Start Here.
An Editor’s Letter from Return to Self
If you’ve found your way here, there’s usually a reason.
Most people don’t arrive at Return to Self randomly. They arrive because something in them is looping, softening, or quietly asking for more honesty… and it leads them here.
This space exists for those moments.
Return to Self is an online publication devoted to shadow work, self-trust, and the slow, embodied work of becoming who you already are. It’s a place to think, feel, question, and practice without spiritual theatrics or pressure to perform healing correctly.
I’m not here to tell you who to be. I’m here to walk with you while you remember.
the inspiration.
One of my favorite childhood memories was cozying up to the latest magazine I’d beg my mom to buy me, and getting lost in the pages. From quizzes and horoscopes to picking out my favorite fashion and tearing out poster pages, magazines gave me the sense of community I’d often gone without as a kid.
It was my friend when I was lonely and my big sister when I needed advice (although in hindsight, a lot of that advice wasn’t great…).
When I was in middle school, I wrote a letter to Seventeen magazine asking what I’d have to do in order to intern for them in New York when I got to college. As you may know, I’m a Capricorn through and through. I started setting goals before I could set the table.
To my surprise, the magazine actually wrote me back and shared that it would be in my best interest to take some journalism classes in school. Fast forward nearly 10 years, and I remembered that advice when I impulsively switched from being a psychology major to journalism.
I never ended up working at a magazine (although I created a few of my own over the years), but I did work at E! News for nearly a decade, learning the ins and outs of running a multimedia giant that acquired 30 million global visitors onto its digital news site a day.
And when they arrived, there was my work for them to read.
It was fun until it wasn’t. Pop culture and celebrity gossip started to become less and less interesting, forcing yet another scary yet necessary pivot—venturing out on my own as a freelance writer. It’s been a tricky journey, one that has made me question myself time and time again (hello, shadow work!), but that’s when Return to Self was born.
Some of you have been here since its inception, and I greatly appreciate your ongoing support. You’ve also probably witnessed a lot of plot twists, pivots, and sudden shifts along the way. The truth is I’m trying to build something with no blueprint, and I don’t have a team or budget to help me (yet).
Everything I do has been a labor of love in the deepest sense, and I continue to learn how to manage my projects without running myself to the ground while doing it.
For that reason, I’m constantly working to build an efficient model that allows me to do the work I love without sacrificing my well-being for it.
the space.
Like any magazine, Return to Self is meant to be explored intuitively. You don’t need to read everything, and you don’t need to start at the beginning. Let yourself wander like the adventurous explorer that you are.
However, if you’d like a little guidance, I happen to specialize in that, so here’s a compass before you begin your adventure:
✧ The Grounded Muse
Personal essays and cultural reflections rooted in lived experience. This is where mysticism meets humanity—where patterns are named, contradictions are held, and self-inquiry stays embodied.
✧ The Oracle Room (Paid subscribers only)
Tarot, astrology, and intuitive insight for moments of transition. These readings are about timing, pattern recognition, and learning how to listen to yourself more clearly. Paid subscribers consistently say this is the part of their week they look forward to most.
✧ The Shadow Lab (Paid subscribers only)
A practical space for integration. Guided journaling, rituals, prompts, and exercises designed to help you work with what’s beneath the surface—without bypassing or self-punishment. Here you’ll find breakdowns on what the shadow is, how it shows up, and insight to help you on your shadow work journey.
✧ The Liminal Space
Fragments from the in-between. Observations, questions, and seasonal reflections that don’t need to be resolved to be meaningful, and may not make sense until they do.
✧ The Initiation (Paid subscribers only)
Long-form teachings, workshops, and transmissions meant to be returned to. These pieces mark pivotal moments—moments of reckoning, reclamation, and deep self-trust. Here you’ll find my various series breakdowns, from synastry astrology placements to chakras to karmic connections and more to come. These aren't one-time reads. Paid subscribers return to them at different chapters of their lives and find something new every time.
the process.
Everything I share here is work I’ve had to do myself. Return to Self became my online journal, a place to reflect and log my experience as I moved through out.
As I’d always say, “I never know what I’m feeling until I read what I say.” That was true when I wrote in my diary as a kid. True again when I had my Xanga and Live Journal as a teen. True again when I had my blog The Problem With Dating, and published my first book Let That Shit Go.
And now here we are.
Except this time—it’s not all about what I’m feeling, but what I’m remembering.
I don’t believe in teaching from a distance. I believe in lived experience, pattern recognition, and the kind of honesty that sparks actual change, not just language. This publication is an extension of that practice.
Some of what's offered here is free—an open door, a first conversation. But if you've ever wanted a place to go deeper on a consistent basis, that's what the paid space is for.
The Oracle Room, The Shadow Lab, and Initiations exist for the reader who's ready to stop circling and start integrating. For $5.55 a month—less than one coffee a month—you get weekly readings, guided shadow work, and long-form teachings you can return to again and again.
the last thing.
This isn’t a space for fixing yourself.
I don’t want you to get stuck in the same spiral I did—believing there was some level of perfection I had to embody in order to unlock the next level of life (which somehow always happened to be the level containing my happiness).
You don’t need to be fixed, because you’re not broken. You’re just navigating this place the best you can with what you got, and maybe you’re ready to expand your toolbox.
That’s where Return to Self comes in.
It’s a space for remembering, integrating, and choosing differently when the moment calls for it.
If something here resonates, trust that. If it doesn’t, that’s information, too.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
Sounds great! Thank you for creating this space. After 3 yrs , 4yrs soon of going through a lot of grief and loss i think im ready to come back to focusing on myself and moving fwd with way more intent. I started using tarot to help guide me but i come and go from it so i like to have someone else read for me until i feel ready again or until i start trusting myself again. When can we request the readings?