Confessions from the creator… 📖

I have a confession I’m finally feeling ready to share with you, within a vulnerable story around how I came to create Cycles Journal and what has since changed.

But first, an update on our fundraising goal…

We’re at 9%! Thank you to all who supported on day 1 of the Cycles Journal Undated pre-sale!

June is pay-the-printer month, and the fundraising goal is to pre-sell 500 new undated Cycles Journals by the end of the month.

But realllly, I need to pre-sell at least 150 to pay the first installment when I submit the files by Solstice!

That’s why the early-bird deals are on through June 21st.

Help us get to 20% by the end of the weekend by placing your pre-order here.

All community fundraising covers the costs of printing & self-publishing, shipping, packaging, storage, and paying our team of two!

The creation of this indie, self-published journal is only possible with you (and your friends and loved ones ~ I invite you to forward this to a fellow cyclical being) 💓

I’ve been sharing peeks behind the scenes as I create the first-ever undated, self-paced Cycles Journal, and it’s time to share a bit more about how I got here in the first place! (and that confession I promised you…)

My story begins on an almost-full moon in the summer of 1995, when I was born in NJ to working-class parents, and a world that felt like too much for such a sensitive little me.

Yet growing up, I was the one who was “too much,” felt too much, wanted too much.

And even with loving, understanding family members and friends (and some not so much), I always needed the space to return to my sensitive self and find refuge in my imagination, creativity, and what I would soon learn to be intuition.

I was always a night owl / lunar being, because that’s when I got my space to just be me. I always found the same solace through art and design and writing ~ from being a witch in my fiction stories in elementary school, to sketching AIM icon designs in math class and rushing home excited to complete and share them on Iconator in early high school.

I was going to go to school for journalism until I learned the programs were more about newscasting and interviews than creative writing. But thanks to the art teachers that encouraged me I could go to art school and do what I loved, I did.

I traversed the ups and downs of finding my style, purpose, and self-worth during those years. As I learned to strengthen my clarity of message through illustration classes and digital translation and formatting in design classes, I also took classes in book arts, printmaking, movement, ecology, and poetry. All of this culminated in what I do today, and I feel really blessed to have foundational support in all these realms so early on in life.

But at the time I didn’t know it. And as much as I was enjoying learning, I was struggling with the deadlines, suffering from the dips and peaks and my mental health and neurodivergent patterns, self-harm of various sorts, and coping through misaligned situation-/relation-ships that I gave too much of myself away in.

So after graduating, between vending hand-pressed buttons and screenprinted patches with social + environmental activist illustrations and messages on them at Punk Rock Flea markets and Uhuru Markets in Clark Park (I miss you Philadelphia), I was still up late with the moon thrashing with inspired ideas and self-judgment for the war always waging inside of me; the sinking feelings of not enough, the ache of shame around my uncontrollable emotional outbursts or repressions…

But after many moons and some unknown magic, it hit me under a full moon during my bleed. Not in a romanticized way, but in a fetal-position breakdown after unconsciously escalating a fight with my partner.

There was a pattern here, and it had to do with the intensity of my inner menstrual and mental cycles, and some external cosmic forces, too.

And after months of trying various apps, planners, and such… I went back to my book-binding and print-loving roots and made a rough little zine to help myself track these patterns. I was gonna connect the dots and make sense of it, if for nothing else but to prove to myself that these waves of turbulence are not my fault ~ there are other forces at play here.

And thus began the hyperfocused all-nighters of creation of the first edition, crowd-funding it on Kickstarter, and slowly speaking the word through beloved early supporters, friends and online peers. Repeat that cycle for 7 more years, each with feedback and updates, improvements and typos… but all always self-published and community-funded with root-to-moon love.

Yet in the midst of all the liberation, healing, and communal reckoning… I was learning and unlearning the cycles of capitalism, too.

I was running my own business on intuition and guidance for well-meaning people who were a bit too wrapped up in the system.

And the benefits of Cycles Journal always outweighed the struggles of staying integral to my values while a self-employed artist in a world that pressures you to bend to its rules of time and numbers.

I could wax on about the ins and outs of moments I was in closer or further proximity from my values, yet I know I never left them behind. You can only do your best as an individual in a system, as you learn to embrace the connections and relations within it all.

I think all the relationships that have encouraged, supported, criticized, and inspired me have helped me unlearn and transform little by little towards the belief remembrance that there are other perspectives on time, and other forms of stability that do not rely solely on human-made systems.

I felt this in the months that I, too, would forget, skip or avoid filling in my journal. Because even though I knew it was okay, and that blank space isn’t a problem, I still felt that looming pressure of the clock and precious resources.

I confess that I had some bitterness towards making the journal for some time. But I think it was really bitterness masking fatigue from capitalism.

I’ve been re-learning the great intelligence and wisdom in letting things take the time they need. And I’m finally learning to embody that more consistently as I release the annual cycle and step into the fluid, undated Cycles Journal.

So here we are, 8 years later, not a regret in my bones, but an evolutionary cycle unfolding…

It’s an experiment in trust, in calling on our ancestors and the spirits of the elements and sentients… and it’s all infused into the familiar yet updated design of Cycles Journal.

The cycles never cease, the world keeps changing, but Cycles Journal remains as a sanctuary of stability in which we can uncover connections, clarity and choice.

Oh and that partner who was a mirror and anchor in my darkest days… the same one who lent me his button press in the early days, then later on lent me money to help pay the printer one year when pre-orders didn’t cut it, and helped me carry heavy journal boxes up and down to our various apartments… we’re celebrating 10 years of growing alongside one another next week.

Thank you for everything, Nick. ❣️ And for bringing Lady Luna into my life, too.

photo from 2020, before i started working with a
fulfillment center to help me reclaim some precious time

And shout out to all the other relations along the way ~ every one of you who has pre-ordered, shared the word. Everyone who helped grow this business alongside me. Everyone who’s been in the journal and directory. Everyone who helped print and assemble the journals. Everyone.

Cycles Journal itself embodies the lessons and wins and everything in between over the years.

Our web is woven with love, reinforced by shared struggles, spirit-sent support, and so much more...

Support (y)our collective web and claim your copy of the new journal here.

With you in the cycles~

Rachael Amber

PS: The New Cycles Journal Undated pre-order fundraiser window is NOW OPEN and closes on the Solstice ~ June 21st 🌞~ will you help spread the word to your community and loved ones and share this post? 💌