238. Sacred Storytelling: 4 Healing Narratives For Fire Horse Season

238. Sacred Storytelling: 4 Healing Narratives For Fire Horse Season

Fire Horse season has arrived, and it carries a very specific kind of heat: accelerator energy.

Whatever you’ve got going on, life-giving or life-draining, aligned or chaotic, Fire Horse energy tends to increase the speed. Which means this is not the moment to “kind of” clean up your patterns. This is the moment to choose what you’re feeding, because the flames are listening.

In this episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, I shared four healing narratives that help you harness this energy in a way that creates momentum, focus, consistency, and fulfillment, instead of burnout, frenzy, and self-sabotage.

Let’s break them down.

Healthy Fire vs Chaotic Fire: What Are You Actually Feeding?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between:

• fire that keeps you warm

• fire that burns the house down

Healthy fire often looks like:

• You wake up with real enthusiasm for your day

• You love challenging yourself (workouts, deep work, skill-building)

• You make steady progress and sometimes even surprise yourself

• You feel physically tired but mentally hyped because you showed up

• You crave completion and follow-through because it feels satisfying, not punishing

Chaotic fire can look productive from the outside, but it often includes:

• scattered commitments

• over-scheduling

• proving, pushing, forcing

• “busy” as identity

• cycles of intense output followed by shutdown

Fire Horse season asks: Is your fire directed… or is it just loud?

The 4 Healing Narratives for Fire Horse Season

1) “I choose to clap for myself, even when nobody else does.”

If your momentum depends on outside applause (likes, praise, scale changes, money, validation from someone you love), your fire is in danger. Not because you’re weak. Because those sources are inconsistent by design.

This narrative is about becoming the kind of person who can keep showing up even when nobody is watching.

It’s tying your daily actions to:

• your values

• your identity

• the woman you’re becoming behind the scenes

The goal isn’t to become numb to recognition. The goal is to stop outsourcing your flame.

Mantra: I perform for an audience of one: me.

2) “I am unavailable to confuse chaos with progress.”

Fire Horse energy accelerates what already exists. So if you keep mistaking chaos for forward movement, you’ll just create a faster, hotter version of the same loop.

This narrative is about discernment.

Because chaos can wear a very convincing costume:

• new projects

• mentorship containers

• packed calendars

• nonstop calls

• “optimizing social media”

• saying yes out of obligation

But if it dilutes your energy, fragments your focus, and breeds resentment, it’s not progress. It’s noise.

This is the year you become unavailable for fake forward motion.

3) “Focus is a skill, and I practice it consistently over time.”

There’s a war on your attention. Not metaphorically. Practically.

The attention economy profits when you:

• scroll longer

• feel more dysregulated

• consume more sensational content

• lose contact with your inner voice

And when your nervous system is stressed, willpower drops and relief-seeking increases. For many people, that relief-seeking shows up through food.

This narrative is about reclaiming cognitive autonomy: the ability to hear your own desires over the algorithm.

Focus isn’t a personality trait. It’s reps. It’s practice. It’s a muscle.

4) “My fire doesn’t need to be dimmed. It needs to be aimed.”

This is the mic drop.

High-performing women with big dreams often get subtly told:

• you’re too intense

• you care too much

• you’re “proving”

• your ambition needs to be softened

But your fire is not a problem to be solved just because it makes someone else uncomfortable.

Yes, misdirected fire can create chaos. That’s why the first three narratives matter.

But once you can clap for yourself, discern chaos from progress, and build focus, then your fire becomes what it was always meant to be:

directed, devotional, powerful.

Mantra: I don’t dim. I aim.

Quick Recap: The 4 Narratives

1. I choose to clap for myself, even when nobody else does.

2. I am unavailable to confuse chaos with progress.

3. Focus is a skill, and I practice it consistently over time.

4. My fire doesn’t need to be dimmed. It needs to be aimed.

If you embody these, Fire Horse season becomes rocket fuel instead of a wildfire.

Links Mentioned

• Grab Your Free Gift - Know Your Hungers: The Complete Assessment Kit

• Learn More About Food Freedom Fantasy

• Trevor Moawad Book (Negativity Diet / Chapter 5)

• Stephen Forrest, The Inner Sky

Embodied Activations

Activation 1: Clap for Yourself (Daily Celebration)

Choose one method and do it daily for 7 days:

• Journal: “Today I’m clapping for myself because…”

• Voice note to yourself: say your wins out loud

• Celebration song ritual: put on “I Wanna Thank Me” and replay your proudest moment of the day in your body

Prompt:

• If nobody witnessed my effort today, what would I still be proud of?

• What does this prove about who I’m becoming?

Activation 2: Chaos vs Progress (Your Personal Red Flags)

Create two lists.

Chaos looks like (for me):

• (write your specific signs)

Progress looks like (for me):

• (write your specific signs)

Then choose one boundary you’ll practice this week.

Prompt:

• What have I been calling “progress” that is actually just overstimulation?

• What’s one “no” that would instantly protect my fire?

Activation 3: Vote With Your Attention (Focus Reclamation)

For the next 3 days, track this:

1. What grabbed my attention today?

2. How did I feel after consuming it?

3. What do I want my attention to feed instead?

Then choose one swap:

• 10 minutes less scrolling → 10 minutes reading/listening to depth (podcast, audiobook, real book)

• No social media until deep work is done

• “Post and close” rule (no browsing)

Prompt:

• What inputs make me feel inspired, powerful, and present?

• What inputs make me feel fragmented, anxious, or hungry for relief?

Activation 4: Aim Your Fire (The Permission Dance)

Pick one song that makes you feel like all of you.

Set a timer for 3–5 minutes. Dance like you’re giving your ambition permission to exist without apology.

After, write one sentence:

• “This year, I refuse to dim my fire. I will aim it at ______.”

Bonus: Choose one tangible target for your aimed fire:

• one project

• one habit stack

• one health commitment

• one creative output rhythm

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the show. Get ready because we are getting spicy today. My favourite.

And of course we are because we have finally entered into the year of the Fire Horse as of February 17th. I don't know about you, but the last month and a half of our snake year rode me hard. My daily tarot club was death 4 times in a 4 week period. SO many old beliefs and wound patterns and misaligned approaches to life that all needed to get shed.

Painful. Humbling. but also very necessary and liberating on the other side.

Today, I'm sharing 4 healing narratives for fire horse season so you end up with red hot momentum and follow-through... versus burnout or chaos.

I'm going to be sharing:

• What directed, intentional, productive fire versus messy, destructive, chaotic fire looks like.

• The 4 narratives to help you harness this energy so it remains creative, powerful, channeled fire versus its hot mess twin brother. I have saved the best narrative for last and it's going to be a serious mic drop moment for high performing women everywhere.

• How to capitalize on the fire horse energy without burning out or burning down your life.

Even if you don't follow Astrology or the Chinese New years and you're like, "Snakes? Horses? Are we on a farm?" You don't have to follow any of this to some massive wisdom from this episode.

Let's start with the distinction between healthy, productive fire and chaotic, destructive fire.

Sometimes, it can be hard to tell the difference. Like, is that fire going to keep us warm tonight or is going to get out of control and burn down the house?

It's the same with a person who has a lot of fire. Is that fire driving them towards an expansive vision, coming from enthusiasm and zest for life? Or... is it a bit of a trauma response? Is it rooted in trying to prove something at all costs?

Is your own inner fire giving you an energy boost and making you more focused and dangerous as you move towards your goals? Or, are you one more fiery week away from burnout and self-sabotage because it was too much, unfocused, and being lit with the wrong kindling.

I was chatting with someone recently and they talked about how the Fire Horse is going to accelerate ANYTHING you have going on... positive, negative, life-giving or life-draining.

My intention is that this episode gives you the exact four keys that will ensure this fire remains healthy so you're accelerating the positive and life-giving. And when fire is HEALTHY, here's what it looks like:

• You generally wake up excited and full of enthusiasm to start your day.

• You actually LOVE challenging yourself - a hard workout, a day of doing deep work on a goal that's important to you, and you often feel a strange mix of physically tired but mentally HYPED up because you just DID that.

• You DO tend to have this all day zest and you astound people with how much energy you have. People are like, where are you getting all this? Can I have some?

• You're making steady, visible progress towards your goals and dreams. You sometimes even blow your OWN mind with how much you can done in a short amount of time or how fast progress sometimes happens when you're harnessing this healthy fire.

• You WANT to work hard. You want to do the things. And nothing makes you happier than getting to the end of the day and all your habits are completed, your todo list got destroyed midway through the day, and you even had bonus time to work on a puzzle or play a board game with your husband in the middle of the day because you were SO ahead of schedule. Consistency Is Foreplay, Fire Horse edition.

Alright, if you want ALL of that, let's breakdown these four new stories to tell in 2026 and beyond. 

Each of these narratives will include some sample practices you can use to live out these new stories. Your embodied activation for this episode is to pick ONE to start with and 1-2 practices you can begin playing with. When you're ready, maybe you move on to the next that resonated deeply.

First narrative: I choose to clap for myself, even when nobody else does.

The skill of clapping for yourself changes everything, and it's needed more than ever in a world where there's a war on attention. People are pulled in 8000 directions. And with the state of the world right now, many people are struggling and at capacity. So, if your fire relies on getting applause from the people around you, that fire is going to burn out in a hurry.

And this isn't because you don't matter or you're invisible or not doing amazing at whatever it is you're doing. It's not personal. It's structural.

If your momentum relies in external validation of any kind, then your fire is in danger. Doesn't matter if the validation is praise from loved ones, engagement on social media, the number on the scale, or the amount of money in our bank account. These external sources will never reflect our worth, our power, our heart, or our potential... and the only reason they ever felt like they did was because we were so powerful, we GAVE THEM that permission.

And if we gave them that permission, we can revoke that permission just as easily.

This looks like refusing to outsource your momentum to outside applause. Because if you're not only lit up and inspired to and able to keep doing the things when you're getting praised, then it's not real fire - it's performance.

Clapping for yourself is about tying deep meaning to why you're doing what you're doing, how it's going to evolve you into the person you want to be and then clapping for that growth and expansion behind the scenes. It's caring more about who you're being when no one is watching than what the outer world sees. It's being your own hype person and being like, "YES, I am becoming her. YES I am doing this thing, and the best part? I'm able to keep doing the thing when nobody else is clapping." There's something really sexy and defiant and powerful about being able to DO that.

One more astrology reference, I promise. But one of my favourite parts in Stephen's Forrests book The Inner Sky is about Saturn - which feels relevant since this planet just moved into Aries. In his book, Stephen Forrest shares this story about a famous writer. But deep down, she knows she sold out to fame and popularity. Her books don't reflect her depth and wisdom.

She wants to write a new book - one that more truly reflects who she is. Her publisher is like, "Girl, no." She writes it anyways. Then she gets terminally ill halfway through writing it. She cries, feels all the feelings, and then keeps showing up to write it, even thoughg she knows it will never be finished. Even though she knows not a single soul will read it.

THAT is exactly what this key is about. Would you keep doing the thing that your soul is beggging you to do, even if you might not have time to finish it? Even if it might never be witnessed by another soul?

I once had someone tell me I was the most "Saturnian" person they knew. I don't know if it was fully a complement, but I'll take it as one. Because in Saturn is kind of a badass. In Stephen Forrest's book, he writes:

"Jupiter gives us the feeling of faith, but often by supporting us with a thousand crutches. "Sure, I've got faith. Life is great. Look at my bank account, my sexy mate, my brand new Mercedes."

Saturn's approach to faith is not like that. He takes away the crutches. He shows us darkness, impossibility, certain defeat. Then he asks: "do you still have faith? Faith in life, in oneself, in our dreams and vision, in our ideals. It is the faith that we have a destiny. And only if those visions can stand alone, unassisted, in the face of absolute impossibility, can we say that we have faith. Until then, we are still riding with training wheels."

This is your invitation to drop the training wheels of external validation and other people's approval and trust your own visions and ideals. THIS is what creates sacred, healthy fire. It's less Jupiter in Leo, WAY more Saturn in Aries.

Perform for an audience of one: yourself. 

This might look like showing up to write when no one reads yet.
Going to the gym when no one comments on your progress.
Posting when engagement is quiet.
Choosing consistency when results are still incubating.

This is going to change everything.

Your embodied activations if this is your key:

1. First, a daily celebration practice. Whether it's in your journal, you saying it out loud to yourself, or you dancing to "I Wanna Thank Me" by Megan Trainor while reliving the most powerful part of your day.

2. Two, get INCREDIBLY clear about why you're doing what you're doing and ensure the motivation is INTRINSIC. It comes from alignment with your values. It's tied intentionally to the identity you're building. And as long as it's creating that growth and alignment, eveyrthing else becomes a nice bonus. Write out how you're growing and what your values are and tie your actions TO this list.

Now, this next one is a little unhinged but wildly effective. If you LOVE external validation but don't want to be at the mercy of the outside world to get it, here's what you can do: create two hot archetypes using AI. Bring them your daily celebration lists and have them growl "good girl" in your ear every night.

It's this VERY odd hybrid of internal-external validation - internal because you created these archetypes and are coaching AI to do it but also FEELS external because you're getting an external response

We dive deep into HOW to do this in Food Freedom Fantasy, by the way.

The second narrative for our Fire Horse year is this: "I am unavailable to confuse chaos with progress."

This is huge because remember - the fire horse is going to accelerate whatever is happening in your life. If you continue to confuse chaos with progress, you'll create an inferno of chaos and be asking yourself why you've made zero progress over the last six months.

It's because you thought chaos - forcing, pushing, overworking - meant you were getting somewhere. When truly, it just created these cycles of chaotic action followed by burnout and disengagement. In those seasons, we often go backwards, swinging wildly between extremes.

Discernment is everything here. I can't tell you what chaos versus progress looks like for you because it looks different for everyone. So your embodied activation for this narrative is to journal on the difference between chaos and progress. Create your own list of red flags for when you're dropping into chaos versus momemtum.

A few of mine:

• Having like... 5+ projects on the go at once.

• Saying yes to commitments and obligations that FEEL contracting in my body, and then struggle with feelings of resentment because I didn't say no.

• Having more than 2 Zoom calls a day or more than 5 for an entire week. There were times back in early fall where I had up to 10 Zoom calls a weeks. Podcast interviews, coaching calls, all the things. And I was MISERABLE. Of course I was. I actually HATE most Zoom calls, If I'm being honest.

• Working with more than 2 mentors at once. I had a point back in early fall where I think I was in 4 containers or mentorship programs at once. I actually prefer 1 mentor at one time, but I'm still finishing up a season where I have 2, and that's okay. Lesson learned.

• Prioritizing social media over deep work and creativity because I'm trying to "get good" at the one platform I've consistently had the most difficulty with.

Those are some examples so you can see - okay, those things COULD easily masquerade as progress. Mentorships, zoom calls, projects, mastering social media (or attempting to for the 800th time)... those all seem they should help, right?

Not when you're trying to balance all of them at once. You dilute your energy and just become burned out, cranky, and ineffective, and you usually become ineffective at the things you care most about.

You'll want to have some healthy defiance as well.

We live in a world that moves fast. That's always pushing people towards doing more, being more productive, taking on more things, as if more is always better and busy is a badge of honour.

But if you're just busy doing all the things because you think you "should" or because the world told you that's how you prove yourself or because you think you get bonus points for filling every section of your calendar with obligations... that's going to lead to chaos. Not progress.

Let this be the year you embody some villain energy. Say no more. Choose yourself more. Resist the high-performer urge to fill that white space on your calendar with "productivity" which actually makes you less productive in the long run.

Become unavailable to confuse chaos with progress. That's the second narrative.

The third narrative: "Focus is a skill, and I practice it consistently over time, on a daily basis."

I'm going to get dramatic right now because Fire Horse energy and also, because this is real and it makes me angry. Like, really angry.

There is a war on you and your attention right now. And it might be one of the BIGGEST things stealing your joy, your presence, and your capacity on a daily basis. And this is not a disicpline problem or a failing on your part. It's an environment thing. 100%.

The attention economy is real: you pay for ‘free’ content with your time and focus. And platforms are optimized to keep you scrolling longer because your attention is profitable to advertisers paying to get your eyes on their stuff.

And let's talk about the impact of some of those things, just from a mind-body and eating psychology perspective because this REALLY matters. This is going to impact every arena of life, but since Food freedom is such a big part of this podcast, I want to talk about what this does to your health, first and foremost.

Cognitive autonomy is the ability to hear your own inner voice over the algorithm.

THIS lack of cognitive autonomy is a HUGE reason why people are struggling not just with health but in LIFE. Because instead of turning inwards with presence and awareness, they're turning outside themselves to trends. To fads. To what the latest health guru is touting.

So people are outsourcing their own inner wisdom to what's hot on TikTok right now and then wondering why they feel more disconnected and disembodied than ever.

Then there's the increased screen time and the preference for sensationalist information? That increased screen time is going to have multiple effects. It's a compulsive behaviour, and for a lot of people, if they're acting compulsively in one place, they're more likely to act compulsively elsewhere. If you seek quick rewards in the form of social media, there tendency to seek it from food is often pronounced as well.

Then the combined effect of increased screen time and a diet of sensational, fear-based content is going to put a person into a chronic stress response.  Who scrolls for an hour and comes out feeling calmer, more confident, and more present? There might be a few, but they have to be few and far between. And when your nervous system is stressed, willpower drops and relief-seeking goes up.

Your body will often seek relief through one of the easiest pathways: food.

And remember - ANYTHING you're doing in fire horse season is going to amplify and pick up speed. Personally, I don't want this to be the year my dissociation and scrolling and social media use takes off. I will admit - this one is tricky when you have big dreams and big visions and WANT to get your creations into the world... but I also believe it's possible. It's finding that Goldilocks Zone of how "how can I use these tools are a force for good while having VERY strong boundaries around them on purpose?"

People always talk about voting with your dollars - choosing companies that act in integrity, care about the environment, are doing the right thing. Here’s the reframe: I also think we can vote with our attention. I'm personally committed to keeping my social media consumer usage as minimal as possible. A few likes and comments on my fellow entrepreneur posts when I log on to post my own content, then closing the app for the day.

I also do not go on the platforms in the first part of my day. Not until my deep work blocks of creative work are done. most times, I will get on the app for about 10 minutes a day while I'm doing my cardio cooldown on the treadmill. It's stacked with something I'm already doing that's not stationary. There's clear boundaries on it. And I don't let it pollute the most impactful part of my day or distract me from the tasks that actually move the needle.

I'd rather give my attention to podcasts with depth, audiobooks, real books, and music that inspires me and makes me feel GOOD. Personally, the LESS time I spend on social media platforms, the better I feel. I don't think I'm alone here either.

Your embodied activation here is to just start noticing what gets your attention and how it makes you feel after. Then, start to shift your attention more towards the mediums that make you feel inspired, joyful, and powerful. It might be social media for you and if it is, that's wonderful. But I'm going to guess for 9 out of 10 people, that's not the case.

And as bonus activation, get your hands on Trevor Moawad 'sbook and read chapter five about going on a negativity diet. This was one of the most powerful examples of how much our focus and attention influence our overall feelings of well being.

From here, you get to decide what you want to focus on. You get to intentionally curate the inputs you're gravitating to. And it might also look like spending less time with inputs and more time with your own thoughts and projects. It might feel hard at first. That doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. You're fighting an uphill battle. We all are. But every time you put a rep in where you choose to focus on your goals, your projects, and your desires instead of what the algorithm attempts to feed you for its own gain... you build the muscle. Your focus gets stronger.

And in today's world, this is one of the most powerful skills you can build.

I told you I saved the best for last, and I absolutely did.

The final narrative to bring with you into 2026 is: "My fire doesn't need to be dimmed. It needs to be aimed."

We didn't just save this one for last because it's the best. It's the other three narratives do come first.

Fire that relies on external validation isn't true fire. It's performance. So... you get good at clapping for yourself while you blaze so you don't NEED the world to validate you.

You learn the difference between chaos, overstimulation, and scheduling-stuffing versus directed, clear energy that's channeled in the direction of your goals, your dreams, your desires.

And building the skill of directional focus so your fire CAN be aimed in a way that's wildly productive and fulfilling.

Without the first three, you can run the risk of finding yourself in trauma-driven hustle or proving or outsourcing your worth to external sources.

But with the first three narratives locked in place and embodied. You now have directed, aimed fire that's powerful AF.

And guess what? That's going to activate some people around you. It's going to make them uncomfortable because what would feel like suffering or overworking or pushing too hard FOR THEM is just... a really good Tuesday for you.

I had to do some serious reclamation work on this one after putting myself into spaces where my own fire was pathologized.

Perhaps this wasn't the intention, but it felt like I was subtly judged and condemned for having big goals.

When I shared my desire to be deeply productive, disciplined, and focused... I got a visible wince in response and asked why I cared so much.

And yes, for a while, I was like, "is this a trauma response? Is this toxic?" It was the perfect example of letting an outside perspective pollute my focus the dreams I had and the life I wanted to build.

Until I realized... for high-performing women with big dreams and a relentless pursuit of growth and mastery because it FEELS good, here's what's actually true:

Your fire is not a problem to be solved or tamed just because it makes someone else uncomfortable or because they don't understand it.

Your ambition is not toxic or a character flaw. Your ambition is hot as hell.

And maybe all the love of self-discipline and productivity and growth exists because you're on this planet to make a big impact and you know what tends to create impact? Heat. Passion. Intensity. Drive.

Yes, you can sometimes have too much of a good thing, even fire. Yes, the motivation behind fire can sometimes be problematic. That's why you DIRECT it with focus and self-worth. You don't put it out altogether. It doesn't matter how it looks to someone else - you know the difference between forcing and pushing that comes from wounds versus aligned, love-powered ambition.

Your embodied activation for this narrative is to find a song that makes you feel powerful, fiery, like ALL of you. And put it on and dance with abandon, giving yourself permission to fully yourself.

Let this fire horse year be the year you stop apologizing for your intensity, drive and passion. If someone else can't handle the heat, they can get out of kitchen because you're going to cook this year. And these four narratives are going to help you do it. To recap:

1. I choose to clap for myself, even when nobody else does.

2. "I am unavailable to confuse chaos with progress."

3. "Focus is a skill, and I practice it consistently over time, on a daily basis."

4. "My fire doesn't need to be dimmed. It needs to be aimed."

Living out these four narratives are the key to red hot momentum, follow-through, AND deep fulfilment in 2026 and beyond. I'm wishing you the most amazing Fire Horse year ever, and I'll see you in a future episode. Take care.