what does it take to live up to your dreams?
living the question
Below the footnotes of this newsletter is a list of resources titled “portal picks” that I've curated for my paid subscribers—YouTube videos, Substack articles, TikTok clips, a podcast, a movie recommendation, an intentionally curated dream playlist, and the poem that changed me.
This list has sent me into some of the most awe-inspiring portals1 over the last few weeks. I hope they serve you in ways you didn't even know you needed, helping you reconnect with the depth of your dreams and awakening the knowing that you are truly deserving of everything that you desire.
Over plates of pasta so satisfying it makes my mouth water even now, my friend and I found ourselves in a conversational flow—gasping, sighing, trading bursts of “Mmm!” and “Wait, wait, let me write that down!”
Phones in hand, we kept scrambling to capture the flood of ideas spilling from each others’ mouths, typing them into our notes apps. It felt like everything was in divine alignment that night at Pasta Y Pasta in Little Tokyo. Between twirls of noodles, we shared the kind of dreams you don’t talk about too often—the ones tucked deep in your chest, so big they feel fragile. Naming them out loud felt bold, almost too much, but also like a kind of magic.
After an hour of talking, Jessie said something so moving it made me take a selah2 type of pause. While sharing the weight of a dream that was just beginning to take form, she said:
“I want to be so transformed that I can hold this dream.”
Her words were filled with so much love that I felt them sink straight into my bones.
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There’s a writer whose work has really resonated with me, , who shared the following in a recent Substack post:
“These past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes someone’s life change. Specifically my own. I’ve been looking back to the moments where my grandest achievements fell upon me. And what it was I did, in those moments before, to receive them.”
As the piece unfolds, she reflects on how much it took to pry open a new life with her own hands, which led me to think about how I got to where I am today.
With my birthday about a month away, I’ve been reminiscing about a dinner I hosted last year. As someone who’s always been resistant to celebrating my birthday—because I used to hold this silly belief that it was cursed and I wasn’t worthy of being seen—I felt a subtle pull to do something different. I brought together women from different parts of my life for a gathering centered around this intention for big friendship3. We made vision boards, shared our dreams for a better world, and unknowingly planted the seed for something incredibly special.
Little did we know, this group of women would spend the next year meeting every 2-3 months to continue the conversations from my birthday, slowly forming into The Co-Create Club. Each of us taking turns hosting and creating space for one another to become our most authentic selves; a reality that an earlier version of me dreamed of, but wasn’t quite sure how or when it would ever take shape. And while it all seemed to unfold out of nowhere, I’m now starting to recognize that I, too, had to pry this life open with my own hands.
I had to transform myself to the point where I could hold this dream.
A few months ago, my parents asked if I wanted to join them on a trip to the Philippines. I said no (a post for later… maybe), but it made me think back to the moment I said yes in 2020—the yes that planted the seed for the life I have now.
At the time, I hadn’t been to the Philippines since I was three years old. I didn’t fully understand what I was agreeing to, but I felt an undeniable inner knowing that I had to go. I was searching for something, yearning to deepen my connection to my roots.
Long story short: going on that trip completely broke me. But if you’ve been around for a while, then you know that for me, being broken has always been the catalyst for breaking open.
I once heard Elizabeth Gilbert share (she was quoting her friend):
“Getting triggered is such a beautiful opportunity for growth because it shows you the parts of yourself that need love and need to be tended to.”
Choosing to go to the Philippines in 2020 was my ultimate trigger.
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The first time I ever met
was about a year and a half ago at a teahouse that hosts open mics—a place that has since become a portal for incredible life shifts. I was taken aback by a poem she performed and felt immediately connected to her. Since then, she’s been a vital part of my creative evolution, revealing paths I hadn’t noticed before through her resources and her openness in sharing her heart. Jessie, Nicole (whom I’ll introduce in the next paragraph), and the other women in The Co-Create Club have all been instrumental in my healing journey. As organic as it felt for all these friendships to bloom in the past year alone, it didn’t happen out of nowhere. It required intense emotional labor. The desire to change. And the willingness to consistently put in the work.Here’s where I get mind-boggled: I ended up at that open mic because my friend Nicole, knowing my love for writing, suggested we check it out. But the reason Nicole and I even made plans was because we reconnected—years after meeting just once, when we were both immersed in the nightlife scene, partying a lot. We never really talked after that night, but we stayed connected via Instagram. In 2020, when I became a meditation coach, a path inspired because of my trip to the Philippines, Nicole, who had been following my stories online, reached out to share that she was a coach too. One decision—saying yes to that trip—set off a ripple effect that led me here in a way I never could’ve imagined. And this is just one of many examples.
Call it delusion, call it coincidence—I don’t care. But the more I choose to sit in stillness and tap into something that feels infinitely bigger than me, the more I find myself connecting the dots between my past and how they’re shaping my life today.
Looking back now, all the painful moments that once felt like scattered pieces of my story have revealed themselves as portals—triggers that guided me towards a deeper understanding of myself. Even when I resisted, I can see how I still chose to surrender and say yes to those quiet nudges from the Universe.
In the poem titled “The Dream” (the one Jessie shared with me during our Idyllwild retreat that I mentioned in my last post), this was the line that shook me to my core:
“[Your dream] loves you more than you love it.”
This is a perspective I had never in my entire life taken into consideration.
Before hearing this, every time I would revisit my dreams—after months or even years of being lost in survival mode—I felt stuck, trapped. I clung to the belief that I was the reason they hadn't come to life yet, that something was wrong with me—that I was defective, broken, and incapable of seeing things through. The story I told myself was that I kept abandoning my dream. And with this narrative came a lot of shame.
But wait… my dream loves me more than I love it?
For the two weeks I did not check my text messages and intermittent fasted from my phone entirely in October, I leaned into this question and experimented.
I spoke to my Dream.
I sat with my Dream.
I danced with my Dream.
I sang to my Dream.
And sure enough, I got my answer.
Without a doubt, my dream loves me more than I love it. It always has. Even in moments when I failed to see this, it’s always been there—pulling, pulling, pulling—to remind me that I am deserving of everything I desire. It pulled me through years of depression in my mid to late 20s. It pulled me when I was ready to give up on coaching and writing and everything creative. It pulled me when I wanted to choose isolation over building meaningful friendships. And it pulls me now, in those moments when even the slightest doubt creeps in, and I wonder if my dreams are too big for me to hold.
I watched a stunning performance by Doechii, an artist with whom I've developed a strong parasocial relationship with. Before diving into her song, "WAIT," she shared how, at first, she felt like this song was about stillness. But as she reflected more, she realized it’s actually about faith.
She shares:
“Faith, to me, is being grateful for a reality that doesn’t exist yet. And it’s about being excited about a future that you don’t even have yet. And being content in that stillness.”
I’m currently in a phase of my life where every time I sit with my Dream, I’m propelled into an endless space of gratitude. She gifts me with visions I haven’t yet lived, but I feel them so intensely, as if they’re already here.
As I continue to meet this Dream, I keep seeing her expand, waiting for me to catch up to its bigness in my own time—never abandoning me. She gives me grace to be human, to lose my way sometimes, and still be enough. Each time I remember that my Dream loves me, I’m filled with the desire to keep transforming, to hold her as she holds me. To do everything in my power to love her back.
To put simply, for me, a portal is an entry point to transformation, imagination, or new possibilities. It’s a passageway that invites someone to move beyond the known and familiar, stepping into a realm of expanded vision, ideas, and self-discovery.
“Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply.” —Glennon Doyle, Untamed
“Big Friendship is a bond of great strength, force, and significance that transcends life phases, geography, and emotional shifts. It is large in dimension, affecting most aspects of each person’s life. It is full of meaning and resonance. A Big Friendship is reciprocal, with both parties feeling worthy of each other and willing to give of themselves in generous ways.” —Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, Big Friendship
Portal Picks
A gentle reminder to please be mindful of the pace at which you take in inspiration. Allow yourself the time to digest and sit with it. The wisdom you seek is already within you—resources are simply guides.
In a video from her Patreon, Amanda Seales shared the following:
“Smart is retaining knowledge. Intellectual is synthesizing knowledge.”
Be still and know.