Happy birthday, Enchantable!
Celebrations and reflections on a year of writing
Dearly beloved readers of Enchantable,
As I write those words, I tear up a little bit, because the little baby that is Enchantable is turning one year old this week - her birthday is the spring equinox - and like a proud parent, I am smiling to how much she has grown this year.
How much we’ve grown together.
How grateful I am for you.
In honor of this milestone, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what Enchantable has become in this past year. I invite you to join me in this reflection and celebration!
At the start of 2023, I knew I wanted to get more writing out into the world, and was thinking of starting a Substack as a way to do that. I took the Moon Studio’s Clear Channels workshop in February, which helped push me to get going. Last spring equinox1, March 20, 2023, Enchantable was born and my first post was on The Year of Enchantment. I began with this welcome:
Welcome, welcome, dear reader!
Welcome enchanted yearnings.
Welcome dreams and wild things
And passion purpose burnings.
Welcome reimaginings
And welcome questions churning
May this be a space for us
To explore our deepest learning.
So I welcome you again, and I welcome you back. If this is your first time here, welcome! I truly cannot thank you enough for being here with me and my words, my thoughts and my heart. As I return to this welcome message, I feel how close Enchantable has stayed to this initial deepest yearning, this seedling of entangled ideas, and how much it has grown from there, words weaving into the world.
What has Enchantable become?
My latest description of Enchantable, which can be found on the About page, is:
Enchantable is a publication, a resource, and public pedagogy in the form of essays, love letters, meditations, spells, blessings, & lesson plans on the interbeing and entanglement of enchantment and disturbance, joy and suffering, reimagining education, peace, magic, dreams, mindfulness, and beyond; incantations and field notes for an enchantable life.
Over the course of this year, I have written a little more than one post a week (over 80 posts total). In this process of writing, Enchantable has become a body of work. Over time, I realized there were different forms of creation, and I have grouped them on the Substack website as:
Spells, Blessings, Poems, Incantations, and Invocations
Guides and Activities: Resources for Learning, Unlearning, Teaching, and Reflection
Meditations and Visualizations (recorded audio)
Essays, Lectures, and Love Letters (longer form pieces)
I have also curated a few special series, including the Making December Magic Series, and the special series On the Art and Power of Friendship with Kimberlyn David (our next installment will be coming soon!). I also added a tab for Thinking-with (Recommended Resources) for you to further explore some of the people, places, teachers, and communities who deeply inspire me, which I will continue to update.
I know many of you probably read Enchantable in your email (and I am so glad that you do!), but I would love for you to hop over to the Substack site to check out how I have organized things.
Enchantable’s Greatest Hits (so far)
Some of my favorite posts that I feel most proud of and which have also been popular with readers include:
We need birth stories
I absolutely love that this is my most widely read piece by far, which indicates to me the resonance of exactly what the title proclaims.Making December Magic series
I will be posting a follow-up to this series later this week for the spring equinox!Become a vessel: Tracings of grief and early motherhood in the pandemic
This one actually hasn’t been widely read because of the way I published it (as a link in a post rather than as its own post). But it is one that I am proud of, and if you haven’t read it and have the space to read about grief, I recommend visiting it.
A year into this process, I can see slow, steady growth over time. I am a Taurus. Slow and steady is our game. This slow, steady growth feels so satisfying, gratifying. I can feel the reciprocity in the energy I am putting out; I can feel Enchantable weaving its way into the world in ways known and unknown. I trust in the process, and I am extremely dedicated to keep showing up, for it, for you, for me.
Earlier this year, I also started a second Substack with my collaboration partner and co-dreamer Minna Kim as a home for our community dreamwork (and beyond), Prism of Wisdom. I welcome you to join us over there if you haven’t already!
What have I become through Enchantable?
I have become prolific. I have become a writer - no, I have been a writer since I was a child, since I knew how to write. But I have, through Enchantable, created a container in which my writing life can flourish. I have written consistently and dedicated myself to putting something out into the world weekly.
I have become more creative. Because there is so much to say about this, I will write a longer post devoted to creativity soon, but the process of creating has been so generative, and my biggest challenge is finding the time to write about all the things I want to write about. The creative process is a magical and devotional practice, and I find the more devoted I am to my writing, the more I have to write about. It’s a refillable, reciprocal, regenerating well of inspiration. I am enamored by this process, and it has undoubtedly added more enchantment and magic to my life.
I have deepened connections with many of you. I treasure your messages and replies, to let me know that you, too, are grappling with similar themes, have similar experiences, or that what I have written resonated with you. Please keep these love notes coming - they keep me going, and give me so much inspiration to keep writing and sharing. The community of readers here means more to me than I can possibly say, and I appreciate you so much.
I am proud of myself for showing up here consistently and engaging publicly. I say that in part because maybe we aren’t so used to saying such things out loud. But I am, I am proud of this body of work and what I have shared here this past year, for the vulnerability it takes to think out loud, which I hope allows for greater vulnerability for others.
What has Enchantable been to you?
Dear reader, I would love to hear what Enchantable means to you, how it has served or benefitted you, and what value it provides you with and what you would like to see more of. Many of you have shared this with me through messages and conversations. I would love to hear what you receive from it so that I can do more of that to serve you even better. I welcome your comments, reflections, insights, and observations about a year of Enchantable from your perspective. Feel free to message me or leave a comment.
If you receive value from this work, I invite you to consider joining as a paid subscriber, which helps support this work. Deep bows of gratitude for my community of paid subscribers - thank you for believing in me and my work!
One of the best ways you can support my work is by sharing it with others. Would you consider sharing Enchantable with a few like-minded friends who might enjoy my writing?
What will Enchantable become?
You can count on me to keep showing up this year. As I shared in my own reflections on making year-end magic, you can expect more collaborations and interviews, and more love stories of the more-than-human and platonic variety. You’ll be hearing more on my friendship series with Kimberlyn David, as well as interviews on astrology for liberation with my dear sister Katina Castillo, and writing more about the wisdom of doulas and midwives and how that can inform birthing new worlds. I am playing around with the idea of offering courses through the Substack platform, so if there is a topic you would like me to teach about, or a format you would enjoy learning through (for example, writing prompts, guided meditations, etc.), please let me know! I welcome your ideas of what Enchantable can become and how I can best serve you, my community.
I have posts in the work on topics such as:
a more-than-human love letter to coffee
for the love of teaching and learning
on creativity
On disenchantment and why enchantment is subversive and liberatory
So, lots more to come - stay tuned!
In the spirit of giving Enchantable a little one-year glow-up and beautifying this space, I unveil Enchantable’s new logo, created by my incredibly talented sister-in-love Molly Pritchett of High Tide Socials (please check out her work!). Drumroll please….
Don’t you just love it?! I love the fairy tale font, the roots being nourished and fed by the word, and the twinkles around the tree. I also love how the color glows from the center, outward like tree rings. I feel delighted to have a little image that conveys the sense of this body of work, and am so grateful to Molly and her brilliance and creativity for creating it!
Last year in my welcome post, I closed with this wish for us, a blessing and spell which is a form I love writing in. Today I would like to close with a renewal and extension of this wish and blessing:
May this be a space to come as you are
With your questions, curiosity
Your imperfections, your grace, your humanness
and more-than-humanness.
May this space feed and nourish the many facets of your being.
May it be a space to think-with
To think-feel together,
amidst these deeply troubling and exquisitely beautiful times.
May we struggle through the pain and mess together
While also seeking the beauty and joy that can be found in this moment -
Yes, even this one.
May this be a space to feed your mind-heart-body-soul
and inspire your creativity
which the world desperately needs.
May you leave this space changed, ever-changing.
May this space be a reminder of our shared humanity and beauty
And who we can be
When we remember our interbeing
With each other, the world, and all of life.
Dear readers, writing Enchantable has given me so much life this year, and so much of that is because of you. I know you are there, and I am so glad you are there. Please know I am here for you. Here’s to another year of inspiration and connection!
With love and care,
The spring equinox is a GREAT day to launch something. More about this on Tuesday’s equinox post!