Hi, I’m Elise.

I’m a podcast host, former media exec and magazine editor, and the author of the New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good as well as its corresponding workbook Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness. (I also co-wrote True and False Magic with the pioneering psychiatrist Phil Stutz and have ghostwritten something like 15 books.)

I’m married to a lovely guy named Rob and we have two sons, Max and Sam. We live in Los Angeles though I was born and raised in Montana and consider that home.

So what’s happening over here?

Across my work, I focus primarily on culture, and the way it lands in our bodies: Why do we do what we do? What’s us versus the stories we’re told about who we’re supposed to be? I’m interested in pulling apart this tapestry so we can re-weave a truer version. I’m also a seeker: While I’m not affiliated with any religion, I turn to the wisdom traditions of all of them for larger context. I call this applied spirituality: How do we take the vertical—its ineffable, magical nature—and spill it into the horizontal. How do we live this deeper meaning in our ordinary existence? I write about this a lot.

Here are some newsletters to the types of things I cover:

• The Most Loving Thing You Can Do: Some Practical Things You Can Do for the One Eventuality

• A Box Full of Darkness: Looking for the Light

• Mothering the World: The Power of Love in a World Hijacked by Fear

• Ending the “Manel”: Doing This Requires Understanding Ourselves

• Yes, There’s Stuff: And Then There’s Home

So what’s happening behind the paywall?

Besides access to paid posts and my archive (including all my podcast transcripts and show notes, you’ll get my list of my most trusted healers, as well as book round-ups on various themes like addiction, death and dying, and mythology). I also host occasional workshops and deeper dives with some of the practitioners I turn to all the time. In addition to weekly newsletters, I write occasional paid deeper dives into concepts that require more research and collation: I’m working on a series about energy healing, entities, negative energy, guru energy, archetypal power sources, spiritual power, etc.