Echoes of Her
on new directions, creating from where we're at, and recognizing envy as a signpost
This platform for my writing was created as an extension of the work I do creating and sharing guided meditations.
For years I’ve been sharing my barest spiritual self in hundreds of recorded, edited, and sometimes live broadcasted sessions of heartfelt intimacy. Many of you who are reading with me here, met or discovered me through that work.
Long have I secretly been concerned about the obvious discordance between my platforms in a sense of thematic consistency.
Having originally created this as a part of ‘Radiant Heart Meditation’, with the idea of sharing spiritual writings, I came to find myself use it about four times in the first year of its existence.
I found that I didn’t really care to spend all of my creative efforts on heart-channeled spiritual insights. In fact, my time focused on creating in that way was slowing down and transforming.
Late last year in September/October 2024. Things changed for me.
Going through the most difficult stretch of my life, a dark night of the soul in the truest of senses — crushed by high-stress living and a few years worth of significant, cascading emotional traumas with no safe space to regulate and heal — I was searching for outlets. It was at that time I found myself compelled to begin writing.
To my surprise, much of it was poetry.
I’ve always been averse to writing poems. Its very important to me to approach art with the opposite of pretension, and from my experience, poetry seemed to veer into those tendencies. Over writing, obfuscating, using flowery-ass language for no true purpose of meaning — just stoking ego and self grandeur through embarrassing artistic flagellation. Which is not my thing. Pretentiousness in any art is the ultimate turn-off to me. It’s just so obviously felt, when the intentions of a creation are the artist’s sick egoic fulfilment.
This is not to say there aren’t poets which are amazing and grounded artists, whose work carries the deepest and most concrete meaning. That is absolutely the case. It’s simply a stigma I long bought into. I’m describing the machinations and false ideas within my own ego which once prevented me from writing poetry.
Yet, there I found myself. Writing poetry from barest intuition, knowing in my heart it was work I’d want to share through my nervousness — more cherished opportunities to test my courage in open-heartedness.
To my horror though, they rhymed.
I’ve hated that. Still, it goes against my whole way of living to have things pour forth so freely from my heart and deny them.
Perhaps I could have kept them unpublished — just for me. But that’s so boring.
Truly, I believe we should all be sharing our creations, even as we learn new forms of art. We all have so much to share with each other from the very beginning of our many artistic journeys. Teachers all — wherever we are in our process.
So, I wrote my poetry. Much of it from long stowed heartache, from truths unsaid, from longing and sadness. Some of it brutal, some of it mean, some of it intended specifically to be evocative — some of it smutty. Always from the most genuine feeling.
This poetry was healing me. It was a therapy.
Essays came too, they still do. These, I immediately liked more than my poetry. They felt more complete. Less amateurish. Before long I felt like I was writing essays with a kind of artistry which was exciting and fueling the process itself.
All of my writing is best when I step out of the way.
Often, I know what I’m going to sit down and write about. Rarely, do I have any details. Sometimes it’s a subject. Sometimes its a poetic line. Sometimes it’s a title with no context.
I sit. I start. I go. Then I work it out. I just start writing. Witnessing what comes through and sculpting it into something to be understood.
Still, the content of these essays is only occasionally spiritual. Often, what has come through are explorations of trauma. They are remnants of grief. They are the barest unseen truths of my heart.
The entire process has been a healing journey of stepping through fear to show myself most honestly.
Wondering all the while, how the hell people were handling the cognitive dissonance of a platform tied to a mediation channel with the title, 'Radiant Heart’, which contained these varying multitudes — confused about where this all was going — but knowing that it was important to me.
My heart has certainly been on display here. Honestly, that was the only reason I let this publication continue to exist under the ‘Radiant Heart’ name.
However, I’ve not had luck being discovered on substack or generating subscribers outside of those who find me from other platforms. And it’s frankly kind of cheesy to call your platform ‘Radiant Heart’ when you’re writing sad poetry and essays, at least to me.
And so — ECHOES OF HER — which came through very clean for me the other day, is now born. After finding the name, I still struggled with old egoic worries that it sounded trite. I also wagered it would have already been taken. Still, I decided I would trust flow and go with it, if there wasn’t already a substack publication by that name.
And viola! There was not, so here we are. I am now presenting these memoirs of myself to perpetuity, in a publication entitled ECHOES OF HER.
New Directions and Envy
Often I pivot — finding myself change plans.
Flexibility a core value.
Lately, something has changed in my writing. All of a sudden, the poetry is working for me.
It stopped rhyming! And I’m so fucking here for it.
There’s something about the workflow of creating art in such short form. Perhaps, I’m a sucker for the immediate gratification, or an addict looking for a healthy outlet of my tweakerness.
Regardless, I love finishing things. I love getting to read or watch or listen to something I’ve poured hours of energy and all of my heart into which has finally come together. Witnessing and experiencing that magical sense of discovery of intuitive creativity.
To be taken aback by the artistry of things which pour through your creative process, unbeknownst to your lesser self, is such a gift.
Artwork — such lessons from our subconscious minds.
I believe by sharing our art we illuminate each other, regardless of who it reaches.
All of this is to say that I don’t exactly know where this new pivot is heading. I know I’m going to be working on compiling/writing/publishing a book of poetry. That I will continue writing essays. And will, as always, be longing and striving to finish a long form fiction project.
My envies have told me this is the way to go.
I know it’s a hard thing to look at. But knowing what envy means, has been one of the greatest blessings of insight I’ve had in my many years of following what pours from my heart.
The lesson came through clear and registered deeply within me. By looking honestly at things which make us feel envy, we can find the deepest of lessons. The clearest of paths.
Envy — the plainest sign of things we’re meant for but have not brought into our lives.
Not in specifics. You don’t get exactly what you’re envious of. That’s not what you’re meant for. The envy comes from not actively pursuing and placing energy into the right places for bring things meant for your life into being.
The greatest of lessons our envies are. They teach us so clearly who we are and who we’re meant to be. The kinds of people we’re meant to surround ourselves with. What we’re meant to strive after and achieve.
My most recent lesson if envy was this: looking up a popular poet and essayist I heard name dropped. Vacantly reading some of their poems, judging cruelly their work and feeling deepest envy for their success, I found reflection.
I am no judge of art. Its true value is in the eye of every beholder.
These feelings of hurt showed me something. Where to go.
So, now I work on a poetry book. Which I will publish much of here as well. That will almost certainly not include most of my rhyming poems from those dreaded before times when I was starting out. We’ll see.
I’m discovering these writings demand I bring them through. My life is noticeably restructuring itself and enforcing strict boundaries to ensure all of my personally expendable creative energies, and limited free time, are built around the creation of these works.
Some part of me knows there’s work to be done. Words to write and share.
A work or works that I’m being driven to create.
The process of getting there will be one of discovery. My conceptions of what these creations will be is always changing.
I will continue writing and may distribute my essays. Perhaps I’ll have something of interest to an online publication or two, specifically when I write about my experience as a trans woman and trans mother. We’ll see.
Creativity — art — is a ride that leads you.
Thank you for taking it with me.
