Becoming Spider Woman in the Utah Desert

I turned 50 last month.

It was not the birthday I had envisioned some years back. I didn’t dress up as that 50 year old SNL character. I wasn’t surrounded by friends wearing wigs, drinking cocktails and being outrageously funny.

Instead I was in the Utah desert. Alone. Sunburned, parched and enduring a howling, gritty, uncomfortably warm wind.

Some days before the momentous/not-momentous day, I set up camp in the Valley of the Gods on BLM land previously stewarded by the Navajo and other ancient peoples before them.

With adrenals exhausted from treating a chronic tick-borne infection, a bit of over-working and the early stages of divorce mediation, I needed a reset.

What I really wanted was a miracle. Or at least a mystical encounter with my beloved power animal, Snake.

I searched high and low for Snake. In all the shady red sandstone crevices I could find. I sat still. I meditated. I dozed. I walked the arroyo, eyes on the skies upstream, planning in advance where to exit the flash flood zone should rain clouds suddenly appear.

I sang to Snake, whispered to Snake, yet Snake did not appear.

What did appear was an intense longing for my (human) beloved. And heartache over the dissolution of my marriage.

And deeeeep questions to Spirit about what new silky skin was truly wanting to emerge when this interminably long round of shedding was complete. What would my life and next-level soul work look like? Where would I live? And seriously, how long will this process take?

Lizard, with a beautiful spotted neck, came to visit daily. Flies and wild bees of all kind buzzed merrily by. Venus shone overhead each night. Snake never came to visit but I did have a mystical encounter after all…

I never once saw her, but Spider made her unmistakable presence known. Each day I rose to find new bites on my body; hot, itchy and red; belly, ears, scalp and legs.

The transformation was underway. I was becoming Spider Woman in the Utah desert.

According to Animal-Speak by Ted Andrews, Spider reminds you to ignite your creativity and weave your fate. The spider, with its two body segments and eight legs, is mystically associated with the figure 8 or the infinity symbol.

“Spider teaches you to maintain a balance – between past and future, physical and spiritual, male and female. Spider teaches you that everything you do now is weaving what you will encounter in the future.”

Spider’s silky yet strong web reminds us that the past always subtly influences the present and future. Think of that web, shaped like a spiral, a symbol associated with creation, expansion, growth and connection to All-That-Is.

According to Andrews, Spider expresses magic in three ways:

1. 1. The magic and energy of creation and creative power

   2. Spider keeps the (divine) feminine energies of creation alive

   3. The co-creative spiral web energy links the past to the future

Spider Medicine, like Snake, is associated with death and rebirth. Spider Woman, the master weaver, appears in Greek mythology as Arachne, is responsible for creation in numerous Native American mythologies and is a Great Goddess in ancient Mexican civilization. She walks the threads with grace.

I, too, have long walked the threads, walked the razor’s edge. One foot in darkness, the other in light, managing to hold both simultaneously. To express an awakened vision of what’s possible, even as darkness consumes a dying world.

 

You, as well, hold the past and the future simultaneously. Weaving the threads of your life into the tapestry before you.

All of us weaving our destiny, either consciously or not. All of us dancing with creation and destruction in each moment. Building a beautiful new world out of the ashes of the old.

Spider whispers to you today: Are you expressing yourself creatively? Are you striking that mythical balance between past and future, your own divine masculine and feminine? Are you consciously weaving your destiny?

I’d love to hear how Spider Medicine has arrived in your experience.

Big, Spiraling, Infinite Love,
Anné

 

P.S. Perhaps mythical spider venom is the secret antidote to an anaplasma and bartonella bacterial infection. According to a recent biofeedback scan, my naturopath sees no sign of that decades-old infection. I can’t wait to see what my new marvel(ous) super powers will be… stay tuned.

The life-healing power of Sacred Intimacy

As a highly sensitive, moon-in-Scorpio gal I have craved intimacy my entire life. You could even say I’ve been chasing it, but rarely catching it.

I’m talking about the seeing-deeply-into-your-soul kind of intimacy that you have with someone who truly gets you. Or at least aspires to get you in a fundamentally compassionate, open-hearted way.

I was raised by well-meaning but heartbroken folks who, like the whole entire world at that time, didn’t understand what a highly sensitive, empathic kid needed to feel seen, heard and intrinsically safe.

I got the message that I was way too sensitive; in essence, that there was something wrong with me.

So I did what kids do. I got lost inside myself as a way to protect my tender heart. But it seemed like nobody noticed I was gone. Nobody came to find me.

I carried this wound and this hide-and-please-seek-me coping strategy for decades. In fact, there are new layers that I’m excavating still.

For this is the true healing journey, a spiral that continues so long as we are willing to bring compassion and consciousness to the deep and sacred work of knowing and honoring ALL of our Self.

This, in fact, is Sacred Intimacy.

The unflinching, courageous act of looking deeply into the mirror of your soul, or the soul of another.

It is the greatest gift you could ever offer to yourself or another.

In my own Sacred Intimacy practices, I have been looking courageously at how this wound and a lifelong unmet need for intimacy manifested in codependency, people pleasing and loss of connection to my authentic soul Self.

It has not been easy to see how I unconsciously contributed to the mess in my now-dead-marriage, chose emotionally unavailable partners and how I abandoned myself again and again along the way, ensuring that the intimacy I craved was always just out of reach.

The way through has been a deep Holding and Expansion practice of being with my pain and my lost parts, calling them back, letting them know that someone, finally, realized they were gone and wants them to come home.

I know that a great many of us, in fact probably the majority of folks raised in the west, suffer similar relational wounds.

Our culture does not understand or prioritize attunement and intergenerational trauma perpetuates relational wounds like no other. Add in addiction and a Puritan-inspired workaholism and you have the perfect recipe for an entire nation of walking wounded.

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This past Sunday I hosted my Sacred Sundays healing circle on Sacred Relationships.

This is an event in my very special, deeply intimate online women’s circle called the Sacred Sanctuary. And in our recent meeting, I shared about the influence the sacral energy center has on our relationship with absolutely everything and everyone.

The sacral center (or chakra) is the lens through which we seek to control our environment, create loving psychological boundaries for ourselves, and provides a survival instinct for moving through the world. It’s how we create safety.

The primary fears associated with the sacral center are loss of control or power, betrayal, financial loss, isolation and abandonment.

When balanced, the sacral center offers the ability and tenacity to physically and financially survive on your own and take risks. It offers resilience in the face of great loss, including loss of loved ones, health, wealth, occupation and even identity.

It’s been a year since my husband walked out of our relationship unexpectedly. And in this time, every sacral fear has been activated within me, thrusting me into a deep, painful and necessary round of Sacred Intimacy with myself. (And if you are wondering, yes, I work with my own trauma-informed, psycho-spiritual coaches, healers and therapists.)

My willingness and ability to be vulnerable and honest in this Sacred Sundays healing circle about my own struggles with codependency and fears of inadequacy in my marriage created the beautiful opening for those present to open up about deeply impactful aspects of their most important relationships.

We held one of the most open-hearted, conscious conversations about the messiness and magic of relationships that I’ve ever had the privilege of being part of.

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Sacred Intimacy truly is humbling, life-altering and life-affirming work. In fact, it is THE path to leading a self-actualized, present, purposeful, connected life.

I closed our meeting Sunday with a sacral energy center healing activation and if this resonates with you, I invite you into your own abridged version now:

Place a hand on your heart and one on your lower belly.

Feel your breath move into your heart and if comfy, allow your breath to expand your belly.

Using breath and awareness, connect your heart space with your sacral womb space.

On your inhale, breathe compassion into your heart space.

On your exhale, allow compassion to fill your whole torso, down to your sacral center, even to your root.

If it feels juicy, go ahead and remind yourself that you are SAFE.

Stay with this cycling of sacral-heart energy as long as it serves you.

 

If you’d like to know more about what we do in my online membership for women, The Sacred Sanctuary, please reach out. The group is intentionally kept small but I do have a few open seats available at this time.

Here’s to you feeling safe and connected enough to see deeply into the mirror of your own soul. And to let someone else see you and be seen by you.

 

Big Love,
Anné

P.S. If, like me, you crave emotional intimacy and you sense a shared spiritual practice among like-hearted, grounded, loving women will support and nourish your journey to self-knowingness and a purposeful life, ask me about the Sacred Sanctuary membership for women. The group is intentionally kept small to provide safety and true connection but I have a few spots open. Please reach out to see if it’s a good fit. <3

The last years for all of us have been Powerful. Potent. Painful, even.

The collective is dancing with Grief. Loss. Transformation. Transmutation. Ascension isn’t necessarily an easeful process. And as below, so above. As without, so within. You’re probably feeling lots of feels as your life changes, relationships end, loved ones cross over. All in preparation for the grand ascension of humanity.

Buckle up.

I’m told there’s a tremendous interpersonal shake up happening on planet earth of late. A great many relationships are being ‘redefined’. If it’s happening to me, I’m betting the house it’s happening to you, too. Marriages and friendships dissolving. Families estranged. I’m told it’s something like a cleansing. A making way for Sacred Unions to emerge that will radically – and for the better – transform humanity.

Let’s be real, though. It’s Confusing. Painful. Heartbreaking. When it’s happening to you.

(Shedding skin seems more challenging for this human than for her scaly counterparts.)

But indeed isn’t this also an invitation into a redefinition of your primary relationship? Your relationship with your whole, perfect, unadulterated Soul Self. A Sacred Union with the Divine, the divinity within YOU.

 

Foreward:

I grew up with snakes. (Without ever understanding the gravity of snake medicine.) They were just everywhere, blending perfectly with the southern New Mexico desert. Finding their untimely end by the blade of my father’s shovel. Me, always fascinated by the primal power and the rattling tail of the Western Diamondback. Me not knowing that, under their tutelage, I would spend my life reinventing myself again and again and again, whether I wanted to or not.

 

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Journal Entry

November 4, 2022: Seasons of the Snake, an Oracle

April 30th, on the New Moon in Taurus last year, my beloved rose, showered and then announced he no longer wanted to be married, that we were just too different and he was divorcing me.

24 years of relationship altered in an instant. My world crumbled.

On June 18th, my partner and best friend exited our shared dream in Santa Fe, our shared vision of the life we worked so hard to co-create after two+ decades together in California.

He left our home. I left my body.

That same day, my neighbor called me in a panic. There was a snake in his living room and he hoped I would remove it for him. (I’m a snake relocation volunteer in my community.)

Snake has a way of bringing you into deep, sacred presence.

What at first glance looked like a baby rattlesnake was swiftly dropped into my snake bucket. It turned out to be a baby hognose, but the message was clear:

“This marks the end of one phase of your life and heralds in a new and wiser awakening within yourself. Know that this is a transitional period in your life with new spiritual awakenings knocking at your door.” – Snake

Two days later, on June 20th, I was asked to remove a wounded snake from another nearby home. The homeowner was understandably upset, having accidentally injured the snake that was coiled in her casement window.

The ants were already on the scene. This beautiful bull snake with an unmistakable female energy had lived long enough to stretch well over four feet long. My heart ached even more.

I took her lifeless body home with me knowing she was there to support the holy work of shedding my own skin.

The following morning, on the Summer Solstice, I laid her in the field outside my home with yarrow and calla lily. An offering to death, rebirth, new beginnings and eternal love.

I wept as I set an intention to be through the most painful part of this seismic shift by the Winter Solstice.
The day before the Fall Equinox, I found two more dead snakes. The first one was cut in half. The second one, much smaller, was whole. They seemed a powerful metaphor for me and my beloved. Both had been mortally wounded on the road.

I placed them in the field with obsidian, clear quartz, local pink quartz and rosemary, which the ancient Greeks used for remembering.

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Seven moons have passed since you left. The rupture in our marriage opened the floodgates to a lifetime of stored grief. I do the deep and sacred work of holding my emotions, allowing myself to feel all the feels, all that I suppressed over lifetimes. Coming to acceptance, though admittedly, often with great reluctance.

I have been in (and continue to travel) this metaphysical and metaphorical birth canal.

Dancing with tremendous fear, loneliness, rejection, unlovability, sorrow and despair.

Asking how I, too, can shed my skin.

 

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Journal Entry 

December 22, 2022: Shedding Her Skin

If I can accept that everything – no matter how painful, no matter if I brought it upon myself or not – is a learning opportunity that is placed on my path for my ultimate growth, then I am at one with the snake.

If I can accept that change is inevitable, that everything withers, that new life cannot exist apart from death, then I am in atonement – which is to say, at one with – snake medicine.

If I can allow myself for even one moment to take a step back, a wider view, to see that all that transpires in this lifetime is theater and I am but one actor among billions, that the cosmic choreography operates at a timescale incomprehensible to mere mortals, then I can relax into the essence of snake energy.

If I can allow myself – even for one moment – to release my judgments, my need to be right or vindicated, my role as martyr, my grasping for that which is long dead, then perhaps I, too, can shed my skin.

But I am human. And messy. I grasp. I writhe. I cling. I fear and I loathe. I resent. I love and I miss and I regret so very much.

And so slithers in snake medicine to teach me and you and all of us to let go. To just. Let. Go.

The snake never asks why she must shed her skin. She never struggles to keep her old scales, fearing she’ll lose herself in her moult.

She doesn’t bargain with god, promising to do better if only things could be the way they were.

When it’s time to grow that’s exactly what she does.

That which is no longer useful gets scraped along the lower stems of my salvia bush, leaving this message: You cannot expand, heal, and reach your potential, dear heart, unlesssss you shed your sssskin.

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Journal Entry 

March 23, 2023: 11 moons

The air in our home is dense, thick, full. As I shuffle the corridor of this mortal coil the energy swirls, coils around me. This place is heavy with moult. With scales that fall from me, scales fall from me, from my heart, my eyes, my pussy. Scales falling, falling, falling, filling this place we used to share, this life we used to share. I look the same. Skin no different after the moult. Only perhaps my snake eyes are clearer, crystalline. Is my heart different? My soul says, yes. So different the difference will only be known in time.

I sip my tea. Talk to the desert willow. One-eyed Moon at my heels, the moon always chasing, always counting, always reminding me. I am here you are not. But I am here. I am. I am. I am shuffling the halls. Feeling the thick energy of so many scales flaking off. Revealing new skin. Revealing old skin. The me I was before. The me I was before. The me I was when the moon was formed, when the earth solidified, when the oceans cooled; the boiling the boiling the boiling of my own heart, my own heart, my own heartbeat that pulses with the beat of the earth.

I hear it in my snake ears. Do snakes hear? I hear the snakes just now beginning to warm, beginning to ready themselves to greet me in the garden. To show me how easy it is to let the old skin go. To let the past lay
to let it lay. let it lay.
let it lay in the garden.
the garden
the garden of my soul
full of life
full of death
spent blooms
full of promise
promise
for what lies
           what slithers
                     what
                          blossoms
                    ahead

 

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Journal Entry 

April 30, 2023: A year ago

 

A year ago today you got up and left.
But the truth is you left so long, so long, so long
ago so long maybe you weren’t ever really there at all.

A year ago today I gazed upon you with a love
so total and complete it shocked us both
love so absolute, so ordained
so not from my broken mortal heart.

My heart cracked open wide streaming
pure pure pure starlight
pure golden milk
honey pure intensity before
it fell to the ground
shattered into 1 million tiny fractures
shards the likes of which burrow into skin and fester.

A year ago today it felt as though possibly an earthquake of never-before-recorded magnitude had shaken the Earth from its axis, from its known place, from its position among the planets and sent it shuttling off into some eerily familiar yet totally unknown solar system.

A year ago, a year, so many tears, so many unanswered questions. I planted
sunflowers and sage, unsure whether I would be here to see the blooms
planted squash and borage.

A year ago I cried. A day ago I cried.

A year ago I wanted you to come home
come back, resume life as we knew it.

A year ago I was shell shocked, in a stupor
performing life like a dutiful little robot.
A good daughter caretaking her father
a good wife keeping the kitchen clean.
For a man who walked away, walked away, walked out.

A year ago I walked our dog.

A year ago I would forget again and again and again that you weren’t coming home.
Nope. Not coming home.

A year ago today I wanted you to come home.

A year later and I’m gazing at the lettuce in full bloom.
Somehow this delicate plant survived all the snow
and the single digit temperatures
survived neglect and even sorrow.
And today stands tall blooming, sending sacred seeds
out into the precious world.

Go forth and prosper.

I never knew how beautiful the lettuce in bloom truly is.

I have longed for you, Beloved.
reached out for you whispered
Good night as I lay down to sleep.

I have cursed you as well, Beloved.
Hated that fate – Ha! – brought our two planets
into gravitational pull hated
that you came to teach me finally how
to fiercely love myself hated
all the ways into which I must now blossom.
unfurl myself into the grace of beginning the grace
of beginning a life on my own
Grace, grace. Oh how sweet and sacred and graceful shame
can be what beginning waits
for the lettuce seeds cast
about on the
wind?

What beginning waits for me?

 

Anné M. Klint 2022-2023

 

Anné (“Anna”) works with women all over the globe to heal their painful past and embrace their shadow in order to create lives they really love. An expert in the field of psycho-spiritual-energetic healing, she uses state-of-the-art energy healing tools and transformational listening + spiritual coaching to guide her clients out of confusion, self-doubt, and perfectionism and into a life of grace, ease, connection and purpose. Anné lives in Santa Fe, NM and when she’s not writing about self-love and ascension, you’ll find her walking her one-eyed heeler, Luna Tuna, amongst the juniper trees.

Looking back and feeling forward.

At the end of each year, I reflect on where we’ve been as I tune into the energies in the field to get a sense of where we’re going. Last year was one of the most challenging years of my life. I know I’m not alone in that.

Perhaps you’ll see some of yourself in these words.

Either way, I’m holding a strong intention for the coming year to bless you in countless ways.

 

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As I reflect on all that 2022 brought our way and what 2023 is calling us into, these words rise powerfully into my consciousness:

Grief

In my deep-dive breakthrough conversations with many of you this past year, grief often hung in the shadows. In my own life I’ve been mourning some foundational ruptures as well. The losses are mounting at the personal and collective level for all of us.

It goes so much further than the pandemic. Yes, it’s lives lost, but also dreams, ideals, relationships and so much more. As the social structures we thought would save us begin to crumble, we are realizing the full extent of our losses. The illusions are coming apart at the seams, the resulting dissonance rippling like waves through our bodies, our minds, our hearts and souls.

We’ve been white-knuckling this thing called life on earth for some time now, waiting for it to change, for something to change, for anything to change.

Change has come, and as it turns out we mere mortals don’t do so well with change.

As we co-create a new reality, the New Earth, the Golden Age, we must release attachments to that which was familiar and known. Even if it never worked for our highest good, it still hurts to let it go.

That’s what it means to be human.

Courage

I had the tremendous honor of guiding some incredible women to deep healing and integration this year. I am literally humbled in their presence as I witness their respective journeys into their own mythic caves, sitting with their wounded parts, calling all their fragments back to the whole and creating meaning from their storied lives.

It takes courage to do this deep inner work of true transformation.

It takes courage to hold space for all parts of you, all parts of your experience.

It takes courage to enter your own cave, alchemize wounds into wisdom and return – one day – victorious.

It takes courage to love that which we thought was unlovable.

Willingness

In 2022, I felt a willingness rising in our collective field.

A willingness

to be in the mystery of the unknown
to deeply hold the wound of the heart
to find a way through

What are we called to in 2023?

In a word, LOVE. You are being called even more powerfully to remember the truth of who you are. You are love, and you can never be separated from it.

You and me both were taught that love is a feeling or an action. So we keep waiting to feel more love. If only we felt more love, we could share more love, be more love.

But have you felt that which connects you to the cosmos? It’s love.

Have you felt the blood pumping through your veins? It’s love.

Have you felt connected to what John Welwood calls Divine, Absolute Love? It’s all around you, caressing you, holding you in this very moment. It’s only that we so often lose the connection; we forget.

We forget the tap is always on, love is streaming ‘round us in every moment.

But now we are waking. Rising. Remembering.

How do we get there, how do we get to love?

In two words, through a Sacred Union. The Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine are rising, intertwining like the serpents on the staff, illuminating a path to greater healing and integration on our collective ascension journey.

The Sacred Feminine invites us into the cave, invites us to hold with compassion our personal and collective wounds. To hold them with limitless love. To alchemize them into wisdom.

The Sacred Feminine is gathering our souls together for this great work of ascension, transformation and transmutation of the past into the future.

The Sacred Masculine is rising to meet his beloved, the Sacred Feminine, to create the sanctified container necessary for feminine wisdom to materialize on the earthly plane. To enforce the boundaries required to create safe space for the unfoldment of magic.

The Sacred Union is the marriage of all that is holy, just and righteous. It is the inner work we do to marry all parts of ourselves, to bring divine balance into our thoughts, beliefs, words and actions.

It is where we derive our true power, and where love becomes the fuel of co-creation.

It is what brings us wholeness, which is what healing truly is. Remembering that we are whole.

Whether you know it or not or feel it or not, you are awakening. You are ascending.

You’ll know it if your life has been turned upside down.
You’ll know it if you’re unable to feel well in a crumbling, unwell world.
You’ll know it if your heart and soul are tugging or outright shoving you towards the far edge of your comfort zone, towards greater connection, purpose, freedom and joy in your life.

Whispering…It’s time… It’s time… It’s time.

There’s no going back. The only way out is through.

Here’s to Limitless, Divine, Absolute love in 2023 and beyond.

Here’s to you,
Anné

 

P.S. If you know in your bones you are being called to create more purpose, connection, love and joy in your life in 2023, let’s talk. The sacred is rising within you and you may benefit from my intuitive guidance. The call is complimentary and may be just what you need to create your own sacred union within. (One woman recently described this call as one of the more holy experiences of her life.)

You live in a world where a good number of folks don’t even believe that they or you or anybody has a purpose. While greasing the wheels of capitalism is certainly one purpose we all share, it doesn’t exactly leave you with a lasting or meaningful sense of satisfaction.

I actually believe that you have more than one purpose and also that your purpose evolves over time as you do.

In one primary respect, your purpose is to live your life as fully as you can. To be present to your winding life journey, and to accept it as it is. And that includes healing any and all barriers to living fully.

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.”
– Joseph Campbell

If you’re reading this, I’m betting you feel a tug in your heart and soul. A tug that pulls you forward into the unknown. A tug that leads to something bigger than yourself.

Sometimes it’s nothing more than a whisper that speaks in your dreams, or subtle messages that are easily dismissed.

Sometimes it’s just an ache in the heart. A knowingness that there’s something calling you but you’re not fully heeding the call.

When it comes to embracing the call of the soul, it’s so easy to compare yourself to others. One gal’s purpose may seem more impactful, or somehow bigger than yours, louder than yours. Brighter. Shinier.

This comparison easily leads to discouragement. If you feel like the longing of your heart isn’t important or glamorous enough or just plain good enough, you’re not going to easily find your way to your purpose.

What I’ve found through my transformational work with women is that there are definite prerequisites to finding and living your purpose.

It’s rare that someone wakes up one day with that “Eureka” knowingness that allows them to step fully onto their soul path and into their purpose.

For most of us, even if we have a good sense of what we’re here for, it can be too scary to really go for it.

If living your purpose – and swimming in the luscious pool of satisfaction and joy that comes with it – is your goal, I find there’s a whole lot of clearing that needs to happen first.

One of the scariest parts of living your purpose is letting go of your very human yet egoic need for safety, clarity, and control over the process.

Joseph Campbell so beautifully said, “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

And no, your Ego is NOT a fan of this!

 

The journey to your soul path requires that you show up
in ways you perhaps have never been allowed to before,
or quite possibly haven’t given yourself permission to.

 

You see, the journey to your soul path and purpose is a journey to belonging:

• • A journey of deep inner work; self-awareness that leads to self-acceptance and self-compassion
  • A journey of healing your painful past that keeps you feeling separate, and thus existentially anxious and fearful
  • A journey to finding your authentic self and voice
  • A journey of healing your heartache

The journey to your purpose is a journey of remembering that you have choice and agency. You get to create your reality.

I believe that like the mighty oak tree that begins as a tiny acorn, you, too, were born to flourish, to heal, to evolve, to ascend.

Within each human is planted a profound seed of potential. Are you tapping into the creative energy of that seed and living your soul’s purpose?

If not, we should talk. The world needs you now more than ever. And you need you more than ever, too.

Schedule a complimentary Fear To Freedom Breakthrough call with me to reach a breakthrough in finding and living your life’s purpose. We’ll deep dive to uncover what your soul longs for and clarify the blocks that get in your way. I’ll intuitively guide you to specific steps you can take ASAP to get moving on your soul purpose path in the direction of love, fulfillment and joy..