After a long hiatus, I’m back. Take back your power isn’t just a blog post, it’s personal.
For years, I wrote consistently online.
Long before Instagram, long before algorithms turned creativity into performance, I had a personal blog under my own name where I wrote about life, spirituality, grief, beauty, relationships, creativity, intuition, and all the invisible things that move beneath the surface of our lives.
I started it in 2008, and over time it quietly grew into a large and deeply engaged community.
Then, after a disastrous migration to WordPress, I lost six years of content.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Thousands upon thousands of words disappeared. Essays, memories, reflections, pieces of myself that can never fully be recreated.
I don’t think I ever completely recovered from that loss creatively.
I continued blogging afterward, but something had shifted. The momentum was gone. The trust was fractured. Over time I posted less and less until eventually the blog became almost dormant.
Meanwhile, I poured energy elsewhere including my pet-centric site Cat Wisdom 101 and like many of you
Into survival.
Into healing.
Into relationships.
Into other people’s needs.
Into trying to rebuild myself after periods of deep fragmentation.
Recently, though, I checked the site analytics and SEO data out of curiosity, fully expecting to discover a digital graveyard.
Instead, I found something surprising.
The site was still alive.
Still ranking.
Still being found.
Still holding energy.
And honestly, that realization hit me on a symbolic level too.
Because so many of us think we are “dead” creatively or spiritually simply because we disappeared for a while. But beneath the surface, something remains alive, waiting for us to return to it.
Lately I’ve been posting a visual series on Instagram called Portals & Thresholds, which has become a kind of living experiment for the larger creative work I’m developing, including future oracle deck projects and other writing.
And as I thought about what I wanted this first post back to be about, one theme kept rising to the surface:
Calling your power back.
Not in the trendy spiritual sense.
Not as a performance.
Not as spiritual theater.
But as a real recognition that our energy is constantly being dispersed, fragmented, siphoned, conditioned, and unconsciously given away.
Sometimes through trauma.
Sometimes through grief.
Sometimes through people pleasing.
Sometimes through unhealthy relationships.
Sometimes through subtle criticism, passive aggression, manipulation, emotional labor, hypervigilance, or simply spending too much time around people who leave us feeling depleted and disconnected from ourselves.
The body often knows before the mind does.
You come home exhausted.
Foggy.
Anxious.
Heavy.
Small.
Drained.
Unable to hear yourself clearly.
And eventually you realize:
part of your energy never fully left the room with you.
I think true power retrieval is both spiritual and practical.
It is energetic, yes.
But it is also behavioral.
Somatic.
Emotional.
It is learning to notice where you abandon yourself.
Where you shrink.
Where you overextend.
Where you monitor everyone else’s emotions while disconnecting from your own body.
Where your spirit learned that survival required self-erasure.
And then consciously, intentionally, calling yourself back into wholeness.
So this is the invocation I’ve been sitting with lately.
Not as a rigid prayer, but as a remembrance.
A reclamation.
A retrieval.
I call back all energy I have given away
through fear,
performance,
attachment,
survival,
or self-abandonment.I release all cords,
hooks,
expectations,
and entanglements
that drain my life force.I return fully to myself.
Grounded.
Clear.
Sovereign.
Whole.
Maybe that is what thresholds really are.
The place where we decide whether we will continue abandoning ourselves in order to survive… or finally step fully into our own lives again.
So, I’m taking back my power by writing, posting and sharing here again, hopefully more consistently. See you soon!
With love, Layla
