Hello Soul Coven,

As you can tell from the title, this one isn’t going to be a fun one to write but I feel it is necessary. I’m also going to keep it more brief than I have in previous posts.

This week has been a very emotionally heavy week for me. PMDD is always a rollercoaster but this week has been another level and I’ve had a lot of things come up that I’ve had to sit with. Our eldest son turned 10 this week, and with that came a realisation from me that since he was born, there have been many times I’ve felt disconnection in my life; I’ve wrapped myself and energy up in people, things, and situations that has only left me with lessons learned and a cup to fill back up. Another thing that has been brought to my awareness is that I’m experiencing something called ‘Trailblazer exhaustion’. I’m beyond it now, having to always create pathways and spaces for me to belong in, for me to leap and go first and call in my tribe instead of being able to be in spaces and worlds that are already built for me, knowing instant acceptance and warmth without having to establish it. It is very lonely and I’m more than depleted. I have an intuitive sense that right now, I need to lead myself and my home hearth only and that’s it.

I’ve also started to notice that the spaces I have been trying to build community in are slowly, but surely, beginning to feel unsafe and heavy. I understand that the state of our world right now is anxiety inducing and people want to talk about it, it should be talked about; but on social media it is an invitation for ignorance, idiocy, and baiting. Not everyone is an activist in the same way, not everyone has the same capacity, and not every one has the same job to do in these times of trouble. I channel my sacred rage into my writing and poetry, part of the artistic rebellion. Sometimes, I think all we can do is take care of ourselves, each other, and try to remember that some days hope is heavy, especially when you are chronically ill or neurodivergent.

Substack is vastly becoming a space of regurgitation, the very spaces I’m trying hard to speak out about. In fact, I realised recently that someone who has read some of my posts has now started their own Artist’s Way recalibration and is talking about things that I have said, word for word in my own posts. There’s so many people here worried about AI being content stealers but then there are also people who are consciously doing it also.

This week, I found myself coming on here and thinking ‘blah, blah, blah…it’s all the same’. Now, there are some incredible writers and souls around here but it seems that they are not coming to my inbox as regularly nor am I seeing much of their stuff at all. I believe, with some of the interaction I’ve also had recently, that people are only just catching up with things I posted in late November and early December. I am beginning to question whether the community I wanted to build here and the healing I hoped I would might bring is a possibility. Is this because of tiredness? Perhaps. It could also be an intuitive inkling and I am not prepared to risk not listening once again.

I’m taking the next 9 weeks until Ostara to focus on getting some solid foundations rooted in my own life and I want to see how it feels not to share like I have been doing. Maybe this is the era of sovereignty I need right now. I think time turning off the world and realising it’s okay and not selfish to absorb myself in my own is the medicine for me.

I appreciate you all.

RH x