy before it was gone. And as my midwife warned, it proved a strong reminder of the first experience - which didn’t feel traumatic in the moment, but my mind-body-soul desperately wished to avoid the experience again.

Even so, my heart hurts lately, in that deep, painful way that makes me want to escape - with the anxious realization that I can’t. I understand, intellectually, that this feeling is here for me, purposeful in its embrace of my whole body.

And yet I’m resisting, intensely.

This year especially, as we’ve transitioned the kids to learning from home (and in combination with changes to my work-from-home business), I’ve noticed this sense of “never-enoughness” with my time:

I didn’t spend enough conscious time with the kids.

I didn’t have enough time for myself.

I didn’t get enough time for the work I wanted to do.

And when will I make enough time for my partner?

Spend enough. Have enough. Get enough. Make enough.

Is this all about scarcity of time? Is this all about how time becomes currency? And, is it possible to reframe my experience of time?

Social media is considered “the” place to share your work on the internet, right? This is partly because nearly everyone uses social media (making it, quite literally, the biggest and farthest-reaching “social network”) and partly because it’s “free” …as long as you’re willing to sacrifice your time to the algorithm and some personal information for big-spending advertisers.

But marketing my work on social media has never worked for me. Not for my money-making work and not for my mind/body/soul.

And here’s why.

The Alchemist later became a mega-success. It’s been translated from Portuguese into 80+ languages and it’s spent a record-breaking 400 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

But Paulo Coelho’s bleak first-experience as a published writer gives me so much hope for not-yet possibilities in my own life now (particularly as someone who writes things).

One of my favorite authors (one of the most influential authors of my time! an author who’s been interviewed by Oprah!) was “forty-one and desperate” before he published his first book; and it was massively unsuccessful and generally ignored for years before anyone started reading it.

That didn’t stop him from writing it or publishing it (twice).

I recently signed up to receive business advice from a local group of volunteers, many of whom are retired from their own small companies or freelance work.

Aside from some possibly out-dated advice about marketing, I left with this feeling of unease in my belly.

My mentor suggested I eliminate anything from my website, my marketing, and my work that is not directly related to selling my copywriting services. Because that's what makes money; that's what prospective clients want to see.

And he is right. That's how a business makes money inside our current systems. Pick one thing, preferably the most lucrative, and “optimize” that thing until you can’t anymore.

And yet.

My work for other people, while I enjoy it immensely, is not the only thing I’d like to highlight - on my website or otherwise.

Instead of embracing LIFE, I make sure I don’t enjoy things “too much,” just in case I have to quickly prepare for losing everything and enveloping myself inside grief.

And god, it’s exhausting.

I understand (intellectually) that it’s not about “losing” so much as “cycling through” what naturally comes from LIFE: change, transition, then death. I understand (intellectually) that we cannot have life without these things.

I just didn’t realize how desperately afraid of death (and life) I’ve become.

And who would have thought that I’d travel 200 miles to realize all this? To realize, too, that I have everything I want and need within the life I’m already living.

I started writing stories when I was young. My mom has file folders packed with elementary school essays and journaling pages.

I liked writing stories because I could control the ending (or, the whole thing really).

I especially liked writing the kinds of stories that have no problems, no misunderstandings, and no climax - just happy, happy, happy from beginning to end.

Which is why my stories were boring as hell.

I understand that our most challenging moments, and the big feelings that follow, are required for Real Life. I understand that’s what makes the good moments even better.

I understand, intellectually.

Following my withdrawal from graduate school, I received an email from a professor that said:

“[I hope that you can] ‘be like water’ and find ways around the barriers to graduate education.”

It’s taken me a bit to understand why these words feel frustrating. Because his intention, I think, was encouragement and optimism.

So why do I feel conflicted?

It’s this implication that I can, and should regularly, move over/under/between/around barriers that serve no purpose but to keep me out (and maybe, to prioritize profit).

It’s so often accepted, that I nearly accepted it myself.

This is the first completed cycle within my residency program: August 29 (the start of the miscarriage) to October 10 (start of my period).

Rather than follow individual months (or even moon cycles) I’m choosing to follow my own menstrual cycle to create and document my creative work - which could very well change if we decide to get pregnant again.

When I say “alignment” I’m talking about the process of ensuring that what we do and what we value is a cohesive experience. ALIGNMENT is the ‘lining up’ of your life, your work, and your day-to-day experience with what your Soul holds most valuable.

You can (often) determine what you value by noticing what you’re doing now… and what you’d like to do next:

• Does your life right now line up with what you value?

• Do the dreams you hold line up with what you value?

• Do you know what you value?

THE PROCESS of aligning your actions with what you value requires your Orientation toward what you want and what you believe - and then your (regular!) Calibration toward those things.

I made this "choice" from a slew of non-options, in honor of myself and in defiance of unfair, unjust practices within academia.

It was a hard, painful decision - because I’ve planned to return to school since I graduated in 2014; but it’s also the decision that feels most in alignment with who I am and what I want now.

I feel grounded in this choice. But also I’m grieving, I’m raging, I’m releasing.

an artist residency in motherhood - “a self-directed, open-source artist residency to empower and inspire artists [writers] who are also mothers,” created by Lenka Clayton

the (original) purpose -

My reasons for adopting the Artist Residency in Motherhood framework are these: to embrace working and creating within my everyday life; to redefine the “limitations” of motherhood, work, and creating by earning a sustainable income for my family - and enjoying the process; to explore my relationship with schooling, education, learning, and teaching by unschooling my kids at home and deschooling myself within our shared life.

Following my hard “break-up” with graduate school, I want to create my own education at home and inside motherhood - while also sharing the process and the results publicly.

There's this "marketing rule" that says the key to business success is -

My commitment to CONSISTENCY.

Which makes sense, kind of: the more consistently I show up in your social media feed, the more consistently you'll think about my work. The more consistently I send valuable content to your inbox, the more consistently you'll have the opportunity to purchase.

(Which is also to say, I’ve failed on all counts - and will likely continue to fail.)

Since the first quarantine in March, I’ve been recalibrating how I spend my days - often.

Most recently I’ve switched my working hours from afternoon naptime to before-the-kids-wake-up mornings.

Because the way we feel inside daily life is what informs everything else: how we interact with our kids, how productive we can be with work, whether or not we show up to our practice.

Which is to say, it’s important. Most important, maybe.