this is a story of life and death

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.

Though I was now following the path of my true Self, I was still stuck in a lot of fear, scarcity, and control (wherever you go, there you are).

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) in the burgeoning psychedelic startup industry. 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. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. 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. 

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 continued to move back into trust, to make decisions from who I now was instead of who I used to be.

I began hearing whispers to relaunch my business a second time, this time from a grounded place of embodied integrity and expression. I had done the deep inner work, and I was ready to work with clients again. I relaunched my business in early 2023 and it began to boom — for the first time ever, clients and opportunities were finding me easily and effortlessly.

Just a few months later, after 9 months of trying to conceive, I fell pregnant with my son, Jax. My business continued to grow, and I was at the height of my external success thus far.

Then, at seven months pregnant, my mom’s cancer returned and this time, it was terminal. She was given six months or less to live.

Though I was finally feeling the flow in my business, I heard a voice that told me to shut it all down to take care of her and spend time with her in her final months. I trusted, and shut my business down entirely.

In the midst of raw grief I was called to write. I started my Substack one morning, awoken at 4am by the fervent need to write and share about the depth of the experience my mom and I were moving through. Writing was more than a creative outlet — it was a balm for my grief and for the intensity of everything I was moving through. Writing was a companion and friend. Writing was my lifeline.

Those six months, the months waiting for my son to be born and my mother to die, were the ultimate test in sitting with the most uncomfortable of liminal spaces. I had no idea who I was going to be as a mother. I had no idea who I was going to be without my mother. Again and again, I surrendered.

As my Mother straddled the edges of Life and Death, I birthed my son naturally with no medication or interventions. Less than three months after that, as a mother of a newborn baby, I walked my mother home to her Death.

I went deep into the void once more.

In Fall of 2024, almost six months after my mother’s death, I began to hear the whispers of creation again.

I was being guided back to my business once more. No longer who I used to be, I allowed myself to re-enter this space slowly and intentionally. This was now the third time I had been called back to my business over the past 6 years, each time returning with more life experience and more embodiment.

I was continuing to share and express on Substack, and my audience there was growing. As I was feeling into who I wanted to hold space for in this new version of my business, it suddenly became clear — spiritual women, writers, and guides moving through grief.

Grief has been the ultimate portal, teacher, and training ground.

And writing has been my way through.

Now, I write and I help spiritual women writers move through creative blocks and fears, feel comfortable and confident sharing their work, and learn to thrive through grief.

I can’t wait to connect with you on your journey through grief, love, birth, creation, and everything in between.