Season of Expansion: Growing Without Abandoning Ourselves
There is something beautiful about watching a dream come to life.
There is also something deeply confronting about it.
Because eventually the thing you’ve been praying for stops existing as a vision board, a notebook entry, or a someday dream.
It arrives.
And when it does, it asks something of you.
Not perfection.
Not hustle.
Not sacrifice.
Capacity.
As we move through June’s Season of Expansion, I’ve been sitting with a question that has become the heartbeat of this season:
How do I grow without abandoning myself?
Because if we’re honest, many of us were taught that growth requires self-abandonment.
That success requires exhaustion.
That impact requires overextension.
That the price of building something meaningful is sacrificing ourselves in the process.
But liberation asks a different question.
What if expansion is not about doing more?
What if expansion is about becoming capable of holding more whilst remaining in relationship with yourself?
That is the lesson this season has been teaching me.
Somatic Pause: Making Space for Expansion
Before we talk about growth, take a moment to notice yourself.
Not your to-do list.
Not your responsibilities.
Not the next thing waiting for your attention.
Just you.
If you’re able, place both feet on the floor.
Take a slow breath in.
And an even slower breath out.
Notice the places in your body that feel supported right now.
Perhaps it’s the chair beneath you.
The ground beneath your feet.
The weight of your body being held.
You do not have to carry yourself in this moment.
Allow your shoulders to soften.
Unclench your jaw.
Take another breath.
As you inhale, ask yourself:
What am I carrying?
As you exhale, ask:
What can I set down, even for a moment?
One more breath.
As you read today’s reflection, I invite you to get curious about the question that will guide this entire Season of Expansion:
How do I grow without abandoning myself?
Notice what arises.
Not what you think the answer should be.
What you actually feel.
Let’s begin.
Expansion Is Not Bigger. Expansion Is Capacity.
When people hear the word expansion, they often imagine growth.
More followers.
More opportunities.
More visibility.
More income.
More responsibility.
And yes, some of those things are happening.
But what I’ve discovered is that expansion is not simply getting bigger; That would be 2 of those 15 pillars of supremacy culture: Progress is bigger/more and Quantity over quality.
Expansion is increasing your capacity to receive what you’ve been asking for.
Your capacity to stay grounded when opportunities arrive.
Your capacity to receive support.
Your capacity to be seen.
Your capacity to share leadership.
Your capacity to remain connected to your values while everything around you changes.
This season has been stretching that capacity in ways I never expected.
What Is Capacity?
I keep using this language over and over, and I want to ensure I give it a proper spotlight.
Traditionally, capacity is defined as:
The maximum amount that something can contain, receive, or hold.
A cup has a capacity.
A room has a capacity.
A storage container has a capacity.
When we exceed that capacity, things begin to spill over.
Yet many of us have been taught to think of ourselves differently.
We’ve been taught that our capacity is limitless.
That if we’re overwhelmed, we should simply work harder.
Push through.
Stay strong.
Do more.
Carry more.
Become more efficient.
But our bodies tell a different story.
From a somatic perspective, capacity refers to our ability to remain present with what we are experiencing without becoming overwhelmed, shutting down, or abandoning ourselves.
It is our ability to stay connected to ourselves while navigating life’s challenges, opportunities, emotions, relationships, and responsibilities.
In other words:
Capacity is not how much you can carry.
Capacity is how much you can carry while remaining connected to yourself.
Because there is a difference between holding something and being crushed by it.
A difference between growth and overwhelm.
A difference between expansion and self-abandonment.
This distinction feels especially important during this Season of Expansion.
Many of us have spent years praying for more.
More opportunities.
More visibility.
More impact.
More abundance.
More community.
But what happens when those prayers begin to arrive?
The question is no longer:
“Can I get more?”
The question becomes:
“Can I hold what I have been asking for?”
Can I hold success without burnout?
Can I hold visibility without losing myself?
Can I hold responsibility without carrying it alone?
Can I hold abundance without operating from scarcity?
Can I hold community without reverting to power hoarding or martyrdom?
That is the work of capacity.
And that is what this season is inviting us to practice.
The Return of Ms. Dare I Say
One of the most unexpected gifts of this Season of Expansion has been the return of a voice that has been with me far longer than many people realize.
Many of you know me through Liberation Education.
Through workshops.
Through frameworks.
Through community building.
Through the Academy.
Through the Liberation Method™.
But before all of that existed, there was writing.
I began writing online in the early days of WordPress and Tumblr.
Back when blogs felt like diaries with comment sections and the internet still felt small enough for people to stumble into one another’s lives.
I wrote about love.
Relationships.
Heartbreak.
Healing.
The strange and beautiful process of becoming.
Eventually that writing led to working as an advice columnist for Quarter Life Magazine, where I explored relationships, identity, and the wonderfully messy reality of being human.
After my first divorce, the writing became even more personal.
I began documenting my own journey through dating, motherhood, faith, self-discovery, and rebuilding a life I hadn’t planned for.
Sadly, much of that work was lost when my original Facebook account disappeared.
Entire years of writing.
Entire conversations.
Entire chapters.
Gone…
But the voice never left.
It simply evolved.
As I moved through divorce, college, parental death, remarriage, a premature baby, three children in seven years, estrangement from my eldest child, entrepreneurship, and the ongoing challenge of trying to build a meaningful life inside capitalism, the writing continued evolving alongside me.
At one point that voice became Dare I Say God.
I was serving as a pastoral leader, a women’s ministry leader, and a Christian writer.
I wrote about faith.
Spiritual disciplines.
Biblical interpretation.
Fasting.
Leadership.
The questions I was wrestling with inside my own spiritual world.
But growth has a way of disrupting certainty.
As my questions deepened, so did my writing.
Eventually, that journey led to Musings of Selenite and Sage, where I began exploring the ways spirituality, religion, ancestry, and power intersected.
I was asking different questions.
Questions about liberation.
Questions about decolonization.
Questions about the origins of spiritual practices.
Questions about what had been lost, hidden, or repackaged over time.
Questions that would eventually become the foundation of the work I do today.
Throughout all of those seasons there was one thing that remained constant:
Community.
Facebook groups.
Patreon communities.
Mighty Networks.
Discussion circles.
Learning communities.
Experiments in belonging.
Experiments in asking what becomes possible when people gather around truth and transformation.
Then in 2020 something unexpected happened.
TikTok gave me my voice back.
Not my writing voice.
My speaking voice.
For the first time in years I was saying things out loud as quickly as I could think them.
No drafts.
No editing.
No polishing.
Just truth.
And when I returned to writing in 2023, I returned with a very different life than the woman who first opened a WordPress account all those years ago.
By then, conversations had become communities.
Communities had become learning spaces.
Learning spaces had become intentional educational ecosystems.
And intentional educational ecosystems require structure.
Frameworks.
Methodologies.
Learning arcs.
Curriculum.
Pathways.
People were no longer simply asking for reflection.
They were asking for tools.
For guidance.
For application.
For transformation.
So my writing evolved again.
I learned how to teach.
I learned how to build frameworks.
I learned how to meet people where their nervous systems actually are.
I learned how to create containers that could support people moving from awareness to action.
And I am deeply grateful for that growth.
After all, my company is called Make Shi(f)t Happen.
I’ve been helping people navigate transformation since 2008.
But here’s what this Season of Expansion has taught me:
Growth does not require abandonment.
Just because one version of you evolves doesn’t mean another version has to disappear.
Because there are still parts of me that don’t belong inside a framework.
Parts that aren’t trying to teach.
Parts that simply want to observe.
Wonder.
Question.
Tell stories.
Laugh.
Explore desire.
Explore relationships.
Explore self-abandonment.
Explore the wonderfully complicated reality of being human.
That’s where Ms. Dare I Say lives.
I’ve jokingly started calling her Liberation After Dark.
Not because the work is less meaningful.
But because it is less interested in behaving.
It’s where the Bronx girl gets a microphone again.
It’s where the advice columnist gets to ask uncomfortable questions.
It’s where the relationship writer gets to sit down with liberation work and ask what it means inside our marriages, our friendships, our dating lives, our sexuality, our desires, and our everyday choices.
It’s where all the parts of me that don’t fit neatly into educational content finally get a seat at the table.
One of the first pieces published there is called Pussy Is Not Your Price. (Also the name of the publication)
It’s a reflection on decentering men, reclaiming self-worth, and refusing to negotiate your value through access to your body.
It’s liberation work.
Just with a little more side-eye and a little more sass.
Alongside that writing, another project emerged: Men Cum in Socks.
Yes, the title makes people laugh.
Good.
It was supposed to.
Because underneath the humor is a serious question:
What happens when women stop organizing their lives around male validation?
What happens when we stop treating partnership as the pinnacle of our existence?
What happens when our dreams, our healing, our purpose, our pleasure, our friendships, our communities, and our becoming become the center of our own lives?
Men Cum in Socks isn’t anti-men.
It’s pro-self.
It’s a reminder that women are allowed to be the protagonists of their own stories.
That our lives do not begin when someone chooses us.
And perhaps that’s why both of these projects feel so aligned with this Season of Expansion.
Because they are both asking the same question:
How do we grow without abandoning ourselves?
How do we expand without leaving pieces of ourselves behind?
How do we create lives large enough to hold every version of who we are?
Ms. Dare I Say isn’t a departure from my work.
She’s part of its lineage.
She’s what happens when every version of me is finally allowed to sit at the same table.
And that’s what expansion really is.
Not becoming someone new.
But developing the capacity to hold all that you’ve been.
And perhaps that is why the Academy and the Homestead feel so significant to me right now.
Because this season is not only asking me to hold more of myself.
It is asking me to hold more of the vision.
For years, much of this work lived inside notebooks, journals, conversations, workshops, and imagination.
Ideas.
Frameworks.
Questions.
Possibilities.
But eventually every vision reaches a point where it asks to be built.
Not someday.
Now.
And building something that can outlive you requires a different kind of capacity altogether.
The Academy Is Becoming What It Was Always Meant To Be
For years, the Liberation Education Academy existed primarily as a vision.
A framework.
A possibility.
A collection of ideas waiting for the right season.
This season, that possibility has become tangible.
The curriculum is expanding.
The certifications are taking shape.
The systems are being built.
The architecture of something larger than myself is emerging.
And perhaps the most beautiful part is that it is forcing me to confront my own relationship with capacity.
Because building something that can outlive you requires different skills than building something you can carry by yourself.
It requires trust.
It requires systems.
It requires collaboration.
It requires releasing the belief that everything depends on you.
For so many years, I carried this work through sheer determination.
Many of you know that Make Shi(f)t Happen was born from conversations.
Conversations that became communities.
Communities that became learning spaces.
Learning spaces that became transformational experiences.
Now those experiences are becoming a structured educational ecosystem.
Not because I want something bigger.
But because I want something sustainable.
Something that can continue serving people long after a single workshop ends.
Long after a single conversation ends.
Long after I’m no longer the only person carrying the vision.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons of expansion:
A vision grows the moment it becomes larger than your individual capacity to hold it alone.
The Healing Homestead Is Becoming an Ecosystem
If the Academy is becoming a school, the Healing Homestead is becoming an ecosystem.
What began as an idea is growing into a living community of healers, educators, artists, movement practitioners, storytellers, culture builders, and people committed to creating intentional spaces for belonging.
This season we welcomed two new stewards into the Homestead Collective.
And honestly?
That feels like one of the most important milestones of all.
Because one of the supremacy culture pillars we are actively dismantling this month is Power Hoarding.
The goal was never to build a community centered around me.
The goal was always to build a community where many people could contribute their gifts.
Where leadership is shared.
Where healing is communal.
Where people are empowered to step fully into their own medicine.
That is what expansion looks like when it is rooted in liberation.
Not accumulation.
Not control.
Not becoming indispensable.
But creating spaces where others can thrive alongside you thankful for The Gospel of LadySpeech for what we are co-creating Ive waited years for a partner such as her, and what a blesing it is to do life with her in this way.
What Stewardship Makes Possible
The moment we stop believing everything depends on us, something beautiful happens.
Space opens.
Space for other people to bring their gifts.
Space for new ideas.
Space for collaboration.
Space for community.
This season that space has been filled by incredible people bringing their own unique offerings into the Homestead.
Leah is offering astrology gatherings.
Corrie is bringing sound baths.
Felicitee is creating line dance and trail-ride-inspired experiences for children.
Mo is creating opportunities for Adult Nights Out.
This Friday we launch Open Mic Night, which will continue throughout the summer.
A space for storytelling.
Poetry.
Music.
Laughter.
Witnessing.
Connection.
The kinds of experiences that remind us healing doesn’t only happen in workshops.
Sometimes healing sounds like applause.
Sometimes healing sounds like laughter.
Sometimes healing sounds like someone finally telling the truth.
And of course, Somatic Sundays continue inviting us back into relationship with ourselves, our bodies, and one another.
Each offering is different.
Each practitioner is different.
Each pathway into healing is different.
And that diversity is the point.
Community was never meant to be one-size-fits-all.
Neither is healing.
What I’m Learning
The greatest lesson of this season is that expansion and self-abandonment are not the same thing.
For many of us, they have been intertwined for so long that we struggle to separate them.
We’ve been taught that growth requires urgency.
That leadership requires over-functioning.
That success requires sacrifice.
That impact requires carrying everything ourselves.
But I’m learning something different.
Growth can happen without urgency.
Leadership can happen without power hoarding.
Community can happen without individualism.
Success can happen without self-sacrifice.
Expansion can happen without abandoning ourselves.
In fact, sustainable expansion requires the opposite.
It requires deeper relationship.
Deeper discernment.
Deeper boundaries.
Deeper trust.
Deeper capacity.
Not less.
And that is what this entire season has been teaching me.
Capacity is not how much we can carry.
Capacity is how connected we can remain while carrying it.
Join Us
If you’ve been looking for a place to practice liberation beyond theory...
If you’ve been craving community rooted in care rather than performance...
If you’ve been wondering how to grow without abandoning yourself...
I invite you to join us.
Join us for Somatic Sundays.
Join us for Open Mic Night.
Join us for workshops, gatherings, movement, healing, and community.
Join us as we continue building the Healing Homestead Collective.
Because liberation was never meant to be a solo journey.
And neither is expansion.
In Solidarity and Liberation,
Desireé B. Stephens
Educator | Counselor | Community Builder
Founder, Make Shi(f)t Happen
Writer of Liberation Education
Steward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.
Where Reflection Meets Transformation
Really helping me right now. Thank you genius !