Remember Thursday’s letter about performance? I talked about the exhausting work of seeming normal and the 364 days we’re all dressed up as acceptable versions of ourselves.

Well, the energy this week is done waiting for you to be brave enough to show your real self. It’s not gonna gently coax you toward authenticity as much as create conditions so uncomfortable that staying false becomes more painful than being real. And between you and me, it plans on forcing your hand.

If there’s a part of you that wants freedom, it’s going head-to-head with the part of you that’s been carefully maintaining stability in whatever situation you’re in. The truth-teller versus the people-pleaser. The authentic mess versus the performed perfection.

Either way, something’s got to give.

Monday hits like a match to gasoline. 

I’m sending this on Sunday, again, because it feels like the week’s got the pedal to the metal. Whatever’s been building up wants out. Now. It could be resentment, or restlessness, or even the sense that you’re living someone else’s life. You might even have the impulse to blow it all up or finally say what you’ve been swallowing for months. That’s real. But so is the potential for collateral damage.

This isn’t the energy that thinks things through. It’s more the energy that acts first and processes later. You could quit the job, send the text, make the announcement, burn the bridge – and then wonder if maybe there was a more measured way to handle it. 😮

So my advice is, you absolutely need to honour what’s trying to break free. But you also don’t have to destroy everything in the process. The question is, can you do it consciously instead of explosively?

Reality checks in…later

There’s a Full Moon on Wednesday that will do its best to pull you back into what’s real, what’s solid, and what actually matters when you strip away all the performance and pressure.

It wants you to ask yourself what you need to feel secure. What actually makes you feel resourced, stable, and held? 

Right after that, the energy shifts from external disruption to internal excavation. Love, connection, creativity. All of it goes deeper. Surface-level anything stops working. Even pleasant conversation without real intimacy feels hollow. You might notice relationships that were… coasting on momentum, suddenly need actual depth or they’re done.

This is “all-or-nothing” territory. 

It’s the kind of energy that says, I’d rather be alone than perform connection. I’d rather have difficult truth than easy lies. I’d rather lose the relationship than lose myself in it.

And for some, that means relationships that have been on life support finally flatline because what you needed them to be, and what they actually are, have finally diverged too far to pretend anymore.

What wants to die this week isn’t the relationship, the job, or the identity.

It’s the performance. At least, the acceptable version. The one that doesn’t make waves or ask for too much. The one that doesn’t take up too much space with actual needs, desires, and contradictions.

That version is exhausted. And staging a coup.

The disruption discomfort sense that everything stable is suddenly shifting is actually breakthrough energy disguised as chaos.

I’m sure you’ve been transforming slowly, incrementally, in ways you might not have fully registered. I mean, think about 7 years ago, back in 2018. Who were you then, and who are you now? Different people, with different values. And definitely different non-negotiables.

Well, this week is the integration point when all that internal change finally demands an external expression. What you’ve become on the inside can no longer be contained by who you were pretending to be on the outside.

So what do you do with this?

First, feel it. Don’t spiritually bypass the anger or the urge to burn it all down. That energy is information telling you where the performance has become unbearable and where you’ve been pretending for too long.

Second, take a beat before you act on impulse because there’s often a measured way to honour what’s real without destroying what’s valuable in the process.

Third, get radically honest about what you actually value. What genuinely matters to you now, as the person you’ve become, not the person you were pretending to be?

And fourth, let the performance end, but not with explosion or drama. With the quiet, firm knowing that you’re done pretending. And whoever can’t handle the real you isn’t your person. 

This week, the costume doesn’t just get uncomfortable.

It tears and splits at the seams. The costume becomes so obviously not-you that continuing to wear it feels more absurd than taking it off ever could.

And yes, that’s scary. And disruptive. Yes, people might be confused or upset when you stop performing the version they got comfortable with.

But on the other side of this discomfort is freedom. The bone-deep relief of finally being seen as you actually are. And the lightness of not having to monitor and manage and maintain some curated version of yourself.

I’d like to get to know the real you. I bet you’re contradictory, complicated, intense, and occasionally difficult, which is so much more interesting than a performance ever was. And don’t forget it.

PS: And if you need space to be the whole messy, contradictory truth of who you are, that’s what my work holds. UNLIMITED EMAIL for the days when you can’t keep it together and don’t want to. MONTHLY CALLS for steady companionship without the pressure to seem like you’re doing better than you are. And starting next year, multi-day in-person retreats where the only performance is presence. If you’ve been referred here by someone who knows you’re done performing, you’re in exactly the right place.