my version of success

adding to the infinite examples of what it could look like

What is success to me?

Cultivating and living in a happy marriage, decades later. A life with someone who feels like deep, passionate, inconvenient, ‘big love of my life’ energy, not a settlement, a transaction, an arrangement of algorithmic compatibilities or a resignation to the ordinary. Anaïs Nin said, “I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy.” I’d want my biography to begin with that quote, and narrate a lived example of it. A beautiful home, with aesthetics that make me happy. To have the time and space, always, to spend on making my home beautiful and creating a heartfelt sanctuary of it. A book written. A life of plays, concerts, performances and art experienced that evoked a true, pure feeling of rapture. To be ever-evolving, to always feel an excitement to creatively refine myself until deathbed. To always have notes app lists of some new habit I am working on, or some new pursuit I am growing in. To never reach a point where I feel like, “I’ve done enough, I’m perfect, I’m good, I don’t need to cultivate anything in myself now.” To feel beautiful. To always find ways to feel hot, juicy and erotically alive at every age. To have a rich, feminine business that comes from being a rich, feminine woman from the inside out. To always have the time and space to cook meals by my own hand for my home and family. To live a life of many, many afternoon naps. To always have the time to do a yoga practice, almost daily. To have an art practice, a hobby, that I never monetize. To have the luxury of touching a creative process, and being touched back by it. To always have access to a grassy ground to walk barefeet on. To always live by the rhythms of the moon, and regularly moon-gaze. A successful life is one where I can read for two hours everyday. To have many memories of three hour lunches. To have many days where I could just linger in life. To take pride in my mastery of the art of lingering, to beat my chest about that more often than how my ‘time management’ helps me to ‘do it all.’ To live a life as a happy woman instead of a Good Woman, to feel like a goddess, to skip the part of being a superwoman who did it all, because I was too busy loving and being loved. To be a self-nourishing fountain of vitality, life force and creative energy. To be turned on by life itself. To unapologetically enjoy my multipassionate, multidimensional ways. To create around myself a circle of women where we all feel deeply nourished, inspired, held, loved and safe. To have a legacy of handmade art journals, process diaries, personal diaries, journals upon journals upon journals, archiving every moment of how I co-created this life with the Universe. To regularly have moments of synchronicity, serendipity, and proof that the Divine is with me. To be a joyous receiver. To be a woman who dances, who danced all her life. To be the example of how magnetic to miracles, joy and abundance a well-rested, relaxed woman can be. To master the art of always trusting that everything happens for me, not to me, and anything that is meant for me will never pass me by, and to move through life in that gorgeous energy. To experience Divine Union on earth, with one partner, for life. To curate the energy I allow into my life in such a way that I always get to be safe in loving, respecting, cherishing and deeply enjoying the presence of the masculine in my life. To always have more than enough examples of men with excellent character, and women with beautiful hearts. To always write. To be the friend that still writes snail mail letters and recipe cards and spends a lot of time planning a gift for you. To always wear real gold. To experience outdoor baths. To get to travel with ten, fifteen or more days in hand to truly romance a new land, and no itinerary at all. To wear lots of silk. To anoint myself in oils I steeped under the moon with herbs. To self-massage, and experience massages, as a regular life essential. To always have women to talk about books, art, business, movement, food, healing and life with. To be healthy, to experience pleasure, and still remain healthy, without ever having had an extremely strict regime ‘diet.’ To always move my body in ways that feel fun. To have the time to plot and strategise and scheme more and more ways to love that same old man forever. To have a life where one can mostly wake up naturally with the sun. To be magnetic to abundance because of the joy and fun of doing what you love. To mostly own your own time. To be regularly inconvenienced by needing to show up for your love, your friends, your family and your community. To always get to meet friends in the flesh. To have an entire attic of art and ceramics that I made. To be remembered by many for the food I made for them. To pour into women, and create a legacy of work that somehow deeply served women. To live a life full of pleasure, and to have experienced immense depths of all the lush gifts of the human experience through my five senses. To have a home with a pole, and the time to practice on it. To have dined in candlelight in my own home, for no reason, thousands of times. To have hosted cozy dinners with ambiences and conversations that inspired a sense of, “This, right here, is the point of life.” To live a beautifully Indian life, but also Italian and French. To be well dressed. To be the wise elder woman that tells the young ones what awaits on the other side of darkness - of how beautiful and fascinating and fun every challenge in life is also going to be even though it’s hard, instead of the one who only has tales of dread and “Just wait till you…” to offer. To be the example of lush, feminine abundance. To bring gifts to the Earth - to the table, to the home, to life itself - that only healing, healthy feminine energy was divinely destined to bring. To be the example of a woman enjoying being a woman, no longer needing to prove that she can do anything a man does.

What is your version of success? I invite you to share, and plant seeds of stories into the world about how each one of us can have our own that looks nothing like what was prescribed to us, and is still holy and sacred and aspirational.

The links in the above writing are roses, to hand out to the women who inspired and planted those words into my consciousness. They will take you to resources of beautiful women that I learnt a lot from, and whose energy is speaking through my words.

Thanks for coming to my circle dance under the moon! Subscribe to receive more from me, I typically appear in your inbox in a gentle, quiet, wax sealed, rose scented email on Moon days and Venus days. <3