When I returned to Vancouver for my first extended stay in four years, I had no plan. I felt a tug — a knowing that I needed to spend some time here in order to receive the money needed for my construction project at the off-grid community in Baja.

I got as far as I could last year — building foundations by hand that withstood the incredible power of the wettest rainy season that particular corner of the sun baked peninsula had seen in more than a decade.

When I came here, suspended mid air on the 28th floor in a condo lovingly dubbed ‘The Eagle’s Nest’ I first took some time to pour into me. Then I experimented and listened for guidance. I went to story nights, attended online writing workshops and as I told my stories of the last several years, I kept getting asked when my book was coming out.

This didn’t seem logical. Not only is writing a book a bit of a time consuming endeavour, but even after it is written, the publishing process, especially through a publisher as a first time author, is not fast.

I had this knowing though — this deep gut feeling that told me that writing the book was the key to unlocking what I was looking for. Not necessarily that the book would generate this income, but that the process of writing it was what I needed to do in order in order to receive what I knew was coming. I decided to do the crazy thing and not worry about where this money would come from, just trust the process.

In a world where so many people have paid subscriptions, free downloadable content, online courses, one on one coaching, retreats and paid communities, while constantly producing content and sending multiple emails a week to anyone who ever looked into the work they do, it seemed completely crazy to quietly put all my eggs in one basket, but on some level I didn’t understand, it felt important to have faith in this — to have faith in my ability to be devoted to my destiny.

So, I didn’t worry about making money, I didn’t worry about how marketable my book would be, I wrote what felt most true. I wrote what I needed to write and the process illuminated and revealed things I didn’t expect. It helped me see the magic of the path I am on, the souls who are part of the joint mission here with me, the significance of so many seemingly random things and it gave me faith to keep going, even when there is no proof that I’m on the right path.

This felt terrifying — there are people who I love very much who supported me in taking this time to work on a passion project and I didn’t want to let them down. I told them that I was here so that in the long run I could not only build my own home in the community I have helped to co-create, but to also contribute financially to the maintenance of the infrastructure at the central hub. I promised them I would be back and that this time away would benefit us all. There is also the amazing person who created a safety net once I began to leap, which allowed me to leap bigger than I ever would have dared to do alone, who created a home in the city that I could always return to and where I could now write in complete peace. I promised him that I would create a home for us on the other side and I declined his offer to finance it. I wanted to return the favour, not take advantage of someone who had already given me so much. I didn’t want to let these humans down, and it suddenly felt like a lot was riding on this gut feeling.

This was not new territory for me. I was self employed for 17 years and did all the things. I marketed, went to networking events, wrote a popular blog about my career, did demos and took public speaking opportunities, and yet, when I became very ill and streamlined I took a deeper look at my business and realized that 99% of my clients (and all the best ones), did not come from any of those efforts. In the years that followed, as I simply poured into myself, more amazing clients continued to find me, despite not being visible. Four years ago I took this to the extreme by leaving my job and jumping into completely uncharted territory. Against all odds, I have two places to call home in my two favourite places on Earth with truly amazing communities and experience a kind of magical abundance that I didn’t know was possible. It’s different now though, because it feels like my decisions affect others, my dreams are bigger than before and emotionally the stakes are higher.

I would be lying if I said I stayed perfectly calm and on task. I tried to rush to the finish line, and had a minor panic attack when I realized I didn’t like what I wrote (despite receiving really positive feedback), and scrapped it and started over again.

I decided to just take the time I needed to write the book I needed to write. To show up every day, although some days I wrote far more than others. To write what felt true, even when it scared me — especially when it scared me. To centre myself in my story, while simultaneously giving credit to those who have walked this beautifully human, messy path with me.

The week that I was finishing editing and putting together a package to send to a publisher, I received unexpected news. I would be receiving a gift, no strings attached, for exactly the sum needed for my construction project, a year’s worth of living expenses while I complete it, including money to contribute to the central hub at the community. It is coming from a source I never would have expected, someone who received an unexpected sum of money and decided to share some with me from a place of overflow.

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At a time when we are told we need to be visible, need to scream our message from the rooftops, need to know our worth and charge an arm and a leg to give someone a map, when we’re all just doing our best stumbling around in the darkness, I am being reminded over and over again that the universe does not respond to strategy, status, to performative authenticity. The universe responds to energy, and it is always paying attention. We do not need to create content to stay visible; we need to acknowledge that we are visible to the forces that dance with our energy in every moment.

I’m still in shock as the logical part of me tries to understand what if cannot and while I am in the city for another six weeks, I am reminded of the immense power of own energy, of the beauty of keeping our head down and quietly working towards our goals, baby step by baby step.

So I am taking the time to really, truly tap in and listen to what I am guided to do next, and none of it looks particularly impressive from the outside. I have curated a bit of a self guided Spanish bootcamp for myself, so when I return to Mexico, I can ask my wonderful unofficial family to speak only Spanish to me. I am working on my fitness so when I return I can jump right in to the construction project, but also because one of my goals when I return is to begin working with my free range horse who is now old enough to start getting ridden, and it has been a few years since I have sat on a horse. I am also taking some time to learn to update my website myself. I am moving towards my goals and that movement doesn’t need to be big and splashy, it does not need to prove anything to anyone, it just needs to tap into the energy of the universe, move with the current of that momentum and create a vacuum for the things that are meant to be in my orbit, to continue being drawn to me.

Again, I would be lying if I said that hitting send on an email with my manuscript to a publisher and receiving a large cash gift didn’t make me nervous — didn’t make me doubt if I was good enough or possibly just crazy, if there wasn’t a moment of panic and old scarcity programming that surfaced exactly when things went as I had hoped, but I am finding out that if we are truly living, expanding, following the pull of guidance, moving towards dreams that feel bigger than we are, the fear will creep in and that is ok. The trick is not to try to distract or numb from it, but to pause, to feel it and to move forward from a place of deeply rooted love despite the fear. To have faith before we see the results and not to cling to an outcome, but be open to magic flowing our way from unexpected sources in unexpected ways.

Where is your energy pulling you right now and what would it look like to trust it completely before having proof?

1) The insecurities and feelings that came up in the stillness of having a beautiful, peaceful space to write, they were just as, if not more important to tend to than the writing. When I finally made space for them, when I finally looked at them and accepted them with no noise or distractions to escape into, they practically dissolved.

2) I truly needed a feeling of safety to write the book I want to write that couldn’t just come from me (although it had to start with me). I needed to know I was truly supported by the people in my life, that they were ok with me taking the time I needed when it became clear it was going to be longer than I planned. I realized that asking for that clarity, from a place of vulnerability was very challenging for me, and I tried to do everything I could to avoid it first.

3) When those things were in place, I had to bring my energy fully back to myself and really focus on pouring into me and not worry about anything else.

4) I needed to share and talk about my ideas with people - because that is how I always gain better clarity, it is how my mind works and it just took time, to delve deeper, to connect things, and to refine and polish a lot of the message on the front end, instead of requiring a ton of editing on the backend. I did some open mic nights, story nights, writing workshops and critique sessions and I didn’t use most of the stuff I wrote or shared in those sessions, I just learned from it.

5) I needed to write the book I thought I wanted to write, to acknowledge there was a more scary feeling one that needed to come out. One that talks about the science I feel unqualified to share and the spiritual experiences I feel embarrassed to acknowledge. The linear memoir, just the experiences I have had these last four years, which have been the most exciting part of my life would have made a good story, but a very incomplete one.

6) I needed to centre myself in my own book. It is my story I am writing and I was fascinated how easy it became to try to take the focus off myself, to take less credit, and to take less accountability with it. I also needed to shine less of a light on others out of respect. The amazing people in my life, they are private and beautiful and inspiring and sometimes messy because the world is very messy right now, and it became very important to me to write about them, and not to ignore things, not to lie, but to also not write a voyeuristic story full of the kind of sex and drama that seems to sell. To somehow in the process do both - tell a better story without relying on cheap crutches, and respect my own and others’ boundaries and to let readers fill in some gaps and leave some mystery. I also needed to read quite a few memoirs in the process. I read a lot of non-fiction, but this was research for my own book, not just reading for fun - and to really pause in the moments where I felt uncomfortable, not because of the subject matter, but where it felt like I was being shown a private moment between two people that felt unnecessary to the story. In this day and age of social media and in our desire to be seen, I think sometimes we forget that not everything is for public consumption, that not everyone deserves access to certain parts of us (or those in our lives). I think often people write memoirs about those who are no longer in their life, and the most influential and important people in my life (those I am focusing on) are present, and I am writing very intentionally from the middle of this story, not any perceived end. Changing their jobs or their professions would either change the integrity of the whole story or it would still be very easy for anyone who knows me to know exactly who they are, so this was going to require some tact and finesse that I needed to develop. I had used writing as therapy for a long time, and it still is, but it’s no longer what I share with the world, it is what I use to clear the channels.

7) I needed to acknowledge that I am not a writer. I love to write, but I am an adventurer first and foremost. I am not a sit down and write for hours on end kind of person like writers are expected to be. I need to move and dance and breathe and eat delicious foods and love and seduce life for the words to pour of out of me effortlessly.

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8) I needed to acknowledge what I have always known: that my process for everything I do is different. That by the time I sit down and feel ready to write, what ends up coming out is often an almost finished draft and that if I try to change that and force myself to sit and write for a certain amount of time or a certain amount of words if I don’t feel inspired, the discipline is not helping, it is actually hindering. This is what I always did in school (where I got good grades without trying - but I was told this was a problem and that I needed to work harder to try to earn an extra one or two percent that may never come). I would jot down ideas - or just think of them and go on with my life. Then, I wrote papers the night before they were due. I probably should have done it a night earlier and then followed up with a quick edit, but I really didn’t need it for my grades. It wasn’t procrastination, it was fermentation. It was shaming this process that caused real procrastination that I struggled with for decades after school.

9) On this journey, I have been shown by those near me, that they love me, trust me, and believe in me even when I don’t look productive, even when I’m questioning myself, even when I’m uncertain. In turn, this continued increase of a feeling of safety, makes me braver to tell the story and has made my entire life so much more rich. For a while I thought that to not perform I would need to isolate myself entirely. I’m learning that it can happen beautifully as long as we connect deeply, yet keep our boundaries.

10) I needed to acknowledge that good things take time. Amazing food, amazing love, amazing conversations, amazing sex, amazing experiences of all kinds - they are not rushed, they are savoured, and I am allowed to enjoy the process, not just race to the outcome.

When I left a city in hopes of co-creating a more nourishing life and environment for myself, it was always important for me to share this with others as well. I had to learn to share in healthy ways though.

In a world that often feels like a desert, parched for nourishment, I had spent a lifetime over giving, over pouring and it led to disease, to anxiety and depression, to emotional instability and to feeling like I could never do enough to help those around me. Spending time in the desert showed me something miraculous though. Many of the plants in the desert rely on nothing but moisture from coastal fog to survive periods of drought lasting up to two years. They capture it in their branches, and as it forms into bigger and bigger droplets, it falls beneath and wets the sand for themselves and all the plants around them. They receive and share and it is what sustains them. It is miraculous.

It has made me wonder how to tap into this way of life - one that teaches me to take only enough, to share lots and doesn’t leave me depleted. Through much observation and plenty of experimentation, there have been several things I learned along the way.

To give freely, without expectation, the giving has to be from a place of overflow, not a place of sacrifice. That is how it becomes sustainable. It is also how it feels light to receive. In Mexico, I have met some of the most generous humans in the world. There is a saying that a Mexican will give you the shirt off his back and while this sentiment is beautiful in theory, if we all do that, in the end everyone with a generous nature ends up naked.

What I have found fascinating as well, is the things I have been most grateful for and that others have appreciated most from me, none of them really cost the person sharing anything at all.

The other thing I learned is that giving feels good when the connection is reciprocal. I don’t mean transactional. I don’t mean sharing only when we get something material that we deem to be of a fair value in return. I mean reciprocal where there is an energy exchange, a connection between two people that goes deeper than someone needing something and someone having that thing to give. Whether it is in an established relationship or exchanging smiles with a stranger out on a walk, sharing something with a stranger in need, or even just lending an ear to someone who has no one to talk to, it feels effortless to do that in those situations when there is a recognition of two souls, a willingness to truly connect, if only for a moment.

Currently I’ve started to build a space for myself in Mexico, in ways that nourish the land I am building on, a co-creation with nature that takes care of me as much as I take care of it. It has passed the first test - an extremely heavy rainfall, even for a place known for infrequent, but heavy rainfalls, after I put the foundations in place.

It is a space that will support me in living a life that nourishes not only my body but also my soul. It has been a plan for a while to also build a guest cabin on this plot and invite people to come experience it.

The point is not for others to see what I’m doing and recreate it, because my space is going to support my own passions, my own unique strengths and the kind of life that makes me come alive. The point is to see possibilities outside of the realm of what we consider reality. The point is to experience the feeling of an environment created to support us in living a life that helps us meet our needs, is aligned with our individual core values, our mission and purpose in this life - a life where the desirable choice is the easy choice every single time. Where wellness is a byproduct of living there, not one where wellness is something we have to fight for.

One of the gifts of a life in which I have had the opportunity to spend time in a large variety of environments over many years, including very consciously over the last five years or so, is that I have recognized patterns that I don’t ever hear being talked about. Some places allowed me to thrive in certain ways effortlessly and provided energy levels I haven’t experienced before. Others felt stifling, exhausting, even though they were beautiful and located in places that looked like paradise. I didn’t fully recognize the pieces of the puzzle and put them all into place until I started planning my own space and even more so, just now, as I work on my book. I have never experienced a place that has allowed me to thrive in all ways, to meet all my needs, but that is what I aim to create.

Often those who ‘return to the land’ recreate the pressure, stress and expectations of city life, creating a life that doesn’t allow for downtime, because even when there is technically time to rest, there is this weight of responsibility that constantly drains, this knowing of all the things that need to be done, like 50 open tabs constantly running in the background draining our battery, preventing true presence. When we have grown up in a world where to survive is to be useful, we struggle to learn to thrive, to allow others to see the worth we have when we are allowed to just be. Even when alone, we often perform, because to stop performing means to risk death to a nervous system stuck in survival.

We are shaped by our environments in young age, and unless we pause long enough to truly become aware of this, we then create environments that reinforce that shape, whether it is one that serves us or not. These environments then make it impossible for us to let go of the survival mechanisms that have kept us alive, by keeping us caught up in trauma patterns, coping mechanisms. They become a feedback loop that prevents us from thriving, they keep shaping us into the shape we have outgrown, and we can’t figure out what is wrong, why we aren’t more happy or more grateful or more relaxed, or more rested, telling ourselves that it is our lack of focus or discipline, and promise to try harder, find a better routine, or diet or workout plan.

We create what feels familiar unless we truly create consciously, so most people recreate the very stress they have tried to leave behind in a more natural setting, which simultaneously means they never truly benefit from authentic connection to nature even when they are right in it.

Life is meant to have both - action and stillness, and to experience both in an environment that supports that, allows that, gives us room to breathe, especially an environment where the actions are not merely doing things to look busy, but ways to intentionally connect more deeply to ourselves and everything around us. Suddenly life becomes a true immersive experience, not just one labeled that.

To come visit a place like this, is not a retreat away from life, it is an opportunity to step towards life - to dance with it, allow it to seduce us a little.

Spending time in a truly nourishing environment, it is an invitation to meet parts of ourselves that have spent a lifetime in hiding. To come more alive not through force, but to gently unfurl, bloom, like a flower in the presence of the sun.

I know that for this to happen, for people to benefit as much as possible from this experience, it has to be people I have an established relationship with, not just because like I mentioned already, reciprocity is important, but also because a certain level of trust is required for someone to come to a property in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country. Not only that, but to navigate the discomfort that is likely to come up.

That is the thing about being in a healthy environment at first, it feels uncomfortable to a nervous system used to struggle, stress, chaos, control. We often spend lifetimes recreating what feels familiar, because it’s more comfortable than uncertainty, even if the familiar path always leads us to comfortable misery. To truly experience a different way of being, to relax into it, a high level of trust is essential because we cannot drag someone into it, they have to want to meet us there. They have to step into the depths of what their emotions may ask them to navigate in that moment.

The thing about healing work, from that I have experienced as someone who has done a ton of healing in the last nine years - is that what I benefitted most from, was not someone trying to heal me. What I have benefited from, is someone loving me exactly as I am, and gently challenging me through things they enjoyed, an invitation into their world, their experiences, their environments and different ways of being that shifted things in me. Most of these things, I never would have tried on my own, because here is the thing about healing - we will avoid the things we truly need to do most to heal. Read that again. The things we need most, they often feel so uncomfortable, we would never choose them for ourselves. We will spend thousands of dollars on therapy, travel halfway across the world to silent retreats or to plant medicine ceremonies, but the activity or experience or connection that would truly reveal a new part of us to ourselves, we will often swear up and down that we just know we won’t like it. I would know. Hiking, camping, baking, cooking, building, writing a book - just a very short list of things I told myself I didn’t like and had no interest in that have completely changed the trajectory of my life. Having a Dogo Argentino, an orphaned horse, a love who is as passionate about horses as I am - even as someone who has always loved animals, these are all things I have said I would never do, didn’t want, that for some strange reason, I have needed to experience in this lifetime to heal parts of me that nothing else could have access to, nothing else was the right shape to touch, to reveal, but I was incredibly resistant to all of them. None of the things I have needed most I would have ever sought without an invitation from someone that something in me responded to despite the fear and it was based on trust.

Being invited into someone’s world, provided with a supportive environment through their own presence and the environment around them, it is some of the most potent medicine I have experienced. We can’t come into it with expectations though. Learning who we are, it is as much about learning what we do not like, as what we do. Sometimes it is just about allowing ourselves to do very little and rest for the first time in a lifetime. We have to be patient, stay out of the way and adjust as needed to find that happy medium where comfort and getting out of one’s comfort zone meet, that magical space where growth occurs almost effortlessly, and to do that one must have no agenda, just truly enjoying each other’s company. To do that, the person doing the inviting, the leading, they have to acknowledge they are as much as student as the person coming into that space.

There is also another piece of the puzzle. For this to actually have an impact, it cannot become a business. As soon as there is an expectation of healing, of transformation suddenly there is pressure on everyone involved. That pressure causes performance on both sides. The money exchanged for a promise causes a level of subtle disconnection that doesn’t always show up in other interactions, but does in this situation. It is why despite the growing number of healing retreats, healing modalities, not that much seems to change, often people just become desperate to seek more of these spaces, instead of trusting their own guidance. Because the version of healing we have been sold, it is actually just learning to cope better with the unhealthy environments we have grown accustomed to, it is why we always need more healing, why it has become a lifelong journey that never seems to get easier - because somehow the goal is always to shift ourselves, to make ourselves small, smooth enough, palatable enough, that we do not offend, that we do not cause friction, that if we just communicate better, then everything will be ok, that we have to learn not to take things personally, and just fly under the radar - excel, achieve, compete - but only in ways that have been outlined for us, largely through abandoning ourselves, overriding the wisdom of our bodies, our feelings and our intuition. That is not healing though. True healing is trusting in our own inner guidance over all else and trusting in our ability to change our lives so we no longer have to cope, but we need to be able to experience this to know it exists. It is not just something that our mind needs to hear, it is something that our body, our nervous system has to feel. The point is not to become simply more aware of what is happening in our internal landscape and keep reaching out to others to help us carry it differently. It is to put it down in a way that only a completely different environment, different activities, different way of being in the world can cause us to do, as we learn to build self trust, even for those short moments and to experience a sense of aliveness we may not be familiar with. Those contrasts, they begin to act as our guides to creating a more beautiful life. Because if we have never tasted the gentle sweetness of a soul nourishing tonic, we will keep drinking bitter poison, we will even seek it out, because it is all we know.

I also believe that everyone deserves equal access to opportunities that allow us to experience a different way of life. One that helps to unlock possibilities when we realize that beautiful experiences and most of the things that make up a beautiful life, they don’t have to be paid for. This is true for everyone, from those with very little money, all the way to those who have a lot, yet still worry that maybe it’s not enough (which, by the way, is almost everyone in our unnatural way of life that depends on money for everything).

At the same time, it is those struggling most who often have the least access to resources and would benefit most from seeing what can happen when we feel a pull of our soul and follow it, no matter how outrageous it sounds, no matter how unprepared we feel. That pull is there for a reason. When I set out on this adventure, I had nothing - no money, no guarantee, no security, just faith that a better way was possible. A safety net began to form when I started leaping into the abyss, but it only began to emerge after the first big leaps, not before. My little plot of land, the foundations on it, the dwelling that is beginning to take shape, they are physical proof that what I am saying is not just philosophy, not just theory, it is something I have experienced. It is hope.

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On this entire journey, ordinary people helped me see my light, fuel my spark, guard it and feed it in moments I least expected it, in ways that feel like they have been designed especially for me.

It wasn’t always pretty either - some of the lessons I really needed to learn, they didn’t come packaged in a pretty box, instead they pricked the very spots where wounds I tried to ignore were festering. Just like when a cactus spike enters the body, often with a barb at the end that makes it impossible to remove, often we don’t feel it for a while. The body has to build up inflammation and puss around it, and only when we poke it directly, graze against it, do we feel the pain and we have to look at it, squeeze it despite the pain for the spike to be expelled from the body. Sometimes the same can be said for emotional wounds - we don’t see them until someone prods exactly in that spot that in an all too familiar way and we can become aware of it and squeeze it, purge it for good.

This is why contrasts are so important. Healthy, healing environments are beautiful, but it is only in experiencing the opposite and learning how to deal with it better, how to walk away completely or set crystal clear boundaries and pull back our energy, depending on what only we know the right choice is, that we truly heal. That is how we take our power back and then create what it is we want to experience more of in the world.

It doesn’t happen overnight either, some of the interactions, moments, experiences - it wasn’t until months later that I would fully understand how much of an impact they had on me, how much they stripped away to reveal the human who was underneath, how much more adaptable they made me. And all of them, they would build on each other, leading me back to myself, like little crumbs in the forest leading me back home.

While some of the people who have had a huge impact on me were those I met only once or twice, the people who have done the most have been those I have known a long time - those who loved me at my lowest, those who know how far I have come, those who have known me over different chapters and have chosen to be there and read them all. None of them are heroes or healers - just people who have cared about me, saw me, and offered something beautiful freely. This is why community matters. This is why community and healing cannot be commodified. They are not mere services - they are the base of what makes us human.

Even in cases healing came in an experience that was paid for -  like a dance lesson, a percussion workshop, a local Burning Man event, whatever the case may be - what these moments delivered was so much more than I ever paid for or could have hoped for in the moment. It came completely unexpectedly and it is why it was so impactful. I will always be grateful for the invitations that were extended my way, the ones that scared me, but due to a connection with someone that felt safe, I was brave enough to step towards. I will take any opportunity to pass that same beautiful gift on to anyone I can.

That is what a magical life is all about - learning to receive from unexpected sources and share from a place of overflow. I truly believe that the right investor or investors will want to be part of this project. In fact, I have already had two offers that came completely out of the blue, but showed me that others can see the value in this, not in mere return of investment in dollar amounts, but in something that cannot be quantified, but deeply matters.

One person, had the means and in fact wanted to give more than I needed, which I did not want (part of this project is challenging the notion that a lot of money is required to create a magical life), but wanted a level of control that I wasn’t willing to give up, so it was not quite aligned. The other person, has created most of the safety net that has allowed me to pursue this dream and while he is generous and would give freely, it wouldn’t be from a place of overflow - he would need to work longer and over give, so I had to tell him that as grateful as I am for all he has done, as much as that place in Mexico is going to be not only my home, but our home because it wouldn’t exist without him, I couldn’t say yes. A couple of others I have inquired with were extremely interested, but the timing wasn’t right for them. I have faith that the right opportunity will come along exactly when needed.

In nature there are species known as keystone species. They have evolved beautifully to play powerful roles in their environments that nourish them, while nourishing the world around them. For example fungi, building powerful networks that feed them, and give to everything around them. I truly believe this step of our evolution is asking humans to become a keystone species once again. At one point we were one, as Indigenous people the world over show us to this day, there were ways to thrive while helping our environment thrive with us. We don’t have to become anything more than we are. We just have to remember what we’ve forgotten.

Soon after my arrival in Mexico, before I ever decided I would want to stay longer than a few months in the place that has become a huge part of my life, a dog adopted me.

Ironically, she is specifically the kind of dog I swore I would never get, not because they are bad dogs, I just think humans have irresponsibly bred many breeds of dogs to be killing machines. Wolves and coyotes - they kill to survive. Dogs kill for sport because humans have specifically bred the dogs with the highest prey drives, the ones that would have naturally eliminated themselves from the gene pool in the wild by getting injured or not having any females that allow them to breed, because despite our twisted human understanding of nature, the most aggressive animals are not actually the best protectors.

She is a Dogo Argentino cross. These dogs have the second strongest jaw strength of any breed. They were originally bred to hunt wild boars and pumas, which for anyone who knows anything about either wild boars or pumas - these dogs are fearless in the face of danger. They were then used for dog fighting too.

When I met her, Güera (yes, ironically she came with a name that means white girl), was 1.5 years old and a mass of pure muscle and energy, far stronger than her size would suggest. I have seen her rip apart a fallen Cardon (the huge variety of Cacti in Baja) into chunks with her teeth just for the fun of it. Her nickname at her first home was coyote killer.

Despite a crazy high prey drive and fearlessness when her prey drive kicked in, she was very insecure in other situations. A dangerous combo - one that can lead to bites. The place she came from, they wanted the dogs to have all the freedom in the world. This came from a good intention, they saw how big this space was and didn’t think the dogs should have boundaries, except sometimes in her search for a boundary (because young dogs will mercilessly push boundaries until they find them, young dogs do not want to be in charge, they want to know who their leader is), she would go so far that someone would yell or toss something at her. Despite her strength, she was incredibly sensitive and this caused her to be nervous around humans, unsure what it is they wanted from her.

When she first started spending time on the property I was volunteering on, she made it incredibly clear that she wanted to eat the free range chickens, chase the cows and horses that wandered by down the road, chase anything that moved really. Due to her lack of training though, and general wariness of humans, she could not be leashed at all, not even for training purposes. She would have full blown panic attacks when restrained in any way.

She should have been very hard to train, but for some reason, despite me wanting nothing to do with her and not feeling ready to be responsible for a dog like this, she chose me to be her leader. She would watch me intently to see where the boundaries were and with every passing day she calmed, listened better and started sleeping outside my tent. Soon it started to feel like she could read my mind without me having to say anything.

I really didn’t want her, but I could also see that without intervention, this dog would harm some animal she shouldn’t and end up getting punished for it by having her life ended by one of the local ranchers.

She was free to return to her other home, one without any boundaries at all, yet she chose to stay and she wanted to learn. We started to joke that she was giving herself a version of exposure therapy - she would place herself in a situation around the chickens where she had to work on her impulse control until eventually, they could touch her and she wouldn’t react.

The challenge has been to teach her boundaries, but give her outlets so she can meet her needs. To suppress those needs entirely would not be fair. To attempt to meet them myself, would be almost a full time job.

So, the goal was never to make her super obedient, it was to teach her to make good decisions on her own.

She is lucky that the accidental breeding that led to her birth (and for the record, she is spayed), occurred in a place where being an amazing coyote protection dog makes her incredibly valuable and she takes her job seriously. She is allowed to chase rabbits, mostly because chances are extremely slim she will ever catch one. If she ever does, she can eat it. She runs many kilometres a day on walks, has playmates to play with, goes swimming in the lagoon. This dog has energy levels I have not seen in any other dog, but now she also knows how to rest and relax quietly.

She has become the best dog - one who didn’t need to be controlled through obedience training, just allowed to meet her needs and have a clear understanding of where the boundaries lie. The once timid yet destructive dog who did not know what humans wanted, has become a natural leader in the dog pack who says no to the others when needed.

She is extremely gentle and patient with children and protects the chickens now. I trust her completely not to give chase when we pass herds of horses or cows on our walks. She always has my back in ways I never expected a dog to do, not because I trained her to do that.

In many ways, I needed her as much as she needed me when I arrived there. In a country where I didn’t speak the language yet at all, with a family who felt very confusing sometimes due to their lack of boundaries, in a way of life that was still brand new to me. Me learning to lead a dog like this, it helped me have the confidence to lead myself more bravely in a situation where it would have been extremely easy to lose myself.

It was a hard decision to leave her there while I am away for a while and I miss her a lot, but ultimately she is happier in an environment that supports her needs, with her dog pack, room to roam, a purpose she loves and the home she is familiar with, than she would be here in a condo. They were very happy to have her stay, as she has learned how to navigate the often confusing world of humans, located in the vast wilderness of Baja, she has become a favourite of most members of the family.

What she has taught me is that sometimes the goal isn’t so much to tame an animal or control it, as to use boundaries not to restrict, but allow it to be more of itself and give it space to thrive. And sometimes the universe gives us better gifts than we would ever choose for ourselves.

I spent many years working with horses as an equine massage therapist before I began to focus more on studying their behaviour and how the environment shaped it. I was kneading tight muscles to return them to optimal function, before realizing that a healthier environment did a better job at returning them to optimal function than I ever could. When I learned to bake sourdough, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity. What I do when I knead the dough, it doesn’t change the mass of flour, water, sourdough starter and salt, but it builds the strength of the gluten, but what is even more important is the environment. The health of the sourdough starter depends on it, although its needs are fairly simple. Now, as I have begun a new project of building my own little dwelling in the Mexican desert, I am met yet again with helping to knead, to massage something, not to change it completely, but to bring out the best in it, while being aware that the process itself and the outcome will help shape me.

I never expected to have my own plot of land or begin my own construction project with my own two hands. If someone had asked me ten years ago if I could see myself doing this, I would say they were surely crazy. Perhaps I have gone crazy, but I think a little madness helps when we have outrageous ideas.

Five years ago, after already making many changes here in the city, as the quiet chaos of Covid descended over us, yet another sign that what were doing was clearly not working, I felt a pull that I could not ignore. It was a force stronger than myself that only tugged harder as the months of uncertainty stretched on.

It was never about doing things just for myself. It was about proving this crazy seeming notion that a different way of life was possible. I was so tired of our miserable existence here - of being part of a system that is a giant pyramid scheme, one where we are constantly worried about how far ahead we’re getting, exhausting ourselves in the process, while leaving more and more struggling people behind and destroying the planet.

I believed there was a way to not only survive, but to thrive here in ways that our actions would not only benefit us (in every way, not merely financially), while simultaneously benefitting others and the planet in equal ways.

I knew a big part of this was the environment we lived in and I believed that moving off-grid and being part of a community would be the best way to achieve a healthier environment that would require of us a level of presence and connection that is practically impossible to attain in the city, amongst the noise and the distractions. So I set out, I decided not to worry about money and to pursue learning. Not in a classroom setting, but to actually explore, experiment, observe closely, reflect and most importantly to experience what I was learning about. I learned many hands on skills in the process, but I also learned something more valuable - that humans recreate the very things they talk about leaving behind when they move off-grid or to rural areas. The addiction to stress, the chaos, the control through rigid schedules and rules, not feeling good enough/productive enough, the scarcity mentality - these all show up and play themselves out in the ways humans design environments that then continue to shape them.

And here is the connection to kneading things. While we mold and shape the land we live on, that land then shapes us in return. It is a feedback loop and the vast majority of the time, we are not aware of it. We create what feels familiar, and good doesn’t feel familiar because we have never experienced it, certainly not for long stretches of time.

Like stalled horses who panic when they are turned out into a healthy, natural environment, it is something we have to ease ourselves into consciously, and I began in the city already, intentionally creating a life that healed what participating fully in our society destroyed - my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

I realized part way into this adventure, that what I was learning in real time was the field of study known as ecopsychology - the connection between the well-being of the environment and our own well-being.

As I noticed patterns and ways in which certain environments allowed me to thrive, while others stifled me, something started to become apparent, I would need to create this space myself, because I didn’t quite see anything out there that correlated with what I knew a human needed to thrive, and what would help me meet my own needs so I could be of most benefit to the world around me, because that is how it works, when we pour into ourselves first, it is much easier to love everything around us well.

In ways I will never logically understand, as I followed the pull, the universe dropped me on this magical place in Mexico and I fell in love with the sacred, raw land that had been untouched by modern man. I came on board to help co-create the infrastructure for the off-grid community that was in the very early stages then. Even in this paradise though, I felt like what I knew to be true in my bones, was so far removed from the way things are done in the world, the conditioning that drives us, that soon there was a lot of friction between me and the man whose family was spearheading this project. He is an amazing human and he has inspired me to grow in many ways, but he also dismissed my ideas because I didn’t have the same level of experience as he did and because my ideas were so different from what anyone else was doing. Very few people are doing things a different way. When we watched YouTube channels on off-grid living, on ecovillages, even regenerative farming, compared to what all the experts were doing, what I was saying was extreme, it was inconvenient, it didn’t sound profitable. How could I argue with that? All those things were true, but I still believed it would be worth it.

I did not foresee that I would be gifted my dream plot of land to get to bring this experiment to life. It is still very much in its early stages, yet simultaneously one of the biggest hurdles has already been passed.

I didn’t pick this plot of land, I swear as I walked through the desert one day and put out the intention for coming across a space that I could build a little dwelling on, it beckoned to me. I turned off the road, walked down a cow path past a cute little Yucca tree, came around a couple of bends and walked into a little clearing that took my breath away.

‘This is the outdoor kitchen’ was the message I received. Not a voice exactly, more of a knowing. I could see a way to create a space where no matter what you were doing in the kitchen, you could always face the sunset. Dinner in off-grid spaces is generally when the sun goes down, but rarely does whoever is preparing the meal get to see the sunset. I know that beauty is not a trivial thing. How much beauty, how much magic we experience in a day, it shapes our perception of the world, which shapes our experience of it, yet off-grid spaces are often utilitarian first, and if they are beautiful, it is often still about how a place looks more than how a place is experienced. How it feels in the nervous system.

A few steps further was another clearing. ‘This is the home.’ It would not be a typical home, but a palapa, with a single wall behind the bed and sliding doors that could be closed during the worst of mosquito season or when a hurricane rolled in, but would typically be open, allowing the sun to wash over the bed at sunrise.

As I wandered around a little more, a magical porch came into view, in the space under the crowns of three little trees, a magical nook where beams of sunlight danced in the shade. A perfect spot to place a white wrought iron table and chairs for morning coffee.

Just around the next little bend, a large Yucca tree (relative of the world famous Joshua trees) that would be the perfect spot to attach an outdoor shower to.

These spaces were all separated by the plants and what I realized is that this land, it would provide both, expansive views of the valley and ocean in the distance, yet privacy. It would not be achieved through building walls or fences, but through blending into the nature that existed. Not a home under one roof, but more of a treasure hunt through the desert. What became clear was that I didn’t want to change it to suit my needs alone, I wanted to benefit it for its own sake in the process.

The crazy ideas didn’t stop there, but for some attempts at brevity, I will focus on the foundations for today - specifically for the kitchen and bedroom. The land is on a slope, and I knew this would pose challenges, but also believed it was worth it.

Most others who build here, really most people who build anywhere, bring in excavators, rip out the vegetation, and bring in whatever is needed for the foundation by machine. In the process, most of what nature has massaged and kneaded through millennia with the use of wind and water and the hoof prints of cows and horses, and then gently held in place through the roots of plants, it is all destroyed, redesigned and what usually ensues is a fight with nature, even in most spaces and designs that talk about preserving nature, there is still our conditioned belief that to create something, we need to destroy first and do it all ourselves, that as humans we know best.

My goal was to preserve the cow paths, the plants (only four small bushes have been removed for the entire construction project), and to bring sand in by hand from the sand pit down the sand road. Initially this was hand hauled with buckets, then as the path became more packed, with a wheelbarrow. Thousands of pounds of sand moved barefoot, during the hottest time of the year, little by little - and I don’t know how to explain it, but it didn’t feel hard. I enjoyed it. It felt so incredibly aligned, I would find myself smiling, sweat dripping down my back and into my eyes, the hot sand stinging the soles of my feet, and I was basking in it all. The energy I want to preserve in the space, is the energy I want to infuse it with. Patience, peace, passion - and what I realized as I worked on the foundation, was that I was building my own foundation too.

Next came hauling water from the central hub down the road, buckets strategically positioned in a wheelbarrow. Wetting the sand and then using an earth rammer to flatten it, mold it, massage it into place.

During this process, I buried four big trailer tires in the foundation of the bedroom - they will be filed with cement and used to anchor the pillars of the palapa. Eventually, they will be covered by the floor.

The lowest corner has been reinforced with a wall of tires, stacked, filled with sand, then covered with more sand, so they disappear into landscape, but support it.

I also spent time improving the drainage system that Mother Nature had so beautifully designed over many, many years. The streams where water had flowed in past rainstorms - I widened them, made them deeper, specifically above the living areas I wanted the water to go around.

I couldn’t know as I worked on all this, but this past summer and early fall would bring the wettest rainy season in over a decade to our tiny strip of the Baja peninsula even as most of the area continued to suffer from droughts. Heavy rains weekly (much needed ones), over a six week period helped pack the sand I carried into place.

Then, one night in late August, the rain pounded heavily on my tent all night and what we woke up to in the morning, was hard to believe. The rain turned roads into gouged river beds, turned the small salt marches by the beach into a giant lake stretching for several kilometres, carved a ten foot deep channel the width of a football field between the lagoon and the ocean, turned any areas where there was clay into knee deep muck for weeks on end.

When I woke up in the morning, much of the huge circular driveway at the ranchito, where the main hub is located, was standing under a foot of water, water that crept into the entry way of my tent. On our way to my little piece of land, the dogs and I trekked through mud, and encountered potholes large enough for the two big dogs to disappear into.

I was holding my breath as we meandered through the now familiar cow paths, wondering if all my hard work had been washed down hill with the torrential rain, and as I came into the kitchen, tears filled my eyes. They were tears of joy. There was no water standing anywhere and none of the foundation was affected, the same was true of the bedroom and the little porch.

It showed me that the unconventional way, listening to intuition over logic, and letting the land tell me how to build on it is not such a crazy idea after all.

It also tells me that the other unconventional ideas that have been guiding me are likely not so crazy after all. I hope to talk more about them in the next couple of articles, not only sharing some of the rest of the vision for this physical project, but also how I want to share it with others on my own terms, because for reasons I feel very strongly are necessary to truly help others connect to themselves and nature, it will not become a business.

For right now, I’m working on massaging and kneading something else - the book that talks about my story and the lessons I have learned along the way from observing nature.

And below is a photo of the desert after weeks of rain.

These same fairy tales paint witches as the ugly, old hags who eat children, wear rags and who are all alone. They paint nature as a scary and dangerous place too, one that harbours the undesirable witches, because by society’s standards the best a woman can hope for is to be desirable, so to be ugly and scary, that is a fate worse than death.

So, what we learn is to give our power away, over and over and over again.

We learn that as women, if we are just sweet, agreeable, and accommodating enough, ‘good’ enough, oh and don’t forget about meeting western society’s standard of physical beauty and perpetual youth, then we will be chosen, we will be lucky.

We form this idea of a beautiful life - tempted by this princess fantasy, the prince, the chariot, the entitlement to land, the fancy dresses and balls, lots of money, the palace and servants, and not having to do anything other than look pretty, like a bird in a gilded cage. The prince is the good hero who deserves this luxurious life, and the beautiful, agreeable, obedient princess is yet another prize he has earned, another conquest.

We don’t just wait to get chosen by Prince Charming either - but everything in life, by teams, by schools, by bosses by clients. We wait to be invited to sit at tables designed specifically to extinguish our power, by promising the mere illusion of it.

A few years ago, I began joking that I am a witch and something truly magical began to happen. I started tuning into what my soul wanted - the things that society long told me were crazy, impossible, dangerous - especially for a woman. I started saying out loud what I deeply yearned for and desired, what lived in my bones, in the darkness, after I stripped away layers of conditioning, stripped away the princess fantasy or maybe outgrew it after seeing it up close and how harmful it is. I dreamed bigger and bolder than any princess wish, and the universe began delivering, often faster than I felt ready for. I began to understand the power of words - our ability to cast spells, even when we aren’t sure they’re possible. Even if all we do is ask ‘what if?…’

As an aside, the day I was born, I was the talk of the hospital not only because I nearly died during birth and required an emergency c-section when my heart rate plummeted due to having the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck twice, but also because I was born with a huge birthmark. Multiple doctors rushed in to the delivery room to see me and early in life I saw several specialists who all had concerns about it and some who discussed options for trying to remove it. I used to hate it. Western society told me it is ugly, a flaw. Had I been alive during the witch trials, it certainly would have been seen as the mark of the devil and would have sent me to my death. Over the years I heard a different story from a couple of people who didn’t grow up in the western world - two countries on opposite sides of the globe in fact, and they both told me that in their cultures birthmarks were traditionally seen as being touched by God, having divine protection. They praised it for its beauty, something no one else had ever done before. In modern occultism birthmarks are seen as indicative of magical qualities or past life echoes. I decided to dig around a little and look up the spiritual meanings of the placement and shape of birthmark I have - part of it looks like flames wrapping around my neck, part looks like wings on my back, and smaller, satellite marks scatter my lower torso and thighs. Flame shaped marks are interpreted as signs of a past life involving fire, wings are considered auspicious, resembling angel wings and suggest divine protection, and the satellite ones represent a strong tie to community including a soul group or collective mission. Maybe I wasn’t born flawed after all, maybe I was always meant to step into my own power, embrace my inner witch?

Curious about that idea, after taking baby steps towards my deepest desires and discovering that it kept working, I began to jump into the deep end and while it wasn’t always pretty, I learned to float, and then I learned to tune into my navigation systems more precisely and to see where I was still settling, where I was waiting for someone to choose me or give me permission, where I wasn’t quite honest enough because I was not dreaming nearly big enough and to pivot gently.

I began to see that this world, the one that seems quite ordinary, it is actually full of so much magic. The people, places, animals, experiences and opportunities I have had placed in front of me - I could have never found them on my own, I could have never expected them, I could have never dreamed them up or asked for them specifically, because they’re so out of the realm of possibilities my mind has explored and because I wasn’t sure I had what it took to do right by them. Their power has sometimes scared me, because it reflected my own. This magic, it doesn’t come from anything that could be sold to me, it comes from being brave enough to meet it, sit with it, and ride the uncertainty. It comes from a place of radical truth with myself and others, which includes acknowledging the pain of hiding my power for most of my life, and trying to earn my right to scraps of belonging and freedom, that were always conditional. It comes from watching for alignment around me and setting boundaries accordingly - even in the moments when I feel like I am not in a position to do so, especially in those moments when it feels like the most terrifying thing in the world, because that is truly where the power kicks in.

In Poland, where I was born, there are different versions of the story of Baba Yaga. She is part the ugly hag, and she lives in a forest hut on giant chicken feet, but she is also multilayered and wise, the seeker of truth and that part of her story has always captivated me. She tests the worthiness of those who seek her out - usually for her wisdom. The trials are designed to test courage, wit and moral integrity. She is nature personified - untameable, dangerous, but also valuable to those who respect her power.

I no longer wait to be chosen, I want to know if those in my circle are brave enough to face their truth, their own power first and join me in creating an environment within us that allows a more beautiful world to emerge. One that is based on truth - raw, messy, unfiltered truth, not polished and rehearsed beautiful lies.

I realized something else too. I don’t want someone who merely chooses me. I want someone who loves and nurtures life, through pursuing his own truth and for that truth and that mission to be what guides him in the creation of a life that we belong in together, one more beautiful than any fairy tale. A life where he is brave enough to put down his sword and armour and realize I never needed saving, I never needed a hero, I needed someone to see the magic and be brave enough to step towards it, and the further I go, the braver he gets.

I keep leaning more and more into witch energy. The plot I have chosen for my little hut (and the outdoor kitchen, shower and magical porch that surround it) that I am co-creating with nature, it sits on the outskirts of community, much like wise women who were trialed as witches used to do, like Baba Yaga too. There will be no fence and no sign on the road and my little dwelling won’t be visible from the dead end dirt road that it’s on - it will practically materialize out of the desert plants, for those who are brave enough to try to search it out, brave enough to leave the walls of the palace behind and wander into the big, scary world.

On this plot, in this space that asks for nothing but truth, I’m creating something for those who want to meet more parts of themselves, a little guest hut that is not accessed through payment, but through opening, listening, not to me, but to inner knowing driven by a desire for more authentic connection with oneself, others and the universe, connection that cannot be commodified or marketed, but faced, met and allowed to flow.

No wonder witches have been feared so much by the systems clutching onto power - because the real power of the universe can only be harnessed through the mysticism of radical honesty. Truth burns to the ground everything that isn’t real, and that is currently the entire foundation of the world we have forced, controlled and manipulated into existence through extraction, oppression and exploitation, and we still fantasize about inhabiting on some level, a patriarchal, colonial fairy tale disconnected from the magic of reality.

Turns out nature is dangerous, and when we are part of it, so are we.

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I have done some undeniably scary things in my life. I have always been drawn to adventure, perhaps thanks to raiding my Dad’s book collection as a child.

I rode and worked with horses throughout my youth, including horses I had no business sitting on (or getting bucked off of). On a trip to Poland at 15, I took the train to the Baltic coast without my family and stayed with my old friends (who were boys), went out dancing on the beach, stayed out late, shocking and disappointing both of my grandmothers. I travelled to Poland when I was 16 to a Polish public speaking competition without any adults. Made friends, missed curfew and stayed up all night not to make out with some random boy, but to wander the Old Town by moonlight. I went to Krakow after by myself, instead of visiting family. After high school, I moved halfway across Cananda to go to college with a roommate I found on the internet (who I am still friends with), to pursue an unusual career (massage therapy for horses) and became self employed at 22.

There was a level of uncertainty I had always been comfortable with, yet constantly criticized for and at a certain point it wore me down. The adventures got more rare after I finished school, it felt like to become an adult, to have love, to survive, I had to follow logic instead of adventure. I met someone who was responsible and organized and I thought maybe that was what I needed. It rubbed off on me, I lived a life of healthy habits, apparently became successful, and too numb to feel much of anything. It lasted until I met some people in my early 30’s who shook up my world, and the call for adventure beckoned again at a time when my body could no longer uphold the pursuit of an illusion of security.

Since then, I have begun to follow my intuition over all else. I have tried brand new to me hobbies, experiences, events, learned new skills, left a career of 17 years with no exact plan, lived all over the province of BC where I learned to chop wood, play with carpentry (and power tools), and use a chainsaw (and discovered chain saws are not really for me). I stayed with friends and strangers, got in the trucks of people who offered me rides, had close encounters with bears. Then I leapt into off-grid life in Mexico, without knowing anyone there or speaking any Spanish. My first stay was with a Canadian couple, but six weeks later I moved to an amazing, sacred property that a wonderful Mexican family inherited recently and have been there to help co-create the infrastructure for an off-grid community ever since. I ended up there after seeing an ad on Facebook - three sentences, no photos, and after a phone call, took a bus to a city I had never been to and met a man who drove me to the property in the middle of nowhere, with no cell reception. I have had close encounters with rattlesnakes and scorpions. I have slept in a tent with only two walls for three years, including through hurricanes that turned roads into rivers and thunderstorms that danced around the tent and shook the ground with a ferocity that turned me on, excited me, connected me to such powerful energy.

None of those experiences have felt nearly as scary as becoming even more radically honest with myself and others and then allowing in the joy that my honesty opened the floodgates to.

I currently split my time between the amazing place in Mexico where I have been adopted by a wonderful, large tight knit family as a niece/cousin/aunt - an energy I did not know I always needed in my life. I have been gifted my dream plot of land. I have received the love of an amazingly loyal dog, a beautiful horse. I get to run around barefoot, play with animals, bake sourdough over fire, fish on a secluded beach right from shore, and build (with my own hands) a beautiful haven for myself to share with friends. Not only that, they support me taking time for myself away from the community too. It is magic.

In Vancouver there is a beautiful place I get to call home. There is a beautiful soul connection with the most loving human I have ever met that is blossoming in exciting and unexpected ways. There are amazing friends old and new, as well as a handful of friends I met as clients who I get to see here and there - about 2-3 half days a month of playing with beautiful horses and receiving enough money to cover my basic expenses here. I have the opportunity to go to public speaking events and story nights, but also try new things, like a kickboxing class (great way to really learn to claim boundaries and NO energy in any area of one’s life), and a partner dance class where I got to try leading for the first time (rarely have I had to use both hemispheres of my brain and as well as body so much all at once - wow). I have the time and space to write and finally pour that energy into the book that has been waiting for me to birth it. I have been pointed to and found amazing (free!) resources online and in person to support this project and truly feel like it will not just be my book.

I get to bridge these two worlds I love so much and walk towards a more beautiful way of life for all humans by exploring, experimenting, engaging with life in ways that I didn’t know were possible.

I never could have dreamed of a life this beautiful. It exceeds all my wildest dreams, because I had no idea any of this was a possibility. It is absolutely surreal and I pinch myself every day.

Yet, it has also been the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. I have known for a long time that joy is the scariest emotion for humans to experience, to allow. Initially, I only dipped my toes into it, and could only hold so much of it in the beginning, but now, here I am, and there is endless joy.

I know why it is so hard to feel - some of it is being taught that we have to earn tiny scraps of happiness with huge amounts of effort. To receive all this generous abundance so effortlessly for being more honest with myself and others feels too good to be true, like perhaps it is a trick.

Some of it is also guilt - I see how others are struggling, including those I love (who are becoming more honest too - because our honesty, it gives others permission to get away from performing as well), who are taking baby steps into a different life, but aren’t quite ready to step boldly forward yet and I want so desperately to help them, even though I know I need to love them and keep going for all of us.

Some of it is pressure I put on myself - the people who love me, they have built a beautiful safety net for me to leap, and the reason I am leaping so big is to take pressure off them too, to weave connections, realities and to turn the huge leap with safety net underneath, into a more solid bridge that others can cross, can pause on if they need to, instead of having to leap all the way into the deep end as I have had to do.

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Finally, the reason joy is so difficult is because it highlights what we truly value and fear losing and in terms of how much I value the people, places, animals, and experiences in my life, the stakes have never been higher.

In the midst of joy, an unravelling began. Dark thoughts would creep in. Do I deserve this? Can I do this book justice? Who am I to not only tell my story but weave in understanding of the world that I am no expert in? This love feels so beautiful and easy - when’s the rug getting pulled out from under my feet?

Soon, I was searching for problems where there were none. In fact, I would hyper-fixate on any loose thread of uncertainty, any fear that I could blindly feel for, and pull on it, pick at it, until I could see the shape of a hole and almost create a problem.

I tried to push through it, but then I had to allow myself to face the fears and insecurities and ground myself, centre myself in my life and focus on the path and my purpose, while staying present enough to enjoy the now.

It’s these beautiful moments that require trust that are often the hardest and I remind myself over and over again that in moments of uncertainty, holding steady and having faith takes as much effort, if not more, than trying to do more, fix more, cling or run.

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We live in a world obsessed with love. With finding it, earning it, with fixing it, with maintaining it, with working on it.

Do we even know what love is though? Have we ever felt love that was completely unconditional (because if it is conditional, it isn’t truly love)?

In a world that was created to support a false belief of scarcity, love seems to be something that eludes many people. We have been taught that it is something to earn, to grasp, to cling onto, to attach ourselves to it and hold on for dear life, basically suffocating any love that is trying to spark in the process. We have been taught to define ourselves, and our love, through labels, roles, scripts and actions that we are told represent being loving.

They never felt right to me. I never wanted to be the definition of someone’s girlfriend or wife, but I settled for it because I didn’t want to not be loved. I shape-shifted to the expectations that kind of love put on me and I expected others to shape-shift to them in return.

What if love is not something that exists outside of us, separate to us? What if love is our natural state of being, what we are, and what if through fuelling that, we attract more love?

For many years I did the things society told me would make me feel loved, which is to try to fit in. The successful career, a popular blog, the relationship that looked perfect on paper, a hobby that required immense discipline, strict diet and exercise routine - everything done so I could achieve some level of perfection, and all of it, it smothered the flame within me, left me exhausted and sick, a crumbling shell of a human, dead inside

If we think of love not in terms of a relationship label, but in terms of a fire, a flame that exists within each of us that we are responsible for. A fire is simple, it needs air and fuel, but the wisdom required to tend the fire within, it is not something we have inherited. In fact, we have been taught to dim our flames, extinguish them, just to fit in. This flame within us all, it will respond to the environments we spend time in, the humans we interact with, the food we eat, the way we move our bodies, the time we spend in nature, the activities we pursue, the music we listen to, the boundaries we hold and more than anything else, the kind of life we walk towards, the purpose that our soul came here for, the kind of vision we have for our own future and a collective future. As our flame burns bright, as it dances, it begins to give light and warmth to everything around us, we learn that we share love effortlessly when we tend to our own fire. When our flame burns bright, when we are following our soul’s path, first with baby steps, then as the flame burns bigger and brighter, as our truth burns away anything in our path that isn’t true and brings clarity, while fertilizing the soil for future growth, as it has gains more fuel, we begin to leap more quickly, as a fire does, to the spaces that are meant to hold it without putting it out. We are drawn to them, and they are drawn to us in return, even in the darkness, even in the chaos around us.

They may not look the way we expect, they may be places, experiences, opportunities, animals, circumstances and people we never expected to love and we never expected to love us back - but they will love us in ways we didn’t know we deserved, not for giving in to expectations, but for feeding the flame. The more we love the experience of being alive, the more gratitude we have for it and show ourselves the love we deserve, the more the universe will show us how loved we are.

I never expected to have love find me through learning opportunities during visits with friends all over BC who helped my vision become more clear, leading to a sacred piece of land in Mexico and the opportunity to create an off-grid space from the ground up, through the large family who owns it who has adopted me as a niece/cousin, through the sweetest Dogo Argentino cross who taught me to step up as a leader, through an orphaned feral filly who may be a reincarnation of my old mare (trust me, something that my logical mind cannot wrap its head around) who made me a surrogate mom, through my dream plot of land on which I have started constructing my dream dwelling with my own two hands, through a second home in my old city where I still have unfinished work to do, at least for now, but maybe forever, I don’t know… and through so many other things, huge and small, including the delicious cup of coffee I just had a sip of, the loaf of sourdough crackling as it cools, the sun streaming in through the window and the cool breeze caressing my skin.

In the past, I expected love to look a certain way, and what has often hurt me is clinging to that expectation, instead of tuning into what love feels like. I have feared following my own path, because it is so brazen, since I feared it would intimidate others, scare them away, so I held onto the patterns that I was conditioned to believe would guarantee me love. People pleasing,  centering a career and a romantic relationship in my life and abandoning myself, snuffing out my own flame as this way of being, it didn’t leave room to tend to my fire. I was torn between doing what my heart truly desired and this vision of a love that was always guaranteed if I just worked hard enough, a love that I could put a leash on and know would be nearby through leashing myself.

Letting go of that desire, it has shown me a love more beautiful than I believed possible in all the relationships in my life, but it has been most clear in one.

A connection with a spark from the beginning over our shared passions and the careers that stemmed from them at the time. Instant friendship and respect that grew from us fuelling that passion.

Over the years we have changed, veered into different paths, both burned out by tending to what we thought of as dream careers that we abandoned ourselves for, relationships we defined ourselves by, but the paths, they kept crossing here and there.

With lots and lots of time (decades), these convergence points became more frequent, the connection deepened, expanded, shifted shape and revealed new parts of ourselves.

He hasn’t been right beside me every step of the way of this crazy adventure of the last few years, but he has remained the steadiest presence, always supportive, even as the vision became more and more impossible sounding, always having my back in ways that have given me courage I never, ever could have developed if I was always worried about what would happen if I failed, if I was always looking over my shoulder for possible threats, and he has protected the flame within me, allowing it to burn brighter and brighter and brighter.

I still sometimes panic in the presence of this love, especially when we do spend more time together, because the fear that drives what we believe love to be, it makes me question, want to cling or push away. It doubts love this pure, this unfiltered, this unconditional, it feels terrifying to a body, a nervous system and a mind that has always equated love with attachment, with self abandonment, with sacrifice, with martyrdom.

Even though I see that our path is obviously becoming more and more intertwined without effort, part of me wants a guarantee, a promise, a contract, the leash, the familiar cage - all the things that aren’t love, because love has to flow free, just like fire it has to travel where there is fuel, not stay stagnant.

And in those moments, instead of feeding the flame within, instead of trusting that it has already led me to more beautiful destinations than I could have imagined, instead of following my intuition, I sometimes still fall back into the old trauma patterns. Into scanning for problems, hyper fixating on them and wanting to fix them, focusing on them and not on the flame. Often, they are not a problem to address, just a blind turn on the path to trust.

It takes effort to believe that beauty can exist effortlessly if I follow the path I am meant to be on. That if my flame burns bright, it will not scare those who are afraid to get burned, but attract the ones brave enough to hold the flame. That the love will continue to follow me into my greatest dreams, at the pace it is supposed to and not that I have to drag or chase or pull it with me.

The truth is, as I become more capable of holding the love I deserve without clutching it, the love shifts to reflect that, both in this connection and every single one in my life. I have never had to look for love, I have just had to look inside and nurture it, share it freely with those who appreciate it, be open to receiving it in unexpected ways and from unexpected sources, and hold it gently, because grasping love, like trying to grasp a flame, not only does it burn us, it smothers the very flame we try to grasp onto.

There’s something my brain has been processing for a while, that has taken a long time to really settle, to feel fully. It’s been coming more clearly into view as I write my book, although it has been painfully frustrating in moments, when it feels like I should be focusing on writing, to allow these ideas to ferment instead. I have needed to allow it to happen though.

They are fragments of thoughts and feelings, repeated in many moments over the last several years. They ask me to allow them to dance and swirl, to grow, to form. They ask me to follow lose threads wherever they lead me. They ask me to feel and then to make sense of what I am feeling.

We live in a world that rewards us for solving problems, not for avoiding them. For effort and productivity, not results. This has frustrated me since childhood. It has been something I have questioned and raged against. Back in school, there were a handful of moments in my life someone recognized my ability to zoom out, see the interconnectedness between everything, come up with a solution no one had thought of before and rewarded it. One of my teachers kept my science project on his desk until he retired.

Most of the time though, it was criticized. I was sometimes told I was lazy, sometimes told I was crazy, accused of cheating, and even told that I couldn’t have written things I wrote myself because I couldn’t possibly have that understanding of the world at my young age.

Only a couple of years ago a dear friend told me something I didn’t know I needed to hear. ‘You were really brave back in high school,’ she said, ‘you questioned things that weren’t fair to any of us, and we were too scared to back you up.’ Back then I learned to believe I was another problem that needed fixing though.

So, I tucked these thoughts away, until I could do it no more, until my body broke from the constant scanning for threats, continuous solving of problems, fixing myself, and the effort of always fighting. I was exhausted, and all my effort, it didn’t lead me to the better life I was promised.

Since then, I have largely walked in the opposite direction of society and my life keeps getting better and better. Not only that, it is much more enjoyable and easy, while I simultaneously do more for the planet and others than I did when I worked so hard, when I was such a good problem solver.

When I moved off-grid, I began experiencing it again. Speaking out about a better path and being told I am wrong, that this is the only way, that the solution couldn’t probably be as easy as I suggest because no one else was doing it that way, and getting sucked into trying to help fix the ever growing mountain of problems tossed my way.

I’ve seen it, I have known it, I have lived it, but I couldn’t put my finger on why it is, until I went back to what I know best, on what sparked my interest in human behaviour nine years ago - horses, and their own behaviour.

In a herd, the stallion brings up the rear, and he is always scanning for threats - making sure no one gets lost or left behind, making sure no predators sneak up on the elderly or very young. He plays a very important role and if he doesn’t do his job well, the herd is not safe. While he is scanning for problems though, his vision is pretty short sighted, which is how it is meant to be, it is what he is beautifully designed to do.

On the other hand, at the front of the herd is a mare (and now we realize, mares often take turns in this position). She is the leader. She is the one who decides when the herd moves, what speed it moves at, which water source or pasture they need to head to, as well as when it is time to stop and rest. She is highly sensitive and attuned in ways the stallion isn’t, designed specifically to see the bigger picture, listen to her intuition and she picks the safest path, but knows she cannot avoid every threat, so she trusts the stallion to take care of any issues she cannot avoid.

Taking care of problems is not the first line of defence though. It turns out the best defence is not an offence, as we have often heard; it is being aware enough to circumvent the issue in the first place, to change course. In fact, if a stallion is too aggressive and picks too many fights, a mare will leave him, not allow him into her space (because it is she who chooses him, not the other way around), in the same way that she will leave a stallion that isn’t protective enough. What if a good leader doesn’t march us into battle?.. What if they steer us to safety instead?

We live in a world that rewards the masculine strengths and believes that problem solving is leadership. A world that does not acknowledge that wasting energy to fix a problem is not nearly as efficient as moving in a direction where the problem doesn’t even exist. In fact, we often can’t even imagine this possibility, because we have forgotten it is an option.

If we observe closely, so called leaders at every level walk right into problems, many of which could have been avoided. It is because this is how we have all been taught to operate, and we applaud problem solvers so much, that we don’t even seem to realize that the vast majority of the problems we are trying to solve, only exist because we aren’t willing to budge when there was time. Worse yet, we don’t acknowledge that many of the problems that we encounter on this deadly path, were directly caused by the shortsighted solutions to earlier problems we could have avoided.

This is currently our society in a nutshell. We are walking towards our own mass extinction, dead set on a path that is not the right one, and trying to fix an avalanche of avoidable problems with duct tape, because they are coming at us so fast now that it is all we can do. We try to attack every problem, instead of zooming out and looking at the big picture and acknowledging that we are lost, that we need to pause and pivot frequently, especially as we learn to use these gifts we have not been given the instruction manuals to.

To be clear, we all have both of these energies and they are something we all need to practice in our lives. To become better self leaders and protectors. To learn from our patterns and avoid problems as much as how to stop running from the ones that we can’t avoid and face them head on. To have the discernment to recognize which is which.

On a larger scale though, I see over and over and over again, that as women, most of us are more sensitive to what is not working in the world, to where at least some of the answers lie.

Society taught us women that we need to wait for Prince Charming to save us. That once we find romantic love, we will be happy, safe and secure, but it is not true.

To find peace and joy we need to be the ones who set the course, we need to stop waiting to be chosen and choose our own path, one that transcends the problems we can avoid. One that allows a more harmonious world to come into view. One that exists already if we learn how to pay attention, but we have not been able to see it because we haven’t looked that far out, too busy scanning for problems instead. One where we choose those who walk the path with us, those we can trust to have our backs while we hold the vision for the benefit of all, even if they cannot sense the destination as clearly as we can. We can’t drag them, or pull them out of harms way though. All we can do is hold the course steady and trust that those meant to come with us, will find us.

This voice, which whispered at first, but has since shouted when I didn’t listen, it has told me in no uncertain terms that I am not meant to have another job, another career, another profession. That there wasn’t any certain one that would fulfill me, that wouldn’t box me in, because I am a multidimensional being who came here to learn, to explore, to experiment, to be curious, to see the interconnectedness between everything and to follow the threads that maybe do not make sense to anyone else, to see what I can learn. To weave these threads in new ways, build new connections in the web of life, bridge worlds, bridge divides, not only in the world outside of us, but in our own internal landscape, through embracing truth over all else. Through admitting that I do not have it figured out, that I do not have all the answers, that sometimes I still get lost. Through acknowledging that I cannot sell anyone a promise, a guarantee, because the greatest rewards in life come from taking the biggest leaps, the ones we don’t have a safety net for, the ones that do not come with a guarantee on investment.

In the last four years, I have had no job, but I have done some of my best work. I have learned more than I believed possible, not only a variety of hands on skills, but whole new ways of being, of relating, of connecting not only to the physical world outside of me, but mostly to myself and the energy of the universe.

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What I have learned, what I keep learning over and over and over again, is how we have been conditioned to seek an illusion of security. To cling onto this illusion even as the systems around us are crumbling. To hold up these systems even as they are crushing us beneath their weight.

And through it all we are taught to deny our two deepest human desires - freedom and belonging, in exchange for the illusion of security, for survival, while we pass up our chance to thrive. In fact, we are taught to fear them so much, that even though we spend a lifetime chasing them, most humans never, ever allow themselves to experience them, to step into them, to trust their own ability to hold so much love. So instead, we tell ourselves how anything outside of the illusion of security is impossible, crazy, instead of asking ourselves simply, what if another outcome is possible?.. a much more magical one?

What if the world is not as transactional as it seems, but instead, if we learn to share freely, with those who appreciate it and become open to receiving, the universe will provide for us all we need - not necessarily all we want. In fact, it often drops at our feet beautiful gifts we do not feel ready for, that we push away, as we run away from ourselves, abandon ourselves in pursuit of the thinly veiled smoke and mirrors illusion of security.

Four years since I have last had a job, and I had no idea I was this person under all that conditioning or how deep that conditioning ran, how it had worn grooves in my nervous system that I would fall into again and again.

I still sometimes cling onto illusions of security in moments of extreme uncertainty (which has been the large majority of the last four years), it is not easy to rewire my entire nervous system after generations of conditioning that has affected how we react, that has rewired our brains to seek safety in unhealthy ways - through workohalism, perfectionism, people pleasing, overachieving, powering through, never taking breaks and in more modern times, disordered eating and exercise addictions. These are all coping mechanisms we employ to survive in a world that teaches us that we are not enough. Really, they are addictions that we receive praise for, but that leave us feeling constantly unsatisfied, disconnected from those around us and ourselves. We become ghosts in our own lives, stumbling around, being in spaces and places, but never occupying them, never touching anyone or anything, or being truly touched, seen, experienced.

To step into my truth in every way, it has been terrifying. I thought I would lose everything I had worked so hard for, but instead I gained so much.

When I left the city four years ago, I had set out to co-create an off-grid community. This was quite the ambitious goal, since I had never even spent time off-grid. I liked hiking and camping, but even that was new to me. I had no hands on skills that could help me survive. I barely even knew how to cook. I didn’t know where I would do this, who I would do it with, or how I would pay for it. Between chronic illness nine years ago and then COVID just as I was financially gaining my footing again, I had no savings. I felt pulled to do it though and I answered the call.

I left the city and travelled around my home province, going into more and more rural areas, getting more comfortable in nature, living without a lock on a door, learning new skills that soon became second nature and learning to coexist with humans in different ways, different settings, learning where my boundaries lay, what my truth was.

A year later, the universe dropped me in Baja California Sur, on a magical property untouched by modern humans, with an amazing large, eccentric Mexican family who were in every way different from me.

I have spent the last three years helping to co-create a space there from the ground up, and allowing community to emerge from between the cracks of systems, beliefs and conditioning that had shaped our modern, unnatural world, that live not only among us, but inside us, even when we move off-grid.

Somehow, despite the differences, despite the challenges of communication (I didn’t speak a work of Spanish when I first arrived), I have been adopted as one of the cousins, something I never knew I always needed. Being a cousin and having aunts and uncles is freeing in such a beautiful way, there is love and support, but there are not the same rigid bonds that exist in nuclear family units, not the same level of expectations or obligations, they don’t feel draining, they feel nourishing. I have found the unconditional love of the most amazing dog. Been gifted the trust of a feral horse. Learned to love cooking and baking sourdough and building and am so excited about my own construction project that I have designed very intentionally. I have been gifted my dream plot of land which, I swear, drew me to it. I have had the support of friends and found a love emerging in my old city, and realized that my path, it has asked me to split my time between these two contrasting worlds. Currently, as I work on a book, sitting in a beautiful condo, getting to see a handful of my old clients, who are friends first and foremost, going to story nights to share my experiences and just learning to take care of myself first, love myself first in a world that teaches us to put ourselves last, I can’t believe this is all possible and I continue to ask - what else is possible? How beautiful can life get?

Finally I am getting brave enough to say it out loud, maybe even scream it from the rooftops - I don’t ever want a career again! I want to continue to do my soul’s deepest work and see where it leads me, what doors it opens, how much higher I can soar, while building strong, interwoven roots with those who I belong with.

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I grew up loving animals tremendously, but was drawn to one animal in particular. No one else in the family had any interest in them, yet ‘koń’, the Polish word for horse, was one of the first things I uttered. When I became infected with the need to figure out what job I would need, I decided I would be a horse vet. As I grew, and eventually got into my top pick university for undergraduate studies I was honest with myself for the first time. I hated the program, did not enjoy learning the pre-requisites, and could not imagine spending the better part of a decade in a classroom. I would go insane. I also talked to a lot of vets, and some were honest enough with me to admit that if they could do it over, they never would have pursued it. It was not worth the struggle, most of them had no time for their own horses, and were exhausted and burned out.

I pivoted, dropped out after a year, and let myself be very, very depressed for a while and admit I was lost. I stumbled across a website for an equine massage therapy school, back when this wasn’t a profession I had even really heard of (even though I had been riding and working at barns for years) and I knew I found something.

I moved halfway across the country, loved the program, graduated with top marks in my class without trying, and returned home. I started what grew to be a successful practice.

Somewhere along the way, even though I was doing what I thought I loved, and something that definitely needed to be part of my journey, I became extremely ill. I had a horse at this time who was more sensitive than any I had ever met, and through her, I shifted my focus from trying to fix horses into trying to understand them.

I became fascinated by behaviours in herds as horses are also incredibly social creatures, similar to humans in many ways. I couldn’t help but notice how the more natural their environment was, the more calm, happy and healthy they were, but that they could also not just be thrown outside into a field with other horses, if they grew up cut off from healthy socialization and the world outside their stall. It has to be a gradual process with the right guides (in the form of humans and horses). Many did not perform well under pressure, did not like having the ‘jobs’ we tried to impose on them, and these were labeled as ‘bad’ horses. Otherwise, there was also a belief that it was the rider’s fault - that a ‘good enough’ rider would be able to force them into submission, which has shifted over the years to bribing them into submission by rewarding with treats (not actually a natural way of building relationships either).

What I noticed with my horse, is that as she gradually became more comfortable living in a herd, being outside, she was healthier and thriving, and more tolerant of work, although work was never as important to her as herd life, that was her purpose. She was a fierce protector of any horse who got bullied. No one really noticed she was the lead mare, because she tended to avoid drama, but if someone was being unfairly harassed, she would chase off the bully. She would share her hay pile with the old horses, be patient with the youngsters while consistently teaching them boundaries. She would chase coyotes out of the field. She would mutually groom the others, gallop and buck and play, nap in the sun and her body, which once carried so much tension, became much more relaxed. She loved humans of all sizes and would be patient and gentle with them all on the ground. She didn’t really want to put effort into work in the ring though, she loved to head out on trails and explore and adventure with friends, but actual work in the ring, it bored her and made her anxious. Even though I asked her to do it and she didn’t love it and was opinionated about it at times, she always, always kept me safe. It took me a long time to realize that she wasn’t a bad horse or that I wasn’t a bad rider. She was actually an amazing horse in every way, I was just asking her to do something that wasn’t in her nature.

As I needed to shift my attention away from horses to dealing with my ailing body, it lead to curiosity about human behaviour. I started to wonder if maybe I was asking myself to do something that was against my nature too. Understanding how integral our connection to ourselves, the environment and each other truly is to thriving in the world and how far removed we are from it and that we can’t just jump back in and thrive became something I started to become more and more interested in.

As I worked less, retired my horse to pasture where she got to be an auntie to babies (something she actually wanted to do, instead of the athletic pursuits I tried to convince her to participate in), I explored life. I participated in new hobbies, tried out new communities, spent more and more time in nature, and saw many of the same issues everywhere. I realized along the way that helping humans live more natural lives, was the gateway to helping animals too. We didn’t need to help them so much, we just needed to stop unconsciously hurting ourselves and them as an extension of that.

My body healed, my mind slowed, I became excited about life again and did my best to create a life more aligned with our human nature in the city. I invested time and energy into community. After a while, I felt like I reached a limit. My life had gotten so much better than before, but I couldn’t keep expanding and I didn’t feel anchored into Vancouver anymore.

I decided to leave the city, learn new skills and co-create an off-grid community. By this time, my horse’s breeding (she was a Throughbred, bred for speed, not longevity or quality of life), caught up to her and her feet were starting to bother her more and more. Her final gift to me, was letting me and the barn owner know that she was tired. I was so worried about her declining while I was away, and it was like on some level she wanted us both to be free, her of a body incapable of carrying her spirit the way it deserved, and me of the responsibility of shouldering that burden.

I was leaving the city with no money (between my illness and then Covid hitting just as I got better, I didn’t have much left). I had a bit of a safety net in a couple of humans who believed in me, told me that if I ever needed money I could call them and one gave me a key to his home - told me it was our home and that I could always come back. It felt crazy to be leaving just when I felt like I had begun to find my ‘herd’ but something told me that I needed to do this for all of us. This was me protecting my herd, even as I was leaving for a while. Me breaking free, was going to light the path for others. So many people knew what we were doing wasn’t working, but none of us seemed to know a way out. We didn’t know how to just be human again.

After travels all around the province with amazing volunteer opportunities, my journey took me to Mexico, for what I told myself was only the winter. I had no plan for how to make money, I still to this day don’t really ever know where I may receive abundance from, I am just learning to be open to opportunities and receiving all of life’s blessings (including those disguised as challenges and setbacks).

I still have no idea, how I ended up stumbling across the most amazing Mexican family who had recently inherited some very sacred, untouched land and were looking for help with building community. I was super enthusiastic and since this was a new endeavour for me, I jumped all the way in, learning all the hands on skills I could.

I could see that as wonderful as the humans were, warm and generous in a way most of us in Canada and the US could only hope to be, that even with the return to this way of life on this beautiful land, they didn’t let themselves enjoy it. It is hard for us to just let go and be more human without needing to prove to others how useful we are. It is hard for us to let go of the need to be the ‘best’ or be right, even in family systems. There was this constant need to do more, work harder, keep living in the rat race even though we were now outside of the cage.

I kept trying to fit in, out of necessity and change things, but then, after hitting my head against the wall I realized something I knew for a while. We cannot bring change while simultaneously holding up a system, while being part of the dynamic. It is not possible. We are not in alignment when we act in this way and our energy moving in two opposing directions, and keeping us stuck in place.

I also realized another truth that was hard for me to swallow. My role in this life, was not to hide away from the world on a tropical beach and play with dogs and horses and nurture the plants and build structures and look after the well-being of campers. It was part of my purpose here, but I was never meant to fully inhabit any one world, I was meant to dance between many worlds and bridge them. I couldn’t do this through trying to change anyone, convince anyone that they needed to live off-grid, or cook their meals from scratch or work less. I was meant to dance between my anchor points, the places my community was growing, and my presence was meant to bump into people, get them to see what I doing, experience the way I existed in the world now, so they could ask ‘if that is possible, I wonder what else might be?’… If more of us could admit we are lost, we could allow a more beautiful world than the one we are trying so hard to create to simply emerge.

Our economic system (and life itself) is built around giving and taking. Our ‘reality’ feels like an endless choice of two way streets that all take us to the same destination - depletion. We have been praised for giving all of ourselves (while someone takes as much as they can on the other end). Between jobs, families, friends and a hobby or two, we rarely have anything left for ourselves. In return, we feel entitled to take as much as possible, in a desperate attempt to recharge. We work hard and then we are told we ‘deserve’ to reward ourselves, but these rewards (a mortgage, a new car, etc) they force us to give even more from that point forward, just to keep afloat. It never feels like enough, because we are not meant to work so hard to survive here. In fact, we are meant to thrive.

We are told to fix this by valuing ourselves - basically charging an arm and a leg for our work. More often than not, what is being sold is not a guarantee of results, but a dream or a promise. We work hard to deliver on the promise, and the paying party works hard to pay for it, but the fixes, the solutions are just more giving and taking in a different package, which is why many people never change - they realize optimizing themselves to better fit into a model designed to break us, is not liberation.

What if valuing ourselves is more about what we create space for in our lives instead of how much money we make? Giving and taking will always drain us, more money just makes it easier to ignore because we can afford better ways to cope.

I was self employed for a long time in a job I loved, and it broke me. I developed serious health issues, anxiety, depression and had an existential crisis when I realized this path I worked so hard for, was harming me. I found ways to work less, to stop giving so much of my money to large corporations that didn’t know I existed, to fill more of my days with things I did just for love, to not take so much. I actually stopped charging a set rate and asked clients to pay what they believed my service was worth based on what was affordable for them. It was the most aligned my work ever felt, and 20% of my clients actually began paying me more than the set rate I believed was fair. And yet, certain health issues still persisted - I was a massage therapist for horses and became allergic to them to a degree that medications did not touch anymore. Even wearing a mask to massage (pre-Covid), only helped slightly and even though I worked only 3 days a week max, I felt a little drained all the time.

I knew it was time to leave my career and move onto something new, but I had this nagging suspicion that every so called job would leave me this drained. I considered many options, but ultimately I acknowledged that I had pushed aside so many of my passions for decades, that I couldn’t keep funnelling all my energy into one pursuit and I needed to do more things I loved, not things that would bring me profits.

I entered volunteer economy. I gave my time and energy in exchange for shelter, food and the opportunity to learn new skills. I went to more and more rural places and learned how to chop wood, start fire, garden, build things, played with training dogs, doing leather work and having the opportunity to observe humans and communities. People would leave the issues of mainstream society in search of a more quiet life, but the chaos followed them even to beautiful, remote destinations all over the province. The giving and the taking existed out here too.

In a way I sometimes struggle to understand, my travels took me to an amazing start up off-grid community in Mexico. The plan was to stay for the winter, learn new skills and return to Canada. I fell in love though, this place was incredibly magical and I so wanted to be able to stay. We were working towards self-sufficiency and I leaped all the way in. It didn’t take long to realize that this was even harder. Here we were, removed from comforts of modern life, and giving all of ourselves, while trying to mold and shape the land not into what it needed, but into what we needed to survive.

We also explored bartering and gift economy, exchanging items with neighbours based on what their value is in the world. There would sometimes be gifts with no expectation of something in return, but I could sense that there was usually pressure to repay the favour. Now, of course our connections in life need to feel reciprocal, but it is also true that sometimes others don’t have anything tangible to give us in return, and often what they can teach us, is far more valuable anyways. Every human we encounter holds pieces of the puzzle we are looking for.

What I realized eventually, is that all these models are built around this false assumption that all of life is built around these two way streets where exchange or reciprocity only happen on this plane. This is in direct opposition to the laws of nature and the universe though. Becoming more immersed in nature and learning from it, having wonderful humans in my life who shared things with me without expectation of payment, seeing how much others appreciated what I shared, I became more open to simply sharing some things and allowing myself to receive. This has shown me again and again that the Universe is much more like an intricate web along which energy travels in any given direction at any given time.

When we are giving for the sake of taking, we actually tend to block ourselves from being able to share the gifts we have that are most valuable to the very reality we want to see. We also block ourselves from receiving gifts the Universe wants to drop in our path. Sharing and receiving is much more of a flow state, a state of creation, death and rebirth, a cycle.

When we make ourselves a meal we love that we share with others, we nourish ourselves and those around us simultaneously. We don’t hold onto what do not need and we benefit from receiving love from humans who can taste love infused into food in ways that a meal purchased at a restaurant can never fill us. We can share with one person, and receive abundance from a completely different place, in a completely different way than we ever expected was possible.

When we are open to receive, we acknowledge that the world is not as limited as we once believed.

When we give all of ourselves away (like the saying of giving the shirt off one’s back), we are signaling to the Universe that we are not worthy of care, that we do not want to take care of ourselves, so chances are we will receive little.

When we learn to recognize the humans who are sharing with us, instead of giving with the expectation to take, and we tap into that same frequency, magic happens.

I have danced around this to varying degrees for the last few years, and the more I share freely, while staying open to receiving, the more magically abundant my life is. I pinch myself most mornings when I wake up, because I cannot believe life gets to be this good. I am more loved and valued and appreciated by the humans in my life, than I ever was when I over-gave.

I now have two beautiful places to call home, and I did not pay for either of them, nor do I own them technically, but it has been made clear to me that they are mine in every way that matters, and I do no work directly in exchange for the privilege of staying there. The people who share them with me, they see what I am doing and they believe it has value. These two beautiful spaces, in completely contrasting worlds filled with wonderful humans, unique in their own ways, they have become the anchor points for a bridge to a whole new world that exists here already, but we cannot see from our limited perspective, we need to rise above it, so we can see past the fog.

The humans at both anchor points, are there holding things steady, while pushing boundaries of reality gently, while I continue to reach for the sky.

My off-grid home base in Mexico, is a space I have helped to co-create for the last three years. I have recently stepped down from a full time volunteer position, now that the foundation here and the anchor feels secure. What I am sharing there moving forward is sourdough baked goodies, pestos and hummus, other dishes I make that are loved by others, but no one else makes. I share my love of animals and help look after the chickens, sheep, goats as well as pour love into training the dogs (who have become the most amazing loving pets, who fiercely protect their humans and home from coyotes). I have brought visitors and volunteers there - and hope to now bring humans who can share and receive freely, not just volunteer. I receive water, a variety of produce and the most surprising gifts - like the most loving dog who adopted me, or the orphan horse the rancher nearby gave to us. I don’t own them, but I get to experience having them in my life.

My other home base, in Vancouver, is the city I have lived most of my life in. I have people here who have followed me and supported my adventure from the beginning. Some have offered me places to stay when I was back in town, some have shared financial abundance with me, others have connected me with people and opportunities that were huge stepping stones on the journey. They have been inspired by my journey, and many are making shifts in their own lives and some are getting ready to walk with me. After so much time spent in Mexico over the last three years, I am splitting my time more equally between the two now and taking this moment to create that secure anchor here now. While I am here I get to share things differently - I get to write things that I need to write to gain clarity and share them with others. I get to share my ideas on stages and feel direct feedback so I can learn more, and inspire others to ask what else is possible, not what is probable. I get to connect with so many humans through conversation - listen to stories and share mine and see, in real time, seeds being planted, while I continue to expand. What I receive here is money, opportunities to collaborate on projects that interest me, and humans asking to walk beside me on my path.

In both places, I share and receive love, presence, support, kindness, truth.

I stepped fully into a space of sharing and receiving in the last month of 2025, and I cannot believe how magical and light life is feeling. At the same time, it is not without its challenges as I see people I love still getting depleted through giving and taking to varying degrees, but as I keep going, build more and more of the bridge, they are able to step slowly onto it and let go of merely trying to survive.

It is not easy trusting that this will work out. So often, we have a tendency to make a plan, try to force things, but I have to fully walk the walk if I believe in this. While I take aligned action and constantly step towards the things that light me up, I also allow myself to sit with the fear instead of trying to fix it.

I also acknowledge as much as I can, that I would not be here alone. The humans who have loved me, have given me opportunities, have taught me more about the world, have supported me in a multitude of ways (the most potent of which was believing in me when I didn’t fully believe in myself), have been honest with me when I didn’t want to hear it, they have built these anchors with me. They have also inspired me to keep going, because in ways that I do not logically understand, doing this for us is so much more powerful than doing it for me alone. I have felt their energy, and I have partly only kept going because I wanted their lives to be better as much as I wanted it for myself. My own freedom would feel empty.

And that is the biggest lesson I have learned. While we need to step into sovereignty in ways we have never done before, we need to also recognize that we cannot soar alone.

We can look at the world we inhabit today and see it as a hopeless situation or as an invitation to step into our most drastic evolution, and our greatest adventure yet.

As a species, we have been stuck in survival mode since the dawn of time. Our brains are wired for survival and we have become very good at it. So good in fact, that we have become our own biggest threat, a plague on the Earth that is now trying to destroy other planets too.

Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms that helped us survive as a species early on are now doing us great harm, both collectively and individually. Even those at the top of the little pyramid scheme we have created, are at great risk - in some ways more so than those lower down, as they have the furthest to fall when it all collapses. As such, those in power, they are not the ones who are going to change the world. It is up to each of us to take responsibility for the things that matter, and let go of the ones that don’t.

What we don’t see when we are stuck in survival mode (or in the matrix or whatever we are calling it these days), is that any solutions or fixes we create are very narrow minded. They are an attempt at eliminating a single threat, not at the big picture.

Our solutions for survival, they are actually in direct defiance of the laws of nature. Somehow we have told ourselves that we are above obeying the laws of the Universe, above listening to our own limits (and we receive ridiculous amounts of praise for this), while simultaneously using and abusing everything and everyone in our path out of fear, not realizing there are consequences to our actions. These exist for us as individuals and collectively.

The issues we face that threaten our survival now, they do not exist in a vacuum - they are all related at their root, and the solutions are starkly simple. Basically, they are to re-enter the very world we have tried to cut ourselves off from, which asks us to behave in ways that contradict how we have been conditioned to navigate the world through survival mode. They feel impossible and we usually do not even attempt them out of fear. Even those trying to make big change, are generally simultaneously upholding the very systems they complain about. Those who leave mainstream society, typically recreate all the issues they wanted to escape, because the familiarity feels more comfortable than uncertainty and because the conditioning is so deeply entrenched. When fear rears its head, people react without thinking and our fear responses are rooted in survival mode. It feels more familiar to try to fix the problem than to simply allow ourselves to feel the feelings that are wanting to be witnessed.

Life is so much more simple and beautiful than what we have made it out to be. Underneath all this competing and striving and achieving we are doing in our attempts to ‘get ahead’, a magical world is trying to emerge.

When we stop and listen, we can feel its breath and heartbeat connecting to our own. It is asking us to do less and share and receive more. To be vessels of creativity, ingenuity and love. To tap into the wisdom that we can connect to, yet we override out of fear, resulting in anxiety, depression, insomnia and a host of physical symptoms.

To tap into this wisdom and flow of energy, we need to stop worrying about survival and allow ourselves to thrive. We need to do this even when it feels terrifying, especially when it feels terrifying.

As someone who got very ill and was forced to do this nine years ago, I have had to learn to listen to my body, my heart and soul, my gut and to nature and other humans.

What I have learned in the process is that our paths are meant to be uniquely different, we all have different gifts and talents to explore, different shadows to alchemize, different things that bring us to life. At the same time, there are certain survival impulses we are all holding onto that are preventing our ability to realize the cage has been open all along and we can spread our wings and soar. These are all things we see reflected back and forth between the collective and individuals.

I am currently in the process of truly stepping into new ways of being in every facet of my life. I have unraveled and learned to nurture my relationships to purpose, identity, abundance, belonging, security, love, health and so much more.

My journey has taken me to beautiful contrasts. I spend time in both - an off-grid community in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature that has not been touched by modern humans (except the garbage that is washed up on shore), and a bustling city. I have danced between the edges of so many worlds in these spaces and what I have learned as I have observed and then begun to embody new ways of being are lessons about letting go of survival and learning to thrive in whatever environment we are in, to the greatest of our capacity (and sometimes we outgrow certain environments and need to let go of them too). Most are ongoing experiments that I am conducting in real time and the reflections on these are what I will be sharing here on Substack moving forward.

I love creative expression in all its forms. In my own life, I love to write, dance, drum, have deep conversations, play with fashion, build, bake and so much more. I also believe that this time of chaos is a time of great fertility. We can build bridges, and safety nets that help others access thriving, while they simultaneously help us, as we can only fully thrive together. We can plant seeds right now that will shift all of humanity from a promise of a Heaven in the afterlife to a realization that Heaven has been here all along, we just haven’t seen it, because we have been in our own way. I believe this shift is possible and that we mostly just have to be brave enough to dream bigger than we have ever dared.

This often feels terrifying at first, because they are the people who see us, who somehow see past the mask we have spent our whole lives struggling to keep in place. Even as we perform and want attention in a world starving for real love, we are usually hiding in plain sight. Our true humanity, something that we often have been criticized for, conditioned to shove down and hide, is something that few people will see when we are busy hiding it. The presence of those who see it will feel incredibly uncomfortable, because we are not accustomed to being that naked.

Sometimes it will take decades for these relationships to flourish, because initially we will keep them at arms length and it is hard to trust people who truly love us, when we have been taught that we are merely tolerated, and easily replaceable, often just a number, a cog in the machine.

These are the people who reflect back to us our light, even when it is barely a spark, flickering in the darkness. They are the ones who aren’t afraid to sit with the presence of our shadows, not trying to change us, yet also not judging us in ways that allow the guilt and shame to loosen its grip on us, so they can be alchemized. They are the ones who allow us to be all of ourselves - silly and ridiculous, or consumed by our pain, sometimes in the same moment. They are the ones who gently stretch us, expand us, not through pressure but by being themselves, while meeting us exactly where we are. We hey are patient with us when we are struggling. They believe in us in moments when we do not yet believe in ourselves. They love us so much that they do not compare us to a fantasy, do not put us in a box, do not try to control or contain us. Sometimes they guide us gently back to ourselves when we aren’t being honest with ourselves. Sometimes they give us space to explore, trusting that if it is meant to be, we will find our way back to each other again. They are the people who never dim our flames, never compete with us, but gently stoke the fire through being more loving, often in ways that are hard to receive.

These people do not change us, they just invite us to remember who we have been all along. They open the door for us to meet the version of ourselves that is most real, most unique, most beautifully messy.

Two seemingly opposing truths can simultaneously exist in every moment - no one is coming to save us and people save us every day. We are whole on our own and we need each other to reflect that back to us. At are core we all one, with the same human needs, yet we are all so wonderfully different because of the gifts we have, the experiences that have shaped us and the perspectives we share. We must take responsibility for our own healing and we can help each other see that we were never broken.

Social media (and that includes Substack and YouTube) are not created to facilitate connection. They are created to keep us scrolling, creating, consuming. In many ways they keep us from being present in our lives, because when we are creating content, we are not actually participating in life, we are not sharing experiences with others.

The connection I am dipping my toes into more and more is the magical, untamed, sometimes messy, but beautiful kind that generates the kind of energy that is palpable, life giving, supportive. It is based on eye contact, presence, co-regulation and co-creation. Social media only allows us to give and take - and if we are giving or taking, we are incapable of tapping into the real time flow of life, of sharing and receiving.

I’m doing this by spending more time connecting with myself in ways that truly nourish me, bring me joy, regulate my nervous system. Slow mornings, walks in nature, dancing in my kitchen, writing when I feel inspired to, eating delicious food that I prepare with love, reading books that bring me on an adventure, learning Spanish and how to read music, challenging my body gently to build muscle, finding discarded gems in thrift stores.

I am doing this by spending more time with those who love me for me and truly appreciating their time, support and presence in my life while we connect in ways that are not an escape or distraction from our lives, but an opportunity for authentic expression of both of us and on some days, it is the simplest of things that feel most magical.

I’m bringing myself into spaces that allow me to intentionally connect with humans in ways I love. These include conversation and connection gatherings, opportunities to improve public speaking, open mic nights for writers, community story nights, group hikes, partner dance socials and a percussion group.

I am spending time on my phone/online more intentionally too. Having more phone conversations and texting less, doing writing workshops where we receive prompts and time to write, followed by sharing and responding with positive feedback, etc.

I have never felt more seen, heard and valued than I do currently. I am realizing something - we are not meant to fit neatly into a niche, we are not meant to be recognized by an algorithm, we are not meant for mass consumption. We are meant to be precious, rare, and held and received by those who make the effort to show up, to meet us, not those who merely want us to entertain them.

I am acknowledging that life is much more beautiful when we treat it like a dance then when we treat it like a race and attempt to beat others down a linear path to the finish line.

There is only one finish line we encounter in this life and that is at the very end of it. It’s a portal into a new adventure that feels very uncertain. One that we hopefully prepare for through experiencing all that is available to us while we are here.

What I have learned this year is that the contrasts, the polarities they are the pulse of life force coursing through us. They are necessary to generate movement, to stretch us, to crack us open. To simultaneously soften us, while they forge us into warriors who walk through fire just to taste all of life.

To feel joy, we need to intimately know grief. To take aligned action, we need to intentionally rest. In order to move towards the light, we need to get comfortable sitting in the darkness.

It is only when we surrender to the natural pace of life, instead of racing ahead, that life truly begins. When we listen for the drum beat that is the heartbeat of the universe, and dance to it, life stops passing us by and it engages with us instead. Life is meant to seduce us, excite us, even scare us. It is meant to recharge us bring comfort and challenge. Sometimes it meant to shatter us.

It is this beat, this rhythm, this ebb and flow that is the only constant in life. It is the natural order of things. It is the death and rebirth cycle visible all around us in all of nature.

It is greater than us, yet, it is something we have become obsessed with overriding and controlling. The truth is, it is only when we accept our limits that we become limitless.

When we step into this dance as active participants, everything changes. We no longer fight the flow of life. We no longer resist. We stop hiding who we are and we allow life to gently guide us back to ourselves, back to what our souls came here for.

When we learn to tune into this infinite flow of energy, to pause when the music slows  and to wait for the beat to pick up again, we step towards life with presence instead of running away from it by chasing goals.

When we allow ourselves to get swept up in the dance of life, we allow ourselves to feel our feelings, to listen to our gut and our intuition, to recognize our gifts and share them with the world, to see where our time and energy is valued and reciprocated, and where life wants to lead us.

When we meet life this way, and follow our joy, our passions, the things we love, it becomes magical. It will gently guide us to a path that is ours alone to blaze. If we really listen, it is a path that seems impossible. If we stay true to this path, become devoted to it, the force of co-creating with life will move mountains. It will bring the most extraordinary circumstances, places and people into our orbit for us to sway to the music with. Some are meant to linger only for a song, while others will fill our dance card for a long time. Some will merely brush against us on the dance floor from time to time. Each and every encounter will leave us transformed, if we allow it.

This path is not linear. It flows and curves and spirals. As we are guided to places and spaces that do not make sense in our minds, yet allow our souls to soar, we learn to pour love into them, breathe life into them. In return, they breathe life into us, reawaken long dormant parts of us. Parts that are needed for us to step into a new world that is being birthed through us all.

Next time life extends a hand and you feel a pull, a stir that starts within, guiding you in an unexpected direction, that’s an invitation to let go and dance with abandon. Will you continue on your ego’s path or get courageous enough to truly live?

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