Mary’s Morning Musings: En Route to Las Vegas to see Taylor Swift

When I was a 7-year-old girl, I dreamt of publishing books.

Perhaps poetry, research, “Mary’s how-to’s” — it did not matter the purpose.

I simply loved sharing ideas and the power that writing and storytelling have to open people’s minds to other perspectives and new ideas. As a kid, I always journaled privately, and only time could tell what ideas or topics would intrigue me or which life experiences would catalyze me to feel ready to share my writing in more public forums.

Little Maryboo, I am sincerely sorry to break it to you—but it will be your Mom’s death in 20 years.

Sigh — I know.

To catch you up, we’re 27 now, and it is what it is. We’re okay. And we’re actually in love with life.

And transparently, we’re objectively thriving.

This is just our journey.

Recently, we realized just how much grief our body carries — beyond mom’s death. In about 5 years, your entire family will experience a lot of pain and loss.

Mom will be #7 of her 10 siblings, on top of our extended family and Dad’s side, to have her life taken away from her prematurely.

I’m sorry.

But we are here.

This is our journey. I know you’re a little in shock — years later, I still experience aftershocks. But again, we will be okay.

We’re actually very excited about this part of the story because now we’re narrating. We’ve reached the part of the story where we step into our light and energy — in the exact way, you and I always dreamed of.

We’re living our dream life — while healing — and so, we’re okay.

Oop — got distracted. Back to everyone else in the room.

Over the last year, I began expressing my unfiltered “Mourning Thoughts” on my private Instagram Close Friends story to aid in my healing.

Last month, to honor my mom’s one-year anniversary in heaven, I published my first blog post on what life on earth has been like since her passing. Writing about my love and continued love for my mom has empowered me to continue evolving how I share my voice and inner dialogue in the world across mediums. Right now, I am the only one who gets to hear, love, and appreciate my internal dialogue. And by writing and sharing my stories and my own narrative, I hope to help bridge the gap between how I see myself and how the universe plus everyone in it sees me.

I recently set an intention to carve out the time and mental capacity to fall back in love with writing and storytelling, and I’ll continue to experiment with the art of writing by playing around with devices like tone, sentence structure, etc. On the day-to-day level, I’m starting by just simply sharing my voice and perspective more and more publically.

On my personal Instagram, I continue to share my now “Morning Thoughts,” which tend to be the more coherent sides of my stream-of-conscious thinking. Lately, it’s been happening first thing in the morning as I’m getting ready for life. I have noticed a trend of these coherent bursts of inner dialogue happening while my feet are in motion — like while playing basketball, walking my dog, pacing, running — or while sitting still but in a moving vehicle — like on a plane, on the Tube, or in a car.

I wrote “Morning thoughts 💭” below in my iPhone’s Notes, starting at 6:00 AM while sitting in the backseat of my family’s car en route from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to see Taylor Swift. My sister and I are huge Swifties. Save your judgment — because we’re not apologizing about it. I’m now at my family’s retreat house in Las Vegas finishing the introduction and closing.

I consider this writing piece to be somewhat experimental as I played with the constraint of time in capturing what I consider to be an artistic or exploratory thinking brain. Anticipate imperfect logic, typos, moments of incoherency, and so on.

And note if you see a black heart, it was originally written as a “dark red” heart emoji #justpersonalbrandingthings.

So, without further ado, enjoy my unfiltered thinking from my ride over.

Cheers, all!

With love,

Mary ♥️️

Morning thoughts 💭

👾 Time & space context:

• 6am en route to Vegas
• My dad is playing disco

🧘‍♀️ Mindfulness body check-in:

• Body energy does not feel balanced
• Had 2–3 days of off wellness targets (sleep and nourishment)
• Lately: Needed several breathing interventions over the last few days

⏩ TDLR: Wrapping up my SoCal trip. I’m experiencing so much love and having so much fun in my slice of life ♥️️

TLDR by section:

1. Context: Gonna try out sharing my conversations with the universe here 🤯
2. Recent Breakthrough: I had a breakthrough in my fundamental relationship with time ⏳
3. The big question on my mind: How might we help break inter generational trauma via scaling inner child healing in order to drive multi-dimensional systemic social change? 👍🏼
4. Mary’s March check-in: I told the universe doing great, but I still need to breathe more 🧘‍♀️
5. Garden of Ideas: I have a lot of ideas growing roots ♥️
6. Dating Fast Reflections: I am reflecting on about what love means to me in all forms, and I got questions 🤔🏳️‍🌈

🌅 CONTEXT

• I’m testing out sharing my work in-process thinking, musings, and imaginative thinking with different audiences (i.e., social media) in case it helps forms any connections if your brains or plant ideas 💡🌽
• Feel free to comment, DM, your POV at any time. My big breakthrough as of late is around my relationship with time.

🕰️ RECENT BREAKTHROUGH:

Relationship to time:

• I have more time than I used to think.
• My lifelong sense of agency is fueled by my rampant exposure to death and decade of unhealed grief. Details in my first blog post.
• We live one second at a time and there is a limit to what our mind can hold per second. Right now, I think one conscious thought per second.
• A lot of things can be explained (or commonly trusted) via science (esp. physics, mind, perception) + art (esp. creativity, storytelling) + faith (esp. universe-level connections, unexplainable divine interventions)
• I never took physics so more on this later, but the universe is always in motion. And it seems like everything comes back to time and space. To me, I see nearly everything happening on earth as a reflection of humans trying to bend time and space and rebalance motion.
• In my unique life, right now, I feel that my superpowers come out in how I make connections between science, art, and faith. More on this later.

🤔 THE BIG QUESTION ON MY MIND:

How might we help break inter generational trauma via scaling inner child healing in order to drive multi-dimensional systemic social change?

Another reframe:

• How might we bring inner child healing to the masses to order to heal generations and rewrite literal history?
• Why is this important: The value of this sits across a spectrum. On one end of spectrum is life and death. On the other end is human (and more broadly) life livelihood.
• We’re not forgetting planetary constraints but planting that thought in the garden for later.

Ideas fueled by my worldview:

1. The big idea for my unique life role: Can we accelerate the transformation of social norms while reimagining the ecosystem of systems that built them? And if so, at what pace? In this reimagining of ecosystems of systems, how might we accelerate the value that each system was designed for while reducing the unintended consequences in order to heal on the spectrum of saving lives to improving livelihoods outcomes?
2. In-process therory of change for my unique role: If I (1) can plant thoughts at scale using the [X] mediums to connect with [X] audiences, then (2) I can help us collectively reframe the common understanding of [generational trauma] and role of [inner child healing] in people’s lives at scale, (3) so that we can see [X social norms change], [X individual beliefs evolve], and [the role of X systems get reimagined/rebuilt] over [X] time.
3. This is my work-in-process latest thinking for how we and I might save lives in the worst case.

Possible modes for my impact:

1. Since I am also constrained by time and space, my focus is on 1) second-to-second mindfulness 2) my well-being targets 3) navigating grief and healing 4) energy prioritization.
2. My intention is to 1) continue finding the right people and environments to release and fan the flames of my ideas and creativity and unlock my expansive thinking as these ideas further develop 2) Continue unlocking the languages I can speak in fluently and/or converse in — in terms of timeless visual and written mediums like movies and writing/books/research/etc. as it pertains to art, science, faith.

My status update to the universe: In other words, I’m doing great. I’m right on track and my soul is so full ♥️

🍀 “Mary’s March” Check-in:

A) Spiritual practice:

Manifestation practice goal:

1. Feeling unapologetic ✅

• Why? I’ve generally feel badass on the inside and to some degree have been seen like that on the outside. I’m very open about how imposter syndrome has played a role throughout my entire life. Internally and externally, I used to consciously and subconsciously apologize for being badass. I’m 27, and it’s take ~20+ years to see this shift. And I have invested a lot of money over the years in unlearning my subconscious beliefs that have basically led me to believe that I need permission to be who I naturally am. I can elaborate on my influences here if anyone’s interested.
• All in all, I’m really happy because I feel like I hit my target here because on the inside I don’t think about this so much now. And I feel like I can just live authentically. *Love this for me.* I really didn’t know that I wasn’t living fully authentically. I can go into that another time. And externally, I hear people calling me unapologetic — which is cool because it’s validating my theory of change here around I just needed narrate my own story and point of view to the universe more explicitly and in different languages (i.e., visual, audio, etc.) So basically, inside and out, I’m still a badass just no longer apologizing for it lmao.

1. Slowing down ❌

• Why not? Though I’m improving on my mindfulness, I still literally forget to breathe. But it’s okay. I only had this time breakthrough a couple of days ago. And I’m working on this with my manifestation coach, so I have the right interventions in place. Yesterday, my friend told me about breathing techniques, which could maybe help so for now, mindful breathing practice needs improvement.🧘‍♀️

B) Earthly practice:

1. Nose ring stud ❌

• Why not? Didn’t have enough time in LA, and I prefer to get pierced by same girl who did my other piercings. So I will shift this goal to April or May when I’m back in LA. ♥️

GARDEN OF IDEAS

1. How might we help more people unlock their genius — based on the fundamental assumption that genius inherently resides in all of us? In letting this idea gain roots, I started sponging in the works of societally-accepted “geniuses.” I talked about this with my Uber driver who was listening to Mozart around how classical music is essentially math, and I created a list of societally-accepted geniuses that I’d like to one day be associated with once I can help “scale” this idea of “genius.” I have theses around how the universe is rapidly evolving how I use my life to serve, and it’s cool 😊
2. How might we/I further develop my understanding around my portfolio of impact? In letting this idea gain roots, I shared my evolving perspective of my impact north ⭐️. It’s also cool, and I can feel the energy in my body moving around how this idea is starting to blossom. Again — it’s time and space. But I can see a lot of the pictures in my mind, and I just need to find the right communication tools to let it out when the time is right. The pictures I see are the universe zooming to the atomic level like in powers of 10. Except I see it with key inputs/outputs/key players/unwritten societal conventions and drivers. It’s sooo pretty and multi-dimensional in my head, and I’m trying to see if/how I can draw lightweight version of this picture already, so it doesn’t slip away. But I think this could even be an art piece. So I’ll just see how this one blossoms.
3. What does nonattachment mean to me? I think a lot of my latest thinking has been fueled behind my relationship to life. And while I wasn’t completely aware of it, now I am, and I think I have a nonattachment practice. I’ll probably figure out how this relates to my concept behind “Aspiring TBA.”

♥️ DATING FAST REFLECTIONS

• Context: I love my mind, heart, and self so much. And I want to world to better understand me and how I see life, so I am working on how my body/heart/mind/soul communicate to the universe so they can tell the world. I can explain my thinking on my narrative later, but reflections first.
• Dating fast intention: Altogether, I want to attract abundance so that abundance can move through my life so I can basically help give, share, shape, and ideally scale abundance.
• Intentions for a romantic soulmate: I have breakthroughs on what I’m looking for each day. And it’s summing to: I intend to manifest a romantic soulmate who aligns with my own energy and intentions, so that we can overall live a happy long life of abundance with as much day-to-day fun within control.
• Day 1–3 context: I have been having some big breakthroughs on how I think about the role of love in my life. Visually, it looks like the yin and yang sign and there are more love philosophies I have relating to “being like water” that want to go into that now. Maybe at the end of my fast.
• Reflections on platonic soulmates: I have plenty of platonic soulmates and continue to see more flow into my life, which I’m so blessed for. As I reflect on what I can learn here to bring into romance, it comes down to who makes time and space the most safe, fun, and playful. I have nerds across heart/body/mind/soul, and I’m most protective around the spirit of my inner child, my imagination, and my ability to in sum, continue to live life through the eyes of a child ♥️ That’s my core belief/heart value/hard boundary because that is my most innocent, happy sense. And the best part is: I actually don’t need to think about this because my body and intuition can feel this. I just need to mindfully breathe and listen. I believe that my soulmate’s energy alignment fundamentally senses this need in me too.
• My vantage point: I see life as a negotiation with the universe and my table stake is that I need to feel safe. And as I continue to reparent, I need to keep my inner child safe because there’s no relationship worth losing my relationship with my inner child for. She is in me, and she is me. I know the universe knows this, so I’m just writing it out in case they forget.
• What I’m looking for now: I have a lot of ideas around what aligned energy and intentions looks like in terms of heart, body, mind, soul — but let’s just give this time to see how this evolves. I think there are a lot of “earthly” things that can be shifted around, but to me, a lot it comes back to: Who do I want to live the most fun life with for the longest period of time? I need to better understand myself, my human needs, and what love means to me.
• My work-in-process equation for lifelong love: I have no idea who the universe will bring into my life and when, but I (and the Supremes) don’t believe in hurrying love because it is impossible to rush the universe and your soulmate. Right now, I think it comes down to is:

A + B + C + D = lifelong love

A) I work on my energy and intention

B) They work on their energy and intention

C) unknown factors (i.e., new information, life happens)

D) divine timing and intervention

I honestly don’t know if that makes sense because it’s been so long since i

I can control A and only observe C. Bae controls B. Universe and God controls D. For A) There’s the added nuance of recently coming out as queer and my evolving narratives of what love means to me. I simply haven’t had enough time to reflect on what love means to me (in all forms — internal/self, external/platonic, romantic, communal++)

• Knowledge gap: I don’t have enough information around what healthy love and marriages look like, let alone queer ones, and I’ve never experienced being in love. But I’d like to be one day. I don’t actually trust a lot of common knowledge around love and marriage since there’s a whole industry around failing relationships and the majority of relationships end in divorce, so I want to figure out my own understanding and intentions to start. Inputs and coaching welcome, especially queer women of color.
• OWIB Perspective: Yesterday, I shared my POV at that point in time. In the moment, I accidentally skipped this part of my narrative that I’m currently reflecting on as it pertains to love and sexuality but I think that means I can reflect on it more:

All this translated: I am having so much fun and in sum want to keep having fun for the rest of my life. Right now, I need time to figure myself out. And with time, I’ll let the universe take care of the rest.

Other —

• I love my dog & he’s coming back to Seattle with me yay

Other-other —

• I have 20 blog post ideas and the big ones coming up are about mental health, my talk, my coming out story

I feel so much love and energy towards the world and universe. I’m physically tired right now so need to continue recharge by resting, nourishing, and energy cleansing.

👾 Time & space context:

• About 10am now and just arrived to Vegas so wrapping my 4 hour morning thoughts up
• Dad’s music is more upbeat

🧘‍♀️ Mindfulness body check-in:

• We got McDonalds but I only drank the OJ, so still off my wellness targets lol. More to come.

Thanks for reading! ❤️

Parting thoughts and asks

Snapshots of my world and space in Las Vegas

As I shared in the beginning, this is my second post ever.

My heart, body, mind, and soul need to express themselves. And my heart, mind, and soul have fun writing as an outlet, so I intend to do more of it.

Your feedback in any form simply encourages me to keep at it as I figure out my voice, my story, and how I show up in my everyday moments. So if your body, heart, mind, or soul experienced a reaction in any way, I would love to hear how.

Observing and hearing other points of view helps me interpret information on how the universe sees me. Some reading this may translate my writing or even what my energy communicates into the following colloquial sayings:

• “She’s an overthinker.”
• “She reads into things too much.”
• “She has no chill.”
• “She needs to breathe more.”
• “She has a lot going on.”

All of the above is true and can be true at the same time. The designer in me sees feedback in any form as a golden nugget of information. So feedback does not create permanent damage — though it could momentarily hurt my feelings — because not only have I achieved a new milestone in my emotional regulation skills as of late, but I also fundamentally believe I am so many things, can be so many things, and can identify as so many things at the same time — the best way to put it is: I am.

I have my own life philosophies, and a few big influences are my spirituality, upbringing, education, platonic soul mates, and day-to-day environment. I won’t get into this now, but while I have you — here are two resources that fundamentally inform how I live from moment to moment:

• In 2013, my mentor Colleen Torres introduced me to Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. TDLR: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, we are what we think about. Please watch this over and over again — like I do. :)
• In 2018, I read A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose because it was #1 on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday booklist. And I often reflect on what I took away and what was too hard to completely comprehend at 22. Until today and looking ahead, Tolle’s writing has and continues to influence my personal philosophies, life purpose, and moment-to-moment interactions. Today, I manifest meeting or even working with Eckhart Tolle one day.

If you want to have a conversation on life philosophies, we can and totally should. I would love it — and maybe love you lmao. Consider this your personal open invite to hit my line.

Whenever you are ready, let me know. I’ll send the calendar invite. 😉

So how might we chat?

If your body, heart, mind, or soul reacted to this piece in any way, at some point please let me know somehow. I get and interpret information via digital mediums like likes/comments either on Medium or on Instagram, texts, phone calls, emails —and human mediums such as just letting me know the next time you see me. To me, it’s all data and means something different.

Some digital options for how you and I can connect:

1. Medium: If you like my writing or thinking, please subscribe here on Medium to stay updated as I share new pieces.
2. Instagram: My personal Instagram for friends I know is @marycserafin. I love making friends from the internet, so if you choose to follow me, I’d love if you could DM me and say hi. Otherwise, I have a periodic regimen to clear out unknown followers who I wouldn’t say hi to in public. Gotta keep IG safe — naw mean. This was my intervention decision after a two-year social media fast from 2019–2021.
3. Website: If you want to see what I’m up to at large, visit my website at www.marycserafin.com. At the point of publishing this post, it’s under-construction with a rebrand in process for summer 2023.
4. Email: For anything else, send me an email at mary.c.serafin@gmail.com.

If you reach out, I will love you. And it’s not impossible that I may fall in love with you either platonically or romantically ha — especially if we have intentional conversations around life philosophies and intentions.

And those who have asked outright or are just wondering: I’m still navigating coming out. Right now, I know I am mostly attracted to energy. In general, I have a 90-98% hunch that my romantic soulmate identifies as a woman or non-binary. To me, that’s enough certainty to identify as a gay woman — at minimum definitely queer. When it feels right, I’ll share my coming out story. I can already share my reflection on my OWIB story — so more to come.

And if your instinct reading that is “I hope she ends up with a man” — please keep that thought to yourself for now and don’t reach out just yet lol. 👀

With more love,

Mary