Behind The Glass with Charlotte Eriksson: Recent Episodes
The Glass Child
Songwriter and author Charlotte Eriksson -- The Glass Child -- lets you in behind the glass. Raw and honest conversations, essays, spoken poetry and journals exploring the subjects of growing up, change, loneliness, living as a nomad, missing people, loving people. How to live with uncertainty. What is home? What is anxiety? What is happiness?
”I wanted to turn my life into my art. My very existence into a poem. This is my story — it might not always be easy, but it will always be beautiful.”
Website: http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com Instagram: @justaglasschild contact@charlotteeriksson.com
About rediscovering yourself in your 30s ♡
www.CharlotteEriksson.com
If I could share one revelation with anyone out there navigating the transitions in life, it would be this:
Rediscover those passions or objects that made you feel free before the world told you what to do and who to be. The hobbies you picked up before you asked yourself if they were cool or would pay your rent. Dig them up from wherever you've buried them, and engage with them totally anew - as the grounded, self-assured person you've maybe become, or are becoming. No more pressure to make a career out of them, to get graded or judged. Now it’s just for you. Because life is short and long and time is all there is.
It's there inside you, those passions. That essential part of you that never left, it just got mislaid along the way. All it takes is a little courage to find that voice again, to say "Excuse me, this is me we're talking about here. My bliss, my loves, my ecstasies."
I have always talked about turning fear of the unknown into excitement for the endless possibilities. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, anything can happen. Everything is possible now. How exciting is that?! So instead of being scared of not knowing what's going to happen, you can learn to view uncertainty as something exciting. Honestly, I believe it’s one of the greatest mindsets to learn because fear of the unknown will hold you back like nothing else. It will keep you hostage in dark relationships, stuck in a job you hate, or stuck in a city you don’t love because you’re simply scared to make a change. There is no better feeling than being on your way to unknown lands, truly feeling deep in your core that you’re driving towards unlimited opportunities in life, and now it’s up to you.
💭 www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭
Losing people is a part of life, I do not think we can avoid it. So it’s the way we move forward that counts. I’ve moved on from people without looking back; without wanting to spend any more time dwelling or thinking or reliving. But I also think you can move while also treasuring a place for them in your heart, forever. Moving on doesn’t always mean forgetting. Moving on can mean: building on, honoring, treasuring, and remembering. And maybe one day, when we’re old and grey, we’ll find ourselves back in our hometown on Christmas Eve at the same old pub. "So, Dave, tell me about the last 30 years of your life". And he’ll go… "it started when I moved to Nashville". And I will smile and listen and laugh and cry and then I’ll tell him about Porto, where it started for me, and where I went after that. We’ll have another whisky and drink to life, for its wonderful and cruel ways of turning friends into strangers and, on lucky days, strangers into friends and friends into family.
Find my books, music and links at www.CharlotteEriksson.com
I'm back ♡ I missed talking to you! I sold all my belongings and moved to Portugal. To start over, once more. Let's chat about it. Life is weird and strange and uncertain and absolutely wonderful.
DM me your thoughts and stories on IG: @justaglasschild
Find all my books and music and links at www.CharlotteEriksson.com
“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac
A writing from my book Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself ♡
They say you can trace a person’s history, hidden emotions andunhealed scars in their appearance. How you act, how you walk, howyou laugh. Do you have a broken heart? It shows. Are you in love? Itshows.
They say bad skin reveals stress or anxiety. Do you blink a lot or doyou keep a steady gaze during a conversation? Do you talk clearlywith strong support from your stomach, or do you speak quietlyand fast, running over your words? Have you ever tried not to eat,just to keep some sort of focus? Sad people either sleep a lot or notat all.
I often wonder what people see when they look at me. What energydo I send out? Do I look happy? Do I look sad? Do I look friendly?Do I look like someone you'd want to hang out with? Do I look likesomeone you could like?
Do I look insecure, or like I'm strong and sure, a role model tofollow? Do I look like someone who threw my fist into a mirrorbecause I simply saw myself in there and couldn't stand the thoughtof it?
People say there is sadness in my eyes but the sadness sits in mychest so I wonder what it is they see in my eyes.
An excerpt from my book Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself.
Pick up a signed copy of my book in my store here, or find it on Amazon ♡
They tell me I have an interesting life. Going places, seeing people,and I shrug my shoulders as I pour another drink,sitting lonely on my floor in my empty room, another Sunday, inanother city, like I’ve done so many times for so many years and theytell me I’m lucky and should be grateful. And yes, I am grateful. Iwas grateful walking lonely through a freezing Berlin on ChristmasEve last yearand I was grateful as I lied about my name and job and age toeveryone I met and meetand if you seek the papers where I’ve been the last years you willfind nothing. Or at best, or worst, a spread-out girl leaving small traces here and there, covering it up with different states of mindor jobsor nameand there was a time they said I would go places.
I would go places, they said, once,way back when.And this is what I think of as I’m sitting lonely on the train homefrom another night of beautiful people, welcoming me into theirhomes with open arms. I played some songs and they hugged melike I’ve never been hugged before,by anyone who knows me,and they told me “thank you” and “I love you”and hugged me again, like I’ve never been huggedby anyone who knows me,and they were grateful. For me. And so was I. For them.
Human interaction: the most complicated form of happiness I willnever figure out.
This is a writing from my book Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself 🌱
"Youthful days are treasures and it has nothing to do with age.
Still young, I guess, but I remember younger days.
Wide-eyed on every bus to nowhere,
everywhere,
finding melodies and stories,
people to love and lose
and I opened up in different ways.
Shared made-up pasts, shaped and designed to tell and sweep away
like the poet that I am
they tell me.
Why tell them about me, when I can tell them about a different me?
... but life grows you ignorant.
I’m walking on an empty country road
somewhere in Sweden
and I have no cares in the world.
I’ve fought and I’ve tried. I’ve seen things, I think to myself
but I’m not happy with what I did or made of myself
and I have no cares in the world.
I spit over my shoulder, get drunk on empty roads
in the middle of the day,
lying on fields in the cold,
cursing how little I grew; how I did not make it.
and I bought new shoes back then, a while ago,
but still wear my old ones.
no money in the bank, no birthday parties to get things wild
for a little while.
I have no cares in the world.
Time taught me to love old things. I’m collecting rings and jewelry and I wear them with tenderness, feeling holy, meditating by the water, in the forest, creating rituals to reach something higher, higher, higher ---
I want to get higher or deeper, somewhere different than this plain, static sense of existence.
Love does the job. traveling too. writing does it. music.
also art, whisky, dark-colored flowers and watching the landscape change in October. Driving on a small road somewhere in Italy with a beautiful boy and I don’t want to be anywhere else in the whole wide world than right there, with him, in that very car, smiling.
But I close my eyes for one second and the moment is gone. I’m back to getting high on empty roads somewhere in Sweden and I’m the loneliest girl in the whole damn world and I just want all things beautiful. I just want the music, the literature, the art and the moments of driving in a car with a beautiful boy in Italy.
but here, alone, I have no cares in the world.
I have no cares in the world. I just want it all to be beautiful."
What does it actually mean to be an independent creator (artist, author, photographer...) and why did I become one? In this replay episode [from the archive!] I share my own story of how I built my little career and how you can too ♡
www.CharlotteEriksson.com
Come hang with me as I answer ALL the questions about vagabonding, loneliness, travel hacks and more!
www.charlotteeriksson.com
The number 1 most popular episode of all time is back!
“Your relationship with your future self is the most important relationship in your life.”
Future me, whom I looked up to 3 years ago, is me now, and that’s why I feel so familiar with myself because I’ve communicated with future me for years.
I’m really grateful to past me for putting in the work, pushing on, making plans, and creating, because without past me doing this, my life would look very different now.
So when I go through hard times, I try to think about future me in a year from now, or just 6 months from now. What can I do today, that future me will be really really grateful for? What can I do today, to make life for future me a little easier and more beautiful?
💭 www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭
Today we're diving into the topic of living a wandering or vagabonding life on a minimal budget. We'll explore how it is possible to create any lifestyle you want for yourself if you just want it bad enough. If you’re ready to sacrifice the lifestyle you have right now. If you’re willing to paint a little bit outside the box.
We will talk about how to create a remote working career and what doors it might open up for you, how to be smart with your money, how to live simply and minimally, and how embracing solitude can unlock a life filled with incredible experiences and long-term travel.
So, if you've ever dreamed of wandering the globe but thought, "I can't afford it" or "I'm not born into wealth" or "what about my job," this episode is for you.
My goal in life is to show by example, how it’s possible to live a life on your own terms, a life that gets you excited to wake up every single morning, and how this life is 100% possible to create, if you just want it bad enough.
The books I'm mentioning in this episode are:
- The 4-hour work-week by Tim Ferriss
- Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac
- The Nomad by Isabelle Eberhardt
Find all my books, links and story at www.CharlotteEriksson.com ♡
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera is one of the most beautiful and complex novels I’ve discovered. It’s reflecting on something that I’m struggling with a lot right now: lightness versus heaviness. Commitment versus freedom.As I’m writing on my 6th book, I’m going to share some of the books and authors I’m reading, studying and finding comfort in and that will massively influence my new book.
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Don’t think you know yourself. You're an ever-evolving incredibly vast thing. You’re not static. Wake up every day excited to discover new sides of yourself. New passions, new hobbies, new talents. Be your own biggest change-supporter.
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Have less, do more. Simplicity is the key to everlasting peace.
Learn to live on as little as possible.
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Embrace unexpected opportunities.
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You can never save people, but you can inspire them to believe they can save themselves.
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Build a connection with the natural world. Greet Father Sky, thank Mother Earth. Meditate. Walk barefoot. Eat foods from the ground. We’re all under the same sky.
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It’s ok to spend a year on your own if that’s what you need right now. It’s okay to go quiet. It’s okay to pause that dream, pause that project, cancel the contract and just sit and watch the waves come and go in some lonesome town in Portugal. It’s all ok. Trust your story. Be where you are and don’t be sorry.
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Your only task is to live.
💭 Find links to all my books, music, writings and socials at www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭
Part two of the 13 truths I have learned about being alive. Part 3 coming next week!
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Don’t underestimate yourself. If you don’t have the necessary skillset now, you can develop it. If you don’t have the resources now, you can get them. If you haven’t met the right people yet, you’re just getting ready for them. Everything is possible if you just want it bad enough.
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Slow down. Stay in bed an extra hour. Sip your coffee while watching the clouds drifts. Read the instructions one more time. Fast is no longer useful. Slow, steady, conscious, and aware—that’s the way to go.
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Uncertainty can grow into excitement if you learn to trust your own path.
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Friends are hard to find. Take care of them when you do.
Find all my books, music, and story here: www.CharlotteEriksson.com
Find me on IG: @justaglasschild
Signed copies of my books: www.charlotteeriksson.com/shop
What I’ve learned after 32 years on this planet ✦
- People will come into your life to present you with moments or hard truths about yourself, and then they will leave. This is the law of constant movement. Life is not static & you must learn to flow with each season without looking back. Don’t desperately hold on to people who are meant to move on. Send them love & be grateful for the memories.
- When you forget about the HOW, go back to the WHY. When you know WHY you want to do/become/feel/achieve something, you will easily find your HOW.
The books I'm recommending in the episode:
- The Desire Map - Danielle LaPorte
- Find Your Why - Simon Sinek
- Start With Why - Simon Sinek
Come find everything I do and create at www.CharlotteEriksson.com ♡
Relationships with cities are very much like relationships with people. Sometimes even stronger, or more formative. You fall into them feeling like a child. Everything is new and exciting, endless opportunities, everything is possible. You wake up in a rented bed, smiling not knowing what the day will bring, and you lie down at night taking a long exhale, perfectly overwhelmed by all new smells and sounds and sights and sounds. You feel like your life has restarted. You imagine yourself in this new relationship, who you could be now, who you could grow to be, the life you could live out. Shiny. Everything is shiny.
But you change and sometimes the person, or city, you’re in a relationship with does not, or just changes in a different direction, and one day you find yourself in an argument and you can’t seem to reach each other. Like suddenly you speak two different languages and nothing translates. You flail your arms, raising the white flag, not understanding where you’re being misunderstood, but off you both go and there’s a separation growing in between you. Something has changed.
I left Berlin many times between then and now. Asked for a break, needed to see if maybe there was another match for me out there. Something always felt a little off but I never managed to put my finger on it. I felt in love, but also constantly daydreaming about something else. You know those people who say you just know it’s right when you meet the right one? I guess I still want to believe in that. I guess I still want to feel that, certain, knowing this is it. I had secret affairs with Bali, with Barcelona, with Lisbon, with Prague… but I always came back. For a person, for a job, the wind brought me back, a flight… I always ended up riding a bike through Friedrichshain in July. Flip flops and cheap wine from the corner shop. And I always found my way back to moments of falling asleep smiling, thinking, “maybe I could be happy here”.
Joan Didion describes her time in New York as never really realizing she lived out a life there, like she only planned on staying for a few more months. But suddenly 8 years went by and she had lived out a life there, without meaning to. That’s how I feel about every place I’ve ever lived out a life in, I never actually meant to stay anywhere, just a few months, which sometimes turned into a bit more. I wonder what it would feel like to actually intend to stay somewhere, live out a life, make some plans.
It was somewhere on the streets of Budapest that I realized I have reached the beginning of an ending. I have started my leaving. Like that moment in a relationship when you know there is no saving. You stand empty in front of someone who used to make you feel a million feelings per second and suddenly you feel nothing at all. And even though it will take months, maybe even a year, you know the breakup started for you in that second, and one day you’ll say goodbye for the last time and it will feel heavy and free at the same time, because endings are always beginnings and they carry you forward, always to something new and different.
Where to next? Not sure, I know I’ll find it when I get there. Maybe Porto. Maybe Prague. Maybe I’ll spend a few months dancing to rhythms in Ibiza. Maybe something brand new. I always wanted to visit Canada. Maybe a few months in New York? I have no one who will miss me, nothing pulling me back. Maybe I’ll go nowhere at all, for a while. Floating somewhere in between, feeling everything, holding on to nothing.
Hanging out sipping coffee, answering all your questions ☕️
More stuff from little me here: www.charlotteeriksson.com
What inspires you most? Will you go back to Bali? What’s your biggest reward from sharing your creative work online? What makes you feel free and at peace? Advice for making friends when you’re in a new place and have social anxiety?
Come have a Sunday morning coffee with me while I'm answering all your questions ♡
Find all my books and music at www.CharlotteEriksson.com
This conversation is for you who, like me, need a challenge in order to feel alive. We thrive on creating personal challenges as a way to feel fueled and fired up, excited and motivated. Nothing drives us more than growth, development, change, moving forward. Stagnation is death to people like us.
And this conversation is about what happens when you find yourself without that kind of challenge, and as a consequence… feel unimpressed by life.
💭 www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭
Have you ever dreamt of reinventing yourself in a new city where no one knows you?Do you know that there is something more out there, destined for you, waiting for you?
But maybe you're scared... scared to leave your safety, your family, the place you've called "home" your whole life?
This episode is about moving away from home, starting over in a new place, chasing your dream and building your home in moments of belonging, no matter where in the world you might find yourself.
If you like my podcast and want me to keep sharing my thoughts and ideas with you, it would mean the world if you took 10sec to leave a 5-star review wherever you're listening. It tells me that you want me to keep doing it, but it also makes me feel less alone ♡
Send me your stories, questions and concerns about moving away from home and I will do a part 2!
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www.charlotteeriksson.com
Find all my books here: www.charlotteeriksson.com/books
Everything that has ever happened to you is yours to keep. You own it. No one can ever take that away from you. Your experiences, feelings, cities you walked, people you loved, and fights you fought: they're yours and yours only. And every single thing you’ve done and every single person you’ve met will stay with you, grow with you, and it’s these things that slowly build your character. These things make your life story, and you will only lose the things you actively decide to let go of.
You can leave someone without leaving them behind. You can keep the warm, safe feeling of loving someone without wanting to be with them anymore. You can keep your love for someone, even when they say they don’t love you anymore. Think about it: what’s beautiful about human relationships is the feeling we get from them. Think about a time in your life when you were hopelessly in love with someone, romantically or as a friend: you had so much love for this person! It filled you up with energy and heat, made you smile and sing, and the thought of this person being alive made you feel both calm and excited and most of all just grateful. Maybe something happened. Maybe that person decided to leave you, maybe you decided to leave her or him, or maybe it was a mutual decision to simply move on. Either way, it was not the other person that created that feeling of love and warmth inside of you, YOU created that for yourself. You let yourself feel love, for this person, but you can let yourself feel love for anything and anyone, life or yourself even, at all times. No one can take the feeling of being in love away from you. It comes from you. You can carry a gratitude of hope and safety with you, even though you have physically left him or her behind.
You can say goodbye to people without losing the beauty they gave you.
I know a lot of you also left your home town, or even home country, to move out in the world and change your dream, whatever that might be. I guess we all have reasons for leaving, or running away. A big reason for me was that growing up, I never felt like I had people around me who I actually looked up to. I didn’t see an adult person doing anything impressive to me. No one who lived in a way that made me excited to also grow up and take on life. I saw adults around me who were uninspired and uninspiring. They were living lives that I did not want to take on. Young as I was, I fled to the books. In books I found inspiring breathtaking extraordinary people, real and fictional, but who were so defined, in a way. Even if it was a quiet small poet, like, I discovered the American poet jack Gilbert and loved his poems but even more the fact that he fled the limelight in America when he became a little bit famous and moved to Europe and lived in kind of random hidden places, quietly, simply, just writing. He lived on a small island in Greece called Paros, where I actually later on went to spend a few weeks myself. He lived in Denmark and Germany, and just quietly wandered and wrote. I was inspired by that. What a wonderful way to live.
Of course I also discovered Jack Kerouac. Reading On The Road was my ticket out in the world. You can leave and live on the road and not chase material success but float from experience to experience and live with no belonging and just soak up the blue sky???? WHAT? It was mind blowing. I was in awe. ....
... A great leader will be aware of his or her own strengths and understand when they are useful and when they are not useful. The dark side of their strengths will show when those strengths are used in the wrong context. So let’s say again this new leader took on his or her team with the same energy and independence and stubbornness as he or she did while climbing up to that position. He or she would then become a very harsh, critical, judgmental leader. That’s when strengths become weaknesses.
Another example, in my own life. My strengths are pretty similar to this example. I’m independent, I don’t need anybody to make things happens. I make things happen myself. I believe in my own ability to learn and figure thing out and I count on myself to always make it work. I believe these are strengths, that I am proud of.
But let’s place me in a context of a relationship. And let’s place those strengths inside of a relationship, and I say to my person: I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anyone or anything to make myself happy and to build my life and I can do this all on my own.
Yeah—
Strengths used in the wrong context will become your weaknesses.
So what I have learned, a huge huge game change of a lesson, is that my strongest strengths, need to be my biggest awareness point, because let’s place me in that relationship, knowing I am independent and strong and don’t really need this person. I need to be aware of how I let those strengths shine through. I don’t mean suppress them, I need turn them around. How can I instead, turn them into terms like: Stability. You can count on me. Loyalty. I will not let you down. I got your back, just like I have mine. If things get rough, you can count on me to not give up. Because I never give up. See, if I can learn to be aware of my strengths, and learn to be aware and conscious of how I communicate them in certain context, they can stay strengths. But if I am unaware of them, they will become my weaknesses.
Being independent inside of relationship. I am still using my strong, independent never-giving-up attitude, but in a gentler way. Saying, “I’m not giving up on you and or me or this. You can count on me.”
What are your strengths? If you would ask your friends, what do you think they would say? Then ask yourself, in what context, if you’re being really honest to yoursel
Today I'm sharing one simple idea from the book Yes, And by Kelly Leonard that actually changed the way I speak to myself and to other people.
I’m very critical of myself. I have high standards, I am my own worst critic and toughest coach. Whenever I stand in front of a decision, I used to always say.. “yes, but…” “Yes, but… I am not skilled enough, good enough, pretty enough, popular enough,.. “Yes, but, I don’t have the contacts, the resources, the energy.” “Yes, but, remember what happened last time, yes but things don’t ever go that way, yes but be more realistic, yes but but but but…"
What happens the second you say BUT is that you interrupt the flow of the yes. It’s basically a no.
The premise of this book I'll be talking about in today's episode is: imagine switching that but out to and… Yes, and…
You will then start saying things like ... “Yes, and... this has been challenging before so I’m going to have to be real smart about the plan forward." “Yes, and, since you don’t have those resources you’re going to have to put in some extra research”. "Yes and, since it feels little overwhelming right now you can ask for help or take your time. “Yes, and you did the best you could.”
See that difference? Switching out one word changed the whole vibe! It went from highlighting the obstacles and negatives to focusing on the ways around them.
BUT indicates an argument. You’re saying NOT REALLY. You’re saying I DON’T AGREE.
AND indicated that you’re building upon something. You’re adding. You’re adding another angle, another twist, another thought.
Instead of cutting down your own or someone else's idea or thought with BUT, you can just add to it and invite them or yourself to see things from a new angle by using AND.
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Find my books at www.charlotteeriksson.com/book
Download a free digital version of my third book Another Vagabond Lost To Love HERE
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What if the universe really truly has your back. What if, every time you find yourself feeling comfortable in life, the universe will make sure that something happens so you can keep evolving. As a person, on all levels. The universe is making sure that you, as an individual, becomes the highest version of yourself. And to become the highest version of yourself, you have to always be tested, challenged to think in new patterns and leave your comfort zone. What if you could learn to see setbacks and rejections as gifts: you’re being challenged to grow and evolve.
I have always had a deep, powerful belief in the universe’s ability to guide and direct. I do believe we are the creator’s of our own opportunities and we can make things happen, but the universe will direct us, slightly, sometimes without us noticing.
That guidance can appear as people. When I look back at my life I can see how every person who showed up in my life ultimately taught me something, or led me somewhere, or introduced me to someone, that in turn led me to the next chapter or opportunity or stage in my life. When I have fallen into moments of feeling like I have done all the work I could possibly do on myself and I am now complete and all healed, I suddenly randomly meet a person who makes me aware of all the sweet spots in my heart that I still need to work on and heal. When I believe I’m ready for a certain opportunity, I’m presented with a rejection, or a hurdle, or I make a mistake that in turn leaves me thinking: I need to work a bit more on that specific area.
This summer I found myself with a very effortless daily living. Everything was calm. I had calm, stable friendships, good health, making slow but stable progress with my creative projects and I slowly made myself comfortable. In the past I had moments when I was chasing something, I was on a mission, being challenged, growing every day, and I woke up with wide opened eyes ready to fight! But this summer.. I transitioned into long slow mornings, no challenges in sight and I might have made myself a bit too comfortable. Then suddenly, POOF, out of nowhere, things were turned around and thrown up in the air and I found myself yet again sitting wide awake at 4am plotting out a new plan. For you, it might have been losing a job, losing a person, being kicked out of your apartment, the stock market crashing.. whatever it was that disrupted your peaceful existence—how did you handle it? How did you react? Did you curse the people and the situation, or did you take a deep breath a glance at the sky, and then thought: “how exciting. I wonder where this will lead me?”
See, the world is not static and the idea that we will get to a point where we got it all sorted is a fantasy that wouldn’t serve us. Trauma, loss or rejections CAN catapult you into action that speeds up your personal transformation in a way that slow and peaceful living never can, and looking back at my life, all the most important big moves in my life happened as a consequence of being forced out of my peaceful stable living.
So how can we handle unexpected hurdles or redirections? We can panic. We can curse. We can cry. Or we can learn to feel the universe placing a hand on our shoulder, saying “that’s not for you, keep looking, I got your back.” When we’re presented with a person who’s triggering us, challenging us, breaking our hearts… we can learn to feel the universe saying: “I sent this person to you for a reason. Your job is to find the lesson that will get you ready for the next person. Maybe the right person.”
Things will happen, that are out of our control, we can not stop them from happening because they were always meant to happen. All we can do is choose how we respond to it. Do we panic, wish for different circumstances… or do we trust in our story, take on the storm like a growth opportunity and embrace the lessons? Can we even learn to take deep, calm breaths in the
The podcast where we ban shallow conversations and go deep 🍷 Grab a journal or a friend and answer the questions from “We’re not really strangers” with me! Send over your reflections on the Spotify app and we can share our stories with each other ♡
www.CharlotteEriksson.com
Maybe, today, I know that I am more interesting internally than I will ever be externally. My thoughts and ideas and goals and visions are grander and more magnificent than any external achievement I’ve ever achieved, so telling my past story feels small and empty because I carry bigger things inside, so I don’t often talk about myself anymore. I don’t need to. I know one day it will materialise and maybe some people will notice, or they won’t, and I no longer care.
As long as I took pride in my past achievements I couldn’t actually completely move towards the future; I held myself back by trying to still fit inside my past story. But you will never fit your future story if you’re still trying to play small and fit in the past one. You’ve grown! Future you shouldn’t be able to go back, she or he should have evolved so much that there is no going back, and the past shouldn’t even be realistic or nurturing anymore because you are now a new you. Evolved. Bigger. More refined.
Connected to this is of course also living through past failures. Introducing yourself with a small tone of sadness because of something you went through, or a little bit of shame because of something you did not achieve a few years ago.
We can not show up in the present as our full magnificent new us if we’re still carrying younger us on our shoulders. We have to learn to move on and let go, good and bad. And that doesn’t mean we let go of the lessons. We hold on to the wisdom, it’s ingrained in us. We carry lessons and wisdom and knowledge with us, but I think we should place the actual experience that let to that knowledge as a painting on the wall and only look at it with nostalgia and not as anything to introduce ourselves with. It was then, younger you. Be proud of younger you. But look up to older you.
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✦ Find all my books, writings and music at www.CharlotteEriksson.com
✦ www.instagram.com/justaglasschild
contact@charlotteeriksson.com
An honest, vulnerable and intimate deep talk session with songwriter and artist EVELINE! 💭
Listen to Eveline's brand new single Under Pressure: www.listentoeveline.com
Follow Eveline on IG & TikTok: @listentoeveline
And you'll find everything you need to find on my website: www.CharlotteEriksson.com
💭 Find all my books, writings and social media links on my website: www.CharlotteEriksson.com 💭
Having a minimalism lifestyle means having less and doing less in order to have more time, space and energy for the things that really truly matter to me. It helps me free myself from overwhelm, stress, find clarity and straighten out my priorities.
When my own dreams and visions make me overwhelmed, I know I have made things too complicated. I have made life too complicated. I go back to reminding of myself what areas in my life I prioritise. These are mine, and I have this written down on the first page of my visualisation notebook: health, passion, intellectual growth, location independence, art and community. This is what I care about and what I want in my life. Nothing more, nothing less. And these words are carefully chosen to make sure I don’t leave anything out that I know I would like in there.
Then I look at the goals that make me overwhelmed. Very often I then find that with time I started adding dreams and goals that really don’t have anything to do with my main priorities in life. Maybe I got caught up in a worldly trend or hype and started to think I also had to achieve that thing or own that thing or go to that place, but when I go back to my own values it’s really not needed
I basically make sure that I only have goals and visions in that document, that are in alignment with my core life values and priorities. Everything else is just clutter, overflow and fluff. It’s not needed. I strike out every goal that feels unnecessary.
But life is not a static object or a one-way-street. It’s an ever-growing ever-evolving movement, a fleeting process that will flow in whichever direction it can, just because it simply can, and I’d like to mention amore fati; trusting your fate. Every single time something crashed my plans or dreams, I was forced to write a new plan, new goals, and take a different road. I cursed the moon and the stars and all the people walking on this earth who were in my way, because I thought I was being challenged. I thought I was being stopped from reaching my goal. But I can see it crystal clear now. Look back on your life, a month, six months, ten years, and you will see how it all connects. Every time you were forced to change your ways it led you to something that led you to the next dot and suddenly you see how it’s a beautiful well-crafted story with wonders and defeats, leaving and arriving, and that’s why they call it a life story and not just a life. Life will keep redirecting you until you’re on the right path, and it will feel like hurdles or obstacles in your way, but it’s all in your favour. You just need to trust your story. Trust your path. Trust your place.
So I know you sometimes feel like you’ve lost track of that well-paved road you think you ought to take to get to where you want to be, but you’re exactly in the right place exactly where you are. Trust the process of how things go and don’t fight them; don’t curse them. No story is worth telling without the twists and turns. Make them count instead. Now go be where you are, and don’t be sorry.
// in this episode I’m sharing an excerpt from my book “Another Vagabond Lost To Love”. You can read more about my books and find links to purchase on my website: www.charlotteeriksson.com ♡
“As a young poet, reading is a search for your lost family. You’re looking for your secret poetry fathers and your secret poetry mothers. And cousins and sisters, people who are like you. Not your biological family, but your imaginative family. The family you’d like to be reborn into. Every time you’ve found a poet you absolutely love, you’ve found another relative. People who are spiritual relatives. And that means you’re not alone. It means that you read Walt Whitman and you feel that recognition and think ‘My God! This is my strange great uncle Walt!’ It makes it easier for you to live. To know that you’re not alone. And so these poems become a part of your life.” // Please come find all my books and links to social media on my website: www.charlotteeriksson.com 🤍
In this episode I share 7 life lessons I’ve learned from becoming obsessed with court trials on YouTube lol.
- Know what you want before you begin.
- Don’t make assumptions.
- Don’t speculate
- State “Irrelevant” and move on.
- Move on quickly.
- Listen and ask more than you speak.
- Tell a story.
Please come find me on Instagram @justaglasschild, and pick up signed copies of my books at www.charlotteeriksson.com/new-album 🤍
“I don’t have another job other than being me and serving my life mission, which is to make people feel less alone and inspire people to design their own lives. But that involves more than just strumming my guitar or writing prose for a book.”
Another episode in which I talk about questions, thoughts or struggles you’ve sent to me. I would love to hear your thoughts on the things I talk about on this podcast! Send me a DM on Instagram @justaglasschild, and we’ll create a community of support and belonging ♡
Will I move to Portugal permanently? What is my daily routine? Life-changing book recommendations? A massive Q&A episode coming your way! www.CharlotteEriksson.com 🍷
You can never go back to the same place twice. Something has always changed a little. You have changed, the place has changed, the people in it ... it’s not the same and you need to visit it with new eyes, no expectations, no lofty thoughts of wanting to go back to something. You can’t go back to anything, things are in constant movement and so are you. You must keep moving forward, on and on and not fight it. The ones who fight the natural flow of life will go against the current and nature is stronger than will. www.CharlotteEriksson.com 🤍
Welcome to a brand new podcast season where you’ll get to join me and some of my most inspiring, intelligent, creative and driven friends for deep talks over a bottle of wine or two!
In this episode you’ll get to meet Elto, a singer/songwriter from Austria who’s currently working on a new album here in Berlin. Elto and I always get lost in conversations about everything and nothing, so we decided to catch over some wine and let you in on our conversation. We talk about everything from finding hope in the middle of a lockdown, crypto and NFTs, my winter in Portugal and much more. Go give Elto some love at www.instagram.com/eltomusic
If you know someone inspiring you think I should invite for a deep talk, please let me know! www.charlotteeriksson // contact@charlotteerikssom.com
If I could say anything to 17 year old me, it would be this:
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Don’t be so scared. Don’t waste your days worrying about the next day, next month, 5 years from now. Just do what you can with today. Be what you are right now, and work with it. You’re exactly in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. Trust your story, you’re going to be something wonderful one day but now you are something too.
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Learn to let go. People, seasons, cities and feelings will come and go. it’s the natural flow of life and nature, and you must be a part of it. Nothing is static and you don’t want to be, you want to learn to grow and flow with the seasons, being in constant movement. Learn to treasure what you what when you have it. When they leave you, learn to smile, say goodbye and move on being grateful that you now will go on being one experience richer.
Lastly, live a little. Put your feet up. Laugh, loud, with strangers and friends. Take a night off. Go to the party and stay the night. let someone kind walk you home, a warm summer night in July. Go to the cinema, read more books, visit museums and go to spain with that kind boy from ... wherever he was from. This mission of yours is really nothing else but an experience, a collection of moments and thoughts, feelings and lessons. Don’t waste it being tired and scared. Say yes, say no, think with you heart and go against the current. Life will be as wonderful as you make it, but it’s up to you to make it so. It’s on your side, you know? You just have to join it.
How to handle grief and loss
What is grief? Grieving, to me, is loving. Grieving is honoring. Missing is honoring. Missing the space this person used to take up on the planet, and now that space is aching, it’s empty. The problem with grief is that we make it about us. We always make things about ourselves, when it’s really not about us at all and neither does it serve us to believe it is. It’s never about us.
I’ve had this one ringing line repeating in my head lately, saying: “There is no wrong way for reality to play out. There is no wrong way for reality to play out.”
David Kessler is an author who’s written several book on the subject of grief, and I really recommend you to google him if you’re going through something heavy. In his book “life lessons”, he says: “But like it or not, change happens and, like most things in life, doesn't really happen to us - it just happens.”
The second we really truly start to live from this belief, so much will shift. Things don’t happen to us, they just happen. It’s not about us. There is no wrong way for reality to play out. We are just here to observe the way reality plays out and what we control is how we choose to respond and react. This is the world. Terrible things happen, and beautiful things happen. You can’t change that, and you can’t stop that. All you can do is decide how you want to move through the world and respond to things. This doesn’t mean that you won’t go out and try to make a change, help where you can and create your own opportunities, it just means that when we’re talking about things like death and loss and grief, acceptance really is key.
You most probably have heard of the 6 stages of grief. If not, it’s a formula used by therapists when they work with clients who go through grief. This formula was developed by a woman called Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and she has documented this whole process in a book called On Grief and Grieving, that I also recommend you to pick up if you are dealing with grief right now. The five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. No matter what you are dealing with, even if it’s something a bit lighter and smaller, you can’t go from the event to moving on. You have to go through some sort if processing so that you can grow from it, learn from it, understand a bit more about what it means to be a human, and then you can move on. It’s the same with the 6 stages of grief. You can’t go from stage 1 to stage 6, then you are missing the whole point of grief. Grief, like any other heartbreak, can be the most crucial self development opportunity in your entire life. Don’t waste it. Face it and become a better person through it.
Healing and moving forward, doesn’t mean that the loss didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that you will forget about them, let them go or deny. It simply means that you will not let the loss control you. It means you will carry the loss with you but you are in control.
Here is an important line I also found in a book on grieving: “What would best honor the years they didn’t get?” This is so powerful. Honour them by the way you now will live out your life. Vast, curious, brave, honouring the people who did not get to experience this day.
I will end with another excerpt from David Kessler’s book “Finding Meaning”:
“After all my years working with the dying and the grieving, I have found that in this lifetime, the ultimate meaning we find is in everyone we have loved. Your loved one’s story is over. For unknown reasons, their time on earth has drawn to a close, but yours continues. I can only invite you to be curious about the rest of the story of your life.”
The year I changed my own character. The year I stopped fleeing. The year I took responsibility for my own becoming. For my own happening. For my own success and happiness, home and surroundings. The year I learned how to quit being myself, and instead design a new self, deliberately, consciously, maturely.
The year my heart broke, quietly dying. The year the vision I’ve had for a peaceful future was erased and gone, the house I thought I was living in was thrown up in the air during the calmest summer day, and I waved my arms screaming for someone to save me. This was the year I learned to depend on myself. On my own ability to get by, even when I think I can’t, and this was the year I became my own saviour. The year I built my own home. From ground up. A foundation to stand on. A stronger character. A loving heart.
Because when a heart gets broken, it’s wide open.
When a heart gets broken, it’s wide open to take in and give out. To learn and to grow, stronger and wiser, and an open heart is a brave heart because it can feel and hear and see it all. An open heart is a brave heart, because it knows there’s no turning back. Only bravely facing forward, one foot in front of the other, slowly moving on to something better, something new.
This was the year I went to sleep some nights thinking, I’m done. Feeling finished. I had a good life. I learned a lot. the year I understood surrender. The desperate feeling of no longer wanting to be here, anyone, anymore, again. alone. alone. alone. This was the year I sat down and faced the sky and screamed out with my arms wide open saying, “I just want to rest! In peace, in quiet, in assuring knowledge that all will be well.”
But no one will come and save you. No one will take your hand and guide you to a better life. You must create it yourself. You must collect your mentors, dead or alive, and you must accumulate wisdom and knowledge, visions and goals. You must decide what you want with your life. You must decide who you are trying to be.
This was the year I learned to no longer depend on other people to get by, nor be stubbornly independent without any help from anyone or anything. This was the year I instead learned to say: you can depend on me. I will be your stability, you can always count on me. I said it to myself and to others, over and over until I believed it. I will stand like a lighthouse in the storm and repeat over and over you can depend on me.
This was the year I stopped begging for things to happen, and instead made them happen myself. This was the year I stopped living my life according to someone else’s needs, and instead explored my own. This was the year I learned to stop begging people to love me. If someone wants to go, let them go. This was the year I learned that every person who shows up in your life is there to teach you a lesson, and they will stay until you have learned what you need to learn. Then they will leave, whether you want them to or not, and you must let them. This was the year I learned that you must dare to leave something or someone completely, leaving that space empty and aching, in order to open up space for something new. And you must know that there is a new lesson and a new person, in a new place with a new life waiting for you. This was the year I learned that what’s coming is always better than what has been.
Don’t hold on to things that are over. Let them go, bravely.
// from my book “He loved me some days. I’m sure he did.” 🌹 www.charlotteeriksson.com
I’ve made life more complicated than it is, believing I need things or believing I am lacking things that I saw other people have. But ever since I came here my practice has been to simplify. Do less but do it with more precision and thought. Make every move matter. Each morning I’m learning the simple practice of just walking. Not while listening to music or a podcast or talking to someone one the home, literally just walking, listening to the sky and the waves rolling in.
🍷 My new IG account: @stillaglasschild 🤍 What I’ve learned from having my instagram account shut down, gone, deleted. Yes, that happened. 5 days ago.. Not just my access to the 30,000 people who found and followed me there but I also lost 8 years of memories that I had captured in my posts.. It truly hurts on an emotional level, but it’s also detrimental for my business as a small independent author and songwriter since 90% of people who purchased my books every week found me through my instagram community, and selling my books is how I survive.. so, I panicked, I’ve cried, I’ve desperately tried to get it back. But also, I am proud of myself because I can feel so strongly that I have built my spiritual muscle, my undying belief that the universe is on my side, that feeling is so strong in me right now and, you know the purpose of choosing to practice any kind psychology practice, spiritual practice, mindfulness, meditation, going to therapy, the whole purpose is that you will be able to handle dough situation in life better and easier. That’s the whole point.
I think people who tend to feel or become disposable, are people who don’t respect themselves enough. But the good news is, we can change that any day. We just have to start letting people know that if we don’t feel appreciated and valued, we will find other friends who will make us feel appreciated and valued. If we’re in a relationship where we feel replaceable, we will make the person understand that if we don’t start to feel loved and valued, we will leave and know that there people out there who will be HONOURED to get to be with us. They will do anything to get to spend their time next to us. Those are the people we want around us. And you know what, in my experience, the people that right now make us feel disposable, they will step up and start value you if you simply show them that you won’t stay if they don’t.
When you have an important decision to make: If you knew for sure, that you would have a great life and be happy no matter what you decided. Then what would you choose? This is a powerful one. We often base our decision on if it will make us happy or not. And this needs another layer because depending on what sort of personality type we are, we usually lean towards making decisions that will give us instant gratification, we want the happiness now. Or we lean towards being future focused people, and then we tend to make decisions based on if it will make us happy in the future or not.
Let’s take an example; you’re in a relationship that is not necessarily terrible, but neither is it amazing. You’re trying to decide if you should stick it out, believe that things can make it work. Or if you should end it and move on. You will walk around trying to decide if you believe that you can be happy in this relationship, OR if you can happier in a different relationship, or even by yourself. But let’s imagine that you knew, for sure, that you would be enormously happy and have a wonderful life in both choices. You knew for sure you would be happy in the relationship, and you knew for sure you would be happy if you also decided to leave the relationship. Then what would you choose?
This turns so much on its head because now you’re left with the question: do you want THIS relationship? The question is not if you can be happy in it. You will. But do you want it no matter what?
This is graceful ageing for me. Entering each age with intention and calm. Not just ending up there, but creating that place. Planning the maturity shift beforehand and giving myself the knowledge I will need, the strength I will need, the relationships I crave … before I get there.
I’ve written four books about leaving, songs and poems, had an endless romance with starting over, packing light. But have you ever tried returning? Have you tried going back to make things right?
Have you ever left a city small and sad, determined to never return but then you’re out there for a few years, roaming the streets, intertwining with people. You make a few rounds, collect some hearts, some wounds, and one day you come to one of those lakes where everything is still and quiet. The clouds are reflecting on the surface and it’s like you see your own thoughts and past and habitual ways in the sky, everywhere, telling you something. This lake can be real or not, either way this is what it feels like. You run and run and run and run and suddenly there’s a still lake reflecting clouds on the surface. You sit down, because lakes like these tell you to do so, and you sit there for a while, tilting your head, seeing your own ways from different angles. Maybe that tragedy wasn’t so tragic after all? Maybe that boy just tried to go on well? Maybe this loneliness isn’t so terrible to live with as long as you know that you can meet new people any second of any day your whole life through. You can still reach out; you’re not an island.
You find yourself letting go of all the stories you’ve held on to, things that happened in these cities, people they belonged to, and now you go back...
I’ve spent the first part of my life leaving places and people and versions of myself, but lately I’ve started returning. I go back to all the places I once left. I left them angry and sad, broken and small. Usually disappointed in people and situations. I have one person for each city I’ve ever lived in, and I kept thinking I could never go back because that city belonged to us, how we were then, and I thought I had to leave and never return in order to move on and get over. But that’s not wisdom. That’s not growth. That’s limitation and giving a piece of the world to someone you think acted wrong.
So maybe that’s what true moving on looks like: learning that nothing is ever attached to something physical. No emotion or heartbreak or catastrophic escape is ever attached to a city or a person or a house: it’s all in you. And you can change. You can move on. You can twist and turn around, take a new shape and let go. 💭🥀 An excerpt from my book “He loved me some days. I’m sure he did.” You can find the book on Amazon or at www.CharlotteEriksson.com/new-album
Whenever I am transitioning from one thing to the next, throughout my day, I am practicing graceful transitions. This means that whenever I am moving from one task or meeting/conversation to the next, I am completely letting go of what I just did, and completely focus on the next things I'm about to do. Before I start the next task or leave for to meet up with a friend or whatever I might be doing, I go through the situation in my mind: how I will do this, why I will do it, what I want the result to be. This is not a long process. This is literally 30 seconds to one minute. I visualize myself do this next thing in my mind. I see myself doing it effortlessly, connected to source, connected to my nature, working with diligence, and a smile on my face. And then I get started.
Even if it's like, I go out to have a coffee with a friend. I quickly visualize what sort of person I want to show up as. You know, I don't just want to show up without having put any thought behind how I want to leave this person. If I go for a coffee with a friend, I want that hour to leave my friend feeling excited about his or her life. I want them to feel good about themselves. I want them to go back home and and have had a positive experience with me. I want them to think about me and say: "every time I meet Charlotte, I feel inspired. I feel supported and understood."
That's my goal in life. So therefore, before I go meet him or her, I visualize how I want to show up, what sort of energy I want to bring forth. What kind of mood I want to be in and just go through my character, to consciously show up as a positive light in the world.
This has literally changed the way I go through my days. And it also means that when I go to sleep, I can let go of everything that happened during the day and sleep. It’s the most amazing feeling to just let go and trust that process.
Do I google myself? Do I read book reviews of my books? What did I edit out of my new book? Do you have to feel a lot to be a good writer? I’m answering all of them questions in this episode 💭
This I know to be true: YOUR job is to decide exactly what you want from life. That is your job. Then it is your brain’s job, or the universes, whatever you believe in, it’s their job to guide you to the right circumstances where you’ll find exactly what you have set out to find. But they can’t guide you unless you know for sure what you want to find.
So now to my actual story: End of February this year I decided to go back to Berlin after having spent the winter in Sweden. There was something going back that made me feel … anxious. Sad.. I did not want to go back. I knew I loved Berlin, I loved the city and my people, but it was the thought of going back to the apartment that made me feel off.. I realised, the girl that moved into that apartment beginning of 2020 was no longer here. I have evolved, a lot, and so suddenly my energy did no longer align with the energy in the apartment. It held me back. I decided, my only goal and vision right now is to find myself an apartment in Berlin that not only aligns with who I am now, but even more aligns with the woman I want to be in 6 months from now. I know that woman, I have created her. I know how she talks and walks, how she behaves and how she feels.
To the story is that the release date for my new album AND new book was set to March 26th. That was an important date for me because releasing this album and releasing this book, I realised, was no longer just about sharing my work with the world, it had grown into the ritual of releasing the happenings in my life that made me create this album and this book. Releasing the sadness, the heaviness, the people, the stories, and most of all, letting go of that chapter. I literally needed to move into a new chapter of my life. Mentally and physically. I had 1 month to find a new apartment, and not just any apartment, but my ULTIMATE apartment, the one I envisioned for myself, now! Everyone who’s lived in a big city knows that finding a new apartment in 4 weeks is pretty much impossible. Well, this is where the magic happens again.
I knew exactly what sort of apartment I was looking for. I knew the size, the area, the rent, the energy from the landlord… I went to 40 flat viewings in 15 days. I applied for 20 of them, I got 4 of them, but something felt … not 100%. Then I simply walked into my apartment. I knew it, the second I entered. This is my new home. The landlady who showed me around kept talking about that one summer she went to Sweden and within just a few hours I had my new apartment secured.
This feels like magic, but it’s really not. I’d like to call it pure science. Psychology. Chemistry, even, it’s about neutrons and plus and minus and all that.
See, what I believe is, the second I walked into the apartment I knew it was my new home because it looked exactly like the apartment I had visioned for myself. When I felt that, so strongly, my energy shifted. I stopped being a potential tenant, and instead started walking and talking like the future tenant of this apartment. Maybe the landlady didn’t notice, but she picked up on it. The human psyche is very predictable. You know there are those experiments that show how people mirror each other’s body language without thinking about it. If you stand in front of someone talking and he scratches his head, you will most likely raise your hand and scratch your head, without even noticing. So the landlady mirrored my energy and I felt it, she talked to me like the person who would move in.
You really don’t have to believe in this way of moving through the world. It’s not a belief. It’s not a religion. It’s not even really spirituality. It’s being in control of your own future. Directing the energy to the right places. Directing your eyes to where you want to go.
Where you want to be in 6 months? How do you feel when you wake up in 6 months? Where are you? What are you wearing? Who are you with? Don’t just end up there, make sure you’ll be somewhere you really want to be.
I feel like I am an abandoned leaf in the world with no steady footing. That’s my reality. And it’s not in the way of feeling like a victim, it’s more in the way of feeling … unimportant.
I’ve been studying shamanism with a wise man from Costa Rica lately, and he’s introducing me to the lineage of Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion. The path of honouring, serving, basically devoting yourself to serving and loving. Loving people and the world, unconditionally. Annoyingly corny, right? Bare with me.
There is something that happens in our hearts when we turn the focus away from our own bruised hearts and hurt, to instead just putting the focus on other people. My mentor challenged me to use every single interaction the coming 7 days to practice Bhakti yoga. He said: “focus wholeheartedly on doing everything you possibly can to make each person you come in contact with to feel seen, listened to, understood and supported. Don’t expect anything back. Don’t expect them to ask about you, to offer the same support back, just be an angel in disguise guiding people home.”
“Just be an angel in disguise guiding people home”.
I think your 30’s are about second tries. This is when you will do things properly. You meet someone in your 20's and fall in love and throw yourself into a hectic romance because it's all so magical and ends just as painfully and now you're gonna do it differently. You want loyalty. You want silent agreements. You also know what you don’t want. You have some standards. You don’t give yourself away so easily. You have worked hard to build a life for yourself and if someone’s gonna be invited into it he better make it better in some way. You no longer do things just to do them.
An excerpt from my very first audiobook, finally out everywhere bow! The story of how I moved from Sweden to London to chase my dream as a songwriter. http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com/links
2021 will be the year i learn to live. Embracing things as they are, no longer feeling the need to change or build or grow, but instead live. be. Do what I already do and enjoy it. love it. Love my people without wanting anything from them or wanting them to think anything of me. Just simply appreciate my people. Appreciate my work, my words, my job, my project. No more pressure to achieve or produce or learn skills I feel like I should have but don’t have any energy to learn. Instead I will align. Do what comes naturally and let my new intellect (?) lead the way. Slow down. Work smarter, not harder. Have less conversation, but with more depth. do less, but do better. Do fuller, stronger, deeper, more fully.
I have felt a strange of heartbreak lately. Without anyone around to break my heart. It’s like, I’ve created the feeling of heartbreak in myself by completely focusing in on everything I’m worried about. How do you heal heartbreak? How do you heal it when there is no one to move on from?
Exactly a year ago I landed in Barcelona with one bag, my guitar, a broken heart and no real plans. I would stay for two months and then spend the winter Carcavelos in Portugal, in a simple but cosy little studio apartment I had found right by the beach. I had already put in the deposit for my studio in Portugal and I was excited to finally live by the ocean. I had spent a year living temporarily in different places, hoping I would land somewhere that felt like home, where I wanted to stay. I was in a phase of healing and figuring out my next chapter in life.
My time in Barcelona became my in-between moment. My right to get lost in nothingness. No plans for the future, not yet healed from the past, and I enjoyed dancing in the middle. One month in I got an offer to move into a flat in Berlin, and there was just something about it I couldn’t let go of. I didn’t want to give up my dream of being a songwriter, but moving out to Portugal would mean a winter in isolation. I was so lonely I cried every day, but I had sort of given up hope that things would ever change. I saw Berlin as my last shot at all those things. I will make one last try, I said. I will give it all I have, one last time. I asked the owner of the studio in Portugal if I could push the deposit forward to this winter instead. I will spend one last year trying my best in Berlin, then I’ll settle by the beach somewhere quiet and simple, I thought. I almost cry when I write that today because it makes me so sad that I was 28 years old and had already given up on ever being happy and loved and surrounded by warmth. I had already accepted that I would always be lonely and was ready to live alone by the ocean because that’s how I felt inside.
I moved into the apartment in Berlin end of November, leaving Barcelona for darkness and cold. “It’s just one year,” I kept saying. One year of saying yes to absolutely everything. Every opportunity, every encounter, every person. I would forget about everything I thought people saw me as and just push forward.
It really is quite magical how you can build a completely new life in just 12 months. If you’re ready to give up everything you were before. If you’re willing to let go of everything you thought you had to be and do and how to do it. I still feel lonely some days but I think it’s more of a habitual feeling I turn to sometimes and I have learned to remind myself that I am not lonely anymore. I have beautiful people around me that make me feel seen and appreciated and I’m working really hard to build deeper connections, not just staying temporary neighbours. I make an effort to reach out, to show up, to go the extra mile. I felt really insecure as a songwriter in the beginning of this year because my career didn’t work out the way I hoped it would and I was sort of ... ashamed? But I love nothing more than helping other artists tell their stories and let them bloom with the song and the spark in our eyes when we’re hitting the right words with the right melody and everyone’s energy sort of makes a little thunder. So I’m still working on trusting my abilities. I must believe I can contribute something special? I think we all can, but I didn’t believe it for so long. I work on myself, still, to not fall into old patterns of thinking low and dark and little of myself and I wake up every morning visualising the life I still am working hard on building. But I feel safe, and hopeful, for the first time in my life, maybe, because this year showed me that I can count on myself to change. I can count on myself to step up and learn new skills and change my ways and do what’s needed, and that accountability changes everything.
Anyway. Today I wrote to the landlord in Portugal saying she can keep the deposit and that maybe I’ll come next winter but for now I need to be here because for the first time in my life I don’t feel lonely and I need to protect that feeling with everything I have.
I don’t need the world to know or see or hear what I do anymore. It’s enough if one person feels it so deeply that something changes afterwards.
My 'why' back then was other people’s approval. My why was, to be great in other people’s eyes. But then you kind of realise: I am the sum of the people around me and my reputation is built on what I make other people feel and actually, I feel more accomplished when I make someone else happy than when someone else help me accomplish something and that’s the switch. www.CharlotteEriksson.com
I’m trying to both love myself and grow myself.
Everything changed when I learned to honour my body instead of fighting it. When I learned to take care of it, like a precious castle to protect this weary heart. To stop harming it, punishing it for looking like this or that, feeling like this or that. I don’t look like they all told me I had to, but I’m healthy and strong and vital. That is enough.
Everything changed when I forgave myself.
We never lose love. We never lose people. We carry it all with us and build our character from soft beautiful feelings and memories until we’re so completely built up of poetry and love that it’s all shining through us, making everyone around us a little gentler and kinder too. That thought makes me smile. And maybe you have a role model in your life, that you know personally or only from a distance. You admire his or her guts, achievement, strengths and wisdom. No matter if this person is still around or not, you can take the feelings, the inspiration, the motivation that person gave you and forever carry it with you. Make his energy a part of you and radiate it to everyone you meet. Eventually, you will become such a role model for someone else, too, and isn’t it a beautiful thought to know that you will share that light and energy forward. Making this world a little brighter and more active.
You can say goodbye to people without losing the beauty they gave you.
We never lose love. We never lose people. We carry it all with us and build our character from soft beautiful feelings and memories until we’re so completely built up of poetry and love that it’s all shining through us, making everyone around us a little gentler and kinder too. That thought makes me smile. And maybe you have a role model in your life, that you know personally or only from a distance. You admire his or her guts, achievement, strengths and wisdom. No matter if this person is still around or not, you can take the feelings, the inspiration, the motivation that person gave you and forever carry it with you. Make his energy a part of you and radiate it to everyone you meet. Eventually, you will become such a role model for someone else, too, and isn’t it a beautiful thought to know that you will share that light and energy forward. Making this world a little brighter and more active.
You can say goodbye to people without losing the beauty they gave you.
You can work on yourself as a human being so much and you can grow yourself and you can work on your music and create a beautiful song with the most amazing video and artwork and you hold this and you think this is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever created. and you put it out and there will be someone writing to you saying, “this changed my life”, and at the same time there will be another person saying, “this is so bad, you should stop doing music”. you can not escape this. this is going to happen, it happens to me all the time. the negativity very often takes over. if you get one positive message and one negative, you’re gonna think about the negative, sadly. the art is learning to speak to the ones that get you and bypass the ones that don’t...
I think I’ve had the best 3 weeks in a very very long time. I thought progress would be feeling more stable, having a consistent state of mind that does not sway depending on the weather but I’m having such low lows and peaking highs nowadays and I’m kind of enjoying it. The day feels like the darkest end or it’s completely magical. Anyway, I’m enjoying it and I write a lot and sing a lot and hurt a lot and love a lot and I’ve met a lot of new people those weeks who don’t look at me like I’m someone lonely and sad and I think that makes all the difference.
What does it actually mean to be an independent creator (artist, author, photographer...) and why did I become one? In this episode I share my own story of how I built my little career and how you can too ♡ www.CharlotteEriksson.com
In this episode I share a technique I’m calling “gifts to future me” to get through hard times 🌹
Visualisation is the most powerful tool I have ever found and it has helped me change my whole life, my own self-image and also heal my mental health. In this episode I’m sharing my own view on what it is and how I use it for clarity, health and future thinking.
Join me for the instagram live stream every Sunday evening! www.instagram.com/justaglasschild
LISBON, 5 Aug, 2018.
I keep putting myself in solitary places, for the pleasure of it, I think. A brown-eyed boy said hi in Swedish, so I looked down and walked away.
The heat is so constant, it’s like a wall as I open the window each morning. The heat, it consumes my senses and there is not place enough for sadness or cold. I bought a black dress with a bare back, wander in sandals and wear no make-up. I let my hair blow free and I only sing before 6am on wild streets or in front of the ocean, where no one can hear. They drink sangria at 2pm here, smoke cigars and go to the beach. I walk with a notebook and a collection of poetry under my arm, ignoring texts and emails, pretending I might stay. Pretending I’m not on the run, pretending I live somewhere. My mom asked me how long I’m staying and I replied “i miss you too”.
I could stay here. I could find myself a job, make some friends, find a home near the beach where I would walk every morning. Meditate, slow down and serenade the drinkers at night by the pub. I have a two months of rent on my bank account. My new book sold okay. I paid 100 pounds to bring my guitar over seas and I’m thinking of teaching yoga classes in the parks. If people want to come; donation based. My life is donation based. Give me what you think I’m worth, how much do you want me to survive? That’s not what I mean and not what I say but that’s how it feels, some days.
I am in love with the constant struggle. The constant pushing, trying to get by. I am in love with the feeling of making it another month, of simply getting by. I fell into a discussion with a British economics student, told him he spoke from an angle of white privilege and he did not understand the other side of money. He wouldn’t live anywhere else than London unless he had a job there so he voted to leave the EU, proud to not be a part of it. I said he was young and not very travelled and I regretted it the second I said it.
My brother is graduating soon. A fine master’s in something important. He’ll get a nice salary. he has a girlfriend, living in a nice flat. My ex-boyfriend just got engaged and my old best friend is pregnant. I’m writing poetry in a beach bar in Lisbon, sipping gin and only need two more songs to fill a new record. I fall asleep to the sound of drunken university students in the room next-door, they’re here to party. “are you a student?” “no, no, i’m here to work”. I say. Softly. Smiling. “i think i’m a little older than you”. I met a Norwegian boy who practiced yoga and said he saw rainbows in my eyes. Now he sends me photos from Canada, where he’s moving, and I save them on my hard drive to keep as a day dream. As an escape plan. No matter what happens, I still haven’t been to Canada. I can still go to Canada.
The heat is so constant. There is no place for anything else. I can make it another month. Maybe even more. I don’t think I ever asked for more than this.
Two weeks ago the whole world was advised to not leave our homes because of the corona virus currently ranging this planet. I will spare you the story about my first anxiety filled days and instead say that I found a way to actually turn this into the most beautiful time for me. I feel so inspired to finally have time to create all the things I’ve put off for so long, because I’ve been busy. One of the things I’ve been wanting to do for years now, is to record audiobook versions of all my books. I simply haven’t done it yet because I didn’t have time. It’s a big project, recording one podcast episode which is just one writing, takes me around 4 hours. Record, edit, and distribute it. So you can math, a whole book is a commitment. But I’m so so happy to say I started with my first book “Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps” last week, and I love it. I’m half way through, then there’s a lot of editing, and then I’m ready to release my very first audiobook.
To hype it up with you, I decided to share the first chapter of the book here. So what you will hear in this episode, is the first chapter of “Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps”, coming out as an audiobook sooooon!
I hope you will enjoy it! I think pretty soon I will start some sort of pre-order of the audiobook, but I’ll let you know when it’s time.
Stay safe, healthy, hopeful and cosy.
I’ve felt strong lately, but even on days I feel strong and happy, excited about my future, I find myself holding on to people. Past relationships I can’t let go of or temporary friendships I wish lasted longer. I’ve found myself feeling disconnected from people, like I can’t really reach them, and I’ve tried to solve this by over-connecting, wanting to be there all the time. Know what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling.. it sounds insane and obsessive, and it is. I know this, but this is me being honest.
So this is what I’ve learned…
Because my own life has felt so empty and uninhabited I’ve taken every opportunity I’ve found to “move in” to someone else’s life. In every relationship I’ve had, I’ve moved in to their lives. Leaving my own behind. I’ve taken on their routines and habits, interests and circle of friends because I’ve had none of my own. And when the relationship ends I keep finding myself helpless and lonely, desperately trying to stand up on my own, because it’s not just the person I lose — I also lose their life where I was living. I took it on like my own home, and now I’m kicked out of my own home and I never know how to let go of people because I simply don’t have a life of my own that feels full and warm enough to go back home to. I find myself homeless over and over again because I keep building my home in other people’s lives.
A while ago I met someone here in Berlin, and I so desperately wanted to invite him into my life. Show him around. Take him to my places, my corners of the city, my daily routine and let him see how I live. But I stopped myself because I simply don’t have a life I feel like I can invite someone into. It’s not full enough. Now, I love my life. I love everything I have in it. But there is something about me learning to live simple and on minimum. I do my things that usually go unnoticed and I create things that only my readers understand and then at the end of the day someone asks “so what did you do today?” And I mumble… mmm, I wrote and created something and then I read some books and did some things but whatever… what about you?”
You know those people you meet who just feel safe. They send out certainty and belonging, like everything will be okay for them, because they know how to make things okay. And if you’re lucky enough to spend a day with them they will go on with their lives and let you be a tourist in there. They make each moment their own, in small ways, like, having preferences of the music, the colors, the smells, the direction, the order of things. And they will talk about their lives in a way that doesn’t leave any space for questioning. It’s not like… hello, this is my life do you think that’s ok? Like I do… it’s more like “Hey, this is my life! It’s nice, isn’t it? Now show me yours!”
So I went to LA and I moved into my friends’ life for 2 weeks and every night I fell asleep feeling both proud of him for having created that life for himself, but also with a new realisation of why I feel so lost and lonely. I need to build out my life. I need to build it to the point of no longer feeling the need to move out of it. I must build my home in my own life. And it sounds so silly and so simple but if you get it you get it, and then it’s the most profound thought ever.
So, how do you do that? How do you build a life that feels full. A life you don’t want to move out of as soon as you meet someone with an interesting life? So that, when you do meet someone with an interesting life, you will have one too, and you’ll be two complete individuals, who can invite each other into each other’s lives, but you’ll both feel home and secure knowing that your life won’t be inhabited or lost. You stand strong and sure in your own and so will he, or she. That’s a healthy relationship. To yourself and to someone else.
http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com
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Clarity and vision are everything: When you’re clear on what kind of life you want to live, what kind of person you want to be, and what you want to achieve the next couple of months … you can say no to everything that doesn’t align with that life. You can stop chasing people who don’t align with your future vision. You can stop spending time on jobs or tasks that won’t bring you closer to those accomplishments and that life. This can be applied on everything. On your work and career, creative projects, health, relationships and friendships. If you know what sort of life you want, with each new relationship you can simply ask yourself: “does this relationship align with that future vision?” If you’re offered a new job or project to take on, ask yourself “will this job enable me to become the me I’m visioning? Does it align with the life I’m trying to shape?”
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You can be in love all the time, with everyone and everything, because it simply makes you feel good. I was heartbroken for a year after my last breakup. I felt like I had been abandoned and I no longer had anyone to pour my love into, nor any love to receive. But through various spiritual teachers, I slowly found a way to understand that I am the one who’s creating the feeling of both being in love and being loved. No one else can make me feel that way, I am the one who’s letting myself feel that way. Only I can let myself feel loved. And I can learn to feel love and feel loved all the time. By the people on the street. By the universe. By my mentors and teachers that I’ve never met but whose teachings I’ve devoured and now I’m trying to practice. By my ancestors and grandfathers. I can choose to feel their smiles towards me, from above, loving me like the child I am under this sky. When I feel lonely or isolated, I have learned to tune into the feeling of love within and create it myself. Then let it radiate to anyone and everyone around me.
Stop letting the past control you. Start anew. Do it now, do it every day.
Those are my 6 major lessons in 2019. I would love to hear yours. What did you learn this year? What will you bring with you? What will you leave behind?
I know the next decade will be the best decade of my life, so far. I know it, because I will create it.
www.CharlotteEriksson.com
Since I started practicing yoga & meditation a couple of years ago my life has completely changed. It healed my anxiety, made me calmer, more patient and ultimately happier. In this episode I'm talking to meditation teacher Kelly Smith from the Yoga For You podcast about all things meditation!
Follow Kelly + listen to her podcast! www.yogaforyouonline.com IG: www.instagram.com/yogaforyouonline
Come find me online: www.instagram.com/justaglasschild www.CharlotteEriksson.com
A writing from my book "Another Vagabond Lost To love" ♡ // "People keep asking what I do for a living and I keep answering that I don’t believe in making a living. That it’s a concept that has been twisted. I tell them I believe in making a life and money is a distracting object if there’s anything left at the end of the day, and I just want to go on well. Make it through the day. So I smile and raise my glass and they laugh and take my hand, saying “here’s to the youth!” pointing at me. And I might just be young and naive for I still believe in the freedom of choice of how to spend your life. So they toast to the youth, who still thinks she’s free, and that’s all fine by me.
Today was a great writing day and on great writing days nothing can bother me. The way my world feels balanced when I can create something out of nothingness. Wait, let me take it from the beginning: I woke up to a grey sky and I was gloomy and worried, like I often am, and I never sleep very well for I dream of him and them and all the rest and it’s cold at this time of year but still I wake up sweating, heart pounding, chest aching. It’s been a quiet month and my voice is untrained and weak from late nights. Cold air and strong drinks. But there are some days that every artist dreams of, when it’s all in the right place and the chords sound right and the melodies grow in the air all around. The words come fast and it doesn’t take much, a few minutes, closed eyes, silent mind – and it’s there.
So some mornings I wake up and things feel wrong but are right and it’s been a silent month for I don’t sing very much but this morning I wrote and sang and created something from nothingness and it put my very self in balance. My body into being.
Anyway, I wrote my song and took my walk and made my way to the bar to celebrate myself for feeling fine and usually people are quiet there, take my order and let me be. But today I felt fine and not strange or sad and the town was not busy so the bartender had time I think for he asked where I was from and what I did here because I spoke English and not German and so that’s that. I said I was just passing by, on my way to somewhere else and he asked to where and I said anywhere and he smiled and it was nice. Nice because I was honest, which I rarely am, and he was nice, which people rarely are, and after a few drinks he brought another one “on the house” and sat down and asked what I was writing. So I showed him and he smiled and we talked Bukowski and Woolf, Thoreau against Emerson and it was beautiful. The way the time passed by and chains fell down and I felt okay, which is rare these days, but I did and I still do as I sit on the floor in an empty room with friends I’ve met on my way, and they’ve told me to put stuff on the walls and decorate the hall, but I’ve said this isn’t permanent, and neither am I, and if I change fast enough I might be able to write another song soon enough because it’s all in the movement. All in the waves. All in the change.
So anyway, it was a great day and nothing in particular happened. Nothing to make the books or the papers or the headlines, but it was sincere, and I felt okay and that’s rare those days. And it’s moments like these that I know I will be okay for it will all make sense one day because I’m still on my way. I’m going somewhere and that’s the whole point.
I’m still on my way. And that’s the whole point.
(If you see the boy in the bar tell him I bought the book he talked about and learned the song he sang and that I found my way home wherever that is. Tell him he’s got a beautiful mind and a beautiful smile and that’s rare these days.)
We’re all on our ways. And that’s the whole point.
I'm talking to UK poet Scarlett Ward about writing, publishing, creating a book and spoken word! Scarlett was nominated for Best Spoken Word Performer in the UK 2019, and she has a new poetry collection out called ACHE, published by Verve Press ♡
www.CharlotteEriksson.com www.instagram.com/justaglasschild www.twitter.com/justaglasschild contact@charlotteeriksson.com
Follow Scarlett! www.twitter.com/scarlettwith2ts www.instagram.com/scarlett.ward
This is a 15 min guided meditation that will help you release and let go of anger, sadness, missing or past grudges. Just sit down somewhere peaceful, close your eyes, and let my voice guide you ♡ If you want me to do the meditation with you, here is the official video that I filmed a bit outside of Barcelona: https://youtu.be/uq0AEtS2SI8
THREE QUESTIONS I ASK MYSELF EVERY MORNING: As part of my morning ritual, I sit down with my journal and answer three questions:
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What one thing, right now, if done well and executed, would bring me closer to my most important goal in 6 months. One thing. What one thing would do the most for that goal, right now.
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What is stealing my focus right now, things that make me feel like I wouldn’t be able to fully consume myself in that previous one thing we just talked about.
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Question number three: How do I want to do the things I will do today? What I mean with this is: The other day I had a meeting with someone I could potentially work with for the promotion of my album. I felt anxious and nervous, like always, started doubting myself and freaked out in my head. But I asked myself in the morning, HOW do I want to do that meeting? Well, with confidence, with calm, excitement and a lot of inspirational energy. Now that made me feel different. Today I knew I was going to record this podcast, and I asked, HOW do I want to feel while recording this? I want to feel grateful, for having a platform that enables me to share ideas and thoughts, and for enabling me to spend my day doing so. I want to feel excited and passionate about sharing those thoughts and ideas that have helped me so greatly in my life. I want to feel like there is a purpose for this, and I want to feel that I am helping someone by doing this. That gave me quite a lot of motivation to do this.
Those are simple questions, but I promise by taking the time to answer them every day, writing down the answer and reminding yourself of the answers throughout your day, you will set yourself up for a completely different day than if you just wake up, numbly step outside and just let the world push you forward. Be the creator of your life. Be the creator of your own day. You know, where you are today is a direct consequence of what you did in the past. That means, what you do today, will directly lead you to where you will be tomorrow. Shape that future. Make sure it’s exactly how you want it to be.
I hope at least this gave you one or two thoughts that resonated with you, that you can take with you and design in your own way. If you try this out, please let me know how you felt about it!
www.CharlotteEriksson.com www.instagram.com/justaglasschild www.twitter.com/justaglasschild contact@charlotteeriksson.com
Welcome back to a relaunch of my life (and podcast!) A relaunch of absolutely everything. I entered this new era by launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund my new 4th full-length album and fifth book. Today, as I am recording this intro we are 21 days into the campaign. You have until October 9th so join this journey, and when the campaign stops, that’s when the real journey behind. Everyone who joins the campaign now will by entering the Kickstarter enter a whole year of new music, new videos, behind the scenes footage, studio diaries, new writings, the book and a lot more. My goal is that you will hold my new album in your hands in a year from now and feel proud, knowing that it wouldn’t exist without your support and help. You are my co-creators: www.kickstarter.com/projects/theglasschild/newera
Anyway, this is me welcoming you to a new era, a new chapter, a new season in life. We’re leaving things we have outgrown, people we might have outgrown, and make place for places and people that align with us now, as the people we have grown to be, now, after everything we’ve been through. You know, the goal every day should be to go to sleep a being little bit different than we were when we woke up, because if we life each day full out, we will grow and flex and shape and expand a little bit every day. So we much embrace chance, like growth, because, that’s what nature teaches us, that nothing is ever static. We must stay fluid, moving and changing with the seasons.
So I’m launching a new podcast season with some incredible guests, and I'm starting with my favorite podcast conversation this far: Nate Maingard! Nate is a modern troubadour, traveler, podcaster and creative entrepreneur. As you will hear, I wish I could hang with Nate three nights in a row talking about life and space and love and loss and everything in between. He’s just one of those people you immediately fall into deep conversation with. I loved talking to him here and I truly hope you will enjoy listening to it.
Go find Nate and everything he's creating here: https://www.nate.live https://www.instagram.com/natemaingard https://twitter.com/natemaingard
Become a co-creator of my new album here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theglasschild/newera 🌹
Dear friends, I never really thought I would be able to say this ... but here I am. Living proof that if you simply refuse to give up, you still have a shot. It's time to enter a new era, a new chapter: it's time to make another record together. It's time to make the dream of album number 4 come alive.
The best songs I've ever written, bundled up in poems and sad melodies. It's hopeful at times, sad at others. It's a little edgy, a little bold, sometimes sexy sometimes small. It's a little bit of everything, just like we are, I think.
This is my official invitation to join me on KICKSTARTER to become a co-creator of my new album! I've spent the last three years writing and learning, living and growing, and now, finally, I have a collection of 14 songs that I believe in so much that I'm ready to give everything I have and am to this journey. After my last album "Under Northern Skies" I promised myseld that if I were to do another album, it would be written and released by a new me. I needed to grow up. I needed to doubt and grow sure, change and rearrange, and I needed to figure out WHY I still wanted to share my music with the world. WHY would I make another album?
I wasn't really sure how to announce this new album and this Kickstarter. I wanted to explain so much, I wanted to tell you so much. One day two weeks ago I simply put the camera in front of me and started talking, writing, dreaming and thinking and the result is this introduction video that somehow says everything I wanted to say. I really truly hope you will like it.
I've used my last savings to secure my musicians and mixing engineer, but I need your help to land this all the way. Before embarking on yet another album I promised myself: if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do it full out this time. No limitations. I set my aims higher than ever before, and I've worked harder than ever before. I reached for my dream musicians, dream mixing engineer, dream mastering engineer, dream photographers and videographers, and of course I already have my dream supporters. I'm half way there, and now I need your help to reach the finish line.One of the things I've always dreamt of getting to film a magically beautiful stripped live session, somewhere beautiful, to share those songs with you in a more intimate way next to the produced audio. And since my goal with this album was to level up, if there is budget left after all this, I have promised myself to aim towards being able to hiring a PR in order to expand my reach and maybe even build a bit of momentum with this album. Imagine if I got some exposure, maybe even had a song or two added on bigger Spotify playlists, and ultimately built my fanbase enough to be able to go on a proper tour with real venues in public spaces where ALL OF YOU can come?! Dream come true.
I truly hope you will join me for another magical album era, another era in life, because we must stay fluent. Move and change with the times. Otherwise, we’ll be left behind.
Join my Kickstarter and become a co-creator of my new album here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theglasschild/newera 🌹
All my love, forever and always ♡
In this episode I'm sharing my million dollar writing hacks (i wish), who I am as a friend, what I think about social media and my favorite Swedish artists. Love and coffee to you all♡
So I died many times that year. In the cold, in the storm, on the run or on the drunk for my heart did not want to beat but kept on beating anyway, and my pain was as real as real can be, and I tried to learn and deal and run and feel, but nothing really worked. I built a comfortable home in my sorrow and settled into a quiet living. No sparks or grand gestures, just a simple daily hymn to comfort. The leaves fell off the trees and coloured this city in all kinds of pretty, and some days that was enough to make me smile at least a little bit, within. I can’t quite recall how, when or why, but the passage of time really does heal what seems impossible to heal. The daily task of getting by adds up to weeks and months, and you will find yourself a little more at ease one day, some days, if you just keep going. Keep doing, keep being. One day, when the spring wakes up and the air is crisp, you will catch yourself smiling, thinking “that felt good,” and you will laugh again, suddenly more often than not, and one day, though far from here, you will say things like “grateful” and “content”, and maybe even “happy”. I think it’s something in the letting go. How I simply stopped aiming at that point at the end of the finger and took a step back. We’re striving and thriving, always wanting something more, but take a short second and just look around you. All the wonderful things you actually already have, and are, and see — right now. I let my eyes see what was simply in front of me, instead of trying to find that spot somewhere far away, where I thought I should be. There was the sun, there was the city, the people, and in the middle: me. Still here. Still doing. Still okay. My point is: You still are. I still am. So we’re doing just fine.
Sometimes, there is no other salvation than to just keep doing. Sometimes, the only trick is to simply keep breathing. And with the small amount of wisdom I hold today: I promise you, one day you will thank yourself for simply holding on. One day, though far from here, you will find yourself walking lightly and sure and fine again, despite of it all. And one day, though far from here, you will catch yourself saying things like “happy” and “how nice,” despite of it all. One day, you will meet someone again who will make your heart beat in all kinds of weird rhythms. And one day, you will have strength enough to go to new places, learn new words and understand new opinions, again, and that day you will thank yourself for simply holding on. You want to still be here for that day.
It was April and the sun stood high and I was thinking things like “exciting” and “lovely,” despite of it all. I didn’t throw thoughts back to all things past, like I always thought I would be, from now on, and the months to come would be the discovery of the world all over again. The discovery of me, of how much this heart of mine is capable to be and feel and love and grow, and dear me; dear, tired little heart, thank you. Thank you for holding on. I wouldn’t want to miss this for the world.
// Spoken word piece from my book "Another Vagabond Lost To Love" ♡ www.CharlotteEriksson.com
Richard Walters has had songs in TV Shows like Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, CSI: Miami and many more, he has released several albums and is also writing for other artists such as Gabrielle Aplin, Declan J. Donovan and Joe Henry. I was so excited to get to talk to Richard about his inspiring journey as a songwriter, and I really hope you all will enjoy getting to know him a bit in this episode.
You can find all his links to socials and music at: www.richardwaltersmusic.co.uk
Come follow me here! ✧ Website: www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com ✧ Merch, books & CDs: www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com ✧ Email newsletter: eepurl.com/t9GTr ✧ Instagram: www.instagram.com/justaglasschild ✧ Tumblr: www.theglasschild.tumblr.com ✧ Facebook: www.facebook.com/theglasschild ✧ Twitter: www.twitter.com/justaglasschild ✧ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theglasschild
Music in this episode: Intro by Chillhop Last song: 'interlude: i was never here' by The Glass Child >> https://open.spotify.com/track/1ZZhwfbY54EnA0kRz2FBgl?si=s_DdGj3MR2KhcVoVxayLCg
In this episode I'm talking to the super lovely Sarah P about mental health, her project "Erase Restart" that aims to educate and break the stigma surrounding mental health, songwriting and how creativity and journaling can work as self-care tools.
You can find all Sarah's music, projects and links at: - www.sarahpofficial.com - www.instagram.com/sarahpofficial
Come follow me here! ✧ Website: www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com ✧ Merch, books & CDs: www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com ✧ Email newsletter: eepurl.com/t9GTr ✧ Instagram: www.instagram.com/justaglasschild ✧ Tumblr: www.theglasschild.tumblr.com ✧ Facebook: www.facebook.com/theglasschild ✧ Twitter: www.twitter.com/justaglasschild ✧ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theglasschild
Music by Chillhop
In this episode I'm chatting to singer, songwriter and entrepreneur Nick Howard! Nick has had such an inspiring career and I loved talking to him about all his different projects. He won The Voice in Germany 2012, has toured with crazy big artists like Gavin Degraw, Train and Jack Johnson, started his own music festival in Cologne called Nomad Fest, and even started his own booking site for house concerts! Click play and get inspired :)
Go say hi to Nick and tell him that you enjoyed listening to the episode! Website: https://www.nickhowardmusic.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickhowardmusic Instagram: http://instagram.com/nickhowardmusic
NOMAD FEST in Cologne: http://www.nomadmusicfestival.com
Come follow me here! ✧ Website: www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com ✧ Merch, books & CDs: www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com ✧ Email newsletter: eepurl.com/t9GTr ✧ Instagram: www.instagram.com/justaglasschild ✧ Tumblr: www.theglasschild.tumblr.com ✧ Facebook: www.facebook.com/theglasschild ✧ Twitter: www.twitter.com/justaglasschild ✧ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theglasschild
In this week's interview episode I'm talking to one of my personal inspirations! Singer, songwriter, composer and music entrepreneur Terra Naomi. Terra has an amazing story as an artist, being one of the very first musicians to blow up on Youtube, signing a major label record deal, releasing music independently and composing music for film and TV. Please go support her on Patreon and keep your eyes open for new music! www.Patreon.com/TerraNaomi
The year I changed my own character. The year I stopped fleeing. The year I took responsibility of my own becoming. Of my own happening. Of my own success and happiness, home and surroundings. The year I learned how to quit being myself, and instead design a new self, deliberately, consciously, maturely. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ The year my heart broke, quietly dying. The year the vision I’ve had for a peaceful future was erased and gone, the house I thought I was living in was thrown up in the air during the calmest summer day and I waved my arms screaming for someone to save me but this was the year I learned to depend on myself. On my own ability to get by, when I think I can’t, and this was the year I became my own saviour. The year I built my own home. From ground up. A foundation to stand on. A stronger character. A loving heart. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Because when a heart gets broken, it’s wide open. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ When a heart gets broken, it’s wide open to take in and give out. To learn and to grow, stronger and wiser, and an open heart is a brave heart because it can feel and hear and see it all. An open heart is a brave heart, because it knows there’s no turning back. Only bravely facing forward, one foot in front of the other, slowly moving on to something better, something new. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ This was the year I stopped begging for things to happen, and instead made them happen myself. This was the year I stopped living my life according to someone else’s needs, and instead explored my own. This was the year I learned to stop begging people to love me. If someone wants to go, let them go. This was the year I learned that every person who shows up in your life is there to teach you a lesson, and they will stay until you have learned what you need to learn. Then they will leave. If you want them to or not, and you must let them. And this was the year I learned that you must dare to leave something or someone completely, leaving that space empty and aching, in order to open up space for something new. And you must know that there is a new lesson and a new person, in a new place with a new life waiting for you. and this was the year I learned that what’s coming is always better, than what has been. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Don’t hold on to things that are over. Let them go, bravely. “If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace.”
_________ Music used in this episode: Round Here - The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/6ByeAAd2VNbIlrMEabqY1p Tomorrow - Bensound
In this episode I'm hanging out with music writer and journalist Brandon Enyeart of Lemonade Magazine! We're chatting all things music, writing and what it's like to interview real cool peep
Read Lemonade Magazine here: www.lemonademagazine.net Follow Brandon on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/Brandon_E
Come follow me here! ✧ Website: www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com ✧ Merch, books & CDs: www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com ✧ Email newsletter: eepurl.com/t9GTr ✧ Instagram: www.instagram.com/justaglasschild ✧ Tumblr: www.theglasschild.tumblr.com ✧ Facebook: www.facebook.com/theglasschild ✧ Twitter: www.twitter.com/justaglasschild ✧ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/theglasschild
And you can find my music here: ✧ SPOTIFY: open.spotify.com/playlist/57f2cw9YAsMGtzUFf4DLWi ✧ iTunes: itunes.apple.com/album/id12153537…?ls=1&app=itunes ✧ Google Play: bit.ly/2o9mK5F ✧ Soundcloud: @TheGlassChild ✧ Bandcamp: www.TheGlassChild.bandcamp.com ✧ Youtube: www.Youtube.com/aglasschild
Music used in the video: CHILLHOP Listen on Spotify: bit.ly/ChillhopSpotify Music by Chillhop: youtube.com/chillhopdotcom
I'm so excited to kick off a new chapter of my little podcast, starting today with the very first interview I've ever done!! I'm chatting to the super talented songwriter James Walker about all things music 🙏
You can find him on Spotify and social media here: ✧ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/08cmuH6uJGH9dQjvvdkTvR ✧ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/james_walker_music
Come follow me here! ✧ Website: http://www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com ✧ Merch, books & CDs: http://www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com ✧ Email newsletter: http://eepurl.com/t9GTr ✧ Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/justaglasschild ✧ Tumblr: http://www.theglasschild.tumblr.com ✧ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theglasschild ✧ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/justaglasschild ✧ Support me on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/theglasschild
And you can find my music here: ✧ SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57f2cw9YAsMGtzUFf4DLWi ✧ iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id1215353768?ls=1&app=itunes ✧ Google Play: http://bit.ly/2o9mK5F ✧ Soundcloud: http://www.Soundcloud.com/TheGlassChild ✧ Bandcamp: http://www.TheGlassChild.bandcamp.com ✧ Youtube: http://www.Youtube.com/aglasschild
Music used in the video: CHILLHOP Listen on Spotify: http://bit.ly/ChillhopSpotify Music by Chillhop: http://youtube.com/chillhopdotcom
I will leave the catastrophe blank for you to fill, and instead tell you that it will get better, in a while, and you will be well again, though you can’t see it now, and you will travel again and eat again and your muscles will grow stronger, again. You will run and laugh and sing and one day you will meet someone who makes your heart beat with no pattern again, and you might try to hide or protect yourself, or compare the different states of love, but you must not grow up, must not act wise when it comes to love. You must stay foolish and fall for every heart will beat in different ways together with yours and love is not meant to be compared, only enjoyed, and suffered, and remembered. So you will meet many ‘someones’ who will give a new definition to your name. And you can not build walls, must not close the door, and please don’t hide, because if you ask me about hurt and love I will say love. Love because the hurt will come and go no matter what, but only love makes it worth while. Only love can cure it. Don’t be scared. Go. Love.
For me, having a minimalism lifestyle means having less and doing less in order to have more time, space and energy for the things that really truly matter to me. Keeping things simple and minimal means, for me, to focus only on the essentials, the things of value, and not get caught up in distractions and worries. It helps me free myself from overwhelm, stress, find clarity and straighten out my priorities.
My personal priorities in life are: health, passion, growth, location independence, art and community. What are yours? Here is a super simple exercise to get us started: List maybe 5 to 7 things that you value in life, write them down on your phone or on a piece of paper, or just keep them in your head. Now, go through a normal day in your life, how you spend it, what you’re doing, the places you go, the people you interact with. How many of those things in your daily life align with your values? Do they support your values of what’s important in life? Do they help you live like you would like to live? If your answer is yes, then congrats! You’re on the right path! If your answer is no... maybe there is place for a bit of reevaluation and restructuring of how you choose to spend this life. because, how we spend our days is after all how we spend our lives.
Keeping things simple and essential enables me to live more intentionally. When you’re not being controlled and directed by 100 people, commitments, bills to pay, projects to work on, meet-ups to attend, you can elegantly and intentionally design your own days so that you wake up, go through and go to sleep with a sense of peace, calm and awareness of your every move. You can use every hour doing something that matters to you and you can intentionally make a decision to veer out on a journey when you feel the time is right.
Maybe most of all, having a minimalistic life enables me to pursue my passions. A low overhead enables me to live and thrive on a minimal income. Putting more value in experiences, growth and knowledge rather than possession, material things and money, enables me to feel the same sense of happiness by singing for a room of a people as maybe some people would get from buying a car. Having less commitments enables me to spend my time with focus and intention so I can build this dream of mine. No minutes wasted.
The resources to learn more that I'm mentioning in this episode are: 1. https://www.theminimalists.com/ 2. https://zenhabits.net/ 3. "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo
"Finding your people" from my book "Another Vagabond Lost To Love ✦
"I’m scared because I want to reach people, make them feel and relate and know that they are not alone in anything because I am here and I hear you and I’ve felt it too. Just like those words by those authors that I read, and those songs by those bands that I listen to let me know that I am not alone, and belonging is everything. Belonging changes everything. So I’m scared and nervous, because the aim to reach those rare and few people who will understand and listen are out there, I know it, but to get to them I need to pass thousands of others. Thousands of others who won’t understand. Who won’t relate or feel or like what I say and what I do or who I am, and they are never too busy to let me know that they don’t like what they hear or what they see or who I am and so I’m scared. Because this album is not just an album to throw words on or dissect——it’s everything I came to see and feel and know and be the last years, and that’s why I’m scared. So just stop, you might say. Just stop and turn around and keep your songs to yourself, and trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve gone away and turned my back and tried to escape but see, I still remember being 16 years old and stumbling upon a song, a poem, a book or an album, and I remember sitting numb on the floor, holding my breath to not miss a single word, because he was speaking straight to me. He was singing straight to me as if to tell me that he understood and I was not alone. And I remember thinking “there are more people like me out there!” and that changed everything. I found my people. My family. Belonging changes everything. I remember buying my first guitar and playing until my fingers bled and my voice was sore because I had to know. I had to know if someone out there understood and could relate, to me and myself, and I thought that if I learned how to write clear enough, play well enough, sing loud enough, someone might hear and could let me know that I was not alone."
// Read more about the book and purchase a signed copy at www.CharlotteEriksson.com/another-vagabond-lost-to-love
MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: www.chillhop.com
I wake up some mornings just feeling... frail. Like, please be careful, go slow, don’t touch me too rough, speak gently. It happens after worried nights, reliving things from the past or dreaming things I don’t wish to happen and I wake up feeling unrested and sore. Like I’ve just been pushed around between two thorny edges and my mind is as wounded as my body and the sky is as fragile as me, able to break into tears any moment. I used to run out in a worried state of anxiety, not knowing where to go with my body these days, not knowing how to drown out the strange unrest in my chest and I used to run run run until it felt better, which it rarely did, until the day was done and I could leave it behind and move on.
But I’m learning to be gentle with myself. To treat me with the same care I wish others to do so I don’t push, I don’t force. I make myself something warm to drink, I sit down in a sunny spot, feeling the warmth like a warm blanket. I read something comforting, something about my place in the universe and how there is a constant line of energy piercing through, a constant source of well-being, and I just have ot tune into it, I just have to close my eyes and breathe it in. I go for a slow walk, I listen to music I like. I call a friend and simply ask how he is, how his mum is, if work is going well? I go to the cinema by myself and watch something bubbly and happy because it simply makes me feel better, to not take it all so seriously and I walk home alone in the dark, slowly, because I go gently and if I’m not strong some days I adjust and slow the pace down, for myself.
I think the key is to lose the fixed, unbroken standard of how a human being should feel and look and get on with each and every day like a robot in a factory. You’re not a robot. You’re a fragile living moving human particle of energy and your energy comes and goes and it’s all okay. Don’t push so hard. Listen to your heart and adjust your pace to its beating. Every day has a different rhythm. If you go faster than what’s meant for you today you’ll step out of the beat. You’ll go out of flow. Ease into it. Go lightly.
✦ • My podcast, music, books and videos are funded by and possible thanks to the support I get on Patreon. Come join me and get access to a whole archive of free demo mp3s, monthly video blogs, Q&A sessions and more: http://www.Patreon.com/TheGlassChild • ✦
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Find all my music here: ✧ SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/user/theglasschild/playlist/57f2cw9YAsMGtzUFf4DLWi ✧ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/under-northern-skies/1102701314 ✧ Google Play: http://bit.ly/2o9mK5F ✧ Soundcloud: http://www.Soundcloud.com/TheGlassChild ✧ Youtube: http://www.Youtube.com/aglasschild
Website: http://www.TheGlassChildOfficial.com Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/justaglasschild Tumblr: http://www.theglasschild.tumblr.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theglasschild Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/justaglasschild Merch, books & CDs: http://www.theglasschild.bigcartel.com Email newsletter: http://eepurl.com/t9GTr
A few years ago I lived lonesome on the road in England. I owned nothing more than my guitar, a few belongings and my dream of becoming a songwriter. The constant worry, the stress, the loneliness and the sadness built up a chronic anxiety that would control me for years to come. It wasn't until I discovered philosophy, meditation, the yogic practice and holistic health tools that I learned how to still my own mind. Nowadays, I start every day just sitting on the ground. Breathing, exploring how I feel today. Listening, waking myself up gently. I find that when I do this, I can then go out and meet the world from a place of stability, calm, certainty about who I am and who I want to be, rather than just anxiously trying to catch up with the day and the world.
Today I'm guiding you through a 10 min meditation, designed to calm and still anxious and worried minds. If you've never tried meditation before, just give it a shot! Surrender to my voice for just 10min, and the worst thing that can happen is that you just got chill with your eyes closed for 10min :) If you liked this meditation, please let me know and I might do more of them in the future!
• For the accompanying video, go to www.youtube.com/aglasschild • My podcast, music, books and videos are funded by and possible thanks to my support on Patreon: www.Patreon.com/TheGlassChild
Growing up is a wonderful thing. Tracing the years back, looking at myself like someone else, someone different. I was angry and anxious, wanting to prove the whole world wrong, prove myself wrong, prove that I could be anything I wanted to be and I was gonna show them all. I would prove them all wrong.
I was driven by external forces, wanting everyone to see me like this and think of me like that. I careful planned my words, my clothes, my songs so that the world would see me from the right angle. It’s different now. I’m different now. I don’t spin the chair anymore. I rest peacefully with both eyes steady, listening and caring. I don’t rush through the rain with a rucksack, but instead I say “let’s have another coffee, tell me one more story” and I wait out the rain.
I’m no longer driven by external forces, but internal ones. I no longer care what the world sees me as. Instead I care about what I think of myself. How I feel, here, now, hands on my heart. Am I peaceful? Am I calm? Am I content? Lonely? Wise? Do I sit steady, do I listen, do I care? I want to care. I want to be someone who cares genuinely about people and places, books and songs. I want to care about my pace and my body, my days and my work. My work... the only thing I’ve ever had. My books and my songs, my journey on this endless road and I love it still, the constant tugging, wanting to reach a little deeper, create a little better. Lovelier, with grace.
I want to be a woman of integrity, walking strong and sure no matter where and I want to talk in a way that draws people in. I want to lower my voice, look people straight into the eyes and talk to their heart, like they’re the only ones that matter for me in this very second because I want to be someone who sees people. Who cares. Who helps. Who can reach out a hand and say “you’re not alone”. I want to leave everyone I meet feeling a little better about themselves and I want to make people excited about their own lives and journeys. I want to make people feel special, like they matter, like they always do. Everyone has a story to tell and I want to hear them—I want to hear it all.
I want to be a woman who paved her own path and who knows failure and heartache but who kept going anyway because it made her wiser. It made her smarter and stronger, but also softer and kinder. I want to be the one you turn to for guidance and comfort. I want to create things that become a source of stability for people, some sort of home. Write books that you read until the edges are torn and songs that you listen to in your headphones on a lonely night bus, taking you somewhere far far away.
I want to be so sure of my own place in the universe that no one could ever doubt me. What I’m about or what I’m here to do. I want to be a safe aura in a sea of worries and uncertainty. I want to stand for clarity where only chaos seems to grow.
Growing up is a wonderful thing. I can feel myself expanding quietly.
// This is an excerpt from my new book "Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself" 🌹 www.CharlotteEriksson.com/newbook
And what am I? I’m forever stuck in a nonexistent place where no time passes and I do so much and learn so much but I don’t grow. I’m still teenage me wanting more. Wanting less. Wanting anything and everything and I think I should grow up now. Grow out of childish anxiety and sorrows for all things past and everyone has moved on from schools and neighbourhoods and I moved first and swore the loudest on never coming back but now I dream about all things past. Going back. How do you transition from being a lost teenager, to one of those calm and serene souls of integrity and certainty? Because that’s what I must do, now, soon. Do others feel left behind too, or is it just me? Like the train left with everyone on it and I’m still standing on the platform trying to decide if I should watch the sky for another hour or go change my ticket. Maybe sometimes you need to just close your eyes and jump on the train without feeling ready, and grow your steady breath on the way. I think sometimes you don’t know how much you’re capable of until you’re forced to grow into it.
// in this episode I'm sharing an excerpt from my new book "Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself" ♡ ✦ Read all about the book + find more photos & quotes at: http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com/newbook ✦ Signed copies, worldwide shipping: http://www.TheGlassChild.bigcartel.com ✦ Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2lQDGdy ✦ Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2MI5SL8
_____________ MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: Dr. Toast - Epicycles East Forest - Let Go The Glass Child - I will be ok
In this episode I'm sharing 5 of my favorite writers + talk about how they have influenced me as a writer and person. I have linked and listed all the books, poems and video I'm mentioning in this episode in the show notes on my website, you can find them here: www.CharlotteEriksson.com/behindtheglass14
My brand new book "Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself" is out!!! it's available as both physical paperback and as a digital ebook, and you can find it on Amazon or get yourself a signed copy from my store that I will personally sign and send to you together with some goodies.
✦ Signed copies, worldwide shipping: www.TheGlassChild.bigcartel.com ✦ Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2lQDGdy ✦ Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2MI5SL8 ✧ Read more about the book here: www.CharlotteEriksson.com/newbook
You will find yourself wanting to leave and go home at the same time, and there is nothing you can do about this. You will find yourself feeling too large for your body, and at the same time find yourself with a body that feels too large for you, and there is nothing you can do about this. You will find yourself with a beautiful boy and you will not want to stay in that room, with him, even though there is nothing more you can ask for in another human being, and there is nothing you can do about this.
There is a constellation in the sky that was created the very second you were born, because no one and nothing was in the exact same position between the moon and the stars at the time of your birth, and this is your place in the universe. This is your spot to stand up tall because no one else was made for it, no one could have been, and neither will anyone else ever be made for it, and so you will just have to stay. You don’t want to. I know. You want to inhabit others’ successes and luck and they’re smiling and building wonderful lives with people all around and you want to walk in their footsteps. You want to leave your own spot, your own place. You want to do it now. You’ve had enough.
You will make a plan and pack your rucksack one night when the time is right, and you will say you’ll be gone for a while, maybe come back, maybe not. You will choose a new name, a new haircut, dress yourself in all the clothes you’ve seen your heroes wear and you will inhabit a new character. You will sip coffee in secondhand cups at cafés in cities where people don’t notice you and no one asks if you cut your hair or if you’ve seen Sarah lately.
You will find people you’d like to call your friends but you will also notice that interactions are hard when the time won’t last and you will only go so deep until someone says “let’s just get another drink” and you will walk home alone or with people you can’t remember the names of, in the morning, but he was kind and took his shoes off in the entrance.
Back to your constellations; the only place you can inhabit.
There is a path that is yours to walk and maybe yours is where you stand right now, but maybe it’s not? Maybe you feel out of place, out of town, out of mind, out of luck, because you simply slipped too far away from your spot and you just need to find your way back again. Don’t rush so much. Ease into it. You’re on foreign ground, that’s why you feel so uncertain, so unsure. Look up, there’s a whole world out there to explore, and you have your own place in it. Isn’t it exciting?
There are things that will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about this.
You will say goodbye to someone you love, and someone you love will say goodbye to you; that he just does not love you anymore, and there is nothing you can do about this. You will lose your credit card on the subway and you will have to walk home in the dark, with no money, and you will panic for a second and maybe call your father, cry, tell him you want to come home; and there is nothing you can do about that. Things will happen on that spot you inhabit and this is good, this is fine, this is all planned. Ease into it. Don’t rush so much. Nothing ever lasts, nothing ever stays. It’s exciting, isn’t it? Exciting beyond belief.
There are things that will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about this. Isn’t it exciting beyond belief?
// This is a writing from my brand new book "Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself", go here to pre-order you signed copy now! www.TheGlassChild.bigcartel.com
______ Music used in this episode: Who Am I - The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/30nCkYsLaQ6oJMfx922aD3 BENSOUND: http://www.bensound.com
There is so much I don’t have. I fall into jealousy, watching other people have their ways, climb the ladder, build fancy lives in fancy houses with fancy cars -- and I rarely see what I do have, only what others have that I don’t. And I think it’s so easy to work and work and actually have the life you once dreamt for yourself but when you reach it, you’re too busy looking at others, looking at future you, looking over the shoulder, so you don’t even notice. I have so very simple dreams, although they’re large, and I have found just a few things that make me feel calm and safe, happy to just be around. I tried to build my life on those things and exclude the rest. I don’t have the house and the job, the car and the yearly holiday to Spain, but I do have freedom. I wanted freedom, in all forms, and I fought with all my power to build a life I wanted to wake up to. All my life I felt stuck in chains, by everything and everyone but then I found these few things that made me feel safe and calm and I ran with it.
I wanted location independence. I wanted the space and freedom to let my creativity bloom, as the wildest flower, and I wanted no boss or label, contract or rent to tell me to stay put.
I work really hard. I work all the time. I work every waking hour of every single day. but I also never work, because this is all I wanted to spend my life doing, you see? I wanted to write music, and I wanted to write books. I wanted to connect with people who are like me, and I wanted to build a supportive community where we simply make each other’s days a little brighter. A little lighter. I wanted all those things and I wanted health. Physical health. Mental health. A deeper understanding and some sort of peace. I wanted no more anxiety. No more fears. I wanted to befriend this body of mine, and learn to work with it.
I wanted to study. Books and authors, literature and philosophies. Spirituality and politics. I wanted the potential for intellectual and spiritual growth and I wanted to do so without being assessed on it.
I wanted all these things together with my freedom and I spend so many endless days and nights cursing my ways because so often I feel like i d i d n o t m a k e i t.
But then I pack a bag and go away. I sit lonely on a beach, meditating with nothing but water infront of me. The sun is slowly setting over the horizon and the water is so clear, I’ve never seen anything so pure before, and I’m thinking: i did not make it... make what? I have my freedom. I have my music. I have my books. I am studying and learning, constantly growing, and I am befriending my body one day at a time, and I have simple dreams, although large, and I’m getting there. Slowly.
I think sometimes, I get so caught up in everyone else’s dreams. The record deals, the book deals, the charts, the magazine covers... i forget what it was i wanted in the first place...
i think sometimes we like to complicate things because we’re told we have to always want more more more, but ... it could all be so simple. Find a few things you love, some principles for your life, work hard on it and exclude the rest.
Today I woke up in a simple room with nothing but a bed and a white desk. I went running on the beach, i wear no make-up, I wear simple clothes. I eat local foods and spend no time on tubes or undergrounds. I bought a coffee and asked if I could have it take-away, but then changed my mind because I had nowhere to go but simply here. I write and I read, work on my music, record my podcast, write letters to people I care about. I take care of my body, I take care of my mind, and it’s all so very simple.
it could all be so very simple.
MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: Dr. Toast - Book of Ingenious Devices: https://open.spotify.com/track/0LcCBSHLP7xxur8gJ2AdhT The Glass Child - Dark Love (Stripped Version): https://open.spotify.com/track/5PhzIdMdri8rqhAp26LbMd
Get your name in my new book! Everyone who enters my Patreon on the $4 level will get their name in my new book on an official thank you page. Go to: www.Patreon.com/TheGlassChild to read more ♡
This is a writing from my new, forthcoming book "Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself" 🌿
"They all ask me: What do you want to do with your life, Charlotte? What do you want to be? Where do you want to live?
I tilt my head to the other side, letting my eyes wander deep into theirs. I notice a soft touch of wind on my chin, grabbing hold of my hair. The sky is full of clouds, shifting and reshaping, making space to fill it up again.
What do you want to do with your life, Charlotte? Where do you want to live?
I lived half my life in constant restriction. Restricting my body from growing, blooming, shaping, shifting. Restricting my heart from loving too much, feeling too much, hurting too deeply. I lived half my life restricting my surroundings. Don’t go too far, don’t move too far, don’t leave the ground.
But my body is a temple and I was not born to live in chains. I stand on a mountain, in a forest, by the water, and I feel free. I feel free to breathe and move, flex and shape and let my chest open and close. I let my eyes go and breath go and I feel the wind moving me, from within, and I let go.
What do you want to do with your life, Charlotte?
I want to move with no restrictions. I want to grow and flex and reshape, a little every day, and I want to listen to natural sounds, playing melodies in the air, and I want to close my eyes, believe in what I feel and I want to let this inner melody guide me. Move me. It’s like a melody moving me from the inside and when I listen closely enough I can hear it.
I want to live here, in this. In the guiding of my own inner rhythm and I want to be this: a force of nature moving wherever it feels right, and I want my life to be this: a temple of strength and grace, a torch in the light, a sacred space of healing.
Close your eyes. Place your hand on your heart. Do you hear it? What about now?
That’s your rhythm. Move with that."
MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: Dr. Toast - lotus East Forest - Let Go
The craftsmen make it seem so simple. The writer presents his words as if they came as natural as a breath. I put my headphones on and the songs with the sounds and atmospheric layers spread wide as if it just happened out of natural euphoria in the flick of a second and this is the danger with art. The art is not the art-form itself, but the way the artist makes something complicated feel uncomplicated; something messy feel intact; something weak feel beautiful.
I am 26 and I am learning what it means to be an artist, for I am not an artist, because it takes life and a life lived well, to the limit, to see the patterns in storms, but I am 26 and I am learning. I am learning shame and solitude, forgiveness and goodbyes. I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day, and you must build your own.
That is the act of the arts. It is not the task of writing about the simple ride from bus to town, but the ride that was not so simple, not so joyful, but to make it feel okay anyway. Because life is not so simple most of the days, but it’s okay anyway ‘cause we’re all on the same ride, all in the same boat, but not everyone can make it feel okay, anyway, and that is the job for the artist. That is why we exist. A place that must be filled.
Music used in this episode: The American Dollar - Long March Broadripple Is Burning - The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/4cKHuBwoJrS9M3p4qcMjTD
A spoken poetry piece from my book "Another Vagabond Lost To Love" ♡ "I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleansing me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself."
Music used in this episode: - Sister by The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/2aKTgMgGCvSh6yHO6QaJFx
I’ve always found comfort in the way nature always has its way. It goes on with the circle of life, so to speak, strong and sure, and it never doubts. I find assurance in small features like the way the waves hit the shoreline and happily role back out at sea. Over and over. I find comfort in the rhythm of the sea. The ebbs and lows, every day, no questioning or doubt.
It was an early morning in March and the sun reflected on the sand like it only does on early spring days. Fresh and pure, not heated up, just clean. The wind was chilly and the only sound came from the water slowly making it’s way up and back, up and back. I watched the clouds come and go, shaping and reshaping, never staying the same. I watched the sun make it’s way over the sky, never standing still. I watched the shoreline get further and further out, and then change it’s way back up again. It was all a big spectacle of change, constant movement, and it was beautiful.
I went home that day with a new peaceful heart, knowing that whatever happened from there on would be a new glorious beginning with new lessons and experiences and stories to collect.
Music used in this episode: - Free 'Instrumentals' by Hyde: www.soundcloud.com/davidhydemusic - Stuck in Standby by The Glass Child: www.soundcloud.com/theglasschild/stuck-in-standby
You can only lose the things you cling to...
My history of leaving is a consequence of my fear of losing and it’s a contradiction I can’t explain but still feel so incredibly clear and it’s my root of all evil. I’ve found things––people and dreams, that I love so deep and profound that I cling to them, attach myself to them, want to become a part of them and their world. But then my fear of losing them gets too large: my fear of being left alone, small on the ground, with nothing and no one, and I cling harder, and they suffocate and I feel the leaving slowly arrive, and I still can’t bear the thought of being left so I pack up and depart. I call it new beginnings. I call it endings with no goodbye. I call myself a leaver, while in fact: I am just really scared to be left.
Music used in this episode: "This Lonely Town" by The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/1FwosBA71UF9RQQlUAeVWU?si=4uz1RIegTAycmAMoF4Ir2Q
In this episode I'm answering some of your questions, talking about things I'm struggling with right now, writing and growing more humble.
Music used in this episode: Stan Forebee - I'm Walkin (The Essenchills Volume 1) Brandon - Sunset Heights (The Essenchills Volume 1) fujitsu - Steady @chillhopdotcom Heroes - The Glass Child >>> https://open.spotify.com/track/0BcpIQvQsfukO27ETby917
There is no right way to say goodbye. But endings are new beginnings and you will bloom again. This is a writing from my book "You're Doing Just Fine".
Music used in this episode: Soliloquy - The Aurora Principle Isolation - Lucas King Sappheiros - @sappheirosmusic Stay - The Glass Child >>> https://open.spotify.com/track/0dvqXqQJvzVp08bSJxf0wG
You can never go back to the same place twice. Something has always changed a little. You have changed, the place has changed, the people in it ... it’s not the same and you need to visit it with new eyes, no expectations, no lofty thoughts of wanting to go back to something. You can’t go back to anything, things are in constant movement and so are you. You must keep moving forward, on and on and not fight it. The ones who fight the natural flow of life will go against the current and nature is stronger than will.
MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: - OdeToYou by Flitz&Suppe: https://soundcloud.com/chillhopdotcom - Om Mani Padme Hum by The Glass Child: https://open.spotify.com/track/7uYsiYfM3lSKVOIa6t9ad2
[Spoken Poetry] "This morning I woke up to the sound of white rain shattering on my window. The raindrops kept falling like the sweetest music leaving tears on the glass, which is what music does to me, most of the time, but silence too. and rain."
A piece from my book "Another Vagabond Lost To Love", I hope you will enjoy it ♡ You can find more excerpts from the book here: www.CharlotteEriksson.com/books
Music in the end: London by The Glass Child -https://open.spotify.com/track/5NLkXuEdIGGbUYPchzzWb0
If I could say anything to 17 year old me, it would be this:
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Don’t be so scared. Don’t waste your days worrying about the next day, next month, 5 years from now. Just do what you can with today. Be what you are right now, and work with it. You’re exactly in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. Trust your story, you’re going to be something wonderful one day but now you are something too.
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Learn to let go. People, seasons, cities and feelings will come and go. it’s the natural flow of life and nature, and you must be a part of it. Nothing is static and you don’t want to be, you want to learn to grow and flow with the seasons, being in constant movement. Learn to treasure what you what when you have it. When they leave you, learn to smile, say goodbye and move on being grateful that you now will go on being one experience richer.
Lastly, live a little. Put your feet up. Laugh, loud, with strangers and friends. Take a night off. Go to the party and stay the night. let someone kind walk you home, a warm summer night in July. Go to the cinema, read more books, visit museums and go to spain with that kind boy from ... wherever he was from. This mission of yours is really nothing else but an experience, a collection of moments and thoughts, feelings and lessons. Don’t waste it being tired and scared. Say yes, say no, think with you heart and go against the current. Life will be as wonderful as you make it, but it’s up to you to make it so. It’s on your side, you know? You just have to join it.
___________ Music used in this episode: Snowfall - Idealism http://bit.ly/ChillhopSpotify Meet Me In The Morning - The Glass Child https://open.spotify.com/track/06AH92EVlk8wDItjhunHlW
I created something, a character of sort, but she seemed as real as me and maybe I tried to become like her. Maybe I wanted to be like her. Maybe I tried to live up to the image I drew, the pure unworldly consciousness of ”The Glass Child”. Maybe it was a dream. Someone I aspired to be seen as. Someone I turned to for guidance. ”What would The Glass Child do”. Maybe it was a cape. A costume of magical colors I could hide my shattered identity under, so as not to feel so detached. To not have to explain myself. Who’s Charlotte? Who cares, this is ”The Glass Child”. I felt no responsibility because The Glass Child didn’t have to answer. She just did. Half alive. Half person, half fiction. She thought and felt and wrote and sang but did not live. Maybe it was everything I could never be. Maybe it was everything I ever could be.
MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE: - Snowfall by Idealism: https://soundcloud.com/chillhopdotcom - Sappheiros: https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic - Time, It Goes by The Glass Child (moi)