How big do you dare to dream?
And why I've decided to become delulu in 2025
It’s no coincidence to me anymore when the themes I’m working on in therapy suddenly start lining up with the astrology of the moment. (Yes, I’m deeply into astrology, and this newsletter does get woowoo from time to time.) In fact, I started my therapy journey back in November 2021 during a lunar eclipse in Taurus — where my north and south nodes of fate are — completely unplanned. I had very little knowledge of what any of this meant back then, and to make a long story short: it was a time of big changes for me and my life journey.
Last month, my favorite astrologer
from Witchy Kid made a post prompting her readers to get in touch with their wildest dreams because the energy of the new moon in Sagittarius (back on Dec. 1st) was encouraging us to go there.At the time, my therapy sessions were focusing on how to tap into my self-worth, undoing misguided beliefs about who I am, how I define my worth, and who I allow myself to be.
When Ocean Pleasant prompted us to “dream big,” I had already been deep in the throes of asking myself, “What do I really want to do with my life?” and “If I’d had blind faith in myself from the start of my life, who would I have been now?” And most poignantly, “What do I want to believe I am capable of?”
It’s a risky thing to dream. So many of us are afraid to do so for fear of disappointment — and life disappoints so often, it’s completely understandable to feel this way. It’s so much easier to wave off a dream. To say, “that’ll never happen” or “I need to be realistic.” We taper off our grandest visions for ourselves, cutting ourselves off at the root of everything we could be.
But what if we could reach the absolute fulfillment of everything we dream we could be by simply believing we could?
The circumstances I grew up in didn’t allow much room for dreaming. My parents were poor and their parents were poor and their parents were poor. So basically, I come from a long line of survivors. People who moved from one corner of the world to another, doing whatever was within their capabilities to survive, right down to my mother and my father who instilled these same beliefs in me.
So my beliefs of my capabilities have always been: “You must work twice as hard for what you want,” and “Creativity is leisure. If you have time for creative hobbies, then you’re not working hard enough.” If I didn’t have a job in something solid, then I was being weak minded and would likely perish for not finding a more stable job. Something that could solidly pay the bills. Those that made money by pursuing creative endeavors were the exception, not the rule.
And yet here I’ve been — considering myself a creative person but never allowing myself to make time for creativity because it wasn’t productive. Here I was — pursuing writing stories that I felt would be more lucrative and less of a waste of time. Here I was — working a soul-sucking job for 14 years that paid me next to nothing, and for which I was often told I should be grateful because it helped put bread on the table.
But recently, these therapy sessions where I was being prompted to see myself of worthy of existing, worthy of respect, worthy of asking for what I want, got me thinking, “If the universe were to tell me that it could grant me the life of my dreams, what would I ask for?”
I keep a manifestation journal, and every month during the new moon, I write down the things I wish to manifest. With my mind now full of the fuel I need to find my self-worth, I started taking inventory of what I have been asking for. And let me tell you, I was surprised, but also not, to find that I was curtailing my dreams. I was trying to keep in realistic. Logical. Sensical. I was asking for what I believed I deserved as a person who probably shouldn’t be asking for much and who was always so used to being grateful with the crumbs of life.
Again, the question blasted through my mind, “If the things you wish to manifest in this journal were to be guaranteed to come true, what would you be asking for?” My mind egged me on to be shamelessly honest with myself. “Go wild,” it said.
I then remembered my therapist also egging me on in a similar way during our session two days after the Sagittarius new moon, a session in which I tried to visualize myself as a published author, sitting at Barnes & Noble, people lined up to get my book signed.
Too afraid to fully embody the vision, she said, “Do it. Go there. You’re a New York Times Bestselling Author.”
I haven’t stopped hearing her words looping inside my head since that day.
Due to my self-limiting beliefs, I’ve spent years telling myself, I’ll be a writer in whatever shape or form the universe will grant me. Trad published, self-published, novels, essays, published, unpublished, unknown, published but no one reads my books — I’ll take it. But that mindset was still coming from a place of lack of self-worth and lack of belief in myself. That mindset is still coming from believing that I don’t deserve more than the crumbs that life has to offer me.
But if I’m a person like everyone else is a person, and if I believe every one else deserves to dream and to have all those dreams come true, does that not also apply to myself?
Maybe. Maybe I’ve arrived at a place in my life where I can stand up tall and say, “I deserve!” with my whole chest. Maybe I’m at a place where I can ask for what I want. Because I’m here. I exist. I’m a human being full of value and light, and I can be for the universe and the universe can be as much for me as it is for everyone else.
Maybe I can stop making myself small. Maybe I can stop dreaming within the margins.
So I finally did it. I wrote in my journal what I really, truly want. I showed up with my hands full of my wildest dreams, without reservations or limitations, and a promise to myself to never taper off my dreams again.
So does that make me delusional? Maybe. But do I care? No. Moving forward, I want to move through the world with such a strong believe that my dreams can come true that I’m basically delusional.
This is my promise to myself from this moment onward, into 2025 and beyond. I will never dream small again. I will let my heart dictate what it wants and chase the mother freaking moon, no matter how far she seems, how out of reach, how unattainable.
If you’ve been tapering off your dreams, then this is your sign to break that habit. We’re made to have our dreams for a reason. And not following these cuts us off at the root of all the majestic ways in which we could boom. Know and believe this in your heart: You are not small, and you deserve the world.
I don’t care what next year looks like — 2025 is for pursuing our dreams. So dream in bold colors. Dream out loud, with your whole chest. Dream like your life depends of it because it does.
This month on the blog
Putting a Spin on Bad Writing Advice
Some writing advice out there is simply not functional anymore. Things like “write what you know” simply don’t work anymore for authors who want to write about fantasy worlds, futuristic civilizations, life on outer space, etc. Plus, we have the internet in the palm of our hands now, and a whole community of writers who are willing to help us redesign literature as we know it. So, it’s time to also reimagine what this advice can sound like in this world of creative trailblazers. Read on to see how we can all put a spin on some outdated writing advice!
How to Maintain a Writing Practice During the Holidays
To say that life gets hectic this time of year, even for those of us who don’t really celebrate the holidays, is putting it lightly. We can end up guilt tripping ourselves for falling out of our writing practice. If you’d really like to give it a fighting chance, this post offers some easy and quick ideas on how to keep your writing muscle trained during the holidays.
Editing sale
I will be announcing a New Year editing sale in January, so stay tuned and check out my Instagram to learn all about that!
What I’ve been into this month
This month I read The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston and it was a delightful read. I love when romance books incorporate magical realism into their plots, and this one was a win for me on all bases: great story, great writing, interesting characters, and lots of heart.
I recently started You, Again by Kate Goldbeck and it is blowing my mind. At first, I’d thought about picking this up but my brain went, “Really? Another romance right after reading a romance?” And I tried to read something else instead. However, I had trouble getting into that, and instead I picked up You, Again and I’m so glad. I’d heard this described as “A retelling of When Harry Met Sally” before, but as someone who puts that iconic Meg Ryan movie on a pedestal, I thought “Yeah. Okay. Pfff.” Boy, am I eating my words right now. If anything was ever going to come close to a retelling of that powerhouse of a romcom film, this book is it. And for me to say that this early on in a book (I’m literally on chapter 5 at the time of writing this!) means something!
And that’s just to show you — follow your intuition! I’m closing out 2024 with a reading bang thanks to going with my gut and picking up the book I should’ve just picked up first.
Also, I made a Yule Log for the first time ever, and it came out amazing! This was also part of my Pockets of Joy self-challenge. I’ve promised myself to bake more this year, just for the joy of it and because baking is a skill I always wanted to develop more.
Next, I’ll be trying to bake a traditional Venezuelan holiday food we call Pan de Jamon — Ham Bread if I translate it literally. Ever since moving abroad, my family has lusted for this holiday treat in our hearts, since it’s hard to find people who’ll make it this time of year. I figured, I want to refine my baking, and I also want to have accessibility to this treat from my culture and childhood, so why not try? I’ll be sure to let y’all know how that endeavor goes.
I’ve been on an old movie kick this month, also as my Pockets of Joy self-challenge (I never let myself watch movies because “I could be doing something better” *eyeroll*). I finally watched Die Hard (my verdict: it’s a Christmas movie, and one I’ll be watching every year during the holidays). The husband and I also rewatched an old favorite, The Fifth Element. I love that movie so much — I could watch it on a loop and never get sick of it, and I will quote it ‘til I die. I also finally watched all of It’s A Wonderful Life (had previously only watched up until the bridge scene which is really a terrible place to stop it at), and I also finally watched Home Alone from beginning to end.
Up next, I plan to rewatch all three hours of The Sound of Music which is a childhood favorite, and a movie my sister and I used to love watching around the holidays.
I have some reservations about the coming year. There are astrologers who predict a stressful year, which honestly, even without astrology, I feel like we can see that coming.
But I’m also hopeful. I feel like a situation is always what you make of it. We survived four years of this madness before, and we can survive it again. And no, I’m not saying to be positive. I’m saying, I think it’ll be what it’ll be. And as Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Or as my grandmother used to say, “The only thing that has no solution is death.” So let’s march on and face the bull head on. Our faith in ourselves and the strength in our community will persevere.
I wish each and every single one of you a 2025 filled with dreams and culminations to all your hard labor. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for having dedicated moments of your life to reading my newsletter. I hope I inspired you in some small way this past year, and I hope to keep bringing you closer to your intuition and the power of your inner light in this new incoming year and for many more after.
Until next time,
Hi there, I’m Maria! I’m a freelance fiction editor assisting women writers in amplifying their voices through their writing. You can find me on Instagram @theintuitivedesk and on Pinterest. Or visit my site www. theintuitivedesk.com to find out more about editing services.