A new chapter of Innermade

A personal update about where I’ve been and where I hope to go.

“Innermade Deeper Cuts” is an extension of the Innermade newsletter to host more personal updates and inspirations behind the project.

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About a year ago, I started winding down on the Innermade project. At first gradually, and then to a complete halt over this past summer.

It came with a lot of guilt. In a lot of ways, this was the worst time to slow down: the account was growing fast and the project seemed to resonate with many. People from all corners of my life were asking me what the next steps were with Innermade, what “my plan” was. 

I found myself in an uncomfortable place. I hadn’t expected Innermade to be understood, let alone accepted or possibly popular. In my deepest of hearts, this project was just my message in a bottle, a spiritual beacon from my current self to my younger self, a wounded child surviving among a family of wounded souls. In this liminal space, I felt I could inject new possibilities into a thread energetically bound by generations of trauma and pain. I could use language as a token to enter the waters of family history—and even alter the story, one word at a time. 

I hoped that the makings contained a key powerful enough to unearth the nuance of change. 

That belief fueled the project, and fueled the person able to send those messages, despite her self-doubt, inner criticism, and fear. 

I realize that I never had a plan with Innermade in the first place, not in the sense that it had a place to go. 

I suppose though, it always had a purpose, and that purpose gives it a place to be. 

Innermade is a space for safe speech and safe thought.

It’s a home for the wounded to nurse their old injuries in order to make room for new strength, new awakenings, and new stories. 

And it’s a practice, a way of being in the world through the lens of connection.  

It began as a small gift from one self to another and is now growing into a wider contribution from my personal container to the world’s. 

I hope this message in a bottle reaches those who most need to hear it, whatever lifetime you’re in, whatever fabric you find yourself woven into. Your thread is connected to mine; we sense each other energetically across invisible planes. 

A change in the direction of the project is coming, the start of a new chapter. But no matter what form Innermade may take or shape it may grow into, the purpose will always be the same, the intention, a constant.

I will keep sending signals through the beacon.

Yours, 
Irisa