Three years ago I had the really special opportunity to be a part of a Fellowship. Part of the fellowship was going on a three week backpack trip through the Utah Desert. When I was talking to one of the fellows during our backpack trip, she shared how her dad had passed away from ALS, the same disease my dad had recently passed away from.

She was this incredible and feisty business woman, truly making a huge impact in the world. I remember her saying to me that some of the times that she missed her dad the most, was when she had to make really hard business and life decisions, because he was the person she would go to for advice. 

My dad was not the typical business man, but he had an entrepreneur’s spirit and lived by the guidance of his heart. When I think about it now, he is the person that I want to go to when I need to make really hard life decisions, because I know he would reorient me towards my heart.

Three years ago, I ran a women’s circle series in Canmore, AB, to honour the cyclical nature of the Goddesses that we are as women. In one of the sessions, I brought in pressed flowers because I thought, What would be more Goddess-like than to cover each other's bodies in pressed flowers? Am I right?! When I brought out the flowers, I felt the call to gather around one woman at a time and, with her permission, place flowers on her body. We began by closing our eyes and connecting to the woman in the centre. Then, following our intuition, we placed pressed flowers on her body, sealing them on with affirmations, prayers and eyelash glue! The experience for all the women involved was profound, powerful and deeply sacred. I would go on to practice this ceremony with different women in different settings, each time feeling that deep healing was unfolding.

For Indigenous people, the phases of life are not solely governed by age, but determined through rites of passage, life experiences and wisdom gained. Therefore, he wasn’t saying that there were physically adolescent men running our countries, but rather men who had psychologically not gained the wisdom that comes with adulthood and elderhood. We only have to look at the state of the world to know this to be true within our bones.

Back in November of last year, I began to get these heart pains. At the time, my emotions were manifesting as physical pain in my body. When these pains would arise, I would often stop what I was doing, close my eyes, and bring my attention to the pain. I would breathe and ask my body what it wanted me to know, or what memory wanted to be witnessed. This process was deeply healing, and when I processed the emotions or the memories, the pain would cease. However, I wasn’t able to process the pain within my heart. I began to feel scared and overwhelmed, not knowing what to do. It was as though the pain was so deep within me that I couldn’t access it.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved stories. I loved being read them, and I loved writing them. As an adult, I see story as medicine.  It has the power to comfort us, connect us and heal us. When we share our stories with one another, we share the experience of what it means to be human.

In the spring this year, I bought a one-way ticket to Mexico for this October. Each full moon in October for the last three years, I have Moon Danced in Teotihuacan, Mexico. Each year, I have come down to Mexico to dance and then have immediately returned home to Canada. However, this year, I knew I was meant to stay in Mexico, but I had no idea why

For those of us who identify as women, somewhere along our journeys, most of us have internalized that we aren’t enough and that there isn’t enough for all of us. This feeling of not being enough and that there isn’t enough is a core wound that exists within us, known as the sisterhood wound. The sisterhood wound often has us unconsciously competing against one another for what we need and desire. As a result, the wound manifests within us as a distrust for one another, which keeps us divided and separated. For if we knew that we were enough and that there was enough for all of us, we would not feel the need to overexert and exhaust ourselves and compete against one another for attention and resources. 

The Beauty Way asks us to take our pain and transform it into our pleasure. This means not to resist, contract or fight through uncomfortable emotions when they arise, but to expand, feel and express them. From this space, we can ask the difficult emotions that are arising, how they long to be expressed. They may want to be expressed through stillness, stretching, shaking, singing, scribbling, drawing or dancing, to name a few. In doing so, we allow the parts of us that have been silenced and cut off to speak and be known.  

As I have shared in previous blog posts, in March of this year, I went through a traumatic experience in the forest. After this experience, my body was riddled with fear, and I couldn’t enter the forest. This was extremely devastating, for I felt like the forest had become a part of me. Since moving back to Canada in the summer of 2022 from Mexico, I had spent most days up until this time in the forest. I would experience deep grief when I was away for more than a few days.

I have come to intimately know that all the women that we ever were, in this lifetime and before, live within our wombs. They remain as a part of us, their stories and memories stored within us. This means that their lifetimes of experiences are imprinted upon us and therefore impact us in this lifetime. 

Last year, I attended my first women’s festival. It was tucked away on a parcel of land in Parsons, BC, and held within a grove of cedar trees. It was there that I walked on fire and remembered the witch that I once was. It was in returning to the festival this year through a collective prayer that I awakened the witch within me now.

A dear friend said that she came in this lifetime to be with Mother Earth. It touched me so much to hear her share this. This morning, I realized I came in this lifetime to translate her messages, stories and teachings. 

The teachings that I share come directly from the conversations that I have with Mother Earth. Sometimes they are direct transmissions, other times she provides me with symbols, words and images that I need to follow. I create art, I journey to her, I write, I pray, I sing, I do dreamwork, I hold ceremonies and have conversations with her. Sometimes the teachings are given in a day, and other times they unfold over months or even years.

It is a cool morning, and I am sitting outside writing this newsletter. I have a blanket wrapped around my thighs, two sets of socks on, and mittens. And, I am listening to my heart; she called me to write outside this morning. So, listening to bird song, I want to share what is on my heart. 

But what my heart longs to share requires a backstory, first...

I sit below a fir tree this morning, as I have every morning for the last two weeks. Grief fills my entire heart space. The pain feels too big this time. I truly don’t know if I can handle the fear and the grief that is engulfing me. Every day for two weeks, I have awoken with layers of grief, sadness and fear that surround my heart like painful armour. And every day I am called to go outside and sit below the same Fir tree. There, I connect to Mother Earth and allow myself to feel what is happening within me. Every day she shows me what is beneath the armour, and every day I leave, reclaiming a piece of myself.

The stories we tell ourselves matter. They matter so much that 95% of our actions are based on our subconscious stories. The quality of these stories deeply impacts the quality of our being and life. However, the sad truth is that most of us are often unconscious of the negative and untrue stories we carry within us. Many of these stories are inherited from our ancestors and come from unhealthy cultural values, personal wounds and traumas, and internalized beliefs. 

There is a sacred Sumerian myth about the Goddess and Queen of Heaven, Inanna and her descent into the underworld. In the myth, Innana embarks on a journey to meet with her grieving sister and Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal. The Gods warn Inanna not to go on the journey, but she feels culpable for the death of her sister’s husband and knows she must go. She makes the descent from heaven to earth and into the underworld.

Dear Friend,

Four years ago, I was in a Temazcal(sweatlodge) ceremony in Teopisca, Mexico and I had a vision about my future. I closed my eyes and saw myself walking down Highway 93 South, a beautiful B.C. mountain highway that I travelled as a child and as an adult. As I walked south down the highway, the highway behind me churned up into an impassable rumble. It was a clear sign that there was no going back to where I had come from. I kept walking and entered a pathless woods. With each step I took, I created my trail. Raven flew above, and I was given the message that the path would be created with each creative endeavor that I embarked on. 

Grow Sideways like the Tree

This is a story to remind you to grow downwards and outwards and you will naturally grow upwards!

Growing upwards as a story of success is one of the great values of the patriarchy and capitalism. We have been conditioned to feel that if we are growing and producing something then we are of value and therefore are on the right path. We have been told this story for generations and therefore have believed it. In my mind, it is not a good story, or a true story and there is an opportunity to tell ourselves a different one.