Moving Toward A Soul-Aligned Life

An update on me & this newsletter.

When I started this newsletter, I knew that I didn’t really want to write about politics. But I was told by everyone who knows anything that in order to be successful I needed to stick to what I was known for.

Almost as soon as I launched, I knew I had made a mistake. I had allowed my conditioning to lead me down a path that was ego driven (“I must be ‘successful’”) but totally detached from my soul’s desires.

This has been the story of my life and so many people I know.

It may be your story too.

When I refer to ego, I don’t mean egotistical, though I certainly have been that at times. I mean the part of us that needs outside approval, “success” as it’s defined by culture, and so on. As Richard Rohr says, “The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.”

The ego is what can keep us stuck.

For the last few years, I have been doing a lot of work to heal and decondition from societal and parental expectations I unconsciously internalized growing up. Getting healthy and clear about what’s important, what you believe and who you actually are is mostly about unlearning. I’ve been deep in this process for quite some time, whether it was deconstructing my Christian faith or deconditioning from many of the warped values of our culture. But I’ve really gained traction in the last year, and particularly in the last few months.

In this process of disentangling from what is not me, I have become clear that what I am passionate about are “second half of life” issues. I have entered a season of detaching from an ego driven life and moving into a life that is aligned with what feeds the soul. It’s what Thomas Merton called moving from the False Self to the True Self.

Nicole Jane Hobbs wrote recently:

I don’t want to be lying on my deathbed thinking, ‘I lived a productive life’ or ‘I lived a life of compulsive busyness, joyless striving and finished to-do lists.’ At the end of my life, I would like to look back and think, ‘I lived an enchanted life. A meaningful life. A life full of beauty and tenderness and devotion.

This, dear reader, is not remotely the life I have lived.

“Joyless striving” and “compulsive busyness” have been my intimate life partners. “Productivity” came near to destroying my body and soul. But I’ve seen the faint outlines of what an enchanted life might look like and have started the process of creating the space for such an existence.

This post is an invitation to you to join me on this journey—or click unsubscribe— depending on your interests. If you signed up for a paid yearly subscription, I can refund you for the time left on your subscription, if you want. The fact is, I do not want to write about American politics anymore and that’s what brought many of you here. I am much more interested in psychology, spirituality, and how to live a more meaningful and connected life.

At the suggestion of my friends, I have started dipping my toe in the life coaching and leadership development waters and we’ll see where that leads. I have been accepted to Yale Divinity School (not to go into ministry, but to study the wisdom traditions, among other things) and am discerning whether that is the right path for me. Update: I deferred YDS for a year in August and since then have decided that I almost definitely not attend next year because other work beckons, particularly relating to my writing and Project Italy.

So, I want to be transparent that I am making a conscious shift in my life and thus with this newsletter. I don’t know exactly what this newsletter will become, so it’s just Kirsten Powers’ newsletter for now.

Second half of life priorities are different than what drives us in the first half of life. To be clear, these halves don’t track with particular ages. There are people who enter the second half of life at a relatively young age and others who stay in the first half of life until their dying day. The second half of life mindset is about giving back — of dedicating your life to using whatever wisdom life has granted you to help other people.

In the first half of life, it’s necessary to develop a healthy ego. I don’t remember who said it, but the fact is that in order to transcend your ego, you need to have an ego worth giving up. I won’t pretend to think that I am going to rise above my ego completely, nor do I think that is necessary, but I can say that it is no longer running the show. I’ve given that job to my soul, or what others might call their authentic or True Self.

It’s not that I haven’t been authentic with you here. It’s that I have only shown a tiny part of me, and I’m interested in expanding beyond that. One thing that will not change is that I will continue to talk about the systems that shape us. Whether it’s misogyny, white supremacy, patriarchy or late-stage capitalism, I want to help people heal from the damage these systems have wrought on their bodies and minds.

Interestingly, these systems have something important in common: they are ego based and soul crushing. In many ways, these systems are so intertwined it’s hard to know where one starts and the other ends. But I can tell you with certainty that we’ve all been shaped and damaged by these systems, and until we heal ourselves there is little hope for our society or this planet.

Some people might say these issues are political, but I don’t believe they are. It’s true that they’ve been politicized by people who don’t want us to talk about them, but there is nothing inherently political about believing all people should be treated fairly and equally and that life is not about working yourself to death. There is nothing political about acknowledging that it’s nearly impossible to be happy or healthy in a society that prizes consumerism, wealth, productivity and the “hustle and grind” above all else.

Some of the kinds of questions I will tackle here are:

• How do you figure out who your true or authentic self is? How can you discover your soul’s desires?

• Is it possible to live a life doing what lights you up, or are you doomed to work in a soul-crushing job that you hate?

• Is it ever “too late” to become who you were meant to be?

• Could being connected to nature’s cycles make a difference in your life?

• What do you accept as ‘truth,’ that is actually societal or parental conditioning? What would your life look like if you let go of that?

• Is it possible to develop a spiritual life if you don’t like religion or don’t believe in God?

• What if nothing is wrong with you?

And of course, any questions you have for me!

If this sounds interesting to you, please stay around (and share this with friends) and if not, I absolutely understand and am grateful for the time we have spent together— and for your support that helped bring me to this place.

Your feedback is important to me, so if this resonated with you please hit the like button and/or weigh in in the comments.