Shaman…

I can see now looking back I have always been a Shaman.  A Medicine Woman.  A Wisdom Keeper.  A creature of the Earth.  It has been my path. 

As a little girl I would run off safe and alone in the trees and talk to the animals.  I have always created beauty in nature with the elements.  My happy place.

I have always been a bower bird collecting beautiful objects, dead things and other treasures to make my surrounding a sacred connection to nature.  My childhood was spent climbing trees, playing in grassy paddocks and stalking animals.  The Earth, crawling creatures, trees, fire, wood, moss, rocks and dirt is my home.  

The funny thing is... I haven’t really seen it so clearly before.  I just do it, because its who I am.  When I look around…  my whole life is wild.earth.medicine  It is my true nature.  My remembering. 

And yet, I deeply felt as though I was lacking, something was missing, I was silly, I was alone or I was wrong.   I didn’t get life.   It seemed mundane being a grown up.

It was not kosha in my family to be sensitive.  We were hard people of the land and had a whole pile of important stuff to attend to.  A never-ending list.  So I hid my real self from the world and got on with it.  I numbed my sensitivity and my connection.   There have been great personal sacrifices, lessons and relationship complexities in my own family linage for generations.   All there for a reason, part of the plan for personal experience and transcendence. 

I actually made myself sick from this embodied disconnect a couple of times.  At 16 parts of my body shut down with an all-consuming mysterious nerve condition that physically paralysed me from functioning.  It took me 12 months to recover.  

This debilitating nerve condition struck me again when I was 23.  I was sick for six months and that’s when it dawned on me.  I have to own this and do something about it.  That’s all I knew if nothing else.  My body was trying to get me to wake up from my numbness and disconnect.  

Often it takes a crisis to wake people up.  Now I was listening.

The nerve dis-ease I had ‘Brachial Neuritis’ is characterised by severe pain and loss of function in the nerves that carry signals to and from the central nervous system and to other parts of the body.  I had shut myself down to get by.  People ask me ‘how did you get into this line of work, coaching, teaching, healing, mentoring etc’… Purely because its what it took to wake up and heal myself.  It was my journey.  To crack myself open to live.   

I struggled along as best I could, doing this for a decade.  Working hard within the realms of science to ‘fix myself’.  Exploring everything that crossed my path. A committed Wander and Seeker.  

The next crisis hit.

At age 33, my dad was tragically killed and I cared for my injured mum for about a year.  Our whole lives ripped apart.  Together we dealt with the grief.  I was only holding on to reality by a thread.  This then catapulted me full speed to crack open to meet another part of myself.  To really step up.  No more hiding.   Although my body remained emotionally frozen in fear.  

For many years I was head first into the mental realms and studied human behaviour.  I was trying to work out how my brain worked!  I wanted to ‘get’ myself.  Who I was and how people ticked.  All the while working towards my goal to ‘fix’ myself and heal the aloneness. 

I realised that I had hit a plateau.  I still couldn’t feel much.  You can analyse things and talk about the change you want to be all day long… but as some stage it has to become real - in the body.  My dads death took me to meet another part of myself I didn’t know – in the body. 

I threw myself into the sensory realms, embodied phycology, nervous system health, sexual and emotional healing, ceremony and ritual.  Things started to really click.  I started to make sense of myself and the journey of life.   I still liked to live under the radar, too scared to show my weird face at its full power, wisdom and potential.  Happy to hide away in my own Shamanic Wonderland.

I knew there was another piece… calling me in the night.  I know I needed to lay down my weapons of control and surrender to the Great Mystery.   More recently, I have been journeying the cosmic realms. It’s not been easy...  I had completed my apprenticeship as wild.earth and ready to remember more of my true self.   Ready to face my fears.  Ready to remember I am in fact deeply plugged in to source and sensitive.  I remembered my linage as a healer, a teacher and a Wisdom Keeper.  I can no longer hide.  I am still on the path. 

I can see looking back I have always been a Shaman.  Medicine Woman.  I have always been an Earth Mother and energy weaver.  This is the innate healer Mother archetype needed to hold space for others.  Ushering the way for understanding, connection to self and spirit, emotional healing and embodiment, just through being me.   

I have met myself in past lives.  Cleared generational disconnect.  I acknowledged my sensitivity.  I welcomed home pieces I had forgotten and needed.  I am an embodied blend of my human walk, ancient knowing and cosmic remembering.

I stand up and claim my place. 

I honour myself as a woman of value.