Building Upon the Ruins

Photo: Life in Ceremony

This week we witnessed a potent equilibrium of time. The spring equinox brought with it equal parts light and dark to our lives and with it signs of hope all around. Hope in the sprouting buds on the barren trees we have sat with over the winter. Hope in the warmth of the suns rays kissing our skin once again. Hope in the sweetgrass that emerged seemingly overnight across any vacant hilltop that man has not altered.

Spring brings with it hope of new life emerging from the darkened and moist depths of the winter earth. The winter is so powerful because it creates a most necessary hibernation of earth’s, and our own, vital resources. Yet nothing is without life and process in this time. She builds her strength over the course of these months by creating a deep and rich soil for those things not yet here to grow and become. Just as we are asked to slow and soften into her season of stillness, so that we may begin to plant the seeds of our renewal as spring awakens. This energy feels potent and alive with possibility right now. Can you feel it?

It’s been a long time since I have shared here with you all. A long, long winter for me. One that spanned across many seasons, many transitions. And I feel myself bursting at the seems with the opportunity of newness.  I feel ready and called to share once again. To be heard. To be seen. To be in communion with the season of awakening, growth, and community. And I am so thankful to have this platform to stand on and return to once again.

My heart and soul have been healing and are beginning to emerge with a new lightness that is calling out for a source of direction. Like a beam of sunlight coming through the clouds, I feel myself breaking through the clouds of challenge, heartache, and foggy vision that has rested within me for far too long. I think I had to break away from it all and just simply learn how to live again. How to play. How to rest in the unknown. How to find the simplest of joy. And ultimately how to reconnect with myself and the place I come from. And now a new energy has found me here, in this place of stillness. In the magic dark that I have sat with for so long.

I will attempt to move slow through this place of possibility. This place that spring calls in with budding opportunity for what may be next. For this is the time to plant our seeds. Working the land, nourishing the sprouts, and harvesting the fruits of our labor come with time, and there is season for each of those too. But this one we find ourselves in is ripe with doors to be opened.

Although the energy of new is upon us, we can never forget the expansive history of our earth and all that she holds. Nothing has ever truly come from a new start. Everything has slowly been built upon the compost of yesterday, and before that the decomposed and lived out dreams and lives of our ancestors before us. In the beginning of a very challenging time, I was drawn to a book on a shelf at the local bookstore. Its title, Transitions by William Bridges. Although it speaks of all sorts of life long transitions, be it work, relationship, home, etc., a particular phrase spoke to me in the depth – building upon the ruins.

For so long I have known that this is what I must do. The enormity of considering rebuilding a life from scratch, from nothing, can be too immense to hold. It can feel impossible to step forward in any one direction. And this makes sense. Because there is no forward movement without understanding our past. Without acknowledging where we have come from and what direction we would like to now step into with this new gift of experience and wisdom both behind us and very much within us. In fact these experiences of our lives begin to seep deep within our cells. They pump through our veins and intertwine themselves with our being. They tell our story just as the rings of a tree honors the years passed and tell it’s story of life.

It was not time to reimagine my life, my values and my passions. It was not time to start from a blank page. Indeed it was time to begin building upon the ruins of what once was. To honor it as the compost of life that will now allow for new things to grow from it. Not in spite of it, but because of it.

Everything I have today was meant for me in a way I cannot begin to explain. The path has led me here today through each step I have taken throughout the history of my life. And often we are called to step foot on that path, brick by brick, without knowing the place that it will lead us to. Or even more often, believing it will lead us somewhere we have imagined, when really something much different was waiting for us at the end all along. Impossible to see that final resting place, we must choose to step foot on the path of life relentlessly.

So I will never again see my story as a page that must be ripped from its binding and tossed to the wayside to start again. But a story to build upon. A home to be built upon the ruins of the devastation that came before it. For the earth provides this message for us each year as we witness her cycles of death and rebirth, death and rebirth. All throughout time. The things that have been built and fallen where you and I both stand would blow our minds. But here we are anyways, choosing to keep building each and every day.

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If you feel so called, I invite you to join me in honoring our past experiences and creating space for deep embodiment of all that we have come to know and become. With spring’s renewal, there is a perfect opportunity for moving forward in wisdom while guided by our own innate intuition and that of those before us. In doing so we begin to see what may not be serving us and has come time to fully process and release. I have found the practice of energetic healing to be a potent resource in this cycle. And I am currently offering healing Reiki sessions at my home wellness studio in San Clemente.

This gentle modality of subtle body and energy work is an incredible tool in moving forward into whatever you may be calling in. As well as fully processing and ridding the body and the spirit of what may be holding us back. It creates a safe space for this to occur and can aid us in journeying to our next phase, while upholding us as we continue on our individual paths through extended times of tending to our own inner landscapes and the purposes we drive towards each day.

Please reach out if you would like to schedule a call in deciding whether this modality is right for you. Or to book a session if you feel ready to jump in. I look forward to serving you.

In gratitude, presence, practice and surrender.