• I had no idea that helping to carry the group food to be eaten before and after each of our solo journeys would add so much weight to my pack. And to my initial thoughts. It was challenging (to say the least) hiking two to three hours in the heat straight up granite rock with approximately 40-45lbs on my back when I’m 114 lbs (my knee was hurting which added a level of difficulty I was not anticipating). ⁣

• But we ARE capable to hold and carry ourselves through the toughest terrains of our lives. And we know that it’s made easier by what we tell ourselves. The initial hike up and subsequent days were made deeply enjoyable by this very thing ~ what I told myself and the non-physical “tools” I had to calm my nervous system. I definitely used them. ⁣

• You CAN (also) ask others for help. I did going up the mountain (in addition to the big pack, I also had a small day pack I was holding on the front of me and I asked someone to help me carry it). In solo, however, that “help” came from yours truly in the form of compassion. Allowing myself not to DO anything which was a hard habit to break and to simply allow myself to sit longer and sit again and again (I used every tree nearby to sit next to, against, under), because I didn’t have much energy to walk around. Or — meditating or praying as many times as I needed to throughout the day when I felt I needed an energy boost or to calm myself. As social creatures, we do very much need each other to survive (one of the stories I will tell at GGP is a beautiful one around this topic: how I kept myself safe during those three nights and days in the wild on my own with the “help of others”, but without us ever seeing one another) — but but but no one can take the journey for us of growth, emotional strength, forgiveness and/or of enlightenment, whatever that means to you. ⁣

• What is natural is being fully you. If you’re not feeling all of you, if you’re feeling stunted or stagnant in any part of your life, a check has been forged or a part of you, maybe an emotional arm or leg or two, has been deeply society-influenced or man-made (~>not natural/sustainable). Remembering this may help: nothing real can be threatened. Be real, be you.  ⁣

• I had a few fresh bear scat droppings around my solo site and though I threw the small plastic bag of emergency food my guides gave me (3 dried apricot pieces, 2 emergen-C packets & 1 Luna bar in case we felt too weak or sick) high into a tree, as they had taught us, I spent a few minutes of each day wondering if bears, with their heightened sense of smell, were walking around me and I simply would turn at the right time and not see them off in the distance. Though I felt genuinely safe and was surprised post solo at how calm I’d enter each evening, my favorite time of day, my bear bell was around my neck every minute, even when I slept…⁣

• I loved the crisp (filtered) creek water up there. Yum. I got bored of. only. drinking. the. crisp. (filtered) creek. water. ⁣

• I’ve never had a more beautiful bedroom. Had the best sleep I’ve had in a long time! ⁣

• Seriously, choose your hardships/challenges — you’ll suffer less at the hands of those unchosen challenges that come. ⁣

• Our kids need us to bring the light received from the proverbial mountain (and from more consistent interactions with nature and from wherever we get that “light” or lightness from). They need us, the more present, calm and honest us, more than ever before!  ⁣

• Just as a car — and love— is a tool, nature is one, too. Most of us just haven’t “picked” it/her up in awhile. ⁣

• I didn’t want to come home (and you know how I lo-hove the people in my home). ⁣

• Get/stay wild about your life! And while I’m at it, what are you really hungry for???⁣

[Did I mention that three of the five of us ran into bears, some right next to their sleeping bag? That I saw at least two shooting stars per night and one comet a few seconds after I was talking to Dino and my Mom about communicating with me even more overtly? And that I only started to fantasize about food for a few minutes on the fourth and final day of fasting?]⁣

#visionquester⁣

#brandofwoman⁣

#greatergoodparty⁣

#creativeheroine

We *are* the elements – it’s where instinct, passion, our emotional strength and creativity come from.  And the more we work our way away from or against what we naturally are (or wish to do at any given moment), the more dis-ease uses us as it’s muse. 

But we already belong to someone, to s o m e t h i n g else…⁣

⁣Here in Guate and especially after climbing the Pacaya volcano, I‘m feeling the vision quest — the essences of self remembered that came without the distraction of food, company, even shelter — as alive as ever.⁣

There’s a woman we all have living deep inside (yet who wishes to fly on the surface of the deepest oceans), connected to her moon, to her own sun…the She who is often restless between adventures because she IS both rest-less and adventure and because modern life, too, has told her to be all things to all people, but be little to herSelf (belittle ~> being little doesn’t become us). ⁣

It’s this woman — the one who lets herself go all the way back to herself, the creation and creator, who knows exactly who she is and isn’t — this is who we miss and who we are lonely for (we needn’t be fooled, it is not anyone else we long for).⁣

Today, while sitting at temple number four in Tikal watching the sun rise over the ruins, listening to the monkey songs below, I felt as deafening a gratitude to and longing to know even more of these Mayan ancestors —⁣

⁣The ones who saw to it that women, with their unique, NATURAL gifts, be expressed, not allowed to rise, but recognized as already risen and already holding a place equal in leadership and good counsel (inside the civilization, the path to power was beautifully open to both men and women).⁣

Our guide confirmed today what I had known before as this statement-turned-question: how could a civilization so close to nature, the skies, stars and the natural world, not be close to and revere women who are a stellar symbol and part of it all?⁣

In his most adorable words, he said that men in power looked to their wives often, potentially one day also governors of the people, valuing them deeply “…knowing they were connected in a way they, themselves, weren’t and that they, the women, had great ideas and [as he leaned over pretending to tell someone a secret] also always gave GREAT advice.”⁣

And maybe where it all comes full circle is here — our connection to the natural (which is also the spiritual and the emotional, that which allows the rising) — if we don’t stop it, move further and further away from it, or feel like we must be or act any different or less creative than what genuinely courses through our veins *keeps* those great ideas and GREAT advice flowing like the river beside the temple that provides and sustains life..