This time last week, I was struggling. 

Writing to you now, I am on the other side of the breakthrough I couldn’t see, but trusted was coming.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling around the East coast, where I lived before I was ALIVE. For most of my life, I had no faith, no self-trust and no will to live. I thought I was broken with no chance of repair. I hadn’t tasted true intimacy or unconditional love. I didn’t know my soul. I hadn’t discovered how powerful, how deep, how sensitive, and how worthy of love she was. 

I’m currently visiting New York City, where I lived from 2012-2018. I was miserable when I left. Suicidal, working in a field I had just gotten a masters in, but no longer had the mental or emotional capacity for. I had already been on antidepressants and in therapy for years, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, keeping myself alive on obligation to others and the imagined peace of being dead. 

In 2018, I moved to Los Angeles as a last-ditch effort to see if happiness was possible. I didn’t have faith, but there was nothing to lose. 

Fast forward to 2023. 

My five years in LA gave me exactly what I needed. Happiness, healing, spiritual connectedness and purpose in a deep, unshakable way.

But this trip to the East coast resurfaced the depression I worked so hard to heal.

On Monday, I went on a walk through one of my old neighborhoods and stopped in a spiritual store. I love them. I can’t get enough of them. Let me touch all of the crystals. Anyway. I decided to get a tarot reading.

It was a much needed affirmation of what I already knew. I was doing the right thing. I was on my path. And the emotions I’m feeling are guiding me. They’re telling me what supports my aliveness and what does not.

My soul knows that my next chapter is in Mexico, but I’ve been trying to hold onto the partnership I built in LA.

Unlike leaving New York in 2018, there’s a lot to lose this time. So I’ve been keeping one foot in as I poke the other out, doing everything I can to see if it’s possible to have both.

I still don’t have the answer to that question. But I needed to be clear about one thing.

My soul knows what it needs to be alive, and I’m not willing to sacrifice that.

I had a difficult conversation with myself. And I had a difficult conversation with my partner. Setting that boundary freed me to lean into the uncertainty of the present moment. To weather the emotions. Trust myself to listen. And enjoy the ride.

Last Monday, I arrived in Mexico. Since then, so much has opened up. I’ve learned new words, met new people, walked down new roads…you know, things you do when you’re in a new place.  But the most profound opening has happened inside me. Thursday, some mild stomach issues suddenly became unbearable cramps, fever and an inability to do anything but lie down and occasionally hobble to the bathroom, for hours. It was brutal. It was gross. It was humbling. And there was nothing I could do. 

Except, I’m a badass witch that can move energy. So as I laid in bed, moaning through waves of pain, I breathed and shook and held different parts of my body, helping it pass whatever was moving through me. 

For the last year, since a mysterious download from the Universe, I’ve been learning from my own body and others’ to figure out how this crazy shit works. Each time, I unlock deeper discoveries and validate wilder hypotheses from my intuition. Being so sick and forced to surrender so hard to “something else,” I got another peek behind the curtain. Consider this poem a recipe.

There’s a splinter in my chest. 

I can feel it. It feels like heartache. 

Old,

and deep. 

I’ve been pressing into it. 

Hard. 

Squeezing the skin and muscles. 

Trying to force it out.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way. 

Okay.

How do you extract a splinter? 

You soak it. You soften the surrounding flesh.

With time, and the right conditions, 

it works itself out.

And so I gently bathe it, 

in warm, soapy love.

I sit patiently beside it and say,

“Take your time. I’m here.”

It aches? I ache with it. 

I place my hand on my back. 

I can feel the muscles start to relax. 

A tear bubbles to the surface.

Do we all carry hardened hearts? 

Bony spines, laid brick by brick

to protect our tenderest parts.

But hardening doesn’t keep us safe 

from the hardness of the world. 

The wound inside remains, 

quivering within its cage. 

I’m reminded every time someone gets close,

or I’m in that certain pose, and my neck hurts. 

But my neck hurts all the time. 

A cold, dull pain I drag from place to place. 

It sits, like a stone. 

Heavy shield

I’m too tired to hold.

Every time I crash, I learn a new way to break. 

A new corridor breathes.

Life flows back

into parts of me I didn’t know were there.

The slower I move, 

the more my bones start to speak.

The cartilage unkinks.

My heart 

wakes up from the inside.

Pumping fresh blood,

a primal hum

shakes itself free.

It doesn’t want to be 

anyone I’ve ever been, 

only who it always was.

Born to swim, 

and dance, and run.

Go where there is life and take it in. 

Wherever you walk, create a path.

Smell flowers, light fires and laugh.

Sit in small, dark rooms with the walls painted blue

and cry.

Most of all, give it time. 

You can’t unfold all at once. 

You’re not a house of cards. 

Your being was built over years and years. 

And the threads of its coding are the oldest fiber. 

You can’t rush open space.

Gold only knows how to whisper.

So listen close,

and wait.