Posts by :
- whole self, a picture of who you are in your wholeness
- inner self, the person you hide from the world (and sometimes hide from yourself)
- outer self, the person that other people see, the person you present to the world, the person that attracts others to you
- ruling tendencies, which are those traits that dominate your attitudes and approaches to life
- key, which is your particular way of ‘unlocking’ solutions and ways forward
- weaknesses, which are traits and parts of you that require attention to really work in your favour
- foundation, which are the traits that give you your strength in difficult times (and keep you steady)
- challenges, which are the repeated externalities like people, environments and circumstances that you encounter in your life. They’re graded into minor, medium, and major challenges
- pot-holes or rocks in your road, which are the things that you will always trip over and have to deal with or find ways around or over
- destiny, which is where you’ll end up
- direction, which is how you’ll get to your destiny.
- major life periods, which show you which aspects of your life are going to make those periods of your life easier, simpler, and more effective (typically cast in decades).
- buildings
- companies, businesses, corporations
- team names
- project names
- pets
- properties and houses
- boats
Liminal Woman set for September 2023 release date
July 19th, 2023Liminal Woman is the new title of the poetry collection I’d originally released as Artist in Recovery, and which I wrote here in May about publishing under its original title, Woman as Artist.
The word ‘liminal’ means, ‘of or pertaining to a threshold’.
That’s really what Liminal Woman is about. It’s the threshold between lives; the blind, grappling difficulty of moving from one type of life to another.
The threshold theme of this work is known now as ‘matrescence’, the period of transition from Maiden to Mother. But it’s always been known. It’s actually one of the world’s oldest stories, co-opted by neo-paganism as witchy and woo-woo: The movement of maiden to mother to crone. Wiccans know it as the triple goddess. Christians know it as Mother Mary. Other belief systems personified the movement in various ways, but they are often the same thing, too; like Tridevi.
Transitioning to motherhood is difficult, but it is sacred.
Learning to Mother is a skill, one that contemporary Western world denigrates, and thus fails to teach its young women. Rites of passage, too, in Western society, are all but gone. Rather than celebrating, supporting and mentoring our youngsters through becoming men, becoming women, becoming women, becoming fathers, we celebrate unimportant things like ending school, getting jobs. We celebrate ages 18 and 21 but they no longer have any meaning; they’re just excuses to get drunk. Thus, if you no longer have your village – perhaps you travelled, moved away from family – this transition becomes ever more difficult.
Liminal Woman was written during the first two years of my son’s life. I wrote it at night, after breastfeeding. One by one, piece by piece. It was an outpouring of love and sadness, regret and disbelief. On the one hand, grief for all the children I never had; on the other, grief for a life that I no longer lived and couldn’t access… and, weirdly, now wouldn’t live if I had the option. It’s the strangest period of time, and as women we (now) do it alone. I got mad at the Sisterhood for keeping so much of the beauty, joy, and glory of motherhood hidden. I still don’t understand why we don’t speak of the fact that becoming a mother is the most magnificent moment in life. It’s far more soulfully important than anything you can ever do.
This book is a collection of poems about the transition from Maiden to Mother, and it predictably rides the rollercoaster of that transition.
Official blurb about Liminal Woman:
This poetry collection explores the dark, scary, solitary journey from Maiden to Mother. That transformation is one you traverse blind, one whose process is known by every other mother, but one of which nothing is spoken. It is one that is filled with love, loneliness, and learning; one that can rip you raw and cuddle you close.
Women, all women, are divine creatures. They are portals to new lives and, thus, new worlds. They are all artists. Their default mode is “creator”. I realised that I could only know this now because of a specific rite of passage: Motherhood.
Liminal Woman shines a light on one of the most powerful moments in women’s lives: Hidden, private, and blessed.
This title is in production and will be available worldwide on 1 September 2023.
Make sure you subscribe to one of my channels (the best is The Letter) to get updates as they happen… though I’m sure I’ll post more about it here, too. 🙂
If you’re an arts journalist and you’re interested in covering this title, interviewing me, or running reviews, please contact me with your media outlet details and potential filing date.
In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for launch-week giveaways!
x Leticia
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What does a Numerology reading cover, and how?
May 26th, 2023‘What does a Numerology reading cover, and how?’ is one of the first questions I’m asked by curious folk. And one of the first things to realise is that numerology is not a form of divination.
Numerology gives you insight into yourself and your interactions with the world.
Numerology is an oracle. It shows you all the parts of you: The good, the bad, the ugly, the weak, the strong, the beautiful, the surprising, the hidden. The parts of you that you perhaps don’t want to recognise. The parts of you that you love, and the parts of you that you somehow knew were there but couldn’t quite pinpoint.
How your world shows up is a mirror of you, your beliefs, your mental attitude, and how you approach the world. What is confronting is that your birth date and your name can shine a light on a whole lot of those things: You have free will, but you are also shaped by when you were born and how you were named.
The insight is deep and powerful. It gives you a sense of why things go right and why things go wrong.
As my mother-in-law quipped when I did her chart, ‘I’m not sure I like you knowing all of this about me.’
As an oracle, numerology can’t tell you what’s coming or what to do.
Numerology is not divinatory. Tarot is divinatory: It is a reading of your life path, and an explanation of where you are, where you’re going and what’s coming at you. But numerology is not.
You can, of course, go bananas with numerology. You can see numbers around you everywhere and start imaging that they’re giving you signs. But it’s just imagination, for the most part.
What numerology does instead is show you how to strengthen the weak aspects of you; how to leverage the strong ones; how to approach your current life phase and current year; and how to minimise recurrent problems (and know what those problems are, actually).
When you know these things, you are capable of living your best life more easily. Suddenly you understand the remedy for the tricky things, and you understand why your default attitudes emerge the way they do.
So what does a numerology “reading” cover?
A numerology chart gives us your:
Besides all of the above, your numerologist may give you interpretations for your current or future personal years. I include this year and the next seven years in all of my charts and interpretations.
A high level of repetition in your chart (the same numbers coming up) indicates an easier life. A high level of chaos (loads of different numbers) indicates more complexity and, well, chaos. Either way, understanding your life path numerologically can do incredible things for you. For example, I am quite a cerebral and internal-dwelling person, which sometimes creates challenges with others; overcoming it for me is about deploying empathy more often. I know this intuitively, but my chart shows it decisively. It helps me remember how to act, and sometimes it’s the reminder that is the most important thing.
How does it work?
The form of numerology I use is called Pythagorean. It takes your date of birth for some aspects (life periods, challenges, destiny, direction, personal years), and it takes your full birth name for all of the remainder.
Each letter of your name is assigned a value and those values are added together, and then reduced to a single value, using a particular methodology.
Many people ask whether changes to name are significant. Things like marriage, or choices to change names. These changes can be influential, but in my personal and professional opinion, it’s more important to understand who you are as you came into the world. That really defined your life path; shifts along the way don’t shape you so meaningfully or deeply.
Of course, if you wanted me to do charts for all of your permutations and changes, I would absolutely do that. It’s just more important to focus on who you were in the beginning before you look at any later shifts.
Numerology works for anything with a ‘name’!
This includes:
Therefore, if you’re moving into a new place and that place has a name, it might be worthwhile having a chart done for that property. Places are people too, and when you understand the personality of the place you live in, you may discover nuances you might otherwise never see.
Similarly, company and business names can genuinely impact their performance. If you’re experiencing roadblocks or challenges in your business life, having a numerology chart done for your business may give you deep insight. When I did the numerology chart for past businesses of mine, I saw their challenges laid out before me in plain sight, and it took my breath away.
It is useful to have numerology charts completed for potential names ahead of time!
This is particularly the case for children and businesses. If, for example, you know your business is starting on a particular date and you have a few names chosen, have charts done for each one. Then, choose the name that contains more traits of your definition of success. If you want your children to be financially capable, make sure they have a couple of ‘h’s in their names!
Because numerology is objective, it is more useful for teams than self-reported tools like DiSC
Numerology charts and interpretations show you not just who you are. They also show you how you relate to others, how others perceive you, and what are your default approaches to the world. Corporate numerology also gives you what you do in team and project situations: It gives you a sense of your own archetype.
Are you a leader? An innovator? A worker bee? A talker? A person who is gifted at data analysis or finance? Numerology will tell you.
More importantly, having a whole team’s numerology completed gives you a clear picture of the nature of the team. Do you recruit in a particular way, so that your team is stacked with personalities of a particular type? It happens more often than you think, and your team’s numerology can paint those pictures for you.
Do you want your chart done?
I take new clients continuously for both numerology and tarot. If you’ve read this far and are curious about your own chart, contact me and we can chat.
xx Leticia
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Artist in Recovery to (re)become Woman as Artist
May 22nd, 2023Artist in Recovery is my poetry collection published by Lionstower in November 2022. But it’s coming back home to me, and I’m publishing it under its original title.
The title was originally conceived as Woman as Artist and at its heart, the collection is this still. Nothing fundamentally changed with a change to the title. Except, perhaps, my own joy. The collection was conceived through the process of matrescence, and it underpins my perspective and attitude towards life and creativity. It is really a journey of a woman from one form to another, from maiden to mother, through the dark forest of ignorance, led only by love.
After having been disenfranchised by the efforts of the publisher, I finally decided to claw back the rights to the book. Happily, it all worked out easily for both of us!
I’m in the process of going over the material one last time, and of creating new artwork for the book.
The tentative release for the edition is July/August 2023.
Hot on the heels of Woman as Artist will be a new collection. Its working title is Ocean Elements, and that one is shaping up in all kinds of strange and beautiful ways. It’ll be re-titled before release, so stay tuned for more news on that score.
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Why you shouldn’t worry about A.I. (artificial intelligence)
May 10th, 2023Artificial intelligence is the latest crazy hype, terrifying creatives all over the western world. If that’s you, you’re thinking about it wrongly. This is my attempt to give you back your spirit.
Artificial intelligence vs creativity
Your creativity will never be threatened by artificial intelligence (AI). Your creations are energy-filled, soulful, divine works. In contrast, AI manufactures soulless remixes that fit some developer’s idea of a perfect world.
Smart creatives will leverage AI to make corporate cash, it’s true. The entrepreneurs out there have been doing it a long time already (I’m talking 6+ years).
But the outcome? An explosion of human creativity and art outside of the construct, because that’s what we DO. That’s the heart of an artist. Why else do you imagine we’re being programmed to believe otherwise? No, that’s no coincidence. Art gives hope, shows us a way through. Without creativity, we simply remix the past forever.
Watch my pep-talk on this to understand why.
You can choose to watch it here or on YouTube.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel here. I don’t post much, but if you want the next pep talk, it’s probably a good idea.
Send me your thoughts about this if you watched the pep talk and it resonated. I reply to everyone… you know, unless they’re trolls. 😉 And if this is the kind of thinking you love, consider booking a taster coaching call. Sometimes it’s a fresh set of eyes that’s exactly what you need.
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7 Books that made me a better freelancer
April 16th, 2023If you read one of these books, you’ll make your entire business better. These are part of the toolkit I offer my coaching clients. Read on if you’re new to freelancing (or new again, having recently been laid off).
This post contains affiliate links. If you buy one using a link here, I may make a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Freelancers are nomads, but business is still business!
The first thing to understand is that freelance work is genuinely nomadic work. You work on different things all the time: Different projects, different clients, different locations. Today you might be editing something; tomorrow writing SEO copy; the next day pitching a feature for a lifestyle magazine.
It’s one of the most perfect ways of making a living, because it allows you to follow your heart, follow your interests and follow your instincts.
But you also have to have enough stability, enough process, to keep your clients coming back.
It’s no secret that the most profitable client is one that you already have. You don’t have to do any outbound marketing, there are no advertising costs. It’s all inside the relationship that you have with those clients.
The key is making your business feel to the client that you’re a professional, smooth-as-silk operator. This isn’t about smashing work out to deadlines. It’s about every little nuance that you can imagine.
Once you’ve got the nuances sorted out, you can still operate from the heart as you did while flitting about. It won’t restrain you. What it will give you is a framework that will support you even as your business grows.
Make no mistake: Once you’re making money, the next challenge is keeping that money, and then scaling while at peak capacity. They’re all different challenges, they all require different approaches.
These resources will see you through all of them. (If you apply what you learn, anyway. Very few do!)
The Top 7 Books
Ready? Let’s go. These are in no particular order.
Book 1. Profit First
The book Profit First is an absolute game-changer. In my first year of (this) business, it paid for a two-week trip to NZ with almost unlimited spending at Hobbiton.
It was on the basis of this book that I reached out to Mike and made friends; I even appeared on his podcast.
I love this book, and actually everything Mike Michalowicz has written. He’s a lovely dude too. And fearless! When he and I went out to dinner, he ate through Australia’s coat of arms, and I loved that!
Buy book. Use book. Profit.
Book 2. Make Your Bed: Little things that can change your life (and maybe the world)
This is a tiny book nobody really talks about much. And yes, it will tell you to make your bed.
It is the foundation of almost all systems thinking in my life. Ironically, this was sparked off by a coach who asked me how many things I had left unfinished. I wrote a list. The list ran to a full A4 page.
I began making my bed and putting the dishes away (after washing them)… and the impact on my business life was immense.
Book 3. Extreme Ownership
One of the things you learn when you start creating a silky-smooth business is that everything is your fault. Literally. Everything.
Client got something wrong? That’s your fault.
Something misunderstood at the other end? That’s your fault.
Virtual assistant screwed something up? That’s your fault.
Client driving you nuts and emailing you every ten seconds? That’s your fault too.
Read Extreme Ownership to learn why.
Book 4. Systematic Magic: 7 magic keys to Disnify your business
Building beautiful client experiences is about as easy as it gets, but somehow we think it’s hard. Let Vance Morris show you why this is so easy, and give you concrete steps he actually uses to do the same thing.
The irony is that Vance published everything he does, all his systems, and his competitors still went out of business. Why? Because they were too lazy to do what he does. If they did, competition would be robust!
This is where your customer systems thinking begins.
Book 5. The Productivity Planner
I am a massive fan of Intelligent Change. I even wrote an article for them, on how I adapted their productivity planner.
This tool is an absolute must-have for anyone working for themselves, so for you it is an absolute no-brainer. It will completely change your approach to task-lists, because it shifts you to getting shit done as opposed to writing lists.
Book 6. The Ultimate Guide to Project Management for Creatives
Project Management is the one thing that lets creatives down, in my experience. It sure was with me! I agonised about it for years. I built system after system after system. I used hundreds of apps and software packages.
And then I went back to basics.
When I did, I realised that other people need to understand it the same way! So I wrote this book.
Use it. It’ll change your entire approach, drop your risk, and improve the quality of every project you handle–one by one.
Book 7. How to Win Friends and Influence People
An oldie but a goodie!
This is honestly my most-recommended work after Profit First. Here’s why: Business happens in front of people, not in front of screens.
Yes, you’re a freelancer. Yes, you’re a working nomad. That makes it even more important for you to learn how to make friends and influence others in person.
Dale Carnegie is an absolute legend. And like all the other books on this list, it will meaningfully change your life for the better.
If you’d like to see how coaching with me can improve your freelancer and writer life, book a free taster call.
Calls run for a full hour, and you get a complete set of notes and actions to take away, just as you would if it were a paid (real!) client call. Send me a message to get started.
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