A few months ago, my husband, Oli and I happily found out that I was pregnant. The decision to intentionally become parents has been a journey for both of us.

Imagine if you will, a gorgeous midsummer’s dusk. Along with others, you’re gathered outside in the wilderness, perhaps in a clearing at the edge of a woodland. A bright, lively stream flows through the land and you can smell the subtle fragrance of wildflowers in the air.

Are you one of those vibrant souls who’s been punished for being “too much”.

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Believing that we are somehow inherently deficient and not enough is the biggest lie that we’ve been force-fed as truth from the earliest of ages.

Every time I sidestep my truth by fawning (people-pleasing), I abandon my Self - the essence of me, my soul.

I was recently reminded of the short parable of the Fisherwomen and the Flowers, as told by the great Indian mystic, Swami Vivekananda.

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It goes like this:

One of the most common issues that clients approach me for one to one work is around being burned out.

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This pandemic of perpetual burnout seems to be one of the most prevalent conditions in our culture, and alarmingly normalized - glorified, even - to the point that people don’t bother to address it until they’re teetering on a dangerous edge of a near-total system shutdown.

Let’s be honest, our prevailing culture of non-stop busy-ness and mental stimulation seldom allows for a slow, full-bodied, receptive “yes” to the helpless vulnerability of raw gratitude. Instead, gratitude has generally become a “life-hack”, a “doing-to-get” exercise, where the discomfort of embodied, heart-based surrender is generally absent.

Whatever you do, do not approach any journey towards change and transformation from the perspective of self-improvement (shudder!) or trying to “fix” yourself somehow.

Since the desert took me in almost a decade ago, I’ve been shedding layer after layer of ill-fitting beliefs lurking within me that were not of my conscious choosing; distorted value systems and their attendant powers to make meaning and create realities instilled in me by family, culture and society, who for the most part did not consciously choose these for themselves either.

I’m often asked to identify the audience sector or (horror of horrors) the demographic that my work, creations and offerings are aimed at.

​This makes me chuckle.

​A few lifetimes ago, I worked in an environment that sought to strip the human soul of all her rich, wild depths and reduce her to her lowest (and most meaningless) common denominator: a demographic which needs to be force-fed a specific flavour of scarcity and not-good-enoughness in order to keep her in a trance of feeling perpetually lacking and incomplete.

If ever there was a time that White Buffalo Woman needed to be called into the collective, it's now. And of course, when this sort of work is done in a group situation, the effects are amplified.

One of the beautiful souls who is participating in my membership program, Root + Rise recently reminded me of this powerful quote by the unforgettable bell hooks from her masterpiece, All About Love.

​If ever there was a time to remember and embody the urgent wisdom of hooks’ words, it’s now.

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The other day, my sister, Tara, told me a compelling little story about one of my favourite humans, my two year old niece, Ila (pronounced eye-la ;))

​Tara usually tells her “Ila makes mama happy.” To which Ila responds “Mama makes Ila happy.” This time she also went on to say, “Ila makes Ila happy.” And then proceeded to give her reflection in the mirror a wholehearted kiss.

Despite my inherently esoteric and mystical proclivities, I always found the notion of “Divine Timing” a tricky one to anchor and integrate.

A combination of ongoing deep-dive inner adventures around unveiling, dissolving and creating new, authentic meanings around deep, swampy layers of shame, voluntarily putting myself into the fire-walk of launching my first group container, and the loveliness of being in juicy conversation with a good friend led to me briefly talking about an event in my late twenties, when I still lived in England, that ruptured mine and my family’s life beyond all recognition.

In Part I, I described the differences between intuition + projection from an intellectual perspective. So very much more can be said, and I hope some of my observations encourage you to embark on your own lines of inquiry. This really is such a rich and nuanced topic, and one that can have a lasting and transformative impact on many areas of Life.

I’m often asked about how one differentiates between intuition and projection. For me, the answer invariably points towards learning to decipher the quality of energy and sensation which - you’ve guessed it - can be accessed through the body.

I don’t know about you, but to me the dominant culture of being liked + approved of - especially on the social media circuit - feels like a popularity contest hopped up on steroids.

​This is colonizer culture 101: where our priceless + indestructible innate self-worth is put under the absurd guillotine of external approval.

The Philosopher’s Stone is the desired outcome of (inner/outer) alchemy.

And VITRIOL is both the literal laboratory chemical and the individual’s fire of sublimating desire that sets the 7 stages of alchemy in motion. VITRIOL also transmutes and awakens into a blissful brain hormone - what I have come to understand as a sort of amrita - Sanskrit for nectar of the gods/of immortality, that exists largely dormant in all of us.