My husband and I met and became writing partners while we were coworkers at a pizza shop in downtown Los Angeles. The shop was located in the midst of the artsy scene, the high-rise business district, and Skid Row (a notorious gathering ground for the city's large unhoused population). Many of us working in the shop were in the midst of our own transitions. In my early 20s, I was driven by a desire for success. I had a nuanced definition of success that aligned more with Maya Angelou's rather than the predominant culture.

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” - Maya Angelou

During this time, I worked 3 jobs, attended Portuguese language school, played on a women's rugby team, was a member of Toastmasters, and was writing my first science fiction novel. I was fueled by the words of motivational speakers and a hunger for achievement. While I was dating, I gathered more and more clarity about the person I wanted to spend my life with and what I wanted that life to look like. Understanding how I wanted it to feel would come later. Deep feeling was the gift I unwrapped as I learned what it meant to live from the womb space. At that time, I was all about action, accomplishment, and proving what I was capable of. This was my Yang era.

When my husband finally confessed his feelings for me, we started a doe-eyed romance that was full of poetry, exploration, and energizing discussions. It wasn’t long before we were inseparable. Slowly, many of my other pursuits faded away, and I decided to focus on my screenwriting. When I didn’t get into my dream grad school, we went back to the drawing board and came up with new visions for our future.

We moved home with my family and got engaged five years later.

We planned our wedding 8 months in advance and exchanged our vows in the serene nook of a vineyard. Surrounded by our friends, family, and wispy clouds on a spring day in April, we stepped into the portal of our marriage.

I had met the Shaman, who wedded us, a month after our engagement. A friend and I decided on a whim to get our first Reiki session.

I remember not feeling much but thinking it was quite calm and relaxing.

I didn’t know much about Shamanism beyond what I learned in my Mysiticism class at the university, so when she told me that she was a wedding officiant, I was very excited.

She presided over our ceremony with intention and care, creating a space of presence that seemed to stop time.

Our Japanese Honeymoon was a dream. We visited 3 cities, various temples, a reggae bar, and ate an unforgettable amount of ramen and delectible pastries.

When we returned, I felt another deep shift within, and this time I cut all my hair off, ready to start on a clean slate.

What followed was a period of intense spiritual seeking. I was in the midst of my Saturn Return but had no idea what that meant.

I read countless spiritual books cover to cover. Inhaling them like the very oxygen that was sustaining me.

During this time, I discovered my ability to channel.

My sister and I dove in with both hands and all feet. I would quiet my mind, bring through my higher self, whom we called Alice, and inquire about topics ranging from the nature of the Universe to the decisions we should make in our personal lives.

My Shaman hosted a monthly group called Goddess Empowerment, where women on their spiritual path would come together to share stories, insights, and encouragement from their journeys.

This is when I entered my Yin era.

I had the blessing of free time. I would wake up in the mornings, tune in to what my body wanted to do that day, and set forth to make it happen. I spent my time exploring the spiritual dimension by attending sound baths, practicing yoga, and attending various healing workshops. I entered a time of deep surrender and allowed myself to be carried by the winds of change. Sometimes it was a cool, refreshing breeze; other times, a tumultuous tornado.

Healing doesn’t wear a single face. During this time, I was cultivating incredible healing energy in myself, and others would respond to it.

I was encouraged to share my gifts and my work as The Consciousness Doula was born.

I took to social media and shortly after became incredibly disembodied. I later realized that, along with healing energy, I had also cultivated deep sensitivity. I started to offer my work in the local community and found deep satisfaction and alignment. I taught classes on channeling, offered workshops, and served where I could. Shortly after this, the 2020 pandemic began. Gatherings were out of the question, and the uncertainty in the air weighed heavily on many of our shoulders.

I spent my time in nature and was introduced to cacao. This is also when I received my Reiki 1 attunement. By this time, my original teacher had moved out of state, and I met another Shamanic woman who opened up the door for me on Yin Yoga, Lunar Living, and working with the elements.

I would receive Reiki massages from her at the time, and if my first foray into Reiki was a soothing breeze, my experiences with her were uplifting whirlwinds. I like to believe that the self-care and commitment to spiritual growth opened me up to another layer of receiving and relating to the Reiki energy.

When I got my attunement, I learned that Reiki was not confined to sessions with a practitioner but was instead an energy that moved through all of nature and life with a signature that clearly revealed its face. Birds became my friends, butterflies and rainbows seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Knowing what I know now, I am sure that it’s not that these elements of reality were absent from my previous experience of life, but only that they were veiled.

I was still doing deep channeling work in my personal life and was soon called to offer the cacao ceremonies that had helped me to connect deeply with my womb and my heart.

My grandmother was living with us at this time, and she taught me more about taking care of my cycle through herbs. She introduced me to Lydia Pinkham’s herbal supplements and taught me how to clear my system with Aloe Vera. She prayed over my womb and beseeched God to give me a breakthrough and relief from my painful cycles. I also came across a moon-cycle essential oil blend that I would massage into my lower belly during my release. I would experience some cycles where I wasn’t forced into taking ibuprofen and numbing my connection to the womb, but it was inconsistent, and it felt like she would rage even louder when she returned from being silenced.

In the early stages of receiving The Consciousness Doula, my guides showed me an effervescent Sacral Chakra. Bright, radiant, and beaming with a warm, magnetic glow. I knew the essence of my work would be to bring this to life. I still had no idea how much life needed to stream into the collective Sacral Chakra and its physical embodiment, the Womb.

What I learned during this time was seeding the understanding that it’s not that the remedies were inconsistent, but instead that my womb was operating on a cycle that was unique to her and my life experience. She needed my present awareness to walk patiently and with kindness through every release, not a blanket prescription.

Various emotional and physiological responses occur with each cycle. I learned that without the present moment awareness, willingness, and space to feel and rest, all I would be able to detect from my womb was agitation that I interpreted as pain.

Everything on this planet has a vibration, and though language, through the spoken word, has been a powerful and impactful development on our planet, the intermingling of our vibrations is the first form of communication we encounter. The herbs and essences that speak to our womb in a language she created have been the most potent forms of healing and integration of the womb energy I have ever encountered.

It wasn’t until after I had my son that I learned about wild yams, which have enabled me to consistently vibrate at the same frequency as my womb during my cycle. This has allowed an easy, aligned release of all the data I take in during the month, as I bleed. No holding, clenching, tightening, or white knuckling.

Just flow.

The knowledge and wisdom that I assimilated during this time undoubtedly rewired my body, mind mechanism for good, but it wasn’t until I birthed my son that a layer of completion that is bursting through my heart to be shared emerged, and I’m excited to reveal that depth in the final piece of this series.

Through her influence, I started paying attention to the seasons (which I know seems silly now, but I genuinely had no connection to seasonal changes at all), developed my musical tastes, and paid more attention to the events and gatherings around me. I really learned the alchemy of Earth through our time together. She just knew what song to play when we hit the freeway with windows down and the breeze blowing through our hair. She would instinctively make smoothies with the fruits and veggies that hit just right in that moment, and most impressively, she always knew what to say when I randomly took our conversations into fantastical bits varying in historical time, space, and far-fetched scenarios. She showed me just how healing community can be. Just how much we all hold keys that unlock deeper aspects of each other.

When we transferred to the local university, I met another dear friend who would go on to become my roommate for the rest of my time there. She was a foreign exchange student from China, and during our time together, she taught me gentleness, attention to detail, and gave me many insights into Traditional Chinese Medicine. She bought me a little fish-shaped hot water bottle from China that she said many women and girls use during their cycles. She taught me the benefits of rose tea and eating foods that bring warmth into the body during that time.

My embodiment was growing.

We had another friend in our foursome who was originally from Brazil. During our time in university, we shared many meals and adventures. We would see the latest films, watch performances at the Hollywood Bowl, and frequent art galleries and museums together. All of these outings were stitched together by delicious meals from an assortment of cultures.

This time of my life was full of exploration, curiosity, and fabulous enrichment.

I was learning more about how to navigate my cycle, but I still experienced excruciating pain and dreaded the time of the month when I would still be trapped at home in bed to find a sliver of normalcy in my body.

When I walked the stage for graduation, my cap could barely fit my head because I had already started what would be an incredibly potent nine-month freeform loc journey.

I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it at the time, but I felt a strong shift in my energy when I left university, and I knew I had to let my hair loc up, and it had to be freeform. I also became a plant-based eater, which would last for the following three years.

The best way I can describe this time is “the great unplugging.” Many unquestioned beliefs and attachments I had taken on from growing up in the Western world seemed to melt away from my aura. Certain insecure, image-obsessed, and racist based thoughts no longer had a home in me. I was slowly being untangled from the weights that held me down and called themselves the real expression of femininity.

I embraced my body hair, packed my lunches, and got out into nature as much as I could. Pieces of my understanding seemed to interlock to form a still, delicate sense of self.

I got two internships and started making plans for transitioning to living in the city after graduation. I took care of myself with dedication and devotion. This Earth mama love I was pouring into myself would usher me into an incredible movement of energy that I still look back on with awe.

When I was nine, we flew across the ocean to New York City. What was to be a vacation turned into a migration. My parents told us at the end of our trip that we weren’t going back home but would instead be moving to the United States for good. My mom, sister, and I took a Greyhound bus to South Florida. We would be starting our new lives there, while my father would return to Jamaica to his career as a chemical engineer, enabling him to support us financially from afar.

It wasn’t too much of a culture shock at first. If you know anything about South Florida, then you know it is a vibrant place for Islanders from all over the Caribbean. We were able to get all of our familiar foods, there were lots of people who spoke our dialect, and the American kids in our school all knew where Jamaica was. Jamaican patties were regularly on our school lunch menu.

With all this going for us, it was to be a rather painless transition. But as life would have it, there are always hiccups. My sister and I grew up rather privileged in Jamaica, and this transition put us in a very unfamiliar lifestyle. We lived in a single room with our mother and took the city bus to get around. Though it was different, I found it all very exciting. Afterall we were in America! We grew up watching American television at home and were very excited to see all the things we had only ever experienced on T.V. in real life.

I was particularly excited to try strawberries. When my auntie would come back home from living in the Cayman Islands, she would bring us American snacks and cereals. I really liked cornflakes, but was always heartbroken when I cracked open the box and didn’t see the beautiful red strawberries that glistened on the front cover, nestled in a delectable-looking bowl of cereal. When we first went shopping in the grocery store, I was bursting with anticipation to try this long-coveted fruit for myself. Back then, we didn’t import strawberries in Jamaica, so this was a long-awaited moment.

They were delicious. I was going to love America.

We did many of the same things we did in our home country in this new land. We went to school, watched our shows when we got home, and played games in the house after finishing our homework.

My mother was very nervous about letting us play outside as long as I can remember.

Our greatest interactions with nature came in the summers, when we would visit our great-aunt in the Jamaican countryside. Surrounded by the lush trees, bushes, and red dirt of our ancestral lands, I always felt a great peace permeating my being whenever we were there. I have a very strong memory of one summer when we packed a lunch and hiked up a mountain, where we met a beautiful lake and ate our meals in silence before the still, majestic water.

This feeling was contrasted to our beach visits, which always brought pangs to my tummy as soon as I smelt the salty Ocean air. I think the vastness of the Ocean struck fear into my solar plexus because of its sheer enormity. I always enjoyed my time at the beach, but that didn’t override the feeling that washed over me every time we visited. The feeling went away sometime in my teenage years, but I remember it viscerally today.

I learned to swim as an adult, but to this day, I would say I’m a beginner at the skill.

Navigating the water requires trust and surrender.

When I was about ten years old, I experienced my first menstrual cycle. I was very excited. My mother had preppd me long before so I knew what to expect and how to handle it…well sort of. My first period was very straightforward. The second one is when the drama began. I felt the pangs of pain my little mind could not comprehend. By this time, we had moved into a house in a lovely neighborhood, my mother had gotten her driver's license and a car, and we were quite familiar with our town and all its amenities. I was in middle school at the time. I remember dragging myself from my bedroom upstairs and crawling down to my mother. I could barely find the strength to knock on her door and tell her what was happening to me. She gave me some Tylenol, comforted me, and told me that she also experienced severe menstrual cramps like this whenever her cycle came until she gave birth to me and was liberated from the torture.

It was solidified in my beliefs that I would suffer like this until I, too, had my first baby.

During my high school career, I moved to three different states (Louisiana, New York, and finally California) and another country (Australia). Everywhere I went, I would routinely be picked up from school on the first day of my cycle because the pain made it impossible for me to focus on anything else.

I remember a particularly gruesome time when I was living in New York. My older cousin came to pick me up from school, and I had to take two trains and walk back home with her, going in and out of consciousness and making a dreaded stop in the subway bathroom along the way.

I didn’t know much about my body beyond what I was taught in health class, and given my mother and grandmother's history with these excruciating cramps, I figured it was normal. It would take decades for me to hear what my womb was trying to tell me, the only way she knew how.

Then it’s up to me, the heroine of the story, to right the wrong, fix the issue, and solve the problem, right?

Wrong.

Not only am I finding that none of this is true (Leonard Shelby, anyone), but there isn’t anything going wrong in the first place. I’ve dabbled in this idea on my spiritual path, and there are many ways it’s said in the various wisdom traditions. My new favorite is Goddess is in control. For me, the phrase simply means whatever force created, sustains, and ultimately destroys this mechanism we call life on planet Earth is always, always, in complete awareness of how everything here is unfolding. For Phil Connor, that force is the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil. For me, it is the Goddess, a personification of the I AM.

No system, person, or event is overlooked in her grand design, and the only reason I slip into the belief that it must be is due to an arrogance steeped in illusion.

Which is why I talk about the same thing. To incrementally sift myself out of this illusory state and instead allow myself to play the game of life from my own tune rather than trying to fix, control, or criticize it.

I’ve recently come upon the Gene Key Prophecy. According to the prophecy, 2026 is the year of closing the door on the old way of being human, and 2027 opens up a time of rapid evolution for human consciousness. The founder of the Gene Keys, Richard Rudd, likens this transition to the evolution of a dragonfly. For the first years of its life, a dragonfly lives as an underwater nymph. Then, when its time has come, it undergoes a rather gruesome metamorphosis where it becomes an airborne hunter. The life that the dragonfly lives would be something completely alien to its original state.

For me, this is hopeful.

When I look at the unfoldings in the world anchored in a state of being, I know for sure this isn’t the whole story. I don’t see humanity expressing its highest truth or playing its most joyful tune.

If we choose to believe the prophecy, then this is a snapshot of our own gruesome metamorphosis, and as challenging as it is to witness, it must be a necessary part of the process. Knowing that necessity doesn’t exempt us from the heavy and combustible feelings and sensations it provokes. But it keeps us mindful of our role at this stage. Surrender to the process, and let our actions align with the greater vision it serves.

In my animal card deck, the dragonfly represents the mind. Just as dragonflies flit about from one thing to the next, darting around effortlessly, so does our mind also exist in a constant state of movement. The dragonfly instructs us to bring awareness to our state of mind.

Lately, I’ve been actively bringing more and more stillness into my mind. I did a violet flame practice that revealed to me a great fear around letting go of my so-called holy, inquisitive, or interesting thoughts. I see them as my best friends, and I have a strong sense of self tied to them. In practice, I was instructed to give silence a chance. Allow it to become my friend as well, and just to see if it can be as good a friend to me as my eccentric thought streams have always been.

For those of us who survived our traumas through knowledge, understanding, and the world of the intellect (even if it is an intellect steeped in spirituality), it’s a tall order to leave this world behind, and yet, like the dragonfly, if I want to acsend from what I’ve always known for a world of light, transcendence, and freedom, I must let go of my previous state of being.

I must make room for a new day to dawn.

With that said, I have some very exciting news.

I’ll be releasing a new series entitled Womb Wellbeing.

Womb Wellbeing will take you through my journey of befriending and living from the womb space, the miracles I have experienced along the way, and the deeper work I’m called to do to facilitate Womb Wellbeing on our planet. I’m looking forward to sharing

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I don’t often feel the same excitement I used to about life, but this year is bringing up genuine excitement for me. I think it’s because I’m starting to understand that a lot of my inner anguish is caused by not wielding the energy I have access to.

Before I had my son, I was on a spiritual quest to explore and understand. I followed my curiosities and answered the most obscure calls for care I got from my body and spirit. After I had my son, I experienced a lot of grief in what I perceived to be the death of the person I knew myself to be.

One of our favorite pastimes is walking around the neighborhood in his pushcar. It’s always nice to look at our neighbors’ decorations and gardens. Last Halloween, one of the homes had a tombstone in the front yard. It said, “death is not an ending but a doorway to new life.” As I’ve been flowing with the heavy grief of releasing maidenhood, I got it in my head that I am a completely new person as a mother. While there is a level of truth to that, I’m at the stage where I see that all the life I lived before motherhood didn’t get sucked up into a vacuum somewhere. Instead, it has become the fertilizer for the new being I am now. As I find myself with the time and emotional space to pick up some of my old interests and hobbies, I see that who I was before is still very much alive in me.

All the lessons I learned have sunk in more deeply, and all the ways I used to wield my energy are now available to me with greater attention to detail and skill than before. Everything I’ve garnered up to this point has shaped the type of mother I am. My son is about to be two and a half, and I find that I’m allowing him to see that person more and more each day.

I think in those early days of motherhood, I had the idea that I had to sort of “entertain” my son. I would plan our days to keep us occupied and active, ensuring he got enough stimulation so he had good naps and nighttime sleep. Though it was a natural consequence, I didn’t primarily see being with him all day as an opportunity for us to get to know each other.

In our third winter together, I find myself slowing down and moving more with the flow of being rather than doing. Of course, we are doing things all day long, painting, playing in the backyard, making and eating food, reading, cleaning, and sometimes running errands. But now in my mind, these activities serve as a backdrop to our being together rather than the main purpose of our time together.

I recently watched a video encouraging folks to put down our phones and allow ourselves to be bored so that we can access our greatest ideas and give ourselves space to explore the bigger questions of life.

Dr. Arthur Brooks, Harvard Professor and author of The Happiness Files, cites an experiment where participants were placed in a room with nothing to do for fifteen minutes, except the option to press a button. The catch was that pressing that button sent a painful electric shock to their system. Most people choose to press the button rather than sit there doing nothing.

He talks about this part of our brain called the Default Mode Network that takes over when we are bored and can lead us to exploring the existential. Though this exploration can be uncomfortable, it is necessary for creating a life of meaning and purpose.

Regarding motherhood, I’m currently working within the framework of shared being and creativity rather than entertaining and teaching. It’s allowed me to share really inspiring moments of flow with my son and to take on even greater adventures together.

In December, we had family visiting us from overseas, and we all took a trip to Downtown LA. I would typically shy away from such a trip with Bear because of his high energy and robust curiosity. I get nervous bringing him into new environments with lots of variables because, as he put it recently, “I want to touch everything.” It was a lot of work keeping up with him in the city, but with my family's help and my willingness to be part of the process, we had a great time, and it was incredibly fulfilling watching him take in this new experience.

This new framework of purpose also creates meaning and peace in the smaller moments we share, like washing dishes together, because it encourages me to enjoy the time we share together rather than being hyper-focused on the goal of washing and putting away the dishes.

This year, I’m excited to see how this mindset shift plays out in motherhood, as well as in my creative pursuits and career.

Dare I say it, I’m excited to be bored and to see what comes out of that boredom.

As I did that, I truly felt the power of the sun on my side today. I felt lightness and clarity streaming into my system in droves. I’ve never quite spent my birthday just tuning in. Tuning in is always something I do as a part of each day. Spending my birthday tapping into myself, my body, and the energy all around me added dimensions of color, texture, and meaning to everything I did.

I’ve been guided to go on an information fast, which has helped my sleep tremendously the past week. It feels as though much of my ceaseless and feverish quest for wisdom has come to a halt. I by no means believe I’m done learning or have reached some pinnacle.

I just know that there are some points on a journey where it’s good to stop and observe the view.

I celebrated my solar return early with my sister. We went for high tea and a stroll on some truly gorgeous grounds. I felt the treetops transmit their ancient knowings to me while the fountain waters whispered of flow. The feel of the cobbled stone earth beneath me told the tale of consistency and precision, while the light of the sun brought warmth and vision. The billowing breeze coated our time with freshness and ease. No blessing was missed or lost on me.

Though I am never left to enjoy the good in isolation, time and time again, I am shown that there is one force here playing the role of light and dark. Good and evil. Ease and struggle. Not two. 🎭

There have been some upsets and blindsiding challenges that arose this year for me personally, and as the news makes its way to me (by hook or by crook), I sense the same is true for the collective.

And yet I know that it is through anchoring deeper into the self that any of us has hope of the liberation and peace possible with transmutation.

A few things have been revealed to be true beyond doubt this year. One of them is that if I allow rivalry to have a dwelling place in me, then I will create wars on every dimension of reality I traverse.

Sometimes it really seems like we're on the darkest timeline, but then I look inside myself and find an unextinguishable light. Every day I wake up to greater and greater puzzles, upheavals, and challenges, I am pushed deeper and deeper within.

There’s no real power out here, the world seems to scream to me from its screens.

Seek ye first…

And so I’m obedient. If nothing else, I am obedient. I run back in when boredom and curiosity coax me from the cave of my vibes. I run back in. When I’m there, I sense what I can do. How can I be of service? And how can I reconcile myself with myself? How can I end the rivalry and the wars? The conflicts and the upheavals. The stress and the strife. How can I ingest, digest, and manifest?

I’ve always been a big picture and ideas girlie, but my son has taught me that the big picture is made of small strokes. So I summon my calm, hold on to my crystals, light my incense, feed the lamp of mindfulness with my steps, and embrace my mission and vision.

35 taught me to move in alignment with the elements, to live a life of creativity and artistry, and to let go of my conditioning or drown with them. Above all it taught me the alchemy of the hermit. What it means to be hermetically sealed to that which I know to be illusory.

May 36 be a year of basking, instinctive mothering and boundless sharing.

What a time to be alive!

Rather than allowing our attention to be eclipsed entirely by the actions we take in life, he points us toward recognizing the energy with which we take those actions.

This means maintaining awareness of the quality of our energy as we transition from one task to another or from one place to another in our daily lives. It’s about noticing when we are taking actions out of habit energy or from a place of peace, creativity, acceptance, or the joy of being. This has been quite challenging for me, as I’m conditioned, like most of us, to move from point A to point B with very little room for deviation in between. In my style of motherhood, I’ve been called to go from A to W to D to M and then back to B again in the completion of any simple task. Anyone with young children knows that they are not concerned with getting tasks accomplished so much as they are captivated by every step in the journey toward achieving them.

They are at once enjoying the journey and also the source of many deviations from reaching the destination directly. Whether it’s the need to play, jump, snack, nap, follow a curiosity, or any innate urge, they indulge these movements along the way. When I’m not tuned in, I’m more concerned with accomplishing a walk than I am with greeting all the yellow flowers we see as we stroll.

My son teaches me to drink in the entirety of an experience and explore the little wonders that are opportunities for enjoyment in each moment.

In other words, he’s in the flow. Sometimes he’ll say a phrase or statement, and I know it’s the ancestors speaking through him. He’s reveling in the moment, taking it all in and encouraging me to do the same. When I’m not aligned, I see these deviations as distractions or annoyances. However, when I am aligned with my well-being and higher-frequency emotions, I recognize the value of immersing myself in a moment for experience and enjoyment, rather than rushing through it to get it done.

I’m learning that flowing with my son rather than trying to force my idea of what needs to happen in a moment is more often than not the most aligned energy. I see how he and his other generation Alpha friends are building on the work of the ancestors while embracing the ways we can care for and nurture humanities forward motion.

Sometimes ancestral urges to control or steer him will arise, and if I’m able, I allow myself to recognize the urge and still leave space to see if it is warranted. Most of the time I'm steering the ship of our day with strong, energetic leadership, to ensure safety and clear direction. But I’ve also noticed that there are so many times where he is the one teaching me what a moment is about than the other way around.

It’s been very humbling to see all the ways I’m so clearly wrong about what needs to happen or what the priorities should be, and he’s gracious enough to give me the kindest look that says, “It’s ok Yaya! You’re here now.”

When I reflect on the urge to force control that rises within me, I have compassion for the ways my ancestors perceived a child leading in a moment as dangerous or a threat. As adults we are so confident in our ability to protect ourselves that we fear entrusting anyone or anything else with that responsibility. Even the energy of the expansive Universe that brought us here in the first place. I’ve observed a conscious, uplifting, wise, and vast energy moving through my son to create moments of joy, love, connection, and reassurance for me and others.

Then in another moment, he’ll push to get his way by making a mess or following a curiosity that’s clearly out of bounds.

And so we buoy, yo-yo, and dance the dance of mother to child, and pure energy to pure energy.

While that’s happening, I see how the flow is taking the lessons of embodiment through peace in the face of challenges, laughter, dance, cooking, and cleaning that my ancestors cultivated—and using the lessons from exploration, authenticity, and movement toward ease that my son and his generation are exemplifying.

Although there is so much chaos and uncertainty on our planet right now, when I’m in that flow, I can find ways to bring beauty and steadfastness along for the journey.

I usually steer away from labeling or identification on my path, but it’s earth element season, so let’s brutally call a spade a spade.

Not only have I shied away from accepting my highly sensitive nature, as a Gemini moon, aka a keep it moving queen, I’ve actively ignored and denied it. I’ve said I was fine so much to the points I’ve believed it. Believing it prevented me from looking deeper. Being fine doesn’t mean you survived it. It means you assimilated the growth and expansion that it came to bless you with.

That is a brutal truth.

Let’s take a deep breath with it.

If that’s the case, then it means we’re not here to simply make it through our lives. We are here to weave the fabrics of events, people, situations, and things into the most authentic expression of the gold our souls are.

One of my teachers always reminds me that there’s no shame and condemnation here. If we realize we have been breathing a little and calling it life, we are always invited to wake up now.

To answer ourselves, body, mind, and soul, as they’ve bellowed to the verge of choking to get our attention.

To listen and respond to the life unfolding before us with as much (he)art, grace, and purity as we can.

To authentically and spontaneously live out the signature we’ve come here to sign with the ink of our daily breaths, and the paper of our actions.

We started with a brutal truth because we must be ruthless in the precision of our recognition. We are certain to miss things in the moment. It’s only human. Yet it is not superhuman to catch them on further reflection. On receiving the gem, they bestowed not as a criticism of what the self is but as a revelation of what it is not. Seeing how we have enabled, fed, and nurtured ideas that are as far from the true nature of ourselves as planet Earth is from Pluto.

The celestial body of transformation.

I’ve learned it isn’t an upward spiral at all.

It is an inward one.

Pushing us deeper and deeper within toward a self-knowledge that is so complete it glistens.

From our auras. From our touch. And from the words that flow through us. Even in its cadence and timber.

We must listen deeply to ourselves to know when we are not speaking our own words.

Until we know the highs and lows of our voice when it soars and dives unencumbered by the weight of some previous existence, we cannot truly say we recognize it.

As this full moon in Scorpio arises, I am reflecting and releasing much of what still lingers from those early months of motherhood. The trauma and depression that I described as being sensed by the door had already gobbled me whole and wore the I’m fine mask with glee.

I’m a highly sensitive being, and I am also a high-functioning being.

I have the ability to flit from heavy experience to the lightness of the present with swiftness and style; an ability I’ve been blessed with by my ancestral lineage, who have endured traumas unthinkable, but remained anchored in a peace that permeated the Christian hymns which flowed through them effortlessly on Sunday mornings.

But you see, everything in this maya has two sides. This is how the lila of duality is played.

Highly functioning means you must increase your subtlety in listening.

I thought postpartum depression would manifest as missing showers or suddenly collapsing into tears. Or being unable to effectively meet the tasks of daily life and believing the worst of yourself. Like the questions they ask you on the forms you fill out for postnatal visits.

No, for some of us, it is far less obvious.

For me, it was an internal resistance to life that permeated my nervous and thought systems on deep physiological levels. And yet I showered and ate and meditated and met the tasks at hand with presence and the belief that I was fine. Sometimes I would sense relief, but then a missed nap or any other unexpected turn of events would send what I considered to be myself plummeting. There must have also been the belief that motherhood means a series of plummets throughout the day, because even that was not alarming.

I carried on.

I met my son in the present moment with as much vigor as I could. I practiced Portuguese on Duolingo, maintaining an over thousand five hundred day streak. I made food, danced, started this substack, and I was drowning.

I didn’t realize how much till the new moon in Scorpio last year brought my cycle back, and so much emotion came flooding out when I had pushed myself beyond imagination. I was held in community, witnessed, and released from the chains that bound me silently and with kindness.

As duality would have it, I recognized both the chains that motherhood revealed in me and the key to releasing them. Motherhood has blessed me with the gift of deep inward listening.

Listening to ourselves goes so deeply into what our five senses perceive that it moves us beyond them. This is where I feel true spirituality begins to merge with science. We aren’t called to drop our minds and accept the illogical as fact. We are called to sharpen our minds to receive our truth on deeply subtle levels that only we can be aware of.

Call it music, science, spirituality, or beauty. It is tuning our instruments to ourselves so the unstruck sound of our heart chakra, the true meaning of Anahata, becomes the language of our lives.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas.

It’s taken me a lifetime to realize that bone-deep silence is a resonant sound my soul expresses from time to time. It’s actually quite predictable. Rather than fighting and pushing sound outward, I’ve been releasing and letting go, allowing the silence to replenish me. And boy, has it been nourishing.

I haven’t been writing much lately. I’ve been living a lot and playing a lot. Bear’s high energy has blossomed into me signing him up for many activities and scheduling many play dates. All fun things. As a result of these activities, I’ve missed my newsletter community dearly. This group has grown so much in my absence, and I’m so grateful for the patience of my readers. I send a heartwarming welcome to those who have joined the journey.

For those new here, I write about how motherhood is watering and fueling my spiritual awakening. At this point in the journey, I am embracing the lessons of the elements in deeper, more prolific ways than I thought possible. I started with water in Pisces season. I worked with the concept of flow in a way that shifted and transformed so much of my views and standpoints. For one, I embraced the fluidity of views & standpoints conceptually. I’ve always had an inkling that each individual is a universe unto themselves, as I integrate the deepening in empathy offered by Pisces season and the journey Venus recently took in retrograde, I’m getting a glimpse of the color and nuance that these universes contain.

Now, as we settle into the spring and the fires of Aries season, I am held by the natural wisdom that emanates from its light. The fire is teaching me the wisdom of responsibility, I particularly enjoy AYAORA’s term response-ability. What makes us able to respond appropriately to the stimuli that enter our field? Giving us the courage, resolve, and sensitive will~power to create change. Not (mis)using that light to nit-pick or criticize but to reconcile situations to wholeness, to the best of our present moment ability. With the greater empathy cultivated from the water, I’m more confident to hone the power of the fire.

More able to be there for my sons big feelings and staying in the center of my belly where my flame transmutes it all. Being grateful for knowing that it is able to assimilate and digest anything.

And this too.

These days have been a lot of recognizing the mystical in the mundane and the mundane in the mystical.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook The Nurture Revolution by Dr. Greer Krishenbaum. Dr. Krishebaum is a neuroscientist who specializes in infant development. In this work she systematically dismantles the many myths about infant brain and behavior that uphold our low-nurture culture. She expounds on the significant impact that nurture has on the human brain’s development between the ages of 0-3 years. During these years, the foundation for what will lead to the development of the emotional and then thinking brain later on in life is established. The level of nurture received directly correlates to how resilient and creative the brain can be. Nurture can override early traumatic events (such as a challenging pregnancy or birth) and even predispositions to certain illnesses or mental and emotional challenges. After these critical years, our brains are basically set in stone…until we become parents. When we undergo matriescence and patriesence, we experience neuroplasticity in those parts of the brain that were established all those years ago, and now we have the opportunity to reshape them through high-quality nurture of ourselves and our babies.

Fascinating stuff.

I carry the insights of the research and experiences she shares throughout my daily experience as my son navigates the shifting waters of growing up. I recognize the ways I am growing within as we accompany each other on this path. As we move into our own experience of what it means to thrive.

The way I’ve chosen to parent hasn’t been easy (is any??). It requires immense patience, a sharp attunement to my son, and ferocious loyalty to my intuition. It has been so validating to learn how much it can make a difference to stay on this path. Dr. Krishenbaum states, “When you feel challenged by nurture, this is why: You are doing something profound. You are doing tremendous work building a brain, the most complex thing in existence besides perhaps the universe. You are building countless brain cells and receptors in your baby’s brain with your brain. This is intense, deep work and something to truly be proud of and celebrate.”

So for thriving here in this groundbreaking work I’ve taken to prioritizing celebration. Here’s to over a year of sharing my journey on Substack ~ thanks again for being here🎉.

It’s a new year.

Each time I put him down he wakes up and screams because he can’t breathe. Whatever you’re thinking/suggesting I tried it. He just gets stuffy again before he has enough time to nurse back to sleep.

I had a different letter planned for our next encounter but it isn’t quite ready yet.
So instead I’m sharing what’s alive for me right now.

I downloaded an app that alerts me about the wild fires, but I had to delete it because too many new ones kept popping up on my notifications, and I couldn’t shut each one off fast enough.

That’s the external climate here where I live in Southern California.

The internal climate is a bit cooler. Shockingly. I feel quite clear and level-headed. Even as the horrifying images flash across multiple screens in our home somehow I sense the peace. And so I send peace to those in the midst of the fires to those in the midst of loss. Who must start over. In the dead of winter.

In the new year, new dimensions of my psyche are opening up themselves to me. I recently learned that our galaxy was named for breast milk that splattered across the night sky when the Greek Goddess Hera was startled while nursing Hercules.

The Milky Way.

She pushed the baby Hercules away when she realized it was him. To push away a nursing baby is quite destructive. From that destruction, all of this arose.

In the mythology.

Now is not quite the time to contemplate the universes that may arise from the ongoing destruction of these fires. At least not for me.

Now is the time to grieve. To grieve with those grieving and perhaps in so doing make their burden a little lighter.

Yesterday I saw a video of Ram Dass talking about the time he took LSD when going to his mother’s funeral. “I wanted to enjoy the funeral,” he said. I know what he meant. He wasn’t saying he wanted to have joy from the act of laying his mother to rest but that he wanted to enjoy the moment of being and gathering and remembering her.

He never said if he enjoyed it.

This isn’t to say that there can be peace and joy while there is grief but to state simply that there always is. While grieving what is lost there is joy for what was salvaged ~ even if that was no material possessions…only the lives. While there is worry and concern there is peace if only in the sky. If only in the earth that has seen of these fires behind it and will see many more ahead.

I guess it’s just my nature to see things this way.

If you have a moment to spare, please breathe in peace and hold a little grief for all of us. But also, please put it down again and strive to enjoy your day.

I shift from our usual programming to share an experience I enjoyed with my good friend Janine a few months ago. She invited me to her YouTube channel to explore what sacred means, and to share something special with her community. The series is aptly titled Show n’ Tell.

Janine is a yogi, mother, and Somatic practitioner. We met in our local yoga community four years ago and connected around the many similarities in our journey. I was so excited to be on the show when she invited me, and I began contemplating the assignment with glee.

Reminiscent of our kindergarten assignment of the same name the series aims to showcase all the beautiful and significant things her guests want to highlight in the world and bring different perspectives to an exploration of the sacred.

What came through, to share, were some tools that have aided me in grounding and beautifying my practices. I decided to share them in a particular order that aligned with the unfolding of my path. The journey would start with the Holy Water, then move to the Herbal Body Oil, culminating with Flower Essence-infused water.

It was a beautiful sunny day when we, arrived at Janine’s home for the video. Greg and Bear joined me and played in her family’s lovely backyard while we recorded. She was incredibly energetic and buzzed with the playful energy of creativity. We caught up a bit about life happenings and after some technical setups and sound checks, we started recording.

Our conversation answered the essential question but also covered how we move in and out of practices seasonally, how it takes mothers 3 years to restore our mineral supply after pregnancy (!), and the importance of increased support from the community & ourselves as we move through our experience. It was so engaging that the time just flew by. After recording we shared some insights about recognizing that our platforms have a life of their own and embracing our roles as vessels that bring that life into reality.

It was an enriching experience and I am so happy to share it with you. The video went live this week and is available here. Please check out Janine’s channel, enjoy the video, and maybe watch a few more from the series.

Till next time💚

Now, that doesn’t mean that reality itself changes, nor does the shift in states transform the essence of what water already is. Whether it is the crisp vapor above the Swiss Alps, a magnificent iceberg at the North Pole, or the warm flowing waters of the Caribbean Sea, water is always essentially H2O.

The change in states allows the transformation of water’s frequency. Frequency is the rate at which an energy current changes direction per second. This can be seen, with water, as when it is ice (at its lowest frequency) it exhibits no physical movement. As liquid, it moves and flows; as vapor, it moves so fast we can’t even see it with the naked eye. With each change in frequency even though it remains the same, and the environment is the same, its personal experience of reality profoundly shifts.

When its frequency is low or slow it may experience itself as an Icicle in the Swiss Alps hanging from a fragrant mountain pine. As the frequency rises it can be the liquid in the North Pole, experiencing the depth and vastness of the Arctic Ocean. When the frequency increases even more it can become vapor in the Caribbean as the thick humidity that blankets the beach on a hot sunny day.

The more heat and pressure is applied to it the quicker it shifts states and expereince.

Water isn’t self-aware in the same way we are so it offers no inner resistance to the heat and pressure that bring on the changes in frequency it goes through. Our resistance is an unfortunate downside to our self-awareness, but an upside is that we can consciously direct and participate in this change of frequency if we choose to.

As a species, we’ve been changing our state since our very emergence.

Evolution didn’t stop when we became upright.

It continues and the two agents that fuel its process are physiological heat and pressure.

Think about your own life experience. Remember a time that you faced incredible heat & pressure (what we call stress). What changes came out of that experience? How did you go from stagnation to flow or maybe even from flow to the total lightness of being that accompanies a radical shift in consciousness?

For many of us, our teenage years were a time of deep transformation. Where our dense (icey) sense of self completely shifted as we encountered the pressures of adulthood. The caveat is at that time in our lives we didn’t have the wisdom we have now.

With wisdom comes clarity and skillfulness.

Life is adding immense heat & pressure to the collective at this time. We’re evolving from the dense, fearful, materialistic, disconnected higher animals that we’ve become into the expansive, connected, and aligned beings we have the potential to be. This requires a complete shift in consciousness that would move us into an entirely new frequency of being.

In this new frequency even though we’d still be inhabitants of planet Earth (the environment) and we would still be essentially humans our experience of reality would shift completely.

We can see the need for this shift all around us when we see the horrifying world events, egregious misuse of power, and the insane way we are treating our planet and resources. I’m sure we also see it in our personal lives in the ways we are being pushed by our life circumstances to dive deeper, get more resourceful, and connect with our communities in mutually beneficial ways.

Responding latterly requires clarity and skillfulness. Clarity and Skillfulness are the flowers that blossom from the rich soil of understanding.

Since the heat and pressure are already being applied by life it behooves us to work with it. This is what I call learning how to burn.

Understanding What is Happening

The first thing we need to understand in this process is what exactly is happening.

Without understanding this we fight, scratch, claw, and argue with reality till we are blue in the face. There’s no logic or real goal in this behavior. Some part of us knows that it won’t change what has already happened. It arises in us out of what Thich Nat Hanh calls habit energy.

"Habit energy" in the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh refers to the powerful, often subconscious patterns of thought and behavior that automatically drive our actions, pulling us towards certain responses without conscious awareness, essentially acting as a force that can prevent us from being fully present in the moment.

One way we understand what is happening is to recognize habit energy arising in us.

Habit energy arises as a response to heat & pressure (stress) because that is how we have been programmed to respond to it from the level of consciousness (frequency) where we currently find ourselves. If we notice that we are steeped in resistance, negative thinking, or on a spiral of heavy and intense emotions then we know that we are in the grip of habit energy.

Now with that realization, we can begin to make sense of our circumstances.

So what is happening?

We are going through the heat and pressure necessary to change our state and thus our frequency.

This heat and pressure are aiding the evolution of the human species. They are what allow us to evolve our consciousness. If we become aware of habit energy we can watch how it operates in our bodies, minds, and the world. This awareness already represents a profound shift in frequency because as we become aware of dysfunction we no longer willingly align ourselves with it.

With this understanding the rage that wells up while we’re caught at a stoplight, annoyances that overtake us when we’re stuck in a long line or the deep pain and sorrow we experience when we look on at the immense suffering of many around the world can begin to serve a greater purpose.

It’s not that we automatically become grateful for our suffering when we understand its purpose, that’s a much longer journey on our collective quest, but at the very least we’re not as confused and shocked by it. This understanding allows us to relinquish our resistance to the best of our ability and move toward thoughts, feelings, and actions that are more aligned with the greater purpose we see unfolding.

Understanding Your Tools

To cooperate with the shift in our frequency we need to work with shifting our bodies and our minds. There are many, both ancient and modern, tools that aid us in that task. We live in the information age so we’re able to find a myriad of techniques to work on transforming our thoughts, feelings, and actions to align with those of higher frequency with a simple google search.

Whether we are using any physical exercise/movement, hypnosis, breathwork, journaling, or even talking to a trusted friend/guide the most important tool is self-acceptance.

We must first accept where we (humanity) currently find ourselves. Accepting doesn’t mean we agree or align with the dysfunction we notice ~ it just means we accept the reality that even though we notice it we don’t take it to be who we essentially are.

Without self-acceptance (or self-love if you’re able to be lavish) every tool we use will be tainted with the corrosive energy of hatred. This renders the tool ultimately ineffective and leaves us believing that we are dependent on certain states of mind and body to truly be ourselves.

We can create stories about how the state of our home, relationships, finances, and any external circumstance is to blame for our inability to truly love and be ourselves completely.

With self-acceptance, we can align with life for the long haul. We don’t need to see immediate results to feel better because we aren’t using our tools to feel better we are using them to align ourselves with evolution. With this attitude, it doesn’t matter how many times we fall back into habit energy or how triggered we get by the behavior of others we understand that evolution is a lengthy process and our tools are there to support us through this journey not simply offer us a quick fix.

Understanding Your Essential Nature

Remember I said that whatever state water finds itself in it always remains essentially the same substance?

Well so do we.

Whether we find ourselves triggered, joyous, succeeding, failing, on the receiving end of kindness, or brutality one thing remains consistent.

It remains (and has remained) constant for our entire lives. That constant fact is that we are ourselves.

One of my teachers would often tell folks it doesn’t matter if you believe that God exists ~ can you debate that you exist?

You know that you exist because you are in there being yourself.

You have always been yourself.

There is not a time that you are not yourself. Regardless of the state of your body, mind, or the world, you have and will always be yourself.

Now what that self is only you can know for sure. We must dive into what it means to be ourselves and what we truly are.

In order to know what we are it is helpful to realize what we are not. Since we have been in our experience then we must rely on our own experience for the answers. We have experienced our bodies at 5 years old, 20 years old, and whatever age we are now and it has changed a lot throughout that time. Our minds on the other hand can change from moment to moment. And yet this sense of being ourselves is untouched by the changing of our bodies and our minds.

Which must mean that what we essentially are is more than our body and mind.

Get curious about what that more is and inquire into the nature of who you are. When we do this through becoming conscious of our thoughts, feelings, and actions we move from the frequency of habit energy to that of a deeper consciousness.

This is how we align ourselves with evolution and the transformation of our species.

Eckhart Tolle says:

When we talk about watching the mind we are personalizing an event that is truly of cosmic significance: through you, consciousness is awakening out of its dream of identification with form and withdrawing from form. This foreshadows, but is already part of, an event that is probably still in the distant future as far as chronological time is concerned. The event is called - the end of the world.

We’ll talk more about what this end of the world means in our next letter. Till then I’m sending you so much compassion and grace as I know you are facing incredible heat and pressure in this world. Thank you for continuing to face your fires. Thank you for allowing your frequency, and that of our planets, to shift.

One of those individuals who has always held a special place in my heart and mind is Queen Nanny, the great 18th-century leader of the Windward Maroons. I dedicate this birthday newsletter to honoring her by sharing how she wielded her spiritual prowess against a mighty and tyrannical empire and won.

The Maroons were former slaves who escaped from both ships and plantations and created communities on parts of the Island that were inaccessible to the British.

Queen Nanny often led her group of 500 half-starving Maroons armed with her sacred knowledge in warfare, spiritual wisdom, and the topography of the land to repeated victories against the heavily armed and provisioned British empire. When people ask me about the power and purpose of spirituality in everyday life I think about Nanny and the Maroons.

One of Nanny’s tactics was an incredibly sophisticated system of camouflage she created and trained her soldiers in. While the British bungled their way into the forests with heavy black boots and bright red coats Maroon soldiers became a part of the forest covered in branches and leaves. Under Queen Nanny’s training, they developed incredible breath and motion control that enabled them to stay still for hours on end on the paths the British would take to try and find them. It is said, that the art of camouflage was perfected by the Maroons to such an extent that a British soldier would hang his coat on what he thought was a tree only for it to animate and chop his head off.

Much of what we know of Queen Nanny has been passed down through oral history and folklore. Most commonly she is said to have been born in Ghana and brought to Jamaica as a slave. Yet it is also said that she was born in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Other tales have her being born in West Africa and willingly being captured as a slave when she heard the call of her people suffering in slavery. Still, there is another tale of her coming to Jamaica as a free woman who may have even owned slaves herself. The mysterious nature of her origins is due to the African, and later Jamaican, tendency to use our ancestors as characters in our folktales.

Two stories give us insight into the strength, wit, and spiritual wisdom Queen Nanny held. They are Nanny’s Pot and the bullet-catching story.

Nanny’s pot was a big cauldron-like pot placed on a mountain path near the edge of a cliff. It is said that the pot boiled with no fire beneath it and when British soldiers would look inside they would pass out and fall to their deaths. The positioning of the pot made it so the following soldier couldn’t see that the one before him had just died investigating it and would thus meet the same fate. Legend has it that Queen Nanny used her vast spiritual knowledge of herbs to concoct a chloroform-like substance that caused the soldiers to lose consciousness. This use of herbal remedies was also used to cure and aid the Maroons in surviving the harsh conditions in which they lived. The location of Nanny’s pot is later said to have been a place on the mountain path where two rivers joined which gave the image of boiling water without a flame. Queen Nanny was famous for using her familiarity with the Jamaican Terrain to outwit the British.

The second story is the most famous. The Bullet Catching story. Queen Nanny is said to have caught British Bullets volley for volley with her bare hands whenever they shot at her. It has even been said that she would throw the bullets back at them! This story has deteriorated over time into a tale of Queen Nanny having caught the bullets with her backside. This version of the tale is the most well-known as you would presume. Either way, it depicts her incredible presence, skill, and body awareness.

A legendary figure who led her people to freedom and peace Queen Nanny teaches me that when we are spiritually connected to our image of the divine, our selves, and the Earth we can survive anything.

In 1734 after 6 years of fighting, sustaining immense losses, and never being able to defeat them the British sued the Maroons for Peace, and a Treaty was signed.

According to, A History of Queen Nanny by Karla Gottlieb, “The spiritual side of life was very important to the Maroons; it was not separated from the other parts of life. It was incorporated into military strategies, into the raising of children, and into the daily lives of the people.” The practice wasn’t relegated to one day a week and it wasn’t seen as something done to take care of themselves in the afterlife. It was something that sustained the people during their present lives through incredible challenges and against insurmountable odds. Queen Nanny is most revered as a spiritual leader and all the success that brought to her and her people speaks to the depth of power we all have access to when we connect our daily living with the divine energy that powers it.

Bear and I are a lot more active these days. He’s a true explorer and I’ve learned that, unless I want to keep chasing him for pot covers and moving everything that hasn’t been nailed down to higher shelves, I need to provide him with a wide range of landscapes to feast his senses on.

It’s a great change of pace from last year around this time when we were essentially homebound (and loving it) as we got used to our new lives together.

We’re nicely into the fall now, and as a fall baby, I always feel at home during this time. I feel the call to go deeper within and integrate more of my learnings as I transform into whatever being 35 years young will bring me. As a result, I’ve decided to publish these letters bi-monthly during this time. We may return to weekly as the season shifts, but we’ll see.

I realize that The Hearth is a living entity that speaks to me in vibration. This has been a fruitful and healing space for me to create and I want to continue honoring it as such. These letters have been the real-time unpacking and exploration of my journey and I want to thank you for coming along and for being an attentive reader and an open heart for me to share this space with.

I’ve been publishing on Moon-day as the energy of the space has aligned deeply with subconscious understandings (and transformations) so beautifully embodied by the moon. However, as you may have noticed the most recent publications were released on Friday. For me, this is aligned with the luxurious and beautiful vibes of Venus that Friday is named for.

As an artist, it is always my intention to use the resources I have to create more beauty, awareness, and authentic expression in the world. Creating in this way brings me great joy, purpose, and centeredness. I hope to continue sharing the juicy realizations revealing themselves to me on this journey in many forms. I feel particularly called to explore collage work and other mediums of expression. I’m sure I’ll be sharing those here as well.

Lastly, this is a moment of celebration here at The Hearth as we have reached the six-month mark. I clearly remember the pull I felt to write about my experience when I started this publication and your amazing responses that have encouraged me along the way. It’s hard to believe so much time has flown by.

So far you’ve journeyed with me through many of the mundane moments of motherhood as I eeked out all the golden nuggets sprinkled throughout it. As we enter this last part of the year we’ll get more mystical as I share more of my learnings in that realm.

There will be history, poetry, and maybe even a song that meets us here. I’m excited for what’s to come and hope you stay cozy and enjoy bountiful harvests.

As we enter the darker part of the year when Mother Nature initiates the process of letting go I feel aligned and supported in doing the same.

Today I want to expound on the second gem I mentioned in Reflections.

Everything is personal.

While reading Courtney’s comment on this piece I realized that this is a radically different stance to how Motherhood and life's challenges in general are addressed in the world. We often hear “don’t take things personally” on these paths, and in fact, this is one of the Four Agreements in Don Miguel Ruiz’s spiritual staple of the same name.

This isn’t the view I started with on the path but it’s the one I have now from where I am on it.

What I’m saying isn’t contradictory to this advice at all. It’s a perspective from a different angle of it.

At one stage of our journey, it is very true that we mustn’t take the behavior of others or events that arise on the path personally. This is because our sense of self is often connected to a meaning-making mechanism prone to negativity and blame. Through the lens of that programming, we take these experiences to mean something about the wrongness of ourselves or others.

To bypass this unconscious process we are guided not to take things personally to avoid getting lost in the sauce around our interpretations of reality.

However, after we’ve become aware of this process within the psyche we are now tasked with facing it as we previously faced the many challenges and tribulations that live at the surface of our experience.

I was introduced to this way of seeing things by Michael Singer who authored The Surrender Experiment & The Untethered Soul. He talks about the magnificence of creation and the way the present moment is interdependent on every single event that came before it. It is a way of acknowledging that the separation we create to understand experience is only true in our mind (which doesn’t make it wrong or trivial it just makes us prone to being trapped in a single way of interpreting things when we don’t open ourselves to the greater context that everything arises from.)

In Reflections I talked about the experiences presented before me as an opportunity to know more about myself through noticing how I receive them. You see we don’t often know what is going on in the subconscious because it is just that ~ below our conscious level of perception.

The way we find out is through paying attention to ourselves and the ways we respond to life unfolding in the way it has for millennia, with a series of ups and downs in its flow. When we see what our relationship is to that flow we see how our relationship is to life itself.

Knowing this gives us a greater understanding of why we experience life the way we do. If some things are revealed that make the experience tense, antagonistic or scary then now is our chance to release any meaning making that is creating that pattern inside us. The task before us is to either choose to protect this dysfunctional sense of self or to let it go and instead align ourselves with being of service to what life is doing now?

That is what I’ve been up to in my Motherhood journey. Being of service and letting go. That is why I now see that everything is personal. It’s all helping me to let go more and more each day.

I’m visiting you in the form of this letter today on a Friday instead of Monday. Bear turned one on Sunday and we had a little gathering to celebrate. It was so lovely to be with community and reflect with others on the journey of this first year of motherhood. A pal wished me a happy re-birthday under my post about the party. So sweet. It got me contemplating how I’ve been reborn this year and all the things I learned. Below are some of the wisdom gems I’ve gathered from the caves and caverns of motherhood.

(BTW I think rebirths are available to all of us whenever we decide we need them. So we don’t have to wait on a birthday or a big event to allow ourselves to be born a new.)

Nothing is etched in Stone.

Even the stone itself is made of space and many days demanded that I abandon my plans, concepts, old patterns, and past conditioning to say ‘yes and’ to the present moment.

Everything is personal.

The dog barking that wakes the baby up. The mishap at work which keeps Greg away longer. The food Bear hates today that he loved yesterday. All of it. It’s all teaching me about myself. It’s all a gift placed before me by creation. How am I going to receive it?

Stand on Business.

The longer I’m in the parenting game the more I realize that a lot of advice is useless when it comes to my journey. Now is not the time to ignore my instincts in favor of what others are doing. Others aren’t raising my baby. I am. I’m entrusted with the task of tuning in being fully present and recognizing what he needs from me and what the moment needs from me. It’s time to trust the work that has taken me this far.

St. Francis is one of my son’s guides and his prayer came into my reality recently. I’ve been keeping it as a whisper and it’s been holding me through the present times. I hope it offers you some peace as it does for me.

I also wish you a Happy Re-Birthday when it comes🎉

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, 

grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

àṣẹ

This is why I have focused a lot on grounding while on my spiritual path to ensure that I embody all I learn and create real-world applications of spiritual knowledge. I’ve always relied on my community and my yoga practice to ground me. That is until I got pregnant. The entire journey of pregnancy and motherhood has been the most grounding experience for me. Pregnancy put me squarely in the body all day as I had to navigate and tend to the various symptoms that would show up as my body entered the many phases of the experience.

Giving birth, which was a 36-hour process, was also immensely grounding and took me to new depths of experiencing and embracing my body. Then there was the journey of healing from birth and being an exclusively nursing mother. I’ve never felt more inside my body than I do at this point in life. I find it to be amazing. It does have its challenges at times as I can vividly feel when trauma or stress is being held in the body in ways that I never used to be aware of. However, with this greater awareness, I find myself more often than not releasing and allowing myself to anchor in even deeper into the present moment.

I remember having moments of bliss just drinking my morning tea in peace when I was pregnant as contrasted to the mornings when nausea and fatigue riddled my system. Now as I spend most of my time with my baby I find myself tapped into the simplicity of the moment as I point out all the elements that make it up. On our walks together I’ll often describe what we are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling which brings a certain vibrancy to them.

Being too grounded can have its downsides, as it can prevent us from being imaginative, creative, and open to possibilities. But if we’re doing it right, we can also allow our grounding to open us up in other ways—to the joy of the simple things and to the intricacies of what it really means to be alive.

What it feels like to observe the breath going in and out and feeling the subtleties of the heartbeat and the state of the body in each moment. I’ve recently been working with toe squats, massage oils, and embracing my environment to foster greater grounding and delightful effects. Living so much of my early life in a whirlwind has allowed me to be extremely grateful and embrace this period of slow and grounded daily living.

It was the love of it.

I enjoyed the entire process.

The ritual of leaving my home or setting aside a space and time for the practice was sacred to me.

I felt my system shift as I made the way to meet myself deeper. I was invigorated by the flow of my body and enriched by the stillness of savasana. I was uplifted by my community when I practiced with others and anchored deeply into self when I practiced alone. I met aspects of self ~ body and mind with newness.

I allowed layers and layers of unraveling to occur each time I stepped on my mat. This devotion, this love shuttled me farther and farther into the world of self-knowledge and self-care.

I incorporated various other modalities into my practice like crystals, reiki, plants, and tarot. All in a sensual dance with myself traveling to greater depths of being. I went on to take yoga philosophy classes, studying Patanjali’s yoga sutras, and taking workshops on somatic yoga and yoga therapy.

All of this was born from joy, excitement, and curiosity. It’s not that the practice was always lighthearted or fun ~ sometimes heavy emotions or wild and uncomfortable thoughts would arise but the love of the practice kept bringing me back. It became a trusty way of processing emotions, releasing attachment to thoughts, and renewing my spirit.

The love kept pulling me towards it and I followed in devotion.

After eleven months since I’ve flowed in a consistent practice I’ve started rolling my mat out at night or during nap time after Bear falls asleep.

It feels like both a welcome home and a grand new adventure. Although my mind and body have shifted so much in this motherhood journey, my spirit remains the same.

Steady.

I’m moving with slow, deliberate, and low-to-the-ground practices, which are a balm after a day of mothering.

One thing about love is that it is beyond time and space so like Maya says, “Love liberates. [If] I love you [it doesn’t matter] if you are in China or if you are across town.” Though I haven’t been in my physical practice in the same way this first year of motherhood it has done nothing to quell the love and devotion. So as I roll myself out to the new being I am, I continue to let the pull devotion be my guide.

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Motherhood has been a great clarifier.

It brought holy water streaming down the pavement of past conditioning. Many seemingly sacred markings etched in stone reveal themselves to be the chalk drawings of children scribbled on a sidewalk.

As each emotion knocks on the door to find their place they are inspected. Can I breathe deeply while hugging it? Do I sense my toes when in its presence? How are my eyes? Can I see that the world is made up of vibrant aliveness?

If the answer is no then they’ve got to go. Not by force, threats or any forms of coercion. Just through letting it run its full course. Feeling it deeply and allowing the emotion to have motion. Motion in pen, body, or sound matters little. I just need to let it out. Just open the door to the home of me and tell it ~ “no thank you. I am.”

Meeting responsibilities is important, but remaining connected to the source is vital. Vitality is my north star.

When I’m skating on the surface of my being it feels like gliding on thin ice. Tip toeing around endless undesirable possibilities. I move timidly. Hyper aware of the freezing deep beneath that threatens razor sharp shards should I miss a step and fall through. A world dominated by time, routines, missing out, and failed plans. Where everything is a danger, fight or flight is the modus operandi and pleasure lives only in memory or imagination.

Shuttling my body and baby from room to room, activity to activity, task to task everything tinged with tension and brief release before tension again. In these times the slightest challenge is an arduous inconvenience.

I can almost hear my guides, ancestors, and teachers murmuring from their side of things, “it’s only a matter of time before she trusts herself.”

Then a moment blossoms. A deep breath. A redirecting word from another. An encounter with a wise plant. A series of postures or a scent and a feeling that somehow helps me willingly sink. Ahhh. I can feel my feet beneath me again. Floating freely and yet secure in solid form. There was never any ice. Only a flowy dream of blues all around and inside me. The world of time collapses. Giving way to eternity in an instant. Routines aren’t so regular. They are the living threads that weave this story together with a pulsing heartbeat. What could I miss out on in a tale so well crafted? How could anything be a failure or an upset in a meticulously designed expression of oneness?

When I sink a little deeper releasing into my own vastness I become the pleasure I long for. Here and now. With weighted steps I know myself and I know my baby. The rooms, activities, and tasks move around us while we remain anchored. I’m sure of this space and all that unfolds within it. I embrace the perfection of a moment deeply felt.

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