Close the gap between yourself and your spirit. Let your choices reflect the person you want to become, not just the person you think you are
-Maggie Smith
Hello everyone! I’m so glad you’re here.
Happy June! It’s a sunny day and I can hear the kids in the schoolyard having their field day across the street as I write this- peak almost summer energy. How are you?
How gorgeous are these flowers? I don’t know their name but my friend Tawny and I stopped to admire them for many minutes on Sunday afternoon while walking through Fort Tryon Park. I can’t believe nature just…does this…we said to each other, feeling slightly fermented by the warm afternoon air and three hours spent perched on the grass watercoloring and eating snacks.
I always feel connected to the spirit realm when I walk through this park, I said to her, noting all the thicc bumblebees getting bumps of nectar from flower pods, my long, meandering strolls with Robin of walks past. Everyone else in our neighborhood had a similar idea that day- the park was buzzing with kids’ birthday parties, couples reading side by side, and to our delight, other people watercoloring.
.
The emergence of June feels like a blank canvas for me. I’ve been a little waffley in my day to day, going through the motions instead of fully existing in them. This is one of my least favorite feelings, the sensation that life is passing me by while I merely watch from the sidelines. I know it’s a common experience nowadays, especially with the optimization of happiness narrative bubbling through our culture.
In a recent New York Times interview with cognitive scientist Dr. Laurie Santos, who studies happiness, this question was asked:
Do you worry that this idea of pursuing happiness, always striving, actually creates unhappiness? Definitely. There’s really lovely research on this from Iris Mauss at the University of California at Berkeley. She has a paper about the paradox of the pursuit of happiness, that the simple act of pursuing happiness often makes us feel unhappy. But that gets back to this fact that we just don’t get happiness right. When we think about the pursuit of happiness, we think of hedonic stuff. We think “good vibes only.” Whenever we’re off track with that, we think something’s gone wrong. And when things go wrong, we tend to have a different set of emotions — what nerdy psychologists like me call meta-emotions. Those are emotions about emotions.
I definitely relate to this. As a guide and space holder for a lot of people’s nervous systems, I often feel pressure to deliver some tiny thread of wisdom that will carry my students through their days or weeks. This only becomes burdensome when I feel I’m not showing up fully to my own life. My inner voice turns fraudulent: who am I to tell anyone anything when I am a mess inside?
This is a conversation I have often with my yoga teacher friends, and we always ultimately remind each other that our teaching is made better because of this not in spite of it. We are humans first, navigating the same lessons we attempt to relay in class, investigating our own lived experiences through trial and error and in a way, reporting back our findings through the teaching that unfolds.
Still, knowing something intellectually and actually embodying it practically is a fickle dance. If I had a nickel for how many times I’ve said to a friend honestly sometimes I think my students don’t realize I am just a goblin lying in bed watching dateline with chip crumbs on my chest, I’d be retired.
.
At the park on Sunday, Robin came up somehow. Probably because the hill we were sitting on is the one I used to perch at with her, and let’s be honest the odds of Robin being brought up in a conversation with me are very good. I can’t remember how we got there but I was describing all the meat I had in my fridge in the days after she died, gifts to her from friends and neighbors leading up to her last day. Ground turkey, thick-cut bacon, a half eaten container of rotisserie chicken. I remember opening my fridge and laughing at the irony of it- what am I going to do with all this meat?
That’s so funny, Tawny said. So it was just you and a fridge full of meat?
Yep. Just a fridge full of meat and my grief, I replied, laughing.
Oh my god, write that down, Emma! she said. That’s an essay! Or at least a journal prompt.
(Tawny is a capricorn AND a writing teacher so the amount of times she has had me write something down to refer back to later is basically humor at this point)
Anyway, I wrote it down in my notes app. And now I’m sitting here thinking about all that processed meat and my refrigerator of grief, and how I can no longer eat any of those foods without thinking of her.
I’m missing sweet Robs today I texted my friends over the weekend. I was riding the subway to work staring at a banner ad for Devin, a new AI technology designed to meet all your needs. I once dated a guy named Devin. At the time I did, actually, think he met all of my needs. I was 25 and he was a few years older, lived alone, worked in finance but possessed just enough free-spiritedness to keep me interested. He was mutual friends with people I knew from the yoga studio I worked front desk at at the time. One day he attended class with them and I was so taken by his face that I asked my friends for his info then later messaged him on facebook. (lol)
To my absolute DELIGHT, he replied. We spent the next few months in his studio apartment asking a gazillion questions about each other. We learned we both grew up upstate, had a therapist for a parent, enjoyed philosophical conversations, classic 90s rock, and hanging out naked together. Though he was a deep feeler, his emotional unavailability and elusiveness frustrated me enough to break it off more than once, only to return again and again, a pattern I frequented in my twenties.
Fast forward to 2019. Devin is no longer someone I think about or yearn for. But he’s become a men’s life coach and is now reaching out to people from his past to make amends. We sit by the water in my neighborhood and he apologizes for not being the man I needed him to be back then. I no longer feel anything toward the person sitting next to me, only a vague recollection of the time we once spent together. I clock how wild it is that the sight of him once stopped time and now he is just a guy coaching men how to be more in touch with their emotions. The irony is not lost on me. I still have a picture of his ass on my phone. For posterity, mostly. Like an old journal entry you don’t want to throw out. He is standing at his kitchen sink, nude, wearing yellow rubber gloves doing dishes. It’s a good ass, I think, even now, 12 years later. Im laughing as I write this, all of it sparked from a silly subway ad named Devin.
I often get embarrassed thinking of the stuff I wrote in my twenties, especially the bits I shared online that I thought were profound at the time. I feel similarly about the content I used to post on instagram, usually a sensual video of me dancing with some ominous words pasted beneath. Agh, bless her though. Writing about Devin just now felt a little bit like that, though I am eternally different on the inside. My mind likes the granular, can conjure forgotten details from a single memory.
I realize this is one of the ways I time travel. Similarly to reading my old journals or listening to a favorite song, my memories allow me to be in two places at once. I can exist both here and there, just like in dreams, if we are lucky. I can be with Robin again on the hill overlooking the water, her perfect short snout and frosty whiskers flitting in the setting sun. For a moment, she is alive again, as real as my perspiring skin as I sit outside writing this, the wiry fur of the dog sitting with its owner on the bench behind me.
.
My main intention for June is to be out in the world more. I deleted some scroll traps off my phone and am hoping to immerse myself deeper into my immediate surroundings. The balance of structure and spontaneity is my sweet spot, too little of either and I become frazzled or restless. I’m visiting my mom in Cape Cod this weekend, excited for clam chowder and salty air, the always nostalgia-inducing Amtrak ride.
Thank you for being here today and each Tuesday. I hope you come across magic at least once this week.
See you soon,
Emma
I’m teaching my first of the season park class this Thursday!! Weather looks beautiful. Free to save your spot HERE. I would love to see you :)
(These classes will be touch and go, but keep your eyes peeled. I hope to do at least a handful over the next months)
Tawny and I during our flower walk
if you look inside of these pods, they’re speckled with the most beautiful color formation. If that isn’t god what is!
my truest self, sitting on my living room floor in sweats
Lastly, something fun and witchy: this substack article I came across this morning is the most comprehensive analysis of one’s moon sign I have ever read. I felt completely seen and called out. We focus so much on our sun sign, but I highly recommend checking this out for your moon sign if you are at all interested- or skeptical of astrology! It’s illuminating and I immediately sent it to a bunch of friends. I’m a gemini moon, in case you were WONDERING.
Have a beautiful week, everyone!
Bali Retreat is live!!
Join Steph Schwartz and I November 12-19th, 2026, at the beautiful Balquisse Heritage Hotel in Jimbaran for a week of yoga, culture, and beauty. Find all details HERE, as well as linked on my website and instagram. The retreat is half full- we’d love to have you!
ps-a former student reached out saying the hotel where we’re staying is “one of my favorite places on earth”
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it is ONLY FAIR to focus on your sun sign when you are the ruler of the zodiac ♌️🦁♌️🦁♌️ -- just sayin' 🤭🤭🤭 ... i am an AQUARIUS moon, for anyone wondering ...
those first flowers are... poppies! my very fave.
loved the astrology article!