Feeling What's Real

on self inquiry and the case for penned intimacy

Dear readers: Today I want to tell you that in 15 years with a blog, not a single word of my writing has ever come from AI. It feels important to share this in a day & age when real, live voices in real, breathing bodies from real, feeling souls are globally tempted to let artificialities infuse the fields of our attention. My own heart’s pen has always driven this bus, and just like Rosa Parks, it won’t be moving to the backseat. ✍🏼 💋

In my last post, Feeding our Beauty with Light, I spoke of a turning point with this Leaning into Light newsletter. I was experiencing a version of what’s called ‘active commitment’ in relationship science and psychology, where two people consciously return to choose each other rather than just sitting back in their recliners, cracking open a beer and assuming it’s still a yes.

For months, I had felt an uncomfortable storm between me and the screen, a sign that our relationship needed to shift. As part of this self-inquiry, I wondered:

🐦‍⬛ Does my newsletter just add noise to an already overstimulated world?
🐦‍⬛ Am I being the truest me with what I write, or am I blending in too much?
🐦‍⬛ Is this a full-yes for my attention… my life force?

In a world throbbing with pain points aching to be seen through Love’s eyes, I asked Life to show me what I could write about that actually matters.

Energetically, I kept hear-feeling Life say, “I want you.”

Listening in my sleep.
Listening in the shower.
Listening as I poached eggs for breakfast.

As I listened for Life’s answer, I heard this grounding and marvelously minimalist song cradling my collar bone like a necklace singing, “I Want You.”

All that Life wanted was for me to live my truth?

Yep. That’s all it asked for. As a mother. As a friend. As a lover, a dancer, a daughter, a writer. As an expression of its Light-fed force, Life simply wanted… me. It said,

Your newsletter is a full yes and it is worth your time, when you write from the truest you.

There was never any doubt about personal narrative writing being my lifelong art; I’ll live and die laying Love on paper. I write books for a living.

It’s the screen part, the computer part, that felt unclear.
Pleasure is one of my middle names. 🍯
Pen on paper feels good. 🖊️
Screens are dead ☠️
such a turn-off
compared to the feeling of
fingers
curving
inkforms
onto sleek and
hardened
pulp. 🌳

Yet… screens are part of what is. I wasn’t considering abstinence from screens. (Yeah, good luck.) I just wanted to feel clear about how we’d be together, when it came to this beloved newsletter I share with the world.

I was swirling in a pool of self inquiry.

If Life simply wanted me to be me — as in, you to be you — then it’s not complicated. Perhaps I just needed to breathe for a few more days, and tell more truth.

Ahh, that was it. Something in my gut felt a need for me to tell more truth with my writing.

Truth that doesn’t live on the surface.
Truth with sharper teeth, more ferocity.
Anger wanted me to have more access to its fire.

That anger piece was especially striking.

On a recent 2-hour call with one of my best friends, I told him about the massive swells of anger I’d allowed to surface in recent times, more than ever in my 51 years of living. He said it felt like Mahakala, the protector deity in Buddhism and Hinduism representing fierce compassion.

Mahakala

Last week I told my man, “You didn’t call in a woman who’s nice all the time. You called in Kali in a Kundalini dress.”

He knows he called in a passionate lover, that was clear from Day One. And yet beneath my long persimmon colored velvet skirt, there lives an untamed power. The womb of the Divine Mother holds power that can kill off what needs to die — the ego, illusion and other forms of darkness that attempt to blind us in these times of catastrophic global imbalance.

From now on, I intend to write closer to the edges of that kind of destruction. With my words fed by the energy that removes internal and external obstacles. I will share what feels good to my heart, yet with less of a pleaser-dress on, and more access to the ripped and sweaty edges of my pen’s closet.

You were born free. 🕊️
We’ve all got endless options for online reading.
Stay if my writing helps you remember who you really are.
Go, if not.

What lives and breathes, what is real and here, from the truest me — is penned intimacy. And it’s a potent art form.

joy on my desktop

As the NY Times shared in The Case for Handwritten Letters, writing by hand lights up multiple parts of your brain, in a way that writing via email does not.

Mid-month, I read a post called the more you write, the more you begin to see, from a writer who began writing personal essays in May 2025. For me, it’s been 40+ years, and I find her perspectives refreshing. About her 'personal essays’ — one version of what I call penned intimacy — Maja writes,

“What I did not anticipate was how profoundly it would change the way I think, process experience, and make sense of my life. That sounds somewhat dramatic, but many people speak about how beginning a writing practice changed their life in similarly grand terms.”

fantastic chart from tinyandsnail.com

Here’s how to dish-yourself-up with real goodness today.

It’s so powerful that I suggest it often to my daughter and the women I coach: Write an Undelivered Letter. Open a blank page in your journal and lay down your truth.

Today’s twist = make it angry. Let yourself move through and feel the expansion I felt last week, during a rare planetary pattern called Barbault’s Basket which peaked between July 19-21. Anger is a smoke alarm in response to a threat, real or imaginary. If you don’t have access to anger, you’re half dead. Tell more truth; it’ll show up. Do not let anger stay inside of you; that causes dis-ease. It wants to be moved through you, and sometimes your anger is asking you to set a boundary.

Here are some tips for your letter:

💢 Choose someone or something you feel significantly angry about.
💢 Vent. Be furious. Let your rage lead your pen. Don’t hold back.
💢 Name what you stand for, and how it’s being violated.
💢 Draw a boundary. What will you no longer do, or tolerate?

Today I’ll leave you with this wish, dear readers. I wish for you a moment of feeling so completely true to yourself that you have finally found Home.

✨ In partnership, like your primary companion is a human embodiment of Home.

✨ At work, that how you generate a living is a satisfying expression of Home.

✨ On Earth, you feel at Home wherever you are on Mama’s spectacular body.

✨ And in the purpose living itself through you as you breathe it into being: Home.

What feels real, feels good. I am grateful for the recent surge of anger that helped clarify and enhance my perception about what feels good for me. And I’m glad that my truth is to keep saying yes to this newsletter.

Thanks for loving you~
🧡 Jess