Monday’s newsletter/post was about the idea of being unable to speak your truth. There’s a moment in my book where I describe sitting on the floor in a circle with my closest friends and picking up a talking piece from the little altar in the center, similar to the one you see above. This marked my turn to speak. I was so shaky, and — as it tends to go for me — I was also voiceless from laryngitis, about to whisper something I’d never said out loud. It was one of the most vulnerable moments of my life, and the stakes felt damn high. I spoke anyway, in whispers through sobs, because staying silent felt much more dangerous than the truth.

What I said that afternoon was highly inconvenient for the life I had built, for the people in it, and for the version of me everyone had agreed to know.

I didn’t walk out of that room with immediate peace, but I felt something new: a freedom that only comes from letting an inconvenient truth actually leave your body.

That’s what this weekend’s prompts are about. You ready?

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I’m sitting here at by desk with the view above and “Pink Pony Club” in my head. These flowers hadn’t bloomed as of the time I last posted on Monday morning on spring and rage. We come through the anger to find joy and beauty and solidarity. 🌸😡🌺 How did Monday’s piece land in you?

We do get our flowers… and they come because something refused to be quiet. I look to the arts to see how we’re blooming in these times. It helps us not to feel so alone when we can see our values reflected around us. This week, I want to share a few things I’m noticing in the arts… and then I’ll ask you to look for your own inspiration and mirroring this weekend.

Here are just a few examples of a culture that has decided not to ignore shit. For that, I am grateful:

🎵 music:

• At the Grammys in February, artists used the thirty seconds they get for acceptances speeches to say things that cost them something. Billie Eilish accepted her Grammy by saying "no one is illegal on stolen land.” Bad Bunny had the first Spanish album to win Album of the Year — a middle finger to anti-DEI politics. Queer, Latino, black, and young artists dominated the Grammys. (Obvs, Tr*mp 🤡 responded by calling the Grammys “virtually unwatchable” and threatening to sue Trevor Noah over an Epstein joke.)

• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance was pure freaking joy as resistance!

• Bruce Springsteen released "Streets of Minneapolis,” dedicated to ICE protest victims.

• Brandi Carlile gathered nearly 15,000 people in Minneapolis and led them in song, raising $600,000+ for the families who desperately need it.

🎥 movies:

• The Oscars this year reflected the activist landscape in that both of the biggest films this year carried political weight: One Battle After Another (six Oscars) centers a rebel group fighting an authoritarian government that detains immigrants. Sinners (four Oscars) explores racial violence in Jim Crow-era America.

• While I was super duper sad that Come See Me In The Good Light didn’t win Best Documentary, the film that got the Oscar, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, is about how, as the director described it that night, “you lose your country through countless small acts of complicity.” That speech needed to be heard.

👖 fashion:

• ICE OUT pins were all over red carpets at the events I mentioned above.

• Connor Ives created a "Protect the Dolls" tshirt in solidarity with trans women, with proceeds going to LGBTQ+ Lifeline. (I have and love this shirt!)

• Vintage shopping/thrifting is a huge movement in the subversion of capitalism.

• Androgynous and gender neutral clothing is everywhere, thankfully. Clothes have no gender.

• People are customizing their clothes to show authorship, self-sovereignty, and the idea that we belong to ourselves.

Ahhh, there’s SO much more — thank goodness! I didn’t even get into television (late night TV, SNL, South Park…), street art + murals, visual arts, photography, books, poetry, theater, dance, podcasting, comedy, hair + beauty, etc… but it’s time:

🪞Here’s your weekend prompt:

I’ve got four questions for you to noodle on, journal on, and get creative with:

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In the spirit of what I posted on Monday, this weekend’s prompt isn’t for your journal. It’s for a robot. Hear me out…

I trained my AI application/chatbot by telling it not to kiss my ass, to give me pushback, to behave in particular ways I mentioned here on Monday. I have a paid Claude account, so the long term memory is on, and it can remember things about me from one chat thread to the next.

The prompt for this weekend allows you to experiment with training your robot 🤖 — or dragon, (which is just a reference to the 2010 movie, How to Train Your Dragon, which I never even saw but AI feels like a dragon of sorts.) You can do this prompt in any AI assistant/chatbot of your choice — whether you have a free or paid account, whether you’re using ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, or another chatbot, and whether it’s your first conversation or if you already have dabbled in using this particular chatbot.

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This Friday, I’m offering a super-fun, one-hour, writing workshop that’s included in your paid prism subscription.

(If you’re seeing this on the Substack website and you’re not a paying subscriber, click here to register for this event.)

👉 Because you’re already a paying subscriber, there’s no need to sign up anywhere!

Simply mark your calendar:

This Friday

March 6, 2026

10 - 11am Pacific | 1 - 2pm Eastern

Click here to convert to your time zone

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📝 Mark your calendars

Next Friday, March 6, I’m offering an inspiring, one-hour writing workshop. Come write along with me and learn a writing practice that will spark your creative voice!

There are three ways to attend:

🟢 If you’re a paying subscriber already, (thank you!) this event and all quarterly events are INCLUDED in your paid annual subscription. No need to register — simply look out for the Zoom link in your inbox the morning of the event. If you can’t come live, you’ll receive the recording afterwards.

🟡 If you’re not yet a paying subscriber to prism and you want to attend this event and get all the other perks and event access throughout the year, click below to subscribe to this Substack for $50:

Subscribe now

🔴 If you’re not a paying subscriber to prism and you don’t want to be… but you just want to come only to this one event, click the button below to register for $33:

register here for the 3/6 event

Now, onto this weekend’s creative prompt. All you need is:

• a piece of paper

• a pencil or pen

• a willingness to slow down for just five minutes to try this

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⚡️ LAST CALL! ⚡️

Only a couple spots remain in the next circle of the Midlife Emergence Group. We begin our 10 weeks of virtual, weekly circles on Tuesday evening, February 24. Applications close this Sunday night, February 15. If you’ve been considering this powerful experience, now is the time! An amazing cohort of people have registered for this round. Get the details and apply here TODAY:

join us

In this Monday’s post, I wrote about how particularly difficult the week prior had been for me, on a personal level and for us all on a global scale. We’re all swirling with our own microcosms and macrocosms of responsibilities and feelings, and sometimes it feels like A LOT.

I want to share an -inspired practice with you that has been helping me through…

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Oh, my dear fellow humans, what a week! Thank you all so much for the heartfelt, supportive feedback to Monday’s post. AND for those of you who have applied for the midlife group that’s forming for next month — I’m so excited!

This was my third week of delving back into morning pages (my first pass was in 2000!) a la The Artist’s Way. In the first chapter of the book, there’s a prompt that I’ve been noodling on because it’s a theme that haunts me. The movie Sliding Doors flirts with this idea, and I also wrote quite a bit about it in my book.

I want to share with you all the prompt so you can explore what it brings up for you over the weekend ahead:

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I have a couple things to share with you today before we get to your weekend prompt.

1. A correction! I wrote to you on Monday about truth. About lightning. About the beloved . I need to correct a rogue “apostrophe d” that was flying around that post. It’s since been edited online, but of course I can’t edit the version that landed in your inbox (for those of you who only read this via email newsletter). Gibson’s book and the line in the poem is You Better Be Lightning. (Not You’d better…) My apologies for somehow messing up something I hold so sacred.

2. A poll! As I’m planning prism’s quarterly live events for 2026, I’d LOVE to hear from YOU:

…and please comment below or email me with specific requests or ideas (or guests!) you might have — I’m all ears! 🐰🐹🐱

❤️ Remember: Paying subscribers attend these events as part of the annual subscription. If you’re still an unpaid subscriber, you’re welcome to attend at a ticket fee, so a paid subscription is SOOO worth it to support independent writing AND to receive juicy weekend prompts and monthly curations AND to get to come to cool, fun events:

Subscribe now

⚡️ Okay, now for this weekend’s powerful prism prompts:

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Welcome to 2026! A new year… and/or simply a new day to be grateful for. This week, I’ve shared some ways of tapping into our true desires and ideas for new year’s rituals I’ve participated in. There’s a lot of pressure on my social feeds every year for this to be a time of renewal and promise. Yes, it’s an arbitrary calendar turn opportunity for that, AND this is your friendly reminder that every single day has a new sunrise and a chance to be new again. Every breath brings a fresh moment.

So, here’s your permission slip, should you be unconsciously awaiting one: Ease into this new year at your own pace. If you’re like me, you’ve been rotating your favorite sweatpants and hoodies, eating random meals of leftovers, cupping warm mugs all day long, and resisting the task of taking down the twinkling holiday lights. You’re unsure what day of the week it is or when you last washed your hair. Oh crap, how did I miss doing Wordle yesterday? How long before fudge goes bad? Where’s the FedEx package drop for returns? When is my friend coming back from her holiday travels? Is my college kid waking up at 3pm because they went to bed at 5am?

Is this really the state of mind we want to be in while planning and prepping for the year ahead? Should you also be finding yourself in that holiday break stupor, here’s your weekend prompt:

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On Monday, I wrote to you about what I’ve noticed occurring this month when I’ve followed the season’s invitation to rest. writes that ideas are always circling us, waiting for a moment when we’re open enough to receive them. This weekend, I invite you to seriously test this theory — see what happens when you deliberately create space for inspiration to find you. This is your prompt:

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On Monday, I shared with you 50 of my favorite things, in celebration of my upcoming 50th birthday. It brought me such joy to make that list, and I am hoping it inspires you to do the same. So here’s your weekend prism prompt…

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As a gift to you, as a paying subscriber to prism, I’m inviting you into my studio with me next Wednesday, November 19th. We’re going to have a live virtual gathering to make art together for an hour.

Here’s a wonderful clip from Tuesday’s episode of We Can Do Hard Things that encapsulates the spirit with which I am offering a community gathering for art’s sake. Please watch this clip, which is just a little over a minute but powerful, starting at 1:21:33 (which is where the video will start if you click the link below) and through to 1:22:55.

And I reeeally hope you’ll join us on Wednesday…

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Happy Halloween! 🎃 If you didn’t already know that I’m not great at being spontaneous, as of Monday’s post, you know. (AND, I still took an impromptu vacay to Seattle with very little notice!)

This weekend’s prism prompt is one that an intuitive suggested to my girlfriend, Diana, and me a few years back to enliven a sense of playfulness and improvisation. (Diana isn’t the most spontaneous person either. We like our calendars.) Anyway, it’s called “whimsy day,” and I highly recommend working this into your weekend (or another random day)! Below, I’ll describe what I mean.

📣 Be sure to read to the end of this post, as I’m announcing a live event in November that’s free for paying prism subscribers!

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On Monday, I shared with you a piece from my journal that stemmed from a prompt in Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy. (I highly recommend this book as a 100 day practice!) In case my journaling inspired you, I’d like to invite you into your own today…

In the spirit of the prompt that inspired my writing, here’s a little fun for your weekend:

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In honor of autumn being underway and our entrance into October, I’d love to invite you into some journaling that honors the cyclical wisdom of the season, while creating space for personal reflection and intentions as we move into these cooler, darker months ahead.

Pour yourself a cup of your favorite warm beverage and open a journal you love (or a blank document on your computer, if you prefer to type). Ask yourself:

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I’ve had Tear in Your Hand in my head ever since writing the post I shared with you on Monday — “Maybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen…”

It felt vulnerable to share that post with you all, I think because it’s hard to notice that after all my excavation and unmasking and personal growth work, there is pain in having parts of myself that are yet unexpressed. Perhaps that’s an ever-evolving feeling of human life! But for someone like me (an enneagram type 4), I ache to feel fully expressed. After years of striving for something I cannot control — to be seen, heard, and met by others — I’ve learned that the onus is on me to express myself how and how much I desire.

At the end of Monday’s post, I wrote:

The fascination I have with musicians is perhaps where I gather inspiration for how to bring forth parts of myself that are still cloaked — the parts that burn beneath my pink skin but haven’t yet had the courage to find their spotlight. For me, it’s whatever the rockstar archetype represents. You might have a different archetype on the vision board in your mind. Which is the one you feel most sheepish about sharing? The archetype that makes you blush is likely the one to turn toward and to get curious about embodying.

I’d love to invite you to spend some time this weekend going inward and finding those pieces of you they’ve never seen. I promise you: they hold the key to how you shine. Maybe they’re qualities, attributes, and/or values you envy in others’ ways of being in the world and you wonder if you ever could show those parts of you. And to whom. And where. And how. This weekend, carve out a moment for yourself, and let’s go on a super-juicy, totally doable, and creative 5-step journey together to unveil the hidden (for now) archetype that burns inside you! 🔥

❤️‍🔥 Before we dive in, I want to remind you that only a few spots remain in this autumn’s Midlife Emergence Group, where we will get up to this very thing — unfurling your true nature for a more authentic and beautiful second act of life.

Learn more + Apply today

a weekend plan:

My suggestion for this exercise is to find maybe an hour each day, over two days. You could use Saturday as your Exploration Day. Play with steps 1 through 3. Let yourself feel whatever comes up without needing to fix or change anything. Let Sunday be your Integration Day. Move through steps 4 and 5. Sit with the knowing that you contain multitudes that are all worthy of expression.

1) 🪞recognition: who makes you lean in?

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Whew, friends! I’m on the other side of the dropping-kid-off-at-college threshold now, and, as I wrote to you about on Monday, I’m remaining so curious about how this phase of parenting will impact my anxiety.

In that spirit, I am revisiting Martha Beck’s most recent book, Beyond Anxiety. I thought I’d share a practice with you this weekend that’s inspired by her book (pages 42-49), as it can help us to sooth ourselves and calm our nervous systems in times of stress or anxiety so we can return to clarity and connection.

To start, Martha Beck encourages us to find a place of tightness or anxiety in our body. She says to picture it as a young animal or a creature of some sort. She says you can even name it and draw it. (You can see my anxiety creature doodle in the photo above.) It’s our job to keep this creature safe, because essentially, it is scared. You can’t force the creature to relax (because never in the history of “calm down!” has anyone ever calmed down). So this is a gentle process that Martha calls “anxiety whispering”…

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I’m still chewing on the post I shared with you on Monday titled you still haven't met all of the people who are going to love you. (Ooo, every time I read that sentence, it gives me a sense of freshness and hope.) In that spirit, I drummed up two juicy ideas for you to experiment with this weekend that may foster authentic connections in your world, no matter your stage of life.

One of these is a writing prompt and one is an action prompt. Take your pick or engage with both… I’m going to do these with you this weekend:

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Yes, you heard from me this morning, too, because it’s the first of the month when I put out my monthly edit — but this note is different. It’s your quick and lovely weekend creative prompt. Enjoy!

I’ve been writing every morning these past couple weeks, ever since the passing of . One of my favorite kinds of creative writing involves using a provocative line from another writer as a prompt to start out my own piece of writing.

In honor of Andrea, who I wrote to you about on Monday, I thought we could all devote just ten minutes this weekend to this creative writing activity. (No really — if you have time to play Wordle this weekend, you have time to create.)

Before we get into it, I need to share with you the song I’m listening (and crying) to now, as I am writing this. It’s a love song that wrote the lyrics to for their friend, Chris Pureka, to perform. It’s a love letter to Andrea’s wife, , that Megan only got to hear after Andrea lost their ability to speak when they were actively dying. Megan writes the story of it right here.

As Andrea Gibson says, “We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.” … So let’s do this:

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Okay, so I guess the reverberations of our actions and creations don’t always take terribly long. I’ve already heard back from several of you already about my post on Monday all about the ripples we create in the world as we move through it. We impact each other more than we’ll ever really know, but we can begin become aware of it now.

One example of this that became so very clear this week was how my entire social media feed was abuzz with gorgeous tributes to the brilliant poet and tender human, , after their passing on Monday. The way my feed lit up in shared grief and gratitude was evidence of the seismic waves their words and their beingness reverberated through the universe.

I devoted chapter 12 in my book to this idea that when we reveal the fullness of who we are, it gives others courage to do the same. When we share an idea, a story, a piece of art, a compliment, a smile, we influence the energy of those in our spheres near and far. I’d love to invite you into a visual exercise this weekend (one that I share in my book) so you can begin to see what an influencer you are, simply by BEING in the world.

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