Page 1 of Unclench Me Softly

Chapter One:

Sage Smoke and Tax Debt

When your childhood is a mix of naked moon dances, expired canned goods, and a mother who swore she could speak to trees, you grow up with certain expectations about life. Namely: that you’ll die broke, barefoot, and maybe cursed.

I wasn’t raised so much as I was… freeranged.

We moved fourteen times by the time I was twelve, usually because Mom sensed a ‘disturbance in the ley lines’ or got into a turf war with another witch at the co-op.

No formal schooling. No health insurance. But I could read tarot by age seven and once exorcised a possum from our garden using a crystal grid and a chant I made up on the spot. (It worked. Probably. The possum never came back, but neither did our neighbor’s cat. Interpret that how you will.)

My mom believed bathing in rainwater realigned your aura. She once grounded me for using shampoo with sulfates.

So yeah, my childhood was unhinged. But it was mine.

Which is why, when a lawyer called to inform me I’d inherited an entire ‘spiritual wellness estate,’ my first thought wasn’t,Oh, how lucky.

It was,Who the hell died, and what kind of pyramid scheme do they think I’m running?

Turns out, my great-aunt Solara, yes, that was her actual name, passed away after decades of ‘energy work’ and ‘clitoral sunbathing, on a sprawling property called Solstice Hollow, and left it to me.

The good news? It’s beautiful. Solstice Hollow isn’t just a retreat, it’s a full-blown cult starter kit. Crystal altars. Geodesic domes. A koi pond shaped like a vulva. (It has a little pearl fountain and everything.)

And it is mine.

Sort of.

The bad news? It came with $87,000 in back taxes and a very official letter from the county informing me that if I didn’t pay up by midsummer, they’d bulldoze my inheritance.

So... not ideal.

Naturally, I did what any spiritually-adjacent, financially desperate woman raised by chaos would do.

I threw together a fake brochure for a “Sacred Masculinity Awakening Retreat,” slapped in some stock photos of shirtless yoga bros, and sent it to every trust fund man-child my old roommate ever dated.

Then I made a reel about the ultra-exclusive, limited-space wellness experience, complete with aerial drone footage of the compound and me in a white dress spinning in a field like a sexy cult scarecrow. It went viral.

The retreat is “exclusive” because:

There are only six guest rooms (and I’m living in one),

The cost is absolutely ridiculous, and

I am low on ice cream and patience.

The non-refundable deposits were just enough to hire a local handyman, named, very appropriately, Toad, who worked for my aunt and who may or may not be qualified to fix the terrifying electrical system in Dome Two.

And now I’ve got five elite men arriving in two days for a spiritual journey based entirely on a made-up healing program called:

The Five Pillars of Divine Masculine Surrender™.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well. For starters, everything smells faintly like burnt sage and mildew, the plumbing gurgles like it’s possessed, and my handyman just told me, with a completely straight face, that the “spiritual vibration of the septic system” is why the dome toilet won’t flush properly.

“Toad,” I say, trying not to scream or cry or exhale my soul through my nose. “This place is supposed to be a luxury spiritual retreat. I can’t have a toilet demon in the sacred guest dome.”

He shrugs, wiping paint, or maybe something worse, onto his shirt. “Just tell ‘em not to flush too hard.”

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