MONSANTO AND ROUNDUP AND CORPORATE RULE– OH MY ! 

As you watch reports roll in about food injustice in the USA, I know it can be easy to despair.

Dear one, the problem is simple. We, as a society, forgot how sacred and fundamental food is.

Like any mistake that is made, it is less important to place blame and more important to learn the lesson and change course.

Initially, we were curious about the promise of the Green  Revolution. Will pesticides, GMO’s, and mono-cultures save people from hunger and bring us into a post-industrial utopia?

After several decades, the results are clear. Diseases and cancers are mounting, while species are dramatically dwindling.

Here in France, they corrected their course earlier. They burned their GMO experimental crops and now, when I go to a corner store grocery, the origins of each item is clearly marked and they try to stock local foods as much as possible.

To be honest, shopping at Whole Foods was never going to be enough. It’s a step in the right direction, but it still falls short.

Here is my solution: we have GOT to start prioritizing local food economies. We can, easily, take the rug out from under corporate rule by refusing to participate in their consumer culture.

To inspire you, I can share that in 2010, I ate all-local for a month in the summer while living in Arizona. I was able to satisfy all my dietary needs better than usual, except that I still ate non-local rice and couldn’t find a local source of ice cream… Well, no one is perfect.

Here is my promise to you:

The struggle against corporate food take-over is going to be delicious.

You are going to discover the best flavors of your life from the freshest ingredients possible.

You are going to make new friends in your community at your local market.

You are going to get close enough to the animals- the hilarious chickens and mischievous goats and soft, soft rabbits- to know for sure that they are being honored for their gifts to us. Your presence will ensure they are living the best possible lives, which in turn gives us the best possible health and sense of well-being.

You are going to bring more money into the community you live in, and over time, you will actually become more wealthy as that money flows back to you.

Yes, monsanto has genetically polluted some foods.  However, the human diet is designed to be adaptable. Buckwheat could be the main flour of the future- yum!

Relax and know that the corporations hold no true power, because all at their core, companies are designed to serve the needs and desires of their customers. When our dollars go elsewhere, they will have no choice but to change their product or go bankrupt.

The outrage you might be feeling right now is not unlike the hunger you feel when you wake up. You have been asleep and now your body is aching for truly nourishing food and sustainable community. Monsanto is the alarm. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but it’s time to wake up.

A new life, a new sense of health and freedom, are waiting for you. Maybe even as close as your back yard.

I love you. You deserve to eat food that brings you strength and health and true wealth.

Remember the abundant gifts of sunlight, rain, or the spark of life that lives within each seed. The seed then grows to the food that sustains the spark of life within you. It is a magical, sacred circle, of which you play a part each and every day.

I am here in France, and it is 50 years in the future. And let me assure you, everything is going to be okay.

In fact, everything is going to be delicious.

Go All-Organic. It’s the new vegan. If Bhutan can do it, you can, too.

xoBee

p.s. Share this with your friends and let them know your intention to eat all-organic. Invite them on the same path to body-community-economy-environmental thriving.

Last year, I was a stable lady with her own apartment and ever-growing collection of stuff.

After a few months, I started to feel the possessions literally weighing me down, as I worried how to take care of them or store them.

More and more, I’m hearing reports that the more people own, the less happy they are. Inversely, the more zen and minimalist people are, they happier they seem to be.

Sure enough, when I can look into a closet and admire all my worldly possessions in one glance, I feel a lightness and a freedom that I imagine birds to be very familiar with. Birds, who travel thousands of miles a year to spend time in their different homes.

After almost a decade of being a part-time gypsy, here’s how I do it, in alphabetical order.

ALTAR

Over the years, I’ve always struggled with packing up my altar helter-skelter, jabbing crystals in nooks and seashells in pockets.

Lately, I had a breakthrough when I came across a lovely card box that could easily house all my precious, symbolic objects.

Nothing centers me more than spending time gazing at my own altar.

And there is no time that I need to center and focus more than when I’m traveling.

To give you ideas for your own altar to-go, my altar features a picture of the goddess Aphrodite on the top of the box. Inside the box, I keep a piece of chrysacolla gemstone, a poetic card from my loved one, sage and paula santo for smudging, and some all-purpose quartz. These are tools I use to hone in on the divine and heal my energetic field. When I need to travel, all I have to do is pop the lid back on the box and stash it.

CLOTHING

Let’s admit it: many of us have old clothes we’re clinging to. At the same time many of us feel the need to “update” our closets constantly with new fashions.

Yet all I really need in this world are a good jacket, few shirts, a couple of pants, a couple of dresses, a handful of under-garments, a half-dozen socks, and I’m good. That usually makes half a laundry-load a week, which can easily assimilate into someone else’s laundry system.

If a piece of clothing wears out, I replace it. This way, I only keep the items I LOVE, they stay fresh-and-vogue, and I have an excuse to wear them almost all the time.

I find this more fun than having dozens of options of mediocre clothes to choose from in a closet.

BOOKS

I own just a few books at the moment. I find books on other people’s shelves wherever I go, and there’s usually one they can part with if I need one to travel with. There will be a time in my life where my own little library will have a chance to flourish. In the meantime, I am an active agent in keeping good books circulating, as I believe all great information and stories should.

TECHNOLOGY

How do I travel with a laptop? After touring several times with one, I ditched the robot and now have nothing but my phone.

The truth is, there always seem to be computers around for the little tasks I need to do.  They’re usually slow clunkers, but they get the job done.

Also, in Europe, there are plenty of internet cafes where you can pay a small fee to do all the needful online activities.

Honestly, most of my time online is spent on trolling social media, so I find it relaxing for my mind not having a laptop/macbook/tablet/gadget at all times.

TOILETRIES

Recently, a friend asked me how to avoid exposure to toxins in an increasingly toxic world. These tips are especially important for us ladies, who have the highest standards for beauty and cleanliness, yet the greatest sensitivity to toxins via our precious reproductive system.  These products I mention are actually life-savers!

Through my extreme sensitivity to modern substances, I have been on quite a journey that has led me to some great, light-weight products I’d like to share.

Shampoo Bar: This is one of my most exciting discoveries. Unlike bulky shampoos and conditioner bottles that can spill open in your luggage or get confiscated at the airport, this is a dry bar, identical to a bar of hand-soap. Unlike even the most “natural” hair products, which still contain a long list of dubious ingredients, the bar of shampoo can have as few as three, identifiable ingredients. It rubs onto your scalp and creates a lovely, low-toxin lather. It’s base is a combination of oils, so I can sometimes skip conditioner completely, making it the IDEAL cleaner for a traveling head of hair.

Sea-Sponge Tampon: You read that right. Men, I encourage you to keep reading. I also encourage everyone to spread the word about this option.

It turns out the ocean, Earth’s metaphorical “womb,” has manufactured a plentiful, all-natural alternative to tampons. Tampons, if left in the body too long, create TOXIC shock, so you can imagine the risk of using these over a lifetime. On the other hand, I present to you a small, soft, oceanic option.

Two sea-sponge can be bought for $12-20 at most large natural food stores. As a budget option, I once bought a large sea-sponge for $2 and trimmed it down into two tampons. The beauty of these tampons is that they last for a year. The only down-side for some is that you have to get rather up-close-and-personal with your sponge, as it requires hand-washing it in a sink or with a water-bottle in nature. It only takes a minute to wash, and then easily slides back in. One of my favorite aspects is that the sea sponge actually feels like the walls of the vagina, so it literally fits right in.  I know many people are familiar with the diva cup, but I could never wrestle on in, and even though I probably could now, I’m totally satisfied with my soft, absorbent little sea creature.

Soap Nuts: Okay, giggle if you must. Now, may I introduce a marvelous invention straight from mother earth. I bought a box of these for about $8, and it will last for 100 loads of laundry.  The product is much like it sounds: these flexible, soapy tree nuts go into a small cotton bag which gets tossed into your laundry. Again, these are easy to travel with and for me, ensure that I don’t have to be exposed to the gamut of crazy, unlisted laundry detergent ingredients, especially “fragrance,” which has the power to meddle with the gender of your unborn children. Yeah, spooky. So try out these innocent little nuts.

A Word from the Gaia Pulpit on Eco-Friendly Toiletries

So there’s an introduction to my favorite natural options for staying clean. By now, you probably have guessed I’m a bit of a hippy. I prefer eau naturale to deathly beauty. None of these options are especially fragrant, but I’d rather smell natural than synthetic.

In the end, my friend who asked about avoiding toxicity wasn’t interested in my all-natural alternatives. She settled for the more spiritual answer, which was to stay stress-free and loving.

That’s a great conclusion to come to, for sure.

But I believe intention combined with action is a more powerful option in today’s increasingly poisonous environment.

Can you really keep low-stress-levels and love in your heart, as reports of water quality go down and aquatic death tolls rise?

Our small actions DO effect the web of life in ways we can’t always see.

We HAVE to connect the dots and realize that a city of a million people using slightly toxic toiletries every day impacts not only human health but the health of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Similarly, a return to simpler products will impact you, your unborn children, and the other life-forms that mutually support yours.

Do it for our the lovely little eggs in our ovaries. For God’s sake– think of the wee little spermies!

Giggles,

Annabeth McNamara

The Power of Presence

One lesson I have been slow to learn is that staying in the present is always better than fleeing into thoughts of the past or future.

This simple lesson is so profound that I didn’t “get it” for several years.

The truth is, any sensation found in the present is better witnessed than escaped, because it’s what’s actually happening.

It’s real.

It’s fascinating.

Sure enough, by staying with what my life in real-time, I’ve found it’s that much easier to make the changes I need to in my life.

When I am hyper-aware of what’s feeling wrong for me, I tend to shift in the proper direction that much quicker.

This is our lives, right now, this moment.

Take a pause to notice your breath, the light in the room you’re in, how your body feels.

This is all that is real.

The past? Gone.

The future? Who knows.

But now?  Yes, now, here, is where your power lives and seethes and waits for you to take the reigns.

Practice Makes Perfect: Face the Apocalypse

If you’re like me, the present is a fair bit uncomfortable. There are some things I’d rather not face.

I’m living at a relative’s house at the moment, which has axed my hopes for autonomy.  I have a fair bit of pain in my limbs, probably because my toxic intake has gotten too high.

Still, I know that the quickest route to transformation is through FEELING the uncomfortableness of all this.

Similarly, many of us know that the environment is under great strain from some of its 7 billion wasteful human inhabitants.  As on the micro-, so on the macro-scale.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed and change the TV channel or return to Facebook’s lukewarm glow.

But I’d like to encourage that we all just sit and feel the pain of what’s happening.

The enormous threats being placed on our cities and lives, as global warming increases the strength of storms, the intensity of droughts, and to be honest, the likelihood of our premature demise.

Tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, flaming meteors– the news has been awfully full of really scary stuff.

The ingredients of nightmares or action movies, not reality. And these events have effected someone you know, most likely.

I have toured through a Spain going up in flames due to a global-warming-induced drought.

I have visited Manhattan in the wake of its recent flooding.

Tsunamis took a dent out of our coastal populations.

I have felt the great anxiety of knowing the nuclear radiation in my vicinity is invisibly mounting.

I have tasted petroleum residues in fresh-caught seafood.

The topping on the horrific cake: a thousand people were killed recently by a comet. Excuse me, what??

I mean, seriously?

This generation is reeling from what the psychic Edgar Cayce forecasted as ”Earth Changes.” More like Earth Conniptions.

After the Horrors, the Solutions

Still, I believe the vast majority of this calamity can begin to be assuaged by sentient human beings simply ingesting the pain and horror of the situation.

Invariably, when I meditate, I find a visceral experience of love underneath all negative emotions.

This, I believe, is a signal that I have integrated the emotion in my body and now exist in the present, in an experience of the Ultimate Reality– Love.

Here I find an influx of a feeling of Power. This love, this present moment, is where all my power lies.

We can integrate the horrors of our modern situation.

We must, if we are to move forward.

We can realign with love easily and daily.

In love lies the creative potential for all the solutions we need to get us through the coming decades and even centuries.

Once we have ingested our anxiety, we can begin to make the changes in our own lives that support a healthy biosphere.

Planting a garden.

Fixing up a bicycle, or better yet, starting to walk where we need to go.

Having a potluck with neighbors instead of driving an hour to a posh restaurant.

Buying food from the nearest farmer’s market.

Allotting some of your profits for philanthropy- aka investing in your own future.

Volunteering on a project you feel passionate about.

Corporate America, which runs the media, would like us to believe we are powerless unless we can buy our way to happiness. That’s all well and good for their profits, but it’s simply not true.

The impact of one person shifting out of fear and into love-in-motion has a powerful ripple effect.

The more people who are moved similarly, the greater the effect.

On the other side of our pain, our grieving, our guilt, there is a new world that we are dreaming of.

Through our daily actions, we can birth that dream.

As if this wasn’t empowering enough, I’d like to point out that the fabric of reality is love, which means we can change the world situation quicker than any physical action could. When we join in the love-song that is creation, the entire world is listening.

Beyond the impact of our isolated actions is the effect our heart’s vibration has on the unseen vibrational world of electromagnetic activity around us. (See the HeartMath Institute for more information.)

This is the invisible fabric out of which the material world arises. On a finer level, this is an even better way to impact reality.

Just look at yoga, which was a fringe fad up until a few years ago. Now it has become popular around the world.

Don’t underestimate yourself.

We can hold the light vibration, and watch reality follow our lead.

Here’s a song I wrote and recorded years ago, to go along with this message:

As the growing season starts to take off here in the northern hemisphere, I’d like to relate to you a curious experience of mine last summer.

Dear Spain: although I love you dearly, your food is a bit abominable. Your staples seem to be super-salty sausage and white bread. After touring and eating bar/road/junk food for weeks on end during my tour of Catalonia, I came back to my French little home in the countryside. As always, my French family and I sat down at the round table and ate a simple meal. On our plates sat various constellations of vegetables from the organic garden outside the door.

As I sat sharing words and moments with my French family, a sort of buzzing buzzed across me. Like a jingle-jangle in my cells. Like a bouncy feeling in my juices.

In short- I was high.

I reported this to my loved ones, who simply raised their eyebrows.
Why was I feeling so altered? Well, for some background, this particular garden is nursed by one of the most zen men I know. He walks in and out of the garden daily with a rose-colored smile fed by sunshine and dew. I’m not kidding.

On top of that, the garden itself has been loved and expanded over the course of 26 years, surrounded by the purest of intentions. Most recently, a concentric, semi-circular, labyrinthine garden has been installed around a sacred sweat lodge hut. Here it is, pictured below.

We’re talking ancient indigenous practices, surrounded by growing life-forms in sacred geometry.

Any of all of these factors could have contributed to me sitting at that table, rendered almost unintelligible.

Words were cumbersome, extraneous to the high of having eaten.

What can I say? Gardening is one of the most original relationships- a human being imploring the Earth for her fruits, to enable a simple survival.

Currently, I’m living in a city with very limited access to organic, fresh vegetables. It takes an hour of commuting to get to a market, and then there is the trouble of getting the produce home. Call me lazy, but I don’t want to run to the corner store for over-priced, boxed-in-plastic, organic baby greens.

I bought $3.00 worth of  seeds from the pharmacy around the corner and have been pushing the seeds into the ground when the weather inspires it. While the local pigeons have turned the lettuce-patch into a birdie-buffet, I can’t help but feel I’m participating in something necessary for my physical, psychological, and even spiritual health. In a time of increasing monetary scarcity in the US, there is still an abundance of sunshine, seeds, and human strength.

So what will it be, $5 for a plastic box of aging spinach, or weeks of plunging my five senses into the four elements while the miracle of life takes shape in the ten square feet of garden-plot?

Personally, I want to set myself loose, like some kind of sheep, to graze on the bit of backyard I have been given.

Here’s the link to the album that was literally written in this magical garden:

http://annabethmcnamara.bandcamp.com/

If you’re feeling generous, good ahead and purchase it– I have spent all my money on organic foods from Whole Foods. While I can’t see supporting the green economy as a “mistake,” I am currently making a bee-line back to my home in France, where the veggies and the hippies roam free.

It’s a beautiful day here in Brooklyn.
Sun is shining through the cold off-blue sky. Bare branches form elegant patterns in dark relief, as the silhouettes of sparrows make their curious dance of foraging and socializing.

More and more, I feel called to be the English interpreter for my feathered friends. As we make our plans for livelihood, home sites, and food-shed, can we consider the birds? The forests, the meadows, are their homes more than ours. As Jesus and Saint Frances noted, the birds of the heavens do not store up, and yet they live lives of utmost freedom, purity, and beauty.

While considering the thought of how I wanted my life to look in five years, I can see that I want a habitat of my own. A home that doesn’t hurt the environment, but blends in with it beautifully. A place where I could feel good about bringing a child into this world. I’ve been in homes like this. They are places hand-sculpted out of rock, clay, and wood. Rather than barging in and cutting out a space, these home structures seem to be more in conversation with the landscape.

Recently, I was caught up in my mind’s story of fear. As I tried to enter into a new stage of creative projects, I found myself making demands, bolstering myself, preparing for the worst. The modern house seems to echo this sentiment. It prepares for the worst, demanding heating, running water in taps, tons of electricity, thick walls with synthetic insulation, heavy locks on the doors. Yet this lifestyle is what is making the planet become dangerously unstable. In its greedy need to assuage its fears, the modern house has become one of the most vulnerable places. If the trucks stopped delivering to the supermarkets, if the power plants ceased their smoggy consumption of resources, if the dollar was rendered meaningless, the highest houses in Manhattan would surely become the most impoverished.

It’s difficult to describe what recently changed my mood from one of fear to one of faith. As usual, it was a knowing that settled deep into my body. After months of stressing and negotiating and mistake-making combined with daily meditation, I finally FELT how difficult my racing thoughts were to follow. As a woman, during my latest moon-cycle, I had the opportunity yet again to shed the past. Now, when the option to stress out about the future arises, I simply say, “No, thanks.” Tried that. And it only led to, guess what? A stressful future. Which became my present.  Sad story. Not repeating that one again.

Similarly, our lifestyles can make this shift. Rather than running around, hoarding money and resources and security and insurance, to no avail, we can relax. We can stop and look at what we’ve really got in front of us. We can start to live in harmony with our local environment, or seek a habitat for ourselves that is truly sustaining.

We can start to trust in the divine flow that makes the blossoms bloom and the sun rise and the breath breathe through us without thinking. It is this flow that gave us life, and it is this flow that will one day bring us through the door of death. Can’t we trust it as well to carry us through what comes between?

As I enter into my relationships, my career choices, and how I deal with what arises daily, I can now feel a lightness and a vulnerability. An open-hearted, open-handed stance. Of course, this doesn’t mean being foolish, but rather staying ready by staying present. I now live like the birds who truly enjoy the moment, yet stay fully attuned to subtle clues around them, using intuition to fly at a moment’s notice.

I don’t want to buy into greed anymore. I would prefer to inhale currency and exhale beautiful experiences. I want to enter into the divine, natural flow of life, and trust all the unseen forces in my life that constantly supporting my well-being. My true wealth is my generosity, as I give my love, attention, forgiveness, and gratitude to whatever comes into my life.

I can trust the universe to reflect that love back to me, as it always has, whether I was paying attention or not.

To be clear, I haven’t been using the birds as a metaphor. I am sharing teachings that I have learned from them through observation. They have been evolving on earth as long as we have, or longer. Their intelligence is different than ours, and is just as complete.

I truly feel in my body that the birds are my relatives. And it is with tears that I write this, because I know their pain is mine. Their habitat is my habitat as well. The forest has long been my place of worship, therapeutic release, and medicine. I would like very much to make it my home as well someday. And while the birds don’t speak with vocal words like we do, I know that they would very much like to keep the habitat they have left.

While I’m not especially Christian, I’d like to urge you to see this moment in time as the best time to follow Christ’s advice to live as the birds live. To be free, live lightly on the earth, and sing often.

I urge you to take a look at my new music video as a part of This Is Alaska.

Vincent Stockholm and I explore nature’s reflection of our psyche through music, lyric, and imagery.

EP is available on iTunes and Spotify.

Okay everyone.
I know I haven’t been a goody-goody-gumdrops lately. In fact, I’ve definitely been a down-in-the-dumps kind of grump.

It’s just, I’ve been really opening up to the shadow, with a seemingly pure desire to be transparent. It is my heart’s truest wish to inspire other musicians, and I know how discouraging it can be to see another musician’s success, with no idea how to get there. I want to show that while I often only share my successes, for every perceived “success,” there is a ton of soul-searching, deal-seeking, roller-coastering, self-questioning processing that seems to go on. Some of that would definitely fit in the “failure” category.

Recently, while reading Christiane Northrup’s female bible, “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” I read a zen quote that she loved. It said something like, “All of life is a mistake.” I know, I know, this sounds discouraging. But it’s actually a relief, to use this as a starting place. When I look back on my life, I see mole hills of mistakes as far as I can remember. Yet ultimately, I’m on a journey that IS leading somewhere, if only to a more refined soul at the end of this life.

An example of how my “success” is actually a bit of a cluster-f*ck can be illuminated by my latest endeavor. After successfully filling out Leonie Dawson’s incredible 2013 planner, I faced the chilling reality that my life in Asheville was financially unsustainable. Like many of my peers these days, I did the most rational thing and retreated to a relative’s home, in order to avoid today’s high costs in rent.

For me, fortunately, that meant taking a quick flight to Brooklyn, NY. While it’s no eco-topia here, it’s a place brimming with arts, culture, and ambition. Obviously, this move is a no-brainer for a music career. While taking the N-train metro yesterday, euphoria swept over me, as I watched all manner of cultures and skin-colors mix in a rush of motion and energy.

In contrast, earlier that morning, I had been lying in bed, feeling like such a failure in this society. This was just my ego and conditioning uniteing to make me feel like crud.

Now, after an invigorating walk downtown, I truly feel like I’m in the right place at the right time.

Voila– From Asheville to NYC, suddenly my “failure” becomes a “success” in the eyes of those watching.

Similarly, I recently posted on Facebook that I was heading to France again on March 5th to work on my latest and greatest project to date, This Is Alaska– a blending of digital alt-folk with imagery to to heal the human-nature relationship.

Yet after some miscommunications, the entire plan dissolved. Ye gods! In one little email, all my springtime disintegrated.

A week later, after some clarifications and soul-searching and back-and-forths, we are back on for the same plans, only a bit later– March 24th. Whew. What a rigamarole.

Do you have any idea how intense it is to go through this back-and-forth, where money is ambiguous and nothing is for certain? Yet I’m reminded that suffering comes from dwelling in the past or in the future. Giving my focus to my anxieties was literally spoiling my creative potential.

This week, in the present, I have found my power. My power to act and make the changes I need. My power to trust that the future will take care of itself if I take care of the present. My power to keep communicating, keep clarifying, keep sorting through the contrast of life’s experiences to grow and purify myself and my intentions.

I know a lot of people are out there, trying to keep everything in their life in control, with a 9-5 kind of jive and saving up to splurge on the weekends. Yet I also see the industrial work paradigm dissolving daily, as more and more people face unemployment.

Here we all are. With our gifts. With our own two hands. While it looks like we don’t have many options, there’s always the option to stand up for what we believe in, through volunteering or activism. Or helping those around us, whether it’s old or young family members, neighbors, or victims in our neighborhoods.

If you have run out of money and energy, this, too, can be the divine working through your life, pushing you to explore an unseen option. I’d like to think that we all can start growing more food for ourselves and loved ones. This is a small, revolutionary act that does help the world socially and environmentally.

Personally, I feel the call to continue to step out on the path of faith to create great music and art. All the details aren’t ironed out for this year’s plans, but I’m choosing to find a feeling of peace and lean into it. I also feel called to write and reach out to you (and anyone you care to share this with), so you feel you’re not alone. So you understand that your failures are actually paving your path to success. So that you forgive yourself– no, love yourself– for being human. So that you tune into who you really are at your core, the spunky kid you were at the start, and start shining that personality into the world.

I ask you, what is calling you? What is moving through you from the subtle realms into your physical reality? What is one thing you can do to support that today? I urge you to do something, no matter how little. The new reality, the world where beauty is valued more than the spoils of war, where people have more voice than corporations, where the environment thrives with us as a part of it– this world is being created daily through us.

If you’re curious about the workbook that has revolutionized my life, I encourage you to check out Leonie Dawson’s workbook. She is a goddess! If you use this link, I get half the profit as her affiliate, so thanks from me in advance!

This past week, I have been through the emotional ringer. A few days ago, I found myself weeping on my blanket, sobbing with the full-throttle exertion of a child, wailing, “I’m so tired! I’m so tired! I’m so tired!!” I’d hit a wall in my bank account (zero), and more importantly, I’d hit the limit of my human energy, my life force, also known as chi.

Chronic fatigue is no stranger to me, and I knew, in the warm flush of tears and emotional release, that something in my life had to change. Maybe everything.

The funny thing is, I got to this point despite spending the past few months taking stellar self-care of myself.  The healthy sheen of my face only masked the underlying depletion of my spirit’s vitality.

What got me to this breaking point? Since I moved to Asheville, I’ve been putting all my energy into pursuits that promised payback after initial investment of time and energy. Ultimately, the returns were way less than I needed to survive and thrive. At first, I felt anger with the people and places that couldn’t support me. Then I realized that I was making my choices based on my head, rather than my intuitive feeling.

I started to contemplate all my different options, and discovered that some of them made my skin crawl and my energy dip, while others made my eye twinkle again and my spirits perk.

Now I know that I can contemplate an opportunity and feel in my body whether it lights me up or depletes me. For example, when I think about writing my next book, excited tingles ripple through my water-based body. When I think about creating a retreat with my favorite artist, Alena Hennessey, I feel a bit tired. But wait- when I think of getting greatly compensated in both experience and financial abundance, I feel a subtle thrill begin to build. When I contemplate sticking around Asheville to cultivate a settled life and fanbase, I feel my eyes bulge in frustration and my skin pop with stress.

In my experience with booking shows, there is no set amount that I get paid. Oftentimes, only I can sense whether the show is going to be worth it or not. For example, I could always tour the west coast and cultivate a fan-base there. However, I’d probably have to tour several times, only barely breaking even, in order to begin making a profit.On top of that, I’ve traveled on the west coast often enough that it no longer seems like an adventure to me.

Europe, however, has a special place in my heart. The first few times I toured, I barely broke even. But it totally filled me with passion for life: I got to learn a second language, experience amazing cuisine, and embrace my European heritage. Ultimately, I got to fall in love and find a truly loving tribe. These experiences have no monetary value, but the choice to tour Europe is always an easy one for me. In fact, I’m returning early this spring using similar reasoning.

As a musician, only you can tell if a gig is going to be worth it for you. If it isn’t, then further negotiation (read: sharing of needs and feelings) needs to happen. If you can’t find a way for the deal to feel healthy, move on ASAP and find one that does.

People (myself included) complain that the music business is unpredictable and confusing at best. There seems to be no formula for success except for Destiny and Luck. Yet at the core of the business is SOUND. This craft is much like the color and substance of visual art, only it’s an unseen fabric. Similarly, the music business requires more than the literal advice found in books. Finding a path to success requires us to use our sixth-sense to feel the subtle energy flow in our lives. We truly have the compass embedded in our internal, somatic system.

The trick for me was getting through all the gunk– current and old pressures from family, society, and my own ego. What I thought I really ought to want was in fact the worst idea in the end!

So yes. After my bout with my blankie, I did an about-face and started to shift all my plans towards feelings of safety, support, and renewal. To sum it up, it wasn’t pretty.  Show cancellations, hurt feelings, frustration, more tears.

But to paraphrase Sheryl Richardson, you have to be able to disappoint others (and even yourself!) as you follow what sparkles for you. And, in the words of Leonie Dawson, if someone doesn’t love you and support you on your path, then they are “bonkerdoodles.” I love that saying! A new friend and band-mate of my mine showed this to me by continuing to beam love and support at me even as I floundered with guilt.

On the flip side of all this, I think by constantly following what fills us up, we will one day find ourselves overflowing with joyous, abundant energy. On that day, we will have to be ready for the influx of true happiness, something our struggle-based culture hasn’t prepared us for. Only then can we can begin to embark on projects of great giving and philanthropy, and push toward the society we’d all like to live in. When our cup overflows, we can water the world.

In the comments, I’d like to know what depletes you and what gives you energy and zest. By regularly journaling about this, says Christiane Northrup, we can begin to shift and sculpt our lives for the better.

As always, if you’d like to honor my path of creative sharing, you can purchase my album download here.