Delightful Pleasures / 12
Musings, visual moods, and wisdom meant for 2024, sent in 2025
Juice readers,
Newcomers, welcome. I’ve noticed an uptick in my subscribers during an unintentional writing hiatus. I’m so happy you’re here…truly. Your presence during my absence reinforces a newly formed belief I’m practicing — that I don’t have to try so hard and pump out content in a linear fashion for the sake of growing a subscriber list — that the right people will find The Juice at the right moment and I can stop white-knuckling through my growth. Something I’ve known to be true in theory, but in practice still feels a little new and foreign. The release of control feels freeing.
The Juice OGs, I’ve missed you. For real. To the ones who read my words and in between the lines…dear lord, you have an energetic thread to my heart. I write mainly to understand the world (my inner world and our outer world) — if some of that overflows to you for you to understand (or maybe cope? unthread? reflect?) the inner and outer…well, that’s what dreams are made of. Thank you for being a part of the ride. 2024 felt like I was thrown off the ride completely after recovering from the whips, thrashes, and bumps of 2023. The seatbelt finally became unworn, leaving me unstrapped and untethered. You may have witnessed me trying to tether myself back together — thank you for compassionately being here through it.
No one came out of this year unscathed.
No one comes out of life unscathed.
It’s been well over a month since I last wrote to you. Probably two. This particular piece was meant to be sent in December — part 12 of a monthly series, theming out each month to consciously embody a predestined card pull. While I never show up to a party early or on time (the perfect time to arrive is a solid 1.5 hours after the party has begun) and am known to Irish-exit all my departures, I never meant to leave you hanging this long. I never meant to leave me hanging this long either. I’m learning how to not self-abandon my creative nature and WOOOO WEEEEE….after being conditioned to self-abandon my creative light for the sake of keeping the dimmed comfortable, I did not know how this belief still has such a tight grip on my psychosis until very recently.
Truth be told, I came back to America (to my parents’ home in small-town Ohio) in November and did not transition well.
At all.
Just when I was beginning to feel tethered, I became untethered again.
Humble pie continues to taste oh, so sweet when you think ‘the work’ is done.
Hat hung up. Clocked out. Presto: you’re healed!
And then all your stuff — baggage, triggers, what’s still unhealed — arises again.
I am learning that when it comes to healing, the work is never done. When it comes to healing within relationships, that work is especially never done.
Every time I think I can exist inside of a vacuum of higher-self living, I am brutally reminded how wrong I am. My sweet naivety continues to be bronzed into valuable wisdom.
I write about overcoming the mother wound, but truthfully, there are places where I am still wounded. The wounds run deep — generations and generations deep (that I didn’t ask for, but was gifted with in this lifetime) — and enmeshed into the fabric of my own being, which takes so much goddamn effort to work through. Which I am doing as we speak. It’s a dedication to myself and my self-evolution. The mothering of thy self.
I write about prosperity but I still feel scarcity. Cold-hearted capitalism and heartless lack born into my bones. While I refuse to let these false pretenses and imaginary fears keep me from experiencing prosperity, when I find a new edge of expansion — I do question first: “Am I worthy to receive it?” How human of me.
I write about speaking the truth and the power of the voice — but I’m still finding mine.
I write about spirituality, but I find myself disconnected and have to fight this frayed and disconnected world to find my way back. Sometimes it’s a crawl. Sometimes it’s a full-on sprint. Eventually, the spine will straighten, the sacrum roots, the heart softens, and the crown of the head pull toward possibility. Somehow, I always manage to make it back home: to my intuitive self.
Through all of these revelations, less-than-perfect circumstances, triggering truths and harsh rigids — I am finding stillnes to be with what is. To hold space for it all. To stop judging where I am and accept: this is where I am at right now.
Devotion to the stillness of what is has shifted judgment into peace. Overcomplicating to listening. Overwhelm into micromoves. Wallowing into self-respect. Making mistakes into refined wisdom. Feeling trapped into self-liberation.
The only goal I have for 2025 is self-liberation. Whittling away at the wounds still open a and purging all that’s not mine — fear, anxieties, conditioning, limitations — to be left with what (truly) is…
The whole self. A liberated self.
Freedom.
The Liberté way.
Fighting tooth and nail for yours, mine, and ours.
WISE SALT.
WISDOM. GRIT. PRESERVATION.
VISUAL MUSINGS
Salt retains, preserves, and absorbs. It brings complexity to flavors and grit to slippery roads.
In due time and with due experience, the Alchemist slowly develops these granules of wisdom that can someday be passed to another.
Someone who carries Wise Salt is immediately recognizable. Their words hold meaning, their stories are deep and true.
They have wisdom that cannot be attained by any other means than decades of pain and pleasure.
Alchemically, you are being brined. Preserve what you can. Let go of the rest…and lean heavily on your elders.
TO PONDER:
THE TASTE OF TEARS.
Salt on my cheeks never felt so satisfying.
TO QUESTION:
WHO CARRIES WISE SALT?
Think of a few people in your life who seem to carry wise salt.
What is it about them that makes it so? Was their depth easily acquired?
TO DEEPEN:
READ ABOUT THE SALT MARCHES IN INDIA.
We march on— for it’s the journey — that teaches us the most, not the destination.
TO CONSUME:
— FREE
— Women Who Run With the Wolves
THE TRUTH OF WISE SALT:
If you’re willing to crack yourself open — to unravel all that once was and be with what is — your inner wisdom will slowly begin to guide you forward.
We all carry wise salt in our pockets. Make less room for your phone (or whatever else you may throw in your pocket — a piece of gum, a receipt, a movie ticket) and more room for salt.
Much love,
M
Beautiful writing!! I love your writing voice and how you capture thoughts. Your connection to salt reminds me of something I read recently:
"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea." - Isak Dinesen. I read it in a Jen Beagin book who quoted Dinesen.