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🌑 Libra New Moon on the 10/10: a reading and meditation on pleasure Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Hi loves, my voice was in and out today but we still showed up, live from the shoppe with the rain coming down, which y’all know I love. If you missed it, the replay is right here, and I wanted to give you the fuller picture of what came through because this one really landed for me. Libra gets talked about for her beauty and her sensuality, and people tend to forget how intelligent she is. The surface is so captivating you end up staying there longer than you need to, and you miss all the depth underneath, her need for justice, for harmony, for things to actually feel right. So yes, beauty is always part of the conversation with me, but this new moon is really asking about pleasure. Are your days pleasurable? Are you moving through even the mundane parts of your life like, damn, this is satisfying to me? And if you’re not, this retrograde season is giving us all the REs to work with, so we can refine, review, and reconsider until we can say with our whole chest that we enjoy our lives. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 🔮 The pull came from the Moonology Oracle deck by Yasmin Boland, which was my very first oracle deck. She’s so well loved and it felt good to bring her back out. ✨ Void Moon: Nothing Will Come of This Situation. If there’s a part of your life where the pleasure just isn’t there, pay attention to that. And I don’t mean toxic positivity where everything has to be a good time all the time. Pleasure can live inside something that stretches you and makes you a little uncomfortable. But if you look and there isn’t an ounce of it present, it’s time to reconsider, because we are not meant to just struggle and suffer, especially as Black women. Pleasure unlocks our creativity, our sense of safety, and relationships that honor us. Staying in a situation with none of it keeps you stuck in the void. ✨ Mutable Moon (reversed): Nothing Is Yet Set in Stone. In this deck a reversal points to internal work. We really are in a season of transition, and you have more say in what you’re about to experience than it might feel like right now. If what you desire isn’t showing up yet, stop staring at what currently exists and use your imagination to see yourself where you want to be, because that dreaming is pleasurable in itself. If that feels hard to do, it might be a call home to your relationship with beauty, passion, sensation, and feeling good in your body, mind, and spirit. Oh baby, we are here to feel good as often as we possibly can. ✨ New Moon in Pisces: Meditate and Contemplate. I told a story on the live about being in the Spotify podcast program with my homegirl Jamila, where everyone else was sharing these calm little updates and then she’s caring for a parent, shooting a documentary in Costa Rica, and flying out the next day, and I’m over here running down certifications and speaking gigs. What Black women do at our baseline is already a thousand percent, and we’ll still say girl, that’s literally Tuesday. That baseline can blind us to how much we’re already pouring out. So this card asks you to go in first. Sit with your higher self, your Ori, your ancestors, your guides, and let their love and protection fill you from your crown to your toes. Then, from that full place, start dreaming about what comes next. It’ll feel completely different than dreaming from anxiety or need. The meditation was all about witnessing the pleasure that’s already here, whether that was the rain, the taste of your morning drink, or your body softening into the moment, and then breathing life into it until it expanded into your relationships, your work, and the people you get to serve. We closed by letting it pour over us slowly like honey, sweetening everything it touched. If you want to go deeper into what October is carrying cosmically, my October Energy Reading is up for paid subscribers. I break down the energy of the whole month plus the tools and resources I’m using to move through this retrograde season, including what’s been going on with my throat chakra and these voice upgrades. A few things coming up: ✨ Oct 17, Black & Spooky Ghost Tour: Historian and genealogist Morgan Lloyd is leading us through Washington Square in downtown Philly, once known as Congo Square. We’ll be pouring libations, honoring the ancestors who gathered there, and being spooky and Black together. ✨ Oct 24, Johnson House Historic Site: Morgan and I will be in conversation at this stop on the Underground Railroad about what freedom meant for Black folks in the early 1800s, with a charcuterie board sponsored by Johnson House and our Hoodoo Heritage bundles available. 👉🏾 Get access to all Beaucoup Hoodoo events here ✨ Scorpio season: My EFT audio on actualizing your potential drops in the next week or two, and my birthday wishlist is coming too since y’all ask every year. ✨ The Strict Shelf: I’ve been dropping so many gems on my book blog here on Substack, all Black fantasy and Black romance through my very peculiar taste. Come see us at the Beaucoup Hoodoo shoppe Thursday through Sunday, 12 to 6, and if you want a personal reading, email me at [email protected]. I’ll be back live for the Full Moon in Taurus. So tell me, which card resonated with you most, and what’s one pleasurable thing you’re calling into your week? With love,Rev. Lo This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

Before I get into anything, let’s be clear about something. CultureCon came from an idea this Black woman, Imani Ellis (a brilliant fellow Scorpio baddie), had, and she started it in her living room, and now it’s a whole weekend where creatives from all over the country, maybe even internationally, are coming together in the same space to commune with each other. So whatever I share about my experience, I’m sharing it knowing this is still a celebration of Blackness, built by a Black woman. And I think sometimes we forget that Blackness comes in all these different shapes and sizes. She’s covering Black in business, Black as creatives, Black as in sisterhood, brotherhood, siblinghood, Black in literature, Black in media, Black nostalgia, Black Afrofuturism, even how to go get a man, which again, I don’t think is necessary information for me, but it was there. With all of that going on at once, nobody’s having the same CultureCon, so I can only speak on mine. People have been asking me how CultureCon was, so this is me sharing my experience. It is not a critique. This was my first time going, and I’d never really had the desire to go, because I don’t do big crowds. I feel a lot of energy from people, and being amongst that many can get overwhelming for me real quick. I actually came out to be an emotional support person for my homegirl, who invited me, and even with spending time with her as my North Star, there was so much going on that I didn’t get to see her as much as I wanted. Someone described Imani’s vision as a homecoming for creatives, and I can absolutely f*****g see that. Fly ass, creative ass Black people, all together connecting, looking hella good. She hit the nail on the head. And when I say homecoming, I mean a proper Black homecoming, HBCU levels of Blackness. If you’ve never been to one of those, that vision could go right over your head and honestly be really frustrating, because it’s still called a conference. But it’s a conference of culture, of Black culture, and that’s vastly different from what other conferences provide. Will I share some ways I think it could grow? Sure. I’ve put on events big and small, I’m a trauma-informed practitioner, I’ve been a creative my whole life, and I’m a native New Yorker who lives out of state now, so I see things from a few angles at once. But none of it comes from having a terrible time. Things weren’t always smooth, and some things could have gone better, but there was never a moment at CultureCon where I thought, this is f*****g awful, I’m never doing this again. Well, one moment, and we’ll get to that AI talk. Everything else, even the bumpy parts, was never a bad experience. Yes, I Came to Get My Fits Off I’m starting with the fashion because I’m really passionate about it, and I grew up in it. I was a fashion model in my early teens, and when you live in New York City, you’re inclined to know about fashion, whether it’s because of Fashion Week or just the incredible style of everyday New Yorkers. Style is key. I know people assume the fashion side of CultureCon is superficial, like oh, you’re just there for the photo ops, and it’s like, yes, and I’m also expressing myself creatively through what I’m wearing, because I’m a creative… So picking out fits was one of the things I was most excited about, because I knew I’d be getting dressed for a room full of creatives who would actually receive it. Outside of my new position as the healing artist at Beaucoup Hoodoo, where I can now dress to my full creative whimsy desires, I haven’t had many opportunities to dress at this level of fashion. Before that, I was working with kids, and there’s only so much you’re willing to wear around children, because they will absolutely destroy everything just by being alive and having sticky fingers. So I appreciate any chance to wear something really f*****g fly, and I planned the weekend around a theme: Saturday was dedicated to the sun, and Sunday was to the moon. For Saturday I wore an oversized, drifty, giraffe-print-inspired halter dress, floor length, with the entire back out and a deep cowl neck in the front to show off my tattoos. Bone-colored thong kitten heel sandals, a cute little red toe, and a dark berry lip. Thick gold hoops, my honey name plate chain, the gold stack of bangles I have on me at all times, and my green jade gold ring. I was shimmering up to the Gods. I looked like an ethereal conjurer who called in the sun. The hair is where it went left. It was supposed to be a fresh braid-out that, in hindsight, I really should have tried beforehand. It was not that. I pushed it off my face and still looked beautiful, but if it had matched what I’d envisioned in my head, that look would have been everythinggg. So Saturday night I got home, did a fresh blowout, and it came out way better. For Sunday I wore an oversized vintage men’s gray suit over a cut-out black crop top with white piping on the straps and around the breast. Silver pointy-toe stiletto boots that are actually comfy and kept my feet warm in the rain. I took a little baby blue and white silk neck scarf and wrapped it halfway as a belt for detail, with an evil eye charm. My NY beret that I love so much, cobalt blue mascara, my signature dark brown liner, and a glossed lip, an ode to being a New York girl through and through. For jewelry it was all silver: oversized crescent moon earrings with a really cute diamond ear stack, and these fun oversized silver rings, one with blue lapis and one with amethyst. Same honey nameplate chain. I got compliments all day, and it made me really happy. Part Fashion Show, Part Networking, Part Conference Someone said CultureCon is part fashion show, part networking, part conference, and I agree, because Black people and fashion go together real bad. We set all the trends, and we will continue to set all the trends. That’s just what we do. Nobody looked the same. I didn’t see anyone with the same accessories or fit, and that shows you how creative we are in our ability to express ourselves through clothing. I may not know all the fashion houses anymore since I’m out of the modeling world, but I know good style, and I know when someone is expressing who they are through their clothes seamlessly. I saw that everywhere I looked, on the line and inside. Hair laid to the gods. The amount of gold glistening off of well-moisturized Black skin in the m***********g sun will always be tea for me. And everybody was complimenting everybody. “Girl, I love your shoes”. “Y’all are so beautiful”. “Girl, you smell good, what’s that?” Nobody was mean, rude, or had an attitude. I know there’s been talk in the past about it being cliquish, or people just coming for photo ops without giving a f**k about you as a person, and that was not my experience at all. People were kind, sweet and really patient, which could also have to do with the frequency I carry. Either way being Black is an incredible experience when you’re amongst other Black people who love being Black, and that in itself was an experience. Day One: Getting Through the Gate Saturday was hotter than many of us expected. We’d already been given fall weather, and then Saturday was like, psych, it’s actually fall summer, and for those who know New York City has about twelve different seasons, you understand what I’m talking about. We were in line for about two hours with no shade anywhere, and the staff were doing their best to keep the line in order, but when you’re standing in direct sun in an outfit that’s generating its own heat, you just want to step into the shade. Come to find out there was free water inside the whole time, so if I could add one thing, it would be volunteers walking the line with that same water, because people didn’t want to lose their spot and they were thirsty. By the time we got in, we needed to go to the bathroom badly, so the first place we went was the Creative Playground. It was a bit overwhelming when you first walked in, especially after being on line for so long, but the activations were really cute and fun, and it was pretty spacious for people to walk around and mingle. The one thing I’d move is the arts and crafts section. I think the goal was to give people a space to decompress and tap into that creative wellness, and having it directly in the center of all the activations, artists, and vendors made it feel overwhelming and oddly placed. The top floor of the Creative Playground had a smaller stage, which I’m assuming was for another Brain Date, with little standing tables in the back for chit-chatting, and everything up there was so much more calm and quiet. That’s where I would have put it. Now, on Sunday, when it was raining and everybody was essentially stuck inside, that section got very, very busy, and it was super loud. So if the point was to network and commune, it hit the nail on the head, but if the point was a safe space to decompress, that wasn’t quite it, and I’m honestly not sure which one the intention was. Once we made it over to the Creative Business Stage, it was running about 30 minutes behind, which was honestly a blessing in disguise, because getting in took so long we would have missed something we really enjoyed. We just didn’t know at first, so we sat through a session we hadn’t planned on, thought we were in the wrong place, left, and came back. Then someone from the CultureCon staff went up and spoke to the audio and visual guys to clear up where we were in the timeline. Once we knew, it wasn’t a big deal at all, it was just confusing until somebody told us. I also don’t know if that delay was updated in the app. It didn’t look like it when we checked, but I can imagine updating an app in real time is complicated. Personally, I did not enjoy the app. The interface is beautiful to look at, but it overwhelmed me, and it was

Thank you Nia, Duncan The Sage, and many others for tuning into my live video! Whether you caught it in real time or you’re reading this because you couldn’t make it, I appreciate you being here. If you want to jump around the replay: * Live begins — 2:29 * EFT directions begin — 34:00 * EFT meditation begins — 38:33 Fall Equinox Message Equinox is a crossroads. That’s something we don’t talk about often enough — how this is a shedding and a becoming. We’re leaving behind summer as a season, and moving into fall, where things are dying, things are falling away, things are shedding. It reminds you to slow down. Summer is a very external season, we outside, sun shining, let’s go. Fall is more introverted. You’re coming back in, and you’re realizing you’re at the crossroads of this journey. We always talk about how we prepared to get here, and we talk about what happens after the crossroads, once we’ve made our choice and picked a direction. But what’s actually happening at the crossroads itself? Are you panicking? Are you freaking out? Do you feel ready to make that choice? Do you know exactly what choice you want to make, or are there too many options for you? Are you taking the time to sit and see if you feel prepared from the past season you just lived? Are there any gems you want to take with you moving forward? Is there anything you know absolutely will not be coming with you? Are you trying to move backwards at the crossroads because you don’t feel prepared to move forward? Are you really aware of the options in front of you, and do you trust that no matter what you choose, it will leave you where you need to be? Equinox is encouraging us to remember there are plenty of crossroads through life, each day and in each moment. They happen at noon, at midnight. Are we present in the moments when we’re there — when we can see the paths ahead and the paths behind and we’re like, I’m right here right now, I don’t have this urgency to move forward and I don’t have a desire to go backwards, I’m at the plateau. And that’s okay, because this is a space to regroup, to reconnect back to yourself, to take inventory, and then to move forward. To be in the moment, to be present, to see what the crossroads have for you, and also to see what you have for the crossroads — maybe there’s something you’re supposed to leave there. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What Virgo Season Gave Us Virgo season has this emphasis around clearing out your house, whether that’s physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and getting organized. That’s where we get this innate desire to want to get our houses in order, to see what’s staying and what’s leaving, to begin witnessing the beautification of our spaces and our relationships because we’ve been cleaning house, because we’ve been organizing. I know it can feel a little cliché to say Virgos are organized, but they are, they’re very organized. Virgo energy knows how to streamline, how to make things efficient. They appreciate sustainability because they know that’s what’s going to keep things going, and they understand the importance of sustainability and streamlining, because you really cannot have one without the other. Without streamlining, without sustaining it, are you actually going to enjoy the journey? Libra Season and the Power of Beauty Libra season is less of the internal work up front. I like to say Libra season can catfish you, because you immediately focus in on beauty and pleasure in general, things that can feel super surface level. But real ones know that beauty is power. It’s raw, and it can be refined, and access to it will radically shift your world. The only way to truly sustain consistent change in life is through pleasure. Virgo season should have been where you got to highlight the spaces in your life where there was some level of emptiness, or too much clutter that you removed. Now you’re entering Libra season to fill in those voids, those gaps, whether that’s in your community, in your relationships, in your practice, with beauty. That could be beautifying something, beautifying yourself physically, shape-shifting. It could be revamping your beauty ritual to deepen your connection and your respect to your own magic, to your own ancestry. It could be exposing yourself to more arts and music, being in places and spaces with people that feel beautiful to you. What power comes from centering beauty? When you decide you’re going to fill these voids and gaps with beauty, what can come of that? Are you open and ready to receive those blessings and miracles? Because let me tell you something — only good things come from adding more beauty into your life. And I mean beauty as it has always been: the expression of source’s love for you and all things. How I’m Filling My Own Gaps As a beauty practitioner, pretty much everything I do is a beauty ritual. Even now, it’s like brushing my teeth. The tool I’ve been really connecting back to is tarot, particularly a deck I struggled with in the past, an Afro-Brazilian deck. It had been calling to me, and doing the reading, it was just such clarity — I needed to hear this. With the body, I’ve been doing butters and smell goods, new fragrances, new body oils and body butters, and I’ve been enjoying reacquainting myself with my body that way, allowing my skin to glow. And with spirit, reconnecting back to the Divine Mother. That has been so important for me. My journey with the Black Madonna has been incredible. What’s Waiting in Scorpio Season When we leave Libra season heading into Scorpio season, Libra season is like death for me, and then I have my rebirth during my birthday. But if you’re prioritizing beauty throughout Libra season, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s less fear when you enter Scorpio season, of having to experience deep transformation or explore the taboo of who you are, because you’re so rooted in and nourished by beauty that it’s almost an adventure. It becomes exciting to look at those aspects of self and see what’s there, see how it can add to your beauty, contribute to it, or see how it’s been deteriorating your beauty and why you need to let that go, or alchemize it into something else that feels beneficial for you and yours. If this felt really good to you, share it with somebody so they can also prioritize beauty in their life. And let me know how you’re doing — leave a little heart, a little comment underneath, so I know you were here. Tap With Me: Prioritizing Beauty and Intentionally Seeking It Out Sequence: side of hand, top of head, brow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, heart, underarm. Three rounds — one negative, two positive. Setup (side of hand, 3x) Even though I haven’t always centered beauty, and even though I haven’t always let it be a form of liberation, I’m still here, I’m still worthy, and I am still capable of choosing differently, starting right now. Round 1 — the negative round * Top of head: Here’s what happens when I don’t center beauty. * Brow: When I treat it like it’s optional, like it’s extra or frivolous, I feel incomplete. * Side of eye: I will push past any gaps and create these endless voids, and it feels like I’ll never be able to fill them. I forget that beauty is necessary. * Under eye: It also means I haven’t fully believed I was allowed to experience and receive pleasure. * Under nose:I’ve stayed stuck in the mud without moving, forgetting that there was more for me. * Chin: I bypassed what I was going through instead of letting myself feel it. * Collarbone: I’ve cut myself off from the power of beauty, and I realize if I hadn’t, it would have cost so much less. * Heart :I lost access to that power every time beauty was not at the center. * Underarm : And that’s what it’s cost me: this confusion, this lack of confidence, being unmotivated, the list can go on and on. To live a life without beauty woven through it is a life I no longer want to live. I want to let that old mindset go and allow myself to be reborn. Round 2 — positive * Top of head: I am choosing to prioritize beauty in my life, to intentionally seek it out. * Brow: And in doing that, I’m accessing power that can radically change my life. * Side of eye: I am ready to receive pleasure, for it to be at the forefront of my practice, of my experience. * Under eye: Pleasure is becoming the baseline for me now. It’s no longer the exception. * Under nose: I’m learning to instinctively identify beauty, even in the darkest of times. * Chin: I’m not going to spiritually bypass what I’m going through. I’m just acknowledging that two things can be true at once. * Collarbone: Even if I feel like I’m in the mud right now, I know it’s not the end of my story. Beauty still lives there too. * Heart: I can bloom, the same way a lotus blooms out of the mud and into the light. * Underarm: I’m becoming the beauty I’ve been seeking this whole time. Round 3 — positive * Top of head: I have bloomed like a lotus flower. * Brow: I am a beautiful entity that nourishes the environment it’s in. * Side of eye: I bring inspiration to everything and everyone I meet, and they do the same for me. * Under eye: I bring joy to everything and everyone I meet, and they do the same for me. * Under nose: I bring peace to everything and everyone, and they do the same for me. * Chin: Not just my immediate environment, but the world at large. * Collarbone: This is what happens when I choose beauty. * Heart: This is what happens when I’m ready to receive. * Underarm: I am living proof of what beauty can do. And in that itself is beautiful. Temporal tapping — close Starting at your temple, lightly tap behind the ear, coming down almost to the

This sermon is about the wild woman and the civilized woman — the two sides of you that society has taught you to treat as opposing forces instead of what they actually are: twin aspects of the same divine power. Drawing on Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves and bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam and Communion, this video goes into what it actually costs us to keep these two sides separated, and what it means to become your own container — strong enough to hold both sides with equal fierceness. This is a continuation of part one, where we laid the foundation for who the wild woman and the civilized woman actually are. Books used for this sermon: * Women Who Run with the Wolves — Clarissa Pinkola Estés * Sisters of the Yam — bell hooks * Communion — bell hooks Songs to meditate on: * “Twin Flame” — Victoria Monét, on what it feels like when you’re in internal divorce, wild and civilized pulling against each other instead of together * “Gemini” — Princess Nokia, on what it feels like in divine union, fully accepting all of yourself Go deeper: * The complete 2026 syllabus : the full theological and literary framework behind this sermon and the year’s theme of duality * My Divine Union sermon : go here for a deeper dive into what union actually looks and feels like once both sides are integrated Reflection questions: Come back into your body before you sit with these. * Place your hand on your chest. Which one of them is closest to the surface today, and what is she trying to tell you? * Where in your body do you feel the split most — your throat, your stomach, your chest? What has staying silent or staying small actually felt like physically over time? * Think about the last time you felt completely like yourself, not performing or managing or shrinking. What did that feel like in your body? What shifted when it was over? * Who in your life knows both of your names? Sit with that one. What does your body say before your mind answers? * If your wildness and your civility can exist together without one canceling the other out, what becomes possible for you that hasn’t felt possible before? Share this: Tell me what surfaced in the reflection questions. And if it named something true, send it to someone you love — repost it, get it in front of the person who needs it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

This sermon is about the two sides of you that society has taught you to treat as opposing forces instead of what they actually are: twin aspects of the same divine power. Drawing on Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves and bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam and Communion, this video lays the foundation you will explore who the wild woman is beneath everything media taught us to fear about her, and who the civilized woman is beneath the language of “well-behaved,” and what it costs Black women specifically to sever ourselves in half. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Books used for this sermon: * Women Who Run with the Wolves — Clarissa Pinkola Estés * Sisters of the Yam — bell hooks * Communion — bell hooks **feel free to grab your bell hooks books from The Lit Twist! My girl Petra is also having a summer school all about bell hooks if that sounds like a vibe for you! Tell her I said Songs to meditate on: * “Twin Flame” — Victoria Monét, on what it feels like when you’re in internal divorce, wild and civilized pulling against each other instead of together * “Gemini” — Princess Nokia, on what it feels like in divine union, fully accepting all of yourself Go deeper: * The complete 2026 syllabus : the full theological and literary framework behind this sermon and the year’s theme of duality * Haven’t read the story of Manawee? I read it directly from Women Who Run with the Wolves in part two, so you can catch the full story there, or pick it up in the book beforehand if you want a head start. Share this: Tell me what came up for you watching this. And if it named something true, send it to someone you love — repost it, get it in front of the person who needs it. Part two picks up with what that separation actually costs us, what it means to build the container strong enough to hold both sides, and what divine union looks like in practice — plus reflection questions to sit with after you watch. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com 💫 Not a paid member yet? This one’s for you first. This month’s meetup is already up BUT if you’re not subscribed, you won’t have access to the full video. But here’s a taste of what your people inside got to sit with today. 👀🖤 Here’s what we covered: 🕯️ Ancestral Veneration: not the performance of it, but the intimacy of it. What it actually looks like to honor your lineage in ways that are personal, doable, and deeply felt. Including how to handle the complicated ones — the ancestors the relationship isn’t simple with — and how to stay centered and stand your ground when working with energy in general. 🌕 Capricorn Full Moon Reading: the two-sided nature of this moon and what it’s asking of you right now. ♌🪐 Jupiter into Leo: what this shift means for your power and your presence in the second half of this year. 🃏 Two-Card Pull: specific guidance to help you move through this lunar energy with intention. 🎵 Song Recommendation: leave you with a song to help you embody the energy of what we covered, not just think about it. The whole session centered on one truth: your darker instincts deserve a seat at the table. Wisdom lives there. Power lives there. And if you found your way to this community, some part of you already knows that. 🐍✨ The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a paid subscriber. When you become a paid member, you get: 🌕 Access to this full video + every monthly meetup going forward🗂️ The complete archive — past meetups, rituals, EFT scripts, and somatic tools built to help you navigate your life with clarity and intention🕯️ Practices that will help you dance in the darkness and live in your light — for real, not for the aesthetic This is the space for the ones done pretending the light is the only place worth being. Come on in. 🖤

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com Happy Gemini season!!! As a Gemini rising with Mars in Gemini, this is one of my favorite seasons baby! There is something that Gemini energy that tells you to WAKE IT TF UP and we all need that boost of adrenaline for real. Here’s what I want you to do (before or after reading this) pay attention to where Gemini is showing up in your own chart, because that’s exactly where this season is asking you to move, speak, and grow. You’ll notice that the reflection questions overlap and even repeat - this is to ensure that you are showing up to the moment with as much clarity as possible. Take the time to answer them based on the wisdom expressed beforehand and then weave all the like minded answers together to build out what you need to focus on in this upcoming cycle. These notes are the deeper layer of everything we covered in the live so you can sit with it, study it, and come back to it whenever you need to. What to Expect in This Replay 🌌 A full sky reading broken down so the astrology actually makes sense and you know what to do with it. 🔮 A two-card pull for the Sagittarius Blue Moon one card for what is completing, one for what this portal is opening. If you are watching on replay, your timing is not late. It is right. 🧪 A live look at the rum-based signature blend I have been fermenting since the Scorpio Full Moon — every ingredient, why it is in there, and how I actually use it. 🧿 The full framework for building your own intentional blend from scratch so you walk away with a method, not just a moment of inspiration. 📑The research and selection process for herbs, spices, and oils that are actually aligned with your energy, your lineage, and what you are calling in right now. Let’s get into it! The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art & magick, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I know what people see when they look at me. They see someone intense, who doesn’t hesitate, who has probably always been this way. And they’re not wrong. I’m not a person who is big on giving grace just for the sake of giving grace, and I know that gets me a bit of a bad rap, which I am totally ok with. I’m the type of woman who has been thrown to the wolves and came back leading the pack. My Nana (a very dangerous yet loving woman) taught me that at a super young age. I remember me, my baby sister & cousins getting a lecture before school that if anyone tried us “you make em hurt so bad that they will never think of hurting you again” essentially I was taught that at the first sight of disrespect you eradicate it before it becomes too big to handle. Now Nana may have meant that in terms of bullies putting hands on us but there was nuance there. There are many ways to remove a threat to your well being that doesn’t equate to being physically violent - and yet at some moments in life that may be exactly what you need to do. Discernment is key here. When I seek out justice or retribution, I receive it — because I come letting people know that if I need to be deadly, I will. For my well-being, peace, community, whatever it is I’m fighting for. I will not hold that back. And because I am a fully embodied multifaceted Black woman there is another side to me that people don’t always see: I am as equally cutie patootie as I am bad b***h. I am very much a whimsical la-la girl. I LOVE that about me. And I can be that way — fully, without apology — because I have no problem showing my teeth. I don’t lose sleep over it & have never felt bad about it. I’m not concerned if someone says I’m too much or too aggressive. At all. Those two sides have always lived in me at the same time. And this piece is for the girl who has that same duality inside of her but hasn’t let both sides fully breathe yet. The girl who is bubbly and joyful and half-glass-full but has been told in a thousand different ways that her softness is the only version of her that’s welcome or allowed. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. That is a conversation I will probably always be having thanks to patriarchy (eye roll) so I wanted to put it here, plainly: it is okay for you to show your teeth. Actually, in order to fully get everything you want from this lifetime, you will have to. I was raised by women who showed their teeth all the time. And I saw how it protected them, how it allowed them to live in a way of freedom that most Black people didn’t even know existed. That forever shifted my understanding of what it means to call in matriarchy, the real deal not the weird whitewashed version trending currently. But to call that in, you have to be able to show your teeth. You have to be able to protect your being, inner God, higher self & inner child. You cannot do that without showing that you can bite back. I have this strong belief that Black women are like wolves. I’ve felt this since I was a child. I actually got an A+ on an essay where I defended the so-called Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs — those pigs sounded like terrorists to me, like Karens before the word Karen was a thing, harassing a wolf that was just trying to live in its natural habitat and survive. Anyways I’ve always had this kinship with wolves because I see how they’re portrayed in media as vile, irrational creatures that are always out for blood, with no warmth or care in their bodies. Things to be terrified of, to eradicate. And it always bothered me because reading Women Who Run with the Wolves confirmed what I already felt: wolves love and care for their community deeply. They only become vicious if you attack what they love. They are sweet, loving, intelligent creatures. That reminds me so much of Black women in particular. I’m not saying all women. I’m saying Black women. I said what I said. We are portrayed in media the exact same way as wolves, wicked and dangerous. Yet we are the exact same way as wolves — nurturing, community-oriented, instinctually protective of our young. Even those of us who have dealt with immense trauma. Part of our healing and spiritual journey is coming back home to that understanding: we are designed to take care of ourselves, and by taking care of ourselves, we take care of our communities. That is why I believe deeply that Black women who are fully embodied, who can operate in their light and their dark, will absolutely shift this world forward. Not save — I’m not calling us into becoming super mammies. My goal is for us to really live out our lives exactly how we see them in our mind’s eye, to be so clear in that decision that we fearlessly live it out loud. And that requires showing teeth. But society has tried to defang us. Remove our canines, our claws, so we would cower and be afraid of extinction and stop operating in our natural way of wildness. Too many of us have stopped showing our teeth because of it. Whether that’s through assimilation and just wanting to succeed with capitalism/racism/sexism or any of the myriad things we have to deal with as intersectional beings we are constantly told not to show our teeth. And when you grow up with that understanding, it is dangerous. It is you forcing your bigness into something so small that it is crushing you. There are parts of you that are being unseen and compressed and pressured into a shape that is not your Divine self. Hell not even your fully human self. You’re operating from a space of smallness. And I don’t want that for us anymore. It can cost you everything to not show your teeth. Even just hesitating a bit. It impacts your confidence. It becomes detrimental to your dynamics because people aren’t fully aware of all you are. You end up actively suppressing your bigness, so you make choices from a place of fear or desperation instead of power. And suppressing your true feelings, especially as a Black woman, can literally make you sick. There was an article that went viral from the Atlanta Tribune ‘Silent Rage Is A Hidden Health Crisis Among Women Of Color, Fueling Autoimmune Disorders’ and it laid out that the ‘angry Black woman’ stereotype pressures us to suppress our emotions to avoid being labeled, and that cultural silencing is making it a matter of life and death. Women of color who frequently suppress their anger are 70% more likely to develop conditions linked to heart attacks. Women account for nearly 80% of autoimmune disease cases. And the traits that get rewarded in us by society like agreeability, extreme selflessness, suppression of anger — are the same traits making us chronically ill. Your body will say what your mouth has been forced not to express. That’s clearly what the research is showing us. I have witnessed incredibly bright, brilliant women go through pain and humiliation simply because they were taught to be nice first. That leads to something else that happens when you swallow your teeth for too long you start questioning other women who you actively see using their teeth. Women who do know who they are, who are aware of their power, who do not hesitate to remove whatever is in the way of their joy — you start projecting yourself onto them. You start thinking, well, I did this, so they might go down this road too. But you’re not considering the fact that a woman who is comfortable showing her teeth is fully aware of what she’s experiencing precisely because she is not hesitant. She’s clear. And when you can’t see that in her because you can’t see it in yourself, it makes it very hard to be in circles with women who are actually showing up and living life. It costs you proper community and support, sisterhood. Because if you’re constantly projecting and not taking the time to allow another woman to be who she is because you are realizing that you are not all of who you are, you will push away the very women you need around you. There’s a deep wound underneath all of this, and for many of us it starts with our mothers. We talk sooo much about daddy wounds (which I think is hilarious because it just speaks to patriarchy) but it’s the mother wounds that tend to cause us the most pain. Because we lived inside of a body that we didn’t really get to know, or that we only knew in one capacity. We didn’t get to see the full dimension of who that person was, whether or not we know our biological mother. And that disconnect can create a real disassociation from your fullness and your power. If you were a golden child, a goody two shoes (I know that’s exactly what I was) you learned early what it meant to make yourself small so that your existence felt worth the sacrifice. I knew at an early age that my mother had sacrificed a lot for me to exist, and my main goal as a child was to make it worth it. I know that sounds heartbreaking. But that is something I intuitively felt the need to do because I was really grateful for my mom, I loved her and I could see, even at a young age, that she was suffering. Or maybe you were the weird girl, samesies. And depending on your environment, that weirdness might have actually shielded you from some of what society was trying to force on you — but you still felt the pressure of people wanting you to assimilate and be normal. Whether it was because being normal gave you more access to community or resources as a child, the pressure was there to not be too weird. To tone it down & fit somewhere recognizable. Or maybe you were the rebellious one. Who questioned authority, had her own thought process, was outspoken in a way that made the adults around her uncomfortable. And eventually that got weathered out of you — either you fell in line, or you were isolated and became an outlier to your own tribe. And that kind of exile

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com 5:44a start time So many of us begin our spiritual journey because we are subconsciously trying to mend a split inside ourselves. We spent so much of our lives before that moment feeling off, broken, misunderstood and not really having the language for why. This split was never our natural state. We were divinely designed for union, to access the full pow…

Thank you Otissia Lynette, Sierra Jeter, Jack, Tori Rerick, Sea, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is the final week of this experience for the Anti-Blocked Artist Club with The Artist’s Way framework, and I am proud of us for completing it. I hope Week 12 has been good to you, and honestly I hope every week has been good to you in whatever way you needed it. This week is recovering a sense of faith, and the essays we went through were Trusting, Mystery, The Imagination at Play, and Escape Velocity. I’m touching on each of them here, and you can go deeper with the replay video. I’ll drop the task images and check-in below so you can move through it at your own pace. Thank you to everyone who completed the 12 weeks, whether you were here live or circling back in your own timing. This is evergreen. Take what you need, when you need it. Trusting Faith had to get redefined for me. I struggled with it for years, especially in my 20s, because the version I was taught didn’t fit my life or my body. What finally made sense was realizing faith is confidence — confidence in who you believe in, whether that’s God, Source, the ancestors — and confidence in what they’re capable of in your life. When that clicked, movement got easier. Courage felt less like pressure. Following my bliss wasn’t naive, it was alignment. That’s what trusting looks like here: confidence that lets you move. Mystery This is the one that feels like dark feminine energy for real. So much of what we create is going to come from places that aren’t well-lit or logical, and that doesn’t mean danger — that means depth. Mystery asks you to stop demanding clarity before you begin. It asks you to stop treating the unknown like a threat. There’s adventure in the parts of yourself you haven’t met yet. There’s creativity in the dark. That’s where some of your best work is going to come from. The Imagination at Play Art can’t survive if you strip the fun out of it. If your inner child never gets a turn, everything starts feeling like work you didn’t sign up for. Play isn’t immaturity — it’s oxygen. It’s relief. It’s what keeps the process from suffocating you. When joy disappears, the struggle that follows isn’t growth, it’s self-inflicted burnout. Play brings your nervous system back online so you can actually create, not just perform effort. Escape Velocity At a certain point in your growth, you’re going to feel a moment where it looks like you’re being “tested.” I don’t fully agree with the language, but I do understand the pattern: there are points where life checks whether you’ve integrated what you learned. If not, the season runs again. Not as punishment — as repetition. If you have integrated it, things open. You move. Creativity gets louder. Access gets wider. It’s not about passing anything; it’s about readiness. 💡 Tasks for the Week & Check-In I’ll drop the images for the tasks and check-in below. This is evergreen. Do it in real time or come back later. Either way, if you’re applying this framework even a little: morning pages, artist dates, somatic practices, check-in questions. - you’re shifting the trajectory of your artistic life. I LOVE YOU! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Jack, Sea, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Thank you for showing up for yourselves, for the community, and for me. I’m still an artist while holding this container, and the direction we’re heading matters. This week was about recognizing what it takes to live as an artist in real time — not conceptually, not aesthetically, but in the day-to-day choices that protect your creativity, your body, and your relationship to your own life. We covered Acceptance, Success, Zen of Sports, and Building Your Artist’s Altar, and stayed close to the truth that being an artist means your life will look different. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the sign you’re actually living it. If you want the deeper breakdown and the parts I expanded on in the live (the nervous system, how capitalism distorts creativity, the oxygen mask theory, and how to apply all of this without burning out) — those conversations live in the After-Party Notes for paid subscribers. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Acceptance Acceptance is realizing you are an artist and that your life is not supposed to mirror the mainstream. Going against the grain is not proof that something is wrong — it’s often the indicator that you’re on the right path. This includes releasing the need to be perfect about how you show up and asking:Am I showing up for my art, or am I performing for other people? We named that boredom is not a failure. Boredom can be a positive sign for the brain — a reset, a clearing, space for ideas to stretch. But if irritation or numbness shows up, that’s usually a sign you’re not expressing your art in the ways you’re built to. That’s the moment to recalibrate, not self-abandon.We also talked about developing a healthy disassociation from capitalism if you want to be a successful artist. If success is the goal, you can’t build it by following a structure designed to drain you. Success Success in this chapter came down to the difference between rest and resting. * Rest is slowing down enough to feel nourished, out of sync with society, and in alignment with your divine source. * Resting, the way Julia uses it, is stagnancy — not sharpening the saw, staying still because you’re tired of trying. I don’t agree with the “be a shark, grind through it, force your way forward” framework. That isn’t necessary, and it’s not sustainable — especially for Black women. It is okay to be one-on-one. It is okay to create at a pace that honors your nervous system. You don’t have to constantly produce because capitalism demands it. We also talked about financial literacy being essential if you want to protect your creativity. Money clarity gives you space to enjoy the process instead of expecting your art to carry the entire weight of your livelihood. Success and fame are not the same thing — and knowing that difference keeps your art safe. The oxygen mask theory showed up here: you pour into yourself first, especially with your art, or you’ll have nothing real to give. Zen of Sports Zen of Sports is about mindful movement. Movement helps creative energy move through the body so it doesn’t get stuck in frustration, irritation, or blocks. Julia shares stories of people who regained creative flow through physical practice, and we expanded that to include somatic therapy, walking, stretching, dance — whatever gets energy moving again. This is about letting the body participate in the creative process, not just the mind. Building Your Artist’s Altar This section connects back to the CPR Method. It asks a simple question:How can my day look and feel like an artist’s day? Building an altar can mean a physical space, but it can also be a ritual, a rhythm, or a way of treating your life like something worth tending to. This is where whimsy, beauty, and creativity return to the forefront. The altar is the anchor point. The reminder. The recalibration. 💡 Main Exercise + Check-In I’ll add the images for this week’s task, the check-in question, and the activity below.They’re images so I can conserve energy and continue putting depth into the After-Party Notes without burning out. Take your time with Week 11.Autonomy isn’t something you rush through or try to get “right.” It shows up in the small choices: the moments when you stop performing, when you stop negotiating with your body, when you stop trying to match a pace that was never yours. This week is about recognizing that you’re an artist and building a life that matches that truth, even when it doesn’t look like what people expect from you. If you want to stay with what came up in this session the After-Party Notes are there. That’s where I slow down and talk through the parts that need space. And if something in you is shifting, you’re not imagining it. Keep going at a pace that lets you hear yourself. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll meet you in Week 12. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Jacquie Verbal, Rachael T, Jack, Sierra Jeter, Summa⭐️, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. LOVE YALL! Week 10 was about self-protection and what happens when creativity finally starts moving and the body, mind, and spirit are all online at the same time. Across Dangers of the Trail, Workaholism, Drought, Fame, and Competition, we stayed with how protection isn’t only about guarding against harm. It’s also about learning how to hear divinity, tolerate alignment, and remain present when pleasure, creativity, and momentum show up. If you’re wanting the deeper layers: the neuroscience, the metaphysical pov, and how dark feminine energy and beauty are woven through this—those conversations live in the After-Party Notes for paid subscribers. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Dangers of the Trail This conversation starts with something most people don’t expect: what happens when creativity finally starts flowing and you don’t know how to tolerate it. We looked at vices not as moral failures, but as the ways people interrupt alignment the moment divinity, pleasure, or creative momentum shows up. There’s a deeper question running underneath this one about discipline, devotion, and why being in flow can feel more dangerous than being stuck. Workaholism This conversation centers one of the most praised vices we have. Workaholism doesn’t look like a problem when it’s being rewarded, affirmed, and used as proof of worth. Especially under capitalism. Especially for creatives. We started pulling apart why this vice is so hard to name, how it disguises itself as discipline and ambition, and what it actually costs you creatively when output becomes the place you hide. The idea of sobriety around work comes up here in a way that challenges a lot of conditioning, and it opens a much bigger question about what you think safety and success are supposed to look like. Drought This part of the live stays with seasons where nothing is coming up, without rushing to fix them or frame them as failure. Droughts, plateaus, and pauses were treated as information, not emergencies. In the live, I shared a practice I personally use when I’m in a drought to help unlock the page without forcing output or letting everything spiral in my head. We also started reframing how people think about plateaus in creativity and career, especially the idea that stillness can actually generate momentum later. I go much deeper into reframing droughts as creative fasting in the After-Party Notes, including how these seasons can be used intentionally instead of feared. Fame Fame is a completely different desire than success, and a lot of people do not know the difference. That confusion is one of the biggest reasons people struggle to express their creativity, because what they are actually chasing is being seen, being chosen, being validated, and that comes with a level of perception and judgment most people are not prepared for. We talked about the pitfalls that come with fame, why it can make creating feel unsafe, and why it is so important to define success for yourself instead of letting visibility become the thing that decides your worth. This part of the replay is for anyone who wants to create and still feel happy, safe, and free while doing it. Competition We ended with a conversation that surprised a lot of people. Instead of treating competition as inherently good or bad, we explored how orientation matters—creator versus competitor—and what happens when attention shifts away from the work itself. Hearing different perspectives in the room changed how this landed, especially for people who have been taught that competition is the only way forward. 💡 Main Exercise + Tasks for the Week Below you’ll see images for this week’s tasks and exercises. I’m choosing to include these as images so I can conserve my energy and continue putting depth and care into the After-Party Notes without burning myself out. You’ll also see the Workaholism Quiz here. Take it and let me know what you notice. 🪞 Weekly Check-In Below you’ll see images with the check-in questions for the week. Take your time with Week 10. Self-protection isn’t something you rush through or perform correctly. It’s something you practice by staying with yourself when creativity starts to open, when pleasure is present, and when things feel possible again. If you want to keep going with me and sit a little longer with what we touched on here, the After-Party Notes are there for you. That’s where I let myself move slower and go deeper with the work. I’m really proud of you for continuing this journey with me. I loved this session more than I expected to, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes up as we move into Week 11, where we’ll be exploring Recovering a Sense of Autonomy. I hope to see you there. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Rachael T, Jack, Summa⭐️, Sea, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This week was about compassion and what it looks like to offer it to yourself as an artist. We moved through three essays: Fear, Enthusiasm, and Creative U-Turns & stayed with how compassion helps us remain in relationship with ourselves while navigating fear, creativity, and redirection. If you want to go deeper into this week—through more in-depth EFT work, or by exploring the beauty, metaphysics, and neuroscience underlying compassion and fear that material lives in the After-Party Notes, along with more intimate reflections from the live session. Those are available to paid subscribers. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Fear I don’t know if you know this but fear often gets mislabeled as laziness or procrastination, when it way deeper than that. Fear highlights how we try not to feel abandonment, success or failure. Instead of turning that fear into proof that something is wrong with us, the we explore learning how to name it and give ourselves more compassion while we move through it. Over time, that makes it possible to make a friend of fear instead of letting it quietly run the show. We also talked about how fear can form early, especially for children who are rebellious, curious, artistic, or inclined to ask questions. When those qualities are shut down instead of supported, that suppression can become a foundational source of fear later in life. Allowing children to ask questions helps them grow into adults who know when to question authority and when to trust their instincts. For a lot of artists, reclaiming that permission is part of the work. Enthusiasm This is one of my favorites in the book and a really meaningful part of the session. We talked about what enthusiasm actually means and what it looks like to create from enthusiasm rather than obligation. When you’re creating from that place, the creative journey feels alive instead of heavy. Enthusiasm allows creativity to feel nourishing rather than pressured, and we need that. Creative U-Turns This was more complex, especially when we looked at how creative U-turns actually show up for Black women. We talked about literary mothers like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others who were not afforded the luxury of retreating from life to recover creatively. Their U-turns often happened through endurance, responsibility, and community. For many of them, creativity became a place to rest, to explore, and to express what they were carrying while continuing forward. That context matters, and it changes how we understand what creative redirection can look like. 💡 Main Exercise: Clearing the Block This week’s main exercise is about getting real with your artist-child about what’s actually in the way, so the work has room to move again. Grab your journal and walk through these five questions without editing yourself. 1. List your resentments. Write down any resentment or anger you feel connected to this project. It can be petty, dramatic, old, or brand new. If your artist is irritated, jealous, tired, or holding a grudge about anything tied to this work, put it on the page. 2. List your fears. Ask your artist to name every fear it has about this project, the work itself, or anyone involved. Let the fears sound as young and extra as they actually feel. If it feels like a big, scary monster to your artist, it belongs here. 3. Ask if there’s more. Check in and ask yourself, “Is that everything?” See if there’s any anger, resistance, or fear you skipped over because it felt silly, small, or inconvenient. If something pops up, write it down too. 4. Name the payoff. Ask yourself what you stand to gain by not doing this work. Less pressure, less visibility, fewer expectations, more comfort—whatever comes up, let it be honest. This is where you spot the quiet bargains you’ve been making. 5. Make your deal. On a fresh page, write a simple agreement: “Okay, Creative Force, you take care of the quality, I’ll take care of the quantity.” Sign it. Date it. Put it somewhere you can see when you show up to work. This little sequence does serious damage to a creative block, because it pulls everything that’s been whispering in the dark into the light where you can actually move with it. Tasks for the Week 1. Morning Pages Read your Morning Pages. This process is best undertaken with two colored markers, one to highlight insights and another to highlight actions needed. Do not judge your pages or yourself. This is very important. Yes, they will be boring. No, I like that part. I think this is really insightful. You probably will find that there are a lot of creative ideas that you can start working on and building toward for your upcoming season of you displaying your art. And you’ll also notice a lot of your growth and a lot of your darkness. Take the time to sit with that. That’s super important. Also, take stock. Who have you consistently been complaining about? What have you procrastinated on? What, blessedly, have you allowed yourself to change or accept? Take heart. Many of us notice an alarming tendency toward black and white thinking. Don’t be thrown by this. And then acknowledge. The pages have allowed us to vent without self-destruction, to plan without interference, to complain without an audience, to dream without restriction, to know our own minds. Give yourself credit for undertaking them. Give them credit for the change and growth they have fostered. 2. Visualizing You have already done the work with naming your goal and identifying True North. The following exercise allows you to fully imagine having the goal accomplished. Please spend time filling it out in rich detail. Name your goal. In the present tense, describe yourself doing it in the height of your powers. This is your ideal scene. Read this out loud to yourself. Post this above your work area. Read this out loud daily. You can also use my Visualize Your Dream Life meditation, which is always available on my YouTube, to do the same exact thing. For those who may not want to write or are unable to write, that’s another great way to do this. 3. Priorities List your creative goals for the year. List your creative goals for the month. Then list your creative goals for the week. 4. Creative U-Turns All of us have taken creative U-turns. Name one of yours. Name three more. Name one that just kills you. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for all your failures — failures of nerves, timing, initiative, and device. Write a personal list of affirmations to help you do better in the future. Very gently consider whether you need to abandon or let go of any of the ideas you have. Remember that you’re not alone. For this, you can use the Creative Shock Code I broke down in the After-Party notes for Week Seven. That will help you see where you’re at with your ideas and which ones are on pause versus which ones you actually need to dive back into right now. 🪞 Weekly Check-In * How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages? Regarding your U-turns, have you allowed yourself a shift toward compassion, even if it was just one page?Did you do your Artist Date this week? Did you keep the emphasis on fun? What did you do? How did you feel? * Did you experience any synchronicity this week? What was it? * Were there any issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them. As we move into Week 10, we’ll be focusing in on Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection, and I really want you to take your time with everything we covered so far. Remember you never have to rush through this journey just to say you checked it off. Let it move at the pace your body and your creative life can actually hold. If anything came up for you this week, feel free to share in the comments or in the chat. This work deepens when we let it be seen, and you never know who else needs to hear that they’re not alone in it. And if these sessions have been supportive for you, you’re always welcome to invite others to join us live. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe

This week, our focus was really about grief and how it shows up in the creative life, especially when things do not unfold the way you imagined they would. How important it is to know that loss and disappointment can interrupt your relationship with your creativity, but they can also become moments of redirection when you understand how to stay connected to yourself while moving through them. We talked through what it actually looks like to pivot when something hurts, and how strength is rebuilt by staying present with pain instead of letting it shut you down or pull you away from yourself. Then there’s how criticism, loss, and unmet expectations can impact artists in very different ways, and why discernment and small, intentional steps matter when it comes to having sustainable creative momentum over time. What’s here makes sense on its own, but there’s another layer underneath it where beauty, neuroscience, and metaphysics start doing something more interesting. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 1. Survival This essay really brought up the importance of having a healthy ego as an artist, especially when it comes to discernment around feedback and criticism. Not everyone needs to have access to what you are making, and not all input is meant to be taken in or applied. Be picky, intentionally. It also brought up how devastating loss can feel in the life of an artist. When something doesn’t work out, it can feel really personal because your creativity is connected to who you are. Making space for that loss is crucial, because when you don’t acknowledge it, it festers and starts to affect how you show up creatively. The author talks about pain as fuel, but I feel it’s more than that - pain is directional. Pain shows you where something is off, where you might be malnourishing yourself, or where more care is needed. When you listen to that instead of rushing past it, it can help you move forward with more clarity instead of shutting down. 2. Ivy Power There is this assumption that you have to choose between being intellectual and being creative, and I don’t agree with that at all. I’m not anti-intellectual, but I am very clear about how much elitism lives in academic spaces, especially the idea that once something has been collectively agreed upon, that is the only way it can be understood. You see this all the time with intuition and spirituality being dismissed as irrational or unserious, even though most of what is considered “proven” now has been practiced intuitively and spiritually for hundreds of years. Science and spirituality are not opposites. A lot of the time, science is just spirituality that has finally been measured and accepted. I SAID WHAT I SAID. I see it as this: creativity lives in the body, and intellect lives in the mind. When those two are allowed to work together, you move through the world as a whole person. That integration makes it easier to trust yourself, share your work, and stop splitting yourself in two in order to belong. 3. Gain Disguised as a Loss This essay was truly about pivoting so you can focus on what you actually want instead of what you were handed/thought you were supposed to want. Grief shows up again by being able to open doors you didn’t know were available. Sometimes loss is what breaks you out of narrow thinking or conditioning you didn’t realize you were still operating under. Grief has a way of stripping things down so you can see what’s actually true for you. Instead of getting stuck in “why me,” the question shifts to “what’s next,” and that question doesn’t require a huge leap. It asks for small steps that help you deepen your skill set and move forward without overwhelming yourself. Pain, in this context, is information. It shows you where to redirect your energy and how to move in a way that’s more aligned. 4. Age and Time, Product and Process There is a lot of pressure placed on timing when it comes to creativity, we’ve all been indoctrinated to do the impossible in our youth in order to feel exceptional. Especially around the idea that you should already be somewhere else by now (how boring right?), and that pressure can quietly convince people to stop before they ever really begin. When we dig deeper we can see how living in a culture where everything is constantly documented, measured, and shared makes experimentation feel more vulnerable than it needs to be. Society has somehow decided that the act of trying, changing your mind, or being visibly in process is a risk instead of a natural part of being creative. Essentially there’s a cost to being cringe (this is such a good title!) Creativity does not operate on a straight or predictable timeline, and it is not something that ever truly reaches a final endpoint, because your art keeps evolving as you do. When the focus shifts away from outcomes and proof and back toward process, curiosity, and presence, the work becomes less about proving worth. You reroute your inner artist towards the path of staying connected to what wants to move through you. You do not need to produce something polished, impressive, or complete in order to justify your desire to create, because that desire was never conditional in the first place. 5. Filling the Form Filling the form is about learning how to take small, supportive steps without turning creativity into an all-or-nothing situation. Many of us as artist have a common pattern, of believing that everything has to change before creativity is allowed to exist, and that belief often shows up as pressure to quit a job, leave a relationship, move somewhere new, or completely overhaul life in order to finally begin. That kind of thinking can feel decisive and brave, but can slip and slide into postponing the work itself. When energy gets pulled into logistics, emotional intensity, survival mode, or managing chaos, creativity will go to the backburner instead of being a priority. What actually sustains creative momentum is learning how to work with what already exists and allowing creativity to live inside your current reality rather than waiting for ideal conditions to appear. This is where the magic in the mundane becomes practical. Small, repeatable actions taken consistently will be easier to build more momentum than dramatic antics that burn you out or distract you from why you wanted to create in the first place. There is also an important distinction to hold around safety. When we don’t feel safe in an environment, emotionally or otherwise, we will struggle to create. At the same time, the belief that everything has to be completely settled before creativity can happen often becomes another form of self-sabotage, since life is rarely quiet or resolved for long. We have to enjoy the dance of finding that middle ground. Let’s be real, you know artists carry a lot of intensity, and though society will try to tell us it’s a problem it’s truly not. The problem shows up when there is no healthy container for it. Without consistent creative outlets, that energy often spills into relationships, impulsive decisions, or patterns that undermine the very dreams someone is trying to build. Creative practice gives that intensity somewhere to go without creating unnecessary destruction. Creativity requires activity, and when that activity is grounded, repeatable, and informed by care rather than urgency, it becomes sustainable. Over time, that steadiness is what restores clarity, confidence, and satisfaction in the creative life. What’s here makes sense on its own, but there’s another layer underneath it where beauty, neuroscience, and metaphysics start doing something more interesting. 💡 Main Exercise The main exercise in the book for this week is called Early Patterning. I’m choosing not to include it here. That exercise can be very triggering, and in my opinion, anything that intentionally brings up early wounds should be done with immediate support, grounding tools, and the ability to process what comes up in real time. Dropping something like that into written notes without that container does not feel ethical to me as a practitioner. If you have the book and feel resourced enough to work with that exercise on your own, you are absolutely welcome to do so. For our purposes here, we’re taking a different approach. Instead, we’re working with affirmations, because they offer a way to integrate what this week brings up without overwhelming your nervous system. These affirmations help reinforce your right to create, your right to take up space as an artist, and your ability to stay in relationship with your creativity as you heal. My suggestion is to use these affirmations while tapping on your EFT sweet spot or through the tapping points you’re already familiar with. You can work with them slowly, choose a few that feel most relevant, or move through all of them as a way to gently integrate the themes from this week. Affirmations * I am a talented person. * I have a right to be an artist. * I am a good person and a good artist. * Creativity is a blessing I accept. * My creativity blesses others. * My creativity is appreciated. * I now treat myself and my creativity more gently. * I now treat myself and my creativity more generously. * I now share my creativity more openly. * I now accept hope. * I now act affirmatively. * I now accept creative recovery. * I now allow myself to heal. * I now accept Divine’s help unfolding in my life. * I now believe the Divine loves artists. Weekly Tasks 1. Goal Search This exercise may feel challenging. Let yourself do it anyway. If more than one dream surfaces, complete the exercise for each one. Imagining a dream in concrete detail helps move it out of abstraction and into reality. Think of this as a preliminary architect’s drawing for the life you want to build. Star

Thank you Rachael T, Jack, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Week 7 was really about reconnecting with yourself as an artist: mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively. The book gives us the topics, but everything we talked about today came from my interpretation and lived experience, especially as a Black woman who understands creativity through intuition, body awareness, and the way we navigate the world. This week we explored four core themes: Listening, Perfectionism, Risk, and Jealousy. Each one touches a different part of your creative process and highlights where connection gets blocked or reopened. The After-Party Notes go deeper into how to take aligned risks, how to work with jealousy without shaming yourself, and how to rebuild trust between your creative self and the guidance that’s trying to come through. The Dark Divines is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my art, consider becoming a paid subscriber. ✨ Key Themes 1. Listening For me, this section is about changing your perspective on who you are in your creative process and who you believe you’re partnering with — God, Source, your ancestors, your intuition, whatever language feels real to you. Listening requires two things: * Detoxing the mind (Morning Pages) * Feeding the body beauty and slowness (Artist Dates) You need both because the mind-body connection is what allows you to be fully expressed as an artist. When your mind is cluttered or your body is drained, it’s hard to hear the spiritual insights and nudges that are meant for you. One thing that really stood out to us:All art waits for you. Once you understand that the art is already complete spiritually and you’re just expressing it, the pressure drops. You don’t have to “earn” being an artist or force something magical to happen. Your job is to show up, stay open, and let your gifts translate what already exists.This shift alone brings a lot of relief. 2. Perfectionism We talked about how perfectionism gets framed as something “positive,” when in reality it holds your creativity hostage. Perfectionism doesn’t make you better.It just keeps you stuck. It directs your energy toward everything you think is wrong with you or your work, and it delays you from actually creating. It’s not excellence. It’s fear. And it keeps you from feeling satisfied, proud, or connected to your art. The goal is not to perfect the work — it’s to express it. 3. Risk Taking risks is necessary if you want to fully express yourself creatively. That doesn’t mean you jump off an emotional cliff. It means you stop waiting for things to feel completely safe, easy, or guaranteed before you make a move. In the live, I shared where I disagree with the book on this.For Black women and for anyone who is trauma-informed, risk has a different meaning. Safety is not optional.We can’t bypass that. To me, risk means stretching in a way that supports who you are, not traumatizes you. It’s trying something new without attaching shame or pressure to the outcome. It’s letting yourself expand even when the voice in your head wants you to shrink. 4. Jealousy This section was about reframing jealousy as information instead of something you should feel embarrassed about. Jealousy shows you where desire is being blocked or denied.It’s not about the other person.It’s about what you’re not giving yourself. When you feel jealous, the invitation is:“How can I give myself what I’m longing for?” That’s how jealousy becomes joy.That’s how you reconnect with your creative energy instead of suppressing it. 💡 Main Activity: The Jealousy Map A simple three-column exercise: * Name the person you feel jealous of. * Name why. Be specific. * Write one action you can take that moves you toward what you want. This works because it turns an emotional reaction into a practical next step. 🧭 Bonus Exercise: Archeology This exercise helps you uncover parts of your artist child that may have been overlooked or unsupported growing up. It’s a deeper self-awareness practice. Complete: * As a kid, I missed a chance to… * As a kid, I lacked… * As a kid, I could have used more… * As a kid, I dreamed of being… * As a kid, I wanted a… * In my house, we never had enough… * As a kid, I needed more… * I’m sorry that I will never again see… * For years, I’ve missed and wondered about… * I beat myself up about the loss of… Then take inventory of what’s positive and present in your life now: * I have a loyal friend in… * One thing I like about my town is… * I think I have nice… * Morning Pages have shown me I can… * I’m taking a greater interest in… * I believe I’m getting better at… * My artist has started to pay more attention to… * My self-care is… * I feel more… * Possibly my creativity is… Weekly Tasks * Make this your mantra:“Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.” * Give yourself 20 minutes to listen to one side of an album. Doodle if you want. * Visit a sacred space — whatever that means for you — and let yourself be quiet. * Make your home smell good (soup, incense, candles, branches, etc.) * Wear your favorite item of clothing for no reason at all. * Buy yourself one small, comforting thing (socks, gloves, etc.) * Make a collage or update your Lotus Life Deck vision board page.Include past, present, future, and anything you’re drawn to. * List your five favorite films. Notice any patterns. * Name your favorite topics to read about.See if these show up in your collage. * Give your collage or Life Deck a place of honor — visible or secret. 🪞 Weekly Check-In * How many days did you complete your Morning Pages?Did you allow yourself any creative risks or daydreams? * Did you take your Artist Date?What did you do?How did it feel? * Did you experience any synchronicities? * Any other breakthroughs, challenges, or shifts? If there’s one thing to take from this week, it’s the reminder that the art already exists. You’re not forcing anything or trying to manufacture ideas. As artists, our work is to stay open enough — mentally, emotionally, and energetically — to hear what’s already there and express it in the way only we can. So if something came up for you this week, pay attention to it. Sit with it. That’s part of your process. And remember: you’re not “behind” in anything. You’re learning how to reconnect with what’s been waiting for you the whole time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lotuslaloba.substack.com/subscribe