Light it up!

An aphorism my mom learned from her mentor, a lesson I learned from a neo-shaman, a Sarah J. Maas moment, and a video of me dancing (sort of)!

Join me for a MEET & GREET and BOOK SIGNING

Wednesday, May 15th from 5:00 pm-6:00 pm MST

at Rebecca’s Apothecary, Boulder CO

Before she retired, my mom was a family therapist. Therapists often have a supervisor—a more experienced colleague who can guide them through difficult moments. Last week, while we were on a family vacation, Mom repeated her past-supervisor’s favorite aphorism to my niece, who was trying to choose a college: Make a decision and then make it right. What this meant, Mom explained, as she sliced watermelon in our rental house’s open kitchen, is that there is no one choice that’s perfect or correct, instead you make a decision and then you do the necessary work to make your decision into a choice that enriches your life.

This can apply to so many things, from selecting a college to choosing a life partner. Make a decision and then make it right.

That’s not to say it’s always easy. I’ve been known to spend twenty minutes comparing soup labels at the grocery store—putting something in the cart, pulling it out and putting it back on the shelf, getting in every other shopper’s way as I stare down the choices. (Yes, I’m that woman.) Once I spent three months researching 35mm cameras. I call this place of indecision the crossroads. When you’re standing at the crossroads, everything is possible. This is part of the allure. Once you choose your path forward, other eventualities fall away. Interestingly, the goddess Hecate is associated with both witches and crossroads. I’m fairly certain I’ve met her there, passing out lemonade and telling fortunes.

As someone who often hangs out at the crossroads, laboring over the tiniest choice, knowing I am going to make a decision (make a decision, any decision!) and then, afterwards, figure out how to morph it into the right decision, is incredibly liberating. Especially because, as bad as I can be at making a choice, I’m incredibly good at making it right. It’s something I’ve been doing my whole life… I just call it storytelling.

The stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful; they’re our personal mythology. While we often have little control over the larger circumstances that shape our lives— we were born into a particular family who live in a specific country at a singular moment in history— we have ultimate creativity in how we interpret the events that shape us. Was that car accident a sign that the universe hates you or a message to get your act together? Was childhood trauma an indication that you’re a victim or a strong and powerful survivor?

How we talk to ourselves about the events we experience frames those events in both our conscious and subconscious mind. This is the most gorgeous type of alchemy we can perform—it let’s us change our dross into gold.

Each story we tell ourself creates a personal narrative and that narrative determines who we see when we look in the mirror each morning. When writing Letting Magic In, I was startled by the disparities between the memories in my head and the written record in my journals. It made me pause and ask myself about truth. Is truth the facts? The stories we tell ourselves about the facts? Or maybe something in between? And what crafts our future: the step by step progression of events we lived through or the tales we later tell to help us make sense of those occurrences? For Letting Magic In, I decided that the way my personal mythology had morphed over time was an important part of the story. So I worked on weaving journal entries with present day memories, mythology with chronology.

Back at the gorgeous villa my parent’s had rented for our family get-away, I would take little breaks from the group to relax in the quiet of my white-washed bedroom. I worked my way through Sarah J. Maas’s latest book and a course with Alberto Villoldo, a psychologist and medical anthropologist who studied the healing practices of Amazonian and the Andean shamans. One of Alberto’s lessons synchronicitously aligned with my Mom’s declaration. He explained that our life’s purpose is to light a candle within. This light then shines on everything we do. Our purpose is not waiting to be discovered outside ourselves but is instead to create the kind of inner brightness that makes everything we choose to do bright and shiny. Or as Danika, one of the character’s in Sarah J. Maas’s book was fond of saying: light it up!

Make a decision, then shine your light to make it right.

Over at the crossroads, a secret smile blooms on Hecate’s face as she gives me a small nod and a wink.

This seemed like a good decision at the time…my ears were not so happy later. Careful, it’s loud!

So, a thought exercise or journal prompt: How do you talk to yourself? Do you berate yourself for your choices or do you make a decision and then make it right? What shift in your personal mythology would let you smile at the person you see in the mirror in the morning? If you're having trouble loving the person staring back at you, try this exercise while looking at a photo of your younger self. How would you speak to that small, impressionable person?

Off to create a new story!

xx Maia

P.S. A number of you have asked me to bring back my Sunday Tea emails (for those who are newer: first, hi! Second, the Sunday Tea emails were a thing a did in the 2010s.) You might notice that it’s Sunday. The tea is up to you. ; )