MY JOURNEY
"Dear Reader, It is a privilege to meet you here in this space."
It is often noted that many therapists, healers or practitioners in the wellbeing industry are thus so, because their journeys have in some way been touched by their own personal wounds, passions, innate abilities and experiences, and although obtaining many outstanding qualifications along their way, it is in fact the culmination of their own unique journey of experiences, that accounts for a great deal more, setting them and their offerings, all apart from each other.
I too hold this to be true, as to some degree I am one such story.
Although I prefer to identify as neither therapist, healer, coach, practitioner or any ‘thing’ as such… rather I am simply a Soul/Being of this Earth….one who has the privilege and ability to offer particular skills, abilities and teachings.
Many years ago now and over a period of several years, I trudged the excruciating pain and life debilitation that accompanied severe Endometriosis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Insulin Resistance, fluctuating Hormonal Imbalances, Oestrogen Dominance, Gut Dysbiosis, Salicylates sensitivity, Candida and numerous surgeries, to name a few.
Yet, I can say that it is as a result of, not in spite of, all those challenges and experiences, that led me to now live in integrity with the truest part of my personal Self, and path in life, working passionately alongside women from all walks of life, having done so now for many years. I do confess however, I have not always lived this intimacy of self and clean life of wellbeing. As a young woman, my regard and respect of Self was virtually non-existent on all levels – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I ate poorly and conveniently. Not having any understanding of nutrition, or the dangers of certain ingredients, additives, or fast foods, I was too conditioned and ignorant to take care of the health of my body, or to even think that I was doing anything wrong. As too was my belief of Self - so incredibly low, protective and critical, shying away and playing small, from an early lifetime of emotional and sometimes physical trauma, although I learned how to mask a mostly happy, confident, and seemingly normal front, and for the most part I actually was happy enough, motherhood being my greatest joy of all. Yet I could feel those stirrings that all of us feel at times, yet are not always aware of. I certainly wasn’t aware at the time, that’s for sure, that these incessant stirrings of ‘something not quite right’ were the voices from my Spirit, my Soul…the deepest part and very Essence of me, which I have come to refer to as my “Sacred Wild”... yearning for me to listen deeply to what I was feeling, then go beyond it, to reconnect and be in relationship with her. And most importantly… that we had way more to experience, to seek, learn and understand.
"I am a lover of the natural world" –
nature is my medicine healer. I greet the spirits of the forest with my own heartlight allowing myself at the same time to be swaddled within the forest's protective embrace, freeing the tangles from within my mind– this the most hallowed of energetic exchanges.
I am a lover of books, learning, history, ancient philosophies, rites of passage, ritual, ceremony and Truth -
These old ways continue to hold much as my teacher and healer. In order to pave a bright future we must first learn from the past...the true past, being heartfully discerning as we step…for much of the truth of our past has been forsaken, diluted and manipulated.
It was after the death of my very dear Nan, a month before the birth of my second child, 3 decades ago now, when my life began to unravel; exquisitely so. To say ‘exquisitely so’ now, actually makes my heart soar with gratitude for the gift that it gave me; hands down it was the catalyst to what got me from where I was to who I am today, and as with all human life, is still an ongoing journey, but truth be known they were also some of the darkest, messiest times of my life. Given nothing more than prescriptions or being told “What more can you expect Mrs Elks - you’re a mother of 2 small children”, from Western medical GP’s, or strong recommendations for hysterectomies by several gynaecologists, in the early years of my pain, left me feeling infuriated, but never hopeless. Not one of these medical professionals showed care or interest in how I felt, what I thought, what my lifestyle was like, as a real person. At that point, it became glaringly apparent to me just how lacking our western society was in teaching the sacredness of understanding one’s feelings and emotions, in favour of a system very much on influencing one to rather repel, avoid or bury pain and feelings – “just get on with it, keep going, push on, take this pill, have this surgery, just get on with it and take more action”. This had pretty much been my only experience in my early years. With these deliberate views teaching us that our way to a complete and happy life was to continually strive outside of ourselves, just keep going, find something that brings pleasure and happiness, with an almost complete disregard to the internal world of all feelings, the full spectrum of emotions, joys or pain, has been the very masculine energy that has been lopsidedly governing our earthly experiences for thousands of years.
With very little emphasis on taking the time to enter the soft stillness, quieter, deep, dark realm of the feminine through reflection or internal inquiry, self love and compassion; to rest, allow space or time, to simply BE, to really feel our way and understand the full spectrum of our emotional range and sensuality, not just through times of upheaval but at all times in the cyclical rhythms our lives take on; without all this we have no inner balance, and are easily influenced, led, overridden, controlled, disempowered and stagnant. We need to be asking what is truly there beneath our surface, why is it there, what do all these Parts of me mean, where did they come from, what may they be trying to reveal to me, what am I truly sensing, what am I truly desiring, what needs to be loved, forgiven, healed, understood or created? This is connecting into one’s feminine creative ‘Sacred Wild’ centre. I realised, to be the truly CONSCIOUS free spirits we are meant to be, completely WHOLE within ourselves, we must all, men and women respectively, return to living with unified equal measured balance of both the feminine will and emotion and the masculine mind in action. Too long we have endured the dominating imbalance, but collectively we must all, women especially, learn about our feminine energy again, embodying it within our hearts and sacred wild wombs, giving her the courage to feel and know her truth, then speak it into action and expression. Yet here in the throws of all my health challenges was my own expression being totally annihilated, and I had allowed it to be so through my unwitting ignorance and unconsciousness. Yet through it all, quite paradoxically, I held no blame or guilt, just this endless hope and deep compassion for my Self, in the absolute knowing that I can only know what I know, and that all things happen through my own creation when it's right and true.
"I am a lover of curiosity and discovery"–
Seeking and understanding the magnificence of our Natural World and how I fit into it. Reflecting and adjusting where needed, through different phases of my life, is a constant healer. The road forward never ends.
I am a lover of Soulful Connections and Intimacy of Self –
That internal spark forever connected in honour with Spirit, Source, the Natural World, Each Other and Self is my healer.
So, I learned to use my many years of pain and trauma as my way through, rather than them standing in my way and possibly taking me down. Time and time again I simply sat…sat with the wild stillness and silence…. teaching and guiding myself through numerous processes of self-inquiry with my humanness shadows– all those deeply charged emotional shadow aspects or Parts of my Self I thought was all that made me, me…those of doubt, guilt, shame,avoidance, not ‘enoughness’, unlovable, unloved, playing small so as not to be seen, fearful of the big wide world, not fitting in, being ‘weird’ and so on and so on….all those times I had unwittingly been unaware of how I had strayed so far from ‘home’ only to become who I thought I had to be…all those places hidden in the shade I had learned to identify as ‘Self’. But they were nothing more than each just a brick in the construct through social teachings, conformities, culture, experiences etc, all the forming and shaping of my so called ‘Personality’. In those moments I realised these ‘shadows’ were merely this construct I had learnt to build around what is essentially the absolute truth of who I actually truly was…am… deep in the powerful centre of my beautiful Divine Self…my Essence…my Soul … the unrealised parts of my Self, as a result of the thoughts, behaviours and beliefs I’d held, some of which I’d been carrying my entire life up to that point, which weren’t even mine, but were often projections from those who had been my greatest influencers and teachers in my early life, that I had learned and taken on as my own, and had created beliefs and stories about my Self based on those experiences. All this was creating conflict with my Soul's truest desires here in this humanness for this lifetime, and they had been manifesting as illness within my physiology. In exploring my interconnectedness with the entire Natural World as an individualised being, and that everything is energy, emotions included, I began the dance of transformation through. The reacquainting and unfolding of my spiritual wild feminine authenticity, shone through her dark forests of despair; and the inner conflicts and all ‘Parts’ were over time, seen through a different lens, listened to with fresh understanding, held and acknowledged as I re-mothered my Self leading them all to my own created ‘Field of Belonging’ through the serenity and goodness of my hearts compassion and vibration of love. That became true freedom. It was the very first time I came face to face with my human existence through the eyes of my spiritual or intimate consciousness. I saw my energetic interconnectedness with all beings, dimensions, kingdoms and the Natural World, yet I became astutely aware at the same time that I am also appreciably and undeniably me, in all my Soulful Humanness, and ‘Sacred Wild’ Spirit, by the very piecing of my Parts back into Wholeness. It has long been revered in many ancient cultures, that humankinds’ greatest power has always lay within Wholeness of Self and these feminine energies of feelings and emotions, especially during those darker and more challenging times, and so because of this it was poorly refuted, manipulatively taught out of us and replaced by what has become an imbalanced masculine energy structure of power, where life became all about the doing, achieving, pushing, striving, status and accumulation, rather than the nurturing traits it takes to connect to human beings in a meaningful and enriching, compassionate, patient and gentler way, embracing intuition and conscious creativity. But as is the power of cyclical rhythms that has us all connected in life, dark will always ensue light at some point, hiding within its beautiful shadowy murky depths, the shiniest gem of one’s greatest insight lighting up the darkest corners– leading eventually to the returning of its cyclical flow back to light. Light and dark both being nothing more than mere energies, and energy merely being just energy. It was this realisation that became one of my greatest understandings. The quality of time, observation, acknowledgement, awareness, shifting perspectives and possibilities I gave to each shadowy challenge, determined not just the fluidity of its natural cyclical flow, but the insight attached to the underlying causes gave me enough promise and hope to greet each new today anew, shrinking the despair, and giving rise to inspiration, motivation and creation, to not just seek a way through, but eventually thrive. However the greatest realisation came when I instinctively knew that for our Souls to ever be truly free, every, choice, every ‘thing’ must be solely by our own Decree…by the individual Selfdom who bravely treads the path to ‘Feel their Way’, reacquainting, reconnecting and reigniting themselves in relationship with their own ‘Sacred Wild’ Grace and Essence. This to me is Spirituality, or ‘Intimacy of Self’, as I prefer to refer to it.
IN BECOMING MY OWN ALCHEMIST, I guess you could say that the ‘world of energy’ as such has always been my playground, although I did not always have an awareness of it in my younger years. As a young girl I experienced many nights of spirit communications and activity, some of which had me rigid and scared out of my wits as I didn’t understand what was happening, nor was it explained or nurtured within me.
Now 30 years later, I am grateful beyond words for the path that I have trod,and continue to tread, living an incredibly enriching journey of discovery to the woman and all of my integrated Parts and roles who I Be, rather than Am…wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, facilitator of sacred healings, bodywork, coaching, wayshower, creatrix, unifier of light, retriever of souls…..
"I am a lover of Love" –
Love as consciousness is the truest of all healers. Fear in its lower vibration, is its adversary and is like a sickness; if you catch it and leave it untreated it consumes you. And ALL are worthy of love simply by their very existence.
I remember back to a conversation my functional integrative doctor once had with me many, many years ago, saying that I was such an enigma – that I healed only to a point but never quite fully. This was the catalyst that plunged me into the world that was soon to fill my own, feverishly learning over the years, seeking in earnest that missing component – the world of quantum mechanics, epigenetics, vibrational energy, frequency fields, energy healing, the matrix overlay with its nefarious agenda, emotions– that secret internal language of our bodies - the natural world of Earth and her shape and form, of ritual and ceremony in celebration of both divine feminine and masculine within, the natural law of nature, rhythms and cycles, the unification of light and the sacredness of deep wild womb bodywork in connection with the sacred altar nestled between my hips– that helped restore my once perceived crushed spirit and body back to her original free spirited playful self - the final link in my chain of recovery, renewal and healing – an enigma, no longer. Original nature of human beings is the finest synergistic culmination of many integrating aspects. We are not mere bodies, for there too exists the Mental, Emotional, Source, and Digital Body’s, as well as the Life Force Energy and Creative/Creator Force within. To facilitate optimal functioning and true wellbeing we must traverse them all. If not we are but a cake half baked, sunken and depleted in the middle – a life half lived. This has been my healing journey. Now, Illuminating womens paths to finding, releasing, renewing, embodying and fully living their own unique ‘Sacred Wild’ Selves, in ways gleaned from my own healing journey, is not just vital to their individual wellbeing, but it has been a sacred privilege on my part, having shared and witnessed the unfolding and healing of so many wild feminine journeys, and so too will it be, to walk alongside you, in yours.
I have learned, discovered, experienced, trained, read, remembered, reflected, released, embraced, created and healed much, but if it is one thing I wish to emphasise from my journey thus far, it is this –
“We are all, but energy- emotions included
I am the vibration of a zillion creative particles of pulsating pure energy.
Yet I am of this earth too; my body is of her soil, my heart and brain resonate and beat with her rhythms.
Sparks of light are spiralling along song lines woven throughout my body.
Yet energy still remains simply just energy.
Given attention, purpose, thought or intention, it will synergistically arrange itself into form; into reality.
The quality of this attention holds the promise of both positive, or negative.
Through this, I am responsible for all that I experience.
I perceive, I decide, I choose, I feel, I expand, I instinctively know, I trust, I flow.
My learning and evolutionary growth is a continuum.
I have much to give and much to serve.
I am a Soul Being of this Earth,
Spirit, Source, Essence, Love
Nothing more, nothing less, just simply SO.
The graciousness of my very existence is what heralds the magnitude of my worth.
But it is my implicit participation, investment and respect in honour of my ‘Sacred Wild’ Self which determines the quality of my life.
She, my ‘Sacred Wild’ Self:
The very essence of who I uniquely am at my core.
Held within this most sacred space – this precious altar between my hips, the curve of this pelvic bowl; the light of this womb and ovary.
This space of deep inner knowing and wild feminine.
Sparkling within the clear pool of wisdom and joy
The ‘Holder’ of ALL – and so too the ‘Nurturer’ of All: allowing me to reclaim this sacred fertile place, leading all Parts home to her embrace and Wholeness..
She determines how well my life is lived.
The connection is unbreakable, yet oftentimes forgotten.
If I did not fully honour her in recognition, acknowledgement, and embodiment, I lived a life half lived.
For she is not only the vessel that may conceive, nourish, and birth new life, she is the constant creation of me,
Of the woman I once was; the woman I now am; and the woman I am always becoming.
I learned to sit in the peace of this most glorious body.
And know, I am an intrinsic part of the web of life.
There are times I am beyond afraid, but I know irrevocably that I was born to be this, to be here, to be here now.
And all this –
Is true of YOU too.
You know she’s there; you’ve always known, because you feel her too,
in the dark and fertile spaces in the depths of your own Pelvic bowl.
She is YOU in purest form, in essence, at your deepest primal core,
She is led by heart and is YOU in full truth,
She is at the root of who you are and therefore, your greatest abiding authority,
She is defined as neither good or bad nor anything or anyone outside of herself - she simply IS -
Playfully creating her own sense of balance, both fierce and grace in union,
She is that primordial life creating force within you,
She is openly expressed, never repressed, rationalised, dominated or contained
For she is innately wise and wildly free!
Yet through the constant whirling pace and blinding brightness of our everyday life,
She, our unlived ‘Sacred Wild’ essence,
may have unconsciously become a mere unrecognised fragment buried deeper and deeper beneath piles of rubble-
lying patiently in wait like undiscovered sacred treasure hidden beneath the subterranean layers.
I see the YOU beneath.
First and foremost, I feel YOU as Spirit and Soul.
It’s time for us all to heal our ability to ‘feel’ – to rekindle the feminine energy within and unite her with the masculine, as once was,
This is not the journey of the rising of the feminine to overpower the masculine,
This is the rising of the feminine in equanimity alongside the masculine within us all - man and woman,
This is the sacred unifying of light - all those gorgeous shade and light aspects of ourselves -
Giving them voice, owning, accepting and embracing them all, because they are all YOU -
There is no other like You - and You are LOVE.
This is the next vital step in the human journey.
When the right time arrives, you’ll know when to step through the door.
For your ‘Sacred Wild’ awaits…..”
BLESSED BE
IN CELEBRATION OF YOU !