Mmmmmmm Narragansett. Sitting close to the piers, hearing the seagulls cry, watching them dart around us, landing on rooftops and stones as the waves crash into the rocks below, the fishermen lining their hooks and casting them out into the vast ocean beyond. The little spots to dine, to dance, to enjoy live music, the rising full moon, the smell of the salt on the air, the faint feel of the ocean on the breeze, caressing your skin as you meander or stare or eat or laugh. Oh how I loved you. My first time and definitely not my last.

Narragansett, just three hours away from me in rural Connecticut, felt like another world. It was a special place and my little family and I had an incredibly special time there. So I’m writing about it - Travel Blog Style - with exactly what we did, where we went and ate, how we spent our glorious 7 days together. Plus the little spiritual lessons and nudges I gleaned as we explored and allowed and moved through meltdowns - the dance of life always showing up as our ever present teacher and gift giver.

OK SO - NARRAGANSETT!

It’s a little coastal town in Rhode Island, not too far from the popular (and I hear more bustling) Newport, RI. It’s been a fishing town for several hundred years now (since colonizers came to establish a settlement in 1675) and in the late 1800s it started to become a beach vacation retreat and destination. You can really feel that history in the downtown area, especially in the two huge Narragansett Stone Towers and the arching bridge that connects them, like relics of a bygone time. They were the grand entrance to a casino that was all the rage back in the late 1800s but it was brought the the ground by a terrible fire in 1900 - only the Stone Towers withstood the devastation (and they’ve apparently survived an internal fire in 1965 and two massive hurricanes - in 1938 and 1954 - so go them).

I loved its vibe, how simple the town was, and then how there were all these other small towns surrounding it, each with their own flare and energy (like Galilee that had an ice cream shop at a bar right along a little inlet by the docks with live music! I loved it! But we’ll get there). I also loved that because there are mainly houses to rent and unless you’re at an incredibly fancy one, there aren’t many pools. So there’s not that “moooooommmm I want to go to the pool now!” when you’ve been at the beach for about twelve minutes. We instead would walk to the beach in the morning and post up at the beach all day and my son loved it. He thrived in just being at the beach - building sand castles, playing a little in the waves (he’s a bit ocean water averse), making friends next to us and playing “crab tag” with them or walking down to the boardwalk about 10 minutes away for a bite or a treat, or a poop. It was so refreshing and grounding and calming to just…. be at the beach, feel the sand in our toes and the breeze in our hair, explore the tide pools and rocks and creatures and birds. It was magical in that rustic nature beach exploration kind of way.

Now let’s get in to the details!

WHERE WE ATE

Monahan’s Clam Shack by the Sea

As you enter the town, heading straight for The Towers, you immediately pass by the cutest Clam Shack maybe ever - that’s Monahan’s - where there’s always a line, but it moves fast and you can get beverages from the bar around back to have with you while you wait. I was a bit worried that there wouldn’t be tables available (and didn’t want to be waiting around for that TOO when I had two hungry little ones) but by the time we were close to the front, there were several tables open and waiting for us to choose from (and highchairs too!). You are RIGHT along the water here, with a large pier off to your right. It’s a spectacular view and vibe. It was even spitting rain here the first time we went (yes we went twice it was that good) and it didn’t bother me one bit. There are some tables that are covered and umbrellas even at the outdoor ones. I loved it even in the rain.

We ate the swordfish tacos - SO GOOD, they were loaded with a couple amazing sauces and a nice relish, just YUM - lobster rolls, hot with butter of course - this was a favorite of my 10 month old - clear clam chowder - the classic as you know it but with a clear broth that my 4 year old, who loves soups but not clams, devoured - with a couple clam cakes and french fries, onion rings, and fried pickles.

PLUS there’s an ice cream shop on site, so it really ticks all the boxes for a perfect spot to go, and why we went our first and last nights there!

Matunuk Oyster Bar - pronounced Muh-too-nick

This was the “hot” reservation to get, we lucked out with them having a random 5:30 available on a Sunday night (all the other nights the rest of the week were booked in our early eating time slots.) It was fun, lower key than I was expecting and located over in this other little town of Matunuk. I loved that it was right up by the docks - Leon (my 4 year old) and I wandered them after dinner, checking out the lobster traps and fishing gear piled high on the boats.

The food was good, but not as great as I was expecting. Lovely raw bar items (no surprise there) - we got a dozen oysters (for my husband and I) and some shrimp cocktail (that both kids devoured). A tuna crudo that was just okay. An octopus that was battered and fried (I accidentally did not read that part on the preparation) and it left it dense and hard to chew, so not my fave. But then shared a Caesar (delicious) and a stuffed lobster (also pretty darn good) made up for the mediocre apps.

Overall - NOT totally worth the hype IMO, though I would still tell you to go - fun vibe, lower key than I was expecting, great raw bar, I got a not good cocktail at first so switched happily to a Rose. (this was maybe one of those moments where my expectations were too high and so it just didn’t match them, even though it is a fun place).

Celeste

We loved Celeste. Cozy, well done spot, right in the heart of town (just past those Stone Towers I was talking about above). Delicious food. Instead of crayons and paper, they had these cool Wax Sticks for kids to play with and create things out of while they waited for their food - Genius.

We got oysters again, cause that’s how we roll, a yummy salad, a great fried calamari that had artichokes and peppers fried in there too, Leon got a cheese pizza and was delighted, and they had this great homemade focaccia that they brought out to start. Then Danny (husband) had the halibut (so good) and I had the Cod (overcooked but still yummy preparation).

George’s of Galilee

Ok so we were coming off a loooong boat ride of “whale watching” (more on that below) and were 45 minutes late getting back and thus late for our reservation here, and they were SO NICE about it. They totally understood and made sure we were still seated right away (there were a ton of walk in people hanging around waiting for tables so I felt very grateful for this with my two hungry, on the verge of melting down children). We lucked into a spot on the patio and had a delightful time. The live music from just across the way at Champlin’s drifted across the sea breeze to us as we ate sushi (me and Leon), a whole lobster (Danny), and salmon plus bits of everything else (Lila). We also started the meal with these incredible roasted oysters with a whole medley of spices and herbs and butter that were to die for (plus they gave us a second round for free cause our first round only had 5 instead of 6, something we hadn’t even noticed, but lucky us!)

Then we walked over to follow the music and get ice cream over by Champlin’s and had the BEST TIME (more on that below plus a video of the magic)

Shore House

Fun pivot - we’d driven by this spot a number of times, located in a hotel facing the water between Monahan’s and the The Towers. Gorgeous view and spot. But it wasn’t on any of the lists… It was 5:30 pm, we weren’t sure where we wanted to go, we’d just stopped by a shop to get some Narragansett gear and as we passed Shore House, with several open tables, Danny says “should we just go there?” So I called and sure enough those tables were available. We did a u-turn and popped in. And it was perfect for that night. A truly stunning view and the full moon began to rise towards the end of our meal - it was such a stunning site. We had a really great bottle of Orange Wine (that they securely packed up the remainder of at the end of the evening). But the food was…. very so so. They had a raw bar, as most places do, but the mains were disappointing, as was the service. All in all, so glad we went, but go for the view and the ease, not for the food.

Anchor Room - this place is located at the base of those awesome Towers I was talking about, so right along the water. And the Anchor Room is the upstairs, indoor area - but with basically floor to ceiling windowed views - of The Coast Guard Restaurant (very popular, we couldn’t get a reservation so we went with Anchor Room instead). It was lovely inside, though The Coast Guard’s outside space looked lovelier, and the food was great. We had some more shrimp cocktail, mainly for Lila, a broccolini Caesar, a catch of the day fish, and linguine with clams (absolutely delicious).

Hot Tip: we learned that there’s an upstairs outdoor restaurant and bar that is reserved for walk ins only and it looked awesome! With plenty of tables still open and available at prime dinner time. A hidden secret if you ask me. So walk in and go there and skip the reservations at the fancier Coast Guard and Anchor Room.

^just to the side of Matunuk Oyster Bar

Ice Cream Spots

After pretty much every dinner we went to a different ice cream spot. Or the same ice cream spot a second time. Each one was seemingly better than the next, meaning they’re all just so good and cute and offer their own amazing range of flavors. But by far my favorite ice cream EXPERIENCE was at The Sweet Spot over in Galilee!

What we tried:

Brickley’s Ice Cream over in Wakefield (a really cute shopping area)

Nana’s Ice Cream, Gelato and Candy in the heart of Narraganset, set back with a few other cutie shops

Monahan’s Clam Shack Ice Cream, along the back of the Clam Shack itself

But my FAVORITE:

The Sweet Spot in the base of Champlin’s Seafood over in Galilee. So Galilee is where you go for the Ferry to Block Island and other Boat excursions. And there’s this adorable Seafood spot called Champlin’s (we did not eat here) right along the water. The restaurant is upstairs and downstairs is an outdoor bar and an ice cream shop! You can get your ice cream and take it to a table in the neighboring bar area, listening to their great live music (we went twice and both performers were excellent - see video below!), plus the way this part is situated, you get a view of the sunset over the little town of Jerusalem in the distance. We had the best time here. A perfect end to a full, adventurous day.

THINGS TO DO

Mystic Aquarium

We stopped here on our way out to the shore and loved it. Def worth a visit if you haven’t been. and we learned that this is the Aquarium that the ‘Curious George at the Aquarium’ book is based on! A fave in our house, and yes there are large Belugas right on the other side of the entrance - so cool!

Beaches

We stayed near Scarborough State Beach and the location of our spot was perfect for us. We were about a 10 minute walk to the northern most entrance to the beach and it wasn’t crowded, we had ample space. And we could easily walk about 10 minutes south along the beach to the main Scarborough boardwalk area where there was a food stand and a little beach shop. But it was WAY more crowded in this area. Like four rows deep of people crowded, which is not my thing, so I was thrilled we were posted up where we were, at the end.

Up in the town of Narragansett, 5 minutes north in a car, is the Narraganset Town Beach. We only saw this from a distance and in the evening. But it looked equally as lovely and sprawling, though I do hear it gets busy and packed pretty quickly, especially in the high season.

Whale Watching Boat Ride

We took a ride out with the Frances Fleet to go whale watching - and it did not go to plan. We sadly saw no whales (ok there was one tail we saw, pretty close up, as the whale dove down, but he never came back up again.) We DID see a huuuuuge pod of dolphins, the captain estimated 400-500 of them, dancing and swimming all around us for about 15 minutes. That was extremely cool and special and I loved it, as did the kids. But it was 15 minutes of a 5+ hour boat ride, and you felt that length - my son fell badly and scraped his knee at one point when we hit a big wave, my husband got seasick (as did a bunch of people on board), and then we were supposed to arrive back at the dock at 5:30, but were no where near it when that time arrived, there was zero communication about that fact, all the kids on board were getting hangry, and we didn’t pull back to land until about 6:20. Oofa!

Positives were that it was a stunning day and being out on a boat is one of my happy places, so even though I was pissed at our very delayed arrival time and anxious about keeping my kids from melting down, I soaked in the sun and the water and the cool air, we played on the upper level with other kiddoes, and my daughter took a nice long nap about halfway through.

* Woo Woo Moment (so skip on over to the cute video of the baby napping below if you like) *

While my daughter slept in her stroller next to me and my husband was walking my son around the boat, I meditated and sent love out to the whales, trying to attract them to our boat, send love out, let them know we were there and excited to greet them. I imagined a beam of light coming down through me and extending down deep into the water where it emanated that light out into the water, almost like a sonar pulse. And a wild thing happened - I began to channel the whales, they began to communicate through me, similar to how Spirit comes, but I just knew it was them. They made it clear that something was keeping them from this area of the surface that day, that there was something they were avoiding and that we would not be seeing them. They were grateful for this communication, for me being open to it. They shared insights into my daughter’s energy as well as my son’s that really resonated with me. It was a beautiful, deep, profound experience. I came out of it deeply humbled and moved and knew that that was why we were there that day. One of the reasons. For me to continue to peel back the layers of my Channeling and learn a bit more about my children through them. And to be blessed by that massive pod of dolphins earlier of course. It was really fascinating, not at all what I was expecting, and pretty profound. So, as mentioned in the Spiritual Takeaway section below, this was a real great example for me of trusting the delays, allowing for the pivots, and practicing simply being present with what IS.

Adventureland

My husband and son checked out this spot, real near our AirBnb, and had a blast. There were go-karts, bumper boats, arcade games, and mini golf. Definitely a great break from the beach activity.

Shopping

There are little shops all over, but I really loved wandering Wakefield, about 10 minutes away, and checking out their home goods and clothing stores. I particularly loved a spot called Ocean State of Mind that was down at the very end of the main street, but was filled with cool and colorful clothes, children’s books and toys and stuffies, and some really rad waterproof bags as well as local artisan jewelry. Definitely worth a stop in.

^ on The Frances Fleet

WHERE WE STAYED

AirBnB baybeeeee!

We found a cutie little house aptly titled Hint of Lime. And I LOVED this spot! It’s in a not so fancy beachy neighborhood, full of split levels or large vacation spots. And this was a small ranch style home, all one floor which was perfect for a curious, wandering, crawling baby. Plus the hosts had just designed it so well. It was beachy without being kitschy. It felt new and modern and well cared for. And they have three other bigger houses in the same area that I am real interested in renting next year with some of our extended family.

Spiritual Musings

Trust the Delay and Allow for the Pivot

I find vacations to be some of our biggest spiritual teachers if we’re open to the that, to looking at them through a spiritual lens. They help show us what we love, crave, want, don’t want. They allow for magical serendipitous moments that wow us and they often put us in magical surroundings whose beauty or vastness or majesty equally wow us.

So there are the typical lessons we can glean while away - taking more time to be present, to witness. It’s often as if time slows down a bit and you simply allow your awareness to shift - taking in all the little moments, the silly moments, the beauty, the majesty - experiencing your own awe and connection to nature - and whatever little magic happens inside you as you look out at the sea.

But I also kept getting the nudge to watch the anxiety that comes up for me when things aren’t going to plan. I tend to want to perfect a situation, for my kids stability and my own “idea” of what the perfect timing will be for everyone to have maximum enjoyment. On this trip, as things went awry and that little anxiety started to bubble up, I was invited to zoom out, to in-the-moment say to myself “things are always working out, how can I soften and trust that the timing is beautiful and that we’re being lead to an even more full/beautiful/aligned experience?” And then watch that unfold again and again. This idea to just TRUST THE DELAY. It’s not life working against you or putting roadblocks in your way to punish or be harsh, but instead it is life inviting you to know that something even more aligned for you, and your family, is right around the corner. Wait, see what comes next, see how the delay or change or challenge actually helps. And notice the beauty of the spot where you actually land.

Our first night there was an amazing example of this - Traveling with kids can be a lot. I was definitely feeling it our first night. My daughter Lila, 10 months old, had taken two short naps on our car journey that day (not her norm) and my son Leon, 4 years, was threatening disregulation from hunger as we were trying to get out the door that evening for dinner. I had a bubbling anxiety around them both tipping as well as noticing my own need for food. It was spitting rain and while we all had our rain gear, we didn’t really want to be outside, so we set out toward a food hall we’d read about (Boon Street Market), thinking it’d be inside. We pull up and not only is it not inside, but even in the rain it is packed. We assessed the situation, unsure of which way to go, and then we notice off to our right is a pizza place. Ok ok, I really wanted local sea fare, something maybe close to the water, but I was settling yet again - let’s just go in the pizza shop. We walk in and it TOO was completely packed with about an hour long wait, even if we just wanted to order food to go. Soooooo, we head back out to the car and reload the kids back into the car seats. Earlier, as we had driven into town, we had passed the famous Monahan’s Clam Shack, but there was a long line and it was also seemingly outside. But cut to us leaving the pizza place, in our moment of unknown, speaking our options out loud, and Leon chimes in from the back - “I want Clam Shack!” - Danny and I laugh and say, ok let’s just drive by, see if we can wait in that line (we’re all so hungry by this point), so we turn away from Boon Street Market and the pizza place, the sprawling ocean’s majesty spread out right in front of us, the road we’re on seemingly floating just above the rocky shore, and as we pull up to Monahan’s we notice that there is basically no line (a complete miracle and rarity we come to find out) and also there is a parking spot right out front! We pull in, unload, wait in the quickly moving line, and get a table right along the edge, facing the water. It’s exactly what I wanted. We were kept away from those other spots, so that we could land here. And it gets better cause once at our table, we notice a small bar off to the side where I get the latest gossip from the bartender on some Millionare resident who’s throwing a party that night with Maroon Five playing (why there are so many extra people in town), I grab myself a rosé and Danny a lager, I sit back at our table, looking out at the calm waters and I am just in Heaven. Our first night, and what a lesson - watch the anxiety and overwhelm, and relax through them, knowing it’s all going to work out, it all IS working out, and see where you land. By the sea, with a lobster roll and rosé, everyone’s bellies full and hearts happy.

And it just kept happening like this -

On our Whale Watching Day, as my husband was sea sick, my kids were underfed, and it was becoming clear that we were going to be much later than our 5:30 promised return to land, a similar bubbling of anxiety and worry came in. Fearing meltdowns on the boat (ones that never came) and that we wouldn’t be sat at our reservation thus not having dinner plans (also did not come to pass). Instead, we got to be on a boat, my happy place, nearing sunset on a gorgeous day, the kids played and we read books and no meltdowns came, and by getting in later, and getting to the reservation later, we got a stellar table outside that lead us to our glorious Galilee evening and ice-cream-water-front-sunset-dance-party night.

As the lesson repeatedly showed up, it was beautiful how I just started noticing it more and more quickly and softened with the dance. A hiccup or road block would appear and instead of letting my worry/anxiety brain come online, I would just smile and say to myself “trust the pivot” and then I’d watch how well it would work out in our favor. Things aligning just right - a blocked parking spot leading to a farther away spot but an excellent post dinner walk/exploration as a fam - a lack of dinner reservations leading to a water front meal at the Shore House with a table perfectly positioned to watch the rising Pisces Full Moon on the night before the Eclipse - an earlier than expected lunch time out that let us have the rooftop to ourselves to run around and explore - a perfectly timed beach walk to catch a one footed seagull nabbing fish from a tide pool to my son’s utter delight.

Life is always serving us little lessons like this, but there’s something about being on vacation that allows us to be even more tuned into them, tuned into how the universe is working FOR us. How as we attune ourselves more and more into the magic that’s all around us in the universe, we tune into these little pockets of alignment and joy and lessons on the way with more and more adeptness and ease.

So for your next trip, or even your next day, where can you trust the delay and allow for the pivot? Can you soften that natural response to tighten around fixed ideas of how something should go and allow for the beauty of how it IS going and unfolding?

What have been your greatest lessons when traveling?

This was a fun one! Different than most, but inspiring for more to come. Getting to document and dive into my travels and explorations in this new and different way. See, pivoting a bit already.

See you next week!

^where I sit typing today - smelling the ocean breeze, hearing the gulls, like little blessings over my soul - on a quiet Narraganset with this gorgeous fam

Why am I writing?? Why am I here?? What can you expect to learn and read and deep dive into?? Let’s dig in:

I don’t want to stay in one lane, niche down. I am here to play and experiment and share about those experiments, as I dance through the biggest experiment of all - Life.

I have been experimenting for as long as I can remember. I was told by society - and my parents - to focus in, to stick with things, to pick a lane, but that’s just not what I’m here to do. I’m on this earth to play, to try new things and new experiences, to learn fast and move onto the next. If you know Human Design at all, I’m a 3/5 Manifesting Generator - the Great Life Experimenter - which explains SO much (I’ve become mildly obsessed with Human Design’s ability to help us know our true “design” - how we were designed to operate in this lifetime on this planet. And understanding it about our kids, fostering their own self knowledge, feels huge to me. Something that deserves it’s own post for sure soon). I spent about 35 years not knowing this stuff about myself though, so my growing up was riddled with a lot of shame and self flagellation at not being more structured, not sticking with things, for my constant pivots in interests and hobbies. So when I finally learned that I AM DESIGNED to be this way, oh my gosh it UNLOCKED something in me, a deep level of self acceptance I’d never before known. An acceptance of parts of myself deemed “different” or “weird” or “too much” or “too out there”. And when you combine it with the insights of Astrology, well, boom, it’s like a full on manual of yourself - a manual that as you read it, it’s like you start to REMEMBER the tools you already have, you feel a pull that is so much bigger, deeper, more whole than any pull from obligation or lack or trying to please that you’ve faced before.

And this is what happened to me - I began to learn more and more about myself and I began to understand that writing and sharing the information that I’ve learned from my wildly experimental life is a huge key for me living in highest alignment with my soul’s path and purpose here. (there’s a lot more about me, my spiritual path, my history, and how I got here on a recent post that you can read here.) And I have felt SO LIT UP doing it finally.

Taking this step has felt SCARY at times, fully outing myself so publicly (and I haven’t even shared over on my IG feed yet, something I’m moving towards doing, but oh man am I seeing my shit come up, my fear of judgement, my fear of being talked negatively about, being told I’m too out there, too positive. I sit with her, that little girl inside me, I hug her, and I tell her our grown up self has got the reigns now sweet girl, and we move forward through our fear anyways.) But though scary, I know that “everything I want is on the other side of fear” and writing recently has felt so unbelievably important, so unbelievably freeing. So I step forward anyways, I share anyways. And writing about the Humanness, the fear and inner child and past wounding, is what I’m here for, so I better let it be seen and known and outed. I better practice what I preach if you will and do what lights me up! Just like I’ve guided clients to do for years now.

So what you can expect here?

The Woo Woo

Expect a place to come to for your woo-woo dabblings and curiosities- I try a lot of things, I am ever curious when it comes to woo woo practices around manifestation and healing and self understanding. And I want to share about things that have helped me in the past, how I’m engaging with them now, and experiments I’m currently trying (for instance, I recently learned about the Grabovoi Codes, learn more here, and am in the middle of a 40 day commitment to sitting in their vibration, and I cannot WAIT to write about all that’s transformed (interesting stuff is already happening and I can FEEL certain subtle but palpable shifts already).

Consciousness Expansion

I want to talk about Waking Up and Expanding Consciousness in a way that is actually digestible. I find so many spiritual teachers just assume that you know what this means and they jump into the deep end, and I just don’t think that’s the way to talk about it with most people. I want this stuff to be easily understood, because whether you’re conscious of the labeling or not, you are expanding, right now. You are learning about yourself and your life and your habits on the daily. And by learning these things about yourself, you are “Awakening”. To yourself, to your programmings. It really can all be so simple to understand and I plan to dive into seemingly heady topics but make them applicable to your life right now (not after you have a mystical experience etc etc, though those are VERY cool and I will also talk about those with you whenever, but in your life today, right now). I did my first one of these in my last post, all about what Timeline Jumping actually is, IMO. Check it out by clicking here.

The Other Side

Musings on loss and grief and connections to the other side - What happens after death - What it is to be a Mother without a Mother in the physical anymore and my connection to her now that she’s on the other side - I feel my mom so much around me and she comes to me in her specific signs ALL the time (a red cardinal, a rainbow, the number 711), usually when I need her the most, or I’m going to see a family member that she always loved (she came in SO CLEARLY and directly the other day as I was heading into Brooklyn for my cousin’s Bachelorette with specific messages for everyone I was going to see. And just before a best friend gave birth to her daughter, in the middle of a snow storm, she came through to let me know that a few things would go awry but that in the end everyone would be healthy and happy so to stay grounded and calm - which is exactly what I needed to hear and exactly what happened)

Thoughts and Tidbits on Conscious Parenting.

Raising kids is HARD. It’s a lot. And for me at least, as a healing co-dependent perfectionist, it has been historically extremely overwhelming, but with certain healings and tools that I’ve acquired, I’m noticing huge shifts in how I parent and how I show up for my kids. I want to talk about it - postpartum grief and anxiety, how our children really do help us heal if we let them, how to understand and accept our kids more through knowing their Human Design, and how the hell we stay calm ourselves in the shit storms that can arise on the daily in a household with young kids (mine are 10 months and 4 years old for reference. I’m obsessed with them and it’s chaos at times, especially when one or more of the family is disregulated.) I want to talk about disregulation and how to regulate and align ourselves, both in the moment and give thoughts and practices on helping us heal deeper and deeper parts of ourselves to help us be more steadily regulated over time.

Healing Modalities

In learning about my deep codependence and perfectionism I began seeking various methods of healing, even training in Reiki online during the pandemic and taking some in person Energy Healing Sessions from the Barbara Brennan School. My interest in healing techniques only grew after having a very intense postpartum period after my son was born, just after losing my mom (I’ll def write about this at some time as I’m sure many would relate and we need to speak about it more and more, especially in the wake of Hayden Panettiere and the Lindsay Clansy Trial). So on top of my own trainings, I have sought out so many different kinds of healings - from psychics to various energy healing practices to somatic healing to plant medicine - a therapist once said it was like I was getting my Masters in Healing Modalities. And it’s true! I really love trying it all and am fascinated by it all. And know that I need to share what’s worked for me, what hasn’t, and why I think that is. And I want to contemplate how it’s ALL - all our trauma, all our shit, everything we’re facing now - it’s all here to teach us about ourselves so we can align with our highest path, so we can continue learning and growing, healing and expanding, to make our lives better and fuller and deeper on the daily. (You can find a little more about my journey from a recent post I wrote if you’re craving a deeper dive.)

Channelings!

I feel a real call to Channel on here - channeling my team of Spirit Guides who tap into a collective consciousness with wisdom and insight for anyone they know will read their words - for time is not linear and these posts are around, so if you’ve found it, it’s meant for you. Whichever one you’re reading, no matter my post date, if you’re called to read the language (or listen) do so knowing they meant for you to read it now, in this moment, and feel how the language shifts things in your body/vessel/spirit. (I‘d done a bit of this on IG a while back and then over on TikTok. But writing it out was the first way I began channeling so sharing it here, when called, feels really aligned). I wrote a whole post about becoming a Channel and what that means for me that you can read HERE!

But wait, you’re an actress, right? Aren’t you going to write about Actors or the Arts or something?

Look definitely maybe. But I wanna say here that I believe being an actor, or an artist in general, forces you to cultivate some sort of spiritual practice in order to withstand your calling in this crazy capitalistic, patriarchal, youth obsessed society. You gotta find something Higher and Zen the fuck out in order to stick around IMO. Those who don’t have often unhealthy coping mechanisms or have sneaky ways of being Zen (I did a great episode on my once-upon-a-time podcast, Art.Fully.Grounded, with the amazing actor Michael Urie and he claims to not be spiritual at all, but his description of trusting his intuition and following the green lights and not letting anything make him feel too high or too low was so crazy Buddhist and spiritual in its own right, it was so cool to witness. Zen/trusting the Universe without any sort of label. Go you Michael Urie, love you on many levels.). So if you are an actor reading this, I hope you take away the skills to know yourself better, to sit within yourself a little bit deeper, within your instrument, and to start to understand how held and guided you are; to listen to a voice deep within you that has a lot of the answers, or at least knows what breadcrumb to follow next.

The Gist - and My Promise to You

I want this to be a space that uplifts, where you come to feel more in touch with who you are at a deeper level, to provide a space that helps get you in touch with your own guides, your own higher self, and shows you that ultimately you are your own healer, that you are so much more powerful and connected and held and guided than you think. And I hope it inspires you to start investigating your own relationship with the Universe as a whole, to start to get playfully curious about your own mechanism for connecting with the Devine, with Spirit, with those on the other side, with how your physical vessel best manifests and functions on this planet. So that you can ideally live your most aligned, best, brightest, self-loving life. (a post for another time, but I one hundred percent believe that the whole point of this life thing is to learn how to love ourselves - ALL the parts of ourselves - and that that is how we “win” in this crazy game of life.)

Now, some Channeling!

Felt really called to throw this in here today, so here goes -

To sign off, I tune into my guides from some wisdom for myself as I Substack and for any and all who read this post, now or in the future:

Oh Dear Ones, WELCOME! We are so delighted to have you joining Clea on this journey, her Soul’s journey, yes, which she is learning more and more about IN ORDER TO SHARE it with you, and you, and you. With a Collective that is so ready to hear through her understanding, through her vessel. The time is now for YOU ALL to step into the most authentic, divinely guided versions of yourselves. And may you be inspired by those like Clea, like all those around you who are STEPPING THROUGH fear of being seen, stepping through their own traumas, and worries, and doubts, and desires to please and look “cool” and be anything other than THEMSELVES in order to please a more mass collective, to please an IDEA of what they are meant to please, for that is all that it is yes? An idea, implanted into you through the society you are living in, through your parents, through your peers, through your “friends” because it feels safe and beautiful and familiar. But what if there is ANOTHER LAYER of beauty and depth and connection that is available to you as you step more and more fully into YOUR AUTHENTICITY outside of any perceived norm? And where are you finding these norms in your own lives? Where do you find your desire to fit in? Is it in the way you look? How you speak? How you show up as a parent, or mother, husband, father, friend? Is it in “doing” for others so much that you cannot also accept and receive for yourself? where oh dear one do you see this in yourself? Get very honest and TRUST AND ALLOW the process that unfolds AFTER the realization of these truths. Trust the deep love that wants to come to you from us, from the Universe, from Spirit, whatever YOU want to call it, whatever YOUR PERSONAL connection and calibration toward Source Consciousness is, that is where the love wants to flow in from. Allow it allow it allow it now, feel it filling you, holding you, loving you, uplifting you to your next level of conscious understanding about yourself. Without shame, my dear one, but with deep love and acceptance. That is all for today, we sense you (Clea) are tired, thank you for holding us and for allowing this space to begin to take shape and be malleable, to morph as you go but the commitment we witness in you is very exciting for us and important for you to see and honor too. You are so loved, more than you can currently know. Allow yourself to understand that, the limitation of your knowing and your mind. YOU ARE LOVED MORE THAN YOU CAN CURRENTLY KNOW. Mmmmm, thank you Dear Ones. Thank you for taking this all in, for understanding at a deeper level. Love.

Whew…. guys they can just keep talking and talking. I love how they said in there that they could sense I was getting tired, it’s so true. I’m at the beach right now, back at my Airbnb writing as my daughter, my youngest, naps, and while this all lights me up SO much, the Channelings, being so spot on and beautiful, it also is draining as I do it, especially when I haven’t fully taken care of my body (I can sense I’m hungry and a bit dehydrated, by the sand and sea yes, but also by the delicious Rosé and salty oysters from the night before.)

I hope this has been an exciting taste of what’s to come, I hope you feel a bit different in your body, expanded in your soul, a little more in tune with your heart, and fired up to keep learning and growing and expanding right alongside me. Cause Lord knows! I got a lot to keep growing and expanding on too. And I’m SO excited to do it with you, alongside you. To muse, and discover, and share, and expand right here. About every week (we’ll see if I keep up the once a week rhythm, or if it picks up or drops down. Or pivots to something else entirely?!? Remember, I’m a Mani Geni in HD so I love a pivot to where my real excitement and lit up-ness is).

So hop on for the ride and stay for some real fun and exploration and expansion. I promise to deliver what excites me and what is currently lighting me up. And my hope is that that enthusiasm, curiosity and passion can be felt THROUGH the screen and picked up by you at home, or on the train, or listening in your car. Wherever you are, I got you.

Comment below what excites you most! What do you wanna hear about? Any questions about anything from the above? Can’t wait to dive in to all this, together.

So I have been feeling this A LOT lately - the feeling that I am Dancing between two different Avatars - the OLD Avatar/body/version of me and the NEW Avatar/body/version me -

As I wake up in the morning and move throughout my day, I notice that something is different. My children wake up in the same way, my husband makes me a pot of coffee as I nurse the baby in the same way, my 4 year old has an emotional breakdown around not wanting to get dressed for camp in the same way, but I am different. My body feels a little lighter, the bad night’s sleep simply affecting it less, I still feel ready to go do a morning workout where I KNOW my past self would’ve been like “nope, we didn’t sleep well, we’re exhausted, I should skip this morning.” My psyche feels lighter/cleaner/less dense - the things that usually would trigger me, I notice quite simply that they don’t - like I’m able see them from outside, understand that my other self would be triggered by this, I SEE those thoughts, but they don’t grip me in the same way. My mind feels clearer, more expansive, less wanting to scroll on my phone and more wanting to look out my window at the mountains and notice the fog covering the valley or the mama and baby deer prancing across the lawn.
This lasts for a day or two, sometimes up to a week, and then something happens or I simply wake up and I can FEEL back in my old body, my old self, feeling denser, heavier, more easily triggered, more rigid, more perfectionistic, more fatigued. Sometimes aches and pains that had vanished in my new Avatar reappear here, it’s all been so fascinating to watch and experience. And now, the more I become aware of it, it feels like the less time I spend in the old and the more time I spend in the new….

And THIS is Timeline Jumping!

Ok ok, so we hear a lot about “jumping timelines” and “oh I want to align to my Highest Timeline.” Or you do a timeline jumping meditation and while you feel totally lit up and aligned with Source and in the flow, nothing’s ACTUALLY changed in your external reality. And you try to hold on to the knowledge that you did the jump! It’s happening! But nothing REALLY shifts so you start to doubt, worry a little bit, am I not believing enough? Does this stuff just not work for me? Did I do it wrong?
(For those SUPER new to this - Timeline Jumping is based on the theory that there are an infinite number of versions of our life being played out simultaneously, each version running on its own Timeline. And if you don’t like where you are now, then you can just hop on over to another Timeline where the “you” there has everything the “you” here wants. Thus, you timeline jump.)

But I don’t think we just HOP into that other life like POOF I jumped, everything’s different (look MAYBE some people with crazy powers and devotion and accessibility to mystical experiences do, and how cool for them, but…), what I’m being shown is that the Timeline Jump IS THE SHIFT INTO the New Avatar. Because as the new, aligned, lighter, brighter, less easily triggered Avatar comes online, THAT IS THE PLACE from where you are magnetizing the ‘dream life’ things into your world; where you are co creating with the Universe, holding the space and vibration FOR the big things you want TO FIND YOU. (Because whether you’re new to manifestation or not, there’s a general growth in consciousness that acknowledges that you make the world around you, and if you dive a layer deeper you start to see that it is your subsconscious beliefs and programmings that are the ones creating your reality. Start to change your subconscious beliefs and programming, bring them into the conscious to be healed and shifted, and then you start manifesting from a different place, attracting different things into your life.)

So Timeline Jumping is the act of Dancing with your New Avatar. Feeling when your body/mind/psyche are aligned with your new beliefs and thoughts and programmings. And then just a simple sensing of when the body is feeling back in the old, the bogged down, the worried, the fatigued, the running from old subconscious programmings and getting triggered in the same old ways. And this is just a noticing - it is not a judging or being like “fuck why am I in the old?!?” - it’s an allowing for the AWARENESS of the DANCE. Op I’m in the old, I’m getting easily triggered, I’m so heavy - Op good morning, I feel really in the new. Wow, that pain in my knee that ALWAYS bothers me is gone, wow I can do this hard workout class and feel strong instead of depleted, wow that thing my husband did that would usually trigger me I was able to just witness and not be pulled in by it.

That’s it. You’ve timeline jumped. When you notice yourself in the New Avatar, what you are also noticing is that you’ve stepped into your New Timeline. A timeline where the “you” you want to be IS PRESENT and attracting all those things you see in your dream life. And when you Dance back into the old, it’s just to witness yourself there so that you can become even more keenly aware of when you are in the New. And through awareness, understanding, acknowledgement, you stay for longer and longer bits of time in the New, until the New Avatar IS you. And maybe there’ll be yet another Dance in the future, the New becoming the Old yet again, for a new New to develop. For I do believe we are forever Dancing.

Where are you feeling this? Where in your life can you feel yourself stepping into a newer version of you? And then can you see it as just a Dance of life that you’re moving between more and less alignment? Older and newer versions of self? Let me know in the comments! And let me know if you have any questions or want to pntificate more on any and all of this. I’m so here for it.

A few Hot Tips for Aligning with your New Avatar - What I do in the Mornings:

• Sometimes I wake, groggy, foggy from the night, sensing my shift from dreamland to the present and I am nudged to actively CHOOSE connection in that moment. To sit in the power, even if for one minute, right there in bed, no ritual, just an opening, a letting light in

  • Call in pure white light from the Universe above and Feel a pillar of that white light come down through your crown, filing the center of your entire body, down to the souls of your feet.

• On particularly gunky days, I channel somatically - letting my hands move through the different chakra and energetic spots on my body, cleansing and clearing things only my subconscious mind can know, but again letting my body be filled with spirit, with flow, allowing for clearing, lightening the gunk.

  • If you know anything about your chakra system, you can focus on one at a time, starting with the crown and going to the root and ask for each to be cleaned and cleared and prepared for the day ahead.

• Both practices leave me feeling lighter and more wholly connected to the higher from the beginning of the day

• And a Note: Little things will happen in the day and I’ll see the old avatar step in, want to act up, have her say, worry, obsess - And I just SEE her and love her and thank her. Sometimes I give her the wheel of the car and sometimes not. But it’s ALL just about observing, seeing, allowing what is with a keen curiosity and awareness of the dance back and forth.

• Now Go DANCE! Literally and Metaphorically! You’ll feel so good after.

If you had asked me even 10 years ago, when I was newly dabbling in spirituality, if I believed in Channeling or even knew what that meant, I would have rolled my eyes or said “Channel - like on the TV?” I was clueless. And even those that I came to know of early on in my spiritual journey I still VERY MUCH saw with a skeptic’s mind - “oh they’re just making that up, performing, wanting money.” See, part of my past, aside from my mom being an atheist physician who engrained into me that Science was the be all end all, was that my great-grandfather was a charlatan preacher. He would go from small town to small town preaching for a bit, being a new “savior",” taking money to build his new “church,” and then he’d ditch that town and move his whole family to the next spot to do it all again. So it’s in my bones to be skeptical, to doubt, to see through people to a darker underside.

Then came the pandemic and a latent, very light curiosity in Tarot that turned into a whole little second career as a Tarot Reader which over time opened me to Channeling the Divine directly. When Channeling started happening to me, I had by then cracked open so much of my atheistic/agnostic/charlatan past and history and stepped more fully into my Aquarius Midheaven of embracing the weird and wacky and woo woo - but it was a LONG road, filled with littered shells of versions past, layers that are still falling off of me to this day. So when it happened - feeling Spirit/Energy/Light moving through my body, and deeply knowing I was meant to open my vessel to verbal channeling, not just writing - I was STILL looking at it AS a skeptic, as a curious, wide-eyed little girl wondering “is this real? Is this really happening? Am I just making it up? Taking performance to a whole other level?” But I rolled with it, cause I’m a curious being. I called my other extremely woo woo friend (now a Reiki Master and an INCREDIBLE healer and teacher in her own right) and was like - let me do this thing for you, let’s see what happens, let’s PLAY! (Play is maybe THE key thing IMO in spiritual growth and consciousness expansion). We hopped on zoom cause she’s in LA and I let it rip and it was wild and wacky and weird, my head and body were moving as I spoke, flowing so deeply with the energy moving through me, and the lessons that came through, for both of us, were extremely powerful and resonant. It was like I couldn’t doubt anymore. Like the ancestors were standing in lines over each shoulder holding space for this to move its way through me to HEAL all past illusions of separation, to seal my future, to disintegrate links to past ancestral traumas and wounds and doubts.

It’s been three years since that magical first session, bringing the spiritual more and more into my physical life. I’ve verbally channeled for clients, for woo woo friends, for TikTok, and done some written Channeling here on Substack. I’m in fact just coming out of a magical verbal channeling session that I had today, an impetus for writing this post, where I was reminded of the power of CONNECTION, of re-connecting with your soul, with source consciousness, with your whole soul’s TEAM. Cause even though I have this gift and am aware of it and use it, I still get very mired in my human physical life, with my kids and my husband and my friends and my social obligations out here in rural, expansive Litchfield County Connecticut. And I forget STILL how held we are, I am, you are, ALL the time. How much this journey that we’re on is guided, planned, nudged along, helped with, held.

SO WHAT IS CHANNELING?

For me, Channeling is opening my crown and my vessel to the Divine - to my Spirit Guides team who talk in a collective consciousness “we”. I’ve always pictured/imagined/known that I have three main Guides and then a whole larger team outside of them. And I think any time I channel, different variations of the team step in with their expertise, and I never, or very rarely, ask who exactly is there. I understand it’s my Spirit Team that is there for my highest good and alignment.

And I also believe there’s a layer that is often present that is the Angelic Realm. I think of the Angelic Realm as being a sort of level higher than one’s Spirit team. In my understanding, Angels in the Angelic Realm are pure love and light consciousness and have not ever been in physical bodies before. So they hold an extremely high level of consciousness and vibration and are such love-bombs. They’re like the puppies of the ether. Whereas, in my understanding, Spirit Guides, are higher consciousness beings now in non physical form but a lot, if not most, of them HAVE been in physical form before. So they understand how challenging incarnating and living and being in the physical can be. They can therefore Guide you - as their name suggests - because they have been in similar shoes in one way or another at some incarnation of the physical. They have a greater understanding of what you’re going through and how to speak and relate - whereas the Angels just want to hold you with deep, high levels of pure Love Consciousness and speak at a much higher frequency/velocity/level.

And then there’s the Higher Self, which I believe is also on my team, but I think of her as a little separate, more like me grown up - my most wise self at the very end of my life who’s seen it all and supports me and loves me along my journey, helping heal and ground in each present moment through that omniscient glorious awareness that it all works out beautifully - or has the potential to if I continue to tap in and stay connected and grow in conscious awareness. (Not saying that’s the ONLY way for it to “work out",” but I do think there’s free will. And we can choose to stay stuck and stagnant or we can choose to learn and grow and change. The HS helps with the latter.)

As I open my vessel for channeling, I feel the connection take place and I feel the energy start to move through me. My body begins to move subtly (nothing like what happened at the beginning, unless I’m Somatic Channeling, but that’s a whole other story for a whole other post) and after setting the intension for the session, usually to be open to the OTHER person’s team of guides, I understand that my team has connected with theirs, and I feel intuitively that they’re ready. I let myself, my own human brain and consciousness step off to the side and I feel the Team’s thoughts come through me, is the best way to explain it. I am still fully conscious of the language passing through me and will have my own questions and interjections and opinions (sometimes I say them out loud and sometimes I hold them back or even ask my own opinions and judgements which can also be labeled my “ego” or “human self” to continue to step aside to allow for the full channel flow), but the language flowing out of me is from the combined Spirit Teams.

Now a quick note here - Spirit is still using MY vessel, MY consciousness, MY human experience. So it only has the levels of experience I know, the language my brain knows, the experiences my human has had. For I am the Prism by which the Light is coming through. So the messages are limited in that way. And I’m starting to understand that that is why it’s so important for those of us who are Channels, who are opening to this gift, to come forward more and more, so Spirit/The Divine can connect through the different Prisms of us to reach the max amount of people that are meant to be reached, and touched, and guided, and uplifted.

Hot take - the “famous” Channels that I know of are almost exclusively white men in their 60s. And so Spirit can only speak through THEIR minds and experience and consciousness. And IMO those Channels tend to be a little harsh, a little one noted, a little distant and unrelatable and placed on a pedestal. We need different prisms. We need different access points and points of view and awareness and being by which Spirit can come through and express. So that The Divine’s ideas and thoughts and wisdoms can be more widely shared and understood and resonate with a greater/different population, one stepping away from a patriarchal, do it this specific way, one size fits all, tough love way of being.

OK - WHEW!

I CANNOT believe I’m outing myself so fully as a channel. I CANNOT believe I am here, writing so intimately about my journey and experiences. Being so public about all this feels extremely vulnerable - what are my Connecticut mom friends going to think of me?! - But it also feels so INCREDIBLY expansive to be sharing a truth about myself, to be being of service in a new and different way. To be stepping into sharing my fullest light with the world instead of hiding and dimming it.

So I want you to know, if a historically and ancestrally skeptic agnostic unbeliever can turn into a full blown Channel for Spirit Consciousness, then there is SO MUCH waiting for you too dear one on the other side of your fear and self doubt and “icky” feeling. Step into it, own it, go towards it with playful curiosity, and see what it opens up in you, see what gifts are laying dormant, see how your life wants to expand.

Write me below, I’d love to hear from you. Questions on Channeling? Your own psychic gifts that are coming online? Questions on cultivating those psychic gifts? Really anything, I’m here for it.

With SO much love and gratitude. May you feel the Divine in your day today in ways both big and small. And may you ask, ‘Spirit, what would you have me know today?’

Love you!

Clea

I was sitting in my mother’s hospital room, hearing the beeping and whirring of the machines, 3 months pregnant with my first child; the skin on her hand felt paper thin, the sun spots catching my eye, almost as little mirrors in time linking my grandmother to this room as well and showing me what my hands would one day look like, are beginning to look like now. I knew she was dying, my mother, I knew I would not be able to ask her all the things I meant to ask her - it was sudden her death, the decline was long but I never thought this ending, DEATH, was quite so near - I knew that I would have to do this next chapter, becoming a mother myself, by myself, with all my thoughts and opinions and neuroses and questions; that my mother, this monolith in my life, for better or worse, was leaving me, in one of my greatest times of need. I thought I had been on a wildly intense healing journey up to this point, but somehow I knew SO much more was about to come.

That was over 4 years ago now, and I was right that my life morphed and changed in so many ways since then. The healing journey I’d begun in my 20s, one in which I foolishly thought I’d healed pretty much everything, was catapulted to a new level through the death of my mom at such a pivotal time in my life - followed shortly after by the birth of my son and an intense period of postpartum that followed. But along the way, I lived SO much life, gleaned SO many things, basically got my Masters in Healing by moving through healing modalities of all kinds, and I am ready to TALK ABOUT IT! So, Welcome.

MY ORIGINS

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an only daughter of an OBGYN Mom - (yes she was an obstetrician who always wanted grandkids who died while her only daughter was pregnant with her first grandkid! Woof. And yes I lost my OB Mom RIGHT when I needed her most and was about to understand so much more about her world) - and a Dad who owned a production company that did commercials and industrial films for companies in Oklahoma and Texas. My Dad was charming and charismatic (still is honestly), but not great with money and usually drank a little too much at parties and the bars where he frequented. Maybe never fully grew up in certain ways. My Mom on the other hand was the pinnacle of responsibility - one of only 10 women in her medical school class in the 1970s, she became a doctor at a hospital that didn’t even have a locker room for Female Doctors. They were simply labeled “Doctors” and “Nurses” (aka “Men and “Women”). So when my mom showed up she was like “Where do I go?” and they told her “well of course, the Nurses area” to which my mom said f*** that. She would change in the Nurses’ space and then march on through the Doctor’s space, as the men changed clothes and gabbed, making them extremely uncomfortable and pissed off, cause ya know, patriarchy, and after about two years of this they FINALLY changed the signs to Men and Women. So yes, yay, go mom. But also she was up against A LOT.

The other side of this ball-busting, hyper responsible, always on and serving others Doctor was an extremely insecure, self conscious, self deprecating woman really stuck in her own pain body in this life time (a deeper dive on all this is a story for another post.).

And so, needless to say to you dear reader I’m sure, my parents didn’t make it. They separated when I was 3, divorced when I was 4, and while I saw my Dad a lot and it was pretty much a 50/50 custody situation until my early teens, my mom was the dominating parent and presence in my life. She demanded from an early age that I pay attention to school work, get high grades, and also be her emotional support at home. I could never have named this at the time but it was an extremely emotionally volatile and codependent relationship. Some days she’d be so happy and just such an amazing, aligned, loving mom, and other days she’d be in a deep depression. I never knew what I was coming home to.

And then there was me! I’ve always had a naturally Sunny disposition (my nickname in elementary school was literally that, “Sunny”). I could see from a very early age that it was a choice to sit in depression, to give into anxiety. I was hyper aware of these things while at the same time becoming incredibly codependent with my mom to keep her happy and healthy and thereby maintain my own happiness and safety in the unit. I’ve also always had a desire to write, to process in that way, but my perfectionist little self would start journal after journal over the years, never finishing them, getting too overwhelmed, shutting down. It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I actually finished my first journal and truly began writing.

I was also always an artistic kid, from my early days. I had severe asthma growing up so was limited in my sports playing, but I still tried many and none of them stuck. What I always gravitated back to (even as my Manifesting Generator self if you know Human Design) was singing, theater, acting. I turned to my mom when I was 7 years old, it was just before my birthday in October and there was an ad on the local NPR station for auditions for the community production of A Christmas Carol, and I said “I know what I want for my birthday, Mom. I was to be on the stage!” She laughed and tried to dissuade me by explaining what an audition was - “you have to get up in front of people and sing...” - and I just looked at her and said “yeah okay, let’s do it.” To her credit she did take me, and I booked it! Caroler #2. I even had a little solo. And it started my acting career, right there in October of 1993. I did at least one community play every year from then through high school, not to mention all the school and camp productions. I loved it. I was hooked.

But my mom’s emphasis on school and academic learning always overshadowed my creative side. I wasn’t allowed to fully explore creativity in a way that I now see that my inner child would have wanted to (or how I allow my own children to now), and it ALWAYS came second to school. Going to a conservatory for college was out of the question, I HAD to get a good Liberal Arts degree and then I could do what I wanted, apparently. So I did what any over-achieving only daughter does, I applied to Stanford early decision - and GOT IN!. I think I was truly surprised that that happened. I kind of still don’t understand it (though I have a theory that I’ll share at another time). But there I was, off at college in Palo Alto. I started as an International Relations Major (I’m fluent in Spanish cause I went to an immersion school for elementary school) and only in my junior year when an advisor pointed out that ALL of my extra curriculars were in Drama and insisted I could easily add Drama as a Double Major did I do so (again, outside forces telling me what to do and how to do it. I wouldn’t have had the guts on my own to just add Drama). So I partied a lot and did really well in classes, but I can only probably tell you about 2 of them because I was just REALLY good at the kind of schooling our education system rewards - memorizing things and regurgitating that information to pass a test. I didn’t CARE about 90% of the topics I was learning about, so they didn’t stick with me. I really was that kind of student.

In my Senior year, thinking about what the hell I was going to do after college, as my friends are applying for med school and Teach for America and McKinsey positions, I finally finally had the guts to be like “ok you know what I really want to do? Go try to be an actor for a while” followed by a whole slew of limiting self talk - “I’ll give it a couple years then go to law school. I’m young and all my besties are moving to new york so I should too and then I can say I tried it and then.... I’ll go to law school.” To practice auditioning, I signed up for Grad School auditions one weekend in SF, got day of callbacks for everywhere I applied, and got full on callbacks to multiple places but decided to just head to NYC for my callback to NYU. Again guys, I DID NOT THINK I was going to get in, I really was like “well this is a fun adventure and experiment” (which is maybe a HUGE lesson in manifestation for me that I have really been dancing with in my adult life.) But then I GOT IN! To NYU Graduate Acting.

So I went. And I spent my first year feeling like an imposter, but also being so in AWE. I could spend 12 hours a day ONLY TALKING AND THINKING AND LEARNING ABOUT ACTING?!?!?! That’s allowed?? That’s my life now?? Holy fucking shit. It was incredible and awful and joyous and painfully hard. All of it.

And then eventually somehow I graduated - they broke me open and started cracking my “good student” shell, asking me what did CLEA think creatively? What did CLEA want? What was CLEA’s opinion on this and that? And I know it sounds silly but really guys, I was just so good at doing what other people wanted of me and regurgitating that info and knowing what my mom would want me to say or do that it took me all of Grad School to crack into my own voice (I’m STILL finding it to this day, but NYU is where the journey began). Plus I finally started therapy in Grad School (when I told my mom this on the phone one day she no joke broke down crying saying “but in therapy they blame the parents for everything!” Oy vey) and talk therapy was where I finally finally began to rip open the little cracks Grad School had etched into me with my own two hands, wanting finally to break open my hard shell and look at what was inside.

Ok we’re getting long now, so if you’re still with me hi, thank you, we should probably be friends mmmmkay? And let me just summarize a little bit to get us to today!

ACTING LIFE

I graduated NYU Grad in 2011 and quickly became a working actor (something I was kinda surprised by as I still had that “I’ll just give it two years and then go to - you guessed it - law school mentality). My first summer out, I worked at Williamstown on their Main Stage and got my equity card immediately. From there I worked all over the place in regional theaters, then in NYC at Playwright’s Horizons in Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss (with the greats Jessica Hecht and Michael Cyril Creighton, among others), then The Public and Second Stage and Lincoln Center and BROADWAY in David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” with Clive Owen (who I got to lightly make out with every night, dreamy). I did some TV in there too, the procedurals and Boardwalk Empire and indie films. And also during this time I went through so many dating ups and downs (DEF its own, or multiple, post), but landed with my now Husband, another actor/creator who I just feel SO lucky that I found and got to partner up with.

We got married New Years Eve of 2019 and were all like “2020 is gunna be the BEST YEAR YET!” And then we all know what happened. The Pandemic. Shifted everything. I was already on a healing journey that had begun with that first therapist in Grad School. But I’d also moved on to other therapists, had some spiritually awakening moments including basically a full on NDE experience during a therapeutic psilocybin trip, and had done deep body work through a craneosacral specialist. So when the pandemic came and everything was paused, I deep dove on the spiritual stuff, which was for me a total life line, in making sense of my acting life/career and making sense of the world around me. I took a deep meditation course with Kristin Kirk and a bought an online Tarot course from Karen Rontowski (these women are on the complete opposite ends of the spiritual teacher spectrum, which probably says a lot about me, that I’m drawn to both, the DEEP and the Cooky). I really quickly learned the Tarot cards, like I was remembering something from another lifetime, like I just KNEW what they were trying to say to me (when I had never picked up a deck even just playing with girlfriends before - there’s a lot in my psychic and spiritual life that I understand now was blocked from me until it was the “right” time, until I was more ready - another lesson in surrendering and trusting the ride).

LIFE AS AN INTUITIVE

So I started reading for friends and then that grew into reading for friends of friends and then it took off into it’s own little business, I loved it (and I never mentioned it to my mom cause I was terrified of what she’d say, I felt totally in the woo woo closet with my family). After about a year of reading for people, I started seeing things in my mind’s eye when I would sit in meditation before a session, and I started understanding that those were messages for the person I was connecting with. After another year, I understood I simply didn’t need the cards at all anymore and I could get direct messages from the Spirit team of the person I was reading for. The cards were still fun to use at times, and a physical example of the intuitive understandings that were coming through, but I started using them less and less and started doing “channeled guidance” more and more. I also started unlocking my mediumship gifts at this time, taking classes and connecting more directly with certain spirits.

Cut to getting pregnant - woo! - first trimester I was so sick - boo! - and two weeks into my second trimester my mom dies suddenly - extra boo! - I am then CATAPULTED by these events into the physical world. I stop doing sessions. I stop posting on my tarot instagram. I had to deal with my mom’s estate and the grief of losing her at that time etc etc etc. Then I had my son - after a more than 48 hour, unmedicated, CRAZY labor and birth where I felt my mom SO present, as did my whole birthing team; it was deeply special and spiritual in its own right. But my physical self had to move through the deep grief I was holding along with the deep seated anxiety and perfectionism I realized lived so intensely in my body from my deeply codependent upbringing.

So I stayed away from readings and stepped more fully into my own personal healing. I’d been doing energy healing work of all kinds off an on for years before my mom passed, including Reiki (I even got an online certification in Reiki and almost went and did a 4 year energy healer training program - cause remember I’m really good at SCHOOL), and various other modalities. Then in this first postpartum time I got really interested in nervous system work so I did a full SSP Protocol (Safe and Sound Protocol) plus somatic healing of various kinds, and regular acupuncture and myofascial work. So yeah, pretty much, if you name it, I’ve tried it over the years (I even did Frog Medicine in the jungles of Costa Rica once). I’ve also gotten even more interested in astrology and learned about my Human Design and it’s like so much has been unlocked in the years since having my son.

Leon, my son, is 4 years old now, I cannot believe it, and last September we welcomed my daughter, Lila, into our lives. She is now a glowing, joyous, curious 10 month old! So I have my hands joyously, and sometimes overwhelmingly, full.

And that’s what I’m here to write - About it all! Life and lessons and healing and motherhood and grief and patriarchy and consciousness and actor shit and woo woo shit and aliens and expansion and your highest timeline and and and!

In human Design I am a 3/5 Manifesting Generator - The Great Life Experimenter. I have to go DO life in order to learn - I literally have to touch a light bulb to know it’s hot. So I’ve learned the hard way on way more than one occasion, but through that, I’ve come into myself. I know what it is to love, to lose, to grieve, and to heal. To be ever healing, and to make peace with that ever healing nature of life. And on the Astrology side, if that’s your love language, I’m a double Gemini (Rising and Moon, with a Libra Sun) and Chiron is in my first house sitting real near my moon - so I feel like I’m here partly to teach, write, express, and share about my wound, the pain that’s been inflicted on my self identity, and all I’ve learned through my journey.

I sit on my porch as I write this, in the middle of the country in Connecticut, peaceful, lit up, alive, healing, whole and worthy and anxious. Full of grief still, full of life, full of hope. I see my hands type and I know how connected they are to the women who came before me, who wanted to share more of their full selves, more of their stories, but never could because of their own fears and limiting beliefs and self deprecations and societal norms and roles. And I choose now to use these hands in a different way. To break old cycles and step into the new, honoring the past, honoring my lineage, but craving more - more wholeness more alignment more inner knowing more truth more joy more expansion.

So stick along for the ride, welcome to the journey! Giddy up! Cause on top of the consciousness, motherhood, grief, love, loss, joy, artistic, and expansion chat, we’ll also talk Channeling. From Spirit, from the Pleiadians, I may even do readings for specific community members! Who knows! The ideas are FLOWING, the inspiration is HERE, the joy of writing, of growing a community, of finding other perfectionism healing, consciousness expanding, spiritually woo woo outsiders thrills me.

So drop me a line below! Who’s here? What resonates? What more do you want to know or see or do? What limiting beliefs are YOU working through? What’s lighting YOU up right now? Give me a little snippet of you and let’s connect and grow and laugh and expand TOGETHER!

With so so so much love and joy and gratitude,

Clea

Sometimes when we think of the Big Changes we want for ourselves, for our lives - and we think about how maybe we’re blocking them, what could be happening, how could I shift to bring about this change? - we think about them as EXTERNAL changes - “I better be ready to relocate, to shift my kid’s schedules, to take a leap and hop on a airplane” etc etc etc - But what if those BIG changes actually came from deep INSIDE of yourself? That the CHANGE you’ve been scared of, that you’ve been blocking from happening is deep WITHIN you. It’s how you habitually move through the world like you’re on autopilot, and the CHANGE would be to shift into manual gear and take the reigns, to think in each and every moment, what do I want/need to be doing in this moment, what feels most aligned and whole for me now? It’s really looking at the fear that comes with re-investigating what you need in this version of you that exists right now.

As you sit with this, now wherever you are, reading, maybe sipping a tea, a coffee, a glass of wine, ask yourself - hmmm is this what I WANT to be drinking? Is this location a place I WANT to be sitting in? Is this the lighting I WANT to be reading under? Or am I here doing any of these things quite simply out of pure habit? - see what comes. How do you react to this internal questioning? And note if anything surrounding you is simply because that’s how it’s always been done, but it maybe does not actually resonate with you anymore/in this moment. (If you’ve noticed something like that, bonus points for rewriting the script right now, saying to yourself “I can change” and allowing yourself to shift that tiny thing - turning off a light to make it more moody, putting down the glass of wine, dumping the coffee or adding an extra scoop of sugar cause baby that’s what I really WANT! Why deny myself?)

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. What does it mean to resist change? To be afraid of change? It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately. And it’s hit me recently that the change I actually fear is not something external, but internal, afraid to admit to myself that I’m so ready for something new, something different, and that these old habits that I just fall into - cleaning the kitchen as I watch something once my kids are asleep and then sitting to continue watching that thing as I pump before I move upstairs to read or catch up on the day (sitting in yet another story or another to-do list) before falling asleep and doing it all again the next day - keep me in my same old loop and patterning. I’ve done so much healing work, but I’m still stuck in old habitual versions of “me.” So what if I can CHOOSE to feel a different level of alignment moving through me and actively MAKE different choices? Feel this internal shift and internal desire to do things differently. With a different level of energy and passion and intent. To watch when I begin to let the autopilot creep in and gently return myself to manual controls.

Where are you resisting change? Where are you feeling stuck on autopilot, scared of changing to manual honestly because what are you going to find there? Sit with that little part that’s afraid, ask it what it wants, what it needs to have you hear, and then invite it to take a seat next to you as you lovingly wrap an arm around its shoulder, catching it up on who you are now, on how far you’ve come, on how much you’re ready for something more, different, to live from a more whole place, and feel its energy shift and change and morph and maybe it gets excited to take on a new role for you, to pick up some pom poms and puff out its chest and cry out to anyone who will hear about how wonderful you are, 180-ing its perspective and its role within your internal system and thereby radiating joy both internally and externally. Gosh what a relief both of you feel. To have had it out with each other, to have eased the tension and the tamped downness that had been there for years, decades, centuries. And you two get to be the ones to break these habits and really shift something. What a cool thing. You high five and your arm slips off their shoulder and you look at each other with such love and admiration, nodding with a silent “I’ll be seeing you real soon” as you stride off into your own versions of the sunset and let everything else fall away, blissed out in your newfound sense of pride and self love and acceptance of what is.

You so got this. Turn your autopilot off and dive into your life. Whatever you find there is gold, so mine it and love yourself even more for doing it.

I’ve been sitting a lot recently with the idea of fully enjoying the embodied feelings of life. The moment to moment tiny pleasures, felt through the senses, connecting with the molecules of your body. Laying on the floor with the sun shining down on you through big, vibrant windows, warming your face and your body. Little giggles from a newborn child, something unexpected in the moment and oh so delightful. The smell of coffee beans as you grind them, knowing they’re about to become something warm and comforting. Your eldest child holding your newest and telling her “You are so loved.” The spark of sensuality coming back between you and your husband, a little glance, a small touch, inner longings reignited. The feel of fresh sheets in a perfectly made bed as you cozy inside them and snuggle in for the night. For the rest. For the dreams that come, leaving wisps of memories, ever more empowering, ever more adventurous.

I invite you to pay attention today to your life through your senses. What do you feel, smell, touch, taste, hear that lights you up and brings you joy? Hold onto this feeling. It works its magic by reminding you WHY we are alive. It works its magic by bringing you into the present moment. It takes you out of your head, out of the futures and the pasts, and brings you into the now. Into the ever present possibilities and delights of the now. In the current chaos that swirls around our every day life, coming into the now, into our bodies, into the beauty of the world around us is beyond rewarding. And can’t be discredited as also being important and impactful for more than just ourselves. For the more people who indulge in the now, in the beauties, in the joys, in the love and beauty that is always available, the more the strongholds loosen their grip on our fear and our worries and our neuroses. The more we start to see clearer, think for ourselves, understand our moral compass, sit in the grey of things, pause before reacting. It ultimately all goes hand in hand.

Where is your beauty today? Where is your little slice of joy? Of love? Of pleasure? Of sensuality? Of acceptance? Of presence?

Channeled Message for the day:

Oh dearest ones thank you for being here, for putting in the time to be here, to read, to indulge. For all you consume is who you are. Today’s message is simple, Clea. It is just to love. To love yourself, as you are learning to do, more and more. So we say to those reading, where can you love yourself just a bit more today.? Maybe in the sheer willingness to indulge in your senses you fall in love with yourself a little more, in love with your life a little bit more. Let this be enough. There’s nothing to figure out. Nothing more to do right now. Just sit in the love for your life. Even in the hardest moments there are pockets to love. Find those now, today, and let that be enough. No more to do today. You are enough just as you are. Love that.

Long time reader, first time writer.

It’s a new year and something has been calling me to write. To write more publicly, more outwardly. To be curious about being seen, more rawly, more truthfully, more openly. To get curious about how that feels in my body and what it might mean to really start sharing and exploring on this platform, in this way, weekly, daily, whenever the language calls me. Whenever the spirit calls, as they say.

A bit about me - I’m a seeker. I’m curious. I want to know myself so deeply and help others know themselves. I see every situation in life as a lesson, yet get frustrated when the same lessons keep showing up. I understand deeply the pain of being misunderstood, the pain of thinking you have to do it all alone, of thinking everything is your fault, and the perfectionism that lies on the other side of that. The hyper vigilance of bending the world to your will so you can feel in control, to keep everyone and every thing around you happy and healthy and quite simply “okay.” And then I know the feeling of accepting life as it is, of starting to melt into the madness, allowing it to overwhelm and then move through. Of seeing when things go “wrong” that there’s actually such beauty on the other side. Of leaning into the chaos and trusting deeply that all is well in every moment. That I am learning and growing, my family is learning and growing, my friends and colleagues are learning and growing. and ALL are teaching me about myself. That’s the gift. To learn about myself more and more deeply in order to accept myself as I am and ultimately LOVE myself, as I am.

I think that’s the key to this game of life - self love. That’s really all life is asking from us. And the more we can truly, fully, love and accept ourselves, the higher the levels of the game we can achieve. There’s so much about 2026 that’s calling us all to up-level. And most notably to up-level in love. So that’s what I hope to provide here. Some weekly content to help you feel more connected to something higher, and ultimately, just more connected to yourself. Finding your way back to yourself, to your own heart, so you can love all its quirks and idiosyncrasies more and more fully and deeply.

I’m also a mother of two beautiful children (3 months and 3 years); I’m an actor who’s worked in film and TV as well as on and off Broadway; I’m a yoga and meditation teacher teaching privately and group classes; And in the spiritual realm, I’m an intuitive - tapping into people’s teams of guides and receiving understandings and downloads. I also work as a direct Channel, allowing the Devine to come through and share whatever is meant to be heard in that moment. I plan to end each post with one of these direct channelings, seeing what wants to come through for that moment in time, knowing it will reach exactly who’s meant to hear it.

More musings to come - on life, on love, on mindfulness. Looking forward to the journey ahead. Let’s go!

Today’s Channeling:

Welcome all to this sacred space, a space Clea is Divinely opening to all to be of service, to be witnessed, to begin to learn more about herself and her teachings and her PURPOSE here. This is something we’d like you to feel into now, all those reading, feel into this big word of PURPOSE. What do you FEEL in your body? If there is fear, a feeling of “I do not know,” feel into that, then begin to let it settle, let it move through, then feel DEEPER. What is my purpose? That deeper feeling is quite simply love. Loving. And through that LOVE, that deeper knowing and feeling of connection is from where your true purpose can start to emerge. It is where you can start to know more fully and truly WHO YOU ARE and from there you will KNOW what you are meant to do. It is simple things at first, it is allowing, it is trusting, it is sitting in the discomfort of not knowing but trusting that day by day things will reveal themselves. Things will start to blossom and bloom and passions/desires/niches will start to pop forward.

For those of you reading who feel you are already in your purpose, we celebrate you and your certainty and we ask you to come into your heart and FEEL this celebration there, a knowing, a softening, an allowing, and from there ask now what is next? What is next needed of me? Is there a pivot or an expansion? See what comes.

For ALL, come into your center now, feel where your unique center lies within you and from there FEEL love and light pouring in. Let it settle in this beautiful center, filling and filling til it expands out and out and out, filling your whole body, now your whole aura, now your whole room. Sit in this love and expansion through the day and sit in the knowledge that simply by doing this practice today, you are in your purpose. You are moving WITH PURPOSE for you are sharing and expanding the love that exists on the planet. And maybe for you that’s all that’s needed for today. Truly, let that be enough today. For YOU are enough just as you are. You are so loved. You are so held. You are so guided, moment by moment. Trust. Allow. Settle in this glorious feeling. We love you. That is all for today. ; )