Pisces season and the overstimulated artist, a remedy

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” - Audre Lorde

Welcome to the Life Is In Love With Me newsletter if you’re new. If you’re a regular recipient of these reminders of love, welcome back! 🌹🥭🌹🥭🌹🥭

Today’s tea prep will be brief. As if to add only hot water to the infusion, some honey, more cinnamon. Really I want to sit with the scent and steam from the mug and chill with you quietly before we talk. How do you feel today?

Today I’m writing from a space of recovery and I feel grateful for what travelling alone has taught me about the need to listen, always, to the body. I’m in the midst of that now. Allowing my body to speak over my habits and over my neatly scribed daily to-do lists. It’s nice to see how our relationship has shifted over the years and how less resistant I am to dismissing the body’s language.

Recently, another synchronicity. I came across this quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Substack and it gave so much knowing in how to express what I have inwardly felt:

“The body always knows the truth before I do. The nervous system is God’s best messaging device.” -

Elizabeth Gilbert

from LETTERS FROM LOVE.

Yes. I had to share it here, with you, in case you needed this loving language to articulate your truth. I encourage you to read the letter in full; it is a warm, wholesome offering.

I also want to make space to shout out my two newest paid subscribers. It was a pleasure to see

kenzi m.

and

Nicole Serrano

join my list of paid readers. Thank you both for always joining me in community and conversation and now supporting LIILWM financially! Check out each of their generous writings:

flowers for my younger self

I Love My Life's Dark Moments

This newsletter remains free for all to read because I want love to be accessible. Last week, I explained that paid readers will now receive a gift in the form of a resource of 111 daily affirmations and a backstory, as a thank you. I call this generosity repaying generosity. If this aligns with you, consider becoming a paid reader ❤️.

Now for today’s letter

Enjoy x

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Around Pisces season, I find this obsessive need to create. Every single year I do something that the youngest sign of the zodiac inspires: a youthful desire to do dumb shit in the name of art. In 2020, I stayed up with multiple poetic ideas in mind, calling in sick for work for three days in a row to get my sample poetry manuscript complete. Some years before that, as a student, a poem came to me and never left, kept me awake through the night and then walked me onto campus for my lecture like sleep was a suggestion for freshers (first years). I’m typically a lover of structure with a regular dosage of unpredictability (for aliveness, thrill). This is not that, but I willingly do it.

As per the season, I have done entirely too much. This week I had a project that kept me at my screen from morning to night. The week before I spent my time doing the same thing, only a little less detectable. My capacity for screen time is about 4-5 hours a day before my body speaks up in discomfort. I have learned this the hard way a few times. Being freelance while traveling has been the ultimate teacher in discipline and flow and self-listening to avoid over-exertion.

Inevitably, this week my body began to show warning signs of paying the price and so, an act of self-kindness. Slowness, softness, easing up so the vessel can receive adequate rest and recovery. Maybe you are here too, needing to nurture and confront your humaness while the rest of you is recharging. We can plant ourselves in quieter spaces together. Or you can save for later times. I know this may happen again, because I have been sent here to write and create and this is not always an orderly existence. I pair this knowing with the fact that I can learn how to be intentionally rested and observant of my body’s cues. To reinforce this, I have written us some affirmations on:

thriving through densely inspired periods

inherent enoughness

self-welcoming (non-judgement)

restful homecoming

self-restoration

no/thingness as sacred

eliminating burnout via self-noticing

Here are some affirmations for when you need to decelerate and take it slow.

Credit o x via Pexels.

11 affirmations on staying still

1. I am living a life of ease for all generations before and after me

2. I am deeply aware of the power in my elongated breath and my sensual lifestyle

3. I release resistance daily, I am in flow

4. Wisdom easily finds me

5. I am well-rested, regulated and intentionally still today, always

6. I am supported in rest, everyone makes space for my peace

7. I do not house survival mode, I unlearn those behaviours with gladness

8. I honour my body’s intuition

9. I let sweetness and surrender settle into the spine

10. In my slowness I am moving as fast as I can

11. I am radically unrushed and wealthy in space

Thank you, so much, for being here.

Below I share some more writings that I hope you will enjoy.

An Origin Story: Food Poisoning In Mexico Turned Me Nomadic

The Friday unwind 006: A Final Pep Talk Before My Year Of Audacity

A story about quitting my job to write

Musings on Black nomadism (pt 1)

The Friday unwind 004: When there is nothing to become

Love,

Amara Amaryah