sabraé danielle smith

Hello sweet angels,

I’ll try my best to keep this somewhat brief, because I’m not sure there is anything more annoying than a self-righteous sounding writer publishing an inaugural letter for a column nobody really explicitly asked for, droning on and on about their personal philosophical inquiries and why it is just sooooo important for them to be sharing them via this hyper-specific vehicle.

It might not be all that important.

But intuitively, I can sense that there are people who may need to be reached by this — people who need to be part of a conversation but perhaps don’t know what conversation, or who to look to for it. We are all, it seems, drowning in a loneliness epidemic and looking for a way to bridge the gaps between us.

Last year, I tried to enter that conversation via a fairly well-worn path in my world. I’ve been diving head-first into the mystical for over a decade, first being introduced to the ways esotericism can be grounded in the mundane and the psychological by finding folks like Jessica Dore on Instagram. Over the years I tried to utilize some very specific gifts in that tradition to walk alongside folks, culminating in a last-ditch effort to bring it back last year, but something in the air had changed. I just couldn’t maintain it.

Full days of dowsing my hands in holy oil, burning stick after stick of incense, shuffling cards until my fingertips were raw — and at the end, even with the personal satisfaction of being a good enough intermediary, a good enough translator between new sweet friends and spirit, I was left feeling… off. Wondering if it were enough. I also found an added frustration I wasn’t expecting there to be medicine in — I was repeating myself a lot. Or rather, it seemed to me that there was something communal that needed to be conveyed in every individual reading, and trying to get it all in, in every session, I kept feeling like I was failing. There seemed to be a call for a conversation between more than just two people.

Not to discount that work. I wish I was exaggerating when I say my life has been saved more than once by the esoteric and its student-teachers — card slingers, psychics, rootworkers. But something about me doing it in that very specific way didn’t feel quite right. And the nagging of my body wouldn’t let me ignore it.

And so here we are — in the pivot.

I think, at least right now, what this column is attempting to do is make a cozy space for the individuality of divination — that behind-the-curtain nature of seeking guidance — with the need for a more communal conversation to share a smooch.

To situate ourselves among each other.

The beauty of an integrative, divinatory-ish advice column, I think, is that the magic is not in me being some all-knowing oracle who can deliver the exact correct answer to your individual query. The magic is in the shared conversation itself — the strange little intersections where personal experience, shared culture, myth, psychology, spirit, and everyday life collide.

I find a lot of magic in talking to you, and me, and the We, all at the same time.

And I find a lot of magic in being a more passive receptive entity in these conversations, too. Much in the same way I wish I was exaggerating when I say my life has been saved thanks to the work of many spirit workers, the same can be said for the serendipitous meeting of a particular turn of phrase from someone wiser than I, just scrolling.

This column exists for seekers of all kinds. My hope is to ease some of the pain of synthesis between the internal and the external, the physical and the spiritual — and to see what magic happens when we do that together in a space like this.

Who am I and how did I get here?

I am not an anomaly. I am not particularly special. But I have certainly lived many lives in my short 32 years.

I had an entire career as a child, something I find myself equally proud and abysmally embarrassed of. I was bred to be a perfect specimen of upward mobility — an extension of all my parents’ goodness, real, attempted, and imagined… a golden child through and through. An excellent performer. A sufficient speaker. A graceful taker of direction and criticism.

I wasn’t half bad in my 12+-ish career, but I certainly didn’t “make it.” And then, I went to great schools — impressive places. I did okay at them — until I didn’t. I went to college a few times. Never finished. I’ve started businesses. Half-started businesses. Abandoned more projects than I can count.

And then there are the relationships. I’ve opened myself up to many people, hungry for love and connection. Often finding only fractions of the fullness of love — and then committing to the Sisyphean task of loving other humans again and again anyway.

My life spills out from the intersections of these matrices. I am the sticky choral seep of molasses from many very, very old trees. Difficult to take in all at once, package, unable to be optimized for the demands of all the -isms.

But my resistance to the traditional way of life has afforded me something incredibly and increasingly valuable: perspective.

I don’t know everything. But I see a lot and I ask good questions. Obnoxious questions, sometimes. And in all my not-knowing and question-asking, I seem to be particularly good at being a companion in the liminal for others.

I promise I won’t always do the fortune-cookie mystic-talk thing. There will be times I weave in esoteric, archetypal considerations, mystical poetics. But most of the time, I’ll just be here as a pal.

To shoot the shit.

To exchange stories.

To remind whoever wants to gather here that we’re all just walking each other home. [thank you, Ram Dass].

Housekeeping (aka disclaimers)

I am not a therapist.

I have studied psychology at the collegiate level, but I do not hold any degrees or certifications. And even if I did, I would still not be your therapist.

I will always do my best to give advice based on lived experience and intuition alongside real research by professionals. In my view, the scope of professionals worth listening to goes beyond psychologists, “experts” as appointed by the academy. It also includes astrologers, mystics, hood philosophers, and other thinkers working outside traditional knowledge hierarchies.

There is an option to join as a paid subscriber, but this column is completely free to whoever wants to read and submit a question, and always will be. Paid subscriptions are just a really great bonus that help me sustain myself so I can do this for as long as possible.

All submissions will always remain anonymous.

Some submissions may be edited for clarity or brevity before publication.

If you need more specific assistance than this column can offer, you can always email me directly (sabrae.danielle@gmail.com) and I’ll do my best to point you toward more appropriate resources.

I’m so glad you’re here :)