It’s Good to Be the King
On finding joy, meaning, and emotional freedom—right where you are.
There’s a quote I’ve been holding close lately:
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” — Vivian Greene
And another, from a very different source but strikingly similar in spirit:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” — often attributed to Einstein
I think highly sensitive people tend to live in that second way.
We’re the noticers. The meaning-makers. The ones who get overwhelmed not just by too much—but sometimes by too much beauty. We cry at commercials. We feel the edges of things. We want to live awake—even when it hurts.
So this week, I want to talk about how we do that.
Not someday. Not when conditions are perfect. But now.
What kind of content really helps?
I’ve been wrestling with this question for a while now:
What kind of content do I actually want to put into the world?
There’s already so much noise. So many posts. So many “5 ways to change your life” reels and productivity hacks.
And I kept wondering if maybe the way to contribute was to teach. To prove value through expertise.
But when I got quiet, I remembered something truer:
In the moments I’ve felt the lowest, I wasn’t always looking for information.
I was looking for company.
Yes—sometimes I wanted to know what vitamin might help or what routine would support better sleep. But often?
What I needed most was simply to hear: You’re not alone.
That’s why I’ve poured so much of my energy into running Meetup groups for sensitive people. Because what I really want is not just an audience—I want a community. A space where sensitive folks can talk to each other. Share stories. Feel seen.
But not everyone can attend those sessions live. So I’m trying something new.
What I’m Building (and Why You’re Seeing This)
Right now, I’m working on building a whole ecosystem for sensitive people:
A place where you can take courses (if you want to).
A place for asynchronous support (if that’s what you need).
A place to just be—without needing to perform or produce.
It’s taking time. And in the meantime, I’m patch-quilting together ways to offer support and insight for all budgets and bandwidths.
So here’s how it works right now:
All my content is free. This newsletter. The podcast. The reflections.
If you want to be part of the live community, it’s $5/month. That gets you access to all the Meetup groups and coaching circles.
And if you join at that $5/month rate now, you’ll be grandfathered in—even once the full platform goes live.
That fee helps me cover basic hosting costs for now. But more than that, it’s a way of saying:
"Hey Leah... I believe in this. I believe in you."
And if that’s where you’re at—thank you. It means more than you know.
The Story That Inspired This Week’s Meetup
At the start of the week, I found myself thinking about my grandmother.
She was a minimalist before minimalism was a movement.
Tidy, sharp-witted, emotionally unsinkable in a way I now envy.
She had three kids, including my dad. And one day, her husband—my grandfather—told her he was leaving her. For a man.
It was the kind of thing you didn’t talk about back then. The kind of thing that could have broken her.
But it didn’t.
They handled it with more grace than I can fully understand.
He let her keep the house. He said, “If you get a child support check, it’s because I have money. If you don’t, it’s because I don’t.”
And he kept his word.
She carried on.
And I don’t remember her for her sadness. I remember her perched in her favorite chair, a beret tilted just-so on her head, a glass of scotch in hand, and a grin as sly as a cat’s as she’d say:
“It’s good to be the king.”
I think about that phrase a lot.
What We Explored in the Group
In this week’s Mindfulness Monday, we played with that same feeling.
The prompt was simple:
If money, time, and energy weren’t issues—what would you spend your days doing?
And then:
What is the feeling behind that dream?
Because under every vision—whether it was about art, travel, love, or quiet—there was a feeling: freedom, rest, belonging, joy.
And so I asked:
What if you could go directly to that feeling, today?
Not through stuff.
Not through achieving.
But through permission.
So we each wrote a permission slip.
“I hereby give myself permission to feel peaceful.”
“I give myself permission to rest.”
“I give myself permission to belong—even without proving anything.”
Wisdom from Viktor Frankl
All of this reminds me of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who lost nearly everything. And yet, somehow, he still wrote:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
He wasn’t saying that life is easy.
He was saying that meaning is power.
That our inner response can still be ours—even when the outer world is impossible.
And when we place meaning around our storms, we start to dance in the rain. Not because it’s fun. But because it’s ours.
A Gentle Invitation
So here’s what I want to leave you with:
What if you stopped waiting for life to be calm before you felt peaceful?
What if you let yourself feel joy—even if you’re still figuring things out?
What if you sipped something you love, tilted your metaphorical beret just so, and said:
“It’s good to be the king.”
With care,
Leah
🌀 P.S. Logistics, if you're curious:
The Podcast is The Healthy Sensitive Podcast and stays 100% free
Meetup Group is $5/month for live groups & coaching circles (and locks you in at that price for life)
Substack: Free unless you want to leave comments/interact on posts (also $5/month, mostly to block bots and trolls)
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