Sometimes a voice even whispers in the back of your mind, “I should know what’s next by now.”

Being in an in-between can feel like disconnection from your creativity and from a business that once felt meaningful.

It can feel like you’re standing in a place where the old way doesn’t fit anymore, but the new way hasn’t fully revealed itself.

And culturally, we’re not very good at honoring this space.

We’re taught that clarity is something you figure out.

That if you just brainstorm harder, optimize your strategy, post more consistently, or “get back on track,” the answer will appear.

But in my experience, both personally and after more than a decade of working with creative, intuitive business owners, clarity often disappears right before a total life and business upgrade.

On the surface, it feels like you’ve lost the plot and that you don’t have control over what’s changing.

But underneath, the next version of yourself is already being formed, and it’s up to you to trust that it’s on its way.

When I shut down a 7-figure business because it felt misaligned, I felt genuinely lost for a while, too.

At first, I felt freedom and relief. I could become whoever I wanted to be.

But not long after, that freedom turned into a question I didn’t yet have an answer to: Well…who DO I want to be now?

I didn’t know what I wanted to build next, and for someone who had always been “clear” about her next steps, that was deeply uncomfortable.

(Not to mention, I had gone through a serious breakup, my beloved dog passed away, and I had moved cities and then countries...there was a lot to process before my next self could emerge!)

There was a stretch where I wondered if I’d ever get my spark back to build something again. Would I be stuck in this sort of fugue state forever? I wondered.

But what I see now is that clarity needs time to process.

That’s actually part of its intelligence and what it’s here to teach us.

If we try to rush through the process of figuring out what’s next, we will only rush ourselves into an answer that doesn’t fit.

True clarity can only arrive when we’ve fully surrendered to life. When we realize that uncertainty has gifts to teach us, too.

For many people, this season is layered with real grief..

…Grief for a former identity.

…For the version of you who was more productive or more externally successful.

…Grief that comes with motherhood, divorce or breakups, burnout, illness, death, or simply outgrowing a chapter that once sustained you.

And with that grief can come shame, especially around moving more slowly or more softly in a world that rewards constant output and forward motion.

If any of this resonates, I want you to know:

Not only is this normal, but it may be one of the most important turning points of your life.

Who you become on the other side of uncertainty (and yes, with time, you will move through it) is often an expanded, more honest version of who you were before.

Many of the people I work with are deeply soulful, intuitive, multi-passionate humans.

They crave depth, meaning, and real connection, not just an audience or a funnel that works on paper.

And yet, they’ve learned to distrust this slower, more intuitive way of knowing and evolving because it’s not how we’ve been trained to live or build.

So instead, they override their instincts and end up even more disconnected from their creativity, their body, and the work they actually want to make.

But instead of forcing clarity, what if this chapter is simply asking you to listen?

To stay present with the questions a little longer and to rebuild trust with your own timing.

You don’t need to know the whole plan.
You don’t need to burn everything down.
And you don’t need to rush yourself into visibility before you feel safe to be seen.

Sometimes the most creative, courageous thing you can do is let yourself be in uncertainty without trying to rush or fix anything.

Remember: Clarity will come.

But uncertainty still has things to teach you while you wait.

If this season feels tender and you sense that a new version of yourself is forming, then I’m hosting a free live workshop to support you.

It’s called Meant for More: Reignite Your Spark and Feel Confident Being Seen, and it’s for creative business owners who want to be seen in a way that feels true, not forced.

We’ll explore why visibility feels unsafe during transitions, how to rebuild self-trust before you push yourself back “out there,” and how to create safety in your body and mind while you’re in metamorphosis.

There won’t be a replay. It’s a live, 60-minute class to help you reconnect with your voice and the version of you that’s emerging.

If it feels aligned, you can join us here for free. <3

Paid subscribers are invited to share their own reflections and goals in the comments and reflect alongside others in the community. Annual subscribers also receive two intentional goal-setting workshops per year for deeper recalibration and clarity. Thanks for being here!

I feel like this deserves a whooole other post, but four years ago I left behind my business in the online space, and now I’m returning to that same space, and it’s such an interesting experience.

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I had an urge to create content in my own way and to talk about things that were meaningful to me. It could be fun and playful, and more like a creative outlet than a business strategy, I thought.

The feeling and inspiration grew.

But then…

…the thought of posting videos on Instagram started to make me feel a little squeamish.

I used to post plenty of video content online and felt totally comfortable with it, but it had been a while...and suddenly some very familiar fears crept back in.

Old fears like…

• People are going to think this is cringey

• Is this even valuable?

• I’m too old to be doing this

• This feels messy, maybe I should “perfect” it a bit more first

Maybe you know the ones?

What I realized, though, was that none of those thoughts were actually true.

They weren’t my values or my desires speaking. They were just old stories, like outdated software in my operating system that knows exactly when to reinstall itself (usually right before I’m about to do something vulnerable or visible).

So instead of forcing myself through it, I watched.

I watched other online teachers create the kind of content I wanted to make. Content that was thoughtful and creative. Personal, but imperfect. Valuable, but not overproduced. Messy in a very human way.

And that’s when it clicked.

The issue wasn’t my confidence or strategy.

It was my nervous system.

When your nervous system is dysregulated, even things you want to do can feel unsafe.

Visibility feels like a threat.

Expression feels risky.

Growth feels impossible because you’re subconsciously protecting yourself from perceived danger.

So instead of doing the thing you want to do, you overthink, procrastinate, or keep doing endless “research” because it makes you feel like you’re making progress even though you’re stalling.

And this is important: you’re not doing this because you’re lazy or undisciplined.

You’re doing it because your nervous system is simply doing its job.

From a survival perspective, expansion often reads as danger. Being seen means exposure. Change means uncertainty.

And no amount of “just do it” energy can override that for very long, especially when your nervous system responses have been programmed into you over a lifetime.

This is why so many people feel like they’re doing everything right, like following the strategies, investing in support, showing up consistently, and still feel totally stuck.

They’re trying to solve a nervous system problem with a mindset or strategy solution.

Instead, the real work is not about “pushing through.” It’s about building a greater capacity within yourself to tolerate uncertainty, be fully seen, and express yourself creatively.

This is the work beneath the work.

You’d be freaking amazed by how much more easily the strategies start to click into place when your nervous system is not subtly sabotaging all your efforts and desires.

As for my Instagram content?

Once I realized it was a nervous system problem, I got to work using some of my tools to understand the old scripts that were holding me back, and to feel regulated and confident again.

Now, I’ve been creating content pretty much daily, and the old stories and fears are gone. It’s genuinely been one of the most fun and creatively fulfilling parts of my business lately.

It’s also brought in a wave of new email subscribers, since Instagram is one of the ways I grow my email list.

And none of that would’ve been possible if I was still dysregulated, doomscrolling through Instagram at people who had more courage than me to put themselves out there.

If this resonates, and you’re noticing that there’s a place in your own life or work where you’d like to be a little braver, a little more visible, and a lot more honest, then I made something for you (it’s free!).

It’s called the Creative Courage Activation Kit and it includes a set of journal prompts and a visualization to support you in working through your fears and uncertainties so that you can get your creative spark back.

👉🏼 You can download it right here.

Now, I’d love to know in the comments below, what is an area of your work where you’ve got an idea…the inspiration is there…but you keep stalling.

Let me know!

Paid subscribers are invited to share their own goals in the comments and reflect alongside others in the community. Annual subscribers also receive two intentional goal-setting workshops per year for deeper recalibration and clarity. Thanks for being here!

As you’ve probably heard about a million times already, this past year has been the Year of the Snake in the Chinese Zodiac.

The Year of the Snake is indicative of a year of rebirth, transformation, and letting go. It actually continues until February 16th, so we have precisely three more weeks of this energy before the Year of the Fire Horse begins.

In a stark contrast, the Fire Horse represents passion, bold action, and independence, so starting on February 17th we are moving from very yin/feminine Snake energy to very yang/masculine Horse energy.

And to be honest: I’m so excited!!!!

I haven’t felt fully rooted for the past couple years. It’s felt like I’ve been shedding and shedding and now I’m re-emerging from a deep slumber and opening my eyes again, seeing my life in fresh color.

I feel extremely directional. I am trusting the way my path is unfolding and I feel comfortable with the uncertainty of where it may lead because I know it’s going to be somewhere great. And I feel creative again and I’m having so much fun with what I’m working on.

For a long time it was hard for me to access that level of spark in my work, so it feels amazing to have it back.

So, with these next three weeks of the Year of the Snake, I want to set myself up to have a clean slate going into the Year of the Fire Horse. To let go of what needs to be let go of. To clear out the cobwebs. And to create steady ground to build upon.

I’m also seriously thinking about moving (more on where below—eek!) and these next few weeks for me are about setting some of those plans in motion.

And while I love learning about things like the zodiac, I have no idea if they’re “real” and frankly, I don’t care haha.

I do my best to extract a bit of meaning from them if it feels useful to my life, while using my own discernment. I think most things are really about the meaning you give to them, and if it’s adding value, that’s enough for me.

So let’s dive into some goals for this week…the last week of January!

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After survival needs, like “financial pressure” or “not enough time or energy,” do you know what the top response was?

Not feeling safe to be fully seen or visible.

I wasn’t surprised.

After working with business owners for the past 11 years, I’ve found that the fear of being seen is one of the biggest things holding people back from success and fulfillment.

How does the fear of being visible show up?

Back when I started my first business in 2013, the thought of even putting a photo of myself on my website felt like “too much.” I didn’t want people to think I thought too highly of myself, and that largely stemmed from the fact that *I* didn’t think so highly of myself.

Over time I started to become more comfortable with being visible.

I rebranded my business from a business name I could hide behind to a personal brand. I slowly started posting videos. I talked about things that mattered to me, even if sometimes they ruffled a few feathers.

But the fear of being visible isn’t cured simply because you now feel comfortable posting a video here and there or going by your own name.

It can show up in many flavors, like:

Editing yourself and watering down your truth.

Do you have a subconscious belief that there’s a right way to exist as a business owner? Do you follow the templates and tried-and-true advice instead of the calling of your own voice?

The fear of being fully seen means that we become adept at hiding the parts of ourselves we think are harder to love, or that don’t fit the mold we deem as worthy of success.

You stay in identities you’ve outgrown.

When we’re afraid to be fully visible, we’re often afraid of looking messy. The fear of looking like you don’t know what you’re doing is part of what holds us back from being seen in the first place.

So when you sense that a truer path is unfolding for you, it can feel more comfortable to stay on the one you’ve outgrown. Because what will people think if they see you in an in-between, when you don’t have it all together?

You keep waiting for permission or certainty that never arrives.

Part of our ability to feel safe being visible is rooted in our capacity to be with uncertainty without falling apart.

But when we’re always chasing certainty, trying to get it “perfect,” or waiting for someone else to tell us that we’re good enough to be seen, then the container we’re operating our business from doesn’t have a lot of breathing room.

Ultimately, what this all creates is:

• Less aliveness. Your business isn’t holding all of you. It’s holding the performance of you. And that gets very tiring after awhile. I fully believe that this is one of the top reasons people burn out.

• Less results. As a business owner, you need to be visible. That doesn’t always mean that you need to rush to post videos or start a Substack, but it does mean that you need to work through the places where you’re standing in your own way. What opportunities or collaborations are you not going after because of your fear of visibility? Where are you holding back in your strategy or leadership?

• Seeing the contrast between the business you could be building, and the one you are. When we look at other businesses with comparison and envy, rather than inspiration and motivation, it’s probably because they’re reflecting something back to you that you’re not doing yourself. It’s easier to judge someone for doing the thing you’ve secretly been wanting to do.

Why does everyone seem to have the fear of being seen at some point?

It’s interesting how universal this experience is, but not that surprising.

In many historical and cultural contexts, being highly visible, especially if you challenged norms, could have led to social exile, punishment, or loss of protection. In extreme cases, this could’ve threatened survival itself.

Not only would this cultural trauma have been passed down through society, but it could also have been passed down through epigenetics.

Epigenetics is a field of science that studies how environmental experiences can influence gene expression, meaning which genes are turned “on” or “off.”

Research suggests that prolonged stress or trauma can leave epigenetic marks that may influence how future generations respond to threat, stress, or safety.

What this means is that patterns around fear and self-protection can be shaped not only by your own lived experiences, but also by the environments your ancestors survived, even if you didn’t even know them.

A little mindblowing, right?

So now, when you go to hit “send” on that vulnerable email to your list, or you host your first online workshop, the fear of being visible isn’t just rooted in the idea that you might get a judgmental response.

It’s rooted in the fact that your nervous system literally thinks you’re in danger.

Yikes.

And what does that really mean, your “nervous system”?

Maybe you’ve heard this term thrown around a lot, but aren’t quite sure how to define it.

Your nervous system is your body’s perception-and-response system.

Its primary job is to scan for safety or threat and to shift your thoughts, emotions, and behavior around that assessment.

So your nervous system scans for safety or threat (often subconsciously), interprets what’s happening through the lens of your past experiences, and shapes how available you feel for connection, risk, or expression.

How your nervous system can unintentionally sabotage your results:

For example, maybe you’ve been wanting to pivot your business to a slightly different niche or topic. But this topic feels a little deeper, more edgy for you, and you’re not sure if your entire audience will be down for this new direction.

So months pass and you continue with the same ol’ same ol’.

The new direction is always on your mind, but your nervous system is essentially in a freeze response, subconsciously worrying about the risk of change and upsetting people.

You just can’t seem to do it because deep down you’re afraid of being fully seen as this new version of you.

Your podcast downloads suffer because your audience can subconsciously sense that you’re not that into this topic anymore. Something feels off, inauthentic.

So instead of using that as the invitation to step into this change you’re craving, you double down on what you’ve been doing, thinking “I’m losing listeners, I need to try harder! Podcasting is changing!!”

So you start publishing two episodes per week instead of just one and wonder why that doesn’t work, either.

Cue: Burnout.

Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between actual danger and relational danger, so it treats visibility as a survival issue.

So when you notice the ways you’re holding yourself back from being seen as your fully expressed self, it’s not because you’re lazy or inconsistent. It’s because your nervous system is trying to protect you from harm.

First of all, how sweet is that? Sometimes I think we forget that we are a soul co-creating with a human body. Our body is our biggest advocate, our mama bear, the fiercest protector that we will have for our entire life. I think it’s so beautiful the ways our body tries to help us.

And.

We have the potential to create a relationship with our body and nervous system that still allows us to go after the challenging, uncomfortable things we desire in life and business.

Your body is not doing anything wrong. It’s doing exactly what it feels it needs to in order for you to survive. I give a lot of gratitude to my body, and I remind it that it’s safe even when I decide to make a leap into the unknown.

What is your nervous system calibrated to?

Like I mentioned, we all have a unique capacity for risk, change, uncertainty, fear, and honest self-expression based on our nervous systems.

Part of that uniqueness is rooted in your experiences throughout life.

For example, if you had early experiences of being misunderstood, judged, or criticized (perhaps that you don’t consciously remember, but that your body does), then these will create the extent of your nervous system’s capacity.

If you grew up in family systems where visibility meant conflict or shutdown, then this will also play into your capacity.

Or perhaps you existed in spaces where you were praised for being the “easy” or “good” child instead of the expressive, rebellious, or talkative one.

And you may have also experienced visibility trauma in smaller moments, where you simply didn’t feel safe to be fully seen.

Your nervous system doesn’t need “capital T trauma” to learn avoidance and fear. Repeated moments of feeling unseen, unsafe, or misunderstood are enough to create a pattern that keeps you small.

So, how do you work with this fear so it doesn’t consume you?

This part is crucial to remember: the courage to be fully seen as yourself is not about being fearless, it’s just about being able to notice your fears when they hold you back and make choices that are rooted in truth and self-trust.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Fear isn’t a signal to stop. It’s just your body’s natural mechanism to protect you, even when you don’t need protecting.

• Your visibility fears are just information. When you can pinpoint the story and bodily response underneath the fear, then you actually have the chance to work through it.

• You don’t need confidence before being visible. You just need the capacity to hold your nervous system’s response. Confidence comes afterwards.

• Safety is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of self-trust. Self-trust means that no matter what happens, you trust that you are capable of holding yourself through it. It allows you to make decisions based on your true desires, even when it challenges you.

• You can practice being visible in small ways to calibrate your system. You can make little commitments to yourself about how you want to show up in your life. This doesn’t need to be a grand gesture right off the bat.

Want to start working with your fear of visibility in a nervous-system-friendly way?

I’ve created a 14-page workbook for paid subscribers:

The Visibility Calibration Workbook: A Nervous System-Friendly Guide to Showing Up More Fully in Your Business.

It will help you meet your fear with understanding and become more visible in a nervous system-safe way.

It includes:

• A self-assessment to understand your current visibility baseline and the patterns that tend to hold you back

• Reflection prompts to help you identify how fear shows up in your body, thoughts, and behaviors

• A guided process for beginning the thing you want to begin without forcing or diluting your truth

• A self-trust rewiring section with grounding prompts and safety anchors you can return to as you take action

Become a paid subscriber now to access the workbook and future offers like this one. <3

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Capricorn is the sign of hard work, accomplishing goals, and being committed, but because it’s in a late stage of Capricorn, the new moon also asks us to look back on the goals we’ve pursued and what we’ve created.

How has where I’ve been influencing where I’m headed next?
Do I need to make some changes?
And where do I authentically want to go?

This feels like the perfect time for Weekly Wishes, where I share a recap of my week and my weekly goals, and invite you to do the same in the comments below. It’s a lovely, tight-knit community where we are building something more human and less curated.

This new moon feels like a natural moment to pause and take stock, especially after how many twists and turns the past few years have held for me.

After walking away from my original online education business about four years ago, I moved to Portugal and opened a bookshop cafe called Fable.

Fable exists in stark contrast to what I had built online. It is a bookstore, for the love, so profit and scalability were not the driving forces behind it. Instead, it’s an in-person, tangible, community effort.

We host crammed open mic nights that have helped artists find their voice. Writing workshops where people finally begin to believe their work matters. Some of our customers have met their best friends or romantic partners at Fable. Notably, a couple once had sex in our bathroom lol.

Basically, the full spectrum of life happens there. I love that.

And it was from this place of remembering how much I loved creating these close-knit communities that my next step took shape:

I moved to Amsterdam and started offering 1-1 coaching in 6-month containers with high-level founders.

I’d never offered 1-1 coaching before. I’d always been taught that the best kind of business was one that scaled, and working closely with people, week after week, is not exactly scalable.

But I didn’t care. I wanted to try it.

And by some kind of magic, all of my clients found me without any marketing. Many of them told me they’d thought, “I wonder what Melyssa is up to these days,” and landed on my website by pure chance at a moment when they were craving deeper support. Each of them felt like this enchanted human being who I so deeply loved working with and getting to know.

Working 1-1 reminded me how much I love helping people build businesses from alignment, and how deeply our work can reflect our inner lives.

But just as importantly, it brought me back into business built on relationship — with another person, with impact I could actually feel, and with a slower, more intimate way of working.

Fable did something similar. It showed me, in a different form, what had become muddled in my last business: that I’m not meant to build at arm’s length.

I’m happiest in close-knit spaces that feel more like a village than a platform. When things scale too far, the human thread thins. You stop knowing the people you’re serving, and over time, you lose not just connection, but a felt sense of why the work matters in the first place.

I share all of this because now I’m moving in a direction that feels fresh again, and very much rooted in that village mindset. I’m working on new programs and courses, but ones that are built upon intimacy and connection.

So with this new moon in Capricorn, I’m noticing how the past four years of trusting the path has led me full circle back to where I started, but with a renewed perspective on what I’m here to build and why.

Now, I feel a desire to support people in living what I consider a creative life. Not necessarily by helping them become professional artists, but by helping them live in tune with their truest selves.

Before starting my first online education business, I had always been “the creative girl.”

In high school and college I was voted “most creative” (well, “second place” in high school, ha) because I was always making things, and often bringing others along with me. I’ve dabbled in almost every creative pursuit you could imagine.

But my definition of creativity when I was younger was a lot more wrapped up in what I was doing than in who I was being.

What I was missing before was the philosophy of thought I have around creativity now:

That a creative life is not just about making things, it’s about who you become when your prioritize courage over fear.

Now, I believe you can live a deeply creative life even if an artistic craft is not even part of the equation. Your life is the canvas, and living in alignment with yourself can be your art.

I feel this genuine sense that a cycle has completed in my life, and another one is being born.

That the spiral has carried me back to the same place I was about ten years ago, but with a completely new vantage point. And it feels really good. Like re-meeting the child inside, now holding hard-earned wisdom in my hands.

As you review your own life and business, where are you landing in your own cycle?

Are you at the beginning of something fresh or familiar?

Are you in the middle, transitioning from one self to another?

Or are you at the end of something that’s carried lessons, and feeling perhaps the joy and grief of letting go?

I’d love to chat about it in the comments below. <3

Now for this past week and my goals for the next one…

Below, I’ll share a more personal recap of my week, what I followed through on, what I didn’t, and the intentions I’m setting next—and I invite you to share yours, too so that we can stay accountable and connected.

Weekly Wishes is a paid space because it’s meant to feel like a small room of friends, not a loud feed. You are absolutely invited to join.

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Much of the conversation was thoughtful and curious, asking what these decisions might signal about strategy, sustainability, or broader shifts within the online business landscape. What’s really going on beneath the surface? people wondered.

And that curiosity makes sense.

But what struck me was how quickly the conversation moved away from the reasons these women actually named, and toward a familiar line of questioning about industry decline or changing economics.

Questions like: If not for dwindling sales or shifting market conditions, why else would Amy walk away from a program that’s earned millions? And why would Jenna step back from a podcast that’s grown her platform for years?

It’s those questions, and the assumptions embedded within them, that are worth examining.

They reveal something much bigger than the fate of online courses or podcasts. They reveal the grip of an old business paradigm that struggles to take alignment, completion, and inner truth at face value.

That paradigm is rooted in patriarchy. Let me explain.

Amy Porterfield shared that during her last launch, she struggled to talk about her course in a way that felt fresh. From what I gathered, she felt like the course was a bit…stale. There’s only so much you can say about creating online courses before it starts to feel monotonous. I get that.

She also said this in her email announcing her choice:

“Sometimes there’s something greater inside you that has to come out. And you can’t fully step into it while you’re still holding onto everything else.”

On Jenna Kutcher’s end, she even titled her final podcast episode, “This isn’t goodbye. This is the goal,” referencing the very thing she’d set out to create in the first place: financial freedom, time with her kids, and a slower life. And she did it.

She also shared:

“Over the last few years I’ve been in therapy doing a lot of untangling, asking myself honest questions about where I’m most lit up versus where I’m just performing because I’m good at something.”

So if both of these women are clearly telling us that they made these decisions from alignment, completion, and a desire to live more truthfully, why are we still searching for another explanation?

I think part of the answer is that our collective conditioning hasn’t quite caught up yet. We’re still operating inside business systems shaped by patriarchal values.

We’ve been taught that walking away from millions of dollars is irrational.

That alignment is a “nice to have,” not a legitimate reason to leave something that still works.

And that success, once achieved, should be protected at all costs, even if it no longer feels fulfilling.

Four years ago, I shut down my own multi-million-dollar courses and podcast.

There isn’t a dramatic story to tell. No lawsuit that destroyed me. No blowout fight with my team. My sales and podcast were thriving. From the outside, it was a success.

But I was unfulfilled.

And I could not imagine continuing to grow a business that wasn’t evolving alongside me. I needed space to discover what was next, what made me feel alive, and what kind of purpose I wanted to bring into the world.

What people rarely talk about is how success can become a cage when you’ve outgrown what you’ve created.

I have a theory that our first successful online business is a kind of red herring. It teaches us essential skills. It’s usually about a topic we care about. And it often serves beginners who are just a few steps behind where we once were.

But over time, we evolve. Our questions become more nuanced. And what once felt energizing can start to feel repetitive.

Eventually, many creators yearn to teach at a different level that matches their own inner evolution. To explore ideas that feel richer, more complex, and less rehearsed.

When we don’t recognize this kind of evolution for what it is, we end up misreading it entirely.

I think where we sometimes go wrong in our industry speculations is that we lump the Old Paradigm of business in with the New Paradigm, not realizing that they are different.

The Old Paradigm of business is about consistency, tradition, and permanence. It is Coca Cola, Starbucks, and Costco. It says, let’s not skew too far from what we’ve built. Keep the investors happy. Protect the machine.

These are businesses designed to outlive the humans who built them. To rarely change. To never question whether the thing they’re producing still has soul.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it isn’t for everyone. And it’s deeply rooted in patriarchy.

The New Paradigm of business prioritizes freedom, alignment, meaning, and creativity. It says, let this business reflect who I am now. Let me live by seasons instead of forcing a linear path. And if something no longer feels alive, let me have the courage to change it.

The New Paradigm doesn’t reject skill, discipline, or excellence.

It rejects self-betrayal.

It prioritizes coherence over consistency and aliveness over optimization. It doesn’t ask, “Can this continue?” but “Should it?”

For a long time, businesses that challenged the Old Paradigm were seen as fringe. Even companies like Patagonia or Dr. Bronner’s, that openly prioritized people over profit, felt radical when they began.

The problem is that our conditioning about business often comes from Old Paradigm thinking.

When we see someone shut down a successful business or product, our first instinct isn’t Good for them for choosing alignment, even at a cost. It’s to search for a broader explanation. This must signal something about the industry, we think. Why else would someone walk away from millions?

But now, more and more businesses, often led by women, are giving us permission to ask a deeper question: Is there more for my life and work than this?

The examples extend beyond the ones I’ve already shared so far:

• Fashion designer, Mara Hoffman, shut down her brand in 2024, penning an honest letter explaining her decision in which she said, “Maybe we all need to see someone make this choice. To actively choose something else, something embedded in love, healing and Truth as opposed to staying put in something that has run its course.”

• Vanessa Lau shut down a highly successful online company, citing burnout, severe stress, and a desire to escape the "hustle culture" that had led her to feel unfulfilled despite her financial success. She’s since started a boba brand.

• Christina Galbato similarly shut down all of her seven-figure online courses because they no longer felt alive to her. She’s now creating new programs in a different niche.

I see these pivots and closures as the decision to live a life that is in full integrity. Enter: The New Paradigm.

I can’t speak for everyone I’ve named in this essay because I haven’t asked them directly. So I’ll speak for myself.

• It would have been “easier” to keep my business intact.

• I would have millions more in my bank account today if I had ignored the whispers telling me that what I’d created was no longer aligned.

• I’d probably be more visible, have more followers, and be more “successful” by industry standards.

• And? I would have slowly died inside.

I think we need to normalize women and business owners making decisions rooted in truth and meaning without immediately searching for a strategic reason to explain them.

When alignment isn’t treated as a legitimate reason on its own, it’s patriarchy at work.

And when I say patriarchy, I’m not talking about men. I’m talking about a system that values domination, hustle, and output at all costs. A system where success is measured by scale and hierarchy even when those things hollow out the people inside them.

Now, more than ever, women are taking the wheel in business. And many of us are realizing that the rat race we’ve been sold is not what we’re here for.

But the opposite of patriarchy isn’t women on top. Instead it’s a way of building that honors cycles, seasons, and change and allows things to end when they’ve run their course.

Here’s what I believe the future of online business actually looks like:

• The assumption that businesses will evolve with their creators, even when that evolution means letting go of hustle-culture definitions of success.

• Business owners prioritizing creativity, purpose, and community over domination and hierarchy. (Not because money doesn’t matter, but because once our basic needs are met, fulfillment matters more.)

• A growing willingness to honor seasons instead of forcing a linear path. To recognize when something is complete rather than insisting it scale forever.

Instead of patriarchal business practices, we have the opportunity to let our companies become a source of meaning in our lives. To grow and evolve as we do, so we can serve our deeper purpose in this short life we are given.

And if we choose the path of misalignment, then what is it all for? More money or fame? At a certain point, you realize those were never the point at all.

So no, we are not watching an industry die.

We are watching a generation of women refuse to trade success for self-betrayal.

The grief of living abroad

It’s been almost four years of living in Europe, which has completely flown by. I love it here and it feels mostly like home, but more and more the grief of being away from so many of the people and places I love back in the US weighs on me. I’d love to live between both places, but it’s hard with two bigger doggies who I love immensely and who don’t fit underneath an airplane seat. :)

I hadn’t really been feeling the weight of being away until I spent a month in California and New York this past fall. It was like all of my grief hit me at once. It honestly surprised me how heavy it felt because I’d always been happy to visit the US, but never really felt the calling to move back. But I miss my people, I miss the food, the culture, the drive, the things that just feel like home because it is my original home.

And it’s not to say I don’t love living where I am, too. I do. I am constantly in awe of the beauty of Amsterdam. There is so so much to love here. And that’s what makes it difficult sometimes, to know that no matter where I am I’ll probably always be missing somewhere or someone. I think it’s the tradeoff for getting to live around the world. To meet people and places that are etched into your soul for a lifetime, no matter where you are.

And if I did live in the US again, where would I go?

LA would be the easiest option; it’s where most of my favorite humans live and my family is in California, too. But it would also sort of feel like returning to an old self, and my inner compass isn’t set on living there right now.

The only other place that calls to me is New York. And it honestly really calls to me these days. I’ve loved it immensely for the past 10 years. I very nearly almost moved there twice (I only didn’t once because of a relationship and another time because of Covid), and I chose to buy an investment property there of all places simply because I love the city. I always imagined living in New York one day, so why not now? But then my devil’s advocate chimes in to say, “Why wouldn’t you move to LA when your people are all there? Why move to New York and start over again?” There’s a lot to consider. :)

I’m not entirely sure how my path will unfold. I’ve learned to trust the questions and I know the answers emerge in their own right timing. But that’s not to say that the in-between isn’t challenging sometimes.

On another note, I’ve been feeling reinvigorated lately in a business sense.

I’ve spent the last few years moving a bit slower on purpose. I took over a year off from 2021-2022 to detox from a lifetime of hustling and building, then started a bookshop cafe in Lisbon, which feels more creative and community-oriented than hustle-y. Over time I felt called to work with entrepreneurs again, so for the past couple years I’ve also worked with founders 1-1 in intimate coaching containers. I’ve loved that, too, and it’s reminded me how much I love businesses where you really get to know the people you’re helping.

But in the past few months I’ve been feeling this excitement about creating content, online courses, and virtual community again.

And it feels so FUN. I’d honestly been hesitant to return to this business because I was worried it could burn me out the way I felt at the end of 2021 when I decided to close all of my programs and explore a new path. I also wondered, is it a personal failing to return to the business I let go of years ago?

But I’ve come to understand that it wasn’t the business I’d built that burned me out, it was what I felt like I had lost along the way — my messy creative spirit, the simplicity I craved, and the deeper connection with my community. (By the way, I’m not using ChatGPT to write this…I just happen to love em dashes ugh *cries*). But I’ve always loved teaching (in fact, I was a high school English teacher before starting my first business!), so returning to the online ed space feels natural and true.

I remember in my past business, even at the height of its success, I always looked back on the first year with so much nostalgia. I missed having a random idea and implementing it simply because it sounded fun, rather than worrying about KPIs or how to scale. I missed learning new things every single day and experimenting. I missed when my online community was filled with new friends instead of followers — when I knew personal details about the people in my community because everything was just more intimate.

I’ve learned so many skills over the past ~13 years of entrepreneurship that make me really good at building businesses, but at heart I’m a creative person. I love to experiment. I love community more than scaling. I like things that are a bit raw and unpolished, even though I can lean toward polish out of habit (it’s a balance sometimes). I don’t really yearn to build a company with 25 employees and so many systems that it starts to lose its soul. I’ve learned that I prefer things a bit more intimate.

So I don’t feel nervous about re-entering the online education space anymore. In fact, I feel fucking thrilled! I get to take all the lessons from the past and combine them with what I know and who I am now.

Which brings me to something I’m excited about…

I’ve been craving a rhythm again that is reminiscent of those early days. Something that feels human, imperfect, and relational.

When I started my first online business in 2013, I had a blog called The Nectar Collective. On that blog I wrote a series called Weekly Wishes, where every single week for two straight years between 2013-2015, I shared my goals for the week and invited others to write a post and share theirs too.

It was a popular series, sometimes with close to 100 people writing their own goal-setting posts and sharing them. The community was beautiful, too because people would read and comment on each other’s posts. You’d see the same names participating week after week. You’d feel proud of these people when they accomplished one of their scary, meaningful goals. And they’d feel proud of you, too. One of the participants even told me that someone they’d met through Weekly Wishes attended their wedding! I think things like that are so delightful. And quite frankly, that’s the kind of business/community I crave to return to.

So I was thinking, why not bring Weekly Wishes back here on Substack?

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Every week I’d share some personal and business updates (similar to this post!), along with my goals and desires for the week.

• I’d charge a very small monthly fee to be part of it, mainly because it feels better to share personal updates to a more intimate group than to the entire internet. It also gives us a more tight-knit community where we can really get to know each other more deeply, as well as a small commitment to show up.

• You can write your own Weekly Wishes post and share it in the comments so that we can all read each other's posts and have some accountability, too.

• Annual subscribers would get access to biannual “goals with intention” workshops where we’d start in January by creating our vision for the year, and breaking it down into smaller monthly goals, and then we’d check in halfway through the year with another workshop to make sure we’re still on target. Wouldn’t it be fun to “meet” these people every week with our posts, and then actually get to meet them on a group video call a couple times a year? :) I feel really excited about this!

The goal is not to promote hustle culture where we set unreachable goals every week and burn ourselves out. Heh.

It’s also not some long con marketing scheme that everything feels like these days lol. I literally just crave the era of the internet where things felt more personal, less curated, and more community-oriented. The goal is also to set micro-goals every week that get us closer to whatever it is we yearn to build and create.

Consider this the first Weekly Wishes post! You’re welcome to write one and add your post in the comments, or to simply leave a comment with your weekly goals. Starting next week, the posts will be for paid subscribers so we can keep the community intimate and get to know each other more personally. I honestly have no idea if anyone will sign up, so it might be me writing to me haha. But let’s see. :)

To kick us off, here are my goals for this week:

1. Update my website copy. My website is feeling a bit outdated and it’s time to update it with who I am and who I help now. I’m excited to do this! I could hire someone, but I love writing and website copy is so personal to me, so alas, I’m going to take a stab at it myself.

2. Submit my car to dealerships to sell. I bought a pretty nice car a year or two ago, and ever since moving to Amsterdam I never use it. Like once a month at most. It’s not a city built for driving (you can bike anywhere) and because of that, it’s also not a city built for parking lol. So, I have to park my car a bit far from my home (a 15 minute bike ride away). Amsterdam also has apps where you can rent cars on the street for a reasonable hourly rate when you need a car for something, so it honestly makes no sense to keep my car. It’s just a bit of a hassle to sell so it’s one of those things that keeps moving lower and lower on my to do list, but I think it’s time to just figure it out.

3. Finalize the outline for a new online course I’m working on. I’m neeeearly there, but just need to make some little adjustments. :) Feels soooooo good to be creating something like this again!

4. Go to pilates at least three times. I discovered pilates this year and was in suuuuch a good rhythm with it. I honestly love it! But then the holidays threw off my schedule, and shortly after that it snowed a lot in Amsterdam which made it hard to get around since the city is not really used to getting snow. I did still see some people biking around, but I am not that hardcore haha. BUT by tomorrow the snow should be completely gone so it’s time to rebuild the habit!

How about you? Feel free to leave your weekly goals in the comments, and better yet, write a post with some personal updates along with your goals and pop the link in the comments below. I’d love to read!

xoxo
Melyssa

Sound familiar?

A reader asked me this recently: How do you balance what feels aligned with what might make the business grow faster or earn more money?

I call this the Alignment vs. Algorithm Dilemma.

How do you decide between what feels true and what will give you the fastest growth?

Here’s the truth: chasing every shiny object or forcing yourself onto platforms you hate is like swimming upstream. Sure, you might make progress, but it’s exhausting, unsustainable, and often leaves you feeling disconnected from the very business you’re building.

I’ve been there.

When I started my first businesses, I felt the pressure to be everywhere. I had a YouTube, podcast, blog, email list, every social media account (including some platforms that no longer exist), a Facebook group…you name it.

But every time I tried to force myself onto a platform that didn’t feel aligned, my energy tanked. I’d procrastinate, be inconsistent, and ultimately show up half-heartedly.

And here’s what I learned: growth is more sustainable when the strategy energizes you, even if it’s slower at first.

So, if you’re struggling to decide which path to take with your business, and feel like you’re choosing between growth and alignment, here are some ideas to guide you:

1. Do an Energy Audit

Every strategy comes with an energy cost. Some feel like a natural extension of your creativity, while others drain you before you even start.

For me, posting constantly on Instagram felt like signing up for a job I didn’t want, so I asked: What’s a platform that feels like play, not pressure?

For me, it was long-form writing and email. The energy I could bring to that made the work magnetic and sustainable, which is why I focused on blogging and my email list.

Ask yourself: Does this strategy amplify my creativity or deplete it? Because the energy you bring is more important than the algorithm you follow.

2. The Long Game vs. The Quick Win

Algorithms promise quick wins. They reward hacks, trends, and formulas that might get you visibility fast. But here’s the catch: if you hate what you’re doing, you won’t last long enough to see the benefits.

I’ve watched countless entrepreneurs go all-in on a platform they secretly hated, ride the wave for a few months, then burn out completely. They built momentum only to abandon it because the cost to their wellbeing was too high.

The long game looks different. It asks: What can I imagine myself still doing in two or three years? Real growth is about consistency, not speed. And you can’t stay consistent with something that drains you.

3. The Freedom Filter

Here’s a simple framework I use when making decisions:

• Does this align with my values?

• Does it create more freedom or more friction in my life?

• Does it feel sustainable for the season I’m in?

If I answer “no” to most of these, it’s not worth pursuing, no matter how promising the strategy looks.

4. The Myth of “One Right Way”

Experts love to tell you that there’s only one path to success: niche down on YouTube, post daily reels on Instagram, launch a podcast.

But here’s the truth: there are a million ways to build a business. (!!!!!!!)

If the very thought of posting on social media sounds draining? Don’t do it.

If niching down feels like you’re losing a part of your soul, experiment broadly and see what sticks.

If you think you need to earn a million dollars to be a success (and you hustle your way there despite how bad it feels along the way), then reevaluate what you actually need to feel abundant and aligned.

The only “right” way is the one that works for you.

5. Aligned Doesn’t Mean Easy

Let’s clear up a misconception: aligned strategies still take work. They still ask for courage, consistency, and practice. The difference is that the resistance feels worth it because the work itself feels meaningful.

Right now, I’m growing a new brand called The Story House, which is an education platform and community for aspiring and professional writers.

And let me tell you: I’m working HARD on it. Some weeks I even spend my weekends tinkering away on new ideas.

But for me, the difference is that the work I’m doing feels so FUN and aligned, even when it’s hard. And the long work weeks are balanced by taking time off and not feeling guilty when I inevitably need a break.

So don’t confuse “aligned” with “effortless.” Think of it as the kind of resistance that stretches you, not drains you.

6. Micro-Experiments vs. Commitments

Not sure what the answer is? Treat it like an experiment. Curiosity will show you what certainty can’t.

You don’t have to choose between going “all in” or saying “never.” You can run micro-experiments.

Try spending $100 on meta ads. Launch a one-month YouTube series. Send a weekly newsletter for six weeks.

Then step back and ask: What did the data show? What did my energy show?

This way, you’re not making permanent commitments. You’re letting data and intuition dance together, rather than feeling forced into one or the other.

Overall, I believe that forcing yourself onto a path you hate is like swimming upstream.

The better question is: Where is the water already flowing? What’s the path of least resistance that still moves me forward?

Because even if you could achieve some level of growth with a platform or strategy you detest, it’s ultimately unsustainable and you will reach a point where you just can’t do it anymore.

Why bother with something that will ultimately crumble when you can build something that lasts instead?

At the end of the day, you’re the CEO of your business and your life.

You don’t have to follow the algorithm.

You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.

You get to build a business that energizes you.

And that’s when growth becomes inevitable.

Which platform or strategy feels most energizing for you right now, and which one feels like swimming upstream?

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What I didn’t realize at the beginning of my journey was that success can grow from two very different seeds: genuine calling, or the unconscious need to fill a void.

When I was 26 I launched my first online course. It was an era when online courses were just starting to appear. Sometimes I still had to explain to people what an online course even was. But when I launched that first course, it earned $30,000 within 30 days. This was roughly what I would have earned annually in my previous job as a high school teacher.

A few months later I launched another online course, this time earning $100,000 that month. It shocked me completely, and now I was hooked.

Fast forward six years. I grew my community to over 150,000 people, helped 40,000 students in my online courses, and earned more than $10 million in the process.

But during these years of intense growth there were always two contrasting forces at war inside me:

1. Keep going. This is working.

2. Let go. This isn’t who you’re meant to be.

I seriously burned out twice during that time, largely because I kept walking down a path that didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore.

As much as I loved the business, the community around it, and the abundance it created, I found myself living a life I hadn’t intentionally designed. I never set out to build a company. I simply created one course on a topic I enjoyed, and watched as things snowballed. I kept going because it worked and I was good at it, but I wasn’t convinced it was my soul’s calling.

It was like being in a relationship with someone who is great on paper, and heck, even in person. And yet somewhere inside yourself you just know they aren’t your person.

One day, at the height of my company’s success, I finally gathered the courage to walk away completely.

I closed the courses and went on a nearly two-year sabbatical. After so long proving myself through achievement, I needed to remember who I was without it. That time away reshaped me. The space let me process everything my company had revealed to me about my wounding, my worth, and what I truly wanted next.

Much of my early life was spent feeling on the outside of a world I didn’t quite belong to. I was bullied in elementary school and tangled in complex family dynamics at home. The stories I created about myself as a child were often ones of feeling unworthy, unlovable, and invisible.

So, when people bought my products, something primitive inside me lit up. I didn’t understand it then as an early 20-something, but I was being fed by the validation I’d been seeking since childhood. It was like someone had finally cracked open a window, and something within me could breathe again.

From there, the machine built itself. More success led to more work, and more work led to a deeper sense of worthiness.

If I look back at who I was before starting my first businesses, I see all the clues.

I was the teenager and university student who stacked achievements like armor: Editor-in-Chief, Captain, President. I genuinely loved being involved and building communities, there’s no doubt about that, but I can also admit that the labels were propping up a fractured sense of Self, and I didn’t have the tools at the time to face this deeper problem.

Carl Jung might have said I was over-identified with a persona — a socially rewarded identity built to secure belonging and protection — while my deeper Self remained hidden.

Jung believed the real work of a life isn’t achievement, but individuation, which is the often uncomfortable process of becoming whole by integrating what we’ve disowned within ourselves.

Most of us don’t chase success because we’ve done deep inner work and chosen a calling with spiritual clarity. We do it because something is missing, and building a business feels like a ladder out of the hole, even if the business we’re building was someone else’s dream.

We do a lot of things for the same reason.

We settle for relationships or marriages to fill an emptiness inside. We go down a career path we don’t enjoy to impress our family or culture. We distract ourselves with dopamine hits because stillness threatens to show us who we really are.

And that’s not to say that every decision we make is coming from an unhealed wound. That would be a bit bleak! I am only talking about the decisions we make unconsciously, rather than truthfully. The decisions that are meant to fill a void, rather than follow a deeper vision.

Entrepreneurship is one of the best things that ever happened to me. It held me through a decade where I didn’t yet know how to hold myself.

But here’s the part people don’t talk about enough:

When the original wound begins to heal, the business you built may stop making sense.

You might look around one day, as I did, and realize that the thing you constructed to fill you is now draining you.

I’ve spent the last decade surrounded by other entrepreneurs, and I’m convinced that this pattern of building a company from an unexamined hunger is not a personal anomaly. It’s practically a rite of passage.

Entrepreneurship pulls in the former overachievers, the sensitive ones, the high-performing perfectionists, and the invisible children who later learned to shine so no one could miss them again. It attracts people who are curious and ambitious, but also people who carry deep questions about their own worth.

And we reward them for it.

Our culture has turned entrepreneurial achievement into the new American Dream.

You’re not just encouraged to succeed, you’re expected to scale. Make $100k? Great, where’s the million? Get 1,000 followers? Why not 100,000?

There’s data that shows the emotional cost of this. Founders are:

• Twice as likely to struggle with depression and anxiety than the general population (UC Berkeley, Dr. Michael Freeman’s research).

• More likely to have childhood experiences of instability or trauma, which correlate strongly with entrepreneurial drive (INSEAD, Manfred Kets de Vries’ research).

• And they report higher rates of burnout, anxiety, and depression than people in traditional employment roles.

There’s also another cultural truth at play:

Western culture views self-worth as something you earn, not something you inherit by being alive. Entrepreneurship fits that worldview perfectly. It tells you that the harder you grind, the more valuable you become.

Many founders are not chasing wealth; they’re chasing worth.

At first, entrepreneurship without conscious intention is like feeding an old wound. But I believe there’s another way.

What if the business you’re building can also build you back into wholeness?

In those early years, my company helped me heal the way a cast supports a broken bone. It gave me structure when my self-worth was weak. It gave me belonging when I wasn’t sure I deserved to be chosen. It gave me a language for my creativity when I didn’t yet trust my own voice.

It filled me until I could finally feel full on my own.

Walking away from my multimillion-dollar business was like outgrowing the version of myself who needed it. Letting go was gratitude incarnate.

The same hunger that drove me to work fourteen-hour days also cracked me open to ask, Why am I working this hard?

The same validation that once felt like oxygen eventually made me question why I couldn’t breathe without applause.

Entrepreneurship gave me everything I needed to meet my true Self.

And I’ve come to believe this is true for many founders: your business can be the portal to your deepest healing.

I don’t think entrepreneurs need less ambition.
I think we need more awareness.

Because imagine if we started companies from our deepest self-expression rather than a subconscious need for approval.

What if we created businesses knowing that there’s no single “right way” to succeed, and allowed the non-linear unfolding of our lives and work?

What if the company you start is born not from a need to be seen, but from a calling that had been waiting for you beneath the noise?

When you start and grow a business from a place of true alignment, it will ask you to confront who you are beneath the persona you learned to wear.

And if you’re willing to stay with that reckoning, it may offer something far more valuable than success: A return to your original Self.

The one who created because it felt alive,
not because someone was watching.

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I turned to him as my body swayed to the beat, a disco ball hanging overhead that spattered his face with light. I was surprised to find a tall, cute man standing there, clad in glasses and a Patagonia sweater, looking more like someone who belonged in a bookstore than a nightclub.

We got to dancing and chatting together. With the bass thumping in the background, I learned that he’d started a business in physics and was only in town briefly for a conference.

As the event wound down, we decided to go back to my apartment together. I’d never done this before — brought a man home after a night out — but I couldn’t think of a reason not to. Even shouting over the music, our conversations had drifted toward the philosophical. He had a curiosity I found magnetic, and I didn’t want the moment to end.

When we got to my apartment we shared our first kiss against my new sofa, which was still in its packaging propped upright next to the kitchen. The delivery people said that unwrapping the sofa was not part of their job, so the couch had sat there for several days, too big for me to move myself, and now the backdrop of a passionate kiss with a man I’d just met.

I told him, pointing down the hallway, that the good news is that my bedroom is just right over there, but the bad news is that my sheets are still in the dryer. So we went straight to my bedroom, kissing the way there, and crawled onto the bare mattress, not wanting to waste time for things like blankets.

Between our kisses, we talked about the unconventional paths our lives had taken. At one point, I sprang up and grabbed Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke from the bookshelf in front of me.

I flipped through until I found the quote I had underlined to oblivion where Rilke says, “Live everything. Live the questions now. And one day you may gradually, without even knowing it, live your way into the answer.”

His lips parted into a smile as if he knew exactly what it meant because he had lived this, too.

As we lay there on the sheetless bed, I noticed an hourglass tattooed on his bicep and two small yellow birds facing each other along his ribs. I asked what they meant and he said, “It’s a bit depressing.”

He waited for me to interject, perhaps. To tell him, It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about it. But at last, he continued.

The hourglass represented his dad, he told me, and the yellow birds his mom and sister. His dad passed when he was 16, his mom at 24, and his sister shortly after that.

I didn’t ask what happened, even though of course I was curious how someone could lose their entire family by their mid-twenties. He carried himself with such warmth and curiosity — traits I’ve learned can be hard to access in the shadow of complex trauma.

At that point the sun was coming up outside and I knew he would have to leave for his conference soon, which started at 9am. There was this sense inside me of time running out, the hourglass glaring from his bicep like a reminder. Every question now carried weight, any one of them capable of being the last before he said, Shoot, I really need to get going. Was unraveling his grief what I wanted to end on?

He told me not to be sad about his past. That he’d made peace with the unfolding of his life. That he was happy. There was nothing he could do about what had happened, he said, and he’d learned to accept the fact that not everything is meant to last.

I couldn’t tell whether he was bypassing painful emotions that he didn’t want to disturb, or whether he had moved through his grief so fully that it no longer carried a charge.

When the time came for him to leave for his conference, I gave him my number and didn’t ask for his, assuming he’d reach out in five minutes on his walk home to tell me he missed me already. I imagined which emojis he might use. Probably lots of hearts. His sweetness was palpable.

But he didn’t reach out five minutes later.

He didn’t reach out at all.

A few days passed and I felt confused. I’d never really been ghosted before, and especially not by someone who seemed so genuine.

Since I didn’t have his number, I decided to look him up online. I wasn’t attached to something forming between us, but I wanted to understand why he would leave me suspended like that — wondering whether the closeness we’d shared was real, or if I’d misread the experience entirely.

I only had his first name, the industry he worked in, and the relatively large city he lived in. After typing these details into Google, the very first result was his LinkedIn profile.

Never doubt a woman’s ability to internet stalk a lover.

I went back and forth about sending him a message on LinkedIn. For starters, the last time I’d logged in was years ago. And of all the social media platforms it seemed the most absurd place to message a one-night stand.

But after several days had passed, I decided to reach out. I sent a simple message, softened with carefully selected emojis, to tell him I was surprised he didn’t text me. That I was okay with the brevity of our connection, but that being ghosted didn’t feel good.

A couple days later, I was headed to New York where I planned to spend a week writing and wandering around. As the plane landed at JFK, I unbuckled my seatbelt and noticed a notification on my phone. He’d responded.

His message carried the same sweetness and sincerity I remembered in person. “Melyssa with a y!” he started, as if I were a long lost friend. He apologized for being unkind and said he’d written many messages in his head that didn’t do justice to our experience together.

“I think I was most afraid to ruin the magic,” he said.

He signed off by reminding me that I’m a beautiful and kind woman, and after putting away my phone I felt the unexpected urge to cry.

Here he was again. Here is the way he writes. Here is how his personality shines through in text. Here is how receptive he is to you stalking him on LinkedIn and sending a message after a brief encounter.

Here he is — a real person.

After he left my apartment that morning, he began to feel like a mirage. Like someone I might later convince myself I had imagined differently. That he probably wasn’t quite so sweet. That a truly sweet man would have texted, even just to part ways. But his response reminded me that he was human with his own earned complexities.

What the experience ultimately returned me to was the very thing Rilke had written about:

Live everything now.

Because sometimes life throws you a precious moment that lasts for five hours, but has more intimacy than with people you’ve known for five years.

And sometimes what’s beautiful is not what lasts. If we zoom out far enough, nothing does. I don’t mean that cynically, but sincerely. Impermanence has always been part of how humans make sense of the world and it’s visible everywhere in nature, where nothing grows without change.

Impermanence itself isn’t the problem. It’s how tightly we try to hold things still in a world that won’t stop moving.

And yes, sometimes beauty stretches on for longer than an evening. But I keep wondering whether length is really the measure of success.

Can a brief moment be complete simply because it was fully lived?
Can a marriage be perfect even if it lasts for ten years instead of a lifetime?
Can a career be worthy even if it eventually turns into something else entirely?

I wandered the streets of New York and, at one point, ducked into a bookshop I’d been in before. I only realized later that it was the same place I’d bought my copy of Rilke’s book years earlier, on a previous trip to Brooklyn.

I picked up a yellow hard copy of Hermann Hesse’s Butterflies off the shelf and flipped to the first poem. It ended with this:

Off across the fields it flew,
That white-and-scarlet butterfly.
And as I dreamily wandered by,
What lingered on of paradise
Was splendor, still and true.

I’ve always been drawn to small, passing moments — the light hitting a window just right, the laugh of a nearby stranger, the way tree leaves sway as if they’re dancing.

It took me longer to extend this same sense of presence to my career and relationships. When I was younger, I clung more tightly. I carried detailed timelines. I pushed for permanence even when I wasn’t sure it was what I truly wanted.

Over time, I began to sense another possibility: that something doesn’t have to last to be whole.

I remember as a girl I had these babysitters — a beautiful woman and her boyfriend. I didn’t know them well, but they would sometimes take me to fun places like miniature golf or the arcade. I remember that they seemed so perfect and so in love, like a caricature of a happy relationship.

And then one day when I asked why I hadn’t seen them in a long time, my stepmother told me they’d broken up. She wanted to get engaged and he didn’t, so they decided to part ways, I was told. That this experience wasn’t uncommon — to end something when one person wanted more and the other didn’t, even though they were both in love right now.

I must have been no older than 10 or 11 years old, and I truly couldn’t fathom how two beautiful, happy people could be discussing marriage and then break up. At that age, those two ideas felt impossibly far apart, as if love and ending couldn’t exist side by side.

I wonder now if they can look back on what they shared with contentment, or if the memory of their relationship was sullied over differing priorities.

Can something still be whole without continuing?

And does our white-knuckle grip on a particular outcome prevent us from experiencing the beauty of what actually is?

I think that’s what he meant when he said, I was most afraid to ruin the magic.

In his own way, he was trying to preserve the moment like a painting that was finished, where one more brushstroke might disrupt its beauty.

And so there we were — a masterpiece, hung on the wall behind protective glass, never to be tampered with again.

And now, I was more than okay with that.

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“What do you do?” He asked.

For a moment I nearly went back into my habitual response of describing the business I ran for several years. The one that will always feel like a part of my soul, but that I stepped away from five months ago.

It feels familiar to tell people about my former life. Sometimes it makes me feel more interesting to have a “thing” — a purpose — to tell someone about. Other times it’s simply easier than describing the free-flowing space I now exist in.

But I knew that at the core of his question was something more simple.

Who are you right now?

So I answered that instead.

“I explore the world, and therefore myself,” I replied. “I create art and learn something as often as I can. I practice staying open when I want to close. I follow my intuition and trust where life takes me.”

I didn’t give him the backstory of what my business once was. I just shared what felt true in that moment.

When I stepped away from my company the year prior, I decided to stop trying to figure out what was next for my life and career.

Trying to figure it out was making me miserable, and I knew that my next wondrous purpose would never come as a result of being forced.

So I dropped the intention entirely.

If it took me ten years to find my next calling, then I was finally at peace with that. I trusted that life was guiding me exactly where I was meant to go, in its own timing.

I can tell you now that surrendering deeply to the flow of life has become one of the most extraordinary journeys I’ve ever been on.

Synchronicities abound because I trust in the unfolding path instead of trying to control it.

The right people walk in in mind-boggling ways.

Joy compounds because I’m less attached to how the plot unfolds.

My purpose doesn’t always need to be something that makes sense in a LinkedIn bio.

It can be a moment — this moment — simply because I’m alive.

It is the in-between, because the space between mountains is just as essential as the mountain itself.

My purpose can be to live the questions, so that my life’s work is the unfolding answer.

So what do I do?

I’m fully alive.
Right now.

And for me, that is more than enough.

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This is the story of what I found there.

For a long time, I thought I was driven by money, but eventually I realized that whenever I reached for it, I was really reaching for worthiness.

After that, I thought it was freedom that pulled me forward. But even that began to feel like only a piece of what ignited me, rather than the thing itself.

What I discovered instead is that I am pulled by a current I’ve come to call truth.

I grew up believing there was The Truth about things, and that it was my job to discover the right answers for my life — my purpose, my spiritual beliefs, my career path, my utter reason for existing. But those answers always felt too rigid for something I sensed held more nuance.

As I unraveled my beliefs, I began to see that truth isn’t a place of arrival so much as a moving vessel. Some truths remain intact for a lifetime, but how they look can change. Other truths feel certain at one point, yet over time we realize they were just someone else’s beliefs that slipped in through a trapdoor.

I learned that truth can be uncomfortable because it refuses to stay still. I had been reaching for something solid to stand on; instead, I found a growing capacity to stay with uncertainty — to build a life inside my questions, to plant flowers even on unsteady ground.

When I closed the company I had spent almost a decade building, I didn’t have a Plan B. I trusted that whatever was next would whisper when the moment was right.

At times, that surrender felt like ecstatic freedom. What I build could be anything. And when I was on a high — taking retreats around the world, dancing in jungles while the beat of life coursed through me, locking eyes with someone who I knew would become a lifelong friend – that level of possibility to become was enchanting.

At other times, it felt terrifying.

What I build could be anything, I would ponder again, and in darker moments the thought curdled into exhaustion.

I was no longer my 24-year-old self, hungry to prove her worth when she started her first company. If I built something new, it had to be because I truly wanted to, because my heart was lit by the idea, because it resonated with my values in a way that whispered yes.

A few months after closing my last business, I went on a retreat hoping to find clarity about what was next. I imagined that clarity might download into me like a software upgrade sent straight from the Universe. There would be life-changing cacao ceremonies. Synchronistic encounters. And… delusion.

Instead, I left with more questions.

But for the first time, that felt okay.

In one of my favorite poems, Mary Oliver hears an owl in the distance and considers that she could chase it down and name it.

“I suppose if this were someone else’s story they would have insisted on knowing whatever is knowable,” she writes. Instead, she stands in the dark, not needing to know something in order for it to be beautiful.

“I love this world, but not for its answers.”

I didn’t realize it then, but I was standing in that same darkness, deciding whether to keep chasing clarity or to settle into the beauty of what was already here.

This is the part people don’t talk about enough: what happens after a big shift.

You’ve shed the old skin. You’ve said no to what doesn’t fit. You’ve exited into the liminal space between what was and what’s becoming. The voice that once shouted burn it down now asks more quietly, okay… so what’s the plan?

Over time, I began to see that my insistence on clarity was actually pushing me further from it. I could sense that something essential lived in the not-knowing. That beauty is not only reserved for daylight.

I decided to try a different experiment: what might unfold if I released the need to know my next path, and instead practiced surrendering to it?

Not long after, I planned a six-month sabbatical through Europe. It was carefully mapped out in advance: a rental car, Airbnbs booked, an itinerary dotted with cafés and nature trails. I was going to drive from Portugal to Croatia, stopping along the way.

But when I arrived at my very first stop in Lisbon, something in me whispered, stay.

This was certainly not part of the plan, but I was listening.

I canceled the rest of the trip, applied for a residency visa, and ended up living in Portugal for more than two years.

During that time, I felt another familiar nudge: open a bookshop café. Moving from a high-profit online business to a brick-and-mortar bookstore in a small European city made little sense on paper. But by then, I recognized the voice.

Begin.

I opened my bookshop, Fable, because it’s what felt the most alive within me. And here I was, learning how to listen to the whispers.

Over time, Fable became a gathering place for writers and creatives, filled with open mic nights and community events that felt larger than the space itself.

Two years later, the voice whispered again. This time nudging me beyond the physical confines of the shop, toward supporting writers globally. A new business emerged from that impulse, one that made sense only because I had taken the first step without knowing where it would lead.

In hindsight, the path looks obvious. The dots connect so easily. But when a transition is actually happening, it feels more like standing in a valley between mountains, unable to see past the hill in front of you.

When I couldn’t see the path ahead, my only choice was to empty myself of all the people I had once been. To create space for a new voice to emerge. And to learn how to listen.

Clarity doesn’t always arrive in a brainstorm. Sometimes it only reveals itself after you’ve taken a step toward what feels alive rather than what makes logical sense.

What changed wasn’t that I finally knew where I was going.
It was that I stopped needing to.

I learned to let my life assemble itself slowly, guided more by attention than ambition. I discovered how to listen instead of rush, and to trust that something coherent was forming even when I couldn’t yet hear it breathe.

Surrender didn’t dismantle my life. It reorganized it around what felt true.

In this way, my experiment in allowing life to unfold without my constant intervention seeped into every crevice of my being.

Like concrete filling in the cracks, making something whole again.

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...I flew to the jungle for a weeklong ayahuasca retreat.

Leading up to it, friends and acquaintances planted the seed that ayahuasca is an intense plant medicine. They told me I’d come out the other side transformed, but that I’d have to fight my way there. That anything not rooted in truth would be purged from my life after this expedition.

I heard this so frequently that I began speculating about what, exactly, might implode after the retreat. When nothing obvious came to mind, I wondered if ayahuasca would excavate something from my past I didn’t even know existed — some latent catastrophe waiting to be revealed — and surprise me with a shiny new trauma for the road.

But the experience I had wasn’t really like that at all.

Yes, there were difficult moments, some tears, and plenty of purging, but overall, I’d describe it as more of a love story than a horror movie.

Before our first ceremony, I joined a yoga session meant to ease our bodies into the medicine. Between downward dogs and child’s pose, the teacher invited us to get curious about the space between our inhale and our exhale.

I immediately reached for my journal. This is where I live right now: the space between, I wrote.

Three months earlier, I had walked away from a successful company I’d built in my twenties. Not because the business was crumbling, but because I was changing. I had started it barely out of college, and somewhere along the way, I outgrew the person it had been built around.

Now I was here: in my early thirties, suspended between what had been and what hadn’t yet taken shape. And instead of panic, I felt a surprising sense of familiarity.

The space between, it turns out, felt as natural as breathing.

In my second ceremony, I felt a wave of grief. I was so ready to move on that I’d left my business in a hurry. I had long since informed my clients and team about the change, but other loose ends persisted: unanswered emails, relationships left hanging, and the part of myself I never said goodbye to.

For eight years, I ran this business. In many ways, it was like a marriage. And once the divorce papers were signed, I got up and ran.

I wanted to believe that my running meant I was moving on. But deep down, I knew I couldn’t outrun that chapter of my life until I faced it. I sensed that whatever clarity was waiting for me next would require closing this chapter with awareness instead of avoidance.

Perhaps ayahuasca was working its magic after all.

It was my third ceremony that offered one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

In the twilight of the maloca, I laid on my mat in awe, listening to the two Shipibo shamans, Francisco and Marcela, sing their ícaros — spiritual songs said to hold healing properties. Their extraordinary voices moved through ranges rarely heard in music, closer to what you might hear in nature: the call of a bird, the low rumble of an animal lurking somewhere in the shadows. Listening to them sing acapella for hours on end was honestly one of the most exquisite parts of the retreat.

I tried to bring myself back to my intentions — I came to this retreat for answers, after all — yet my egoic mental chatter was loud.

Anytime I tried to focus or center myself, my mind would interrupt with the most absurd thoughts like, “I wonder what it would be like if Francisco and Marcela opened for Kanye at Coachella?” Then I imagined them flying across the world in their traditional Shipibo outfits, pondering what kinds of snacks they’d request backstage.

Probably nuts instead of Skittles.

Eventually though, my ego began to quiet enough so that I could hear.

I’d come to the retreat with three intentions:

• Show me Monja, my beloved dog who had passed away a year earlier, and whose death kicked off the series of changes in my life.

• Show me my next purpose.

• Show me what true, loving partnership feels like.

I repeated them frequently in my mind during the ceremony, hoping to move past my ego’s unhinged babbling and into a deeper realm where the complexities of my life might start to make sense.

When I turned toward my intention about Monja, my body was alive with love. I felt his playful presence immediately. But having heard so many stories about how visual ayahuasca can be, I found myself hoping he’d appear, maybe prancing over in the darkness to invite me to play, or giving me one last conversation before saying goodbye for good.

But nothing came. Just the pitch black of night.

I continued on, bouncing between mental chatter and moments of insight.

Eventually I returned to my list of intentions. I started again with Show me Monja, reciting it silently in my mind. At that precise moment, a giant wave crashed on the nearby beach almost as if it were responding.

And that’s when I remembered.

I remembered the most beautiful lesson Monja’s death had taught me: that his soul was never just his physical body.

It simply became part of everything in his passing.

I tuned into life happening around me with a different kind of presence — birds chirping, fellow retreat-goers shifting on their mats, a baritone frog croaking in the distance — and all of it helped me remember the truth.

How could anyone I love ever really leave when we are part of the fabric of life itself?

In that moment, all I could feel was pure peace. But it didn’t feel still or stagnant, it felt alive, the way I imagine a tree or the ocean might feel knowing that it is connected to all things.

But that wasn’t the end of it, and from this place of peace, I was now on a roll.

When I asked about my second intention, Show me my next purpose, the answer came simply and immediately:

This.

And it wasn’t referring to a business idea or a clear career path.

It was pointing to this: the feeling of connection, the moment of stillness, the state of presence. The deep knowing that this is it. This is the purpose of all of it.

And I knew, again, that I could stop striving. Or rather, that I could keep striving all I wanted, but it wasn’t the point. That chasing a destination was just one option. And that my way, at least right now, is to seek trust, synchronicity, and living a life that is rooted in truth.

My purpose, then, was to follow the flow of what comes with wide-eyed curiosity.

I went into the ceremony expecting something else. Instead, I was met with a simplicity I hadn’t known to look for.

Finally, I asked about my last intention: What will it feel like to be met fully in true, loving partnership?

Again, I heard: This.

And I felt warmth all through my body. I felt held and safe. It wasn’t an Ideal Partner Checklist. It wasn’t a story about someone else I needed to find to be complete. It was a feeling inside myself, that I created all on my own. And I didn’t question it. I just knew. This.

I went into this retreat searching for an answer and hoping to leave with a plan.

What I left with was the realization that maybe this is it.

This breath.
This moment.
This miraculous, ordinary day.

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