Gratitude and adoration for all that we want to return to & all that we already are
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🌿 by The Easeful Place.
Happy Venus day. I hope you are holding love near today. Today’s letter is starting out with a burst of gratitude for the love, messages, and excitement received from the announcement about the ‘Return to Self’ journal workbook release. This community has breathed life into the work as well as the heart, so, much gratitude to you for sharing in our joy for this milestone and workbook. What a beautiful gathering this will be. It feels like the right moment to unravel a little of the meaning behind this project, heart work, I’ve been quietly working on for most of this year.
The personal significance of return–
There is nothing to become, there is only daily invitation to compassionately be.
This is a deep-seated belief that guided this journal’s creation process. The title of the journal workbook is dedicated to our return, both collective and inner. Returning is a cyclical event. I imagine it as an ongoing homecoming, where all versions of ourselves reunite and are granted space and peace to simply be. Creating space for return is also necessary, gentle or demanding work, work that feels deprioritised, unimportant, and hard to access when our living can be so full of things not ours and void of rest.
Returning is decolonial work, because it is a brave undoing and unravelling. It is restoring ease, kindness, generosity, it is returning to honesty when we have been socialised to be dishonest with self and others. It is about returning to asking life to widen our capacity to loving and seeing deeper, returning to our memory and to our imagination, to our past, present, and future selves deepest wishes. The return is how we learn to show up again and again and again, with more knowing and more willingness.
‘Returning’ has many definitions, and this journal workbook guides us towards reaching into our own definitions.
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Why did I create this workbook?
Journalling has been a defining theme in my life for ages. My journalling practice is almost the same age as me, but I truly began devoting time to daily pages in 2015 and have kept up my decade-long practice. After redirecting my path from the comfy but misaligned life I had built in Birmingham after moving from London, (the city I was born and raised in), self-reflection paired with curiosity about the world as it is and might be led me to return to my truths and interests. I was deeply drawn to a slow, intentional life of my highest choosing and began writing about and within it.
Through journeying around the world with (too many of) my journals, I progressed from filling pages with observations to intentionally investigating through curated journal prompts. I began sharing them online and with fellow journallers. In this time, I’ve written journal prompts for a living, facilitated writing and journal workshops for The Easeful Place and other organisations, curated prompts for almost 2K subscribers in a globally read newsletter, contributed to wellness platforms and international publications like SELF, Well+Good, The Good Trade on positive self talk and self/collective care, and most importantly, introduced people to this practice to remind them that compassion and open-heartedness takes time and an intentional meeting of self.
Everywhere I land I learn that prioritising this time and attention to self is never selfish but a way to help me better connect, listen and be in service around the world.
Whether that service is an offering of calm in the presence of language but not energetic barriers or the service is holding space for soulful community gatherings, it is the result of reflection. Journalling and integrating mindful practices into my journey has a lot to do with this.
May 14th marked 4 years since I got on my first one-way flight, beginning my journey living around the world, finding self and bonds in new parts of Earth that become dear to me and my story. Self-noticing became centric to my life while removed from all that was familiar and routine. I have journals that document my fears, journals that document the words that strengthened me, journals that document the highs as well as the lows, journals with pages that are crumpled by ocean water, and pages that are filled with questions that my future self can return to with learning and experience.
I dived into all of this while curating this guided mindful experience, because I personally know that the journey back to self is not neat, linear, or translatable but it is worth it. Sometimes it is the question within the question. The sensation of a word as it rushes back to your memory, or the sensation when you see the time and place scrawled at the top of an old journal entry. All of this has a worthy place on the page as it does in our reclamation of our selves and expression. In a sentence, I intimately know the power of returning and I dedicate my time and sacred creativity to helping others access this with as much encouragement and kindness as I know exists and expands abundantly in the world.
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The celebration writing event to welcome the 'Return to Self' guided journal workbook into our worlds, Saturday June 7th, guided by Amara Amaryah.
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Who is the ‘Return to Self’ Guided Journal Workbook for?
Those who want to remember themselves - mind, body, and spirit
Those who want more structure in their journalling routine
5-minute journallers and voice-note journallers
Life-long journallers and newbies to the practice
Those looking to merge their journal practice with mindful exercises and practices
Those who want to gift someone they love with guidance for self-rediscovery
Those who live in tune with the seasons and know it is time for their return and new cycle.
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A playlist request
A journal session can be done anywhere - to the sounds of waves or to the sound of silence. Just in case you’d like to create a vibe for your practice, we’re providing a curated journal playlist to accompany this journal workbook.
What songs would go along with your journal practice? The playlist currently includes a mix of instrumentals and soulful tracks from SAULT, Yussef Dayes, Ego Ella May, Jordan Rakei and more - we’d love to hear any additions that you’d add. No gatekeeping, drop any gems in the community space for us all to groove to.
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Community corner
This week in the community corner we’re sharing the METAMORPHOSIS day retreat in Playa del Carmen at Casa Sirena, a space lovingly curated by our friend Jamila (@earthling_era) and fellow space holders. If you’re in the PDC or Quintana Roo area on May 21st, feel free to check it out.
Our friends at Trust + Travel are hosting an October writing retreat in Brazil with the Taiye Selasi - read more about what to expect at this retreat.
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Launch Event for the 'Return to Self' Journal
Saturday 7th June, 2025 - 10:30 am - 12pm CST. Save your spot below.
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If these letters, events and our journal offerings are aligned and supportive, please consider sharing it with a friend. Feel free to share the invite to our launch event with your friends and community who you'd like to share space with. Gratitude in advance for helping us get the word out. Until the next letter.
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​Love,
Amara Amaryah
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