Heathrow, India

Enough spirituality

Dearest die-hards,

I love you. Thank you for being here.

As I continue following the pulse of the here and now – experimenting far beyond marketing plans and branding strategies – I wonder if I’m making a mistake. Losing opportunities. Failing some unseen potential.

And then I pause. I continue writing. Every Tuesday, a new thought piece funnelled through the very loud speaker of my soul. Nothing seems to change. Everything does.

Duty-free ceiling

I am coming at you from the departures lounge at London Heathrow, on my way to India. My first time in India. As a devout yogi, long-term spiritual seeker, and avid globe-trotter, you’d think I would’ve made the Indian rounds by now.

Nope.

This is go number one. And it’s coming at the best time, really. When my spiritual concepts are being forged – by being massacred – in the burning fire of midlife. As things are getting really real.

It seems the deeper I dug into the subconscious, the transcendental, the ascension, the multiple dimensions, the closer I got to the earth. And all her dirt. The more I realized just what being in a human body is all about, fancy spiritual concepts or not.

The more I tried to transcend and ascend my life, I found that being here is actually the point of it all. And being here – in a human body which undergoes all sorts of rigamarole like intense hormonal changes nobody told you a peep about, like raising teenagers in a country that feels more foreign to your DNA by the breath, like losing your identities because they just no longer fit – is exactly the point.

Substack success or not.

So here I go, off to India. To live at an ashram for 2 weeks. In my full weeping, smiling, seeping glory.

And just before I take off, I’m gonna share a draft of something I wrote in August. Something I wrote and then didn’t share. Too raw. Too immediate. Too real. Maybe I’d scare some of you away, admitting how shipwrecked I’d become. Maybe I’d alienate my surely-incoming fanbase, who surely loved me because of my sparkling eyeshadow and straight-talking salty spiritual tone.

Nah.

Here it is.

And if it heals me, it heals you. That’s what I’m here for.

Beyond the veils.
And off to India I go!

Taken by a “stranger” at Heathrow, willing to entertain my “will you take a picture of my open palms” weirdness

11 August 2025

I am confused, lost. I am right at home.

How have I lost my writing practice? Am I no longer a writer? How have I lost everything except for cleanliness, order, yoga, and showing up – ever so slightly – for my kids and Ted every day? For myself. How?

Well, this is the color of why. These are the contours of now. There is nothing more I can do than accept. See. Understand enough to just keep on breathing. To just keep on breathing.

I am confused. Actually, I am very confused and perhaps that has been the point all along. I sit in this room that was my office, my studio, my creative space, a rehearsal room. This room where I wrote a book and two albums. Where I earned tens of thousands of dollars writing marketing copy. Where I lived some of my very best days.

I sit here now and it is half-packed, half-quiet, awaiting Maude. This will be her bedroom. And I will wander into a new open space, half-designated for something. Wondering where I fit in and if it matters, at all. In this world that scares the living soul out of me at most times. This world that I see blurry, half-confused, tired, sad. And here – still here. I am here – still here.

I read a half-line in a book yesterday… “once most women have exited the purging fires of menopause…” and I reminded myself that I am still within “the purging fires of menopause…” I am still within the burning flames. Burning flesh apart. Watching the scaffolding and foundations crumble and disappear. Getting down to bone level and wondering if I will be this bare forever. If this was the point always. If someone can live this sick for the rest of a life, if sick is what I am. It’s how I explain myself to most people, even Ted.

I am sick of the ways of the world. I am sick to them. I cannot make sense of them. Cannot figure out where to place myself within them.

Maybe it really all is an illusion. Maybe no one is in the world at all. Maybe it’s best to not have so much time being idle and sick like me, with so much time on my hands. To be busy is to be productive is to be useful is to keep the world turning around. Is to keep things in order, food on the table, public transport running, hospitals functioning, movies being made and commercials being pumped out and songs being strummed on Spotify servers.

Imagine if everyone got sick like me and just pulled out. Catholic style.

Imagine the aftermath. Imagine the disaster. The chaos. The starvation? The death? Is it true. Is it true?

I think I need a structure to un-sick me. I think I need to wake up and know what I’m doing, at least for this day. That’s what the doctor says. There are names for all these things. Stripe or polka dot or lined or something. Slotting everything in. I know about it all already. I am hyper organized, always have been, wiping the dust off the shelf before it even manages to land. Washing glasses before the coffee is done. Writing to-do lists and taking a walk at the same time. Typing out questions for the interviewees on the podcast, all in perfect order. Arriving on time to everything, prepared. Until my sickness.

Until the great unraveling-

Maybe this is always how it was meant to be. Maybe in some way – from a certain sun-bleached angle – I am brave. Maybe the mapless path in the dense woods was always the one for me. Maybe walking it while simultaneously raising 2 kids in a normative society was always the plan. Maybe that’s my code to crack, and my sickness is my permission slip away from it all. My sabbatical to rewrite the rulebook I (we’ve) been so blindingly obeying.

Robert Plant howls in my head: “nobody’s fault but mine.” And I sing back in silence, for that is how music plays for me these days, “nobody worth blaming for anything.”

I am here. This is the great acceptance. I am beneath the overcast sky in the dark woods. I am more tired than I even knew possible. This tired far surpasses the tired I felt when I was a new mom to a new baby who could only rest pressed up against my chest. So tired was I then that Ted would order me black eyes (2 shots of espresso in a large black coffee) to get me to the noon hour. But this tired is deep. Immense. Longingless. Seemingly infinite.

“I would write the word light at the end of this tunnel if I could find the tunnel,” Andrea Gibson stated.

I’ve found the tunnel, Dre, but you’re on the other side already. I found the tunnel and have learned that it’s possible to move in a certain direction, even in the dark. There are other senses to lean on. Other senses to learn from. Other senses to trust. And that’s how I feel at home.

Now, though, I’m off to Istanbul with Ted. To celebrate our honeymoon? To take a few days together to decide if we’re supposed to stay together? To escape the “reality” of the burn for a few moments? To soak in some sun? To eat kebab and walk in sandals and declare August a summer month. And still, who knows. I wrote though. And that is something for the books. Oh yes, that is something for the books.

I love you, darling Sarah.
In sickness and in health.
Til death do us part.
And death? It does not part.
—-

17 February 2026

I hereby welcome in the year of the fire horse.

Serving from the wound.

Love,
Sarah ♥️