Beneath the surface

 

Not long ago and in multiple time periods of my life, I remember feeling so fed up, so frustrated, and honestly so heavily burdened I could barely manage to keep up the facade of “I’m fine”. Some days were filled with despair, thoughts and ideas of desperation were gripping me, restricting me, and causing so much turmoil I felt like all I could do was just give up.  

 

Every so often we’re faced with such turning points, where the pressure builds and a breakdown equals a breakthrough, although it sure doesn’t feel that way at the time.

 

Darkness of depression and suicidal ideation would rear their sorrowful heads and I would suffer, alone and in silence. For most of my life I never even thought or identified that I was experiencing depression and I didn’t know what suicidal ideation was, well into adulthood. Because I had been conditioned to be strong at all times, and was completely convinced that what I was experiencing was something I had to suffer through, not an actual thing I could get support and help with. 

 

Eventually after leaving the father of my children, getting somewhat on my own two feet, I knew I wanted to begin a deeper healing journey, and found therapy for the first time in my mid 30’s.

 

Therapy helped, along with my first real spiritual foundation work. When I had the opportunity to learn, grow, and connect within myself to something greater than myself, I knew I was starting down the right path. It only took a destabilizing, extremely intense and very disruptive spiritual awakening/ dark night of the soul experience to nudge me towards my soul purpose path. 

 

The guidance, support, advice, intuitive coaching and mentorship I’ve had along this journey of the last decade is invaluable and stands out as pivotal, transformative, and impactful. Sometimes having a mentor means hearing hard things, facing my own self imposed limitations and patterns, and taking responsibility for myself and my choices. Looking back, those were the most empowering shifts in my life. 

Sometimes a mentor is a friend, someone you look up to or admire, someone you trust and can exist outside of a formal mentorship relationship model, but it’s still mentorship. Sometimes we are the mentor to others and sometimes they are mentoring us. 

There was a podcast or interview I was listening to a long time ago and the topic was about mentorship and coaching; Oprah Winfrey (someone I admired at the time, but not so much anymore) said something that stuck with me and that still rings in my mind. She said: Everyone she knows, herself included, has a mentor/coach for every main area of self development in their lives. At that moment she was getting coached from 5 different people. I don’t know why but that moment dissolved beliefs I didn’t realize I had at the time. I had some assumptions like we often do about people we look up to but maybe can’t relate to. At that moment I had such a powerful light bulb moment. I remember realizing “Oh yea, the people I look up to, admire in some way, or that inspire me; They’re human just like me AND they need help, support, are still learning something new, they seek advice and counsel, they need sources of motivation and inspiration, and rely on relational accountability.” 

 

A good mentor or coach doesn’t do the work for you. No, they help you discover your own empowerment. There's absolutely nothing more important than your inner power. To feel your inner power, to honor, recognize, hone, and grow your capacity to hold your innate empowerment, is the gift of embodiment. 

 

Empowerment or inner power sounds individualistic, however in my opinion and experience true empowerment, in part, is the realization of your interconnectedness to all things, all beings, and source creator itself and that your conscious connection to that, is the foundation of empowerment. That actually does not require you to out source your power to another person/being of perceived authority. It requires that you take much more responsibility for yourself, in recognizing, understanding and moving from a place of embodied empowerment; you know that your thoughts create, your body holds the wisdom and experience of all your ancestors and multiple lifetimes, your soul and higher self are your main guidance systems, your emotional and intuition landscapes are your compass, and your energy body system is yours to maintain, clear, and work with daily. And YOU have the right to access your own empowerment. To be real though, so much of this process is retrieving power back from where it was taken, stolen, hijacked, suppressed, oppressed, and manipulated, controlled, and or misused against you or another. That’s where support, guidance, reflection, practices, and healing come in to inform the process to wholeness and/or empowerment.

 

Fast forward to now.

 

Reflecting on the last 6 months or so, I've been asking myself: what in my life work purpose has been fulfilling, inspiring, joyful, easeful and makes me feel alive? and how I’d really love to do more of that….

 

Developing a unique, individualized, and spiritually intimate collaboration  with Ronin (Ro) in a 1/1 mentorship relationship has been that for me. 

 

In the middle of a desert landscape, we sat on a wooden platform among the edges of a completely dry and arid area called summer lake where we had driven 4hrs or so to enjoy an overnight stay and soaking in the hotsprings there. And that’s exactly what we were doing, enjoying sun, pulley tarot cards, drumming, and having deep and meaningful conversation. The perfect grounds for intuitive information and natural divine flow.

 

In that time together came through this feeling/knowing intuitive information I had not previously known or thought about before. I asked Ronin, have you done hands on energy healing before? And you should try it right now on my knee… low and behold 20 some odd years earlier that had done a reiki training and had been interested but hadn’t really practiced formally for a long time. After some more fun experimenting and conversation they surprisingly asked me to formally be their mentor. It actually took another year from that moment before we began our 6 month agreement to formally begin our partnership.

 

In that moment both of our life purpose guidance systems coalesced in divine orchestration to offer each of us our own unique next level of learning, growing, and evolving along our soul journey. Them as mentee and me as mentor. Ro will be sharing their experience first hand about what it was like from their perspective so I’ll let them speak for themselves and will share that when the time comes. 

 

We decided twice per month for 6 months we would have our 90min mentorship sessions. For me, this is the very first time I have done something that is so aligned, so authentic, so fun, exciting and generative it never ever felt like work. It felt like the most natural, impactful and soul aligned purpose experience in my life to date. I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to step into this with such a ready, willing, open, and gifted human being as Ro; they helped me a lot along the way also. As this is a reciprocal relationship dynamic, which I believe is so powerful and is what felt so right about it. 

 

Which leads me to this vulnerability moment of opening up and sharing out that, I am calling in a handful of folks who are interested in taking their own journey to embodied empowerment, soul purpose expression, and opening more fully to their gifts, to the next natural evolutionary level and want to explore doing that, Through the mentorship relationship model. I truly believe that everyone I get to work with is divinely aligned/assigned to me and I to them and that we are soulfully matched for the highest good of us both. If you want to connect over a cup of coffee or tea or even a phone call and feel for yourself if a mentorship relationship model is right for us, text me to set up a time and day to get connect. 

 

I honestly can’t wait to hear about what you are wanting to cultivate, step into and grow in your life right now. For me there's nothing more exciting to talk about and there’s no pressure whatsoever to commit to anything. I'm so passionate about this stuff. Getting the opportunity to listen is super fun for me and if you want feedback or intuitive advice at the moment I’m happy to offer that too. So if you're curious, why not take the opportunity to connect? I promise it’ll be fun, I’m already looking forward to meeting up with you.