Becoming Myself Part IV: Intimate Relating, Anew
Shifting my relationship to relationship
This is the fourth and final article of the Becoming Myself series, which details what I have created in my life since September 2022, as I embarked on a journey of initiatory personal transformation and evolution work.
First I will dive into what is alive in my intimate relating spaces, right now, today, with myself, with Jeff, who I romantically relate with, and with the people around me in my community.
Then we will dive head first right back to where I left off in my last article when I first met and distinguished many new parts of myself as I began training with the tools of Possibility Management. I share here just some of my research about what intimate relating can be.
Enjoy and thank you for coming with me on this journey, I am grateful for you being here and I wish you a beautiful 2024.
Love,
Jacqueline
Tip: There are resources and offers awaiting you at the end of this article (and throughout) so don’t forget to scroll all the way down and check them out!
It is the first day of 2024. A whole new day, a whole new year, and I feel myself filled with sadness and anger as I did not issue this last and final piece of the 4 part series before 2023 ended. I am in awe at the depth of emotion I am feeling about this desire to have a “clean” cut from the last year, energetically sealing what happened in the past 365 days before at 11:59:59 PM on December 31, 2023.
Part of the sadness and anger I am feeling is that I didn’t perform, I let myself down, I didn’t prioritize my time enough to get this done before one day turned to the next. There is another, deeper layer of sadness, more of a grief, about how I am relating to the change of years. In the past, I would always have to be doing something special, going to a party, an event, gathering to watch the ball drop, drinking champagne, spending time with as many people as possible, and texting to my family and friends to say “Happy New Years!”
I spent the day yesterday exploring the land here in Guatemala with the man I am relating to in a romantic partnership, Jeff, and a local man, Cheyo, here from the village of Tzununá. I cooked the three of us some breakfast afterwards, before I went up to sing at kirtan with friends, travelers, and ex-pats who live here at Lake Atitlán.
Jeff joined me at kirtan here at the Lake for the first time yesterday (I go pretty much every Sunday at Karuna because I love it! I cry, laugh, and sing my heart out harmonizing with the beautiful energy of the mantras we chant as a collective). Right now a big theme in Jeff’s evolutionary journey is researching how he consciously and unconsciously uses his sexual energy to connect with people, particularly women. He uses the example sometimes, that if he was an alcoholic, he wouldn’t go hang out at a bar. Similarly, he has been avoiding spending time in environments where there are groups of people who may be unconsciously using their sexual energy, and for him yesterday, coming to the kirtan, it brought up a lot for him.
Since kirtan is about three hours of devotional singing and music playing, there is not much of a space to communicate what is going on. When I experienced him feeling distant, I created a story that he was mad and judging me about my use of my sexual energy and how freely I was enjoying the context of kirtan. On top of this I also felt resentment because I had the expectation that he would show up in joy and be affectionate with me, on my team, by my side, in connection, around all of these other people. I had this fantasy about how a partner should show up when in social settings together, and when he did not, I wanted to get revenge on him.
What I didn’t know was that inside he was feeling so much fear and drowning in mental jumping jacks about how he should act at kirtan. What if he looked at a woman the wrong way? He was comparing how everyone else was being carefree and all he could do was analyze how he was being with his sexual energy and noticing how everyone else around him was using theirs.
After we left kirtan together, I asked him what was going on, because I felt this big rift between us, and he shared with me what I just relayed to you here. We spent another hour or so tending to laundry and deciding what we wanted to do on this last evening of the year. I heard him and I still felt stuck in this emotional sadness and anger that I am sitting here with while I write this to you.
What I am realizing now, is this connection between the old emotions of sadness and anger that are lingering, is that they are OLD. They are not here in the present. Living in the past I have created fantasies and expectations about how romantic partnership should go. I have created expectations about how New Year’s Eve should go. Both of these did not go how I expected them to go, so I feel this anger and sadness about them.
I feel joy that I connected with a dear friend and colleague Beth today, where we exchanged holding space for each other for Emotional Healing Processes to look at what really is going on, since Jeff and I already cleared what happened yesterday. From this process I saw how I was playing out expectations about how I wanted my parents to show up for me as a kid when I was younger. Still living out a fantasy that they would meet my needs, that they would read my mind of what I wanted, and simply be the space for my unique being to unfold inside of. I was projecting this onto Jeff when he showed up unable to be that space or be the affectionate partner I wanted in that moment.
This realization, while painful, is also perfect. More and more layers are continuously shown to me of how I relate to the world around me — to people, cultural customs, nature and beyond. These old patterns and ways of relating are coming up to be cleaned up, to die, to be transmuted and transformed into something else, something more conscious.
Today is January 1, 2024, and it is simply the day after yesterday. I can assign all of this meaning to today’s sunrise, and yet, the work continues, day in and day out. Today is just the next day that the sun rose. When I can take off the pressure and expectation of what today is SUPPOSED to be like, I can be with what it has for me more, instead of resenting it and getting revenge on it, or on myself, like was playing out with Jeff.
Last night, Jeff and I ended up sitting in a temazcal just the two of us, chanting and singing medicine songs for an hour, making miso mushroom soup, and watching Netflix before going to sleep by 10 PM. I awoke at 12:01 to loud bangs and looked out the window to see fireworks near and far going off all around the lake. It was an explosion of lights, colors and sounds and we were perched up in the mountainside of this volanic caldera lake inside of all of it. It was magical. All two minutes of it before I went back to sleep.
Yesterday truly held multitudes — sadness, anger, fear, and joy; adventure and mundanity, old friends and new connections, desires and repulsions, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, movement and stillness, life and death. This all happened in one day!
So here I am now, on January 1, feeling many feelings and emotions as I write this. Feeling a lot of “shoulds” circulating in my field — I should have gotten this out “last year”, I should have been in touch with more people yesterday to say Happy New Year, I should be feeling only joy because it is the first day of the new year and I need to start it out on the “right” foot, I should not be feeling disconnection towards Jeff because we already cleared what happened yesterday.
I am sharing all of this with you here because this is what is most alive in me now. It is spilling out from my heart and my being, feelings, emotions and all, seamlessly onto this digital piece of paper needing to be expressed.
This is what is REALLY going on with me, and THIS is what intimate relating is about.
I’m now ready to travel back to the second time I was here in Guatemala at the Lake, back in May. I had just been at my first Expand the Box (ETB) training in Costa Rica where I was energetically electrocuted (I love this image that I received from reading Clinton Callahan’s book No Reason recently about becoming a profound listening space for someone to speak into) as I received the download of so many new Distinctions in this 5-day period. These distinctions blasted me open to question everything as I started to see how modern culture, fueled by Patriarchy, had been unconsciously running my whole life and the world as I’ve known it.
I couldn’t look back and so I kept deepening this exploration by going to a Possibility Lab right afterwards. I traveled there with Tamara and Beth who were continuing on from the ETB they had invited me to join them at, along with a man named Jeff, who had organized and participated in the ETB and was also headed to the Lab.
So back to Guatemala I went, to Lake Atitlán, for another Possibility Management (PM) training, which brought along with it deep learnings around what being in “relationship” means. Relationship can mean so many things based on the entity I am relating with — myself, a friend, a parent, a romantic partner, a business partner, a teacher, nature, a pet, my work, creation, practice. By merely existing I am in relationship, I am in relationship to life.
There are different practices of relating, such as ayni — reciprocity, the harmonious balance of giving and receiving — an Andean philosophy, which I was first introduced to when I went to work with sacred plants in the Amazon in 2022. This is how the individual and community, how human and nature organically feed each other, take care for each other and sustain life through its many cycles of evolution and growth.
At this PM Lab, my shadows around romance, sexuality, jealousy, possession, and competition came boiling to the surface. I was starting to explore my underworld more, as I simultaneously began stepping into connecting with my power, anger, and voice more. The two come hand in hand, shadow and power, because as I gain a greater capacity to take up and project myself into space, to hold space for groups of people and projects much bigger than myself, there is more to tend to around my underworld purposes that are unconsciously at play.
In my travels between Costa Rica and Guatemala, Jeff and I opened up a verbal conversation about exploring relating as more than just colleagues training with the tools of Possibility Management. It was a brief and casual conversation that did open up some energetic ties between us. It was left open as we entered the Lab training space.
One of the highlights of this training space for me was about midway through, when we went to a local market in a nearby village called Santa Clara. The night before there was an intimate connection space created in the Lab. Jeff and I did not spend time together during it, though we were doing that thing of energetically keeping tabs on each other from afar. I had a beautiful, powerful connection space with the trainers — Patricio, Vera and Devin, along with other participants Beth, Tamara and John — diving deep into questions of working with plant medicine and its impact on one’s evolutionary journey, creating Low Drama in romantic relating spaces, and people destroying group spaces to get the attention they are still seeking from childhood.
At the end of the night, after the space closed, I connected with Jeff to say goodnight, and our friend and another participant in the training, a woman, J, came to join and sat down in the middle of the two of us. The two of them had a deep connection space earlier in the evening, and the three of us explored opportunities to creatively collaborate on projects. After this I experienced an awkward power struggle to see who would be the last pair of two to say goodnight. The energetic stalemate ran its course quickly as we all headed to bed.
I felt angry and confused, because I didn’t know what was going on or how to act. I thought Jeff and I were exploring a deeper way of connecting on a romantic level. I thought J and I were not just friends, but becoming real sisters. What was happening with the two of them? What did this mean about me? Was I the stupid one, the odd one out? So much was happening in me, and yet, so much went unspoken.
The next morning, before going to the market, I woke up in AGONY. I couldn’t stop crying, feeling a mix of sadness, anger, and fear combining because of the shame and guilt about the jealousy and insecurity I felt from my interaction with Jeff and J the night before. I didn’t know what to do with it, how to address it with either of them, and was just beating myself up for what a gross and disgusting human I was to be feeling such things.
We walked through the market, and as I stayed quiet, in and out of tears, and shut down, J kept saying “you can trust me and I am on your team,” as she tried to stay with me in my sadness. Jeff was looking out for me, inviting me in to check things out, and also keeping some distance. N, another friend and participant, held me at some point as I went totally Liquid and broke down crying in the middle of this market and didn’t know which way was up. Still, so much was going on under the surface, and I could NOT stop and say what was ACTUALLY going on.
Intimacy was NOT happening. Hidden purposes, self-cannibalization, survival protection strategies, patriarchal weapons between women, and between women and men, were all alive unconsciously and unacknowledged inside of me. It was a big fucking mess and I was creating all of it!
This is not to say others did not have their own roles in what was going on, but by being opaque about my feelings, emotions, and what I was seeing, no one could actually be with me, and no collaboration, healing, or creation could happen. I was paralyzed by fear. I did not communicate with J that I had opened a conversation about romantic relating with Jeff. I did not communicate with Jeff about the expectations I had started to grow about us because of the conversation we had, and continued interactions we kept having. I was not being honest with myself about what I wanted or needed in this situation from myself and others, nor did I ask for it.
A couple of days later the Lab ended, having kept most of this still inside of myself, I saw Jeff interacting with J and I was fuming. I stayed silent and didn’t use my voice as I had been practicing all week. I was hiding what I was seeing and had built up so much resentment to the point that I imploded. I couldn’t be in the space with Jeff and the other women and men, because I was so unconsciously angry and sad about how everyone consciously and unconsciously connecting with each other, and how rejected and jealous I felt. That night, I left the kitchen where everyone was together barely saying a word.
Jeff found me before I went to bed and asked if I wanted to talk about what was going on, with sadness and anger in his voice about my leaving and ignoring him after we had been connecting during the training. This morphed quickly into the three of us — J, Jeff and I having a deep multi-hour conversation about the dynamics happening between the three of us. It was messy, painful, scary, sad, maddening, and beautiful in all senses of these words. I walked away from this evening with clarity that I was not available to explore relating to Jeff as anything more than a colleague at this point, and that I wanted to deepen exploring what it means to be a true sister with J.
I was still left with so many questions:
What are my expectations in relationship — romantically and platonically? What is my relationship to possession and jealousy? How do I manipulate others by what I do and do not say? What does it mean to be right or wrong? How do I relate to my sexual energy? What is my relationship to how other people use their sexual energy? The list went on and I was just only starting to scratch the surface.
I headed out the next morning with Tamara to stay together in Tzununá for a week and this opened up even deeper layers around these questions. While I stayed with Tamara, I got my Reiki II training and attunement with my teacher Katherine. I also stayed at the lake to get to experience Tamara’s musical and sound art genius at an ecstatic dance she was playing.
Tamara had a lot of experience in exploring the many facets of intimate relating in conventional and non-conventional ways, and we had many deep exploratory conversations about what it means to be “friends” or “romantic partners” or what “partnership” even means. It really blew my mind as we started to sink into our archetypal purpose for relating — what was the bigger picture reason, that we could grasp at this time, for us to be in connection? Certainly there was Discovery, Evolution and Love happening — but when these concepts of family, friend, partner, romance started to enter the picture things got very blurry for me. For example, I could be in partnership with someone that I was simply co-creating a project with. I could be attracted to someone physically with no desire for romantic intimacy with them. I could be emotionally and intellectually, but not physically, attracted to someone. I could want to have sensual connection with someone and also be their work colleague. All of a sudden, all of these ways of relating using these bigger conceptual labels became very hard to accept and understand.
How can I notice in which of my 5 Bodies I am experiencing attraction to someone? What and why do I want to do something about this attraction? Do I need to do anything? What is the purpose of attraction? What is my purpose of relating to anyone at any given time? What part of me is attracted to them and what is that part trying to create?
After these trainings, and these intense investigations of relating dynamics, it was time to go to what felt like one of the scariest places I’d been all year — Houston, Texas. My brother, sister-in-law and nephew had just moved there from living in Asia — Seoul, Singapore and Japan — for many years. After all of the transformation this year had brought I was going to go through an integration period in an apartment, in Houston, Texas, with a newborn baby, and spend time with my brother and sister-in-law that I hadn’t spent more than a few weeks with in our adult lives (though we had our regular video catch ups over the years), all while being extremely energetically sensitive from all of the work I had been doing on myself.
And so I went to Texas at the end of May. This brought many lessons and meditations on motherhood, sisterhood, community, culture, and the myth of normal. I had some very deep conversations with my each of my family members in person here and got to spend time connecting with my beautiful nephew. One was with my brother and sister-in-law where I made a mess learning how to navigate old relating dynamics with new tools I had learned from PM. It then led into the second conversation of concerns expressed about my ability to relate to “normal” people, if I am engaging with these tools that are so direct and expressive with people without the numbed out conversing that people are used to.
I have come to realize that I am sick of talking about nothing, about “shooting the shit”, about filling empty space with empty words just to avoid the fear of being in silence together because we don’t actually know how to express ourselves because we are too afraid of rejection if we say what we really feel or ask for what we truly want.
Briefly, on the themes of relating in motherhood and sisterhood it became clear to me how important community is when it comes to raising a child. For the mother, for the child, for the family. Everyone is a critical piece of the equation and community allows for interdependent support structures to emerge and keep each individual in the group cared for, balanced, and integrated in their own wholeness and within the larger dynamics of the culture they live in.
I felt I was just as much there as anything to bond with my sister-in-law to show up for her, to be a space of support, to hold space and time for her to come back to and tend to herself as she had been caretaking this 7-month year old being largely on her own since they moved to Texas a couple months prior. To listen and share and learn more of the ways in which we approach love and life along many spectrums. It was beautiful.
And my nephew! To see him open his eyes after a nap, to cry so intensely, to explore his vocal chords making sounds, to see how much attention and care he truly needs and deserves to blossom and flourish. To witness all of the micro moments and decisions that go into raising a new human being in this world. There is much more to share about these aspects and those will come in another space as I continue that research.
Before I knew it, I was back on the road after a couple of weeks to Mexico to explore living in a community again. I first stopped at my dear friend J’s from the Lab in Guatemala. Intimacy WAS happening! In the difficult processes we went through together, it deeply bonded us like sisters in a unique way from my previous experience. It was going through very raw, scary and uncomfortable experiences together, and being truly vulnerable in the process, that we formed such a beautiful connection. We were together most of the time in Mexico, except for my first week visiting the community.
It is called Inla Kesh and is located in the state of Chiapas and is outside of the lovely city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. In this community they practice, study and implement the tools of Possibility Management, while growing their permaculture project on land feeds and sustains themselves, and their local community. They have families, babies, and individuals that live there full time and also have visitors for extended periods of time to realize projects there.
During my brief stay here, I was faced with the lesson of navigating my desires and needs in the context of community, or in any relationship for that matter. The challenge became clear: How to ask for what I want and need while showing up to contribute to the group tasks and initiatives that I am committed to by being there?
I felt a lot of internal stress with my people-pleasing and perfectionism strategies, trying to get it all right, while avoiding direct communication and creating stories that fed my insecurities about people liking me or not. This was a strong mirror to show me the parts of myself that I couldn’t hide from when living in the context of community (versus alone and not having to navigate individual and relational needs and desires).
While a stressful time, it was also a beautiful time. I had ample moments to practice letting go of control, cooking and cleaning for others, offering yoga practice as a gift, planting propagated trees on Inla Kesh’s land, creating compost from natural toilets, and practicing the tools of PM together. I got to deepen connection with women through deep vulnerable conversations about competition, trust, and what it means to show up for each other, really.
From here I went to another PM Lab training in Mexico, which brought along with it many more opening processes, landing at the end of this time with new questions about my relationship to authority figures, sexual shame, and trusting myself. It was about starting to own the woman I really am in a world where I was taught to look the outside for answers to my questions, most often to strongly-opinionated men.
From Mexico I went back to the States again, this time to my parents’ house. When I arrived there it was about a week before my 32nd birthday, where I was gathering some dear friends for a day of nature, ceremony, food, and connection. I had begun a 3-month spiritual coaching training program, not related to PM, back in June that I was attending online during these other experiences. Landing back at my parents’ house I was able to just focus on this work for the next month I would spend there.
I was so tired the first few weeks I was there, sleeping long hours, taking naps, yawning all the time. I came to realize that this was the first time in a long time I let myself pause all of the go, go, going. It was much needed after having been in non-stop transformational experiences for the past 7.5 months or so after radically shifting my life.
Once I was able to let myself slow down and rest, it was not long before I was ready for the next waves of transformation. The first wave was about acknowledging all of the change and the new person I have been becoming, day, after week, after month this year. I hadn’t really understood it because I hadn’t slowed down enough to really let it sink in until this moment in time. I had a conversation with a dear friend right after coming out of an Emotional Healing Process exchange where I looked at fear I held around being seen as legitimate with all of the traditional labels of the educational and corporate life I had been building up my whole life. I then came right into this conversation with my friend who said that she wasn’t sure how to relate with me anymore. It was like every time we had been connecting in the past few months, I was more and more this intense person so raw and focused on my growth and evolution that she didn’t know about how to show up in our space together.
This spun me out into the first wave of existential fear that I (finally) felt this year about “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” having made all of these wild changes. Was I becoming too radical? Would my brother and my friends, people so near and dear to me, not be able to relate to me any more? Could it be that I had changed so much that parts of me were dying and the person that these people knew before no longer existed?
I was grateful for this experience because it really shook me to pause and reflect on this new version of me I had been investing so much into becoming. It also made me appreciate so much the love and care I had cultivated in my relationships — with my friend, brother and family — that at the end of the day I was able to have really challenging yet loving conversations with each other where we still chose collectively to be with what was, even if it was uncomfortable, unknown, chaotic, or people wished it was different.
I was finally allowing myself, for the first time as an adult, to get closer to consciously touching my deep fear of people not liking me for who I truly was. I had been trying to fit in, to be someone to everyone since the beginning of high school. And now, I celebrate that finally, I became more committed to my authenticity than my attachment to any relationship. And still, people I cared so much were still being with the real me. I am experiencing waves of joy and sadness as I write this to you now and acknowledge this shift.
The second wave of transformation was about coming to truly face the Gremlin activity in me in my “romantic” relating patterns, coupled with my child ego state wanting someone else to meet my needs instead of me asking for what I need and want as an initiated adult.
I had a brief romantic connection with a man when I was in Guatemala for the first time, which was fun, and also opened up a lot to reflect on when I left for the Vision Quest in Nicaragua. I saw how I made myself available to waiting around for someone to want me, to make time for me, to show me they cared — when they were actually relatively emotionally unavailable and not particularly interested in relating with me. I was waiting around for someone who was creating their life to see me as a part of what they wanted to create, instead of us co-creating together because we were each living from our beings.
I found myself again in this pattern when I was back at my parents house, and decided after some brief virtual reconnection to propose a visit to him. The plans built for a few weeks, I booked tickets, and we had preparatory conversations for my visit, including sharing about expectations and emotions going into it. I felt a lot of joy to have been creating this type of relational space with a man, though my underworld was deeply running the show here under what appeared to be harmless on the surface.
The week leading up to my flight to visit I could barely sleep, I was feeling incredibly insecure, and had so many doubts about my plans to go visit this man. I called him up and we processed a couple of times what was going on for me — and I saw so clearly another pattern of mine — to bulldoze. My mother knows this pattern well, and perhaps some friends or people who have worked with me. It happens when I get an idea stuck in my head and I enter this tunnel vision type space where I cannot see any other possibility, and I obsessively force the thing that I want to happen through convincing and/or sheer will.
I had bulldozed these plans with this man, because I wanted to feel wanted, even though he was busy and relatively indifferent to my visiting, and even though I sensed all of this. I wrote an article that I’ve not yet published about this that I will link to here in the near future about this experience. So it happened that two days before my flights were to take off, I decided not to go visit this man. I changed my mind and pulled the plug, at the last minute — this is something I had never done before.
Since Jeff and I had been in Lab in Guatemala together, and we had found each other in various online trainings and circles on a weekly basis since then. Though I had closed the container we had briefly opened, we were on a supportive and cordial basis, deepening our practices and training with the tools of PM together.
After I decided not to go to visit this other man, which I shared in some of these online groups including with Jeff, I received an invitation from Jeff to go on a roadtrip for a week from Salt Lake City to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming before I headed to more PM trainings in Poland. With the desire for adventure, and admittedly lacking a lot of clarity and honesty with myself about wanting intimate (type and kind to be determined) connection with a man, I decided on a whim to go.
The trip was beautiful and opened a container of exploration between Jeff and me — ranging from feeling all of the four feelings of exploring physical intimacy together, to seeing grizzly bear in the Grand Tetons, to preparing an impromptu picnic with Argentinians who travelled from their home country to Canada and back in their van.
I said to myself when I arrived that we would just remain friends and have a good old time together. Well, we did, and some, and it worked. There were also these same old aspects of how I related in various ways to people coming up anew — how I shrunk and got quiet in the presence of a partner who has a lot of social presence and ease, how I felt fear if I didn’t know what to say when spending minutes, let alone hours, in silence together, and how much fear I felt to be seen so intimately for an extended period of time on end without being able to hide any parts of myself.
We closed the container and headed off separately to meet each other again in Poland for two weeks of group trainings focused on the themes of healing from school, and honing our skills as Possibilitators, and as people who train in and implement the tools of Possibility Management in their lives.
During these two weeks in Poland A LOT happened — many initiations around connecting to the deeply feminine, beautiful, angry, and fierce parts of myself. I felt myself reconnecting to my courage and power to speak my truth evenly with clarity. I started unfolding my ability to hold space for others more and step into the territory of the unknown of their evolution. I decided to practice being a Conscious Asshole: being someone who speaks their mind freely, even if the truth hurts, always keeping my heart and my sword in connection with the other human I speaking with.
Things were also still moving between Jeff and me since our roadtrip and in the intensity of the container of these trainings our feelings continued to deepen. It became apparent that we needed to negotiate the terms of exploring romantic partnership together. This too merits its own written space, and you can also join us in our ongoing research of relating (one such offer is linked at the end of this article).
During the trainings, one of the powerful processes we we entered into was called a Frying Pan, where the two of us sat in the middle of a circle of twenty or so people to negotiate with each other, guided by two very powerful trainers and space holders — Clinton, the creator of Possibility Management, and Anne-Chloé, a PM Trainer, PM Gameworld Spaceholder, and Clinton’s partner. Most of the experience entailed me using my anger make it very clear to Jeff about what I wanted (which was to open up a relating space of practice, including his attention on the use of his sexual energy with women and closed physical intimacy relating), what else I was available for and not. I stumbled over my words trying to find what I was trying to negotiate and it was both terrifying and so beautifully supportive.
I also received strong feedback about my own strategies for manipulation, playing small and not clearly asking for what I want; how I actually use my sexual energy to achieve this in my romantic relating as well. A lot of questions came up about the meaning of monogamy, non-monogamy, and how to relate in a mutually supportive way where we both can flourish and grow, while staying true to ourselves and desires.
Zooming through the months of September to now, Jeff and I have been exploring romantic relating traveling through Europe with a crew of pirates. We traveled through Poland, including a visit to Auschwitz, and then visited other members of our decentralized community throughout Europe. First Bratislava, then Zurich, then a community in Switzerland called Shloss Glarisegg. We visited even more friends in Frieburg and Groot Eiland, before I headed off to Portugal for a Women’s Lab (which needs its own dedicated writing space because WOW that was one of the most initiatory experiences of my life). What I will say is that being in this group of women cracked open new parts of my being that I did not know were possible for me to hold. I realized how much more I was playing out patriarchal war games with my sisters, including a dear sister named Bishop with whom I am currently deepening relating with through our romantic partnership experiences, and exploring holding spaces together and supporting each other owning our fierceness in all spaces we relate to.
I also just need to pause here and express my deep gratitude for Vera and Anne-Chloé, two incredibly powerful, inspiring, Archan women, who I have held so many spaces for me this year in in-person trainings and beyond. I am not sure if anyone has touched my being as gently, as intensely, as being-cracking-openingly, again and again as these two have. Thank you for being with me, and for shining so much light in my world and in the world of so many people around me in the name of Regenerative Culture. Thank you.
In Portugal was also the Archiarchy Maker’s Fair, which brought deep explorations of the fear, anger, sadness and joy that happens in creative collaboration (and destruction) between women and men, a Feelings Practitioner training, which brought a whole new side of Possibility Management and straight up magical physical body healing with energy and emotions that also needs another dedicated space to explore, and Gameworld Consulting at a budding community called Quinta Da Carvalheira. Then I headed back to the States for another Lab training in Austin, Texas, before entering full modern culture (and no in person trainings!!) for a couple of months in Miami with Jeff’s family wedding, and American Thanksgiving in New Jersey with my full extended family.
I write to you now from the shores of Lake Atitlán kicking off the New Year, brimming with possibilities, offerings, trainings, research, and more, galore!
Here are some offers for you if you are ready to expand your box and evolve your being:
Get Visible: Rage Club for Women
Have you been playing small recently, or maybe even your whole life? Have you been waiting for permission from others to follow your desires? Have you been scared of making others angry when you ask for what you want or say what you really think? Have you been hiding behind a quiet voice or not sharing your voice at all? Have you been stopping yourself from sharing your unique gifts with the world? Have you suppressed your desires so much to the point that you don’t even know what you want?
I’ve done all of these things and I am ANGRY about it. I am angry seeing other women who do the same, tiptoeing around their own power. I am angry about all of the gold that I am sitting on and hoarding for myself because I am scared to be seen in my full magnificence and radiance. Sound familiar?
The world needs women who are committed to finding their clarity, creating from this clarity, and getting visible with what they create. This is exactly what you will practice in this Rage Club.
This space is for women who are more committed to standing in their power than hiding behind it.
I NEED this space. If you are reading this it’s possible you do too.
Will you join me?
Navigating Offers for Intimacy | Research & Practice Space
Do you know how to negotiate what you want in your relating space? Or does it turn into low drama more often than not?
Navigating your relating space can be combative and filled with gremlin reactivity. On the other hand, you can fill your relating space with the Bright Principles of Connection, Collaboration, and Creation.
Negotiation is about being skilled at making offers for intimacy. With practice, winning starts happening with the people you relate to.
We want to practice with you because it is such a simple act, and yet is not always easy. We also want to research this with you because we can’t to do it alone.
What tools, what distinctions, and what level of responsibility is needed for your offers to land in support of archetypal love?
This space is for couples, for friends, for colleagues, pirates, creators, and journeyers who want to discover the magic of true intimacy. As we kick off 2024, we take a stand for practicing intimacy with ourselves, each other, and with the village to bring a new level of loving co-creation into our lives.
Will you join us?
Possibility Coaching and Emotional Navigation Work
I currently hold individual and group spaces for women, and men, who are in transitional phases of their life and committed to unfolding their true nature to live as a free and natural adult, connected to their source of their being and aliveness.
Since I retired from “work” about a year ago, and am committed to being of passionate service in the world, I feel joy to offer an exploratory session with you to understand your X on the map, no frills, no B.S. Just pure clarity and heart connection delivering the distinctions you need to take your next step in your evolution.
If you are ready to GO! connect with me on Telegram or WhatsApp at +1 908 268 4707.
Lastly, if you want to get involved and start exploring Possibility Management for yourself, I invite you to come to an Expand the Box training this February, in Costa Rica. Learn more here!
Books I read (or am still reading) and recommend:
The Shaman & Ayahuasca by Don Jose Campos
Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremey Narby
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar by Martín Pretchtel
Yoga Sutras of Patañjali
Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara) by Shantideva
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
No Reason by Clinton Callahan
Courses, trainings and healings I have completed or received the past year+ I recommend:
Shamanic Reiki Healing and Kambo with Blue Star Alchemy in Brooklyn, NY
Healing Ayahuasca Retreat at the Temple of the Way of Light in Iquitos, Peru
Introductory Herbal Course from the Herbal Academy (online; in progress)
Compassionate Inquiry Self Study Short Course (online; in progress)
Plant Dieta at Shipibo Rao in Pucallpa, Peru
Reiki I and II Training & Attunements at San Marcos Hollistic Cottage in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Vision Quest at Reserva Los Nogales in Nicaragua
Spiritual Coaching Training with the Life Purpose Institute online
Possibility Management Trainings:
Expand the Box (x1) - In Nosara, Costa Rica @ Tierramor with Anne-Chloé Destremau and Clinton Callahan
Possibility Labs (x7)
In Guatemala @ The Hermitage with
and Patricio DiazIn Mexico @ Otros Mundos with Lisa Ommert and Patricio Diaz
In Poland, the Heal from School Specialty Lab and Possibilitator Skills Specialty Lab with Anne-Chloé Destremau and Clinton Callahan
In Portugal, Women of Earth Specialty Lab with Anne-Chloé Destremau and Vera Luísa Franco, and Feelings Practicioner Core Lab with Michaela Kaiser and Michael Hallinger
In Austin, Texas, United States @ Amrit Yoga Collective with Vera Luísa Franco
Gremlin Transformation Chapter 0 (x2) - Online, with Patricio Diaz, Devin Gleeson, Lisa Ommert, and Luís Trindade
Special shoutout and thank you to all of the names of people mentioned and alluded to in this article. Thank you for being huge, impactful parts of my life. I am so very grateful for you. Looking forward to seeing more of you in 2024.