Good morning and Happy Valentine’s Day – let’s remember the true reason behind this day: the ability to practice spirituality without condemnation and with the intention to bring people together, rooted in love.

I have a lot of things bouncing around in my head, this morning. I’ll have to put some aside for naptime because I have client sessions to get to, for the day. First, I want to mention the amount of errors in my blog yesterday was simply atrocious. I am a freelance editor as a part of my daily work, but I don’t reread or edit these blogs before I post them. I went to read yesterday’s blog and, wow, what a mess. I’m grateful if you still catch my gist and stick around despite the grammatical nuclear disaster.

Let’s dive into where we left off yesterday – the topic of sleep and the book Essentialism. I picked up the book and started to explore it during naptime. I can tell right off the bat that it’s a valuable book, but perhaps is not written for me. I believe it’s written for people addicted to the hustle, who are working themselves thin, or who feel their identity is best defined when they are busy. Since my mindset is quite aligned with slow living and I have known about the lie that is hustle culture for a while, now (I speak about this in my book, The Transformational Path), I was ready to put the book down… until I started flipping through and discovered the chapter on SLEEP.

Yesterday, I mentioned that perhaps I needed to adjust my sleep schedule for a new routine: one where I get up a little earlier than everyone and do things for me. Essentialism says to do the opposite. It states that non-essentialists – or, people who don’t know how to manage their time well – get up an hour early to “be more productive” and “do it all,” when, in fact, “sleep is for high performers,” is a necessity for quality performance during the day, and is an essential priority at the top of the list of life. Well, riddle me this.

Now I’m torn on where to stand on this topic. Do I trust the words of Greg McKeown who wrote the Disciplined Pursuit of Less or do I need to find a new way to navigate the changes on the horizon by adjusting my sleep schedule? How does one gain more sleep if there are no hours to grab from? How do I remain productive during the day when I am already aware that, by noon, the connection begins to fail (so I have a limited window to work with)? I am absolutely so lost on how to navigate sleep when the book tells me to recognize what requires prioritizing – and I do: writing – but then tells me not to sacrifice sleep for it (when sacrificing sleep might be the only way to access this priority).

I feel like these are contradictions that mothers navigate all day long. I feel like we are on an endless cycle of ABC IS BETTER – NO XYZ IS THE BEST – NO 123 IS SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN TO BE EVEN BETTER! So much noise about what is right and best for us and our path that we fail to listen to the whispers of our spirit. The problem is that when it comes to this subject, I can’t translate what the whispers are saying and I can’t seem to choose a side in this internal battle.

As I predicted at the end of my blog yesterday, so many birthday books arrived. I am only missing one, now. It was immensely difficult to put together a stack because I’m too excited about so many of them. I’ve decided to go with this stack you see above, though quite honestly Essentialism will be one I just flip through and take notes from, not one I read front-to-back (I still don’t think it’s meant for me).

Enlightened Parenting hasn’t left the bookstack in a month, now. It’s a really valuable book with short essays relating motherhood experiences with spirituality and I read it on-and-off. It’s probably one of the best spiritual motherhood books I have on my shelf due to content and approachability, but it is another one that I don’t feel called to read front-to-back. Rewild Yourself will be my new “central” book (the one that I pick up most often), and the rest I will bounce between. I think I can read Through the Kitchen Window in one sitting as it’s short and filled with beautiful illustrations.

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As I have mentioned a million times before, I created Awakened Little Souls on Instagram as a way to get away from the emotionally triggering content of social media and to cultivate a space for my joy. Social media thrives off of emotional responses: it’s what keeps you hooked to scrolling, it’s what has you sharing heavily-emotional content, it’s what keeps you falling down the rabbit hole. But it’s all an illusion meant to distract you from your own reality. It all thrives off of getting you worked up, angry, sad, frustrated as a way to keep you in the app. It’s why once you’ve interacted with one post that hits your emotional ego lizard brain, your feed becomes full of them. And it’s why once you’ve acknowledged the propaganda and lies being sold to you as reality, you’ll be inundated with more and more and more.

And just as you begin to walk a path of peace, of calm center, of love and focus on your own healing to change the world (because that’s the only place you can control and that essentially makes a difference in the long-run), you’ll get glimpses from lower-entities meant to distract you off the path. In Christianity it’s called the Devil. I just call it darkness. For this reason, I’ve unfortunately had to mute the stories of many people I follow – people sharing content that pulls others down into the darkness with them.

I’m not guilt-free of this; in my attempts to share Truth, I have used emotional content meant to trigger reactions. But in this space I’ve created and in this new bubble of boundaries I am setting for myself, I have no time or place for it. I know how my spirit reacts to selective rage, so I don’t want to play a part in it, anymore. I know how my heart jumps out of my chest to lies disguised as emotionally triggering content, so I need to distance myself. I am setting boundaries with this space and it does not mean I am ignoring reality, it just means I have come to recognize that these are all illusions set in place by darkness who have their sticky fingers on planet earth and I refuse to feed their chaos. It’s just meant to distract you, so don’t let it. I’m not, anymore.

The other problem with social media is that the space is not technically yours. If a company goes out of businesses, implements new laws or regulations or privacy contracts, or simply decides to transform how the platform is used (ie. push for more advertising, negative content, etc.), you have no choice but to be a subject to its rules. What you put on social media is no longer really yours. What you gather in that space is only yours so long as you pay the piper. It gives me all the more reason to continue to cultivate something here, and to continue to contribute in a space where I protect what is coming in and what is going out. I have total control over the narrative I build here and the environment I am a part of. No algorithm influences what is created here or what inspires this space. It’s yet another reason I am drawn to Pinterest – it cultivates beauty and inspiration, not emotionally reactive content that stirs the bad within you. I must really make time to utilize it in a way that draws organic traffic here, for like-minded readers. It reminds me of an article by George Kao: social media forces you to be instantly impressive rather than consistently authentic. I choose the latter.

The more the days go on, the more I am pushed from social media – and yet it has benefited me in making connections I wouldn’t have had, otherwise! Mothers and friends and soul-family I would have never found if it were not for social media! I guess, like all of life, anything in extremes is silly and I need to learn how to pilot through in a way that continues to serve me but not turn me into a servant.

Right as I finish this paragraph, I see a Reel on Instagram about all the levels of conflicting advice that is given via unqualified sources speaking with an air of domineering truth but triggering your emotional lizard brain as a tactic to convince you that what they say is Truth with a capital T. It is not. What they want you to do is share and help them grow by catering to this aspect of the Self. Don’t let them win.

I think this is where I disconnect for the day. I am feeling pulled in other directions, so I don’t want my writing to lose its heart. I have a new Awakened Mama Community Member post on the horizon (keep them coming! Send me an email if you want to be featured!). I will end on the most beautiful testimonial for my Past Lives Intercession Reading and Celestial Genesis: Spirit Baby Reading services (if you’ve had a reading from me, a testimonial makes a huge difference — so thank you):

xx C