BEGINNING TO TRUST

For most of my life I lived in the rigidity and anxiety of my mind. I was ruled by shoulds, societal conditioning, logic, and a need to control every single thing I could. I desperately needed external validation and crumbled at even the slightest criticism. I constantly compared myself and felt like I would never measure up.

I didn’t trust life. I didn’t trust my inner knowing, that still small voice that wanted me to live as the wild, weird, wonderful woman I truly was. I was living in fear and making choices from my conditioning, not from the core of who I truly was. I thought who I was conditioned to be WAS my true self. I couldn’t yet see all the layers that were crowding out my connection to mySelf, to Spirit, and what I truly wanted from life.

And yet, every once in a while, I would get little glimpses of that Self and the incredible possibilities that were waiting for me on the other side of fear and control. I would hear a gentle voice giving me clear guidance on how to take the next step forward. And sometimes, just sometimes, even when it made no logical sense, I listened.

And little by little, the more I followed that voice, the more magical, real, and true my life became. The more I was able to dance with life as it unfolded. The more I recognized how I am always supported by life and by Spirit, even in intense pain and struggle, when I couldn’t see how anything made sense. But of course, looking back I could always see that I was being divinely guided.

Over time the voice of my Self got easier for me to hear. In 2018, that voice told me to leave my career in education after just finishing two years in a Masters’ degree program. I knew I was still living a life led by my mind and not led by my true Self.

My Self told me to start writing again, to share everything I had been through on my journey with anxiety and depression after shutting down my creative channel completely due to comparison, paralyzing fear, and criticism. I was terrified, but I finally listened. I was unhappy and unfulfilled in my career and I knew something needed to change.

I began sharing my words online, and began to access new levels of Self than I ever thought possible. Through sharing my writing, I connected with others on similar paths and learned about coaching. My Self immediately said, “YES.” I left my full-time job and started my first coaching business the following year.

THE DEPTHS OF THE FIRE

Though I was now following the path of my true Self, I was still stuck in lots of fear, scarcity, and control. I pushed and forced, I listened to business coaches and entrepreneurs and bought their blueprints to success. I tirelessly did everything I thought I should so that my business would work - but really I wanted it to bring me validation, money, followers, and finally make me feel whole. I needed all of that - and I needed it quickly. 

I wasn’t embodied in what I was sharing or creating. I was saying all the right words without actually living them. And it felt like I tried everything, and yet nothing worked. I did some beautiful work with beautiful clients during those two and a half years of business, and through each triumph and disappointment I continued to peel back the layers and get closer to my core. But it was never enough for me. I always needed more.

Until finally I decided it was time to let the business go entirely. To remember that my business wasn’t responsible for making me happy or fulfilled. I was responsible for that.

So in 2022 I dissolved the business and got a full-time job (something I vowed never to do again). And to my surprise, there was a lot I loved about it. Though I was working for someone else, I felt free. Free of trying so hard to make my business work. Free of the endless pressure to create and share. Free of always hoping the next creation would be the “thing” that brought me the accolades I so desperately desired.

I was content. I gave myself space to grieve my business, and I thought I would never go back.

2022 also brought the most intense personal challenges I’ve ever faced. I was met with the lowest of lows and then the highest of highs. I experienced initiation after initiation. I was deep in the underworld, mostly just trying to survive as many external things I’d relied on to feel safe crumbled and transformed.

But in the depths of those fires, a new self was born. One who was no longer afraid. One who found safety not within someone else, not within external validation, followers, money or clients, but deep within herself. And from there, everything began to unfold exactly as it was meant to. 

THE FLAMES OF REBIRTH

A few months after these initiations, I was laid off from my job. In that moment I was shown just how deep my trust in life, and in myself, had become. I held myself through the grief, I allowed myself space to be angry and disappointed, to feel it all. And though more external safety nets were crumbling around me, I felt truly safe within myself for what felt like the first time.

I spent the fall and winter of 2022 in a deep void space. I had always been so, so scared of the void. But this time, I trusted it. I of course had moments of fear and moments where I fell back into old patterns of control, but I could no longer abandon the direction of my Self. I leaned on practices like breathwork and tea ceremony. I continued to move back into trust, to make decisions from who I now was instead of who I used to be.

Then, on a powerful retreat in Costa Rica, something in me roared to life. I knew that the fires of the past 3 years, the fires of annihilation were the flames of my rebirth. I was READY.

I was safe. I was supported. I trusted in life. And I was now ready to express that to the world. To birth my new business - one that held codes of spaciousness, trust, depth, light, truth, and power. To flow with life, business, sex, grief, play, joy, discomfort, service and any other initiations life presented me with. To meet my edges. To live as the liberated woman I always knew I could be.

I hold powerful space as a coach, tea ceremonialist, partner, daughter, friend, and now mother as I am expecting my first child in Spring of 2024. To be a powerful mirror and witness to those on the path. To be a beacon of light to those in the dark. To be a living reminder that you can live this way too.

SAFE TO BE FREE

Living from your authentic Self, free from patterns of trauma, conditioning, control and fear is your birthright. Embodied expression and sacred creation are your birthright. Trusting in life and your connection with Spirit is your birthright.

But you must first be willing to journey to the depths of your soul, through the fires of discomfort, grief, rage, and despair, to the heights of enrapture and pleasure and bliss, through the infinite playground of creation, death, and rebirth.

You must be willing to strip back all that is not you to allow all that IS you to come to the surface and shine. So you can live fully expressed. So you can create from abundance, love and overflow. So you can flow and dance with life as it shows you the path, small step by small step. So you can feel safe in yourself when you experience loss, the opinions and projections of others, immense discomfort, and intense initiations. So you can meet those with the knowing that you’ve got you. Always.

You are safe to be your wild, raw, pure, authentic, weird, triggering, truest self. You are safe to share your deepest expressions and sacred creations. You are embodied in everything you do, say and share. You move through the world with divine trust.

You are free. To become who you were always meant to be.