Unbecoming

Prologue

The Dream

I am the witch who lives where the desert meets the ocean, on the outskirts of both community and nature. I listen to the unspoken whispers of animals, people, the universe and my own inner knowing. 

I sleep in a treehouse fort built near the top of a teepee. The sun gently wakes me every morning with its spectacular show in the sky and washes over me with its warm glow. I take a moment to stretch and look towards the ocean in awe, grateful for this life, for this place and every moment and experience that brought me here. I climb down the ladder to a large open living space that allows me to create and dance and relax and rest. There are sun catchers strung up in a few places and those, along with the bright fucsia flowers that climb up to create living walls, are an amazing contrast to the muted desert colours. I walk over to my outdoor kitchen, start the fire and make my morning coffee, which I take to my magical porch – a spot where a few large native plants covered with desert moss, create a shady nook and allow beams of sun to dance over the white, wrought iron table and chairs that sit beneath. 

The entire plot has been co-created with nature in a way I haven’t seen before. I have kept all the native plants in place and I designed spaces that maximize the beauty of this place, that allow a human dwelling and nature to intertwine, that allow the relationship between the two to heal effortlessly.

I have no career, but I have so much abundance in my life, including all the money I need to take on projects I am passionate about – they revolve around helping humans repair their fractured relationship to nature and themselves. Money is energy and everything is interconnected, the energy we put out is the energy we receive. Abundance is our birthright, not something we need to earn and it allows us to pour more of our love into the world. 

My days are filled with joy and variety and they leave me feeling accomplished and at peace. I collect and chop my firewood, carry my water and keep life as simple as possible, yet rich in experiences and full of love. I cultivate some of the nutritious native plants that thrive here, catch some fish from the ocean shore, grow some salad greens and incorporate those foods into my diet often. 

I go for epic adventures with the neighbourhood dogs. I live in harmony with the wild creatures all around me and befriend the feral horses. 

I bake sourdough breads over fire, make delicious pesto and hummus and share them with the neighbours. I love making things that are different than what anyone else around here does.

I am a steward of this sacred land that I have the privilege to live on. I clean up a large portion of beach shore, dunes and salt marshes. I learn about the fragile ecosystem here and support it in any way I can, including through helping the local ranchers lessen the impact their livestock have on it while increasing their profits and improving their animals’ quality of life through bringing awareness and facilitating connections. 

I help out at the community regenerative ranchito where I put into place things that make life easier for the humans, animals and plants – watering systems, animal feeders, misters in the animal enclosures, etc and help with the hands on work. I receive delicious farm fresh eggs and produce from them. 

Friends from all over the world visit when they can, and we stay in touch through phone chats. 

I connect with my small, but amazing community online – people who are also expanding, and exploring and experiencing the messiness of being human. 

I meet lovely people who are travelling through the campground here and stay in touch with many once they leave. 

I write and dance and play music and make things that are impactful and share them with the world when I feel called to do so. They have a journey of their own, spreading far and wide and reaching more people than I ever expected and connecting me with others who are curious about making big shifts in their lives. 

I organize pot luck dinners for all the closest neighbours, we share things we love to eat, a fusion of delicious flavours to enjoy, and everyone does their own dishes at the end. 

I have a romantic relationship with a man who is as enamoured with life as I am. We have no roles to play, just a deeply authentic connection based on trust. We are there for each other always, but mostly we want to enjoy our time together. This means enjoying every little moment, but we love to have bonfires at the beach at sunset, go skinny dipping in the moonlight, dance barefoot and make love to each other the way we make love to life. 

I have created a life that doesn’t require me to do something every minute of the day, but it does invite me to be constantly present and curious and to leave space for miracles. 

I enjoy rest sometimes, soak it all in, delight in the wonder of the world around me, allow being held here to continue to heal me, open me, enchant me, as I become more and more intimately connected to this place, and every plant, every bird, every bug that I may encounter,  and to see them all as part of me. 

Chapter 1

“When every part of ourselves is in alignment with our magick, we become our magick and it is almost impossible for that magick not to become a reality.”

– Mat Auryn 

In these last couple of months, as 2025 is just beginning, I have found a sense of peace that is new to me. I don’t have the words to do it justice, perhaps because it cannot be rationalized. I feel like I have connected with powerful energy, most specifically Tree of Life energy, in some unexpected ways. 

Three years ago, I did a powerful series of kundalini yoga classes. I attended the first of the series of classes while reconnecting with a dear friend I hadn’t seen in a long time on Bowen Island. In some mystical way, it was exactly what I needed to experience. I was feeling a little lost at the time. I left Vancouver seven months prior and while I hadn’t yet found a place to call home, the city I lived in for the majority of my life, no longer fit who I was, it wasn’t letting me stretch my wings the way it used to. It no longer felt like home and I very much struggled with feeling like I belonged anywhere. The root chakra (or the first chakra) is all about belonging, being grounded, growing roots. We don’t have to be attached to a place to belong though. We can be grounded in who we are and feel at home in our bodies, on Earth, as part of the cosmos. I was so moved, that even though I left the island a few days later, I completed the rest of the series online. This series helped us connect to the different centres in the body, and to release blocks in the chakras. I couldn’t attend the classes in real time, but I watched the posted replays later. In a way I was glad, as each class released something I didn’t even know was there and at some point, tears would flow and I would even sob sometimes. I appreciated having my privacy to be fully immersed in the experience without feeling self conscious. I especially seemed to struggle with the root chakra and the crown chakra and learned the importance of those two. It is only when we become very grounded, rooted, stable in the very foundation of who we are and feel that we belong here that we are truly able to tap into the power of the crown chakra – higher power, collective consciousness, magic. Also, this connection between the two opens up some amazing possibilities, as I also learned in my time studying partner dance (specifically Brazilian Zouk). It is only when we are connected to the ground, that we are truly able to pivot. Having some certainty, learning to source our own safety, it allows us to embrace uncertainty more easily. That is when we become open to all the possibilities available to us instead of only living in the rational and logical world of probabilities. While I haven’t actively worked with the chakras since then, that powerful experience has definitely often been in the background.

Something about imagining myself as the Tree of Life a few months ago during a meditation guided by a podcast I enjoy, opened up the channel of the chakras which has felt blocked again. With my roots settling deep into the ground right here on this sacred land I love so much and taking the time to become very firmly connected with the depths of not only this place, but also my being and how I want to show up here, has allowed me to stretch my branches in so many directions and tap into parts of myself that have remained hidden since I first arrived here two years ago. It has opened me up to reach to the sky above and in a way I do not feel like I comprehend with the mind, to not only stand on, but become the bridge between Heaven and Earth and to feel compelled to share the knowledge, or more accurately the visceral knowing this awareness opens in me. To begin to understand the power of this connection between the two, even if all I have experienced so far is the tip of the iceberg. To realize we all have so much more power than we have tapped into and that it is required for our evolution. We think of Heaven as some far off place where our souls go after we do our time here, but what if this is the only place they can return? What if it’s actually been here all along, hidden in plain sight, we just haven’t been able to recognize it? It is time to acknowledge that the old ways are not working for us any longer, not that they ever really did. It’s become so convoluted for us though, as humans, with the trauma filled stories we are constantly unconsciously telling ourselves, we often unknowingly recreate our own version of hell over and over and over again, turning every piece of Earthly paradise into a living nightmare over time, and all in the name of progress.

It seems those who truly make shifts, are those who no longer have an option, which more and more people are facing every day. We have to get so incredibly tired of carrying that heavy baggage that keeps us blocked from engaging with the world in a different way, and allowing it to weigh us down and keep us stuck in the past while we simultaneously worry about the future, that we finally have no option but to just let it go. Every time I think I will do better, yet each time, I only let go when the load becomes unbearable, that is when I finally become aware of it and how it is draining my life force. It is a reminder to myself to create the space to let go more frequently.

Tapping into this energy, opening up this channel, it has shown me how the things I have tried to manifest in my life, they have often resided only in the mind. They have been created by the ego. 

Whether it was to be successful working full time in a career I loved and to be considered an expert in my field, to own a horse, to be in a committed romantic relationship that looked great on paper and live in a great neighbourhood, right by the water, to go on a few vacations to beautiful tropical destinations every year, have many friends and to look physically attractive by society standards. I managed to do it, but I had no idea how much work it would be to live like that, how exhausting it would be, how unsustainable keeping this image would prove to be, because that is all it was, an image. That is what we are taught to create in our very material world, an image of perfection and success that often leaves us feeling empty, unfulfilled, anxious and depressed. It is why we have to do so much and buy so much in an effort to fill the void. It is an image so disconnected from our authenticity that it stifles us, dims our light until it is almost completely snuffed out. Living that life, it made me very, very unwell, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I felt like I was ungrateful for being so miserable living a life society told me I was so incredibly lucky to have. Except I didn’t actually do any living, I was working every minute of every day on forcing myself to fit into this tiny cage I had constructed for myself, the one where maintaining my image was a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 day a year, never ending, exhausting job. 

Over the last seven years, my dreams and goals evolved over and over again. After my health declined so much I could no longer ignore it and push through, after I left the relationship that was draining me, made the difficult decision to retire my horse who really had no interest in the athletic pursuit I tried to train her for, and then got sued over a title I rightfully earned all while working non stop, yet feeling broke, I had a complete identity crisis. I admitted I was lost and needed rest. I slashed my expenses and reduced how much I worked several times until I was working 20 hours a week maximum (including commute and scheduling) while having more disposable income than ever. My body healed, my mind stilled and my emotions were no longer overwhelming me. I tried many, many new things and they all allowed me to get to know new parts of myself, to focus on expansion, not growth in a linear sense, as expansion is a flow state, it cannot be controlled, it connects us to child like wonder and creativity. I continued to let go of more and more too – I realized how many of the possessions I owned, actually owned me. In the process, as many of these new experiences, people, places made me feel more and more alive, I still clung onto different dreams generated in the mind. I would experience these glimmers of a world that is possible, I would get just a taste of pure magic, I would co-create with the universe and people in my path for a moment and it made me so hungry for more, but I was too afraid to really let myself dream like that, to get that creative, to be that out there, because it would mean letting go of even more people and opening myself up to the pain of disappointment I wasn’t sure I could bear after losing so much. So instead, I allowed my list of probabilities to grow based on what I could see others do, what my mind could get comfortable with, but I still didn’t really delve too, too deep into me. I was still playing small. 

Even long after I got out of the rat race, after I left mainstream society, I stepped onto a path less travelled, but it was a path others had walked, which made this drastic change to moving off-grid less scary and easier, at least to my mind. It gave me a sense of control to feel like I could watch some YouTube videos, read some books and see how this life would look. 

I decided I wanted to be a co-creator of a community working towards sustainability. I wanted to work on building this amazing space and to share what we create with others, giving them the opportunity to experience deeper connection. I found this breathtaking place with wonderful people, but it was so unfamiliar and uncertain and my mind continued to dream in predictable ways in an attempt to gain a sense of security. Maybe this was someone I was meant to be in a relationship with and to become part of their family? Of course, as women we are conditioned to see ourselves as incomplete without that, something that seems to be magnified in off-grid spaces, where often women feel less at ease initially, less proficient at the skills needed to build shelters and structures that support life and are very important. 

Fast forward two years after stumbling across this amazing, sacred, largely untouched land, a place so raw and beautiful that I had no idea still existed on the face of the Earth and the amazing family who recently undertook this project. This life wasn’t what I expected though, it left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth as the reality of it all hit me. It was surprisingly easy to fall victim to the prison of the mind and to fall into old conditioning of non-stop work for everyone here. It was more work than life in the city had been, without any of the comforts and conveniences. It left us too exhausted to be able to build healthy relationships with each other, to meet our own needs and the reality of life in such a community, the lack of boundaries and the weight of others’ expectations drained whatever energy was left. We were not consciously creating reality here, we were creating work, while reacting to the chaos the unhealed parts of us were causing. We had different priorities too, as all humans do and making decisions that left everyone equally happy was not really possible. I had to feel the grief of realizing I was still not on my own path, and that I was not dreaming nearly big enough. I was recreating what felt familiar, in a much more challenging setting and even as I tried to bring awareness to what we were doing, I was outnumbered, I couldn’t convince others that there was a different way and eventually I realized that maybe it wasn’t the others that were the problem. Perhaps my purpose here was not to heal others, to try to drag and push them towards their path, but to simply remain on mine and keep my heart open? Maybe the reason so many off-grid communities (and our society at large, if we’re being honest), become cult like with the rules and the structure and level of control is because we are so uncomfortable in this space of the uncertain and unfamiliar? Is our purpose really to attempt to surround ourselves with others who are exactly on the same spot on the same path, or is it to courageously blaze our own path wherever we may be pulled to live? Maybe the goal is not to heal others, but to heal ourselves enough that we can effortlessly love others exactly where they are, see the beauty in every human, appreciate what we can learn from others and to not be swayed from our truth in the process? Maybe it’s in the loving others exactly where they are, while being kind and honest and remaining true to ourselves that we help them heal? Maybe in the moments we feel the urge to control those around us to keep ourselves more comfortable, we are being invited to pour more love into ourselves, so much in fact, that it will spill out over all we touch?

This dream I was trying to cling to, it was not truly aligned with my soul, my heart, my intuition, my gut, the wild woman within or my inner child. In a way, it was another form of the socially acceptable image based on the unhealthy values society teaches us. It plugs into the way our society fetishizes doing very hard, hard work for some reward very far in the future, on being a work horse, essentially. It is also based on a model of life where we live in continual servitude to others, while they do the same, there is constant sacrifice and compromise and no one is truly happy.

In some ways I struggled to feel the grief and pain and frustration of these dreams not coming true more than in the past. Perhaps it was because I had let go of so much to get here, I risked so much and I didn’t want to leave a place I loved with my whole heart, but my mind couldn’t see how I would be able to stay and be happy. I guess I hadn’t quite let go of enough yet. In moments of frustration in the chaos, I resisted and clung and bargained and blamed and cried. It is amazing the lengths we sometimes go to in order to avoid the very pain that is trying to transform us into who we are meant to be. 

Finally, when I could no longer hold it in, push it down, distract from it, and when I believed that maybe I had ruined my chances of staying here when my feelings spilled out very ungraciously, I surrendered. I took a much needed day off. I didn’t even let the dogs join me. I brought some sourdough focaccia I baked and hummus I made, a bottle of water, my journal and I walked, and I walked, and I walked some more until I got to my favourite spot on the beach (and on the planet, if I’m honest). 

I laid in the warm sand, letting the sun caress my skin, and the gentle breeze tousle my hair while the sound of the ocean calmed my rattled nervous system. I felt at home, I felt complete, I felt loved and embraced and held. In that moment I felt connected to not only the ground below me, but to the vast power of the universe, and people I love thousands of miles away and gratitude washed over me. I felt safe enough to let my walls down. I met the pain, I let it wash over me too like a wave in the sea and I allowed it to unfurl me, to open me up completely and to connect to the parts of me I had disregarded for so long, to the parts of me that didn’t want my dreams to come true because they knew I would not be happy, the parts that felt relief because they knew I wasn’t being honest with myself. I suddenly became aware of the meaning of everything happening for us, not to us. The doors that didn’t fully swing open for me, the ones I had been trying to get through for two years, them remaining closed was truly a gift. I knew what was on the other side, it was the very life I left behind, just in a different setting, with different people playing out the same familiar characters, reliving the nightmare that society has packaged up beautifully and sold to us as our ultimate dream, the one where we have to remain small and powerless to fit in. 

Over the course of the next several weeks, that Tree of Life energy flowing through me, I began to allow myself to dream my own dreams. What I realized is that they don’t make sense in the mind, because that is not where they are generated. The mind cannot comprehend them, because it has no comparison, no reference point on how to get there, no plan. However, just like we enter a destination into a GPS and trust it to find the best route, to tap into the flow of co-creation energy with the universe/spirit/creator/God/a higher power, we need to put our dreams out there and they need to align with every part of us, and every part of us has to be ready to receive them.  It is only then that the next step of the path reveals itself. And then we have to do the next part, take action along that path, become the person our dream asks us to be.

In many ways, these dreams are making me face the biggest fear humans ever face – being cast out of society, and in past times, being killed. Women who have  wanted more, who didn’t live the image society expected of them, who were connected into more power than those around them, they were burned at stakes and drowned and hung. In more recent times, women who wanted more than the world offered them were seen as insane and institutionalized by their fathers or husbands – the very men who were supposed to keep them safe. By all ‘normal’ standards, the life I am walking towards sounds crazy, impossible. Somehow, it would make more sense to most people if I said I wanted to become a billionaire so I could fly into outer space – it would seem unlikely sure, but some others have done it, so it would seem much more probable than what I yearn for. 

If it was hard to be honest with myself about what I want, it is even harder to put in out there for others to see. As a good friend reminds me often though, the truth sets us free. I truly believe in the power of words, in casting spells into the ether, in alchemizing our deepest wounds into our greatest strengths through being vulnerable, in the power of unwavering love, in trusting our inner compass and walking towards what we seek and trusting the universe to meet us, while we let it conspire to weave pieces into place in ways we wouldn’t have ever been able to plan or design or imagine. 

No longer burdened by any constraints of the mind or the social conditioning that lives there, stripped of any desire to fit in, no longer concerned with seeming rational, a dream began taking shape, one that feels more real than any so called reality I have experienced. One that stems from my soul and is aligned with every part of me and puts me on a direct path to my highest purpose. I have known for some time that my mission in this lifetime is to learn to connect authentically and deeply to others, the environment and myself and learn to live in a way that benefits all – no longer believing that we need to win or get ahead. Life is not a war, even though most of us spend the majority of our lives at war with others and ourselves. Life can be enjoyed, not merely endured. 

As this dream has taken shape and has begun to turn to reality with every passing day, it has become detailed, but it has also left space for me to continue expanding, be challenged and keep growing roots and taking up space like the Tree of Life. 

It has felt really uncomfortable wanting these things. I have felt naive and juvenile and like maybe this isn’t supposed to be what I want and that perhaps it’s just too much, too unrealistic, but the more I have admitted it to myself, the more I have begun taking steps to walk towards it, the more I let myself take up space in my life and step into the version of me that wasn’t tainted with the harsh realities of a world created to oppress humans, the more I have said ‘no, thank you’ to anything that is not it, the more things have started to fall into place in the most unexpected of ways. Suddenly, even though I don’t know quite how, this world feels within reach, it feels like the destiny I was always supposed to seek that has been seeking me for a lifetime, perhaps many lifetimes. It feels so within reach, that I believe it will be entirely true by the end of the year.  A part of me trusts it already exists, I just have to keep shedding the limiting beliefs, blocks and patterns that have been keeping me stuck between worlds – no longer able to participate and play by the rules of the world that broke me, but not quite feeling ready to create a new world. It turns out, I don’t need permission to do it, I just need to have courage and trust. 

Chapter 2

“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”

– Paulo Coelho

I never used to give much thought to my soul. I believed I was just a mind and body and prided myself on being very logical and rational. I have experienced firsthand the destruction it caused to my wellbeing and everything around me when I ignored my soul. I have also experienced it again several more times, when getting swept up in ‘reality’ with others. The most recent was moving off-grid and feeling like my options were to move to a community that already existed and fit into its rigid rules (because we seem to leave society when we dislike the rules, only to create a sense of familiarity with new ones), or to try to co-create one that was not so restrictive. Yet, pretty soon we fell back into the familiar trap of working non stop and trying to prove our worth and trying to control each other. We got trapped in our heads and lost sight of our souls, even while living in this magical paradise. 

Six months in and my skin was covered in an angry rash so itchy that I wanted to scratch my skin off, I was experiencing digestive issues and was so exhausted I went to bed before dinner a few times. There were well meaning opinions on what I should do to remedy the situation, but I knew that I needed to reduce stress – and that stress isn’t just caused by external factors, it can also be caused by unprocessed feelings that are demanding to be felt. When we’ve disregarded the soul for so many years, it no longer whispers, it screams.  

I realize now the soul needs to lead for there to be true alignment. Really, the soul, body and mind work beautifully together, but we have silenced our souls and bodies for so long, that to learn to tap back into our divinity, we need to really listen to them first.

Initially, the soul can be hard to hear. It speaks to us through the language of our body and one of the powerful gateways to tap into our soul, is through our breath. It helps us to connect to our heart, which is tied into our emotions and our gut, which is tied into our intuition. These are two powerful communication centres for our soul. Our emotions and our intuition are both incredibly valuable tools when learning to access the wisdom that can guide us to a life we enjoy that we are at peace with, something that comes from being in alignment with a greater purpose.

Our emotions are something we have spent a lifetime pushing down, distracting from, avoiding. We have been taught to chase happiness, when our most potent power comes from learning to meet our darkness and transmute it. When we do begin to feel some feelings, we often talk about them or think about them, which prevents us from actually feeling them. When we do this, we often react to the anger that comes up first, but what sits beneath our anger is what holds power over us. Our shame, insecurity, sadness, loneliness, grief and fear are hiding beneath the surface and require space to be processed. Rarely though, do we simply allow our pain to be and sit with it. Invite it to be felt fully, to wash over us, move through us, and to come out the other side different – both, more loving, yet more fierce. Able to see the situation from a distance and see it simply for what it is, neither good or bad, just information. It is mostly that our soul wants to be heard and acknowledged. Very often the problem is not so much what happened in that moment, but that we are selling ourselves short somewhere in life, staying where we are not completely fulfilled, where we are not valued for being fully ourselves. 

Our souls, which are much like an inner flame, they are fuelled by passion and love, not just romantic love, but love for the land we stand on, the air we breathe, the power of the universe and how interconnected everything is, love for humanity, animals and ourselves, love for different hobbies and interests and forms of self expression, love for adventure, exploration, experimentation, learning and movement just for the joy of it, and the freedom to be completely and authentically all of ourselves. We are living in a world created and driven by fear, no wonder our souls are hurting. We are multidimensional beings who have deep within us so many longings that often go unanswered, unnoticed because they simply don’t seem rational in a world driven by fear (that is what all our so called ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ decisions are usually based on). Many of these things that we require to thrive, seem unnecessary to our survival and we get so caught up in the constant busyness of life, that we ignore them. Ancient humans knew the importance of playing music and singing and dancing and creating art and telling stories – all things that arguably are not very important for our survival, yet when we go without them long enough, we begin to wither. 

When we ignore the soul and don’t listen to our heart and gut long enough, physical symptoms arise. We are living at a time when so many people have digestive issues, and it’s easy to look at our diets first and to fall into traps of trying to manage them relentlessly (been there, done that), but what if the issue is that our intuition is desperately trying to get our attention? The vast majority of physical ailments now have a direct link to stress, the word disease stems from lack of ease, and while that is often a lack of ease in our external environment, it is driven internally – if our reactions to the world around us are based in fear, not love, we bring ourselves so much suffering and our fear creates more stress and chaos and pain, until we listen. 

To begin to listen to our souls, we need to make space for them, like we do for a good friend we haven’t seen in a while. Whether it’s journaling, meditation, just being present while drinking a morning tea or coffee, there are a variety of ways to make space for our soul to be heard. I don’t know what works best for others, but for me walking and spending time in nature (especially somewhere with a body of water) were the initial doorways. They allow me to breathe more deeply without trying to force it, they help regulate my nervous system enough to access the deeper feelings, they help move the feelings and observe them without becoming them and then access a meditative state almost effortlessly in ways I haven’t been able to accomplish differently.

Doing this allows us to see our lives with a little more distance and clarity, to stop seeing things as good or bad, but just as truth. Sometimes the feelings just ask us to acknowledge them, sometimes they have far more information. They can be tools to course correct, to set boundaries, to focus our attention on the things that truly matter and our path, or to get out of our own way. They can show us how we have disregarded our passions, because our passions are not random, they become the ways we pour love into the world, and often in pursuit of one passion, we push others aside. We also often put so much pressure on ourselves to do well at the things we love, that it sucks all the joy out of them. Sometimes we do so much and try so hard that we do not allow the space and time for our true gifts and talents to simply emerge, to be nurtured, to grow. 

Taking the time to feel the feelings and let go of them also helps us to connect to our intuition. It clears out the noise in our head and allows us to hear it. It doesn’t mean we receive the entire roadmap with every turn we need to take on it, but our intuition will guide us to the next step. We don’t need to have things all figured out first, it is only once we take action, that more of our path will become clear. That is the secret ingredient, our path never becomes revealed if we do not take action. 

For example, I have known for a while that I wanted to create my own space here, a little plot that would allow me to truly feel one with nature not only when I go to the beach, but right at home. The piece of land seemed to call out to me last year. I was out on a walk and set the intention of finding a spot and I was guided there. At a certain point, I turned off the road, came into a clearing with a view of the ocean in the distance and knew I was standing in my future outdoor kitchen. I walked down several steps from there only to find myself in another clearing – where I knew my little dwelling would be. I put it all on the back burner when there were a lot of things happening at the ranchito, but this fall when I returned from Vancouver, my heart and gut told me I needed to focus on me now. That I would only be able to truly have an impact here once I was more grounded, settled into my own space that truly felt like what I know I need in a home. I got brave enough to start dreaming my dream, now I needed to take a step. I had already been taking small steps towards living my dream – taking a reusable bag on my daily beach walks to fill with trash, teaching the dogs not to chase the wildlife or livestock, setting better boundaries around work, working on my Spanish every day, saying no to things that didn’t light me up. When I began tuning in more, I realized I would need to ask if it would be possible for me to buy the land down the road, without falling into fear. It would be very easy to talk myself out of it. Where would I get the money considering I haven’t had a job in three years? Would they even be interested in selling to me? When I finally asked, I received the most amazing surprise; I was told that it was mine. I sat speechless when I heard that as one of the pioneers here, it was being gifted to me. I had felt welcomed by this land since I arrived here, but to know that I was also welcomed by the people, and not just as a visitor, it meant a lot. It felt like I was truly exactly where I needed to be. 

I was tempted to start working on building right away, but my intuition tugged at me again. It told me that it was time to write. I had taken a pause from sharing my experiences and feelings and musings on social media in as much detail. I felt like I was adding to all the noise online, to all the people trying to shout over each other, and it was very draining. I also realized that I had no desire to create content or be a social media presence – I wanted to create a magical life instead, one I was truly present in every minute of the day. I was also very torn about the publishing process, which kept me from writing. I spend money very intentionally, ensuring that it goes as directly to people as possible. I go out of my way not to support huge corporations, and as a result, I also didn’t like the idea of benefiting financially through a large corporation or that corporation benefiting from me. I share money – but it feels good to do on my terms, when it is invested in people, not have it essentially be taken. I knew I needed to begin writing in order to see the next step though. 

Finally, I had struggled with finding the peace to really write, the space I want to create, it would offer that. I knew it couldn’t just be an escape though. My intuition told me that it was time to become the peace I was seeking and that as I would, my external circumstances would shift to meet me. It also told me that perhaps a little chaos in writing isn’t the worst thing. It is something we are experiencing on a global scale, it only makes sense that a book that talks about going through this process that is written at this exact point in time would be infused with chaos.

I started writing without a plan, no book outline, no list of chapters. I just allowed things to flow. This time it was my heart that let me know I was not courageous enough, that I wasn’t delving deep enough, that I was playing it too safe, that I wasn’t trusting that I had valuable insight to share beyond just a story of the past two years. The next incarnation went a little deeper, but the heart still wasn’t satisfied, it had swung a little the other way and lost its personal touch. I knew on some level that I didn’t just want to add to the sea of information on the internet, I wanted to model and invite transformation, but this was much more scary. On my third attempt, I was terrified, it felt like I stripped masks off in this process and knew that I would be a different person by the time I finished – as though this was an experience for expansion not just for others, but for me. I realized I was finally writing what was being birthed through me without trying to predict how it would be received, or control how people would see me. I had let go of the fear, and stepped into more love. 

Once we learn to listen to our soul, we can take aligned action and this is where we also learn to harness the power of our mind, instead of being a prisoner of it. In a world that keeps us distracted, focus is one of our most valuable tools. Where focus goes, energy flows – if we are focused on creating the life of our dreams and becoming the person who steps into them, this energy, it moves mountains in ways we could never imagine. I have experienced this many times now and it doesn’t cease to amaze me. The moment we begin, we become aware that something beyond just ourselves is guiding us, working with us, propelling us forward, blowing a gentle, yet steady wind in our sails. When we operate in fear, it feels as though it’s us against the world, when we operate in love, the world loves us back and wants us to succeed. 

Maybe the universe really is a more benevolent place than we have believed? Perhaps it gives us the exact opportunities we require to grow into the people who can step into our dreams.

I look back on the times in my life that were the lowest of lows. People have told me they wish I hadn’t gone through that, but I wouldn’t be where I am without it. Those moments that knocked me down the mountain, they sent me back down the most challenging path that had the least amount of pay off, the path I picked over and over again. They were showing me that there was a better choice, one that allowed me to be of more value to others and to also enjoy the journey so much more.

Chapter 3

“In chaos, there is fertility.”

– Anaïs Nin

It is impossible to talk about where we want to go without first addressing where we are. We need to see the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to bridge it. Change cannot occur without surrender and acceptance. This is often the most challenging part for humans who have been taught not to feel all our feelings. We have been taught to seek out a variety of complex and expensive forms of entertainment to disassociate from reality instead of facing it head on and creating beautiful lives we want to be actively present in. 

It doesn’t help that we very much live in a time of extreme uncertainty and chaos. It is challenging not to grasp onto an illusion of safety in this time and we source safety in many ways, including holding onto a sense of control that familiarity provides for us, even when that familiarity is very painful. It often feels easier to tell ourselves that this is just the way things are, that the world and people cannot change and that we are powerless victims of an unjust world full of unjust systems and maybe, at best, to ask for things to change, to try to demand it of others, while still giving our power away. It feels too hard to make changes when just getting through each day has become so much effort and such a struggle. What can we do when the world is shrouded in so much darkness? 

It can also leave us feeling guilty to live a life we are thriving in when everywhere we look we see pain and struggle. We stay where we are to fit in and remain part of community, even if that community is not healthy for us. Then, once we begin to heal, we desperately want to bring everyone with us, but our journey, our path is ours alone and it is often lonely for a while. 

For anyone paying attention, things in the world do not look good. Between genocides, the climate crisis, extreme inequality, food insecurity, growing violence, and rise in diseases, mental health struggles and addiction rates, along with the rapid rise of cost of living and the homelessness crisis, our future here does not look promised and our reality is bleak. There is so much pain and suffering in the world right now, it is hard not to feel like if we allow ourselves to feel too much our hearts may shatter. 

Sometimes, we also feel like we shouldn’t experience joy when so many people are hurting, but joy and sadness can coexist in every moment too, as can love and grief. What if the universe is making it harder and harder to stay numb and distracted not to merely break us down, but to break us wide open so we may allow the light in? Maybe we need to be brought down to our knees to let go of a way of life that is harming us all? Maybe the goal is to show us that there is another way, a more beautiful and ease filled way, where we can stop wasting all our time and energy just to swim upstream, and instead take advantage of the current to propel us farther than we believe is possible?

The truth is, both realities can coexist, and they do. We have the power to choose the one we participate in. We cannot choose a new path, until we accept that the one we are on is not serving us first and surrender. To surrender is not to give up, it is more about pausing, looking around and deciding that we no longer want to be at war with ourselves. It also requires us to accept the things that happened in our past and make peace with them, because chances are good, we have spent our lives recreating unconscious stories that stem from before we can remember. If we don’t feel good enough or worthy or loved on the inside, we will unconsciously create a reality that reflects those beliefs, we will find romantic partners, friends, careers, hobbies and environments that mirror that back to us. It is only after we have done this, that we can step onto a new path, and we usually have to revisit it many times to course correct, because healing is often more of a spiral than a straight line, we revisit the same themes and patterns more than once to become truly free. 

This part can be lonely, seeing the world in a different light can change our relationships to others. Sometimes we see that those relationships no longer serve who we this new path asks us to be. There may be people who even see the world in a similar way, but are not yet ready to break free from their own suffering. Even though we cannot bring anyone with us on our path, we can help light the way for others. It is only on the darkest of nights that we truly see the light of every star in the sky. If there was ever a time to shine brightly, unabashedly, it is now.

We are constantly creating our reality – both collectively and individually. We just aren’t conscious of it most of the time. Even if we want a better future, as long as we continue to believe that we live in a world of lack where there simply is not enough abundance for all humans to live a beautiful life, where among many other things, there is not enough food, money, joy, love and respect to go around, where we have to work very hard to earn these things and prove our worth, as long as our actions reflect that, we will continue to unconsciously create this world. Since we have been living in our heads, we overthink and worry and very often, we bring into our lives the very things we are trying to avoid because we focus on them so much. When you learn to ride a motorcycle, one of the first lessons is to keep your eyes on the road. If you focus your attention on a tree or car along the side of the road, chances are very good you’ll crash right into it. Where focus goes, energy flows. If we allow ourselves to get sucked into the chaos of the world, instead of being mere observers, we will become part of the chaos and only fuel it more. 

We have lived in a world where surviving the way we have been taught is not easy. We’ve been conditioned to fit into tiny boxes, to compete with one another, to work very hard to try to ‘get ahead’ and in the process, we haven’t been paying attention to where it even is we are going or to how our actions affect others and the world around us. We have been hurting ourselves and unconsciously spreading that pain to others and the environment in many ways. We have made ourselves feel better by placing the blame on others, those who are very rich and powerful, instead of being taught to take radical responsibility for our own beliefs, choices  and actions, instead of understanding that everything is connected and that by healing ourselves, healing our relationship to the Earth, healing our relationships to each other, we can contribute to the rippling out of a different reality – one that is based in love, not fear. 

The chaos we are experiencing right now, while it is alarming, sadly it is also needed for us to change course. Chaos can be a force of destruction, it causes confusion, conflict, pain and suffering. On the other hand, it also shakes things up, stirs up the sediment, and brings the truth to the surface, it causes things to look darker, but it is more that we can no longer look away, because everywhere we look we are confronted with the fact that things are not ok, that humans are not ok. While we tell ourselves that we are the most intelligent species and admire the progress we have made, we may also be the most stubborn, the most set in our ways, the most resistant to evolve, but evolve we must, or we will become extinct. Our idea of progress is one that has left deep scars in the Earth and in humanity, it is one that is based in destruction, extraction, exploitation. If we do not step into our full potential as human beings, we will not only continue to destroy the environment that supports human life, we will continue to contribute to human suffering, we will also make ourselves obsolete. As long as we pretend we are mere shells of ourselves, robots really, AI will do everything we do better. However, there are parts of us technology cannot replicate, parts that have been shamed and repressed and vilified, but they are the parts that have the power to actually set us free. These parts are where the beauty of humans lies. 

Change is happening whether we feel ready or not, and chances are, we will never feel completely ready. The current world is dying around us, yet rigidly clinging to control, while a new world is being birthed from the chaos, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes. Death is necessary for rebirth to occur. We are being invited to let parts of us die too, shed them like a snake sheds its skin before we can step into a new reality and take our rightful place in it. It’s easier to blame the world for our circumstances, when it has been our resistance to change that keeps us stuck on a loop replaying the same life over and over again until we stop reacting to life and instead begin co-creating with it, becoming more curious and playful in our approach to it. We need to let go of old patterns, beliefs and traumas to propel us into new dimensions. We are being invited to co-create the world of our dreams, to allow the Heaven that has always existed to unfold right here on Earth, to be the heros of our own lives and the torchbearers for others, even as we are still stumbling through the darkness.

The truth is, no one knows exactly how to show up in this new world. Many of the people taking the lead, talking the loudest, are still unconsciously recreating old patterns and entrenched in upholding the very structures that cause suffering. In times of uncertainty, when making big leaps, we get tested and it’s easy to feel the desire to live up to old standards and expectations and to remain in control by not only creating a life for ourselves, but by attempting to create other people’s reality through building communities based on what we believe is in everyone’s best interest. Many of these communities are stuck repeating the exact patterns that have brought us here though. The unfamiliar is scary, and many groups fall back into familiarity instead of truly breaking free, because when issues arise, everyone wants to stick to logic and reason, not realizing that all our notions of ‘normal’ are based on survival in a very dysfunctional system. We also do not realize that we spend most of our lives engaging in drama triangles – we all play out the roles of hero, victim and villain to differing degrees in different situations, this is largely what most of our interactions are all about – placing blame somewhere outside of ourselves, effectively giving away our power while keeping ourselves stuck. It also allows us to fit in though, as something I have noticed lately is that most of us, we want someone to commiserate with instead of doing the things we need to do to bring about the change we desire. The thing is, in order to truly make big shifts in our lives, we have to accept that we have created the life we are living, consciously or not and we have to forgive ourselves for prolonging our suffering. We also need faith that we are capable of becoming the change, and we all are, often we just need something to live for, to fight for, not to fight against. What do you want to live for?

For true lasting change to occur at every level, we all have to consciously take each and every step, not be pushed or dragged into it, not do it for others or just to look like we care. And while this world is abundant, while there are resources that are more sustainable and renewable, while there are better methods to grow food, while there is more than enough of all we need, this new world is asking us to also live more gently, more simply, to let nature take the lead and be patient as she heals, to look at how our actions impact everyone around us, to only take as much as we need, to reconsider what a beautiful life even is, because if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t even know.

We can’t know what we want, until we know who we are though. The journey is spent not so much discovering the world, but discovering who we are as we navigate experiences, who we are under the masks and the armour, we need to shed them to access our power. We have been scared of the power we hold, but it is time we learn to access the magic that is alive in us all. 

It is there, waiting for us to nurture it. It has  been lying dormant for years, maybe lifetimes, dimmed, shamed, hidden in the shadows, but as long as we are breathing, it has not been extinguished. It is asking us to have faith, to believe that anything is possible and to learn to tune out the noise and tune in to the internal compass we have silenced and to follow only it, one step at a time. This new way of life, it is not asking us to be perfect, it is just asking us to unclench, to expand, to stop playing games and reacting to everything around us, to start being radically honest with ourselves and to become more curious all while opening our hearts to more love. 

No matter where we are on our journey, it is important to acknowledge both – this is a scary time to be alive, it is extremely difficult to be human right now, but we are more resilient than we know and if we are willing to step towards our fears, we can acknowledge that it is also a very exciting time to be alive, because the future is unfolding more rapidly than ever before. and we are all here writing it. Are you ready to start a new story?

Chapter 4

“Around us, life bursts with miracles–a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life’s daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.”

– Thich Nhat Hahn

This may sound counterintuitive, but the power to create the life we want in the future, it is generated by our ability to be fully immersed in the present moment, to be in awe of life right now.

Most of our suffering in life comes from wanting to be somewhere other than here, while simultaneously projecting a past experience on what is. When we do this, we’re just stuck in survival mode and unable to move forward. 

The present moment is all we have though. If we cannot find the beauty in what we have, why would the universe give us more? If we can see the magic in the world around us, more and more magic begins to flow our way. 

If we spend our days reliving our painful past while worrying about the future (a cycle that is so common, it has become the norm), that is what we unconsciously ask the universe for. Remember, we are always manifesting, we just often unconsciously manifest the very opposite of what we actually want by focusing our attention on it. It is easy in those moments to think to ourselves ‘nothing good ever happens to me’ and our unconscious mind to tell us we are not good enough, worthy enough, lovable enough, or whatever story it is we attach to experiences. These words have power over us and the direction of our lives.

It’s strange, it was at the time when I had very little, comparatively speaking, that I began to feel gratitude. I wasn’t able to access it before because I was too numb to feel much. When I began feeling, it was buried underneath the anger, frustration, grief and loneliness I avoided for so long. I had to feel all those feelings and begin to let go of them to be grateful for my morning cup of coffee and the sunlight streaming in through my window. Suddenly there were so many things to be grateful for. I became grateful for moments of beautiful connection with the humans I love. I remembered my love of dance and explored it again. I fell in love with the beauty of the natural world and started spending more and more time outside. I explored all of Vancouver (and much of the surrounding area) on foot, learning about historical buildings and the creation of the systems we live in. Then I started hiking, and getting more and more curious about plants, animals and the processes that shaped our natural world. I began to appreciate the warm glow of the sun and the gentle breeze caressing my skin. I became very grateful for a cozy bed to sleep in. I started trying new foods, savouring my meals and becoming so much more aware of the flavours. 

If we begin to see the universe as a mirror, a place where our beliefs shape our reality, we begin to understand the value of gratitude. The things that are happening (individually and collectively) are not random. They are also not happening to us, they are not punishments for past wrongs; they are portals into a different way of life. When I look back at the moments my life was falling apart, I realize that it was beyond fixing, it needed to fall apart so it could fall into place. I couldn’t try to continue to hold things up, to force them, no matter how much I tried and that was a gift, it has opened my eyes to so many possibilities. When I look at the ways my body, mind and soul imposed limits on me, I realize me accepting these limits, it opened up new channels, new skills and talents, a different perspective, it made me more empathetic, patient and kind, first to myself, then to others. It showed me that it is in accepting our limits that we actually realize just how limitless we are. 

Some of the recent challenges I have faced, they are pushing me to take big risks right now. I had many moments of panic over the last year, moments that made me want to return to Canada and work part time close to more friends, close to more things that felt familiar and write my book there, tie up loose strings that resurfaced, apply for residency and then move here permanently. When this would happen, after taking some deep breaths and listening to my heart and gut, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be. It felt like a test, like if I could write a book here, with everything else we were dealing with and do it in a couple of months, then I could do anything. If I could challenge myself, find the time and space to do the things that ignite my inner flame, set boundaries in kind ways and still find moments to rest, reflect and connect with friends and family (maybe briefly, but authentically) while keeping my nervous system regulated, preparing healthy and delicious meals, getting decent amounts of sleep, then I would get to see what I am made of. I realized this was a test of faith, something I have experienced a few times now. It’s as though the universe wants to know how committed we are, whether we really and truly want the things we dream of and whether we are willing to expand our capacity in order to achieve them. So here I am, setting my alarm for 5 am every morning and getting an hour and a half to write. These challenges that made me want to run, they are parts of myself I have needed to face with compassion, to shift my beliefs around them, to acknowledge they are temporary and to create something beautiful from the pain. I have always been great at starting projects and while I have gotten much more organized and better at finishing them too, procrastination used to often win out. Not only did I not prioritize my own personal projects, giving myself the excuse of having no time, but I also procrastinated out of fear, the old perfectionistic tendencies popping up and whispering in my ear that it’s not safe to make mistakes, so better not to try at all. These challenges were trying to show me the chaos that resides within me, the way I have constantly been fighting myself and how that has affected my lived experience.

My sensitivity is something I have hidden from the world for most of my life, and something I even hid from myself. I thought I made peace with it after I got sick the first time and had to redesign my life. When I came here and fell in love with this amazing place, I was scared to lose this opportunity. Off-grid spaces are where unhealed masculine and feminine energy rises like nowhere else – clinging to the familiar out of fear. There is so much to do, that it is easy to ignore the feelings that come up, unless we have no choice, because not feeling them makes us sick. I felt ashamed for being more sensitive than those around me, for being the black sheep yet again, speaking up when things didn’t feel fair, when the big picture wasn’t taken into consideration, when people’s needs and boundaries were dismissed. In the last few months I have learned to feel grateful for my sensitivity. It is not a burden, it is a super power. It is what allowed me to create a magical life in Vancouver, a life I was told was impossible, a life I was told I was crazy to even dream of. To work part time in my previous industry and to have more disposable income than I had working triple the hours, to have the time and energy for so many hobbies and interests and to do the best work of my life while feeling incredibly appreciated and to have the time to invest in some beautiful friendships was something I didn’t dare dream of before, but I got curious enough to try when I realized I had no choice. I know that my sensitivity is allowing me to create magic here. If I can create a magical, ease filled, passion saturated life in this very harsh environment where I have been told it is not possible, then truly, there are no limits. No one else has an excuse. I can see that without feeling like I have no choice, I would have been too scared to say what I want out loud, to disappoint those around me, to risk being cast out and to effectively cast myself out when it seems more crazy than ever. Why would I settle for a life that is anything less than magical though? Why do any of us do it?

I see how these events, these traits, these dark nights of the soul, midlife crises, whatever we want to call them, they are not trying to destroy us – they are actually trying to wake us up so we stop getting in our own way. They have had to get so loud because we haven’t been listening. 

Gratitude doesn’t mean we stay in spaces or situations where we feel undervalued or unappreciated though or that we say yes to opportunities that don’t light us up. We can be grateful for the lessons, yet have healthy boundaries and know our worth, know what it is we need to thrive. I began to be more honest with myself about the things that no longer served me and let go of them with gratitude too. Often they were people, places, jobs and hobbies I had loved, but they were no longer letting me expand and were preventing me from moving forward. I also had to let go

of the limiting beliefs that brought those things into my life. Each and every one taught me so much, exactly what I needed to take the next step. There were also coping mechanisms – we live in a world that generates a survival instinct in us through a mentality of lack. This world wants a reaction out of us, as that is often when we buy something we think we need to fix our problem. These reactions are what often motivate much of our behaviour and shape what we think of as our personality. We are often oscillating between fight, flight, fawn or freeze. There has been an emphasis to condition us to react through fawning. The praised trauma responses we have been taught to react to the world around us with are perfectionism, workaholism, people pleasing, powering through, never taking breaks, disordered eating and exercise addiction. Throughout life, we were taught to fawn to our parents, teachers, coaches, then bosses, customers/clients, even friends and romantic partners and authority figures. These coping mechanisms often resulted in huge amounts of praise and external validation, they gave us the illusion of success, of fitting in and being accepted, but they kept us stuck in survival mode, disconnected from ourselves and they’ve caused us to become exhausted, resentful, mere shells of humans going through the motions, but not really living. They have kept us safe though, they allowed us to survive, and we can also thank them for that while letting go of them – often more than once, as they have a tendency to resurface at the most inconvenient times. To truly thrive requires us to step into a different way of being. People often mention how the more conscious version of us responds instead of reacting, taking time to pause, regulate the nervous system and respond with integrity. I agree with this, but I would go a step further, the more conscious version of us isn’t simply waiting for life to happen, it is co-creating a life, engaging with life, playfully curious about life and actively exploring possibilities. This comes from a place of having gratitude for the entirety of the human experience, gratitude for being here at this moment in time, gratitude for the messiness and mistakes we’ve made along the way, gratitude for knowing that we are both sensitive enough and strong enough to co-create the kind of world that supports our expansion.

Our ability to be present, to enjoy the journey, it is largely dependent on our ability to be grateful for it. As I have continued to do this, life has become more and more meaningful and beautiful and magical, even during the challenging moments. They are now not just moments to react to and get through, but breathe and grow through. Walking through the fire is how we are forged into the people who are able to step into our dreams with ease and confidence, people who take up space in their own life unapologetically, people who say the truth without attaching blame to it and follow through with action, even when it’s terrifying. 

If you slow down, breathe deeply and close your eyes for a moment, what are you grateful for? Which moments of joy do you rob yourself of by not being present for them?

Chapter 5

“The journey of the sun and moon is predictable, but yours is your ultimate art.”

– Suzy Kassem

I truly believe, from the bottom of my heart, the depths of my soul and with every single cell of my being that we all have a true calling that is more simple, pleasurable and beautiful, yet simultaneously bigger and more powerful than what we allow ourselves to imagine. Our deepest dreams, they are what point us to our purpose. I also believe that if we follow our true calling – the one that we try to ignore when it whispers to us in the middle of sleepless nights and the one we distract from with scrolling our phones and the one we numb by burying ourselves in endless days filled with work and obligations, that we will be rewarded in ways we cannot imagine. 

We may seem crazy to the outside world, we may lose some people initially. If we ignore it long enough, we may actually lose everything we know, own and believe we are, but on the other side is a life we have not known was possible. It is just waiting for us to commit fully and to walk towards it. 

The right people will not only like us, but respect us and they will make the effort to find us, even if we’re in the middle of nowhere. We will feel abundant in a multitude of ways. We will unexpectedly receive gifts and money and opportunities will present themselves to us, not for working so hard, but for being our most authentic selves. The universe will ensure that will be cared for, supported and loved – to the degree we care for, support and love ourselves, especially when it is the hardest thing to do. 

The thing I keep learning over and over again is that the universe loves courage, it loves those who live with conviction and integrity. It absolutely rewards courage against all odds, in ways that our minds cannot comprehend. The root of the word courage is cor, the Latin word for heart. Living with courage means not always making sense to others, sometimes not even making sense to ourselves. When we do this while listening to our intuition, the universe places, right in our path, the most unexpected people, experiences, places and information we require to help us expand and keep going. Some of what we see as detours prove to be life changing experiences that catapult us into a new reality, a new dimension of possibilities that opens up to us in an instant. This power moves mountains, but only if we are tuned into our intuition and brave enough to take the next step. This power also tests us, it will place distractions and opportunities to repeat old patterns in our path too, so that we can learn to let go and to say no to anything that isn’t 100% in alignment with the version of us that we are required to be in order to step into our purpose. While rites of passage are not so common in our society anymore, the universe is asking us to be initiated all the time, if we only listen. Our new rite of passage as humans who walk into a world full of possibilities is to listen to our inner knowing over the noise around us and the fear within us.

The passions we have, the things we are drawn to, they are not random, and most of us have only explored a very small number of them. These passions, they become the gifts that we came here to share. A beautiful life is not about living in a mansion, having expensive cars, going on luxury vacations and acquiring material goods. A beautiful life is one where we get to pursue our passions and let them heal us so much that our light shines brighter and it lights up the little corner of the world around us and brings healing to it too. A beautiful life is about giving and receiving love – and love is so much more than the fairy tale stories we have been sold. 

A purposeful life doesn’t require discipline and motivation to keep us going, it is fuelled internally through our devotion to ourselves and the things we love. It doesn’t drain us, it recharges us, allows us to tap into endless sources of energy from the universe, as we realize we are dancing together, interconnected in the mystical web of life.

I know we traditionally think of men as protectors, but if you have ever seen a hen chase a big dog away from her chicks or a mare protect a foal against a herd of young stallions, or have experienced the wrath of Mother Nature, you know that feminine force is a power to be reckoned with. We all have this force within us, and I believe it is one of the reasons the feminine has been so oppressed in our society – that force is terrifying to those who are not living in alignment with their souls. I felt that force here often, but I realize I have channeled it into the wrong things. I have let it fuel rage sometimes. I have tried to convince and explain and change other people’s minds, to control things that are outside of my control, which is actually something the world has taught us all to do, to force things, but it doesn’t work. It is why we are so exhausted and feel so stuck. Sometimes I even blamed others for keeping me stuck, instead of just taking up the space I needed to in my own life, instead of expanding to be more of me and being vulnerably honest and setting boundaries with kindness. 

I thought I wanted to be part of the decision making process here and a co-founding member of the community, but I realized that my purpose and my path is my own to walk and it doesn’t end at the boundary of the property I’ve been working on. I see that the desire to co-create a community and that to be my full time role was a bit of a security blanket. I felt like my effort would be greater if combined with that of others so directly, but I trust that I can have even more impact here if I allow myself to pursue all the things that light up my inner flame. I also see that others have their own way of expressing their purpose which is beautiful, even if it is very different from mine. I trust that I will meet more and more people interested in all the things needed here for this area to thrive – both regenerative farming and rewilding, but also engineering, self reliance skills and art and building our relationships with each other and the world around us and exploring how all these different aspects can intersect in healthy ways that bring new levels of satisfaction and meaning to our human experience. They are all important and valuable in their own ways.

When I came to this place, it shifted something in me; I immediately felt very protective of it. This place is so rich in history – the kind that predates the wars and kings we learned about, the kind that predates Jesus, the kind that predates the written word, even the kind that predates humans being here at all. Anyone who has spent much time here has come across arrowheads, spear heads or even metates (stone tools used for grinding seeds and grains). We have come across fossilized sea shells too, not just right here, but almost 20 km inland, showing us how much further the ocean used to stretch. I have never had children, but I very much felt this maternal energy since experiencing this place, wanting to take care of it, not merely for the benefit of the people, but for the land itself, which, absolutely benefits the people too. That has been complicated sometimes, while being a full time member of a newly budding community and all the work that entails. I struggled with showing up fully out of fear of alienating myself from the tribe. I love the people involved and they have been very generous, which made it challenging to explain that I want to be involved, I still want to help (perhaps more effectively than I have been), but I also needed to create a life that allows me to do all the things I feel driven to do. What I want to do here, the difference I want to make not just for myself, but all the people and animals and plants who inhabit this little corner of the world, it is possible, although I also know I cannot do it alone. I am starting small, with actions I take myself, and it is honestly amazing to see the results of small, consistent action taken by just one person a few months in. For example, the beach, dunes and salt marshes are so much cleaner. I believe my role here is to be a weaver of sorts – to weave different timelines and realities, to inspire people near and far to pursue their passions and walk towards their dreams courageously, to get people curious about this place who maybe wouldn’t have otherwise come here. Spending time here is a unique experience, to put it lightly. To become immersed in the raw beauty of this land, the hospitality of the wonderful family here, to see what a handful of people (some back in the city funding things and some of us here), have managed to do in a few years time, while building out of mostly reused and repurposed materials, to spend some time on my plot and experience the interweaving of nature and home and finally, to also see the things around here that are not perfect, it is something that doesn’t just enliven the senses, it opens the heart and stirs an ancient remembering in the soul. It’s about allowing the experience to inspire people to make changes in their own lives, and for some people, to get involved here in whatever capacity they feel called to. I believe more of the right people will be drawn to this place, will be moved by how sacred it is, will want to take care of it, will understand that nothing in this ecosystem exists in a vacuum and that for any of us to truly thrive, we all need to thrive, those of us who have recently come here to live as part of the little community, the plants and animals we bring here, the wild animals and native plants that have been here for thousands of years, the ranchers who have been in this area for many generations and the cows and horses they have here. 

There are many projects the world over that focus on either rewilding or regenerative agriculture and I don’t think one way is better than another, although I am not sure we can simply go back to the way things were before humans arrived or to try to control every aspect of an ecosystem to benefit us. I believe we can learn from the past, co-create with nature and look to a future where we can all heal more together. The ranchers here are struggling, climate change means less and less rain and their herds, who are free range, are dwindling due to the extreme drought here this last year. It is heartbreaking to see animals suffering so much, to see the ranchers feel hopeless, to feel powerless and paralyzed by it all. These ranchers have so much wisdom about home remedies, properties of local plants, but many of them got caught up in the idea of perpetual growth with the rest of society. It was fairly easy to do here, the animals all grazed free range for many generations, herds growing in size to over 1000 head. Climate change, quite possibly influenced by overgrazing as well, has caused more and more droughts, younger generations have left ranching, the health of the ranchers began to decline right as the weather shifted and their animals began to struggle (which is likely not a coincidence). Many have lots of land and water and it wouldn’t be too difficult to keep herds smaller, grow feed for the animals and do some rotational grazing. Many are at the point where they would gladly accept help and try to do things differently. I don’t have the answers or the solution, but I trust that one will present itself in time. So often we feel like we need to do something, which I have definitely felt pulled to do and even attempted, but sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to make space to feel the pain, to let it linger and allow opportunities to emerge instead of trying to force things, exhausting ourselves in the process. Unfortunately, if the ranchers leave, if they sell their properties, the large scale development that will bring will destroy far more than the livestock have. I know there is a way that all the parts of the puzzle here can coexist, with some trust, some aligned action, with trying some things radically differently, including building real friendships with the people around us.

I know that there was a reason I was brought here, and there is no doubt in my mind that I was brought here. I was the only person who responded to the very short Facebook post seeking volunteers, three sentences or so, no photos at all. I took a chance to catch a bus to a city I had never been to in order to meet a stranger who would drive me to this property in the middle of nowhere, with no cell reception, to check it out. My first night here, there was a rattle snake in my tent, it is a tent with two open walls that I have now slept in for a long time. Having courage in pursuing my passions, actively overcoming fears while also listening to my intuition has always worked out for me and I know it will continue to guide me to more and more of a purpose filled life. 

I trust I will meet others whose paths intertwine with mine and that of this place,  people who want to connect more deeply. Deep connection is not the same as frequent connection; in fact, sometimes it is very challenging to spend too much time with those who see us fully without becoming triggered, without putting up walls, without trying to control outcomes or how we are perceived. I realize I can’t expect others to trust my unproven ideas, I need to walk the walk and show others that it’s safe and give them the opportunity to step more fully into their own purpose on their own terms. That means having to let go again and channelling that energy much more effectively into my own life and allowing it to spill out onto everything I touch so that everything I do all day is part of my calling in a way I haven’t seen modelled before. I have no option but to truly be the change I wish to see, and that excites me and it terrifies me too. I have no option but to trust my intuition that as I continue to leap blindly, the universe will catch me again and again and again. I know it has, that is how I got here in the first place, but this feels bigger, less realistic, something I haven’t ever seen done this way before. To lead a magical life in a harsh climate, explore all the things I am passionate about, where I take care of myself first, and then give in ways that feel authentic and effortless, I know it is possible.

I do love to push the boundaries of what is possible, so it seems like exactly what I signed up for. It hasn’t been until recently that I believed that I could have chosen to sign up for this mission, for my soul to be on Earth at this time and to have the responsibility of alchemizing the pain and suffering around me and inside me into the gold that will heal me and help heal what I touch. It’s not because I didn’t see how this time of chaos is also a time for opportunity for humans to become our true selves, the ones we were always meant to be, those who take care of themselves and this miraculous planet, but because I didn’t think I had it in me to do what was needed, to step up. I didn’t think I could feel so much and keep moving forward, but emotions are energy in motion, if we channel them correctly, they drive us to achieve the impossible. All of us here at this time are more courageous and stronger than we believe and more ready than we feel. The strength I am referring to is not the kind our society recognizes where we push through immense physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain in a belief that it makes us better people. Real strength is being connected to all those parts of ourselves and having the power to live in integrity with our values and to take care of ourselves. Where in life are you not living in alignment with your values? And remember, the point is not perfection, it is just being honest with ourselves, having compassion for ourselves and allowing a new path forward to emerge. And even deeper – where in life are you not living, how do you bypass certain parts of the human experience by keeping busy? Some things that are unfamiliar to us, can feel deeply uncomfortable, but in safe spaces with safe people, when we want to live more, we can choose to lean into the discomfort. For example, for most of my life, I believed I hated hugs. They just felt awkward and stiff. I became interested in Brazilian Zouk though – it’s a beautiful partner dance and I found the flow mesmerizing. It is also one that invites you to dance very closely connected to others. In my time dancing I learned so many valuable lessons from surrender to listening, to going with the flow, and I also realized I actually love hugs. 

Our purpose doesn’t have to uproot us and bring us to a whole different part of the world either. Part of my mission is to push the extremes in this life, to be a torchbearer and for people not to follow what I do, but to see the life I have pursued and ask themselves ‘if that is possible, what else might be possible?’ I knew I had the privilege of more freedom than most people, and I believe that it is my responsibility to push the limits in such ways that they inspire others. We can embody our purpose anywhere and anytime though. At the end of the day, it is not huge, heroic acts that define us, but the small, consistent actions we take. The way we surrender and trust, how we show up, how we share our gifts, the way we treat people, animals, nature, the choices we make in challenging times, the things we support, what we focus on, how gently we walk over the Earth – and that is all a reflection of how we see and treat ourselves and how much courage we have to be fully seen by others. 

Chapter 6

“You are not in the universe. You are the universe.”

– Eckhart Tolle

My relationship to a higher power has been a complicated one. Early on, I felt no connection to the kind of God organized religion tried to sell me on. God’s spokespeople weren’t exactly relatable to me as a kid – old men, who had not experienced romantic relationships or fathered children, whose job provided them with a home and built in community and a leadership role. They were people who from my perspective abstained from the experience of life, yet felt like they were somehow experts on how those of us slogging through the messy work of actually being human should behave. 

God wasn’t relatable either. Another old man, sitting and judging. This God wanted us to pay for sins that weren’t even ours, especially as women. This God wanted people to sacrifice themselves in this life for the promise of an eternity in paradise. It felt like he just wanted us to be obedient and gave out punishment instead of true guidance. How could a just God, who created us exactly the way we are, then  shame us for being human? I suppressed so many beautiful parts of myself just to be seen as ‘good’ through the eyes of others, and yet I never felt good enough, so when I moved away to college, I stopped going to church. I decided it felt easier to believe I was all on my own in this world than to pray to a God who judged me before I was even born. 

From what I knew of other religions, they all felt constricting, not expansive to me. They also all seemed to be ways to help humans accept the world the way it was, the pain, the suffering, the only way to end it was in death, but we really needed to suffer very hard in life to guarantee that death would bring us peace, we needed to sacrifice to be worthy. In other situations, one could change their state, despite their circumstances, but this seemed to take place in monasteries and ashrams, again, while abstaining from truly living, in spaces that were not accessible for most people. While I believe every religion in the world holds valuable pieces of the secret of a meaningful life, while I believe they share teachings of people who often were beacons of consciousness way ahead of their time, and while I trust that the intentions of those who go to church are good, it also feels as though religions have been used and twisted to help control humans for power and profit. They have allowed us to make peace with the very systems that oppress us, while fighting with each other, in the name of God. It is through the lens of religion that we lose sight of the same God we pray to being reflected back to us in another’s eyes the moment they worship that God differently. Religions have been used to keep the status quo, to keep people divided, to hold up these systems and simultaneously to keep us small and powerless and attached to a sense of reality that is an illusion. That illusion is now crumbling, making those who relied on it for a feeling of security to lose their footing and feel more unsettled than ever, causing so much pain and destruction in their wake. 

I considered myself atheist for many years. I leaned into science all the way, treated it like a religion actually. I saw myself and everyone around me sort of like humanoid robots. A physical body simply reacting to a mind telling it what to do, completely separate and cut off from everything around me. I forgot all about my heart, my soul, disregarded my body all while pushing down my emotions further and further.

It took a few experiences science could not explain to see that I was not actually ever alone. There were two moments that occurred fairly close together, perhaps because the first didn’t seem to wake me up. They both occurred twelve years ago. The first happened the day I returned to work after a minor surgery. The doctor assured me I would be fine, I was still feeling some painful cramping in moments, but trusted the doctor. I was driving home and felt completely normal. I was hungry though and stopped for a bite to eat and decided to get a coffee to warm up. Not far from there, I lost consciousness while driving with no warning whatsoever. My truck crossed the centre line, yet in the moment before it slammed head on into another truck, I came to and turned the wheel, before realizing what was actually happening. I was shaken up and made sure to get more sleep, stay more hydrated, but was too busy to reflect on it. About a month later, I was riding my horse after a heavy rainfall. In the canter, we hit a deep patch of sand in the arena and her legs buckled as there was nothing solid beneath her feet. We had been going pretty fast and that forward momentum was going to make a big impact. I was sure we were going down, I leaned back and pushed my hands forward, so as not to catch her in the mouth and make things worse and surrendered, maybe for the first time in my life. Somehow, past what felt like the point of no return, she managed to toss her head up, push off her hind legs, leap forward and remain upright. This time we were both shaken and she was obviously concerned about me, which was something I had not experienced before. When I got off her, I saw that the muddy sand covering the front of her legs came above the tops of her knees. Her coming that close to taking a fall and somehow saving it, that defied all laws of physics and biomechanics. It took another two years and my world falling apart as my health continued to deteriorate to really reflect on what happened in those two instances. Both times it felt as though a force much greater than me, almost like a big hand, reached down and lifted me to safety. Even though I was not doing well at that time, it felt very clear that something was looking out for me and that I was meant to be here. That maybe things in life were not completely random. This is the point in life where I became curious and where everything began to change. 

I don’t think of God these days, because that word has become too tainted for me and it also isn’t how I see a higher power. I feel the energy of the entire universe coursing through my body just like blood courses through my veins, I feel how interconnected we all are in ways that make sense, such as atoms and molecules of water that are now part of us being recycled from other, ancient sources and the spaces and places they have occupied before making their journey to this vessel I currently occupy, as well as those that do not make logical sense, like someone I think about calling me. I feel so much more connection in general, to people, animals, plants, everything I see and touch and even things I do not see and cannot touch, but know deep within are true. I know it even though it cannot be explained, but I have experienced too much to ever deny it, not just in those two notable instances I described above, but in so many moments and magical synchronicities since. The people I have met, the places I have been, the experiences I have had. I never could have ended up where I am if it wasn’t fated, if I wasn’t guided, because I didn’t know in my mind what I was looking for. 

I don’t pray these days either, even though I have tried it recently, just out of curiosity. It felt too forced and awkward and unnecessary to pray to a power that knows my every thought. I felt like a child asking for permission, when I trust that we are co-creators here, that we are divine beings finding our way back to that divinity. I have learned in the last several years the power of our thoughts (especially the unconscious ones) and our words. These spells we constantly cast have the ability to completely transform our lives. If we think we cannot do something, we have failed before we have tried. The truth is, we don’t even have to be sure something is possible, we just have to be curious and brave enough to take the next step, just one step towards our true path, our destiny, until the next step shows itself. We have to trust that even if things do not work out how we planned, we will be ok, and that maybe they were meant to be even better in the long term.

I realize now that I do not need a middle man to connect me to God. I do not need a temple to feel the presence of a higher power. I do not need to read scripture to understand my purpose in this life. I just need to tune in and listen to everything around me and within me and to courageously move towards truth, even when I am afraid, especially when I am afraid. I need to be grateful for the experiences in my life and trust with every part of my being that they are happening for my highest good. That they are opportunities to learn valuable lessons that will help propel me, fuel my growth and bring me ever closer to authenticity. To live more and more in alignment and with intergrity. And to surround myself with those who mirror back to me the ways I do not live up to the standards I have set for myself, all while also mirroring my light. 

I do not believe that any higher power that created beings capable of feeling so much, seeing such nuance of colours, tasting such a range of flavours, hearing the variation of so many musical notes, recognizing so many smells, being capable of experiencing so much pleasure through touch, and loving so deeply, would also expect us to go through life sacrificing, suffering, settling for scraps of a life lived fully. With how interconnected everything in the universe feels, I believe that our hearts, our bodies, our minds, our feelings – they allow Source to experience through us what it cannot experience without us. We do not need to spend our lives on our knees, with our heads looking towards the Heavens, we need to take our rightful place right here, on this Earthly plane, in this place that we belong to, that we are deeply rooted into and enjoy it.

This belief that we are not alone, it brought me to exploring modern spirituality, where I learned some important lessons too. Learning to believe that we all deserve and live in a world of unlimited abundance and not a world of scarcity was life changing. Learning to understand my own inner power and be conscious of my limiting beliefs, thoughts, patterns, actions, words, nervous system, breath – everything that communicates with the world around me. Pretty soon I started questioning things in this realm too though. My life over the last few years allowed me to experience many different forms of abundance. I have learned to receive and give love through the beautiful people and places and animals who I have had the pleasure of experiencing life alongside, however briefly. I have learned to source feelings of love and security and belonging from within myself and the universe has mirrored them back to me more and more. The modern spiritual movement talks about abundance of all forms, yet the focus is largely still on money – on multi million dollar retreat centres and communities in other countries that displace locals and destroy nature and programs and courses costing many, many thousands of dollars. There is talk of sharing gifts with the world, but the real healing, it is reserved for those who can afford it, continuing to uphold the systems of oppression too. Spiritual entrepreneurs talk of knowing our worth through making money, but money is not something we make, it is something we receive and in business, we control how we are open to receiving it. A spiritual business, modern or traditional, it sells us a promise. In the old religions, it is the promise of an afterlife. In modern spirituality, it is the promise of financial abundance, if we follow the steps, follow the path laid out by others, one that often is not spiritual at all, but designed to still exist in a world of lack, and continue to uphold the pyramid scheme that is the very Matrix we say we want to leave. 

My healing began before I was seeking it. It was not through healers, but through every day people I truly connected with. Those who saw my pain before I was ready to face it, those who in my darkest moments, reminded me of my light, those who cared about me, not the bottom line, those who sat with my shadows, those who were patient with me when my emotions spilled out, those who reflected back to me all that I am, and those who triggered me too. In fact, the less I have sought healing and the more I have focused on living life more fully, allowing more feelings to flow through me and allowing myself to flow more freely through life, the more healing has happened as a byproduct. I also don’t see the world as purely transactional anymore. At our core, we are all energy. When we put out the energy of love instead of fear, we receive love too, but it often comes to us in the most unexpected forms from the most unexpected sources. That is the magic of it, that is part of the gift, part of the trust that spirituality is supposed to offer, that we just need to do what we know is right and trust. The new spiritual model also ignores our actual reality of life on Earth; we live in a world of unlimited abundance, but finite resources. There is no way to bypass this, we are spiritual beings, but in this incarnation, we are bound by the laws of nature and that is a beautiful thing. It is what is nudging us to evolve so we can continue to call this place home for many, many generations. It is actually driving our spiritual growth to go far beyond our society’s measures of success. It is teaching us to surrender and trust more and not need to have every detail planned out and every dollar accounted for. It is teaching us to value the things that cannot be bought – as they are the most valuable. We live in complicated times, we are walking between worlds whether we want to or not. Money is not inherently good or bad, in fact, it can be an amazing tool to take care of ourselves and improve the quality of our own lives and to share with others, to invest in people we connect with, projects and causes we believe in, to lend a helping hand to those who are struggling, not viewing it as an act of charity, but as a part of being human, one that if we are honest with ourselves, we have all experienced in our lives in some form, because we have all been ‘in need’ in one way or another. Maybe we don’t need to worry about earning money, perhaps that is just another limiting belief that is blocking us from being able to receive just for being our most authentic selves? One that is so deeply entrenched that even those trying the hardest to live differently become caught up in it, continuing to reinforce it. And maybe freedom isn’t simply bought with more money, but cultivated by nurturing our capacity for it, fought for even when we don’t have much money? Perhaps we do not need to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders and be needed so much and instead allow the world to carry us? Do we know what actually happens when we trust the universe to take care of us and stop playing by the rules of a material world that keeps us enslaved? What happens if we learn to spend the money we receive in ways that truly enrich our lives and those of other humans, instead of simply making huge corporations richer? Is it possible that we can make leaps far bigger than we have tried? Have our cages been open this entire time and we have just not stepped through the door?

The more I believe that I deserve an abundant and beautiful life, the more I take care of myself in ways that feel nourishing to every part of me, the more I am aware of how my actions affect the world around me and the more I slow down to remain in alignment as things around me spin out of control, the more the universe ensures that I am taken care of in return, in ways I never could have predicted. 

Chapter 7

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

– Bell Hooks

Humans evolved as beautiful social beings. Our early survival was completely dependent on being part of a tribe. We had to work together for the sake of survival of the whole. Everyone in the tribe  knew and cared about each other though, humans were not trying to benefit from others in their own community, just to make each other’s lives easier. 

Over the course of our time here on Earth, we have become disempowered. We have been taught to compete against each other instead of working together on the one hand, yet to be charming enough to be accepted and fit in on the other. As a result, we have become hyper-independent in some ways, yet very codependent in others. It is part of the reason why our relationships to others have become so complicated and why we are so disconnected from ourselves. It has meant that even though we work very hard not to need anyone, we use others to become sources of our security instead of sourcing it from within. This means we have expectations that are impossible to meet, because others – whether they are family, friends, romantic partners or community members, cannot do for us what we are not willing to do for ourselves. To need others to that degree and to be constantly needed, it may make us feel unalone, important even, but it builds resentment, it creates unnecessary chaos which leads to the desire for control and manipulation, it drains everyone involved and causes people to abandon themselves in order to be accepted. In every environment and social group we are part of, we have to have certain ways of behaving and seeing the world to be seen as normal, even though they are often very harmful to us and the planet, but we go along with them to avoid being ostracized. There are hierarchies and power struggles that exist in every group and community we create, because that is the only way we know how to exist. With competition being so engrained in us and such a driving force, judgement, shame and comparison are the byproducts. Our schools are based on competition, so are the hobbies we engage in, jobs we go into, social media is set up to be a huge popularity contest. Our whole purpose in our society is to try to ‘get ahead’ (surely we must know by now that the only place we are racing towards is our death). As a result we are constantly in survival mode trying to prove our worth, instead of actually slowing down enough to live our lives. We do not learn to meet our own needs, to honour our boundaries in healthy and loving ways, to prioritize ourselves in our own lives, to have dreams, to follow our purpose, to be free. We don’t learn to value the things in others that are important for healthy connection either – like integrity, kindness, generosity. Do we bother to value those things in ourselves? 

We are not happy always unconsciously competing, tearing others down to make ourselves look better, but even if we don’t say it out loud, we so often compare ourselves to others in unhealthy ways, forgetting that we are all created to be wonderfully unique, to have our own gifts and talents. When we are so busy trying to prove our worth, we often hide all the most beautiful parts of ourselves. This way of walking through the world, it teaches us to build our own cages like everyone else, so that we can fit in, only to lash out at ourselves and each other, as caged animals do. 

We have become needy and we need each other for things that no one else can do for us, they must come from within, which means we rarely actually truly see other people in their entirety. Often, if someone isn’t willing to do what we want, we tell ourselves how terrible they are. Largely, we want others to keep us comfortable, to tell us what we want to hear, that is what most of our connection is based on. We so badly want attention and validation from someone for the things we have been taught to value. We so desire love from others that we are not willing to give to ourselves. The bizarre thing is that what scares us the most is someone actually seeing us and reflecting back to us the light we have been dimming in order to fit in.

Layered beneath all that is the fact that as men and women we have been taught to source our security in different ways. Men have been conditioned to source it through productivity, and women, through relationships. Men have been taught to be the protectors and providers, causing their lives to revolve entirely around their work. Women have been taught to keep relationships alive, causing our lives to revolve around romantic partners, families and communities. Is it any wonder that women and men spend so much time talking past each other, when we have been taught such different ways to source our needs? Is it any wonder that we’re so insecure since neither of these actually works? It makes sense, for centuries and many generations, men have needed to work to survive and women have needed relationships to survive – it is part of the reason we have a hard time leaving relationships even when they’re not good for us. It is not just something we are conditioned to do in this lifetime, it is something that has been passed down through ancestral wounds and encoded into our DNA. There is no way for a dynamic built on that foundation not to have some codependency built right in, no way for resentment not to creep in. Of course, with the rise of ‘equality’ in our society, women have been taught to use productivity as a source of security as well, and instead of becoming more free, putting ourselves in another cage, now doing two jobs at the same time. Both men and women have been struggling to just keep our heads above water, constantly swimming upstream and often blaming others for not doing more to lighten our load, instead of simultaneously putting a lot of our burdens down and just pausing to see if the things we are working so hard at are actually serving us, are actually giving us the peace that comes from feeling secure. 

Through this obsession with productivity, we have learned to feel more secure while doing something, anything (even if it’s binge watching Netflix or playing video games), instead of feeling, listening and observing. Ironically, we can only make the decisions to do the things that truly bring us more security through feeling secure in the first place, which comes from having the capacity to feel all of our uncomfortable feelings, to make space for the very things we try to run from. Otherwise, when we are in survival mode we make a decision to stop the most immediate threat, because we do not have the capacity to see the big picture and make a choice that will actually improve our lives in the longterm. Even when we’re not actively doing something, we are worrying about things, because it has become that unfamiliar to just be, so even if our body is still, our mind is racing to make up for it.

To find our way to a healthy community we need to become healthier individuals yet to become healthier individuals we need humans to be our mirrors. What I have realized is that it requires us to dance between solitude and interdependence as we learn to become better at both. We cannot form healthy relationships with others until we heal our relationship to ourselves and become sovereign. We need to free ourselves from attachments to be able to love others without expectations. We also cannot heal our relationship to ourselves as long as we are able to dump the things we don’t want to take responsibility for on those around us unconsciously. In tight knit groups, we have been taught to tolerate unhealthy patterns in others through engaging in unhealthy patterns ourselves. It always takes the participation of more than one person to create a toxic dynamic, yet we dismiss others as toxic and do not take the time to look in the mirror with compassion and honesty. We unconsciously manage the expectations of those around us, take responsibility for the feelings of others instead of being authentic, it is so deeply engrained in us to do this that we believe the traits we develop to become good at this are our personality. We need to learn to be loving and open and vulnerable, yet more self reliant, resilient, more courageous, especially in saying ‘no’ to anything that doesn’t light us up. And we need to focus on the things that do light us up – create the lives we want instead of expecting others to do that for us. Maybe a healthy community is not one where we all cling to each other and a shared dream like a life raft, maybe it is one where we are given the space to create our own dream and give everyone else the same space in return? Maybe it is a place where we acknowledge that our dreams can change, that we can expand and to still be loved? So often, we cling to jobs or interests or hobbies because we fear the loss of community it provides, but as someone who has let go of many of those things and has a more loving community than ever before, the people who are meant for us, will stay connected to us even if we don’t see each other as often, even if we no longer have that thing that brought us together in common. Other times, they are people who resurface and we reconnect with later – after we both have needed some time to grow. If we let go of the responsibility we take for other people’s feelings and keeping others comfortable, that creates the space for us to take radical responsibility for the life we are creating, because we are always creating our lives, whether based on our fears or our open hearts.

To really move forward, we have to be able to face our fears and source a feeling of security from within through our connection to the universe. This is a challenge, because our biggest fear as a species that has needed a tribe for survival has always been to be cast out of the tribe, so instead we abandon ourselves. If we honestly look at where the world is headed though, we can see that we’re not going anywhere good and that maybe giving ourselves some space from the tribe is our best hope, one that will allow us not only to survive, but to learn to thrive. Even as we work through healing, we often fall into the familiar ruts of hyper-independence and codependency. These familiar ways, these old patterns, they seem like the only way. They have worn grooves in our nervous systems which make it challenging to change and we have also learned to create more chaos in an effort to manipulate others. It can be very hard to say no to things that don’t feel aligned when we are tired and a constant sense of urgency exists and things get thrown at us, yet often this is what we have learned to do in order to get our way. Do we even like who we have become in order to be accepted? Aren’t we exhausted of living this way?

It took me a long time to actually realize that I am much more powerful when I learn to stand alone and take all the love I have poured into places it was unappreciated and instead pour it into myself and to just learn to take better care of myself – not through bubble baths and trips to the spa, but through following through on creating the life of my dreams. It is only from that place that I can love others instead of falling into resentment. We do need human connection, there are certain needs humans cannot meet alone, but in healthy relationships these feel like a recharge, a boost, not an energetic drain. We are not meant to be this tired and weary all the time. We are also so much more capable than we realize, so much stronger and more powerful.

In ancient times, even though humans lived in tribes and all worked together, they were also more self-reliant. There were rites of passage where young people who were becoming adults, went off into the world to survive on their own for a predetermined length of time. It was a portal into a new stage of life. 

I think in these times that is important too, although I am honestly finding that I want to live at the very edge of nature and community indefinitely. Many people these days need to remove themselves from where they live to focus on healing, including the popularity silent retreats, plant medicine retreats, yoga retreats, you name it. Some people attend these at least annually, and often far more frequently, for many years. I want to have the ability to retreat into silence and stillness built into my life no matter what is happening around me. Especially as we learn to be more human, it is messy, we are messy, and the stillness and space, it provides clarity, some distance for a better perspective. It helps us observe our feelings instead of becoming them, it also helps us not to take on the feelings of others, as we unconsciously do. It helps to give me the time and space to truly create the things that are of value to me and to also listen and observe to the guidance within me and the world around me. It helps me stay grounded so I don’t feel like I need to be healing so much. 

The time I spent living alone several years ago was such a beautiful gift. It was uncomfortable at first, and at the time I required much of that time for rest and self reflection, so very little was done externally. Now, it is more about expanding fully into myself, blooming in a multitude of ways and learning to spend quality time intentionally with others and by myself. When we spend time with others intentionally, we are able to have more reverence for that time, for that connection with another divine being who is also doing their best to navigate the challenge of being human at this complex time and we are able to bring our best selves forward.

Thanks to technology, we are able to be more self reliant than ever, even living off-grid. We can learn how to design things efficiently so they can work for us. We can selectively purchase a few items that will make a drastic difference to our everyday lives. We can connect with humans from all over the world and be inspired to learn new skills and even go and learn from some of them in person through workshops or volunteer opportunities. While I don’t see the point of moving off-grid only to recreate the same world we’re trying to leave behind with all the modern day comforts and conveniences, I do think technology has given us so many more tools and options to make our lives better and more ease filled, if we use it wisely. 

At the same time, it is important to allow the time and space for connections that enrich our lives, that encourage us to be more of ourselves, that bring comfort and laughter, that can sit with our pain, that we are inspired by, that we learn from by example, that lovingly nudge us out of our comfort zone, that love us for who we are, not merely what we do for them, that reflect all parts of us to ourselves so we can then sit in solitude with the parts that need more of our love. That is how we heal in relationship. The love of soul friends, soul family, soul lovers – it helps us to grow roots, even as we spread our wings, in ways that don’t seem possible. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems we have to drink in everything that is not love, before we learn to recognize what love actually is. Even when we think we have learned the lessons, it can sneak up on us to both want to earn love and also want others to earn our love in return. We keep reaching for the same poison and it goes down easy, but purging it is much more painful. 

Authentic connection to others is a powerful tool for sovereignty as those who truly love us instead of merely needing us will always want us to be more free, even when it’s hard, even when they will miss us. If we learn to enjoy the dance between solitude and community, the skills gained in one help us navigate the other with more grace. They each enrich our lives in beautiful ways.

Understanding our traumas, coping mechanisms and that the patterns we have created to give us the illusion of safety and control through familiarity actually backfire and keep us perpetually stuck in unhealthy loops, it allows us to learn to cultivate in ourselves all the traits we are drawn to in others. We have the capacity to nurture so many skills within ourselves and to slowly move towards love instead of fear, hope instead of despair, joy instead of anger, gratitude instead of frustration. This is how we learn to love, it is not a skill most of us have inherited from the world around us. 

We are all one, part of a beautiful collective, that is true, but we are also whole on our own. It is only from the place of wholeness that we can create the world we all desire. While everything and everyone is deeply interconnected, our personal experiences are all our own and that is beautiful. It is the tapestry of our unique life experiences, talents, perspectives that give the world so much more depth and texture. We all have beautiful gifts to share with the world, but that has to come from a place of pouring so much love into ourselves that the love simply spills over effortlessly to everything around us. That is how we heal the world, we heal ourselves first.