🍋 Lemon Medicine 🍋
Re-orienting from 'what if?' to 'what is' + some invitations at the bottom
Dear friends,
There’s a part of me that has always lived in the space of what if. This is the fantasist part, the escapist, the one who walks through this world into another. It’s useful for speculative fiction, but as with many of our gifts, its origins began with survival. See my FlowForm website for more on the survival/gifts relationship.
When I was young, the ability to imagine a different reality was what kept me going.
If reality won’t change, then I have to change it in my mind, or shape an entirely different reality that can hold what I am.
This is very common with writers: writing to keep you alive, writing your way out of one thing and into another.
And yet— as with many of our survival systems, there is a moment when the creative response becomes the obstruction to expansion. When I look back at my life, there are moments when that what if tendency actually stopped me from being present to the both medicine and the challenge (intertwined as dancers folded over one another) — of the now.
My first boyfriend was this sweet, gorgeous, French boy who at sixteen asked me if we would continue our relationship after our summertime romance. I was preparing to go to France for a year-long study abroad program, it was technically possible, although the exchange program had placed me on the opposite end of the country.
My mind went to:
What if I meet someone else in this next chapter?
What if I need to be available for something better that is coming my way?
And that what if—it stopped me from seeing what I had.
It stopped me from seeing the reality of what was in front of me.
I broke up with him. It was cruel, although I didn’t realize it was until afterward, when it was too late to repair. When I got to my year-abroad, there was no one. I was alone, and
🍋 I had lost the possibility of the now in prioritizing the possibility of the future.
Five years later, at twenty-one, I was living in Madrid: another year abroad. And six months in, I realized I was still living out of my (lemon yellow!) suitcase.
Part of me was thinking—
But I’m going to leave. This program is a year long, and I’m already halfway through. I can’t unpack. I can’t stretch out.
I remember distinctly the moment when I recognized the blocks I was putting up to all the alive Spanish medicine of the moment (tapas! vino tinto! music on the streets! shopping with girlfriends!). This moment when I saw that anticipating the future—my inevitable departure—was preventing me from actually receiving the here and now.
That day I unpacked the suitcase. A suitcase I did eventually struggle to close at customs (lol), because I threw my protections to the wind and I bought too much stuff—things that wouldn’t fit, things that would overflow.
I also went out and bought a beautiful floral quilt for my little twin bed. I loved it so much. I allowed myself to be home.
🍋 To rest in the power and imaginative possibility of what is.
Re-orienting from ‘what if?’ to ‘what is?’ is a subtle practice with profound impact. In the now is the space where we root down and anchor in.
I’ve now been in the Hudson Valley since 2020, and in my house for three and a half years. It’s taken us a while to really settle. Partly because of young kids, yes. But also—because I’ve been running that same old pattern.
What if we don’t stay here? What if the geopolitical chaos forces us out? What if we want a different kind of life? What if this wasn’t the right choice?
And while any of those things could be true—
Living in that what if state has been keeping me, once again, from fully receiving the blessings of what was already here.
This past solar eclipse, I found myself painting lemons on our kitchen wall.
Because this is what you do when you decide to stay.
You look at the blank wall and you say,
Yes—I’m going to paint some lemons on it. Fuck it. Why not?
I don’t like the phrase, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade —maybe it’s the toxic positivity of our culture —
🍋 Or maybe it’s just that I love lemons.
I love how strong and clarifying they are.
How the taste brings you immediately into the here and now.
Cleansing. Stripping everything else away.
Lemons are the fruit of what is.
So: have your lemons. Take a big old zingy bite and allow yourself to arrive.
Anchor in the now.
Reorient to what is, right now, right here.
With love,
Saga
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Some updates as I slowly unveil the web I’ve been weaving:
If you would like a one-on-one session with me, these are now only available to those in my ‘inner circle’. That’s you. They will not be listed on my website or my instagram, but if you want to come and chat about anything - be it your brand, your creative process, your crossroads in life - I can help you find the authentic form to support your emergence. Link here to book.
Callie Rojewski and I are facilitating this workshop together - Digital Sovereignty: Reclaiming the Internet from the Teknokings. This digital queen has helped me clear my relationship to the internet in a huge way. I feel excited to be here now and if you’ve noticed a change in my last few newsletters, I attribute it to the energetic shift of working with her. If you are someone who has conflict over how to express yourself or build your business authentically in the toxic wasteland of the current internet landscape… join us! Come find your authentic shape and structure, feel the permission to move and be as you need to, and as Callie says go bigger than big tech. By which she means your imagination is bigger and more powerful than any so-called teknoking. Step into the circle, my queens.