🔥 How do you know it’s working?

Sadie Speaks is my personal writing — short, honest essays from the deep middle of things. They started as emails to my list, but they’ve become something more: snapshots of truth, power, and self-return, written in real time.

🎧 Listen to me read it — just the way I meant it.

💬 Prefer to read? Here’s the original text.

Earlier this week, I did a scary thing: I gutted my entire website.

I’d been circling this project for months – not because anything was actually wrong with the website. I just didn’t like it anymore. Because it didn’t feel like me.

I’m not somebody who likes to stand still. I like to build. Mandala had been in a state of quiet evolution for over a year. But through all those iterations, I kept struggling to name what it had actually become. 

Then I went to the beach in June, and my body finally figured it out: the signal inside of me was no longer matching the story that site was telling. And my body needed cohesion.

So I started over. Time to rip some shit apart.

At first, though, I bargained. Because it’s summer. And I have less time in the office and other fun projects I’d rather be working on. Actually anything seemed more fun than redoing something I’d already slaved over. That copy was good. I believed in it. And it held a very brave version of me – one who had to stretch just to say it in the first place.

But revision always asks us to stretch again. Into new shapes.

I know this well, because I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. And, over the last 18 months or so, I’ve been writing a novel. (Pssst—if I can stop getting stuck in revisions, I might even finish this draft before the end of summer…) 

Honestly? The process is the same. First you make it exist. Then you make it true.

Sometimes that means cutting out things that aren’t bad, they just don’t belong anymore. Not in this version. Not with how the plot is turning out, or how the characters are evolving.

But it’s super fucking hard to let go of things that used to fit.

***

Earlier this spring, we traded in our busted-up skidloader – one that felt like a carnival ride last serviced in 1970 – for a new-to-us 2016 model. It’s the fanciest thing we own. It’s newer than all of our cars. And, most importantly, the steering’s tighter, the hydraulics don’t leak, and we can finally do more than just nudge heavy things from over here to over there. We can actually get things done.

Our first project was clearing brush at the top of this hill, so we can install a permanent parking pad for Pearl (our bus). If you ever need to really feel something – power, momentum, catharsis – climb into this thing and rip 20 years of overgrown invasive honeysuckle out by the roots with a grapple bucket. It’s a whole thing.

But down at the bottom of that hill is a giant, gnarled apple tree. 

Most people who tend fruit trees prune them down so they don’t get ginormous and you can actually reach the apples. But this tree…isn’t like that. It’s massive, and nobody had touched it in ages. So this year, I climbed inside it with a pole saw and started cutting. (Yes. I had to insert myself into the tree. It was an ordeal.)

Once I got in there I realized – so much of it was dead. Which made sense, I guess. No air flow in there, no light. 

So I started cutting. 

And I took off more than I meant to.

That’s the thing about pruning: it doesn’t always feel careful. Sometimes you don’t even realize what you’ve let go of until you’re watching it turn to ash in the burn pile.

Oh, and yeah – we burned those branches in a Wild Woman fire. It just felt right.

***

Like I said, I did a lot of cutting. And I ended up with a lot of woodchips in my bra. So I shimmied down my shirt and shook things out a bit. And that was that. 

I didn’t realize until later – when I was undressing for the shower – that something else had fallen out, too. My Reiki heart was gone. I’d carried that little thing in my bra every single day since my attunement. A small green-and-white crystal I picked out at the end of my training. “Don’t think about the choice,” Karen had told me. “Just feel which one is calling.”

That’s a hard thing to do. But I did it anyway. And then I charged it with my symbols, made it sacred. It made me believe I could do this – for real.

When I realized it was gone, I thought I was supposed to panic.

And I didn’t.

Which was weird. 

At first I thought maybe it was because I’d found something sacred against all odds before. A few years ago, Cora lost a tooth at a campsite. She thought it was a fishbone and spit it out in the gravel under the picnic table. It wasn’t until tooth-brushing time (read: dark) that she realized it was missing – and then promptly panicked because she wanted to claim her tooth fairy prize. 

So I went outside with my phone flashlight, realized every single piece of gravel under that picnic table looked exactly like a five-year-old’s tooth, gave up hope completely – and then immediately found the tooth.

So this time, when I realized my Reiki heart was gone, I told myself: You’ve done this before. It was just a little crystal, about the size of a nickel – green, white, and gold. Kind of exactly like the grass-and-woodchip mess I dropped it in. If I could find a tooth in a gravel pit in the dark, surely I could find a crystal in the grass in broad daylight.

Except I couldn’t. And I didn’t.

Even then – at the realization – the panic I expected never came. I was there, knees in the grass, looking…and then I just stopped. And went inside and had a drink, because it was hot.

I didn’t need to keep looking. Because I didn’t need the heart.

I’m not that version of myself anymore—the one pretending to believe, or relying on something outside of me to prove it. I don’t need the training wheels. I actually just believe.

So I left it. Let it sink into the soil under that tree like an offering. And an anchor. A quiet little ceremony for the things we’d both outgrown.

***

Not gonna lie – when I finished with that tree, Alex kind of gawked at it. And I felt a little embarrassed. Like when your kid finally agrees to a haircut (thank the Lord) and you get a little overzealous with the clippers. Suddenly you can see their eyes! And they can see the world!

Even when it doesn’t look bad – it’s disorienting. And vulnerable.

But it makes space for the light.

And that’s the point of this entire piece, the part I needed a name for: this moment in my life doesn’t feel polished or sure-footed. 

It feels in-between. A fish bag moment, like I’m being carried in a sloshy little sack from the goldfish booth at the carnival to a new (hopefully bigger, fingers crossed) aquarium. 

I didn’t just clear space – I let go of good things. Things I cared about very much. The Reiki heart. The website. The stories I used to need to tell in order to feel sure.

I cut back more than I meant to…and I don’t yet know what will grow back in its place.

But I do know this: growth doesn’t wait for guarantees. You don’t get to have the new thing before you let go of the old one. You don’t get to try on your new identity at TJMaxx and give it to the fitting room attendant if you didn’t quite love it. You take it home and pull out your sewing machine and the Bedazzler if you need to because this thing can’t be returned. 

This morning, Jacob found an Aldi bag labeled “boys size 6” and wanted to unpack it. (He turns 6 on Friday.) I said, “Yes – once you go through your drawers and take out what doesn’t fit you anymore.” There’s no room for the new until you make space.

All of this? Just me making space. Clearing brush. Pruning trees. Revising pages. Telling the truth, even when I’m afraid. Especially then. Because that’s what becoming feels like. It’s not clean, it’s not comfortable – and that’s exactly how I know it’s working.

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — get in touch with me. I’d be honored to hold that space for you.