This weekend, Uranus exits the sign of Taurus (forever in our lifetime) and enters the sign of Gemini. We saw a sneak peek of this energy back in July 2025, when we channeled how this transit is changing the Twin Flame template forever. But this transit is also reshaping our world as a whole.

Uranus will remain in Gemini until 2032, initiating a new 7-year cycle of quantum leaps and revolutionary breakthroughs.

Uranus is all about “expect the unexpected,” but while it might feel sudden, any change we experience is actually the result of building momentum. This is the year of the Fire Horse with active Aries energy in play (Saturn and Neptune both entered Aries earlier this year). It’s a snowball effect, where energy will continue to ramp up in real, tangible ways.

Uranus last met Gemini in the 1940s. It was the apex of WWII and the advent of new technology and innovations in communication. We saw changes in how ideas were shared, and it was the beginning of a more global economy (and community).

Uranus breaks boundaries and shows us what’s possible when we release control, conformity, and comfort. In the sign of Gemini, it pushes us to re-evaluate how we communicate, learn, and connect.

Uranus is the lightning strike, and where it will hit personally depends on where Gemini sits in your natal chart. But because we already got a sneak peek of this energy last year before Uranus retrograded back into Taurus for a time, you’re already seeing where it’s going to impact you the most. How you experience it depends on whether you flow and surrender to what this transit is trying to show you or stay in resistance to it.

In our 2026 Year Ahead Channeling & Reading, we made some predictions for what this energy will bring over the next approximate decade and beyond. Here are the key takeaways, or watch the channeling on YouTube for more details and messages of support during this transit!

• The political landscape will change and the “house of cards” will continue to fall. With Saturn in Aries supporting these shifts, advocacy comes with action that moves beyond verbal protests. (We’ve already been seeing this play out over past year).

• “Everyday” people will pick up the mantle and step into roles previous assumed by those in authority, starting with school boards and local seats and eventually extending into higher positions. Through their actions, they’ll show what true leadership looks like—empowerment versus control. Additionally, there will be no more career politicians.

• I also received a message that eventually, government as we know it will shift to “higher councils-”—Council being the key, operative word.

• Mutual aid and community efforts will take center stage. This feels more immediate, as the focus returns to community support. We’ve been channeling the importance of community and that connections and relationships will return as the focal point of our individual and collective lives. Check out our 2024 Year Ahead Channeling, “Authenticity and Community” for more on this. In fact, much of what we channeled in 2024 is being seen now, as the seeds were planted before these astrological shifts.

• Capitalism as we know it will shift, and a new economy and democracy will be birthed. I received the message of “capitalism holding hands with non-profits.” In our 2024 Year Ahead Channeling, we spoke of public land being bought for food gardens as an example.

• Communication channels will change. Gemini rules communication, media, education, public perception, etc. Again, in 2024 we channeled how new businesses, social platforms, technology, and innovation that are for the benefit of all versus the benefit of the few will begin taking shape. We’ll see this in full effect, especially as Uranus rules Aquarius. Expect the unexpected also means prepare for the unconventional. What seems eccentric and “out there” now might just be our new normal once this transit ends, especially when it comes to communication and technology (similar to the way television changed our world the last time we saw this transit.)

Uranus is also known as “the Great Awakener,” and in Gemini, it’s all about connecting with ourselves and each other in higher-consciousness.

Here’s what that means...

• Social media will return to valuing depth and long-form content over superficial, performative “quick hits.”

• Independent journalism, entertainment, and artists will flourish as people see through the illusion of curated value and paid-for placements. Industries held up by gatekeepers will tumble, as the control metrics keeping them up will no longer be sustained.

• The AI bubble will burst, and it will burst quickly. AI will remain as a tool, but the overuse and dependency will fade out. Particularly in the arts, we’ll experience a return to authentic, personal, and soul-driven work.

• The digital subscription bubble will also burst, and we’ll see a return to an analog life. This won’t be a complete 180-return, but a balance of digital with physical, in-person media and connection.

We channeled more about Uranus in Gemini and how it’s shifting twin flame/sacred partner connections, specifically, in “Template of Love” on YouTube. Watch this along with my 2026 Year Ahead channeling for more detailed predictions and messages!

COMPANION CHANNELINGS

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This is a hard post to write—and it might be a hard post to read. But I promised myself a long time ago that I wouldn’t hold back from the tough stuff, and for twenty years now, writing has been my main outlet and saving grace.

It’s a bigger audience than in those early blogging years. Part of me feels a little afraid of continuing to be so raw and open online, especially when the online landscape has changed so dramatically since those days of community, and not necessarily for the better. But this space is meant for that. It’s where I express myself—where I can be honest with what’s in my heart and on my mind and process my experiences. It’s my real life, lived in real time. I’d be doing myself an injustice if I silenced myself now. While some things are kept private and sacred out of respect for myself and others, my life—my thoughts, my perspectives, my emotions—are never off-limits.

So, here we go…

I think about death a lot.

I know that sounds so morbid, but it’s the truth. It’s something that’s been part of my awareness since I was young—I’m talking ten-years-old kind of young—and exploring its meaning and our human relationship to it in the earliest pages of my journals, my poetry, my stories.

See? Writing is how I process the complexities of being human—whether in my novels or my poetry or these posts, it’s where I can express myself, unfiltered, and find my way to a deeper understanding of whatever’s weighing heavy on the soul.

When I say I think about death a lot, I don’t mean in a gothic, emo way. I was never gothic… maybe a little emo, but only in that I’ve always been a sensitive soul who feels things so deeply and explores the depths of that emotion in order to understand myself better.

I’ve never been afraid of the depths.

No, when I say I think about death a lot, it’s more in a philosophical, poetic, Emily Dickinson way—“Because I could not stop for Death…” and all that. She personifies death to explore it, to understand it, maybe even to make friends with it. I’ve been curious about death in the same spiritual way I’ve always felt connected to the Universe—as something esoteric and abstract, yet intuitively felt and personally experienced. Something that exists alongside life rather than in opposition to it. Something that I’m part of—that we’re all part of—in its grand design.

Death used to scare me when I was younger. Its loss felt like abandonment, and I couldn’t make sense of the seeming finality of it all. But having experienced so much of it in my life since—through family and friends and pets—and through facing my own mortality with illness and my spiritual journey, I’ve come to understand it better, to see it differently.

Like Emily, you could say I’ve made friends with it.

From the human perspective, Death is scary because it’s the one thing we all face that we can’t control. It’s the very edge of our experience here—what makes everything feel more fragile and fleeting. It’s also what makes it all so precious and why, even when I was that young child, I vowed to myself to make the most of the gift that is this life.

That vow was renewed when I was sick—when my body began to decay and my spirit became shadowed and I felt like a ghost of my former self. Facing death—your own or someone you care about—makes you face life. It makes you go hard for what you love, to fight for what’s meaningful.

We might be spiritual beings having a human experience and infinite in that sense… But I want to make the most of this and every life.

That’s what my spiritual journey has shown me. When I unlocked my psychic gifts—gifts that I had as a child but suppressed—I saw, without a doubt, how eternal we are. Energy isn’t created or destroyed; it simply changes form. It continues in a way that, unless we’re attuned to it, we might not fully recognize or understand within our human minds. But the soul knows. The soul recognizes.

It’s just the physicality that’s part of the human experience that we miss.

For most of my life, I’ve lived with these two truths within me. This is what my ten-year-old self was remembering. This is what the writer in me has explored and tried to understand. This is where I am now—holding these two inevitabilities that have shaped the way I move through the world.

Fourteen years ago, I was brought back to life. Slowly, over time, as I began to recover from illness, I felt the spark inside my soul that had grown so dim begin to return. And I was irrevocably changed. That’s what happens when you touch the edge and come back from it—life doesn’t ever feel the same.

Because even if we are infinite—spiritual beings moving through something far greater than what we can see—this life, this version of me who loves as deeply as she does, is something I only get once. And I don’t take that lightly anymore. I want to be here for it. I want to live it, fully, as the person I was given the chance to become.

This morning, I had a follow-up phone call from my doctor to go over the results of some bloodwork. The Epstein-Barr Virus I’ve had since I was a kid is active again, which accounts for the fatigue I’ve been feeling. That means the Lyme disease is active, too.

I’m OK. I’ve been here before. I’ve gotten through relapses, and I’ll get through this one. I’m still functioning at a higher capacity than I was all those years ago, and when I look at everything I’m accomplishing, I’m so proud of myself.

Still, there’s that quiet whisper of disappointment that stems from my love of life. I want so much out of this existence, and part of me wonders if I’ll ever see everything I want to see, or do everything I want to do, or love everything and everyone I want to love.

“You have big dreams,” my friend observed tonight. “It’s why we love you.”

I do. I always have. There are big dreams for a big life tucked inside my heart because life itself is expansive and beautiful, and my own soul won’t let me do anything but dream.

But there’s a solemnity that’s comes with being aware of your mortality. You realize that to have a taste of life—true life—is to want more of it, and you can never go back to living the half-life again.

I found myself thinking of death again today—not as something happening now, nor as something imminent, but as an inevitable truth that touches us all. It’s part of the human experience, bringing us deeper into it.

I’m not welcoming death to my door. I don’t want to be sick anymore. I fought so hard to stay and get well, and to be here—functioning and closer to healthy than I’ve been in nearly fifteen years—I can see that there’s still so much more in this life that I want.

• I want to fall in love again… and be fallen in love with. I want to know how it feels to be cherished in reciprocity, to share my life and its treasures with a sure and steady heart who wants to share their life with me.

• I want to keep exploring the world—this vast, remarkable world. It’s so easy to look at the state of the world and proclaim it as a shit-show, but I look at it and see its beauty, see its gift. I want to touch its corners, traverse its lands, connect with its people. I want to return again and again and again to the country of my heart and plant roots there. I want to live a big life in a gentle way and find my way home, walking along the dirt paths of a village in France to my little cottage surrounded by animals who welcome me at the rickety wooden gate. It’s a specific dream, I know. It’s one that’s held deeply within me.

• I want to watch future generations grow and thrive beyond what we could have ever imagined for them. I want to watch my friends’ kids and soul daughter become who they’re meant to be, who they want to be—not shaped by the world, but shaping the world itself. There’s no greater honor than to bear witness to the next generation claiming their place in the world.

• I want to take care of my family and friends—to be there for them as they’ve always been there for me. I want to spend my precious time with my animals, to give every animal a loving home—these innocent souls made of pure love. There’s a saying that goes, “to you, they’re part of your world but to them, you’re their whole world.”

• I want to keep doing my work. There’s so much more I feel called to do—so much more I want to give in service, in advocacy, in making even the smallest difference. I want to keep lighting candles in the dark.

And my books…

I think about my books. Because they’re not just stories on a page. They’re not just characters or settings or plots that end when the cover’s closed. They’re worlds that exist within my mind, characters that carry pieces of me. They’re my own love letter to life and what it means to be alive.

The Damn Novel is twenty this year. Twenty years, this book has been in my heart. Twenty years and halfway written. Everything else I’ve done is leading to it. It’s the one I carry with me every day, marinating in the back of my mind.

It’s why I’m not ready, why I’m not going anywhere. There’s too much left to say.

There are stories I haven’t written yet.

And more I’ve yet to live.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

Why bother?

That’s the phrase that kept running through my mind when the idea of writing my book, The Unity Code: Rewriting the Twin Flame Template for Your Sacred Union Path of Ascension, first came to me years ago.

Why bother turning hundreds of my channelings and teachings into a book when they already exist in other mediums? Why bother further exploring years of personal experience in such a public way when I already vulnerably share my story on other platforms, when so much of it remains sacred itself? Why bother putting language to something that feels, at times, too vast to contain within words and too illogical for life as we know it?

Why bother?

As my personal journey continued and these teachings evolved, I knew that I wanted to have something more cohesive than playlists and bundles, something more tangible and available than courses and workshops. I wanted to pull together all the threads of this path I’d unexpectedly found myself on—to collect everything I’ve learned, all the wisdom I’ve earned—and gather those years of lived experience into one cumulative place. I wanted to return to the medium in which I’ve always felt most comfortable as a life-long writer and established author.

I wanted to write a book. And I did. That book is ​The Unity Code​, and it’s the beginning of everything I wanted to share through my personal experiences, everything I wanted to say to the world about relationships and love and how connected we all are.

But now, two years later, as I’ve felt that familiar, intuitive nudge to make the teachings of The Unity Code even more accessible, I’m asking myself that familiar question…

Why bother?

Why extract from a work that already exists? Why pull from passages that might have already been read? Why revisit teachings that have already been shared, lived, and integrated?

And then came another, more important question…

Why now?

For the past few years, we’ve been witnessing a growing divide across societal landscapes that have seeped into our personal lives. In truth, the seeds of that division were planted long before I was born, and even centuries beyond. But they’ve become embedded into our way of life—creating friction in how we relate to the world and disharmony with each other—and it’s never been more apparent than now.

As someone with a strong sense of justice combined with a deeply-sensitive soul, I can’t stand by and see those seeds of division continue to be sown and not be a voice for unity. While I’ve continued to share my Unity Channelings on YouTube and I’ve written essays on my blog, The Mystic and the Muse, it doesn’t seem like enough.

I keep getting called to more, to what I can do even if it feels so very little.

When I originally wrote The Unity Code, I was deeply immersed in living and understanding the Twin Flame dynamic—that intense, soul-reflecting connection that forces us to confront our deepest shadows and our highest potential. For many of us, this specific path of awakening is an initiation into the next level of our spiritual journeys. But what it also reveals is that sacred union isn’t about finding “the one.” It’s about remembering the All.

Relationships are fundamental to our spiritual evolution and our human experience, and these connections mirror a much larger, collective experience. Sacred union then becomes the threshold to deeper spiritual ascension.

And ascension is our doorway to unity consciousness.

I created this book—a selection of writings from The Unity Code—because I wanted to offer something that brings us back to the energetic thread that connects us to ourselves and each other. Something that reminds us what unity consciousness actually asks of us. Something that helps us stand up for what is sacred without losing our sacredness in the process.

These select, focused writings are an entryway to the full body of my work, yes. But they’re also something you can return to when you feel yourself being pulled into the undertow of disharmony and division. They’re intended to help you remember what some small part of yourself already knows: we’re all made up of the same soul stuff, and we’re never alone.

We’re currently living through a monumental shift in collective consciousness—a movement away from the friction of a divided world and towards a profound remembrance of the sacredness within. To navigate this transition, we must rewrite the inherited stories of separation and consciously choose to embody our highest spiritual evolution.

The Unity Code features selected writings from my foundational book, reframed in this edition to distill these essential teachings into a focused work on universal spirituality and higher consciousness.

Inside this curated collection, you’ll learn to dissolve internal barriers by breaking free from the patterns of separation to reveal the inherent unity of your spirit. You’ll explore how to balance sacred energies, understanding and harmonizing the intricate dance between masculine and feminine frequencies within your own being. By journeying through the complexities of the shadow to illuminate your true light, you’ll discover a path to navigate the self and find divine purpose. These insights provide the practical foundation needed to embody oneness, helping you live the energy of peace, unity, and love in your everyday life.

Whether you’re at the beginning of your awakening or deep in your spiritual evolution, these selected insights offer the wisdom to move beyond the illusion of separation and reclaim your authentic power.

You are the living energy of love. You are the embodiment of unity consciousness.

You are The Unity Code.

Because I believe this message is vital for the time we’re living in, I’m offering it to everyone for FREE.

Forever.

The Unity Code: Remembering Oneness in a Divided World (Selected Writings) is available in multiple ways to meet you exactly where you are:

• For You: You can download the short eBook easily for FREE right here: ​DOWNLOAD​

• For Your Bookshelf: If you’re like me and love the feel of a physical book or want to add it to your bookshelf collection, the 92-page print edition is available on my website at the lowest price I could make it: ​BUY THE PRINT BOOK​

• For the World: To make this message as accessible as possible, it’s also available everywhere books are sold (Amazon, B&N, Apple, etc.)

If you know someone who’s feeling the weight of the current world or if you want to play a part in spreading a little more love and unity, help by sharing the code!

Gift a copy to your friends or family or tell your community with a simple post or direct message by linking to the free ebook: ​SHARE THE UNITY CODE​

This selection of writings exists to help us remember what unity truly asks of us—and how to live it, right now.

So, why bother?

Because the world is what we collectively decide to make of it. When we recognize that true awakening occurs within—when we see ourselves as the bridge between the world we’ve been conditioned to accept and the one we long to create—we understand we can only do it together.

We recognize the unity code lives in all of us.

THURSDAY

A jump off the bed. That’s all it took.

A split second where my elderly dog decided to jump down from the bed as I was falling asleep, and I didn’t have time to stop her or redirect her to the ramp she has just for this purpose.

Moxie cried out in pain, her legs collapsed beneath her. When I got to her feet, she was holding up her right back foot, crying and going lame whenever she tried to press down on it.

I stayed up with her all night, doing some energy healing and calling on AA Rafael, my guides, and God. Nothing seemed to be working—1am turned to 2am, then 3am as I kept a watchful eye, praying it was just a sprain and she could get some sleep before I called the vet first-thing in the morning. But at 4am, she got up and hobbled into the hallway where she fell again, and I sat there with her… utterly helpless.

Thinking she had to go to the bathroom, I finally managed to get her on one of her dog beds and drag the bed down the stairs like a slide with her on it. We stayed downstairs the rest of the morning. I slept maybe an hour or two at the most—on high-alert every time she so much as sat up (which was often).

Murphy’s Law was in full effect this morning. Maybe Mercury Retrograde has played some part as well. I usually thrive under Mercury Retrogrades, having been born under one and with a strong Mercury in Virgo (9th house) placement. But this Mercury Retrograde is opposite to my natal, and I’ve been feeling its full effects.

Including delayed travel plans. Like I said…

Murphy’s Law.

Moxie had a 10:20 vet appointment. Since she’s 60 pounds of squiggle and I’m unable to carry her, the plan was to borrow my mom’s van and back it up to the low deck so I could drag Moxie on her bed right into the rear of the van.

And it worked. That part of the plan worked seamlessly.

What we didn’t account for was the melted snow from high temps earlier in the week and now the rain making the backyard a veritable swampland. The wheels started spinning and the yard started…mudding.

And I was stuck.

10:10am. New plan. The vet is thankfully a few minutes away.

Calling on my angels and mustering up all the strength I had, I heaved Moxie into my arms and crossed the backyard to my car. I sped to the vet’s office, where they helped her on a gurney to bring her inside…

And that’s when I lost it.

Seeing her strapped down like that—in pain, confused, and helpless—I fought and failed to keep my composure. You’re an animals whole world, and she’s been the biggest part of mine—my furbaby, my angel girl.

Yeah. There was no way I was going to keep it together.

She has a torn ACL (known as a Cranial Cruciate Ligament injury in dogs) in her back leg, with arthritis flaring in her other. They gave her some pain medicine and an anti-inflammatory, assuring me that with proper rest, surgery likely wouldn’t be needed.

I cried again, but this time from relief.

Bringing her back inside the house was even harder. After crying for hours (honestly, her and me both), she was finally able to rest a little more peacefully, and I got about an hour of sleep myself.

But not before sending an email to our holistic vet, who immediately set us up for an appointment on Saturday. Add this to the ever-growing list of things (and people) to be grateful for…

FRIDAY

Thanks to pain meds for her and crashing from the stress and adrenaline for me, Moxie and I somehow got through the night, and the worst seems to be behind us.

I slept on a makeshift bed of couch cushions and bedding (which my cat has now claimed as his own, of course), that is somehow not entirely uncomfortable, Moxie situated on her most orthopedic-friendly dog bed at my head.

She woke up a few times during the night to go out, and I helped her by dragging her bed to the back door and holding her hind quarters up using a towel for a sling.

In the morning, she hobbled on her own a few feet to the water dish, and though she’s always supported by the sling when she’s walking outside, she tried touching her injured leg to the ground—a positive, promising sign.

I spent the day in careful observance—something that will be repeated over the next several weeks. I’ve canceled or rescheduled everything I can, my life now dedicated to her care and recovery.

And I wouldn’t want for anything less.

Anyone who has ever loved an animal knows they’re so much more than animals. They’re tender souls in little bodies—angels of unconditional love—and this girl has healed me time and time again.

Without question, I would be here to do the same for her.

SATURDAY

We took her to her holistic vet an hour and a half away Saturday morning. Moxie has been seeing this vet since the summer for acupuncture and other therapies—a recommendation from my friends at my local metaphysical shop—and this small practice has been nothing short of a blessing, adding to Moxie’s health and overall well-being.

She had her first prolozone injection to help stabilize the knees, her first laser therapy session, and we came home armed with additional supplements to help with the inflammation and pain management. Adding to the energy healing sessions a friend is performing, the red light therapy mat I’d bought for myself that’s now useful for her, and the homeopathy remedies on-hand, Moxie’s on track to nicely recover.

When we got home, she even was feeling well enough to walk around the yard, do her business, and then practically bolt to the house so that I had to keep up with her!

I’m still dragging her bed from the living room to the kitchen when she has to go out—and also when I’m cooking because her beagle gets activated and she has to investigate wherever food is involved. So now I make the “chuga-chuga-choo-choo” sound (this is my particular brand of crazy) and position her so she can watch me.

It will be 24/7 watch and care for her. I can’t—I won’t—leave her alone. But the pain is being managed, I have healing tools and resources in our pocket, and there’s a ton of support surrounding us so that I can care for her without neglecting myself, my health, or my work in the process.

The gratitude is immeasurable.

But I honestly didn’t feel grateful at first. I felt frustrated, even angry.

Hearing her cry in pain was devastating, and those first 48 hours of feeling helpless was excruciating. I kept calling on my angels and guides—kept calling on God—but I didn’t know if any of it was working.

I even wondered if my belief and faith were enough.

In those moments on the floor—stroking her head, whispering that I loved her, envisioning white and green healing light surrounding her—I didn’t feel so spiritually connected. I felt very human.

And I almost chided myself for it, until I felt God come in later that evening when all was quiet and she was calmed and relieved from the pain thanks to her medicine.

This was the point.

I’ve always said that we’re still human, and I never want to bypass or avoid that for my spirituality because that’s not spiritual at all. Spirituality is the lived experience, and I never saw that so clearly as this week.

Sometimes, especially when someone you love is in pain, spiritual connection can fall silent, feel slow, or even be absent. But it doesn’t mean your faith or connection to GodSource and all that is isn’t real. It just means the moment is asking you to exist fully in the rawness—in the real experience versus the idea of what you think faith and spiritual connection should look like.

I came to understand that feeling helpless and frustrated, but holding faith and being present fully in my love and devotion to her, was actually spiritual practice in disguise.

I didn’t always understand this. There was a time in the beginning of my ascension journey when I let my spiritual ego get the better of me. My parents’ dog had passed away, and I had trouble holding space for their grief because nothing ever dies, right? He was at peace, he’d always be with them in spirit. Couldn’t they see that?

It’s so gross when I think about that now, and I learned quickly that I never want to forsake my humanity for spiritual understanding. When my own soul dog, Riley, passed away a few years later in 2020, I had a healthier connection to my spiritual self—being a psychic medium, I could know what I know and experience what I experience and still allow myself to grieve the physical loss and all that comes with it.

This was grace. And I had to experience it for myself so I could learn to offer it to others.

I’ve lost a lot of loved ones since then. My grandmother a year after Riley, one of my first childhood friends this past summer, and a dear family friend at Christmas. I’ve lost a lot of loved ones—animals and people alike—throughout the whole of my life. I know they’re not really gone. It’s not just a comforting saying but something I innately believe and have always intrinsically known. Throughout the course of my journey, as my spiritual life has expanded, I’ve learned to ground that knowing so I can carry compassion and hold space for others.

And myself.

Seasons of struggle don’t replace seasons of joy. Multiple realities co-exist, more than one emotion can be felt. We can experience the sting of grief with the joy of having loved, grief being love with nowhere to go.

I feel helpless and frustrated when those I love are in pain. Spirituality doesn’t demand the absence of negative emotion, doesn’t require perfection. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong or at fault for what you feel. True spirituality is experienced in the most ordinary acts and the full expression of self. When you’re attuned to suffering, it creates compassion, and holding grace for that and space for each other can itself be sacred work.

As I was falling asleep, Moxie at my head the way she likes to be, I realized that I was already embodying the healing I was frantically praying for. Sitting with her, comforting her, staying beside her through the night kept her calm, made her feel safe and protected.

It made her feel loved.

And there’s nothing more spiritual than that.

Moxie’s road to recovery will be long, but she’ll get there. And I’ll be here—present, devoted, and learning from the experience, too.

Love is the lesson. Love is the prayer.

Love is always the answer.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

ICARUS II
by Susan Dawn

What happened

when Icarus fell?

Did he drown beneath

the cerulean sea?

Was his naked body

cradled by its waves,

the weight of his wings,

sodden with wax and water,

keeping him from soaring higher?

Or did he drag himself

to the vacant shores

of his own humility,

crawling on his

hands and knees

in reticence and regret,

a layer of surrender

that can only be known

when you fly

and then fall.

I want to ask him about the before:

How did it feel to soar

so close to the sun—

did you recognize Helios

or did it feel like hell—

that scorching gaze

turned to you

like you were a chosen one.

Did freedom feel free,

following the flock

who have never known

what it means to be caged?

Did you tell them?

Did you whisper

how lucky they were

to have only ever known

wind beneath God-given wings?

Tell me, Icarus,

who you were before

and what became of you

after.

Searching for Icarus: Poems for the Soul’s Journey is available in eBook and paperback everywhere books are sold!

Order Here

Behind the Poem

My poetry book has been twenty years in the making, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I seriously considered publishing a book of poetry at all. These were phrases that were scribbled on a forgotten envelope in the car, lines jotted down in the middle of the night, and full verses expressed at the height of happiness or the depth of my tears—and mostly, somewhere in between.

The phrase “searching for Icarus” landed in the middle of the night, and unlike some other thoughts and “downloads” I receive at that 3am hour, this one wasn’t fleeting. It was one of those get-up-and-write-it-down moments, and so I did.

Then I left it.

But it wouldn’t leave me.

For months, poems kept getting written in my head, and I knew that there was something in me that was longing to be expressed. Writing has always been cathartic—a way in which I contemplate the world and understand myself.

Writing was once again healing me.

I just didn’t expect it to be like this…

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I’m supposed to go to a hockey game tonight.

Supposed to being the emphasized word here because that was the plan. That would still be the plan except that I changed it, and not because of anything external…

I’m at capacity.

Today, I looked at my weekly planner, and I felt overwhelmed—not because there’s too much to do. In fact, right now it’s at the bare minimum on purpose:

• Hockey Game

• Sacred Circle Readings

• Work at the shop

• Health appointment

• Dinner with a friend

It’s so limited, and yet I’ve cancelled or rescheduled what I could because it feels like enough to take care of myself and my animals in this moment. All I can seem to bring myself to do whenever I can is listen to my records and color, or watch my comfort shows (Downton Abbey, The West Wing, my favorite episodes of Doctor Who).

It’s not depression. It’s not anxiety or agoraphobia, even though I crave the sanctuary of my house and loathe the idea whenever I have to go out.

Everything feels otherwise normal.

But my nervous system is at capacity, and I have to trust what I’m experiencing and make adjustments from moment to moment, because I never know, moment to moment right now, how I’ll feel.

I’m used to that. Having a chronic illness, I’ve learned to adjust my whole life to a new normal. I realized that a few months ago at a doctor’s appointment when I realized I might be world’s apart from where I was ten years ago, but I’m thriving now because I’ve redefined for myself what that looks like.

This isn’t that, though.

Because I’ve been feeling this for a while now.

Last year was all about expansion. This feels more like containment—saying no to things I would love to attend but that feels like too much, or a nearly-empty week in my calendar that still feels too full.

Last summer, I took a break from my businesses and spent a month taking roadtrips and going to concerts and generally socializing with friends—I wanted to be out in the world—part of the world and basking in the sunshine! Then in the autumn, that shifted to something more internal, and I was called to take a bit of a sabbatical—putting anything on hold that wasn’t urgent or client-based with the intention of returning in the new year. In the meantime, I went to work at my close friend’s family-owned shop for some more physical—rather than cerebral—activity. And I’ve loved it. It has become the perfect balance for the energetic work I still have such a passion for.

All the while, I’ve been making adjustments—upgrading my website, curating my programs and offers, tinkering with my next novel, and organizing the containers of my work in a way that feels so intuitive and healthy not only to my physical business, but to me, as its operator.

It’s been balanced. I’ve been happy. I’ve been fulfilled.

This isn’t any of that, either.

I spent most of January knocked out by an unxpected illness, which took the better part of February to recover from, but in that time, I’ve felt motivated again—moving forward with exciting projects and implementing new ideas. I have big goals and even bigger dreams, but for the first time in my life, it all feels doable in a healthy and effortlessly balanced way, rather than the force of expectation or obligation.

But still… something feels off. Like I’m still preparing for something I can’t name. Like I’m once again finding myself in the crucible of becoming, only instead of burning down with the old, I’m quietly cocooned here, being energetically reshaped and realigned to something—someone—I can’t yet see.

I can feel her—the new version of me. I can feel her right at the periphery of my awareness, right on the edge of my energetic field. But she’s not to be chased or rushed, and so I rest more often than usual. I plug away, step-by-step, at my books and my projects and these dreams.

I color. I listen to music. I watch my comfort shows.

Because I’m at capacity. I don’t have room for anything else.

Maybe this is the lesson.

As we continue to hold space for the world, we have to remember to keep holding space for ourselves.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

Sometimes I think about how much simpler life would be if I could just… settle.

If I could curb my ambition. If I could be less passionate. If I could shut down my heart and silence my curiosity and grow content with everything already as it is.

But then, I know, I would also cease to be.

I wouldn’t be me.

I think this is the crux and crush of a soul that knows it’s always been made for more. I’ve felt it since I was a young child, when I would tell my mom as early as five that I don’t belong here, and she would respond, puzzled by my meaning, “Well, where do you belong?”

I didn’t know then. I barely know now.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure that out, but at last I have some semblance of an answer: I belong here, now. But also to another here and now. A better here and now. A here and now that offers so much more than what is.

Yep. Cue existential crisis number 400 and counting.

I need you to understand my meaning. Maybe that’s what this seeking is—to finally be heard, to be understood. When I say that I’m made for more, I’m not talking about tangible success—more money, or more things, or more connections or any of that.

That’s never mattered to me, except more money would enable me to bring my visions to life more effortlessly, and I enjoy surrounding myself with books and art and sentimental mementos from people I love and experiences I’ve had for the memories they contain, and I love meeting new people and forging intimate, emotional connections because that’s also what life is.

But, no. When I say I’m ambitious and made for more, I mean that my soul longs to experience the fullness that this world, this life has to offer. I want to add to it—like a tincture to ease someone’s health, I want to pour drops of love into the world and make it better.

My ex once told me that I looked sad, and I couldn’t understand then what he was talking about because when he said it, I was unexpectedly happy. But I think I do carry a kind of grief with me, and it’s always been there—underneath the peace that I’ve fought so hard for, past the pain I crawled out of, and beyond the joy I found living, too, inside of me.

It’s a grief for all I’ve loved, for all I want to love, and for all I’ll never have the chance to love.

Maybe it’s what that little five-year-old version of me knew so long ago, when I was philosophizing about my place in the world: as much as you love, as much as you experience, it will only ever be a taste—a fraction of what’s possible.

Maybe that’s the limitations of being human.

Maybe that’s the beauty, too—the fact that it seems so rare in this world, and so to love is an act of courage, itself. It’s sacred defiance.

I love and I love and I love and I love, and maybe it will never feel like enough.

But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t love at all.

I expand, and my heart expands, and my capacity for love keeps growing. But so, too, does the chasm of grief, knowing there’s still so much more life to live, knowing there’s still so much more love that’s possible—to give and to receive, to fill and be filled.

Why should I settle? How could I settle? When there is this inside of me that longs to climb to the highest peak of the tallest metaphorical mountain and shout at the world, “I love you. I love you. I love you!”

And the silent plea beneath those words, “Please, love yourself enough.”

Love the rivers that bring us fresh water, and the soil that grows our food, and the land itself upon which we walk, side-by-side with animals and neighbors, that offers more beauty and wonder than can ever be mass-created with our innovations and technology.

Love our innovations, too—innovation comes from our creativity, from our desire to better ourselves and the world we live in—but with reverence to all that came before and a mindfulness of what will come after. Love the human propensity to create beauty in this world—art and dance and music and books, all stemming from a desire to express ourselves. Love the uniqueness of each other.

Just… love each other.

Love each other just enough that we can make this place, this home to us all, a little bit better than it was before.

This is what I want. No—it’s what I crave, it’s what I long for.

At the end of the day, all of my work—my tarot readings and channelings and spiritual conversations, my novels and poetry and essays, my activism and advocacy and awareness, and whatever else I do and create and become—is this.

At the end of my life, all of my inner healing—so family dynamics deepen, so my friendships expand, so my relationships grow stronger, so my interactions with strangers soften while my place in the world becomes bolder and more certain—is for this.

For the ripple of love to spread.

This is my ambition. It’s why I keep searching, keep exploring, keep discovering. This is why I keep changing and growing, and my external life keeps evolving, too.

I can’t be just one thing when I’m made up of everything.

I’m unsatiated, as much as I feel fulfilled. I’m unpacified, as much as I feel content and at peace. I’m unsettled, as much as I feel grateful and blessed for my present life.

Do you know this feeling, too? So that I’m not alone in this? Do you understand what I’m saying, do you feel the heartbeat in these words?

Even if you don’t, it’s enough that you read them.

It’s enough to be seen, to be heard, to know I’ve tried to put down into words—in the hundreds of writings here—everything I am, everything I want to say to the world.

And, still, there will always be more.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

Friday the 13th is also known as the Day of the Goddess, often associated with Freya of Norse mythology. Today is the first of two back-to-back Friday the 13ths this year!

I love this rising recognition of the Divine Feminine energy that exists within all of us. The more I do this work, the more I’m able to see, feel, and experience the beautiful balance of masculine and feminine energies in the world beyond the extremes of one versus the other we’ve been conditioned to.

The Universe exists in harmony, and so do we if we look beyond the illusions of what divides. In the past, consciousness fell and wisdom was lost to ego; love forsaken for jealousy, mistrust, and contempt; and unity forgotten for division.

But as we awaken to the truth of ourselves and begin to see life, the world, and all within the evolution of the sacred, we heal ourselves and change the world.

The union of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine is the blueprint for a new future--one that reminds us that we are for each other and future generations and this world we call home. It’s time to be bold, to be brave. It’s time to remember and embody the sacred that has until now remained dormant within you.

Take leadership for your life as you shift your perspective on who you were to become all you are. Have faith in this process as you continue your sacred journey with conscious and loving pursuit in step with your human experience.

Friday the 13th is said to hold high energy to help you tune into the heart-center for creation.

How are you tuning into love?

I Am (Not) the Goddess
by Susan Dawn

I’m not the goddess you knew.

The one that existed

on Mount Olympus

has long been extinguished.

You made sure of that.

So I watched your world burn

in the fires of Pompeii,

lighting my cigarette

in the dying embers of Vesuvius.

I stepped aside,

let the lava cascade,

flicked the remains

towards the screams

and rose like a phoenix

from the ashes

of what you thought you buried.

I saved you all.

Yes, I’m that kind of goddess.

I carried you home,

yet you failed to believe;

you tore down my temples,

cursed at my altar—

begged, cried, no matter—

I heard it all.

Still, I rose from my gilded seat—

the one you painted for me,

and climbed down my pedestal—

the one you sculpted to me,

and held you safe.

Oh, you and your human race.

I am not the goddess you crave,

someone to betray

your sacrifice

and inspire

and answer

your thousand questions

with a thousand stories

and a thousand wordless prayers.

I am so much more

and so much less

than what I seem—

an angel in a sunbeam,

a sprite beholden

to the dark of night.

I am all. I am none.

I am the virgin painted

on the cathedral wall,

the whore condemned

upon the fall.

I am a lifetime of laughter,

seconds of sorrow.

I am profane and vulnerable,

sacred and hallowed.

You, who have forgotten me,

buried me beneath your reality TV,

abandoned me for your social idols,

living in your self-denial…

You toast to me

drinking from your broken cup,

catching a glimpse of me at sun-up,

before the reflection fades,

before the truth is swayed.

Still I stay.

Because I am not the goddess

you thought you knew.

You see, I am also you.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

I overdid it, and now my nervous system is paying the price.

I spent the day yesterday helping one of my best friends put his store back together after they had the floors replaced. I’ve been working at his shop for a few hours a week since August, and I’ve been loving it. As an owner of three online businesses with a focus on writing and energy work, I spend a lot of time at home—in my head and supporting others. Which is great. I love my alone time, and I absolutely adore the work that I do. But I also needed to find some balance, and a few hours a week interacting with people and giving my body more of the physical movement it craves has been so helpful.

But it doesn’t come without its limits. Especially when you have chronic Lyme disease.

Living with chronic illness means living in constant negotiation with your body. There are moments when I feel energetically limitless—times when I surpass my own expectations and feel almost victorious in what I can handle. And then there are the consequences. Hours or days in recovery mode. A body that won’t cooperate. A nervous system that demands rest whether I want to give it or not.

I’ve learned to live like this. That’s what you do when you have a chronic illness—you adapt so that it becomes your new normal, and while it might look “normal” on the outside, it’s because you’ve gotten very, very good at managing your life.

I’m worlds away from where I used to be, and I’m so incredibly grateful for it. But I still get angry with myself—with my health and my body—for not being where I want to be.

And I don’t want to feel that way.

I don’t want to keep blaming myself when I’m at capacity. I don’t want to punish myself when I’m feeling limited. I don’t want to feel like I’m not doing enough when for the past few years, my sole focus has been on my health and I’ve been doing everything I can to support myself.

I’m tired. It’s not just the fatigue of illness, though.

I’m tired of carrying it all.

One of the biggest lessons that I learned through my Lyme disease journey was that I don’t have to shoulder the burdens of life, and I think I’m revisiting that lesson now.

When we try to carry it all, there’s a price we pay. But what’s the price we pay if we let it all go?

Yesterday, I reached my limit. I overdid it. I didn’t uphold my boundary with myself or respect my personal limitations. I kept telling myself I was fine and could do more because I wanted to. I wanted to finish the job. I wanted to support the small business I’m now a part of. I could have easily told my friend—who I’ve known since we were sixteen, so there’s never a need to hide how I’m feeling from him—that I couldn’t do anymore (and eventually I did), but I’m stubborn and insistent and probably a touch masochistic, if not a lot neurodivergent. That’s a self-discovery that has been especially eye-opening for me…

It wasn’t even the physical work that was my inevitable emotional downfall. Nor was it the fact that my adrenaline was already in overdrive trying to navigate the snowy conditions on the way to work, or the little moments of simple missteps or overcoming micro-obstacles—though it might have been a culmination of all of it.

It was really the fact that I was at capacity, and because I subtly betrayed and abandoned my own needs, my nervous system became dysregulated.

I went home. I took a nap. I woke up to my counterpart texting me that he had dropped something off for me, and I felt a combination of relieved that I wouldn’t now have to drive there to retrieve it, grateful for the thoughtfulness, and disappointed that I didn’t get to see him—and all at the same time, I was utterly incoherent and unable to articulate or express any of it due to the fatigue.

A few hours later, in the solitude of my bedroom, I had a silent meltdown.

Why is it that women, especially, feel like we need to carry the world on our shoulders when the world exhausts and overwhelms us, too? When did we become so conditioned to believing we have to be the glue that keeps our lives—and the lives of those around us—together? That it’s shameful to have needs and wants, that if we’re wanting to receive, too, we’re selfish, and that if we’re generous, we’re constantly expected to give more?

We know what we want or what needs to get done, but we have to ask a thousand times just to be seen or heard, so we learn to shut up and not need anything from anyone. We let ourselves receive support but then we’re called dependent—or worse—and so we learn to shut down and do it ourselves, then we’re lambasted for being hyper-independent. We express ourselves and are met with resistance, dismissal, or silence, so we learn to minimize our needs until they disappear altogether.

Nobody can shoulder what a modern woman has been conditioned to carry, and yet we do.

We call it strength, but our self-reliance is survival.

We learn to stay quiet to keep the peace, to carry what isn’t ours to hold, and then we wonder why we’re so tired when no one is asking us how heavy it’s been.

Or better yet, no one is offering to lighten the load.

This isn’t a denouncement of men. I have the most incredible, supportive men in my life who are growing examples of healthy masculinity, including my counterpart, who is unconsciously reflecting to me where I’ve been hyper-independent and showing me how to be more receptive in my feminine energy.

It’s the patriarchy. It’s damning to us all—men and women included.

In my book, “The Unity Code,” I wrote about distorted masculine leadership and the suppression of the feminine and how the patriarchy actually harms us all. That truth feels less theoretical now and more cellular. Patriarchy isn’t just history or politics—it lives in our nervous systems. It lives in over-functioning, in self-abandonment disguised as responsibility, in minds and bodies that don’t know how to rest without guilt.

Balance—true union—is never about replacing one hierarchy with another but about harmony. And when the feminine principle is neglected or abandoned, the cost is paid internally before it’s ever visible externally.

I can see the collective shift happening. Women like myself are setting stronger boundaries and becoming more self-loving. They’re refusing disrespect and turning towards community instead of sacrifice and martyrdom. I’ve done this too—slowly, imperfectly, but sincerely.

For the past decade, I’ve been consciously working on expanding my capacity within my nervous system by working through my traumas, beliefs, sense of self, and healing energetically. My own spiritual journey has guided me to enacting energetic and physical boundaries, learning to honor my own needs and wants as fair and valid, and setting new standards for the relationships in my life because the most important one is the one I first have with myself.

Still, it’s not easy when you care. It’s not easy when you’re deeply empathetic. It’s especially not easy when you’re a psychic intuitive and can see the threads of life unfolding—when you want the best timeline for the world and the people in your life.

But you can’t control the world. And you can’t control another’s journey.

All you can do is love.

Ah, but to the carer, it never feels like enough. And when you have actual physical responsibilities, it really isn’t enough.

I was on the phone with a friend last night, trying to process my emotions. This is where I tend to be hard on myself—I’m so blessed because I have so much physical and emotional support in my life, and yet I still feel overwhelmed. She reminded me how much I carry that I’m not even aware of, and I finally saw myself through a new lens.

I’m carrying my own emotional experiences—fears and struggles that I don’t really tell anyone because who would I tell and what good would that do? I take responsibility for myself and my emotions, I reason, and so I’ll work through it like I always do.

In writing. Sharing in my journals or my poetry or with hundreds of strangers on the internet because who will read these words anyway? Here, at least, I’m not asking for anything other than acknowledgement, as if that’s a burden itself on the people I love and who love me.

Isn’t that what we all want, at the end of the day? Just to be acknowledged? Just to be seen and heard and held in that space?

I’m also carrying so many—my parents, who are aging and all the emotions and physical responsibility that comes with that; my animals who depend on me…literally; my soul family, who I keep energetic watch over and hold in my heart; a multitude of friends, who are dealing with their own traumas and asking for prayers; my clients and community whose journeys I hold space for…

The list goes on.

The easy thing would be to say, “Nope. Not my responsibility.” And it’s not. I’m not responsible for an individual’s choices or actions, and I’ve let go of all of the energy of wanting to be, no matter which way it unfolds. But we are also, in a way, responsible for each other. I can’t simply ignore my parents or my furbabies or my friends. I can’t ignore the injustices in the world. As much as it’s “not my circus, not my monkeys,” you can’t help but want to help when you care.

I’ve spent so much of my life holding, carrying, translating, stabilizing—for myself and for others—that all I want is to be alone for a bit. To not be needed. To not be responsible for anything or anyone.

But that’s not being honest.

Because what I really want is to not have to be strong. I want to express these passing feelings, to receive without shame or repercussion, and to let someone else take care of me—for a day, for a moment. I imagine the little girl inside of me being tucked into bed, her hair smoothed back from her brow as a kiss is planted there—comfortingly, lovingly, securely. And I can drift off to a peaceful and restorative sleep, knowing that I’m held.

My nervous system is short circuiting. My nervous system practitioner would probably say that it’s just upgrading—that I’m at capacity and being asked to take care of myself and set new standards so that capacity can expand.

And I will. I’ve been here before. But in this moment, I’m tired of trying to save a life.

Especially when it’s my own.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

It would be easy for me to write this post about everything I experienced and personally accomplished this year. After all, isn’t that what year-end posts are all about? How fast the seasons are turning now that we’re growing older and how it’s hard to believe it’s December 31st already?

How it doesn’t feel like much changed this year, but oh, how I have changed?

How this year was a mix of blessings and bereavements, and sometimes they were both at the same time—and how downright existential that was?

All of this is true. This year, I experienced movement and pause, fire and softness, love and grief all wrapped up together so that at times it felt impossible to know where one ended and one began.

To quote Mr. Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

But the tough times has a pretty different look these days. Maybe that’s what healing does for you—it doesn’t erase pain but grows your capacity to hold it without collapsing in on yourself. It shifts your perspective so you stop seeing yourself as someone things keep happening to and start recognizing yourself as someone who can meet life as it unfolds. You’re no longer swallowed by the story of what hurt you—you’re anchored in the truth of who you’re becoming through it, and you find yourself grateful for all of it.

The past three years cracked me open to that transformation.

This year asked me to embody it.

At the start of each year, I like to choose a word or two as an intention for what I want the year to be about—what I’m creating, what I’m manifesting, who I’m becoming. I spend time with them beforehand—a month or two in consideration before cementing them in—because I want the words to feel meaningful, not rushed or arbitrary.

For 2025, I chose empowerment and expansion.

Boy, did they deliver…

Here are the highlights with some mini-essays on just what this year meant to me.

All Smiles…

When I turned 40, I wanted to give myself the gift of confidence—something that comes from within the self and not without, for sure, and what I’ve been cultivating this past decade as I’ve worked on healing mind, body, and soul.

But there was still a nagging insecurity when it came to my smile.

(And I really love to smile.)

So two months after my 40th birthday, I got Invisalign as a gift to myself.

Here’s something you might not know about me: There was a time in my life where I feared allowing myself to be seen. I don’t mean my emotions or the deepest parts of myself—that part didn’t always come easy, but I always pushed through any fear and allowed myself to be vulnerable through my writing.

No, I mean visibly seen.

It was like I could hide behind the words I wrote—let my heart and soul show itself through the blog posts and books, but to venture out into the world and let people see me physically?

Well, that was something else entirely.

This year, I was hyper-focused on my physical health and wellness after years of doing the internal healing work. That included not just loving, but accepting myself—finding forgiveness for the hell that was Lyme disease and loving my body and all of her shortcomings (ha!) for helping me survive.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me.

Hell, maybe I can’t even tell the difference when I look in the mirror... But what I see in that reflection is resilience where there was defeat, acceptance where there was shame, and love where there was insecurity.

For the past two years, I worked with a personal trainer to build back my stamina and core strength. This summer, I experienced another mild Lyme relapse, but I wasn’t defeated. In fact, it forced me to realize that I’m worthy of life even in the rest periods. And now, even though my weight and shape hasn’t changed as I continue to battle flare ups, loving my body for everything she is has become a vital part of the new woman I’ve become.

The braces came off in January of this year. I still struggle with a little insecurity and sometimes hesitate to be fully visibility and public-facing in a world that focuses on gloss and glamour—especially while I crave the depth and rawness within it—but I’m loving myself more and more each day, and that love is overcoming the shadows of fear.

Ready, set, smile.

The Mystic & The Muse

A few years ago, I received the download for the phrase “The Mystic and the Muse” and bought the domain name, leaving it to sit because I didn’t know what it was supposed to be. A book? A new section of my business? A partnership?

It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that it became clear what that initial spark of inspiration was for: a place where all of my writings would intersect.

This space. Where you’re reading this now.

For years, I shared my spiritual insights and reflections through Susan Dawn Spiritual Connections, while my love for storytelling first found a home in my novels at Brown Beagle Books. Even though I’ve been blogging since early 2006—and even though both spaces are very much me—these two businesses felt separate, and so I kept my writings separate.

In January, I began to merge the two worlds together. Substack was the new blog home for both my personal writings and spiritual expression. The Mystic and the Muse became a place where spirituality and creativity can now intertwine—where I can explore the sacred and the depth of my personal, human experience side by side.

And I’ve never felt more complete, more whole, and more at home than here.

I’ve spent the past year returning to my roots of writing—my first love and greatest passion. It’s where I can excavate my heart and explore my soul, where I can teach and learn, where I can pour every authentic emotion onto the page because that’s how I get to know myself.

It’s messy. It’s real. It’s sometimes creative but always sacred.

It’s the evolution of my life, of me.

It’s good to be here.

Full-Circle Homeopathy

Modern medicine saved my life, but I went through hell with it to get there. I fully believe in science, but I also believe that science is often playing catch-up in its provings of what is already naturally known. I also fully believe—from my own experience—that doing the work of inner healing has helped the process of my physical healing.

Homeopathy has been the next step to getting there.

But what I didn’t know was that this journey began a long time ago…

Back during my month-long trip to France in 2008, the place of my first major spiritual awakening, when I first met Yves, a psychic medium in a nearby local village. Because I was a hot, anxious mess for the majority of my trip, the owner of the inn had finally had enough of my crying and begged him to help me.

(That’s not entirely true. But 17 years later, it’s fun thinking that’s how it went down.)

At the end of our visit, he handed me a piece of paper and instructed me to visit a pharmacy. At the pharmacy, I was handed a selection of small blue tubes that contained little white pellets. I began taking them. I immediately felt relief and was able to cope better and actually enjoy the rest of my trip.

Flash forward to a few years later, and I began to learn about Bach flower remedies. A few years after that, I was guided to essential oils. Then, another few years ago, I was reintroduced to those small blue tubes with little white pellets through clients-turned-friends who are certified in the practice of Homeopathy.

In February, I took and completed a level-one beginner's course. I’ve since been utilizing homeopathy to heal my dog and cat’s afflictions, to support my own health, and to help my family through colds and injuries.

It’s been awe-inspiring to see how the threads of my life continue to connect and how these full-circle moments are always unfolding.

Grief as We Know It…

Oof. This one is hard to reflect back on.

On May 9 of this year, I lost one of my first childhood friends to cancer. Even now as I’m writing those words, tears are stinging my eyes. Maybe that’s how you know how much you’ve loved—by the amount of grief you’ve held.

After all, they say that grief is love with nowhere to go…

Gretchen wasn’t the first friend I lost to cancer. But her passing has hit the hardest. Still, in her death, she has reminded me to live.

And this year, that’s what I did.

I wrote about her here and here and here and here, and I’ll probably write more still…

Everything I’ve experienced this year and who I am from her passing onward is, in some small way, because of her.

And this year is, in some small way, dedicated to her.

I will never, ever forget her.

(Right before Christmas, we also lost a family friend. I had a conversation with God about it—why all these good, bright, and beautiful souls are leaving the planet right now. He told me that the world wasn’t getting darker because they’re leaving—”Remember, Susan,” he said. “Love is energy, and energy can’t be destroyed, just transformed.” So now I like to think the world is getting brighter, better, and they’re still having a hand in that but in a different way.)

Crafting & Creating

The last Save date on the unfinished draft of my next novella reads February 2024. That means it had been over a year since I last opened it, nevermind wrote a single sentence for it.

I’ve been working on this book since 2021—earlier, if I want to count when the idea of returning back to Annie’s world and the summer of 1979 first came to be. Reading back through the first several chapters, I’m both awed and saddened.

Awed because it’s damn good, and I’ll forever live in gratitude and wonder of this gift of painting pictures with words.

Saddened because I know that over the last few years, I’ve lost some of that creative spark, stalling these stories midway.

Creativity is a muscle that has to be used or, like any muscle, it deteriorates. Oh, I’ve used my creativity and writing skills in other ways—namely for my spiritual business with its posts and essays. And I did write and publish two non-fiction books and now happily released my debut poetry book out in the world…

But storytelling is different. And I can’t fully explain it. It’s a different energy, taps into a different part of the psyche and soul. When I’m writing anything, it rises up from deep inside of me and spills out onto the page. And when I’m writing fiction, I’m merging the imagination—all those scenes playing out in my mind—with emotion.

That’s what it’s like for me, at least.

Even though I’ve taken a huge step this year by unraveling the knots of these interconnected stories and began drafting Lilac in Winter’s sequel, when I focused on this book—a novella that comes before the sequel that still needs to be finished—I couldn’t tap in.

It felt like a lot of the magic was gone.

But then this year...

This year, I finally sat down and opened the file, read through the first 10,000 words, and mapped out the remaining chapters.

This year, I recaptured some of the spark.

Because this year, I vowed I wasn’t giving up on something I love so much.

I wrote my first book, Gold in the Days of Summer, about a precocious 12-year-old girl named Annie who befriends her neighbor, a young Vietnam veteran at war with his own past. That same veteran then showed up in The Last Letter as Lia’s psychologist. He has ties to the families in Lilac in Winter and East of Everywhere.

He is a common thread in all of my books, and in this novella, he’ll finally be named.

I thought I was writing Annie’s story, and Lia’s story, and Lilac’s story, and Janie’s story.

But it’s been his story all along.

And it’s time for it to be told.

So, this is where I am, and this is where I’ll be still in 2026—revisiting the house with the crab apple tree in the front yard and a porch overhang that shields him from memories he’d rather forget, going back even further to first love, forged friendships, and unfinished chapters that linger and haunt.

Writing one sentence at a time.

Speaking of Writing…

I published my first poetry book in September.

Here it is:

And you can read one of my favorite poems here: When We Build Cathedrals

I’m so damn proud of this book. Maybe prouder than anything I’ve ever written to-date.

Like all of my writing, my poetry starts with an emotion. Like all of my writing, I have to go down into the catacombs of myself, hunt around awhile, before drawing the words up through me, and only when they’re on the page do I feel like I can breathe in relief.

Curating this book from a collection spanning twenty years and hundreds of poems—adding more than forty poems in the space of this narrative—I revisited emotions I didn’t know were still there, like grief and heartbreak and lost love and fear.

(And also hope and faith and second chances and courage.)

Healing happens in layers—it’s something I tell my spiritual-business clients all the time. Don’t judge yourself for it. Hold compassion always.

But sometimes it will surprise you what’s still there.

I wrote these poems for what was still hidden within me, facing it time and time and time again.

Now I’m giving voice to it in another way—on the page.

This is why we write.

And Still, There’s More…

This year, I also:

- Traveled by train to New York with one of my best friends. The city invigorates me—I haven’t been back in over eight years, but every trip feels like coming home (and in some ways, for a short time, at least, maybe I am). We went to Bryant Park and the NY Public Library for the first time, and I got to see Hadestown on Broadway. I met and took pictures with Phillip Boykin (Hades) and Lana Gordon (Persephone) who are the nicest actors I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking to. Words can’t ever express what this musical means to me. In November, I took my dad to see the National Touring Company in a nearby town. The cast was just as phenomenal, and he loved it. So did I.

- I planted my first vegetable garden with the help of my dad. We successfully had a summer of string beans, radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, and the beginnings of a watermelon and carrots that the rabbits happily ate and which annoyed the crap out of me. They’re now on my shitlist.
- I took cupcake decorating classes with my friends and my mom and made cupcakes for loved ones for Christmas. I’m not quitting my day jobs.
- I went to concerts in the park and trivia nights with friends.

- I strolled the pathways of Longwood Gardens, facilitated an energy clearing and photography session for my parents’ 50th anniversary at Columcille Megalith Park, attended a hilarious reading by David Sedaris, and went to my first NHL Washington Capitals/Philadelphia Flyers game at our local hockey stadium. I always wanted to go to an NHL game with my dad, but neither of us wanted to travel to a big stadium. Manifestation FTW!
- I found a new (fabulous) holistic vet for my dog, Moxie
- I renovated an old bedroom into an office with second-hand furniture—it looks amazing and is now my favorite room
- I participated in a book signing for a fundraising event, held tarot reading fundraisers, and put together charity drives
- I rested. I worked. I rested some more. I took time to myself and allowed for the quiet pause of life as I recovered from another Lyme relapse
- I made new friendships and reconnected with someone who means the world to me and who I’m utterly grateful to have back in my life
- I began working a few hours a week at a friend’s shop. I also continued to work at the metaphysical shop
- Did I mention I was tired and required lots of rest?
- Most of all… I dreamed
- Most importantly… I lived.

I Also Learned…

Sooooo many lessons, including:

• Embodiment matters more than effort. I didn’t get here by pushing harder, fixing myself, or trying to make things happen. I learned that I was never broken in the first place, that although I was wounded and hurt and healing, I was still worthy. I learned that I can be sad and still be cherished, be angry—or on the receiving end of that anger—and still be respected and loved, have bad days and still be me. I learned that I didn’t have to do more or prove myself or perform… I could be fully, authentically me, and by staying present with myself—by staying regulated in my nervous system and honest with my heart, even when it felt uncomfortable—I was rooted in my truth, and that truth is where I hold my personal power.
  

• How to hold love without collapsing into it. I learned that I don’t have to bargain, self-abandon, or turn longing into labor in order to love deeply. I don’t have to overgive or self-sacrifice—but I can give from overflow, I can give from generosity, I can give when I’m called. I can love fully and still choose myself. And I can be met there in equal effort and beautiful, mutual reciprocity. This is true relationship.
  

• My authority doesn’t come from being understood. That’s a core feminine wound that I carried for a long time. Since I was young, there’s been this subtle belief that if I could just explain myself clearly enough, someone would finally see and understand me. This year changed that. I learned that being rooted in truth matters more than being received correctly. I stopped asking for permission to speak from my knowing and started standing in it without needing validation or agreement, without fear of being misinterpreted or wrong. Finally, I could just be me. Real, messy, beautifully humanly me.
  

• Grief and joy aren’t opposites. They can exist at the same time. It’s what I learned when my friend passed—what I spent all summer reconciling. I stopped postponing joy until everything made sense or healed or resolved. I let myself feel pleasure, creativity, laughter, and love even alongside pain, even when there was grief. This year showed me that joy isn’t the reward for healing—it’s part of the process.
  

• My work doesn’t need to prove itself. My voice doesn’t need justification. My writing, my offerings, my presence matter because I matter, and they carry weight because they’re lived experiences, no because they’re perfected or optimized. Not everyone is going to understand me or the things I share or teach. Hell, not everyone is going to like me, either. For the first time—maybe in my life—I didn’t take that as a cue to explain myself better, to try harder or to be more palatable. I didn’t make it mean I needed to earn my place. Instead, I connected more deeply to myself—my truth, my heart, my inner world—and became more unapologetically me. It’s still a work in progress.
  

• And I learned to trust God’s timing. Surviving illness, I know how precious life is. Grieving many loved ones’ passings over the years—as well as facing my own mortality—I know the meaning of Time. It’s why I never want to waste a moment, but that desire can lead to urgency, which can lead to fear, which can sabotage every good thing. So, I learned—am still learning—to slow down, to enjoy the here and now instead of getting caught up in the hauntings of the past or the inevitabilities of the future. I’m here. I’m now. And I want to make every moment count.

My Words for 2026…

In the final months of 2024, I chose Empowerment and Expansion as my words for the new year, not knowing then how the year would take shape or how pivotal those choices would become. At the time, they felt aspirational—like intentions I was reaching towards, something to manifest. But looking back now, I can see they weren’t goals at all.

Empowerment asked me to come home to myself in ways I’ve never fully done before, that I never thought possible—to live inside my body, connecting to my truth instead of worrying and wondering my way through life.

Expansion didn’t arrive as something more, something faster, or something bigger. It arrived as depth and capacity and the ability to hold myself in fullness—more love, more presence, more everything—without abandoning who I am.

What I didn’t realize then was that empowerment would require me to slow down, to listen, to feel what I had once overridden in order to claim myself more. And expansion would come not through striving more, but surrender—through trusting what was unfolding instead of trying to outrun it.

These words shaped my year. And now, on the threshold of the new, I’m once again setting the intention for what I’m creating and how I’m evolving…

My words for 2026 are:

Love and Alignment.

Let’s go.

Want more words?

Read the books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

I once read a newspaper story about the tradition of children finding oranges in their stockings at Christmastime.

Oranges were a rarity—especially during the Great Depression, where fresh fruit at all was considered a luxury. This stuck with me throughout my life as a reminder to appreciate the little blessings and to always find gratitude for what’s given.

When I was writing Janie’s story in East of Everywhere, which begins in WWII, I knew her story as one of survival and struggle, especially considering the times. But I also came to know her as resilient, generous, and full of idealism. She’s anyone who has ever felt the complex pangs of heartache and hope in life.

Janie’s story was one of the hardest books I’ve ever written because it was so far from my own. Her story is imagined—a culmination of various sources of inspiration that I wanted to explore, and yet I had to reach into the depths of emotion that I am familiar with, that I know so well. They might not be shared experiences, but they’re shared emotions…human emotions that connect and unite us.

Janie makes so much out of so little.

She finds beauty in what’s simple.

For me, those little blessings—like fruit in a Christmas stocking—are what make life rich.

This scene is a blend of inspiration—hearing that story of the oranges at Christmastime and growing up reading and watching A Little Princess. Can you spot the scene?

Here’s a quick sneak peek at a Christmas scene in East of Everywhere, available everywhere books are sold!

There’d been no Christmas that year on Harker Street—that last year before Anthers Hall. Plastic wreaths decorated the apartment doors, bringing cheer to faded wood and muted hallways that boasted decades-old paint.

Sometimes, Janie would peek past open doors to see stockings hung on a wall and greeting cards proudly displayed on bookshelves. She wanted to examine every ornament on the neighbor’s fir tree, to lie beneath the branches and stare up at the lights and silver tinsel draped across its boughs and imagine there were presents with her name beneath the tree, a stocking for her on the wall, a greeting card addressed to them all at the house with the swing in the backyard and the stray cat beneath the porch—the house where her father still lived, if only in a daydream.

But there were no stockings or season’s greetings that year. And when the apartment doors closed, Janie turned to her own bare door and wondered if her mother would rise from the bed at all on Christmas Day.

She’d done her best, Rose would say when she returned from her shift at the department store where she now worked. She’d kiss Brayden’s forehead and slip into bed beside Janie and whisper she’d given it her all before sleeping soundly through the night while Janie lay awake, wondering how much money was left in the coffee tin until she’d sneak out of bed and tiptoe to the kitchen to count out the change—enough to ease her mind until morning.

Brayden was almost five by then—too old for lies and too young for the truth. He saw the wreaths and lights and trees just like Janie, and when Janie took him to the market, they slowed their steps despite the cold and the snow to look at each window display. Once, she made the mistake of taking them by the toy store. She didn’t realize it until it was too late, and they both stood on the sidewalk, staring at the colorful display of dollhouses and blocks and miniature army men, a large red wagon toting it all. Brayden pointed, his brown eyes wide and wanting, but he never asked, never cried, never wondered aloud.

Janie pulled his hand along. Neither looked back.

The next day, Janie stole the ceramic camel from the nativity set in her classroom. The day after that, it was the donkey and a sprig of mistletoe she hid in her coat pocket. By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, only Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus were left behind in the manger. She made a wreath out of old newspaper and red ribbon and hung it on their door and cut out winter scenes from magazine advertisements.

“These are our Christmas cards,” she told Brayden, who happily helped her pin them to the door.

She didn’t know what to expect Christmas morning. Maybe if she still believed in Santa Claus, she could imagine a roomful of presents and a hot meal on the table. But as she went to bed that night, she only imagined it would be a day like any other day.

Except, it wasn’t.

When Janie opened her eyes, Brayden was playing with an old toy truck on his cot, and their mother was nowhere to be found. She wandered into the living room and glanced in the kitchen, but that was empty, too. She’d wanted to cry, but a tapping at the bedroom window had dried her tears and pulled her back into the moment.

Brayden glanced up. “Miss Maggie!” he exclaimed and shoved open the window.

Maggie ducked her head and climbed in off the fire escape, packages wrapped in brown paper tucked under her arms.

“Merry Christmas, kiddos!”

Read more! Get your copy of East of Everywhere, available everywhere!

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

Eight years ago, I met the love of my life.

“Met” isn’t the right word here. In truth, we’ve known each other since we were ten years old when the Universe threw us together in the same fourth grade classroom. We had an amazing teacher that year who taught us about the stock market and how to play chess, helped me write and print my first newsletter, and got us started early in entrepreneurship with our own school store. I can see shades of these experiences in our lives now—his and mine. In who we are, in shared interests, in how we used to spend our time together…

Funny, how things shape us.

After we moved on from that class, I didn’t see him again. We still went to the same school, graduated with the same class, even went to colleges only thirty minutes apart.

But we were walking different paths, and we left each other’s worlds.

For me, it was like there’s a void there—like when you try to pull forward a memory, and there’s nothing. Did we even pass each other in the halls? Sit near each other at pep rallies? Stand near each other in line in the school cafeteria? I don’t know; I never noticed. He told me once that he remembers seeing me in the back of the auditorium where I stood as part of my job on the sound crew. I wonder about that. I wonder what he saw. Wonder what life would have been like if I’d looked up and caught his eye.

If we’d so much as said hello again.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know him or couldn’t remember him or wouldn’t speak to him—it was like I was blocked from even seeing him again. Like he was always in one school hallway and I was always navigating another, still circulating the same building and orbiting each other’s worlds, but never close enough.

The sun and the moon—only coming close on those rare, cosmic occasions.

I don’t know, maybe the Universe had other plans. Or maybe it just wasn’t time for us back then. I used to dream about him, though. I don’t know if I ever told him that. Through the years, he would pop into my dreams—visceral dreams that felt more real than real life, and I’d wake up wondering why, after all that time, I was still thinking of him.

Sometimes I wish it was different. I think about all that lost time—a wound woven around regret that has taken years to heal and accept. Maybe our lives would have been different had we known each other better then…

But maybe we needed to go our separate ways to become who we were when we met again, nearly twenty years later.

I didn’t want to love him. We’d met for coffee once a year earlier, and when we agreed to meet again after continuing to converse only through social media, my best friend asked if it was a date, and I insisted we were just two former classmates catching up. I remember looking at his picture after that night and saying to God, “Him?! Are you fucking for real right now? It’s him?”

This man who was a boy that I’ve known since childhood—this is the person I’ve unconsciously denied other relationships for, who I’m finding myself compatible with on every single level, who is nothing like I thought I wanted but everything my heart wished for? Out of all the people in the world, this is the one that feels like home, and here he is a half a mile from home?

The Universe really does have a sense of humor…

But also a sense of benevolence. Because after twenty years, we seemed to have a second chance. And I didn’t want to waste it.

Except, it wasn’t at all like I imagined it would be. Because when we met again, it also began a spiritual journey that led us into the deepest love and the darkest nights of the soul, facing ourselves by facing each other and going through painful growth cycles that eventually turned into a breakup that almost broke me and three years of more healing and more growth in the silent shadow of each other’s presence.

Still, on the other side of it now, I wouldn’t change a thing for how it changed me.

It felt like a divorce and a death all at once… I was grieving the loss of him, of the family we’d created, and of a dream that had been born inside me when me met all at once. And still, he was there—having been part of my life and forever etched into the rhythm of my soul.

That’s what it is to love someone and to lose them—whether in life or passing, they’re still in every memory, in every heartbeat.

We were in each other’s lives for five years, close in ways that didn’t fit the label of friendship yet never stepping fully into a relationship, either—devoted, yet unanchored. It all happened so fast, taking perhaps both of us by surprise, and we didn’t have a stable foundation beneath us.

But what is a foundation when souls recognize each other? I didn’t want to logic this away, didn’t want to shut down my heart or play any game. I just wanted to love and keep my heart open and let it unfold. Surprisingly, we kept growing closer, and no matter how I did try to hold myself back as I let him lead the connection, no matter how I tried to give space and distance when it seemed to be wanted, the Universe kept throwing us together in crazy ways.

It was my heart that remembered him—not from when we were ten years old, but as something sacred. Something true. Something I’d been waiting for without knowing what—or who—I was waiting for. I loved him without knowing why or how. And then, as we got to know each other better—as I grew and connected more deeply to myself—I loved him not just for the soul but the person he was, and who we were together.

He used to say to me, “Love yourself, Susan,” when I would express my love to him. But I knew I loved him because I loved myself, not the other way around. Because I loved myself, I allowed my heart to open. Because I loved myself, I silenced the anxious mind that had been overly-active with any other man. Because I loved myself, I could let love in.

Eight years ago, I met the love of my life.

I don’t know if I was ever meant to be his.

But I also know from our time together—and then our time apart—that I don’t have to be.

I can love him just the same.

We’re back in communication. I’m different. He’s different. It all feels so beautifully different—like the Universe has given us yet another chance without the pains of spiritual awakening and the confusion of instant soul recognition. We can build the trust that, beneath the surface has always been there but it’s taken our minds—so scarred by our individual life experiences—some time to catch up. We can lay a foundation that is stable and secure and won’t fall apart or break away. We can accept and honor each other as we are—not who we were or who we think the other should be.

We can just enjoy each other’s friendship.

And that can be enough.

That’s how I know it’s real for me. Because I can strip away the journey and the labels and the soul-recognition and see both the boy and the man and love him there.

And it’s scary. Terrifying, even. It’s scary to love with such depth, and even scarier to receive that love. But that’s also how I know it’s real. Because I’ve spent time in the silence of uncertainty, and still he was there in my heart.

I’ve spent the majority of my life single, and it hasn’t mattered because I’m fulfilled in so many ways. I have incredible friends who, even though they’re married with kids, never fail to include me either as a family or one-on-one. It helps that I’ve known them for half of my life. It helps that they’re my best friends.

I have a close-knit family. I have animals I adore and who unconditionally love me. I have work that is the most satisfying and joyful I’ve ever experienced, with successes ranging from awards and accolades for my books to emails from clients sharing how their life has changed for the better along their journey. I have a strong personal relationship with God, and I have a sacred and fertile inner world.

I’m blessed, and I know it.

I’m loved, and I know it.

Still, I desire a relationship in my life. I want to have that experience.

I love romance—that beautiful expression of affection and love. I’m someone who loves the tender moments of courtship—the reaching for a hand, the stroke of an arm, the sudden, passionate kiss. Grand and public declarations are repulsive, but it’s the thoughtfulness, the consistent communication, the wanting to spend quality time together that’s romance for me.

It’s the magic of the little moments that have always meant the world.

I want that. It’s hard to admit this—it feels so vulnerable to admit this—because I’ve had to deny that within myself for so long, and it feels like I’ve been starved for that affection, even as I’ve learned to give it all to myself. Hyper-independent and scarred from some of my own experiences with love, I’ve had to learn to support myself, to honor myself, to validate myself, and to love myself. But now I want to experience the adventure of love and relationship with someone. I want that closeness and intimacy and connection.

When we’re loved well, powerful things happen. That’s what relationship is for—to uplift and support and grow together. To heal the parts of ourselves that felt unlovable in the presence of love, not the absence of it.

I’ve spent the past eight years learning more about myself than I ever thought possible. I learned how to love myself so deeply, no one’s opinion of me has precedence over my own. I learned to believe in myself even in the face of others cutting me down. I learned to honor myself, remember my worth. I learned to trust in my own authority, to speak my truth and express myself even if it means discomfort and conflict. I learned to never abandon myself—my heart—for the sake of others again.

I learned that I matter, too.

These lessons were hard-learned. They were learned through contrast, and now I don’t want to experience pain anymore, so let me find my way to peace. I don’t want to feel like I’m begging for attention, starving for affection, so let me offer that to myself. I don’t want to question if I matter to someone, so let me choose myself first.

They were all the lessons I needed to learn to anchor so fully into connecting with and knowing myself.

And now…

I want to learn through love.

I’m ready to see the other reflection—the light side of me and not just the shadow. I want to see the love I have inside reflected back without hesitation—with pure devotion, and affection, and a fearless claim.

I love the lighthearted, goofy, and silly side of me I’ve found again, and I want to know that my person doesn’t expect perfection but loves me flaws and all. I love to feel safe and secure wrapped inside someone’s arms that both comfort and protect—as if they know I’m strong, but there in that embrace I can let myself go, let myself be, and they’ll hold me steady until I remember myself again. I love the kisses and cuddles and the unabashed desire to want to be close—I want to spend our time together because it’s always better together.

And yes, being so independent I want to have our space, too. But I love hearing his voice—and I want him to want to hear mine—to share all about our day and looking forward to seeing each other again.

I don’t want to feel ashamed of the closeness I want.

Maybe someday I’ll meet someone who’ll offer that companionship, and I’ll love them deeply, and my heart will be devoted to them—because when I love, I love deeply and devotedly.

But sometimes I wonder if the most sacred part of my love story has already happened. Maybe it just doesn’t look like I thought it would. Maybe it wasn’t the full relationship that I’d wanted it to be, but there was love.

My god, there was love.

And that love won’t end, even as my life reshapes itself and a new chapter begins.

Whatever is being written there.

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

Today’s my late-grandma’s birthday.

It’s also the eight-year anniversary of the start of my ascension journey.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since my life irrevocably changed and I began a journey that would completely alter the course of my life...

And myself.

The past 15+ years haven’t been easy. Surviving illness—a few times at that—and fighting my way through Dark Nights and crises of faith and then moving through spiritual awakening after spiritual awakening only to face the deepest parts of myself in the throes of ascension, well...

Let’s just say the human spirit is nothing if not resilient, and I’m annoyingly, boundlessly optimistic even when I want to be anything else.

But, here in this moment of reflection, I can share my truth: this journey has been the greatest gift of my life.

I couldn’t always say that. I didn’t always want to say that. When you’re in the thick of it, man... It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. But the way to the other side is through, and through endless acts of surrender, I began to learn what true and unconditional love really means. Not in the self-help, performative kind of way, but in deep and sacred connection to the inner chambers of the heart.

In the recognition of the soul.

In the homecoming to oneself.

So why the backpacks in the picture?

I intended to spend the day in my pajamas watching sappy, romantic Christmas movies, journaling, and reflecting on the day, but as soon as I woke up, I heard Spirit urging me to go to the Goodwill.

Weird, I mused. But OK.

When my intuition is strong like this, I know to get out of my own way and follow—that there’s always a reason for it, even if I can’t see all the threads just yet.

Surrender. Trust. Take that divine action.

(Yeah, I’ve learned a thing or two along this path…)

I found these backpacks—brand new, clean, tags still on.

I left them. I drove home.

What was I going to do with them, anyway?

(Clearly I haven’t learned enough to follow that divine action all the way through…)

The Universe rolled its eyes and pinged me with an idea. I drove back, picked up a few of the backpacks, and found brand-new squishmellows, a brand-new infant toy, and some other goodies in the process.

This time, I didn’t hesitate.

Giving has always been important to me—philanthropy is one of my core values—but I wasn’t always in a position to be of service. That’s also what this journey gave me—new outlets and resources and opportunities to share more of my heart and soul. And while I’m not living the full extent of my personal dreams, I’m happy, I’m fulfilled, and I’m blessed with opportunities to be there for others.

My grandmother was one of the most giving people I’d ever known, and she taught me from an early age how to be generous of spirit. I feel like she was with me today, reminding me that when you go where you’re guided, magic is possible.

I’m filling these backpacks with treats and goodies and reaching out to my teacher friend to find out who could use a little bit more joy this season. And in the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my annual Community Connections post with ideas for how you can offer similar support in your local communities.

To quote my favorite musical, Hadestown: “If no one takes too much, there will always be enough. She will always fill our cup.”

With love,
Susan

Want more words?

Read my books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

WHEN WE BUILD CATHEDRALS
by Susan Dawn

She waits in the arch

of a centuries-old cathedral,

concealed beneath a canopy

of wooden rafters and ancient timber,

sitting vigil without story

while hymns and homilies

and the holy cry of sacred hearts

echo in the hallowed hall below.

Her maker carved her

into the high beam,

etching fine lines

along the curve of her wings,

folded forever, at rest,

her fragile beak faintly parted

to share in the chorus of her

four-chambered heart.

I share my heart in silence, too—

carve hope into blog posts

buried in the algorithm,

share stories of grace spoken into

the absence of audience,

channel love through spaces

between silences.

I lay my living legacy

brick by brick, page by page

embedded in the marrow of the world.

This is my cathedral,

chiseled from soul and

stained-glass

and scripture—

truth born from presence,

not pulpits.

But who looks up,

or sees deep beneath?

This open sanctuary

welcomes the weary

finding refuge in its pews,

but there is no altar here—

only a remembered vow

to be a candle in the night.

What meaning will remain

when the carvings are complete

and the scaffolding falls away?

What place do I have

in the history of the heart

when all that I’m building

is invisible to the gilded eye—

a bird with a song

perched in the rafters,

concealed within the cathedral’s

bone and beam, hymn unheard

and no less holy.

“No one will see her,”

they goaded with glee.

Her maker molded anyway.

That’s not why we create

beautiful things.

Searching for Icarus: Poems for the Soul’s Journey is available in eBook and paperback everywhere books are sold!

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Behind the Poem

I wrote this poem in the early morning hours of a Sunday in July. It was one of the last poems I wrote as I was readying my manuscript for publication…

Read more

Oof.

Here we are again, in our little writing sanctuary—my place of catharsis to process emotions that are swirling and twirling within me like one of those ballerinas that spring to life when you open the lid of a jewelry box.

I had one of those as a kid. I wish I still had it now. It was pale blue and white and played a gentle chime, and the ballerina had the most fragile blue tulle skirt. I remember cranking it up and listening to the light notes of the familiar song and watching her twirl on her little spring, thinking how beautiful she was.

I wonder where that jewelry box is now—maybe hidden in the back corner of a Goodwill or in a landfill or on another child’s bedroom shelf. I like to think of her as dancing and delighting another little girl…

The little girl within me wishes that for her.

See? Here I am, emotions rising again. You can’t keep it in, I know from experience, and so onto the page it goes…

What is it that I’m feeling, and why?

For the past few years, I’ve felt at peace, strong within myself, and in balance with these emotions. Pockets of grief arise, and I work through it, transmute it—losing my childhood friend this summer, seeing pictures of my soul dog who passed away five years ago, letting go of dreams and wishes I held for so long in my heart, even anticipatory grief for changes that are inevitable because although we are infinite, life is short and we have only this, here and now.

I’ll never understand how we don’t make the most of the here and now—I’ll never understand how we can hold ourselves back from loving as fully and boldly and fearlessly as possible. I will never understand holding onto resentment and grudges and pain when healing and peace is possible. I will never understand how people would rather isolate themselves in their pain rather than express their hearts.

To the end of my days, I will never understand this. And to the end of my days, I vow to love and love and love and love.

Loudly. Boldly. Fully.

Fearlessly.

But I digress.

When I feel emotions like grief—or even an overwhelm of love—I sit with it. Emotions are energy, after all. And they’re always showing you something about yourself. So maybe that’s what I have to do—explore what this is showing me.

To do that, I need to go back to last night, where it all seems to have started…

My dad and I attended a Getting Acquainted Dinner for our local AHL hockey team. We’ve been season ticket holders for a few years now and have made some great friends in our section who are members of the booster club, and because I’m all about having experiences right now—which, upon consideration might stem from spending the majority of my 20s and 30s bedridden from illness and recovering from trauma, not to mention going through the deepest layers of personal healing one can fathom thanks to my spiritual journey, so of course I’m ready to have a little fun in life—we decided to join them for dinner with the players.

We had a great time—one-on-one connections, fascinating conversations, a fun meet and greet. It was everything I was expecting and more. I took some pictures with some of my favorite players, including one of our goalies and right wings, who are both so friendly and just hilarious and delightful in person. It was a truly joyful experience.

I love this team. I love this sport. I love the brotherhood and camaraderie and true sportsmanship that’s displayed. My parents used to ask me to turn on the hockey game for my Grandma when she lived with us, and I’d run to her room where she was in her chair knitting, and we’d watch the first period together, enthralled by the fast pace of the skaters and the puck. I love everything to do with the ice and have since I was a kid watching Kristy Yamaguchi and Scotty Hamilton and Ekaterina Gordeeva in Stars on Ice.

Then I tried figure skating myself, and as soon as my skates hit the ice, I was off like there was nothing more natural in the world. My friends all quit after a few months, but there I was learning waltz jumps and toe loops and single salchows, and man, nothing was more scary or more exhilarating. But I was in middle school. And everything kinda sucks when you’re in middle school (especially getting sick with mono that’s actually undiagnosed Lyme disease), and soon insecurity took hold and I pressed pause on my lessons.

My one and only regret in life is never trying again.

Maybe that’s what this is bringing up.

Insecurity.

Because that’s the only thing I can think of that triggered what I’m feeling now.

Last night, I took pictures with the hockey players who are all extremely tall, and I’m…

extremely not.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Fun fact: both of my exes were also tall. Which is probably a given considering the fact that, once again, I’m decidedly not. But it never bothered me—or them, presumably.

Until now.

When you live with your body for over forty years, you get kinda used to it. I went through puberty early and my family are all on the shorter side, so being in that end of the gene pool would dictate that I probably wasn’t going to be a supermodel.

I never wanted to be, anyway. I was always comfortable with myself—it was what it was. Sometimes I’d feel the frustration of having to order special-sized heels for work or shop in the children’s department for sneakers or hem the bottoms of every single pair of pants I bought or wear capris as regular pants instead (all true stories). But that was life. I didn’t know anything else.

When I was in college, I took an improv class as part of a humanities requirement. Our professor did an experiment by having the shortest person in the room stand on a chair while the tallest person in the room got on their knees.

I stood on the chair.

It was an experiment to show different perspectives—kind of a metaphor for walking a mile in another’s shoes. I’ve gotten so used to never seeing the top of shelves and being able to see up everyone’s noses that it just doesn’t phase me anymore.

It literally just is what it is.

And it doesn’t phase the people around me, either. My group of friends all love and adore me, and while they’ll make fun, I’m never hurt or ashamed because it’s all coming from love, and I can feel that from them. My height has never bothered me before.

Before now.

Because I look at that picture and I don’t recognize her. She’s not who I am inside. And I can’t help but be sad that the beautiful woman that I feel inside doesn’t exactly show itself on the outside, and if it doesn’t show on the outside then what does that mean of others’ perception of me?

And why suddenly, today, does that seem to matter at all?

My body has been through so much, and I’ve had to learn to love and accept and honor it as it is. Lyme disease almost killed me a few times over, and I’ve fought my way back to where I am now—functioning and thriving and healthier than I’ve been in over a decade with still a ways to go because this disease is relentless, but then again so am I.

I’m a survivor, but I want more for my life than to have survived. My body wears the scars of illness everyday, but my soul has healed and flourished, and I’m so damn proud of the woman I’ve become.

I love her. For the first time in my life, I love the woman I see in the mirror. I love who she’s become. I love her heart, I love her soul, and I can look at her and believe, “you’re beautiful.”

But it kind of breaks my heart to think that others don’t see that. Or that they’ll look at me as one thing, when I’m so many other things. I don’t know how to reconcile the woman I am within with whatever everyone sees without.

I feel powerful and magnetic and beautiful, and I know my worth…

But if you were to look at me… would you see that, too?

I awoke in the middle of the night, my heart heavy with this insecurity. For the first time in a long time, I broke down in tears. I didn’t judge what I was feeling, didn’t berate myself further. I held a hand to my heart and let myself cry in the dark, asking God to help me keep loving myself, keep seeing myself as I am even if others can’t—or if they choose not to.

Then my cat curled up next to me. His tail flicked against my arm as if to say, “you’re good. I got you. Come back to yourself.”

As if to remind me that no matter what size you are, you’re powerful and beautiful and worthy, too.

Want more words?

Read the books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

I long for the soft life.

It wasn’t always like this—that wasn’t always my dream.

I have an entrepreneurial spirit and a indistinguishable flame in my heart. I’m ambitious by nature—but not ambitious by means of wanting my name on the corner office or the luxury house in the gated community or the pillars of fame and fortune. Those are fine dreams for someone else, but that’s never been me.

No, my ambition isn’t tied to power and control or monetary value or even household name recognition where you’re on a first-name basis like Taylor or Sabrina or Olivia. Could you imagine? Susan? I don’t think my life was fashioned for that, anyway…

My ambition instead is tied to wanting to create change in the world—and that, in my experienced opinion, is much more challenging and devastating. Challenging because creating change requires you to let the world change you first. It demands a level of surrender that ambition rarely tolerates. It asks you to dismantle every false structure you’ve built—every way you’ve tried to prove your worth, every identity you’ve used to hold yourself together—and then to keep showing up, heart-first, even when you’re raw and exhausted from the process.

Been there. Still doing that.

It’s devastating because all you want is to be heard, seen—understood—in a loud and distracted world that’s committed to misunderstanding you.

I have a private collection of videos saved on Tik Tok under the name “Wishlist.” Nope, it’s not the Taylor Swift version, although somehow the essence of her song seems pretty accurate to what I’m getting at. My collection is over 400 videos of dreams and soul wishes—sometimes foreign places I want to visit or adventurous experiences I want to have, but mostly it’s my dream life within the sanctuary of a home.

It’s a quiet cottage on a beautiful piece of land near some kind of water source—a brook or stream or river. There’s a flourishing garden in back from which I harvest vegetables and herbs for meals, fresh flowers for the table. Sometimes I relax out there on my wooden swing and watch the current as a thousand scenes from my forthcoming novels play out in my head—scenes I’ll put to paper later. Sometimes, when it’s raining, I’ll look out the kitchen or living room window and watch the droplets dance across the water.

I have animals—definitely dogs and cats, maybe some ducks and mini-goats and chickens. I have no idea how to raise ducks or goats or chickens, but I’ll learn. The chickens give me eggs that I use for meals, and I pass the extras along to neighbors or a food bank. I also have no idea what to do with the goats—do mini-goats produce cheese? Maybe I’ll have a neighbor who has farm animals and horses instead, and their paddock reaches the edge of my property so I can enjoy their company without all the work of caring for them.

(I’ve cared for a lot of people in my lifetime. I want to be cared for. I want to take care of me—even for just a little while, even for just a few years of this peaceful life, this soft-hearted dream.)

Inside, my cottage is decorated in a blend of French provencal charm and boho chic and dark academia. It’s an eclectic mix of everything I love—gauzy linen curtains that waft with the summer breeze from open windows, curved mahogany bookshelves that store my collection of favorite authors, and colorful rugs layered across the hardwood floors for added comfort, blankets and pillows everywhere because I’m in my cozy era. Art from independent artists bought at markets and thrift stores are hung on the stone walls, and crystals and candles line the mantle and windowsills next to sentimental pictures and pieces I’ve collected throughout my lifetime.

I make tea in the kitchen—a touch of honey, just like a long-ago love used to make it—and scribble poetry and pieces of dialogue in a journal on the counter. Music is always playing at a low hum throughout the house—Ed Sheeran or Trevor Hall or a Broadway musical or Yo-Yo Ma. My musical taste is as eclectic as my decor.

My days are spent working—though it never feels like work. That’s what happens when you create a life you love. I might do a Tarot reading or coach someone through the dark nights of chronic illness, or I might spend a few hours researching a plant that will only show up once in some obscure scene of my manuscript, and even then the lines might never make it to publication, but they’ll have existed once, even if only in a draft in my mind. And on the weekends, I’ll host dinner parties with family and game nights with friends.

I’ll never miss a moment cuddling with the cat and snuggling with the dog, knowing my time with them is far too precious and way too short. Sorry, that should probably be plural. Cats and dogs. It was always a dream to have a sanctuary for dogs, and while that’s one of many dreams I’ve laid to rest, I’ll always have room for their forever home.

In this soft life, I’ll keep creating.

I’ll write books that move people, that make them think but most importantly, that make them feel. I’ll offer programs and presence to guide people home to their hearts, help them remember love and remember themselves. I’ll bring awareness and education to a misunderstood illness and encourage hope for the healing. I’ll help organize food drives and literacy campaigns and donate to the thousand causes that speak to my heart, and I’ll keep doing all these things I’m doing now because it started here.

But I also want more. I want more for my life and I want more for the world.

That’s the thing about ambition—it never really leaves you. It grows, and you grow along with it. This is all my heart has ever called for, all I’ve ever strived for—to change the world in big ways even if I have to take these small steps.

All the while living in the softness and peace and love that my soul deeply desires.

That’s where my ambition is. It’s not the kind that climbs ladders or chases lights. It’s the inherent wish to leave the world just a tiny bit better, a little more loved.

That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.

Want more words?

Read the books!

Available at www.montourscity.com and www.susandawnspiritual.com

One of my friends has been sharing a series on her Facebook page honoring the saints. As ​a former Catholic​, I’ve always found these glimpses into their lives fascinating—testimonies of devotion, courage, and the way spirit weaves through an ordinary human path.

Over the summer, by what felt like happenstance though I know is anything but, I first came across Hildegard of Bingen. Since then I’ve been reading more about her—a visionary, a mystic, an artist whose creative life flowed directly from her spiritual devotion. Something in my soul sparked, and so when another saint recently appeared on my friend’s page, I felt the resonance even more deeply.

This time it was St. Teresa of Ávila. She, too, was both a mystic and a writer, carrying visions and translating them into words—even weaving stories out of her spiritual experiences. Reading about her, I realized how much that mirrors my own path, particularly with my recently-created outlet, ​The Mystic and the Muse​.

I’ve always been guided in what I create, and I know now that my work—whether a book, a poem, or a reading or channeling—has never been random.

There’s always a purpose for it.

Stick with me a minute...

In our capitalistic society, that truth can feel buried. And I know many of you feel this too—the constant pressure to keep up, to stay visible, to measure your worth by numbers. How many followers do you have? How many views did you get? How much revenue did it bring in?

Hurry, hurry, hurry, the algorithm hums. Post the next thing. Feed the machine. Don’t get left behind.

And yet, I keep coming back to my own truth. I’ve never been satisfied with surface-level measures of success. And while I understand the importance of growth—you have to, to some degree, in order to sustain an online business—the questions that matter most to me have always been deeper ones: But how did it make you feel? How did it impact your life? How did it land in your heart?

That’s the legacy of my work. That’s why I create.

Whether I’m writing a novel or sharing a workshop or channeling, it all comes from the same wellspring. My stories—like Lilac in Winter, with its exploration of love and living memory, or East of Everywhere, where belonging and redemption carve a new path—aren’t just words on a page. They’re mirrors of the human condition, windows into hope and healing of the heart, reminders of resilience.

That soul story runs through my poetry in my new book, ​Searching for Icarus​, channeling something both familiar and eternal. And my spiritual work carries that same heartbeat, too. A workshop, a class, a deck, or a channeling—they’re not just products and services. They’re vessels of remembrance, activations for reclamation. They’re invitations into deeper embodiment—into the sacred mystery and magic of love, union, and evolution.

My business, in the end, is simply the container for this self-expression. Because if my work is an extension of me—of my own soul’s journey—then it can only grow as I do.

Right now, I feel the call to expand not through doing more, but through living more. To return to the spaces where inspiration is born: in experience, in embodiment, in presence.

That means saying yes to life—to the events, connections, and changes that are shaping these next three months—while also honoring the equal pull to go within.

I feel called to fiercely protect my energy, to step into a kind of hermit mode where solitude and reflection make space for what wants to emerge. It’s a rhythm of both immersion and retreat, of being out in the world and then pulling back to let those experiences root more deeply inside.

And so, looking ahead...

This is why I’m stepping back into a sabbatical for the final months of the year—October through January.

The most meaningful work I’ve ever created hasn’t come from hustle or pressure—it’s come from experience, from being out in the world, from letting life move me first so that I can then translate it into words, teachings, and offerings.

These next months will be full in many ways, but they will also be sacredly quiet. A season of outward movement and inward retreat, of gathering inspiration in the world and then letting it blossom in reflection.

That’s where the truest work is born.

June reminded me of that truth. I spent the month traveling, sharing new experiences with friends, making connections, and saying yes to soul-led adventures.

And even though I wasn’t as forward-facing, I was still creating in the background—writing, channeling, creating—not because I had to, but because I was inspired. That season showed me how alive I feel when I let creation flow from living rather than obligation. It was a return to joy, and my work that came forth from it carried its deepest weight because of it.

We need art now more than ever. Literature, music, visual art—these remind us of who we are, give us permission to feel, and open us into new ways of seeing. They carry us into other worlds and deeper into ourselves. They teach us to think, to question, to grow.

That’s the core of who I am and the heart of what my work has always been.

Like Hildegard of Bingen, whose visions became music and medicine, and Teresa of Ávila, whose devotion became story, I see now that the creative and the mystical have never been separate.

At least, not for me.

Their lives remind me that art and spirit have always walked hand-in-hand, and that creation itself can be an act of devotion. My own work is simply one small way of carrying that truth forward—through story and poetry, workshops and classes, and the spaces I hold for our individual and collective transformation.

As I step into these next few months, I do so with a trust that what’s lived and embodied will naturally flow into what’s written, spoken, and shared. That art and spirit aren’t separate, but threads of the same tapestry.

And that my path continues to lead me back, again and again, to the mystic as the muse.

What this means...

So here’s what this means:

In practice, this sabbatical doesn’t mean anything stops—it simply means I’ll be showing up in a more intentional way and with more of a focus on my first love: writing. You’ll still have access to everything I’ve already created, as well as the spaces we continue to share together.

I’ll still be offering collective readings, but when I feel called versus routine weekly check-ins. You might also notice these shifting. Rather than focusing as closely on the masculine, feminine, and counterpart energies as I’ve done in the past, the guidance now is pulling us towards a broader perspective—one that explores how sacred union is shaping us collectively, and how it weaves into the greater path of ascension.

Which, if you’ve taken advantage of my full offerings and channelings, is what we’ve always done. See some of that collection in our ​Free Resource Library​.

We already have a wealth of timeless readings and resources to support you through your sacred union path of ascension, but this next chapter is about deepening into what it means to anchor that union, embody it, and allow it to move us further into service and mission—in authentic expression and in love.

It’s an expansion of what’s already here—an opening into the larger picture of how love transforms not only our connections but our world.

Here are the details:

• The Unity Code Intensive: My work with 1:1 clients continues uninterrupted.

• Higher-Heart Academy: The Academy remains open with a full collection of resources to guide you deeper into embodied union with yourself, a counterpart, and your spiritual journey. New content, including workshops and topical mini-channelings, will continue to be added, so be sure to join the Higher-Heart Community as part of your membership for updates.

• Sacred Circle Community Livestream: Our monthly livestream gathering on YouTube continues as usual.

  • Due to a scheduling conflict, we’ve had to skip this month’s Sacred Circle, but we’ll resume in November.

• Services: Select services remain available for one:one single-session guidance.

  • I’m still debating on Year Ahead readings and/or a fundraiser reading special to end the year. I’ll have a final decision in November.

• YouTube: Readings are shared as I feel guided, with a focus on soul path, ascension, and the embodiment of sacred union. I’ll add occasional Sacred Union Energy Updates for additional support of your collective journeys as I’m called.

• Social Media: I’ll still post on Instagram and Facebook, but my other platforms will be moving into legacy mode (still available, but inactive).

• Substack: The Mystic and the Muse will continue to be my main outlet for writing, reflection, and sharing the deeper currents of this journey. Writing is where I’ll be focusing my attention over the next three months, so be sure to subscribe for essays, behind-the-scenes, personal stories, and reflections.

As you can see, on the surface it might not look like much has changed—and that’s how I want it. Our journey and the work we share together remain mostly uninterrupted.

But beneath the surface, I’m returning to the heart of my writing, engaging in collaborative projects, and listening deeply for what wants to emerge next.

This time of reflection isn’t just about me—it’s about making space to receive what will serve you, our community, in the deepest way as I explore and anchor this next evolution of our work together.

What comes next—whether masterclasses, sacred channelings, or an exciting new collaborative endeavor—will be shaped with you, and for you.

Wherever you are on your journey, know that you’re never walking it alone. My deepest hope is that you find what you need here—whether it’s comfort, clarity, inspiration, or the reminder that you’re not only loved, but love itself.

As I take a step back in this season of creative reflection, my prayer is that you, too, give yourself permission to live, to embody, to let your own soul guide you. And when I return with all that comes next, I trust it will meet you in the perfect moment, just as you are.

Until then, may the path continue to unfold with grace, may your heart remain open to its own wisdom, and may we continue—together—to remember the truth of this sacred love.

With love,
Susan

Dear Little Susy…

We’re 42 today. I know that sounds like such a huge number to you—ancient, even, and beyond your little mind’s grasp. But I promise, it’s not as scary as it seems. In fact, it was only when you turned 40 that you really began to feel at home in yourself, in this world.

I’ll get to that later…

Four decades. Four decades beyond your age in this photo. Four decades of birthday presents and cake and celebrating with loved ones—yes, I promise we still gather with those we cherish. But birthdays take on new meaning now—we don’t just celebrate you, but we celebrate life.

How we survived. How we thrived despite it all.

Oh, but there’s so much to tell you…

You’ll notice some familiar faces sitting around the table, or popping in to say hello. Some will be missing, too—empty chairs and absent voices that you never quite get used to. You’ll realize early on—in about ten years or so—how precious this tradition is, and it will be the only gift you’ll ever want from that moment forward…

Time.

Time with the people you love—whether they stay for a moment or forever. It’s the only thing that truly matters, but don’t worry. You catch on to that pretty quick.

Four decades, Susy. Four decades that feel like a full lifetime for all we’ve seen and done, and the hundreds of versions we’ve become.

Oh, you’re going to be so proud.

You know that dream you’ve held your whole life, since you first began to dream? No, not teaching sign language to gorillas or being a champion figure skater like Kristi Yamaguchi. Your 6th grade guidance counselor will pretty much quash that first one, and the second was never big enough to warrant you learning anything beyond single toe loops and salchows.

I’m talking about the dream embedded in your soul. The one you came here with. The one you began to nurture since you first learned to hold a pencil, since you crafted homemade books made out of cardboard and wallpaper backing in your Montessori classroom.

Yeah, that dream.

Guess what? You did it. You’re an author. Your words are on the page, curated into a story and bound in a book—seven books, actually. Wild, isn’t it? They’re out in the world. And part of you is out there with them…

Susy, there’s still so much more I have to tell you, so much more you won’t believe. Like how you follow in Grandma’s footsteps and buy your own house, and how it becomes your place of healing. You travel to foreign countries, discover that France feels like home and plant the seed of a new dream in the garden of your heart. You create businesses and build communities, and shape a life of your own design.

More importantly, you don’t give up.

Most importantly, you love and love and love.

You’ve also been through some sh—stuff. (Sorry. We use questionable language a lot now. Don’t let that surprise you.)

Life hasn’t always been gentle or kind or forgiving. But I promise, it gets better.

You get better.

Now, I want to give you some advice—from this 42 year old woman to you, my little heart:

• You’re going to experience some things, not far from now, that will make you dim your light, retreat inside yourself. You’ll grow shy, insecure, and even a little afraid of the world. You are safe, dear Susy. You’re safe here, you’re safe to be you. Please don’t hide away that silly, goofy girl. Please don’t lock yourself away. But if you do, I promise, I’ll find you again. It might take me a while. Forty years, to be exact. But I’ll be there to remind you how loved you are, as you are.

• Be kind to your parents during your prepubescent years. They’re people, too, navigating raising children and being someone’s son and daughter themselves at the same time and trying to figure out how their little girl all of a sudden became, well… you. You’ll have the gift of helping to raise a little girl someday. You’ll understand what it’s like to watch time pass too quickly. Give grace. And also? Forgive them for what they don’t know. They’re doing the best they can… and they’re pretty damn amazing at it.

• Which leads me to this. Love them harder. Stay with them a little longer. Go to dinner with your grandparents. Watch that cartoon show with your brothers. Play another round of Canasta with your mom and dad. (Yes, we’ll eventually move beyond Go Fish.) You’ll find and cherish your independence in profound ways, but times will change, dynamics will shift, and life will lead you all in new directions—both together and apart. Don’t be so eager for what’s ahead; love what’s here and now.

• There will be three moments that will irrevocably change your life: France when you’re sixteen, France when you’re 25, and France when you’re 40. At sixteen, you’ll discover yourself. At 25, you’ll lose yourself. At 40, you’ll come home to yourself again.

• Don’t give up ice skating. Just don’t do it. You’ll dream about it for the rest of your life.

• You’re psychic. Don’t freak out.

• Your height will peak in elementary school. I’m so, so sorry.

• You’ll meet a boy when you’re ten years old. He’ll give you a card for Valentine’s Day. Please accept it. Let him see you. He’s the love of your life.

• Don’t bother with the GRE’s. Grad school isn’t for you. Neither is Boston, or Baltimore like you’ll one day plan with one of your best friends. You have so many more exciting things ahead—things that you’ll never believe you’re capable of.

• Speaking of friends… Some friendships will fade from the foreground, and it will hurt like hell, and that’s OK. You’ll one day learn that time and distance don’t completely erase history, and you’ll love them anyway. But you’ll begin to meet your best friends as you grow up, and the circle will become smaller and bigger and smaller again, and you’ll learn there are oh, so many different definitions of soulmates, and so many ways to love.

• And speaking of love… Adopt the dog. Take home the cat. Don’t ever look back.

Oh, Little One. If there’s one thing I could tell you about who you become, it’s this…

There’s so much life packed into your years ahead. There will be tears (sooooo many tears). There will be laughter (so much laughter!).

But most of all, there will be love.

Because I love you. And I will never, ever stop.

Hugging you and loving you,

Your Older Self, Susan

I’m at the beach writing this in my journal right now, visiting with one of my best friends on our yearly day trip. The weather is perfect—a blanket of clouds mitigating the heat of the late September sun, a slight breeze cooling the air just so… I love listening to the roar of the ocean, love watching the waves crash and recede only to do it all over again.

I needed this.

God, I needed this.

We’re at a new beach farther along the point than our usual haunt. It’s a fishing beach, so it’s more secluded here—technically, at least. The shoreline is peppered with white stakes holding fishing lines, and nearby, families are lounging on blankets or beach chairs. I watch a chocolate lab play in the surf a quarter mile away—I’m pretty sure he’s trying to catch the waves with his mouth—and people are tanning or reading or napping, children shaping sandcastles with their hands.

It’s peaceful here. I’ve needed this peace.

The past several days, I haven’t felt much of that at all.

I’m experiencing another consciousness shift. I’ve been on this journey long enough to recognize it—long enough to identify the ego tantrums my old self was throwing and the pain codes rising to the surface no matter how I tried to stuff them back down.

Long enough not to pay them much attention but to instead observe, surrender, and let myself move through it.

Rage. Disappointment. Frustration. Injustice. Unfairness. Grief.

It was all there, waiting to be recognized and felt so that its energy could be released.

And boy, did I feel it.

Healing always comes in waves, like this ocean tide. Deeper and deeper I go into myself, and at the same time, I’m expanding in my awareness and connection to all that is.

I’ve experienced this expansion before—dozens of times. This is the hallmark of our evolution, after all. But this is the first time I’m purposefully meeting it from love rather than self-punishment. And it’s only now I can clearly see how the very spaces meant for healing sometimes perpetuate the wound within us.

The spiritual community can be so damaging to the soul. I’ve begun to realize this over the past few years as I continued to turn inwards, to recognize myself as the empowered creator of my lived reality. Just like anything taken to the extreme, it can become self-punishment and spiritual abuse, and you can convince yourself that you deserve pain or struggle or that you’re doing something wrong and that’s why shitty things happen.

“But I’m doing everything right!” you try to bargain with the Universe. “I’m leading from my heart; I’m trusting my intuition. How can everything go so wrong?”

It doesn’t make sense. And so you gaslight yourself to try to make it make sense—maybe if you just tried another technique or a new framework or learned another spiritual concept or took another medicine journey… Maybe then it wouldn’t feel like such a struggle. Maybe then surrender wouldn’t feel so much like defeat.

Maybe then you’ll understand yourself and your place in this world, and isn’t that what we crave most as humans?

To know where we stand.

To know where we belong.

But it’s here…

In moments like this—at rest before the vast stretch of ocean that mirrors the sky so you can’t tell where one ends and one begins—that you start to find the answers.

They were never outside of you, anyway.

There’s a saying that goes, “Tell me who you think of when you’re standing before the ocean, and I’ll show you who you love.”

It’s true. Because even in this split-second thought—this brief moment of vulnerability before the raw power of one of nature’s greatest wonders—you’re deeply connected to yourself. And so you’re deeply connected to your heart without ego, without reservation, without question.

The ocean might have secrets of its own, but you can’t keep secrets from it.

It knows you more intimately than you even know yourself.

A pelican dips into the waves. A seagull climbs towards the sun.

And I stand at the shoreline of the infinite, nestled between ocean and sky and close my eyes.

Who do I love?

Everyone. Everyone. Everyone.

I imagine that's how the mythical Icarus felt—world below and sky surrounding him. I imagine everything felt possible, and that's why he stretched his wings in freedom, climbing higher still.

But flight is only half the story.

Because you can’t know ascension without the descent, or light without the dark. The freefall into shadow and the salvation that follows is where our awakening takes root.

This is where Searching for Icarus was born.

Three years in the making, drawn from over two decades of personal poetry, this collection is the map of a journey I didn’t know I was charting until I looked back and saw the threads—love and loss, longing and surrender, the ashes of myself and the wings I forged from them. Searching for Icarus is a collection of sacred poetry that traces the arc of spiritual awakening by exploring the delicate balance between light and shadow, the human and the divine.

Reimagining the myth of Icarus, this collection offers a new perspective on what it means to rise towards the light, fall into shadow, and find yourself in the space between.

It's the soul’s journey through the very human experience of spiritual awakening.

The book is divided into five parts—The Call, Rise, The Descent, Rebirth, and The Becoming—each one a threshold, a reflection, a passage into a new facet of the self. A mix of micro-poetry and longer reflective pieces, each live in the tender space of flight and fall.

If you’ve ever felt the tension between heaven and earth, or the pull to become something greater without losing the truth of who you are, this book is for you.

Searching for Icarus: Poems for the Soul's Journey is available in eBook and paperback everywhere books are sold!

To celebrate the launch, I’ll be sharing poems, glimpses behind the writing, and the deeper experiences that shaped this collection here on The Mystic and the Muse over the next few weeks. Become a subscriber and stay tuned for all the sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes!

I’d love for you to post a picture, share your favorite poem, or leave a review when the book finds its way to you. You’ll be part of helping Searching for Icarus take flight and reach others who, like you, are finding their way through their spiritual journey.

You can:

• Order your copy from online retailers

• Request it from your local bookstore or library

• Get your personalized, signed copy directly from me!

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Searching for Icarus is a living testament to not only what I’ve walked through myself, but also the journey we’ve found ourselves on together.

May these words carry the echoes of the rise and fall, and the (r)evolution within us all.

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