Me: less overwhelmed, having fun watching Survivor, enjoying warm days.
I have a LOT going on. So last week I knuckled down to work on feeling less overwhelmed:
I got organized by sorting my to-do items by project and then ranking my priorities. It really helps me feel less overwhelmed, more grounded, and more clear-minded so I know where to start.
Luckily, this was a day before my colleague asked me to start a fundraiser to help Aminata, a young woman in Sierra Leone, go to college. It’s imperative I did the prep before so I had the capacity to fit that in.
Everything I do is for future me. If I don’t try to do this fundraiser, I know she’ll regret it. So it’s important I clear the noise and know my real priorities.
Maybe this is something that will simplify things for you as well.
Wishing you a good week.
Maybe I’ll see you for the Tarot party charity event for Aminata on March 8 🙂
And you might also like the podcast I recorded for you this week! Deletion is HOT.
xo
In this post:
A podcast on deletion
A teaser
New Podcast: Conscious Deletion
Feel less weighed down and more potent and powerful as a writer or creator!
Listen to Andrea Hylen and I talk about the conscious deletion.
Instead of being bogged down by the past, you can reabsorb your power so you have energy for the next chapter.
Do you feel like you have potential that’s not being expressed?
Something is coming soon to help you:
-Focus on what is important and feel less overwhelmed by cleaning up your business, project or writing files
-Develop your projects and get clear on what to do next to finish
-Make notes so you don’t ever forget important details about your projects and next steps in one easy to find place.
In our monthly meetings, you’ll be guided to create a central project hub in the free Notion app that you will come back to monthly.
These projects can be writing projects, business projects or life projects
Each month you’ll learn skills to simplify and accelerate your projects
through digital organizing, planning, & accountability
You’ll also get bonus classes about the free software I use for writing and organizing content for dozens of articles, videos, emails, blogs, launches and more: Obsidian.
Join the waitlist to get news about the early bird special of $30 total for 3 months of membership:
“Kris’s Tarot Card reading was insightful, enlightening, and spot-on. I have had many readings through the years and no one has provided as much accuracy and clarity as Kris. She truly forms a genuine connection and has an astounding comprehension of the messages within the cards. I highly recommend tapping into Kris’s talent and getting a reading, you will not be disappointed!” – Theresa, California
“Kris is an amazing teacher and writer full of light, wisdom and emanates joy in her teachings. Also the best Tarot card reader. Have recommended several friends to have readings and Kris is always generous, bringing light to the issues with insight and accuracy. Love her 💖 highly recommended her classes and readings.” – Colleen, California
“Kris has such a nurturing warmth and love that just oozes from her every word and act and then you couple it with a natural intuitiveness, skills with tarot cards, and her business savvy, and you have one very special and unique women who thrives in this realm! I loved our soul session together; it was affirming for the direction I’m going in creatively, personally, and professionally and encouraging as well to continue listen to my instincts and intuition in all aspects of my life. I highly recommend doing a business soul strategy session with Kris if you’re going in a new direction with your business or creating a new one from the ground up.” – Rachel, California
Or scroll down for instructions to pay through paypal.
More information:
What is the cause?
We are raising college fees for women in Sierra Leone.
For two years running, we have successfully raised money for two young women to attend college.
This fundraiser is the only reason they are able to attend and have not dropped out due to lack of funds!
Considering only 1% of women in Sierra Leone get to go to college, this is an amazing opportunity for them to gain financial independence in a place where women face many human rights abuses.
This fundraiser has already finished collecting fees for Ismatu!
We are now collecting funds to support Aminata’s next year (year 4) in university:
-Year 4 pharmacy degree student
-Orphaned, her parents died shortly after enrolling in college
-comes from a city with low female literacy in Sierra Leone
Why it matters
It is rare for women to go to university there, only 1% of women in Sierra Leone have any college education, so we want to make sure Ismatu and Aminata can finish their degrees.
Less than 1 out of 5 women where she is from can read a sentence, so it would be a shame for her to reach this level of education and then be forced to drop out because she lacks a few hundred dollars.
Aminat and Ismatu want to use their degrees to get a paying job after university and to help others in their community.
Can I learn more about this nonprofit?
Her Future Foundation is an organization dedicated to empowering girls and ending sexual violence in Sierra Leone.
Her Future Foundation organizes transformational gender-based programming, and identifies vulnerable girls and women who need resources to avoid female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage, gender-based violence, and sexual assault.
They help us to direct resource to where it will make the most impact to help girls and women in Sierra Leone.
2. If you feel more comfortable sending payment via Paypal, you can send the money to Sofia, who will transfer it to Her Future Foundation in Sierra Leone for Ismatu’s college fees.
(From Sofia: This is a special treat – I rarely offer Tarot Readings outside of my private coaching!)
Sofia, the “mermaid wrangler”, helps you tap into your power to write and create awe-striking things.
Sofia Wren is a writer, musician, and spiritual support for writers, creators, and entrepreneurs around the world. She helps sensitive people who are grinding or circling around to know exactly what to do next to make progress on their books and businesses.
With spot-on intuition, positive vibes, and a gift for words that inspire, she has a passion for helping unconventional people to always know what to do next because they can hear their intuition and trust it.
Praise for Sofia:
“I had my reading with Sofia Wren today. It felt really sacred and perfect!
I had been feeling agitated and stressed off and on for the last week and was looking for relief.
The amazing thing was that out of the three cards Sofia pulled all of them spoke to different aspects of my life that had been bothering me. She opened the door ways to insights that I had not seen clearly before.
She facilitated a shift in energy and gave me practical tools to take away and integrate. Emotions that had been stuck bubbled up and were able to be cleared. After my session I felt calmer and more inspired, I felt like I had a focused path to follow.
Thank you Sofia.” – Kate Burkett
Kris Oster:
I’ve been reading Tarot since age 12 and have been channeling angels, goddesses, spirit guides and passed-over loved ones for as long as I can remember.
Professionally, I’m an author, tarot reader, reiki healer, astrologer, archetypal brand strategist and marketing copywriter who helps entrepreneurial Healers, Coaches & Priestesses create mythic & monetizable brands that become the stuff of legends.
Once upon a time, I was a corporate marketing director and lead website developer for some pretty big names, including Citrix Online, E! Entertainment Television, Disney, ABC, Paramount Pictures. I received my PH.D in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute where I studied mythology and depth psychology with such luminaries as Marion Woodman and James Hillman. I have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs create a business and livelihood that feels pleasurable, alluring and that reflects their authentic vision.
You can learn more about me at
Sending you oceans of love,
Kris
Praise for Kris:
“I received a business tarot reading from Kris. I was delighted. I am an artist and the typical business coaching session leaves me uninspired and kinda dry. Kris’s approach in combining the the tarot with her business skills was very effective for me. It brought the magic and mystery, that I so love, into the dry parts of my work. I guess what pleased me the most is that she completely spun the concept of business around for me. Kris showed me that the business parts don’t have to be boring, that by mixing it up with the sacred and magical it can be fun and so much more effective. I feel a little like she infused my business with Spirit. I received great business advice in a way that I could hear it and in a way that I am actually excited to carry out. I highly recommend a tarot business reading from Kris.” – Terre, California
“Kris’s Tarot Card reading was insightful, enlightening, and spot-on. I have had many readings through the years and no one has provided as much accuracy and clarity as Kris. She truly forms a genuine connection and has an astounding comprehension of the messages within the cards. I highly recommend tapping into Kris’s talent and getting a reading, you will not be disappointed!” – Theresa, California
“Kris is an amazing teacher and writer full of light, wisdom and emanates joy in her teachings. Also the best Tarot card reader. Have recommended several friends to have readings and Kris is always generous, bringing light to the issues with insight and accuracy. Love her 💖 highly recommended her classes and readings.” – Colleen, California
“Kris has such a nurturing warmth and love that just oozes from her every word and act and then you couple it with a natural intuitiveness, skills with tarot cards, and her business savvy, and you have one very special and unique women who thrives in this realm! I loved our soul session together; it was affirming for the direction I’m going in creatively, personally, and professionally and encouraging as well to continue listen to my instincts and intuition in all aspects of my life. I highly recommend doing a business soul strategy session with Kris if you’re going in a new direction with your business or creating a new one from the ground up.” – Rachel, California
“When you have a reading with Kris, you know it’s going to be a magical experience. It’s not just that she’s got the whole sexy mermaid thing going on, being able to go into the depths of the subconscious and find the pearls and treasures lost to us, bringing them back to the surface. No, it’s more than that. She sings a siren song that lures us to our dreams, to the steps that we need to explore and to the beat we need to dance to in order for our dreams to become manifest. In that way, she seduces us with our own wild souls, and entices us to invoke our own inner powers. Her readings are accurate and exploratory, delving into areas of my business ideas that I had been keeping on the back-burner. As we immersed ourselves into the dark seas of these ideas, her readings helped me find my compass, my light and my magic. Without these, I would still be adrift on a sea of wishes and dreams that would amount to nothing. Now, armed and shimmering with magical ocean spray, I feel more than confident that I can achieve what I want and go after what I need, enchanted and empowered, and wickedly alive.” – Cynthia, United Kingdom
Your experiences do not have meaning. Your experiences are meaningless.
If you’re looking to your story for some kind of meaning, remember that you’re the one who chooses what meaning it has. You make the meaning. You are the only one with that power because this is your life. You are powerful.
Reminder: You are Powerful
An Invitation:
Here’s how I KNOW we are an aligned fit to work together for a 6-Month Writing Mentorship: You want more authenticity in how you BE, how you write your book or content, how you share, or how you promote your business.
If it’s feeling hard or stifled, and limited—I can help! You want to WRITE You want to heal your stories and be more yourself. Less fear. More flow. You want writing to feel more fun and authentic. You want to feel good, you want to feel proud of what you have written. You want someone to have your back as you try to write and share. Someone nonjudgmental but knowledgable. You feel overwhelmed or discouraged. You feel like at the end of the day, your mental health and stress level is really key, so you want the kind of help that will help you relax, not stress you more. You want to feel held and understood in the writing process. You need a loving space to let yourself unfurl so you can finally get authentic, good writing out into the world to the people who need to hear it. You know that more self-acceptance, more wholeness, more self-celebration, and confidence can only be a good thing.
Connecting with yourself on a deeper level builds up your resilience, and you know that you can’t have too much of that. And if you want to do that while writing to market your business, I can do that, too!
The year of 2024 so far has felt like a whirlwind and I have been trying to catch my breath.
I have been on social media more the last month to promote things.
This has been really powerful but it does take a lot out of me.
It’s just the way it interacts with me.
So I’m pondering how to meet myself where I am while still showing up publicly…
I’ll keep you posted about what I figure out.
(But these FunLetters are staying, they are by far my FAVORITE way to share.)
Today I’m sharing an article I wrote a week ago in case you missed it.
As a reminder that you don’t need to be ‘fixed.’
You can still catch the replay to the Be Your Own Best Friend class–more info below.
Listen Up: Stop Trying to Fix Yourself
Grow your capacities and strengths instead.
Once upon a time, I was desperate to fix myself.
But it turns out that this was a waste of my time.
This might be controversial to say
Some people are so deluded and blind to their issues that we all WISH they would see. That drives you crazy, right? Me, too.
But on the other hand, many amazing women, and very cool men, get fixated on this cycle of fixing themselves. I used to be one of them.
But the endless cycle of trying to fix issues never gets to the real root.
At the root of so many of my persistent issues has been a gap.
A gap, stemming from a time or an area where I didn’t get the care, connection, or consideration that I needed.
Trying to “fix myself” often amounted to saying that I only really deserve love on the other side of that change: when I completed the change I would be okay, but not now, and not until it was fixed.
Fixing myself just doesn’t work
Why? Because I never reached the end no matter how hard I tried.
I couldn’t help but keep moving my goalposts farther away. There was always more fixing to do.
It seems simple to me now. It is difficult for me to make a change in the first place if I don’t offer myself love and acceptance as I already am…
It’s not too late to see the replay of the workshop!
Are you feeling:
-Overwhelmed and exhausted from constantly seeking personal growth without finding a sense of fulfillment? Stuck on a never-ending treadmill of personal development?
-Yearning for someone who can provide consistent, nonjudgmental support and understanding in your journey? Feeling isolated and lonely?
-Finding it hard to express your true thoughts and feelings for fear of being hurt, dismissed, or made wrong? Difficulty being fully honest and understood?
If so, these are all great reasons to come to my “Be Your Own Best Friend” Workshop to focus on
the most precious relationship you have:
The relationship you have with yourself!
It is the foundation of everything.
Ready to deepen your connection with yourself? Join me and my friend Kate in Paradise in our upcoming transformative workshop!
Discover the empowerment and relief that comes from radical self-acceptance and self-compassion.
We’ll dive into practical ways to do this and practice the tools together.
Inside the two class replays, you will:
– Embrace self-acceptance and feel understood without judgment. – Connect with yourself on a deeper level and build resilience.
– Celebrate your achievements and feel a sense of wholeness.
Invest in yourself through this $38 workshop and feel the difference that comes from being your own best friend in a bigger way.
Afterward, you’ll have the tools to feel more supported anytime, even if no one can answer the phone to talk.
Check it out if you like, or you can join us for the final session of Be Your Own Best Friend (below).
See you in my next FunLetter
xo
“Be Your Own Best Friend” Workshop Continues Next Week
It’s not too late to join us for the next live workshop!
Are you feeling:
-Overwhelmed and exhausted from constantly seeking personal growth without finding a sense of fulfillment? Stuck on a never-ending treadmill of personal development?
-Yearning for someone who can provide consistent, nonjudgmental support and understanding in your journey? Feeling isolated and lonely?
-Finding it hard to express your true thoughts and feelings for fear of being hurt, dismissed, or made wrong? Difficulty being fully honest and understood?
If so, these are all great reasons to come to my “Be Your Own Best Friend” Workshop to focus on
the most precious relationship you have:
The relationship you have with yourself!
It is the foundation of everything.
Ready to deepen your connection with yourself? Join me and my friend Kate in Paradise in our upcoming transformative workshop!
Discover the empowerment and relief that comes from radical self-acceptance and self-compassion.
We’ll dive into practical ways to do this and practice the tools together.
Inside the two live Zoom sessions and replays, you will:
– Embrace self-acceptance and feel understood without judgment. – Connect with yourself on a deeper level and build resilience.
– Celebrate your achievements and feel a sense of wholeness.
Invest in yourself through this $38 workshop and feel the difference that comes from being your own best friend in a bigger way.
Afterward, you’ll have the tools to feel more supported anytime, even if no one can answer the phone to talk.
(This will go to their general fund as they are waiting for grants to be approved. This is an older fundraiser that I created but you can still donate here!)
together we raised over 90% of the yearly fees including everything due on Monday 2/5/2024.
It has been a pleasure to see all the energy behind this support for Ismatu.
I think many of us are world weary and it is refreshing to be a part of something so good.
So that is the update! A happy ending.
My previous post is below in case you missed it and have no idea what I am talking about lol or who Ismatu is.
This is a big deal. We are all so amazingly powerful, don’t forget you can do more than you even know you can!
Xo
—
I was on the phone last year with an amazing young girl from Sierra Leone.
She told me that she used to be scared.
Ismatu is her name–
She said as a young, Muslim, indigenous girl, it was scary to visit communities where she knew no one.
But she wanted to talk to the women there.
She wanted to talk to them about traditions that hurt women like FGM, and why it must stop.
Over 90% of women there have already gone through FGM.
She wants to change the cycle.
So even though it was scary and uncomfortable, Ismatu had a mission to help women and girls.
So she kept going. That fear did not stop her.
Where she is from 90% of women cannot read a sentence.
Not only did she finish high school,
but she won a regional high school debate on the topic,
“Why Girls Deserve an Education.”
We want to see her succeed.
We want to see her shine brighter.
We want to see a girl like her, blooming out of rough soil, show everyone in her country what girls can do.
We want to amplify her voice.
I am a part of a movement to support girls and women in Sierra Leone,
in a place where it is not unusual to marry girls as young as 8,
and to require FGM of all women.
It never heals right. It’s awful.
Over 50% of women are scared of their husbands.
Don’t get me started on the rates of women who believe violence is deserved.
Sexual assault of minors is so common,
it’s been declared a national emergency.
WE NEED A MOVEMENT OF CHANGE
What better person to lead a movement of change than a girl, like Ismatu?
There is a Problem and an Opportunity
We believe in Ismatu.
But this brilliant, rare girl, doesn’t have $500 USD to go to university.
I just found out that she needs it by Monday, Feb 5.
AND I THINK WE CAN DO IT
WE CAN HELP HER KEEP GOING ON HER MISSION.
To end FGM, violence against women and ensure a good future for all girls.
How?
If 17 amazing souls donate $25 –
that’s $425 right there.
I can donate the rest ($100).
That will cover her schooling and the fees to get it to her.
But it has to happen by Monday.
The good news is some people have already raised their hand.
Me + them = $400 pledged.
$125 to go.
We just need 5 more volunteers to send her $25.
Are you one of them?
Do you want to help us ease the path of this gorgeous soul who wants to advocate for girls and women?
So she can be a shining example to them all?
God, I want to see that.
(Note: This fundraiser has ended! But you can send donations anytime to this fundraiser to Her Future Foundation, the nonprofit advocating for girls like Ismatu.
Maybe you know you have some trouble supporting yourself through challenges, or
maybe you know your relationship with yourself could be BETTER.
You could feel more held, more loved, more understood, more cherished.
More nurtured, more nourished, more gotten, more precious.
And maybe this feeling would help you knock out a few big goals that would change your life for the better this year! I’m so excited for this upcoming class with my friend Kate in Paradise.
Writing has helped me to improve my relationship with myself.
I’ll share my favorite writing exercises for this and a whole bunch more!
We’ll teach you how to be a better best friend to yourself through writing and somatic tools.
A friend was asking me about my goal to have a better relationship with myself in 2023 and in 2024, and
I realized there’s a general misconception about this sort of thing.
The misconception is that me wanting a better relationship with myself,
including accepting myself in all ways,
meant that I did not accept myself in some way.
Not necessarily.
In fact, that’s not really true at this point of my life.
But I sometimes feel an intangible sandpaper feeling.
It’s inside. I won’t know why.
I have to sit down and be with it.
Everyone can be MORE accepting…
but there is more to it.
Finally, I was able to articulate this truth:
The relationship you have with yourself isn’t really about you.
-Feel anxious about life in general, you will feel anxious about yourself.
-Feel out of control, you will try to control yourself.
-Feed sad, you may feel sad about yourself.
Or at least, this is true for me!
This is the #1 lesson I’ve learned by making my relationship to myself a priority over 2023:
It’s symbolic and not always about me.
So turning it back to you, it’s the same:
your relationship with yourself is symbolic and not always about you.
Wanting to accept yourself more doesn’t mean that you need to reject something specific about yourself
in order to benefit from that sort of focus.
It’s so much more complex than that.
And I’ve also learned that you can reverse this principle:
You can improve your relationship with yourself as the ground zero to feel better about everything else going on in your life.
“…Being at home, in the core of ourselves, is the foundation that gives us the security…to be in full relationship to life.” Bud Harris
Get me?
Today, as you go about your day, check in with yourself, and ask:
How am I feeling?
How do I feel about things generally?
Maybe journal about how you feel about things in general and notice if that affects how you feel about yourself.
It’s an interesting thing to notice, for sure!!
Your feelings do matter and it is worth it to spend time with them.
But don’t BELIEVE that a temporary feeling means you don’t like yourself.
Taking those feelings and what they say about you less seriously will be such a gift, I promise.
That said you can always be more accepting, and compassionate with yourself, too.
Self love is not an Off-or-on switch. It’s complicated.
And if this intrigues you, be sure to check out my upcoming Be Your Best Friend Workshop!
Do you ever feel: -Like you are on a never-ending treadmill of personal development? -Like you don’t have a nonjudgemental person to talk to consistently? -Like you can’t be fully honest, or fully understood, 365 days a year and 24/7–
Because when you try to share your whole self, you sometimes feel hurt, wrong, or dismissed?
It’s great to have goals and want to grow,
but if you (or others) are always making you wrong,
then you can’t move a muscle!
Without self love and acceptance, it’s harder to do everything.
Loneliness and isolation are super common these days, but you still have one perfect best friend at the ready:
Yourself.
Give yourself a safe space to land.
Be your own best friend–the kind that knows when to push, and when to love.
What if you could have a conversation with someone where you could share everything you’re thinking and feeling, and they’re totally holding space for ALL of you?
You can! And she is with you every second of every day, for the rest of your life.
BE Your Own Best Friend!
Learn Writing and Somatic Techniques over two sessions.
Benefits of this two part workshop: 🤍 Time to celebrate yourself 🤍 Feel more wholeness 🤍 Grow from a solid and steady foundation 🤍 Tap into your future self to get guidance on your goals and desires 🤍 Feel more understood, heard, and seen without judgement 🤍 Meet yourself where you are and feel more connected
I dunno ’bout you, but this month has been kicking my butt.
My latest win is finishing a HUGE excel sheet to budget for a nonprofit I help in Sierra Leone, called Her Future Foundation.
Hopefully, it helps them get a grant to help women and girls escape violence and FGM!
That was a big deadline. There have been a bunch of other things I’ve been juggling as well.
And then of course there is my ultimate priority:
My relationship with myself.
What are you focusing on right now?
With ALL. THE. THINGS…
You didn’t forget to pay attention to yourself, did you?
I used to always do that when I got busy, but I’m getting better at building new habits.
My big goal in 2023 was to have a better relationship with myself–
so far so good!
In fact, I’m keeping the same big goal in 2024.
If you know something is important, sometimes it pays just to stick with it.
These containers of “years” that we put our goals into are arbitrary.
Some things take longer, and some things take less time.
Shrug. Don’t let it limit you.
Here’s some stuff going on that you might want to know about:
Interview: Ginny Robertson interviews me on How my goal went for 2023, developing a better relationship with myself. More below.
12 for 10 Sale on Writing Mentorship: Work on your relationship to yourself, or develop writing for your business. Ends 1/31/24. More below.
Free Feel Good Goals Event: Feel bad about your goals? Anxious, resistant, overwhelmed? Check this out. More below.
& Keep an EYE out
Be Your Own Best Friend Workshop:
Use writing to have a better relationship with yourself on Valentine’s Day. Because it’s the most important relationship of all! (Keep an eye out for a future announcement all about the workshop— or get on my newsletter to be emailed!) COMING SOON
1. Upcoming Interview
“Forget the other goals, if all I do is end the year more self loving than I began, then I will consider it a success.” ~ Me in January 2023.
“…Being at home, in the core of ourselves, is the foundation that gives us the security…to be in full relationship to life.” Bud Harris
The Personal Writing Mentorship program with me will help you if you resonate with either of these tracks:
Personal Track: You want to heal your stories and be more yourself. Less fear. More flow. You want writing to feel more fun and authentic. You want to feel good, and above all, you want to write for yourself first. You want to feel like you always have your own back no matter what. And since your relationship to yourself is the basis of all others, you know this will help you feel more loved in general.
Professional Track: You want more clients, fans, or followers; the kind that GET you. You want more clients and connections because it can assist you in your career as a writer or business owner. You want writing for a website, content, emails, salespage, book, video, or something else. Maybe you are writing or publishing for the first time. Or maybe you want to reinvent yourself. You want to write so you will get a positive reaction when you share it.
