Lights Up
I didn’t disappear. I was becoming.
There’s a moment in theatre — just before everything begins — when the stage is dark and the audience is hushed and something electric moves through the air. Nobody has entered yet. Nothing has happened yet. And yet everyone in the room knows.
*Something is about to begin.*
That’s where I’ve been living for the last several months.
Behind the curtain. Hands full. Heart full. Quietly, intensely working in a way that doesn’t always look like working from the outside — but from the inside feels like the most important creative labour of my life.
And now?
Lights up.
Here I am. Paint on my hands. Dish soap still drying. I just fixed the dryer with my own two hands and a little help from Matt. Standing in the doorway of my ordinary, extraordinary life — and finally, fully, joyfully ready to be seen.
The Ecosystem
Here’s what I want to tell you first.
For the last four and a half years I have been creating. Constantly, quietly, sometimes without knowing exactly what I was building or why it all belonged together.
Tracks. Courses. Sessions. Containers. A book. A 30 day journey. A Substack library that keeps filling itself up. Live workshops. Video courses. Meditations and breathwork and automatic writing and nervous system work and soul art and sacral questions and —
Something would move through me. An experience. A thought. An idea I couldn’t stop playing with. And I would create from it — not because I had a plan, but because that’s simply what I do. I went through something and made something. I thought of something and shared it. I played with an idea until it became real.
And then one day I finished something that changed everything.
The Book That Revealed Everything
The Midnight Carnival: A Tale of Remembering.
I wrote this book in 30 days.
It poured out of me the way only the truest things do — not forced, not planned, just arrived. A soul art piece that insisted on being written and refused to wait politely.
When it was finished and published I did something I hadn’t done in four and a half years.
I looked up.
And I finally saw it.
*Every single thing I had ever created — without trying, without planning, without knowing — fit perfectly inside the world of this book.*
Not because the book came first. It didn’t. The tracks came first. The courses came first. The sessions and the workshops and the automatic writing and the nervous system work — all of it came first, born one piece at a time from living and going through things and playing with ideas and deciding to share them.
But the book? The book was the moment I finally saw the shape of what I’d been building.
It’s an ecosystem.
One living, breathing, interconnected world. And The Midnight Carnival is where I hand the whole map into your palms.
You can find it on Amazon. Or if you want something more personal — a signed copy, straight from me to you. And if you want to understand where it came from, what it was born out of, what cracked open to create it — that story is waiting for you at jocelynbates.net 🌿
What Quiet Has Looked Like
I’ve been quiet on here. I know that.
But I want you to understand what quiet has looked like —
It has looked like spending weeks curating and recording video & audio tracks for Insight Timer — meditations, visualizations, breath work, Yoga Nidra, inspirations, automatic writing — crafting each one with the kind of care you give something you know will outlive the moment it was made. I am so proud of how these have come out.
Those tracks are live now. Free ones available to anyone with the free Insight Timer app — along with live workshops I’ve led that live there permanently. Premium tracks, video courses, and my Automatic Writing Course are available with a premium membership.
It has looked like building my Nervous System Course — one of the most alive, most ME pieces of teaching I have ever created. It uses sacral questions to open each lesson and moves through the carnival row from The Midnight Carnival to teach how to understand and regulate your nervous system. I built a whole framework out of the book and turned it into something you can actually USE in your body. 💛
It has looked like showing up every single day for my 30 Day Live Journey on Insight Timer — Day 18 complete and still going. Every day a full video, posted live and then shared on Instagram as I go. Come follow along. It’s completely free and I would love to have you walking alongside me.
It has looked like rebuilding my website completely from the ground up. jocelynbates.net is alive and gorgeous and finally feels like walking into a space that actually looks like me. Every offering is there. Go visit. Walk around. Stay a while. 🌿
What’s Here For You Now
If you want to go deep with me one on one — Soul Pulse Sessions are open. All the details are at jocelynbates.net. 💛
If you’re ready for a longer, layered journey — Soul Archaeology, my three month container, is there for you. This is for the woman who knows something profound wants to shift and is ready to give it real time and real space.
And if you’re not ready for either of those yet — come find me. On Insight Timer. On Instagram. Walking the 30 days alongside you, one day at a time.
For The Ones Already In The Room
There’s something quietly extraordinary happening inside this Substack for paid subscribers.
The Midnight Carnival Audio Library, here on Substack, is filling up — premium Insight Timer tracks, the Automatic Writing Course, the Nervous System Course, and more finding its way in as we go.
And at the end of this month —
Something live. Something intimate. Something creative.
The last Saturday of every month. Starting May 30th. 10am ET.
I’m not going to say too much more than that.
But if you’ve been wondering whether now is the moment to step further into this world —
It is. 😉
I am here.
I am available.
I have spent four and a half years building something I couldn’t fully see until now.
I see it.
This is what emergence looks like in an ordinary life.
Paint covered hands. Dish soap drying. A dryer fixed with my own two hands. Kids nearby. Heart wide open.
And an entire world — built quietly, stubbornly, lovingly — waiting to be explored.
Come walk further into mine. 💛
*Explore everything at jocelynbates.net
*Find me on Insight Timer — you can also search Jocelyn Bates
*Follow the 30 Day Journey on Instagram
*Step inside the Midnight Carnival Audio Library — become a paid subscriber* 🎪
LOVE.
Jocelyn b.