archive: Creature//Creative Newsletter #1

from 3.28.22 newsletter

Friends,

I want to tell you where the idea for this newsletter came from and why I’m writing it now of all times.

I started this year off in a beautiful 10-week offering from my yoga teacher, Josie, called “The Imprint” (don’t worry, this isn’t an advertisement). We started on January 1st and wrapped up earlier this month after weeks of deep practice, reflection, goal setting, and growing together. It was truly moving and life-changing. Through that course, I decided to leave my full-time job in pursuit of better developing my writing and yoga teaching projects. The group setting also meant that I felt held through my major life changes in those first months of 2022 - we joked in our group meetings that I was fully embodying my Late Summer, the season of transition in Traditional Chinese Medicine. This continues to feel so true as I begin this next part of my journey.

I sat with Josie weeks ago contemplating what it might look like to just fucking write outside of my ongoing novel or poetry projects, and to actually share that with others, despite currently being so averse to blasting my life and thoughts on social media. To be honest, I have been dragging my feet on getting the newsletter up and running since that conversation, simply out of fear. Fear of being seen. Fear of failing. Fear that you will see right through to my deepest insecurities.

Moving through fear and opening this next chapter of my life has deeply humbled me and taught me so much about the person I am at my core. The fear of vulnerability and failure can be an insight into our basic desire to protect ourselves from harm, but often becomes harmful itself when left to its own devices. It’s okay to freak out and have a meltdown, but when we don’t put a boundary on our bullshit, when we don’t reckon with it, we allow it to control our lives. We slowly become untethered and out of reach, with no grip on ourselves or our needs. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can reflect on those fears to find out who we are and what we want, and then set the intention to make moves in alignment with that truth. In doing so, we liberate ourselves from the inaction of fear, instead using it as a tool for deep self-knowledge and transformation.

xoxo (gossip girl),

Lashonda