Page 67 of Unclench Me Softly

I stare at the screen, pull the robe around me, let it settle, and for the first time all day, maybe all week, I feel… warm, held, a little lost, and maybe just a tiny bit found.

What’s In Your Spiritual Purse?

A sacred quiz from Bliss: for alignment, self-discovery, and finding that one lip balm that smells like unresolved longing.

Choose ONE item you’re most likely to have in your purse:(Trust your intuition. Or just pick the one that gives you tingles in your sacral chakra.)

1. Lip Balm (3 different kinds, all herbal)You’re soft. Sensual. Dangerously prepared. You’ve spiritually kissed someone through a trauma spiral and would do it again. Your purse smells like honey and gentle accountability. People fall in love with you in tea shops.

Bliss Diagnosis:Emotionally hydrated. Probably in love with three people and one playlist.

2. A Tarot Deck (travel size, worn edges)You flirt through interpretation. You’ve absolutely pulled “The Lovers” and then made someone take their shirt off. You havebig energy healer who cries once a week and journals about itvibes.

Bliss Diagnosis:You are the ritual. Your purse is a spell. Do not trust you with moonlight and a bottle of wine.

3. A Small Crystal Knife (for protection or vibes)You’ve been through shit and no longer apologize for your sacred rage. You saged your last relationship out of your sheets and now sleep diagonally like a queen. You cut cordsandexpectations.

Bliss Diagnosis:You are divinely unbothered, semi-feral, and manifesting someone who begs to be emotionally ruined.

4. A Folded Paper With a Strange Affirmation (Possibly Written by Bliss)You’re either extremely grounded… or unhinged and trying very hard. You once cried during rage yoga and called it “an exorcism of the masculine gaze.” Your purse contains hope, lint, and one secret.

Bliss Diagnosis:Chaotic good. Needs snacks. Emotionally allergic to routine but weirdly good at leadership retreats.

5. An Emergency Salt PacketYou’re protected, passive-aggressive, and spiritually petty in the most divine way. You once hexed a man by rearranging your altar and sending him confusing voice memos.

Bliss Diagnosis:You are the reason the moon hides sometimes. And you are deeply loved.

Bonus Result – You Picked All of Them

You arefully Bliss-coded.You contain multitudes, glitter, heartbreak, and the smell of ethically foraged eucalyptus. You’re emotionally generous, wildly dangerous, and your purse is basically a portable trauma temple.

You don’t need a man. You need five. And pancakes.

Bliss-ism #76/b

You can tell a lot about a man by what he brings you from the woods. Especially if it’s a skull.

Chapter Thirteen:

Sticks, Stones, and Unexpected Feelings

I’m seated on my cushion, swaddled in The Womb Cloak™ like a woman reborn in lavender-scented dignity, when the flap of the dome lifts with a gentle shfff.

Asher enters slowly, hands cupped in front of him like he’s carrying something fragile or sacred or both, eyes wide with the kind of soft reverence usually reserved for vintage records and hummingbird sightings.

He sees me and smiles.

Not the bright, bouncy grin from earlier, but something smaller. Quieter. Like he’s still inside the stillness and doesn’t want to scare it away.

“I found it,” he says.

I nod, shifting slightly to face him, heart already climbing into my throat like it’s afraid of what he found.

He approaches with careful steps, kneels beside me, and holds out his hands.

There, nestled in his palms like an offering, is a small pinecone, half-covered in moss. Not fancy. Not rare. But the moss has grown in just the right shape that it curves gently, softly, unmistakably, into a heart.

I blink.

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