Trusting the Muse
How Writing Became My Spiritual Path
When I was a child, I spoke to angels.
Like most kids, I eventually forgot and suppressed this as I grew up, but since being on my spiritual journey I’ve rediscovered long-lost memories of sitting on the carpet of my childhood bedroom, cutting out quotes from an angel magazine, writing my own poems about angels, and even choosing “angel” as part of my first AIM screen name and an archangel as my Confirmation name.
I never felt especially connected to religion—more confused by faith than comforted by it. With my parents’ blessing, I left the church as soon as I was Confirmed and began my own exploration. Catholicism laid the initial foundation, but my understanding of spirituality was shaped by people like my childhood best friend. At our sleepovers, I’d watch her family light candles and recite blessings, and in the fall, we’d help her dad put up the sukkah on their back patio, adorning it with corn husks.
My own spirituality continued to evolve as I discovered other world religions and beliefs, primarily through books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Siddhartha, and the essays of Emerson and the transcendentalists that crossed my path as early as middle school, opening my mind to new ways of thinking about faith and the Universe.
Over time, I found my truth in Thomas Paine’s words: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
Simple, but honest.
I found God in the stillness. I found sanctuary outdoors instead of in a church.
Nature became my cathedral.
When I was 25, I traveled to the Languedoc region of Southern France for a writer’s retreat. I was a hot mess, as unbeknownst to me at the time, it was my first official spiritual awakening. The owner of the inn, noting that my anxiety wasn’t abating two weeks into my month-long stay, took me to see her psychic friend in a nearby village, where I experienced my first Reiki and mediumship session. My grandmother came through with words of comfort, which seemed appropriate, given I was working on my first book. Gold in the Days of Summer had started as a collection of short stories and turned into a novella based around my childhood days of schoolyard crushes, evolving friendships, and watching my grandma decline from Alzheimer’s disease.
(The Languedoc region, I should add, is deeply connected to the Cathars and the rose-line of Mary Magdalene—something I wasn’t aware of at the time. Fifteen years later, in a full-circle moment, I returned to Carcassonne for my 40th birthday on a spiritual pilgrimage—fully conscious and immersed in my ascension journey. It was the most profound trip of my life.)
When I returned home from France in 2008, I connected with a local psychic for tarot readings to help me navigate my quarter-life crisis. As a teenager, I had found my mom’s old tarot deck in the basement, but I never quite connected with it. Funny enough, now I read professionally.
It seems spirituality was always part of my path, it was just unfolding in its natural time.
This was the first tarot reading I had ever received, and while I had long been drawn to personal development—writing about my life and soul growth on my blog for years—spirituality was unlocking something deeper, a part of me I didn’t even know was missing.
Over the years, this local psychic would become a mentor and friend. I took some spiritual development courses with her and began to open up again to my own intuitive gifts—I even invited her to the launch party when I published Gold in the Days of Summer!
Gold in the Days of Summer happened somewhat miraculously in hindsight. I had been researching publishing paths for years, including self-publishing through what was then a company called CreateSpace. When I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease in 2012, after 15 years of misdiagnosis, I decided to launch my own imprint under Brown Beagle Books, named for my beloved dog, Riley. I followed my intuition through the entire process, from choosing my incredible cover designers—who I’ve now worked with for over a decade—to building my business. Looking back, it all felt almost effortless.
At least, that’s how I remember it now.
More than anything, this book was a guiding light in a very dark time, and I will always have a special fondness for it.
Gold in the Days of Summer helped to heal my inner child and come to terms with my grandmother's illness and eventual passing, whose grief I'd never truly processed. I thought I’d already dug deep into the soul with this one…
I never saw The Last Letter coming.
The Last Letter. This book is as connected to myself as any piece of writing will ever be. Throughout my journey with Lyme disease, I continued to blog and share my personal experiences. Writing has always been cathartic that way, and sharing publicly helped me connect with people through such a beautiful medium.
I couldn’t write this book as a memoir—I was still in the throes of recovery, where you feel worse before you get better, and the trauma of everything I’d experienced was still too raw. But I also knew that, as a writer, stories were how I made sense of the world—how I processed pain, how I found meaning in even the darkest moments. And this story, in particular, felt urgent. Lyme disease was—and still is—deeply misunderstood. I wanted people to understand the reality of living with an illness so many dismiss.
Then came the day Amelia Lenelli appeared and lent me her voice to share our story—mine and the hundreds of thousands of patients who are diagnosed with Lyme disease each year.
I combed through old blog posts from the years I spent searching for a diagnosis, sifting through the raw, unfiltered desperation of that time. I pored over the scribbled angst of my journals where I had spilled prayers punctuated by exhaustion, frustration, and fear, beaten down from the emotional turmoil of being chronically ill.
Through this character, I finally found the words I had struggled to say for so long—everything I had felt, everything I had wanted the world to understand. Everything that had remained silent in my heart.
Through Lia, I wrote my way back from hell.
Writing The Last Letter was an act of perseverance. Some days, the brain fog was so thick that a single sentence was all I could write, and even that felt like a victory. I poured every ounce of hope and healing into those pages, and I published it when I was in the middle of a relapse. I have believed in this book more than anything else, and over the years it’s continued to get new life.
I can't begin to express what that means.
For a long while, I wrestled with the decision of whether to self-publish or pursue a traditional path. This book wasn’t just my story or Lia’s story, it was the story of Lyme patients and their caregivers aching for validation—for someone to say, I see you, I understand, I’ve been there, too.
It’s what I needed in my darkest nights.
I wanted to be there for them, so I wanted the reach—I wanted this book to be available, to be read. I wanted chronic illness and Lyme disease, specifically, to be understood. But I also didn’t want to wait. And I definitely didn’t want to change the way I wrote the book or soften the truth of what was included.
I reached out to a mentor who was a literary agent and champion for writers with this quandary. She said something I’ll never forget:
"Susan, people will wake up in the middle of the night in pain, not knowing what they’re searching for. They’ll find your book. You’ll be lighting candles in the dark."
I published The Last Letter in 2016, and even with my limited marketing capabilities, it went on to win literary recognition from Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly, and it received an esteemed starred review from Kirkus Indie Review.
More importantly, it reached the Lyme community and showed them they’re not alone.
The Last Letter is the story of my heart and soul. It gave voice to pain I’d buried and prayers I’d abandoned. Through Lia, I began to find my back not only to myself, but to God.
But I wasn’t done yet.
Writing The Last Letter had been an act of surrender, a release of all I was holding inside. It was the story I needed to tell, but it wasn’t just the closing of one chapter of my life—it was the opening of a door I hadn’t even realized was there. In many ways, that book had been about survival, about finding light in the midst of darkness. But what came next wasn’t about survival. It was about awakening.
I had no plans for my next book. And yet, in February of 2017, I woke up early one morning with a single sentence clear as day in my mind:
"My name is Lilac Sophia Carpenter, and I’m sixteen years old. I’m going to be sixteen years old for the rest of my life."
It was as if the story had already existed somewhere inside of me—as all stories do, truly—waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. For the next three weeks, I wrote with a miraculous clarity I haven’t felt before or since. The brain fog lifted. I pushed through the fatigue and joint pain. My writing consumed me. The words didn’t just come to me—they moved through me. Lilac in Winter wasn’t simply written, I know now. It was channeled. It was delivered.
At its heart, Lilac in Winter is about forgiveness, redemption, and unconditional love. But on a deeper level, it’s also something more. It’s about the space between worlds, the threshold between life and death, the connections that stretch beyond time. It’s about the way love endures, even when life itself ends.
Lilac’s story—her imagined love story and the connection that binds her to Nathan—was more than fiction. It was a reflection of something I had yet to see, something that was preparing me for what was to come.
At the time, I’d never heard the term twin flame. Even when, nine months later on a trip to New York, my best friend began speaking of her experiences and the spiritual journey that accompanied the phrase, I didn’t understand.
No, it was more than not understanding. It was like there was a blank space in my brain whenever those words came up, blocking me from it entirely.
That is, until one month later, when I was reunited with a boy from my childhood. This boy, now a man, would change my life forever in the soul recognition that was experienced, catalyzing me to an unbelievable journey that I now know as my sacred union path of ascension.
Lilac in Winter was published two years later in 2019—almost fully intact from the book I had written in that three-week period, but more polished and with the added layer of Nathan’s point of view.
Nathan, it seemed, had his own story to tell.
And he’s not done yet.
But before we get to his story, which is still being explored, there was one more that wanted to be written.
East of Everywhere was finally the book I had always wanted to write—not necessarily the book I needed to write. Unlike my previous novels, which were deeply personal and intertwined with my own experiences, this one allowed me to step fully into imagination and creativity—especially as the main character’s story was so far from my own--while still using my own depth of emotions for my characters and their experiences.
Janie, an orphaned runaway in the 1950s, was a character born from pieces of inspiration—Annie, The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, The Boxcar Children—all woven together into a story that was entirely its own. Through Janie, I explored grief, love, and the indomitable human spirit while challenging me to dive deeper, to stretch my capacity as a writer.
More than that, though, traveling back in time with Janie led me to something unexpected—the origins of Montours City, the river town that quietly threads its way through all of my novels.
Would any of these stories be what they are if I hadn’t trusted the process? Would they even be here as part of the world if I hadn’t followed the path of my intuition, my own soul?
Would I be who I am now without them?
I don’t think so.
My writing has never been separate from my spirituality. Every blog post, poem or essay, and book I’ve written has mirrored my own evolution, manifesting exactly when it was meant to, revealing truths I wasn’t always ready to see but healing aspects of myself that was ready for it.
Gold in the Days of Summer helped me heal my inner child. The Last Letter helped me reclaim my voice. Lilac in Winter was a bridge to a deeper understanding of love and the unseen. And East of Everywhere gave me permission to step beyond my own story and explore my creativity with trust instead of fear.
Each book has been its own awakening. And yet, each one has also guided me towards something greater in myself and in my life.
And the journey isn’t over yet.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that the stories will always find me when I’m ready. They come from somewhere deep within me, as whispers of the soul. I don’t always know where they’ll take me, but I know for certain now that I’ll always follow.
Because writing, like spirituality, is a divine surrender.
And so, I continue…
Following the muse. Trusting the path. Writing my way into the unknown.
