The new edge of soft discipline

And the kind of trust it takes to *not* do anything

Welcome! This is the Sunday Soother, a weekly newsletter about compassionate personal growth, practical spirituality, and authentic living, written by me, Catherine Andrews, a life coach, teacher, and writer. Did somebody forward this to you? You can subscribe to the Sunday Soother here.

Happy Sunday, Soothers. As we go towards the winter solstice, and I wrap out a hell of a year (health issues, engaged AND married within six months, taking a sabbatical, trying to figure out where my work is leading me next, my nervous system being fried out knowing Trump will be our president again) I’m up against an old familiar friend/foe:

The push of feeling like I should do more than I might actually be capable of.

And a new guest is making itself known, too:

The softer, new kind of discipline I’m instead choosing to turn towards, this time.

I’ve been writing on the internet in some form or another for about 30 years (WTF, btw). Much of that time were private blogs for friends, not aimed with the goal of professionalizing anything. I’ve been writing the Sunday Soother for… probably about 8 years now, if I had to guess. It too started as a hobby for friends and a writing practice for me; eventually became a little brand that could; and has been the cornerstone of my business for the last 5 years.

At first, even starting a weekly newsletter was a halting process. I was in what I’ve dubbed “creative recovery” — coming out of a hole of C-PTSD shame that stunted my writing and left me nervous and timid, unable to believe that what I had to write had any worth to it. I was in serious writers block for years, probably from my late 20s to mid 30s. The false starts were plenty, the doubt was deep.

But the Soother guided me out of it. Having a goal (write one newsletter every Sunday) helped create consistent routines for me, something that re-built, brick by brick, the steps back to my self-worth.

Every time I published a newsletter or got a kind reply from a new reader from my growing audience, my heart glowed just a bit more, and I felt my pride and worth and resolve deepen.

It was hard, at that time, sticking to a schedule. I was used to flying by the seat of my pants, not committing to anything, and very avoidant overall. I was like a wary animal who wanted love and attention, but could only sniff around the edges of it, skeptical and fearful of anything that might try to anchor me.

But the discipline of a weekly publishing schedule gave me the steadiness and stability I needed at the time, and helped me see myself as reliable, able to do challenging things. I knew exactly what to do: By Saturday evening at the latest, I had to put together an essay that I felt proud of, some links that I thought would help people, dump it into Tinyletter/Mailchimp/Substack (oh, the changing platforms we must keep up with!) and schedule it. Readers were counting on me, you see! But more than that, I was counting on me. I was becoming proud of who I was, and that consistency contributed to it.

Nearly a decade of this process later, and I find myself coming up against a different edge.

I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I felt this knowing poke up against my side like a sharp corner probably at least two years ago:

Writing the Soother had become another obligation, and I wasn’t doing it out of consistency or pride.

I was doing it because I felt I had to, because I thought a lot of my business depended on it, and because “staying consistent” was what responsible people did and how we grew businesses.

I’ve written a lot in the past couple of years I’m extremely proud of, but I also have done plenty of writing that was more paint-by-numbers than anything else. I know I’m a pretty good writer; I can sit down and bang out a decent essay on almost anything, as long as I put my mind to it. I don’t think I’ve written anything awful, ever, truly.

But too many of those essays were lacking what I can only refer to as the spark — the feeling behind them, that they were words that HAD to pour forth. Topics I couldn’t stop turning over in my mind, and needed to turn to the page to understand and process.

You know. Soul.

More essays than not in the past couple of years have felt to me like they had a more check-the-box flavor to them; I was guessing at what people might want to read about, or I saw another Substack author write about something that could be a good topic for me, so I took my own swing at it. I’d often do this on Monday mornings with a sense of resigned obligation, rushing through the writing; it was just time to sit down and pound out another essay before I moved on to an ever-growing checklist. I think the essays I’ve written in the past couple of years were good and useful, but I can’t always say that all of them were truly, truly, from my heart.

The consistency and routine that had helped me heal and rebuilt a sense of worth and discover awe and wonder in exploring the world around me? It’d become, as it so often can with expectations, a bit more of a trap.

And so now I find myself up against a new edge of learning.

Back in my 30s, adhering to the weekly routine of publishing a new essay every week was what my heart and mind needed at the time. The discipline was good for me. I needed it. It built my self-trust and my capacity. I’m grateful for it. It was right.

Now, I sense I’m being invited into a new era, a new kind of discipline, a softer one.

This is the discipline to trust that it is safe for me only to write here when truly called to.

When I have something I simply cannot stop thinking about, and can only be understood by turning to the page.

Something I know that others need to hear, specifically from me and my experience in it.

Not on a weekly schedule.

And that it is okay if that only happens when it happens, whether it’s twice a month, once a month, or even less.

Trusting this? This too, is discipline.

But it’s the discipline of release of control and of surrender, a karmic lesson I get called deeper and deeper into every year.

What happens to the flow of life when we don't put it on a schedule of output, of production, that capitalism has trained us into?

What happens to my business and my writing when I only write when I feel called, not on any sort of calendar agenda that I efficiently produce?

This is hard for me. It’s actually easier for me to do more and work more, than to stop and listen to my energy levels and inspiration and create from that place. My brain has been trained quite well under the “putting more in, means you get MORE out of it, so, ERGO! you gotta do more” model.

But I don’t think this is quite true anymore (actually, was it ever true, or have we just been tricked because it makes us more productive and efficient??), and I want to play with it.

A year or two ago I had this vision of sorts in a meditation.

It was of me on a beach, standing extremely still.

I wasn’t doing much, and I was alone, except for palm trees that surrounded me.

But then, in the vision I had some sort of deep knowing or energy moving through me. It rippled through my body like a series of golden waves, and then it moved into the ground, spreading out wide, vibrating the earth and the palm trees.

Whatever I was anchoring into in the vision, was rippling out.

I was standing stiller than ever before, but my energy was going further and reaching more.

I tell myself these days I’m disciplined because I returned from sabbatical, and, motivated by the grief and despair and fury of the Trump election, returned right back into a regular schedule of content creation.

But the reality is that energy, that return, came less out of discipline and more out fear and scarcity and doing what I was comfortable with and what I’ve known.

So what if I adhere to the new discipline of trusting?

Instead of racing to my laptop every Monday, and forcing myself to sit down and write just because it says so on the calendar, what if I let myself wander in the woods. Turn thoughts and concepts over in my mind. Get lost in books and interesting podcasts and conversations.

And when something coalesces, when a spark is lit, when the channeling is ready, when I feel that absolutely sense of urgency in my heart and body, then I turn to the Soother?

Can I trust this? Can I turn my discipline away from schedule, and towards whatever may be?

I think so. I’m ready to try.

And what about you?

The whole point of this exploration here certainly isn’t to dismiss the power of discipline where you keep consistent and do things on a regular basis. I firmly believe there is a time and a place for that, and it can be extremely healing to prove to yourself the power of dedication and consistency in a practice.

It’s more to explore the discernment between the two types of discipline I’m talking about and figure out what season you might be in.

You might need more consistent, on-a-schedule discipline if…

• You’re working through healing self-worth and self-sabotage

• You’re in a season of rebuilding or recovery

• You need an anchor that gives you a sense of grounding in a time that overall feels more chaotic

• You’re working on planting the beginning seeds of a project that need consistent nurturing and your attention

You might instead be ready to embrace the discipline of trust and surrender if…

• You know you can sit down and finish projects — self-sabotage isn’t too much of a thing anymore

• You’re in a creative or spiritual exploration phase that might need space for the kind of spontaneity that can foster deeper insights, connections, and flow

• You feel called to rest or recharge and are ready to test and see if your need for downtime may set the stage for deeper creativity and output later

• You want to prioritize energy alignment over productivity and are ready to experiment with flow

If you’re resonating with this and wondering where you are, I created these journal prompts to see if they can guide you into a deeper knowing:

• What feels more challenging for me right now: committing to structure or letting go of control? What might that reveal about the type of discipline I need?

• What season of life am I in? How do I know I’m in this season? What kind of discipline could this season call for?

• Do I need grounding through consistency or expansion through surrender? What signs am I noticing?

• Do I feel drained, burned out, or like I’m just going through the motions in a particular area of my life? Could stepping back create space for inspiration?

• What would it feel like to trust myself to act when I feel genuinely called, rather than sticking to a rigid schedule? Am I holding onto a structured practice because of fear or a belief that I ‘should,’ even though it no longer feels fulfilling?

• What sparks joy, curiosity, or inspiration for me right now? How could I create space to follow those feelings?

So, here I am, standing at the edge of a new experiment: trusting myself to know when to create and when to pause.

Trusting that what I offer, when it comes from a place of genuine inspiration, will ripple out farther than anything I could force.

And trusting that you, dear Soother, are navigating your own edge, too—deciding when discipline serves you and when surrender calls.

May we all find the courage to choose the season we’re in and embrace the kind of discipline that truly nourishes us.

What this means for the Soother: I’ll still write occasional free essays, when called, but likely they’ll be every few weeks rather than weekly — or, who knows?! Gonna try to practice what I preach. As I work on The Perimenopause Reset and go into the Winter Solstice, things might be quiet around here for the next month or two. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll still get the weekly Tarot forecasts and regular 5 on a Friday/Wednesday Wellness posts, nothing will change for you there.

Reads & Recs

Let’s bring back a few links, too. I have really struggled with this section for a while, not only because it really used to focus on things I was buying and enjoying. But honestly, I’m so fucking tired of buying stuff. 90% of the content on the internet these days feels like something trying to trick me into hitting the buy button. So as I stopped buying so much stuff… I had less stuff to recommend! But still, we’ve got a few links of good stuff I really enjoyed around the web this week.

🌌 This post from Carrie Bennett, one of my favorite educators on quantum and circadian biology, neatly sums up the spiritual and the physical importance of winter and the absence of light. Dark is healing, in more ways than one, if we can allow ourselves it.

🤣 Nina from the Sunday Soother Slack posted this reel, and we all laughed and laughed. IYKYK.

❄️ From my friend Arlene, 9 Ways to Embrace Winter—Even if You Think You Hate It: “By reshaping your mindset, you can learn to love winter, sub-zero wind chills and all.”

📌 A great piece on becoming ‘collapse aware.’

😢 I liked this article, from Claudia at the Recomendo newsletter

Turning toward sadness
This article, written by clinical psychologist Beth Kurland, shifted my perspective on the necessity of processing raw emotions. She describes sadness as "a bit like food that needs to be digested in order to move through you. When left undigested, it can sit there for a long time and cause unintended consequences”. The author provides six powerful "views" or vantage points to help process these heavy emotions. The one that works best for me is the Audience View, which helps to loosen the grip of the story I've attached to the emotion. The practice involves imagining yourself as an audience member observing your experience and then distinguishing between your raw emotions and your thoughts. For example, you might say: "There is sadness, and I am aware of thoughts telling me that I should be over this by now." This helps me label emotions as emotions and thoughts as thoughts, recognizing that neither of these are facts, but rather "food" to digest.

That's it for this week, all my love for the week ahead,
xo
Catherine

I'm Catherine, the author and host of The Sunday Soother, a newsletter and podcast dedicated to practical spirituality, authentic living and compassionate personal growth. I'm also a spiritual mentor and teacher working with sensitive humans to step into energy, magic and authenticity.

You can find me on my website catherinedandrews.com, or @catherineandrews on Instagram.