talking to my guilt over a pumpkin spice latte

a behind-the-scenes post from my book writing process

I am back at it after a few months-long break from my book writing. What was ‘A Little Book of Feminine Wisdom’ is now transforming into ‘A Little Book of Feminine Quality’. Below is an excerpt from one of my writing sessions. I am not yet sure if this piece will end up in the book, but it felt important to share because it shines a light on the challenges I am facing in the writing process - and how I am attempting to embody the feminine quality in encountering them. If you’d like to support my writing, you can pre-order the book here.

I am sitting in a cafe having just ordered a slightly over-priced pumpkin spice latte and there is a part of me that is guilty of the choices I’ve made. 

I came here to do my daily writing, so I am anxious that the guilt is going to make it hard for me to accomplish it. 

I remember the commitment I made to myself to be connected to the spirit of the feminine as I write this book. 

A thought occurs - Can I fold this experience I am having into the book? 

The guilty voice wants to be heard. 

You could have just stayed home. 

Do you need to spend money to be able to write? Surely not. You should just have more self-control. 

Why do you spend money on whims, when you could just have tea at home. Tea makes you feel better anyway. 

But no, it seems that you can’t free yourself away from this habit of spending money on expensive drinks in hipster cafes because you like how sitting here makes you feel. 

You feel like you are in your own little world. You have some comfort that you paid for. 

You feel like you can focus and forget about everyone else. Forget about your boyfriend at home and his needs. Forget about the people you have not responded to. Forget about your family. And give yourself over to the pleasures of being fully and uninterruptedly with your mind.  

My gosh, the PSL is so good. 

It was worth it. It is making me feel cosy and comforted and I am enjoying it even more because it’s raining outside and I feel protected. 

Feeling cosy, safe and protected surely does help lean into the feminine quality. 

Last week my boyfriend put his hands behind my back in a way that made me safe to lean back and immediately my heart felt more open. 

Previously when I would ask him to help me feel, he would put his hand on my heart. Little did I know that him putting his hands behind my heart is what really unlocks things. 

It’s like my heart does not need direct interventions, it’s fine as it is. But it does need to feel like there is someone or something it can lean back, that someone’s literally ‘got my back’. 

This discovery feels relevant to my sense that we’re collectively disconnected from the feminine quality. 

There’s a way in which it’s become quite unintuitive for us to lean back into connection, safety and open-heartedness. 

When I try to understand why this might be so, I think about how most of my closest connections live in different parts of the world and our primary medium of connection is Zoom calls. 

I would not trade it for anything and my friends are incredible, but it’s really hard to have this embodied experience I had with my boyfriend over the internet. 

It is still possible to feel like the other person has my back metaphorically, but I just can’t know how it would feel in my body to feel them touch me in a way that would make my whole body relax and open to them. 

And this is just one reason why it’s hard to explore the feminine quality - there are many more. 

The point I want to make is that there is something structural in the water that makes it important (and, in fact, quite wise) to forget the feminine quality. 

Given the context we live in, it’s wise to prioritise learning how to watch out for your back, keep yourself safe and don’t rely on other people to make you feel good. 

To become disconnected from your needs for safety and comfort, or to get really good at providing them all to yourself. 

It’s not mine or your fault that we have disconnected from the feminine quality. 

The level of critical inner talk I experienced around wanting to treat myself to a pumpkin spice latte on a rainy day so I can explore my creative endeavours is really sad. 

There is a strong sense in me that I am doing something wrong by choosing comfort and leaning into my sensory pleasure. 

I am pretty sure I was not born this way. 

It is also not exactly my parent's fault, although I have probably been in relational dynamics with them where it felt right to be hard on myself for things they did not seem to like me doing. 

The logic must have gone something like this: If I say it to myself, they won’t need to. Because hearing it from them hurt and made me feel even worse. Unloved, bad, abandoned. 

So I would unlove, pathologise and abandon myself internally, so I could keep the love flowing through the channel that felt more precious. 

And now years later I am realizing that perhaps I don’t need to do it anymore. 

I’m looking at my delicious PSL, hearing soft music that the cafe owners chose to create just the mood, I am writing and feeling stimulated, feeling like my soul is speaking to me. 

This is great. I am tempted to ask my inner voice - Maybe we don’t need to be so worried about choosing this? 

I don’t have a good sense of what they look like or whose voice their wielding exactly but I can almost sense a nod in my direction.

We can try. 

The thing is - when I relax this guilty grip, there is suddenly more space in my being to notice that what brought me here was not just a whim, but rather a deep intuition. 

I know, deeply in my bones, that a setting like this and the comfort I feel here is going to support my creative process in all the best ways. 

And it does not mean that I could not write at home - I even did yesterday and it was great. 

It’s interesting to notice this because intuition is one of the gifts of the feminine. 

Being guided by a vague sense, a pull towards something that does not exactly make sense just yet. Being ready to trust it and see what is on the other side. 

So not only does my guilt prevent me from enjoying the creativity that is already here, it’s also making it harder for me to appreciate the intuition that is guiding me. 

As I think about this I have a feeling of descending a staircase into the labyrinth of my inner world. Things are layered and complex here. 

There have been structures created that chronically put me out of touch with the feminine quality and that prevent me from seeing and appreciating it. 

And again, I need to repeat to myself - it’s not my fault.

At some point in time, given the context and my attachment patterns, setting up those structures must have meant survival. 

I am drawn to slow down and take a breath and a long exhale. 

There is anger here that I can feel in the strength that my fingers started slamming on the keyboard. Why did you do this to me?! 

And there is sadness nearby too, in my shoulders and my face. I feel myself closing my chest and wanting to lean my head into someone’s embrace.

It’s time to feel. 

I am relaxing my attention away from the screen and I remember there is the soft music my ears can still hear. I put my hand on my chest and look out into the pouring rain. 

There is a relaxing opening in my body as I let the wave of emotions arise and pass. 

I imagine them like bubbles floating up from my lower belly, through the middle of my chest, and throat, exiting through the head and then a few inches above my head where they pop and splash little droplets of emotional water on my forehead. 

I can’t change the past. But I can choose to stop perpetuating the inner structures that prevent me from being in touch with the feminine quality. 

Before I finish I am drawn to analyse what just happened. It’s my masculine quality kicking in, wanting me to integrate and make sense of a pattern I’ve just witnessed. 

I welcome it - this is one way in which the masculine collaborates with the feminine to create more wholeness. 

It took me 40 minutes but I have arrived - I am here now. 

The quality of my presence has changed. I feel like I can just sit and stare out the window, feeling palpably OK. There is nothing I have to do, there isn’t another way I need to be. 

I am enjoying just being. 

This is the gift of the feminine - this quality of presence. 

This feeling is usually so far away that it makes the 40 minutes worth it. The work I did today might also make it easier next time. 

I expect the guilt structure will still get activated and try to speak to me, but now I can remind it of this experience and how nice it felt to not do that. 

So what happened exactly? 

I noticed the guilt. 

I noticed some part of me wanted to ignore it and just get going with writing, the thing I came here to do. 

I chose to not ignore the guilt and fold it into my experience instead.

I let the guilty voice express itself fully. 

This gave me some spaciousness and compassion. 

I thought about the historical and structural reasons that made this voice exist in the first place. I made the guilt feel seen. 

Then I talked back to the voice and suggested we try something new. 

It agreed and I felt a sense of an increase in my agency. A kind of strength. 

I was now able to connect with feelings of anger and sadness that surround the guilt.

I slowed down and felt them until they released. 

And then things just felt good. 

It strikes me that it could seem as if I wasted 40 minutes to get myself to a place where I could finally write the writing I came here to do. 

But in a world where the feminine quality is appropriately valued and appreciated, it would be obvious that this was the writing that I had to do. 

By sharing it with you, I am creating a pattern of allowing myself and others to witness the full process of creation, not just the polished bits. 

Including the challenge and the inner battle, I go through each time when I sit down to express myself and put something into the world. This is me accepting that I am not superhuman and I hope to invite others into this pattern with me. 

Maybe tomorrow I will write words that will come from a place of already being in the being. 

But today I wrote words about how to get into the being because, in some sense, this is exactly what this book is about.