If you’re just joining us, this is the third email in our CAPACITY series, six ingredients for building the capacity to jump off the cliff into the life your soul is actually asking for. You can catch up on the first two here.
So far we’ve covered where you source your energy and how you shift your perspective.
Today’s ingredient is the one that took me the longest to actually live.
Earlier this year, things felt sticky inside our company. Not catastrophic, just that friction where the flow you’re used to isn’t quite there, projects move slower than you want, something feels off and you can’t fully name it.
And here’s what I did with that stickiness. I made it mean something about me.
The stories of inadequacy spread like rapid fire through my entire psyche, the way these stories do. If things aren’t flowing, I’m not good enough. If I’m not good enough, then maybe this whole mission to normalize the sacred feminine on the planet won’t work out the way I’ve dreamed. And if it doesn’t work out, then I have failed. Not my company failed. I failed. Me, personally, as a soul.
Watch what that does.
The moment “a normal business wobble” and “I am a failure” become the same event, your whole system goes into protection mode. Your body reads it as a genuine threat, because to your identity, it is one. And creativity cannot move through a body that’s bracing for a threat. Creative flow needs safety and openness. When your sense of self is on the line every time the work hits friction, there is no safety, and so there’s no flow.
So while Kelly (who does not over identify with the rise and fall of work) was focused on solving problems, my capacity shrank down to almost nothing, precisely when I needed it most.
As I started pulling this apart, I found the belief underneath it: I thought I was holding this work.
That I, in my own body, had to hold all the women, all the creativity, all the weight of the mission. I was so fused with the work that I couldn’t tell where it ended and I began.
And that’s the thing that isn’t true. I am not a holder. I am a channel.
The work that moves through me is not about me, and it is not even really mine. It’s the divine’s. I’m here to translate it, to let it move through my body and my instrument and out into the world. My past, my skill set, my understanding, those aren’t the source. They’re the filter the work passes through on its way out.
This is the third ingredient of capacity: you are a channel, not a holder.
And it comes with a piece that changed everything for me. If I am the channel, then I, Sarah, get to exist separately from the work. I get to be Sarah regardless of what’s coming through, regardless of what the goddess wills, regardless of whether any particular thing succeeds or fails. The work can wobble without me going down with the ship, because I am not the ship. I’m the person who gets to be a vessel for it, and then gets to go make dinner and be a whole human being.
That single shift, from I am holding this, to this is moving through me, is the difference between panic and flow. When it’s coming from you, there’s this grippy, pushy, white-knuckled quality, you can feel it in your body. When it’s coming through you, it feels like a current. Your only job is to stay open enough to let it move.
Which is really what it looks like in practice: your job is to tune your instrument.
Stay open, stay connected to the source, clear what’s in the way. Not to squeeze the work out of yourself by force, but to keep the channel clean enough that it can come through.
Here’s the joyful version of this same truth. Kelly and I have been writing this book, and every so often one of us will pick our head up, take a dance break, catch our reflection in the mirror, and just go, wait, are we really doing this? Because what we’re writing is essentially a map of the history of humanity and how it shaped the psychology of women alive today. It’s an enormous body of work. And neither of us has a PhD in history. And here we are, writing this book.
But who are we to decide whether we’re good enough to write it? That was never the right question. The book is just coming through. The divine asked if we were available for the job, we said yes, and now we’re doing the best we can with what moves through us. That’s the whole assignment.
Kelly has a line I love:
All of the normal girls are the great spiritual teachers.
All of the great spiritual teachers are just the normal girls.
That’s what being a channel actually means. Not being special enough to hold it. Just being available enough to let it through.
So today’s question:
Where are you holding something so tightly that you’ve fused with it?
What would change if the work were moving through you instead of being squeezed out of you, and if you got to be you, whole and fine, no matter how it turns out?
More tomorrow.
Love,
Sarah
❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Learning to be a channel instead of a holder is one of those things that clicks in your body long before it clicks in your mind, and it clicks fastest in ceremony, surrounded by women practicing the same thing.
That’s what Emerge is for.
On Monday, July 20th at noon eastern, we’re opening a group ‘Clif Jump’ moment — a flash sale on our final Emerge of the year at $500 off, plus two bonuses, the Juicy & Alive Protocol and the Sacred Work Intensive.
This is our last retreat of 2026, and we won’t run Emerge again until September 2027. We jump together on Monday. Check the dates (September 18-20), read the page, and feel into whether you’re coming.
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