Last weekend, I sent out a newsletter that got a flood of beautiful replies—stories, gratitude, resonance. But when I checked the RSVP list for this week’s gathering?

Two people.

This isn’t new. High engagement, low conversion. People love the writing but hesitate at the threshold of real-time connection. It’s summer. Life’s full. I get it. Still, it stung.

I cap my gatherings at ten people for a reason. My work is about depth, not reach. But part of me still wonders—should I change my format? Offer more? Make a reel in a bunny costume?

This is when old doubts resurface:

Maybe intimacy isn’t what people want
Maybe my pricing is off
Maybe I’m the problem

The temptation is to tweak everything. Push harder. Over-analyze. Disappear.

This is exactly when The RIPPLE Practice™ becomes essential—not for creating something beautiful, but for interrupting the cycle before it derails you.

Reflect: At my art table, I asked, “What am I carrying right now?” The answer: disappointment that my reach wasn’t translating to actual presence, and anxiety about whether depth over breadth was naive.

Identify: The story I was telling myself: “If only 2 people want to show up, maybe intimate gatherings aren’t what people actually want.” Classic worth-equation-thinking dressed up as market analysis.

Play: I pulled out watercolor paper, bold colors, and markers. No agenda except to move my hands and quiet the mental noise about metrics and validation.

Personalize: Words kept surfacing as I painted. I added them to the tokens, one phrase choosing each colorful background. Motifs that call to me, dots that ground everything, and a little bit of glitter because what’s life without some gold?

Let Go: These weren’t for me to keep. They were tokens of appreciation to ripple forward—to the grocery clerk, the postal worker, the stranger who needs to know they’re seen.

Embrace: I noticed the shift—from “I’m not reaching enough people” to “I'm reaching exactly who needs to be reached.” I felt lighter. My breath had steadied. My body was at ease.

The newsletter resonated, the gathering will happen for the two people who need it, and both are enough.

Let me be clear: the peace didn’t last. I still refreshed the sign-up page. I still had to remind myself not to send “only 3 spots left!” emails that make my stomach turn. The feeling of “enough” comes and goes.

But this is the point of a practice. Not to erase the humanness—but to meet it with grace.

And sometimes, what comes back is unexpected. Like four signups for the backyard-gathering on July 25 without me pushing. Or emails that say, “This helped more than you know.”

So I’m sharing this—not to vent, but to remind myself (and maybe you): not everything meaningful scales. Not every ripple is visible. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

Because two people saying yes—fully, wholly, honestly—is enough.

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