spirituality – Frozen Spaghetti

This is not a new year’s resolution

January 1, 2026by ErinLeave a Comment

Posting on Frozen Spaghetti on the 1st of the year comes with no proclamations of anything I am going to “try to do” or attempt in 2026. This post simply comes from my couch while Starships by Nicki Minaj is played by a marching band (via the Rose Bowl) and my husband breaks down the graveyard of Amazon boxes that have been at the foot of our steps since Christmas… you know… that holiday we celebrate the existence of divinity and everlasting peace with cardboard.

I just got home from the studio (slash yoga clubhouse) that I own here in Webster Groves, Missouri, United States. Smack dab in the middle of the continental US for my non US readers. Hi, by the way. Love that you’re here. I started the day off teaching a little bit of a butt kicker to a groovy little playlist and with gingerbread incense threaded throughout the hour. I knew all the students by name, even to where I got excited when I peeked at the roster last night: these are “my people” and I was genuinely excited to see each one of them in the new year.

Because I am all about gear shifting as little as possible, especially on holidays, I kept the studio open for an open house. We had my friend Anna up giving IV hydrations and IM shots. I got my usual IV hydration with glutathione, zinc, Vitamin C and B 12. The tri-immune glutathione, zinc and Vitamin C mix I absolutely swear by and highly recommend to all of you attempting to avoid or get over the flu.

It was about 4 or 5 of us that stayed throughout the day, working on individual creative projects, getting IVs or watching me and my friend Cindy work on “an intuitive painting”. We are turning the front room of the studio / yoga clubhouse into a dwelling space… meditation room… treatment room… quiet room and it needed art. I really truly love what we came up with but it seems a little “floaty”. The blankets I bought for the room do not go with the painting at all. And though I love a good clashing of things – I need this room to be less march to the beat of your own drum and more held by universal love and spirit. Though I could go into how those are the same, there is an aesthetic difference I am trying to reconcile in the space.

But, like all things, I know it is something I don’t actually have to think about to figure out. My mode of operation with this is to wait and listen, pay attention to the energetic quality of things, take it step by step, notice what is used, what is needed and when and what naturally comes about. This is the practice I started that I call “being consistently inconsistent”.

The afternoon ended with the painting getting cleaned up and a small group of us staying in the studio to work through the Fruits of the Spirit and their definitions and create a spectrum of our opposites as we head into the new year. It is a workshop practice I teach that I refer to as “Finding Your Positive Opposites”. I noticed this year that my opposites were getting more fine-tuned. It’s not that I feel disconnected, it’s that I feel misunderstood. I thank the work of Internal Family Systems therapy and a whole lot of yoga, philosophy, rest, stillness and listening to the things that come out of my mouth when I am feeling certain ways.

The dogs are barking asking to come in and I am ready for the next round of new year’s day… I hope that if you are reading this you have a word for 2026 in mind, better yet – maybe even a Fruit of the Spirit you are going to commune with in this first part of the year. Love? Joy? Peace? This year, I am starting with Gentleness although Self Control, Goodness, Kindness were all runners up. Faithfulness, always as a part of the practice and Patience is a must when dealing with…. these dogs barking.

On that note… Happy New Year!! Tell me your word or fruit! I would love love love love love LOVE to know!

Also – what do you think of the painting???

Words in Sentences

Thinking Back

October 15, 2025October 15, 2025by ErinLeave a Comment

I was thinking back on some blogging I did in 2021 related to training the brother and sister dogs we adopted. Seemingly in the constant pursuit of “what I write about” or “what I share about”, I wondered back then whether or not dog training was going to end up being “my thing”.

It’s comical now, 4 years later, with dogs who absolutely go ape shit at the fence for a german shepherd (they looooove a german shepherd). The only thing that makes any of that noise easier to swallow is the fact the sister dog jumps and barks while the brother dog stands with paws on the fence. It is as comical as it is absolutely irritating to the bone.

I have been near obsessively working on my program that has, at this point, been received by over five hundred people over the course of its existence and acknowledged by many as having “changed their life”. Holy shit – I realize – my approach to dealing with my own human emotions in order to give my life some purpose and not think everything is in vain has supported other people’s ability to do the same?

“I should really do something with this”, I think, “…then I could hire a dog trainer.” lol

And the truth is – I am thinking about it. I am doing it. I am recording and I am writing and I am creating every single week – something new – something old repurposed. How does it all come together? How do I start? Oh I am already started. What do I do.

I have so much faith in all of this, honestly. But the belief in right timing is only as good as the dedication to practice and use of right energy.

To do the things you love to do. To be the places you love to be. To allow the way you love to feel. It’s nooooooot always easy when you are covered in news and buried in headlines. It’s not always the first thing you think of “I love today!I love my life” when there are so many people dying and drowning in fear. BUT. HOW will it get better if the artists don’t art?!?

How will culture evolve in the creators don’t create?!

How will justice reign if the makers don’t make and the builders don’t build and the – what else – shakers don’t shake?

lol Taylor Swift nod.

Sigh. So – here I am, with my new Buddha (that honestly looks like me and my siblings likeness), my cat and my geraniums here in the middle of October ready for everything that is next. Are you ready for what is next?

Tell me honestly. Please – are you excited about your life? Do you feel purpose in today? Why or why not. Lay it on me.

Give me something to think about. ✌🏽erin

woman cat and buddha and geraniums set out to change the world on a wednesday october morning

Words in Sentences

Things are Sacred “Before They Are Beautiful”

August 22, 2025August 22, 2025by ErinLeave a Comment

I spent the last week in Green Cay, U.S. Virgin Islands in creative process, in conversation and – ultimately – in exploration of the deeper colors of life. What does it mean to be surrounded by beauty? What does it mean to be resourced by the earth?

Blessed be the Creator God – who made the heavens and the earth. 2 Chronicles 2:12

Part of this exploration was related to how, on an island, you celebrate the rain for filling up the cisterns, you wait for the sun to power up the panels before you do your laundry. This coordination with nature is and of itself a deeply desired internal rhythm I know I have, but I truly think we all have in our innate humanity.

What child doesn’t want to love and feel love from its mother?

Being in community with women who not only lived this way, but discussed which fish were eating which fish, increasing the big fishes’ mercury and who marveled over who had what trees growing on their property was nourishing and replenishing. Like rain to the cistern of my heart :)

Waking up this morning in the midwest with the type of tan I have found you really only get in St. Croix, I walked my garden similar to how I walked Samadhi by the Sea, the garden of my beautiful host for the week, Riya – a chakra oriented artist whose sculpture garden served as the key dwelling place for me and my creative spirit.

My garden – with it’s patchy weirdness, spiraling thin weeds and a serious need of mulch looked much different than Samadhi by the Sea. Thoughtfully still, I took my prayer beads and charged them by one of my favorite 2025 plantings: a baby rosemary shrub I am going to experiment with sheltering over the winter. I walked my garden slowly, kneeling down, looking carefully – naming what I believe are its main centers.

I moved the lemon eucalyptus and the pineapple sage together (near the “The Stump of Contemplation”) so they could be friends as they will both fruit Christmas gifts for my friends when I harvest their leaves, dry them out and bundle them for smudging gifts later on. I texted a dear family friend and studio member, Kim Joern – a master gardener and herbalist – for insight on my lavender. I danced in my garden when a neighbor stopped on her drive by. I pulled a few more weeds, said a few more prayers, noted a few more tasks and came inside.

One of the takeaways from my trip is a new installation in my vocabulary of the word “sacred” before key nouns in my sentences. Like the gold paperclips I picked up on my first day on island were dubbed sacred paperclips and kept all week in a dish, I started seeing the weird, the unorganized, the unmulched, the unattended parts of my Garden of Knowing as sacred.

My list of next round needs? A sacred rain barrel, small sacred fencing for the hostas… Among other things, of course, like sacred stones.

There is this stoic thought about how you cannot tell an emerald it is beautiful and it all the sudden becomes beautiful. Likewise you cannot tell it is is ugly and it becomes ugly. Rather, the nature of the emerald is that of an emerald, its nature is derived from itself.

As I spent time in my newly appointed sacred garden, in its overgrown honeysuckle and hidden irises, I reflected on how nature simply becomes. It unfolds without rush or definition. More rain does one thing, less rain does another. Early falls do things like late springs, hot summers and cold winters are an active part of the unfolding.

I promised my garden I would write in it. And I saw the process of the gardening serve up a lesson as I walked up the steps again (similar to a 12 hour writing day a few days ago, when I ascended and descended the steps of Samadhi by the Sea over and over and over and over).

“Discipline means walking up the steps again.”

It is my recent finding that the faithfulness to the process seems to be more important than the dedication to the outcome itself.

To allow my garden its sacred nature brought the same wave of gratitude and inspiration, nourishment and knowing as the waves crashing ear’s distance away from the vibrant intentionality of Samadhi by the Sea.