Welcome to the Sovereignty Circle

I’m genuinely glad you’re here.

Before anything else, I want to tell you what I mean when I say the Sovereignty Circle.

It isn’t a membership program or an online community. It’s simply the name I’ve given to the growing circle of people who are following and exploring this work together. Some of us first meet after a workshop or a conversation. Others find their way here through friends, podcasts, queer gatherings, retreats, kink weekends, or online spaces. Some of us will eventually meet in person. Many never will.

What connects us is a shared curiosity about what becomes possible as we build the capacity to express more of who we already are.

I’m grateful you’ve decided to join the conversation.

For years, I assumed that if I understood myself well enough, I’d naturally start asking for what I really wanted and expressing more of who I really was. Knowing what I wanted turned out to be much easier than actually living it.

I’ve spent a good part of my adult life studying change. Professionally, that meant working in venture capital, philanthropy, and social impact, trying to understand how people, organizations, and systems actually change—not just in theory, but in practice.

Personally, it led me into queer community in all its richness—from friendships and relationships to circuit weekends, kink spaces, retreats, and other places where many of us go looking for pleasure, freedom, intimacy, and belonging. Some of those experiences were beautiful. Others were confusing. Nearly all of them taught me far more than I understood at the time.

Along the way, I made plenty of mistakes and discovered I wasn’t nearly as radically transparent as I thought I was.

Those experiences left me asking questions I never expected to ask. What becomes possible when we’re willing to have radically transparent conversations? How do we learn to express more of who we are instead of the versions of ourselves we’ve learned to perform? What happens when we stop treating pleasure as something that belongs only in sexual experiences and begin recognizing it as an essential capacity for healing, connection, creativity, and being fully alive? And how do we become more fully expressed versions of ourselves—not once, but over a lifetime?

I don’t feel finished with any of those questions. If anything, the older I get, the more interested I become in asking better questions than pretending I’ve found final answers.

As I kept exploring them, I noticed something that surprised me. Insight wasn’t changing me nearly as much as I expected it would. I could explain exactly why I hesitated to ask for what I wanted. I could describe the patterns that kept showing up in relationships. I could see the places where fear, shame, or old habits were shaping my choices.

And yet, in the moments that actually mattered, I often found myself responding in the same familiar ways.

That’s when something finally began to click.

The gap wasn’t knowledge.It was capacity.

The capacity to remain present when vulnerability feels risky. The capacity to stay connected to myself instead of automatically protecting myself. The capacity to express something true, even when I couldn’t predict how it would be received.

That realization quietly became the foundation of everything I’ve been exploring since—and ultimately, the foundation of this work.

As these letters unfold, I’d like to leave you with something to carry into your own life. Sometimes it will simply be a question that has stayed with me. Other times it may be a small experiment or practice that I’ve found meaningful. None of it is homework, and there’s nothing to get right. They’re simply invitations. Take what serves you, leave what doesn’t, and trust your own experience.

One question you might carry with you this week is this:

Where in your life do you already know what feels true for you… but still find it difficult to express or live it?

Not because you’re doing something wrong.

Simply because some part of you is still working hard to protect you.

You don’t need to arrive at an answer. Sometimes simply noticing the question is enough.

And if you’re curious to experiment, here’s one possibility.

The next time you notice yourself hesitating—before replying, before asking for something, or before saying what you really think—pause for one slow breath.

Then, rather than asking yourself, “What should I do?”, see what happens if you ask, “What feels most true for me right now?”

You don’t need to change your response. You don’t need to push through the hesitation. Just notice what happens when you ask yourself that question. You might not notice anything at all. Or you might discover that the hesitation has more to teach than you expected.

Thank you for being here.

I’m looking forward to exploring these questions together.