How Uncaged Came to Be: From Story to Self-Discovery
The unexpected journey that turned the lessons within my writing into a seven-week program for freeing ourselves from the patterns that keep us stuck
I didn’t have a plan to create a course. I didn’t have six cages, Archetypal Wardens, tools, or a seven-week framework. I entered this year questioning what I was going to do next.
This week, I launch a new course: Uncaged: Free Yourself, Reclaim Your Life.
Looking back now, I can see that its beginnings were already there—in my writing, in the journeys of my characters, and in many of the lessons I had learned throughout my life. I simply hadn’t recognized the larger pattern yet. Sometimes, we don’t know what we’re creating until we step back far enough to see it.
Uncaged gives you tools to break free from the hidden patterns and cages that rule our lives, such as conditioning, expectations, obligations, perfectionism, fear, and identity.
Taking a Step Back
At the start of the year, I had no idea that Uncaged would be a project I’d be launching. At the end of last year, I was feeling confused about my future. I had left my previous publishers and regained my rights. I wasn’t sure what to do next and debated whether to find another publisher or self-publish. On June 3, 2025, I released my oracle deck, Daily Divine: Reflections to Connect Within, under my imprint, Trust In Your Soul, but I wasn’t clear if I should continue.
I also questioned whether to continue writing or to take a different direction. I knew I needed help, and I reached out to Joanna Hunter, a spiritual business coach. We started working together at the beginning of this year, and my life has completely transformed.
If you’ve been following me, you know that I chose the self-publishing route. The second edition of Lonely Dove was released on June 22, 2026, and I am slowly working on releasing the second editions of the books I’ve already published. Also, a brand-new poetry book, Where I Call Home, was released on August 14, 2026, with eight more books to come in the series.
I feel more empowered and in control of my process after choosing to self-publish. I originally felt daunted, but took a deep breath and worked on one thing at a time. As I learned what I needed to, I realized it wasn’t as overwhelming as I thought.
How Uncaged Came To Be
Uncaged came to me unexpectedly. When I started working with Joanna, she was certain that my books had deeper healing messages. I hadn’t recognized it, but once she said it, I knew it to be true. In my novels, I write about pivotal moments in my characters’ lives that awaken them to identify, trust, and follow their inner guidance. My poetry is about my life, but I do the same, often sharing how I have learned to trust my soul.
When I edited Lonely Dove for the second edition, I kept a separate notebook where I highlighted excerpts that shared wisdom or advice and wrote summaries of what my protagonist, Anji, learned. Joanna worked with me to identify the bigger structure, and Uncaged emerged. I realized Anji released patterns, which I renamed cages, and these became the foundation for the program.
Uncaged, The Program
Looking back, I can see that I was living through some of the lessons that would eventually become Uncaged. I was questioning what I thought I was supposed to do. I was taking responsibility for the direction of my work. I was moving through fear of doing something unfamiliar. And, rather than waiting until I knew exactly how everything would work, I began making conscious choices one step at a time. I didn’t have the language for the cages yet, but I was already recognizing some of my own.
The Cage of Conditioning: “This is what I was taught.”
The belief and invisible rules we’ve inherited from family, society, culture, religion, schooling, community, and past experiences about how we should be and how life is supposed to work.
The Cage of Expectation: “This is who I’m supposed to be.”
The standards and roles we learn to measure ourselves against—the invisible scorecard telling us what we need to do or who we need to become to be accepted, successful, loved, or worthy.
The Cage of Obligation: “I should. I must. I have to.”
Expectations become requirements, and we begin abandoning ourselves to avoid disappointing others, keep the peace, or carry responsibilities that aren’t truly ours.
The Cage of Perfection: “I have to get it right.”
The pressure to perform, achieve, avoid mistakes, and continually prove our worth by climbing an endless ladder where “good enough” never arrives.
The Cage of Fear: “What if…?”
Fears of rejection, judgment, criticism, failure, abandonment, being seen, or disappointing others convince us that staying in the familiar cage is safer than stepping beyond it.
The Cage of Identity: “This is just who I am.”
This is the deepest cage because we carry the roles, labels, and patterns for so long that we stop seeing them as patterns and start believing they are who we are.
All the cages play a role in our lives. If you’re curious about which cage has the most influence on you, I invite you to take this quiz.
For the program, I made the cages more dynamic by identifying corresponding Archetypal Wardens, who are aspects within that keep us in the cages and make it hard to break away. The wardens are the internalized voices and roles that enforce the rules of each cage—the parts of us that warn us not to disappoint, fail, stand out, change, or become someone unfamiliar.
I wanted to create tools to break these patterns, which weren’t included in Lonely Dove but are among the biggest takeaways from the Uncaged program. These are called Keys, or qualities we cultivate as we begin to open the cage. These keys are discernment, self-acceptance, radical personal responsibility, self-love, courage, and conscious choice.
The course is seven weeks long, with one week dedicated to each cage, and I added an extra week for integration to give students time and space to embody the self that emerges after the Uncaged program. During those weeks, you’ll have opportunities for self-audits to help you understand yourself better, reflections and journaling so you can apply the concepts to your story and your life, and ways to identify patterns, begin to break them, and integrate them.
On September 16, The Cage Opens
When I look back at where I was at the beginning of this year, I couldn’t have imagined I would be here. I thought I was trying to do with my books. Instead, I was beginning to discover what they had been trying to teach me all along.
Uncaged emerged from those lessons, but it also emerged from my journey of questioning what I was taught, reconsidering what I thought I was supposed to do, moving through fear, trusting my inner guidance, and consciously choosing what came next. Now, I’m ready to share that journey with you.
Wednesday, Uncaged: Free Yourself, Reclaim Your Life officially opens.
If you’ve ever felt that you’re living according to rules you didn’t consciously choose, carrying responsibilities that don’t belong to you, trying endlessly to prove your worth, allowing fear to keep you small, or wondering who you would be without the roles you’ve spent your life playing, I created this program for you.
You don’t have to become someone new. You get to discover who you are beneath everything you’ve learned to carry.
It’s time to open the cages.
Which cage do you recognize most strongly in your own life: Conditioning, Expectation, Obligation, Perfection, Fear, or Identity?