You're More Free Than You're Acting Like: May Resource Guide
The Free will edition- Grants for Women, Atlanta + NYC Events, Korean Skincare, Yoga Nidra, and Permission to Slow
We don’t use our free will enough.
So, before I give you a single resource, I want to show you something, how I’ve been using my free will.
Earlier this week, my nervous system was overstimulated in a way I couldn’t think my way out of. So I shut my laptop. Walked downstairs. Got in our hot tub in the middle of the afternoon. Stayed for an hour. Then had the audacity to take a 30-minute nap after.
I came back to work completely reset. Not slightly better, actually reset. I got more done in the two hours after that than I had in the whole morning.
That’s free will. A midday hot tub soak on a Tuesday. Fully available to me. Deeply underused before that day.
And then there's this.
Bernard and I took a painting class where the whole point was to make a mess. We put on full painting outfits and got covered in color. It was chaotic and joyful and had absolutely nothing to do with productivity, content, or strategy. We just went somewhere together and made something ugly cute.
Now girlie pops, I’m talking to you here…
We have a habit of saving things for the “perfect moment”. The dress. The shoes. The bag we bought and then decided was “too much” for a regular day. The hairstyle we think requires an occasion to justify. We wait and we save it.
I’m here to say use your free will!
Wear the dress to the coffee shop. Through the bag on to go to the grocery store. Do your makeup the way you actually want to and take yourself to the museum. If you want to dress like you’re part of the exhibit, do that too. There is no occasion more worthy of the things you love than a random Tuesday when you simply felt like it.
You don’t need a birthday. You don’t need a reservation. You don’t need a reason. You already have one , you wanted to. That has always been enough.
Now, Bernard and I have been tossing around something that feels both wildly premature and exactly right: planting permanent roots in Atlanta. Buying a home here. Not a starter home — the home. The one with the vision attached to it.
So we’ve been doing something that has no practical justification and every spiritual one: touring multimillion dollar homes we cannot afford right now. Making the appointments. Walking through the rooms. Standing in the kitchens. Imagining ourselves there.
Nothing is stopping us from looking. Nothing is stopping us from letting the vision get specific. Nothing is stopping us from walking through the door of a life that’s on its way, even if it hasn’t arrived yet.
That’s free will too.
Deciding that desire doesn’t need permission.
That you can hold a vision in your body before your bank account catches up. That imagining yourself somewhere isn’t delusion, it’s practice.
Look at the house. Make the appointment. Let yourself want it.
We don’t use our free will enough. We’re more free than we act like. We’ve outsourced our choices to routine, expectation, and a vague sense of what we’re supposed to be doing and called it discipline. What if the real discipline was learning how to actually choose?
This month’s resource guide is built around that premise. Using your free will.
Here’s where to start 👇🏾
Jump To What You Need
🎉 Vibe & Experience: Coffee parties, morning raves, day parties — ATL + NYC
🏃🏽♀️ Move Your Body: Climbing, u-pick farms, obstacle racing
💸 Money & Grants: Four open grants, two closing in May
📚 Books: Two for the season — one for your spirit, one for your creativity
🌎 Places to Go :Exhibits, community gardens, farms — ATL + NYC
🧘🏽♀️ Wellness Tool: What I do on Sabbath to fully reset
🛒 Free Will Purchase: TikTok got me. I regret nothing.
🎉 Vibe & Experience
Atlanta + New York recs, because we move between cities and so do my people.
Coffee Party Atlanta (Atlanta) Daytime music events with local DJs, fresh coffee from SecondCupATL, no alcohol, no cover, no agenda except showing up and being a full human person. This is the soft radicalism of going somewhere on a Saturday morning just because you felt like it. Find them on Meetup and check their schedule for upcoming dates.
Daybreaker (Atlanta + New York) Born in Brooklyn, Daybreaker is a global sober morning dance movement — breathwork or yoga first, then DJ sets and live performers, with free coffee and matcha at the bar. No VIP. No bottle service. No hangover. Their next Atlanta event is July 26 (bookmark it now for summer), and New York dates run through the fall.
Black Coffee Atlanta — Cafe Unplugged(Atlanta) Black Coffee Atlanta hosts Cafe Unplugged, a live music experience on first Fridays of the month. Soft clubbing energy: you’re home by 10pm kicking your feet in bed and you did something intentional on a Friday that wasn’t the couch.
Hi-Top Fade ATL — 4th Sunday Day Party(Atlanta) Every 4th Sunday at Rock Steady ATL. Free with RSVP. New jack swing, millennial/Gen X era music, grown people energy. This is the “I went somewhere on a Sunday and didn’t feel gross after” experience we deserve. Search Hi-Top Fade and follow their page for the next date.
🏃🏽♀️ Move Your Body
Hyrox — When You Want Something to Train Toward (Nationwide)
I got roped into this one and I am not mad about it. Hyrox is a fitness race where you run a kilometer, complete a workout station, and repeat that eight times 😩. The stations include sled push, sled pull, rowing, burpee broad jumps, farmers carry, sandbag lunges, and wall balls. It sounds unhinged. It kind of is. But it’s also completely doable for regular people at any fitness level, which is the whole point. I’m training for an October race and if you want a goal that makes your workouts mean something this summer, look up a race near you. Keep an eye on the official site, ticket sell out quick.
Stone Summit Climbing & Fitness (Atlanta)
Fair warning and I say this with love, this activity is not for the girlies with nails or a fresh manicure. I learned that the hard way. Come with short nails or come prepared to sacrifice. Either way, come. Stone Summit has walls extending 25 to 60 feet high for all skill levels, a bouldering room, a yoga studio, and a full fitness center. You can go on a day pass with zero experience and use the auto-belay to climb solo ,no partner, no certification required.
Spartan Race — When You Want Something to Train Toward (Nationwide) Sometimes free will looks like signing up for something wild before you feel ready. The Spartan Sprint is a 5K obstacle course race with 20 obstacles and it’s the entry point most first-timers start with. Spartan has free training plans on their site, and if October is your target, now is exactly when you’d start. If you want a goal that makes the gym make sense this summer, this is one worth looking at.
💸 Money & Grants
A “best for” line on each one so you know immediately if it’s worth clicking.
Amber Grant (Rolling — always open) Three $10,000 grants awarded monthly to women-owned businesses. No industry restrictions. No complex business plan — just an honest, written explanation of your business and what you’d do with the funds. No time-in-business requirement. Best for: Any stage, any industry. Lowest barrier on this list. Apply every month until you win.
Women Founders Network Fast Pitch (Deadline: May 31) Pitch competition for U.S.-based businesses with a woman founder, co-founder, or CEO. Winners receive $25,000; one finalist receives $5,000. Best for: Growth-stage businesses with traction and a compelling story. If you can pitch, enter this.
The V-List (Deadline: May 29 ) Recognizes 100–250 U.S.-based women entrepreneurs building revenue-generating, values-driven businesses. Free to apply. Winners receive recognition, visibility, and consideration for additional Spotlight Awards. Best for: Revenue-generating businesses ready for more visibility and room access. Less cash, more signal.
HerRise Microgrant (Rolling — monthly cycle) $1,000 to U.S.-based, majority women-owned businesses with under $1 million in gross revenue. Submit by the last day of each month to be considered for that cycle. $15 application fee. Best for: Early-stage founders or anyone who keeps saying she’ll apply to something. This is that something.
Q2 planning session If you’re still mapping out the rest of your quarter and want a framework for how to think about your revenue and offers through June, my Q2 planning breakdown covers all of it. → Q2 planning session
📚 Books I’d Hand You Right Now
“The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” — John Mark Comer If you’ve spiritually bypassed the idea of rest… told yourself you’re not that busy, you’re not that bad, this book will find you. Comer makes both the theological and practical case that hurry is the enemy of the life you actually want, and that slowness is not laziness. It’s a practice. It’s a discipline. It’s maybe the hardest thing you’ll do this year. Faith-rooted without being preachy. Completely convicting.
“The Artist’s Way” — Julia Cameron You’ve probably been seeing this everywhere again lately — and it deserves the resurgence. I’ve done it three times over the past six years and walked away with something completely different each time. Which tells you everything. The morning pages practice alone will change how you move through your day. If you’ve never done it, this is your sign. If you’ve done it before and put it down, pick it back up. You’re not the same person you were the last time you read it.
🌎 A Place to Go
Harlem Roots Community Garden (New York — Harlem) Not a destination garden a neighborhood one, which is the whole point. Harlem Roots is a beautiful community space celebrating African American heritage, with diverse plants, educational workshops, and open hours where anyone can come and simply exist in green space in the middle of the city. If you’re in New York and you want to feel connected to something real and rooted, this is it.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden — “Ancestral Ecologies” (New York) On May 23, the inaugural Heidi Nitze Art × Environment Fellowship launches with Ancestral Ecologies site-specific installations by artist Olalekan Jeyifous and environmental art practice ADWO, exploring how African Diasporic and Latinx cultural traditions can inform our relationship to the natural world. Alongside that, the Block by Block exhibition recreates stoops from Brooklyn’s Greenest Block contest a whole neighborhood’s worth of community pride installed in one garden. Both free with general admission.
Atlanta Botanical Garden — "Niki in the Garden" (Atlanta) This one hits different in 2026. The Garden is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a return of artist Niki de Saint Phalle's sculpture exhibition. 42 of her mostly massive, whimsical works featuring colorful "Nanas," animals, and fantastical creatures. It runs May 9 through September 6 and it's joyful, surreal, and the opposite of productive. Go on a weekday. Wander slowly. On Thursday evenings through September you can get cocktails and enjoy live entertainment while you explore. That's free will with a view.
🧘🏽♀️ The Wellness Tool I Keep Coming Back To — Yoga Nidra
As most of you know, I’ve been deepening my Sabbath practice this year and if you want the full story on how and why I built it, I wrote about it here.
One of the anchors of that practice is yoga nidra. If you’ve never heard of it: yoga nidra is a guided meditation that brings you to the threshold between waking and sleep. It’s not about clearing your mind or sitting perfectly still and being great at meditating. It’s about systematically guiding your nervous system into a state of complete rest.
The best way I can describe what it does: you know how you shut your computer all the way down, not just close the lid, but fully power off and restart and suddenly everything runs faster and cleaner?
That’s what yoga nidra does for your body and brain. It’s a hard reset. A full shutdown and reboot for your nervous system.
Not a nap. Not a meditation. Something deeper than both.
I do this as part of my Sabbath, usually on Wednesdays, or Saturdays and I follow along with this YouTube video.
And the Sabbath tool I built to support the practice is here if you want it.
One thing to know going in: if you fall asleep during it, that is not failure. That is how you know it’s working. Your nervous system needed it that badly. You’ll still get the benefit so just let it happen.
It’s free and it might be the most underrated thing I’ve added to my wellness practice this year.
🛒 The Free Will Purchase(s)
Aka: TikTok got me. And I regret nothing.
You know exactly how this goes. You’re scrolling, minding your business, and then suddenly you have a cart full of Korean skincare and a credit card that’s silently judging you. That’s what happened. I gave in to the Medicube moment everyone’s been having — and this is one of the rare times TikTok did not lie to me.
Three products. All worth it. Here’s the honest breakdown:
① Medicube Zero Pore Pads Pre-soaked cotton pads with BHA and AHA that you swipe across your face to exfoliate, clear pores, and refine texture. Dual-sided — slightly textured on one side for gentle exfoliation, smooth on the other to restore hydration. The detail that sold me: they come with a small plastic clamp inside the jar so you never have to touch the pads with your fingers. More sanitary. More satisfying. I use these as my first step and everything I layer after absorbs better.
② Medicube Pink Peptide Serum The dewy, glass skin serum. Niacinamide and turmeric root to brighten, hyaluronic acid and coenzyme Q10 to hydrate and strengthen the moisture barrier, plus salmon-derived PDRN, collagen, and peptides to boost elasticity and firm the skin. Silky, absorbs without stickiness, and my skin looks genuinely different the morning after. More luminous, more alive. Worth every penny!
③ Medicube Zero Exosome Shot (the microneedling in a bottle) Micro-sized, needle-shaped boosters coated with exosomes that deliver AHA, BHA, and PHA deep into the skin. Yes, you will feel a tingle when you apply it. That’s it working. Give yourself a few uses to adjust the first time feels like a lot. By the third or fourth, you’ll just see the results: tighter skin, refined texture, a firmness that makes you look in the mirror and feel genuinely pleased with yourself. Comes in two strengths, start with 2000 if you’re new to actives, move to 7500 when you’re ready (i’m a 7500 girl).
All three are on TikTok Shop at medicube.us. or Amazon. I’m just saying sometimes the algorithm knows you.
One More Thing
If any of these resources hit, the grant you finally needed to apply to, the class you’ve been meaning to take, the permission slip you’ve been waiting for — I want to know. Reply and tell me which one you’re actually going to use.
And if the free will conversation is landing and you want to go deeper on what’s available to you right now in your life and business: I’m opening spots for Clarity Reset this month , a 90-minute 1:1 session where we get clear on exactly what’s possible and what’s actually in the way. → Book your Clarity Reset
Not ready for that yet? Start with the quiz. Five minutes. No fluff.
→ Take the Less Chaos, More Clarity Quiz
With care,
Alicia G