Could it be more than fortune-telling? Is it even fortune-telling at all?

We’ve all seen the movie scene: the fortune teller studies someone’s palm and predicts a death, or some dramatic future event. But what if palmistry is far more than that?

Dixie and I dive into how she got started, a serendipitous meeting with a client that supercharged her path in palmistry, and how palmistry can be used as a guide for self-discovery, a spiritual practice of introspection, and a way to better understand the paths we’re walking.

We also get into the nuts and bolts of palm reading, whether the lines on our hands can actually change, and what our hands might reveal about the life we’re creating.

And, plenty of other fun stuff along the way.

You can learn more about Dixie and her offerings HERE

And…

If spirituality or mysticism is calling to you, I am hosting a retreat in Guatemala this February!

This will be a space to step away from the noise of everyday life and go deeper into your own spiritual journey. We’ll explore breathwork, ancient cacao ceremony & fire ceremony with a local shaman, ancestral healing, meditation, inner work, and the wisdom that comes when we slow down enough to listen to our own inner shaman.

If you’ve been feeling the call to reconnect with yourself, explore your spirituality, or simply experience something deeper and more meaningful, I’d love to have you join us.

Guatemala • February 2027

You can learn more and find all the details HERE.

As always, thanks for listening!

Much love on your spiritual journey,

-Mel

Joseph discovered that seeds often flourish not when they are tightly controlled, isolated, and perfected, but when they are allowed to adapt, interbreed, and respond to the environment around them. Through his work with landrace seeds, he began to see a profound reflection of the human experience: that people, like seeds, may grow best when they are given space to be themselves.

In this conversation, Joseph shares his journey from a life shaped by external expectations to one guided by curiosity, intuition, and connection. We explore how the same principles found in nature: diversity, adaptation, resilience, and freedom, can also guide our own personal and spiritual growth.

Together, we discuss:

● What happens when we stop trying to force ourselves into a predetermined mold

● The wisdom nature offers us about resilience and adaptation

● How allowing ourselves to be “wild” can help us reconnect with who we truly are

● The importance of listening to our inner voice rather than following a path created by others

● How less control can sometimes lead to more meaningful growth

Joseph’s story is an invitation to reconsider what we think thriving looks like. Perhaps, like seeds, we aren’t meant to become something perfect or predictable, perhaps we are meant to become fully ourselves.

Joseph is a farmer, author, yoga practitioner and seed steward known for his work with landrace gardening, an approach that embraces diversity, adaptation, and natural selection rather than strict control and uniformity. His work with seeds has expanded into a broader philosophy about human nature, creativity, and the importance of allowing life to unfold.

You can find him at https://lofthouse.com/media.phtml

If you’d like to know more about the work I do and upcoming retreats you can find more here.

People often arrive with images already stirring in them, symbols that reflect the exact threshold they’re standing in, or the journey they’ve been walking through. What she does so beautifully is help refine those choices so they become more precise and alive, shaping placement, form, and color in a way that deepens meaning and brings a sense of forward-moving energy rather than something fixed or stagnant.

In that collaborative process, the image becomes even more than art, it becomes a distilled expression of transformation.

Sessions often carry an emotional depth as well, where what’s been held in the body around past experiences can be acknowledged and gently integrated, allowing the tattoo to hold both memory and movement forward. The result is a work of art that feels like a living map of becoming. Honoring what has been lived, and movement into what’s next.

You can find Sandra on Instagram at @sandra.escareno.inc

or reach out to her at 435-512-5104

If you want to learn more about building a spiritual practice or finding a style of spirituality that resonates with you, I have a 1 day retreat running on July 18 in Logan ut. You can see all the details on my website.

I never expected to feel closer to something bigger once I stepped away from organized religion. This episode is about the surprising peace, questions, and growth I found on a spiritual journey outside of church walls.

I’d love to hear about your spiritual journey & practice. You can email me at truewithinyou@gmail.com

I’ve shared with you in past articles much of the spiritual journey I’ve been on in the last decade.

It’s been a wild, beautiful, and often disorienting path.

One of the clearest things I’ve come to understand is this: having a spiritual practice is not optional for me, it is essential. But just as important is that it is not fixed. It shifts, evolves, falls apart, and re-forms as I do.

And that, to me, is one of the most beautiful things about it.

A return to what’s been lost

Many of us are moving through life with a lot more internal experience than we have space to process.

We are still wired for rhythm, meaning, and ritual, but much of modern life no longer offers the containers that help us slow down, feel, and integrate what we are living.

This retreat is a space to return to that.

Not by escaping life, but by learning how to be in deeper relationship with it.

What this retreat is

This is a one-day experiential retreat focused on spirituality as a lived practice.

This retreat isn’t about the belief systems we hold. It’s about the practice of relating to yourself, your life, and what you hold as meaningful or sacred.

It helps us:

• listen inwardly

• process emotional experience

• regulate the nervous system

• create meaning from life transitions

• stay connected to ourselves in real time

This is not about adopting a new identity or belief system.

It is about remembering how to listen.

A lost rhythm we are remembering

In earlier human life, spirituality was not separate from daily experience.

It was woven into:

• grief and loss

• coming of age

• birth and death

• seasonal cycles

• community and belonging

Ritual and story helped people move through transition with support and meaning.

Over time, we shifted from participation to observation, from rhythm to efficiency, from ritual to productivity.

In that shift, many of the natural containers that helped us process being human quietly disappeared.

This retreat is a way of rebuilding some of that rhythm in a grounded, modern way.

What we will do together

Did you know there are 7 types of spiritual practices? We will explore them all and you can decide which one you most resonate with.

Throughout the day, we will work experientially with:

• breathwork and nervous system regulation

• inner listening and awareness practices

• journaling and self-inquiry

• ritual as symbolic integration

• mythology and life cycles as meaning-making

• embodied reflection practices

• creating your own spiritual practice

Everything is designed to bring you back into direct relationship with your inner experience.

Inner work & identity

A central part of this day is gently exploring the stories we carry about who we are.

We will look at:

• identities formed for safety or belonging

• roles we have outgrown

• emotional patterns beneath them

• what exists underneath the story

Not to fix or change you, but to understand yourself more clearly.

What you will leave with

You won’t just leave with insight, you’ll leave with a practice.

Together we will create a simple, sustainable spiritual rhythm that fits your real life.

This may include:

• daily grounding practices

• breath or regulation tools

• journaling or reflection rituals

• nature connection practices

• symbolic anchors for everyday life

• ways to pause, listen, and reset

Something that supports you—not something you have to perform.

Included

Ancestral Healing Session (pre-retreat)

A private session to explore inherited patterns, internalized stories, and identities you’ve carried.

This creates space to reconnect with what is underneath conditioning, expectation, and old narratives.

For me, this is where spirituality becomes real. When we shed the masks, programming, and beliefs that hold us back, we come home to ourselves. We create in a whole new way.

($125 value)

Nourishing Lunch

A wholesome grain and protein bowl.

Retreat Toolkit

You will receive a set of meaningful tools and materials to support your ongoing practice.

This retreat is for you if you are:

• in transition or change

• feeling emotionally or internally overwhelmed

• seeking deeper connection to yourself

• questioning or rebuilding your spirituality

• longing for meaning beyond productivity and survival

Or if you simply sense there is more to life than the pace you are living.

In the end

This is not about becoming someone new.

It is about returning to yourself, with more clarity, more presence, and more capacity to listen inwardly.

It’s about creating a practice that support you in real life, not just in theory.

I would be honored to share this space with you.

The Details

The retreat is in Logan Ut

July 18, 10am-5pm

Cost: early bird pricing is $255 (this includes an ancestral healing session pre-retreat $125 value)

You can save your spot with a $100 deposit at Venmo @truewithinyou

This podcast lives where ancient wisdom meets nervous system healing and spiritual practice. Together we explore what it means to come undone not as breakdown, but as initiation—returning to the body, breath, and ritual as pathways back to wholeness and meaning.

A space for remembering who you are beneath the story.

This is not a critique of any individual or faith, but a reflection on a structure that has deeply shaped our society as a whole. A structure often understood as divinely inspired, and one I’ve been thoughtfully re-examining.

A Sacred Lesson

I was once invited into a Native American ceremony where an elder shared something that has stayed with me ever since. He spoke about how, even after generations of suppression and inherited trauma, true healing for his people was deeply connected to healing beyond their community as well. There was a spirit of openness in what he shared. An invitation toward healing that didn’t exclude, even in the face of deep pain.

While my own experience is very different, the principle he shared stayed with me. It shaped how I would eventually come to see patriarchy. As not just as a system that limits women, but as a structure that shapes all of us, carrying both privilege and pain across every gender.

Growing Up Within The System

There was a time when I believed patriarchy was God’s design, not because I had deeply questioned it, but because I hadn’t questioned it at all.

It simply was.

If that’s how God structured the world, then there must be a good reason. I told myself that, and I believed it.

I grew up thinking that, as a woman, my highest calling was to be a wife and a mother. This was the pinnacle of womanhood, the greatest achievement I could reach, which, for the record, I don’t totally disagree with. More on that later.

And for a long time, that felt fine. Partly because it was framed as “what God wants,” and partly because it was all I knew.

I grew up in a world where leadership was largely male-led. Men were the presidents, the doctors, the lawyers. They ran businesses and held the majority of economic power. They were also the spiritual authorities. The ones who spoke for God, the priests, the bishops, the ones with revelation and the final say.

I didn’t see women in those roles. Not really. And at the time, I didn’t register this as a problem. I had loving parents. I felt safe. In many ways, my upbringing was beautiful, which is part of why it was so easy to accept the structure around me without question.

There was even language around honoring women, the sacred role of motherhood, being valued… within the right roles.

The Quiet Red Flags

And still, underneath it all, there was an unspoken truth: women didn’t hold real authority. Not in the world, not in the home, not even in the spiritual spaces that defined our lives.

So I did what I was taught to do. I learned to trust the voices of authority over my own. I deferred my intuition, my questions, my inner knowing. I believed men were more capable, more logical, more spiritually connected.

They spoke for God, and I followed.

To be clear, this wasn’t all painful. I wanted to be a mother. I am naturally nurturing and supportive, and there are parts of me that genuinely aligned with the life I was living.

I got married. I had four children. My family has been one of the greatest sources of joy in my life. But over time, something began to surface. Because being a wife and a mother was aligned for me—but it is not the whole of me.

Red Flag… Ignored

I remember being in the temple, where as part of a ceremony within my faith tradition, women are asked to make a covenant to obey their husband. A thought flickered through my mind: at least he’s a good one… I guess. It was subtle. I didn’t linger on it, but I felt it, a quiet confusion in my body.

And underneath that, a question I didn’t fully let myself follow: what about the women who didn’t marry “a good one”? I knew many, even within my own family.

It was a red flag, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to process it.

I had complete faith in the system I was in, and in order to keep moving forward toward the life I had been taught to build, I set it aside. But it stayed with me, a tiny crack in something I had never questioned before.

And when I finally returned to it years later, there it was, clear as day.

Did God Put Men In Charge Or Did Men Put Men In Charge?

I became very good at what the system asked of me. I learned how to support and anticipate needs. Not because my husband demanded it, or even asked for it. But because it was what I had been programmed to do.

I didn’t know myself, so I knew him. I didn’t trust my voice, so I amplified his. I built an identity around being a good wife, a good mother, a good woman, and from the outside, I was doing everything right.

But inside, something was slowly disappearing.

Because I had so little confidence in my identity outside of these roles, I became deeply enmeshed. My worth became tied to how well I supported, how well I upheld the structure I had been taught.

And for a while, it worked—until it didn’t.

Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn’t reconcile it anymore. Either God was asking women to be less… or this system wasn’t coming from God at all. That was the moment everything shifted.

My Greatest Liberation and My Greatest Pain

What surfaced wasn’t immediate clarity, it was discomfort, a quiet restlessness I couldn’t explain.

I started noticing things: the way women were patronized, put on a pedestal, yet still didn’t seem to hold real authority. I saw places in history where women had some authority, and over time, that authority had been taken away and placed into the hands of men, often with the reasoning that this was what God wanted.

Then came the harder questions. Why did it seem like women were left unprotected? Why were perpetrators often supported while victims were asked to forgive? I was told we don’t always understand God’s ways. To just have faith. But something in me wasn’t settling anymore.

Resentment began to rise, along with a deeper realization: I felt lost, disconnected from myself. Eventually, it all came crashing down. I could no longer ignore what I had seen, what I had felt, what I had quietly known for a long time.

I had been taught this structure was divine, but the more I looked, the more I saw the cracks. I had explained them away, justified them, minimized them, until I couldn’t anymore. Something in me had known, long before I was ready to admit it.

When I allowed myself to see patriarchy as something shaped, at least in part, by human influence rather than purely divine design, something opened—relief.

Suddenly, so many things made sense. Women’s voices do in fact matter. Our intuition was valid. We are allowed to choose lives that feel fulfilling. Our role was never meant to be this narrow.

It felt expansive, liberating. And at the same time, there are no words for the grief, the anger, the rage, the betrayal.

I started to realize I had grown up with a very narrow view of what womanhood meant… where a woman’s worth was tied to being a good wife, a good mother, and her sexual purity.

And then I saw something harder. Women weren’t just shaped by the system. We also helped uphold it. Sometimes by reinforcing roles, sometimes by judging each other, sometimes by resisting change.

And then there was the self-betrayal. I saw how I had participated in my own silencing, how I had learned to override my instincts, to stay quiet when something didn’t feel right, to trust others over myself.

That realization cut deep.

I had never felt more alive, and I had never felt more pain.

Understanding The Whole Of Patriarchy

Over time, something else became clear: the men in my life hadn’t created this system either. They had also been shaped by it, taught that boys don’t cry, that anger is acceptable but sadness is weakness. That their value comes from providing, leading, being strong.

They were given power, but not emotional tools. And within that privilege, there was harm.

I saw it in the quiet struggle to connect, in the pressure to provide, in the expectation to succeed at all costs, in the loss of authenticity when vulnerability is stigmatized and asking for help is seen as weakness.

Just as I had been limited, so had they.

Patriarchy Hurts Everyone

For a long time, I thought patriarchy served men and limited women. Now I see something different. It limited all of us, just in different ways. Men may have gained privilege, but they lost access to parts of their humanity.

Fast forward a decade, a lot has changed. Women are standing up, asking for equality, not dominance.

And many men feel displaced, unsure of their role, wondering where they belong. Some want to return to the old system because it felt clear, because it feels familiar.

But familiar isn’t the same as healthy, and comfort isn’t the same as stability. A system that becomes unstable when equality is introduced was never truly stable to begin with. It was a hierarchy, not a balance. And going back would not bring healing. It would only repeat the harm.

This isn’t about blame, and it’s not about excusing harm. Accountability still matters. The impact still matters.

But if we want real healing, we have to understand what created the harm in the first place.

Those who hurt or control others are almost always carrying pain themselves. Unprocessed emotion, trauma, disconnection.

Control is often the language of unmet need, of unhealed pain. And real healing doesn’t come from flipping the power structure, it comes from transforming it.

Just like that elder taught, healing cannot be one-sided. It requires all of us.

Lets Not Repackage Patriarchy/Hierarchy

So this is an invitation for women and for men, to sit with the grief, to feel the discomfort, to do the work, to move beyond a system that has hurt everyone. Real stability comes from balance, from connection, from shared humanity, and that is something we have to build together.

We could go back. We could try to repackage what once was. But it will never bring authentic healing.

In Part 2, Let’s explore more deeply why returning may not be the answer. And what it could look like to create something more whole, more balanced, and more human for all of us.

If you would like to learn more about the work I do, you can visit my website here

It’s this simple.

If you brush your teeth every morning, you are doing ritual.
If you make tea or coffee every day… ritual.
If you pause to breathe, stretch, or step into the sun before starting your day… ritual again.

These are small forms of care that create rhythm and orientation.

Another Layer of Ritual

It includes religious practices like baptism, communion, prayer, or reading sacred text.
It includes ceremonies that mark life transitions like birth, marriage, and death.

And if we zoom out a little more, it shapes our collective life through holidays and seasonal celebrations.

Let’s Talk Easter (since it’s right around the corner)

For Christians, it marks the resurrection of Christ—death transformed into new life.

But Easter didn’t come out of nowhere. So let’s zoom out a bit more… It’s closely connected to Passover, which was observed around the time of Jesus’ last meal and crucifixion. Christianity did emerge from Judaism, after all.

Passover tells a story of moving from slavery into freedom—a complete shift from an old life into a new one.
Easter tells a similar story, but through resurrection: leaving death behind and transformation into new life.

Different stories.
Similar rhythm.
Both are about transformation—leaving one way of being behind and stepping into something new.

And zooming Out One Last Time…

There is evidence that Passover may carry echoes of an even older tradition.

In the spring, pastoral communities in the ancient Near East would sacrifice a lamb as a protective ritual, marking their door posts and tests with blood asprotection. Blood on the lintel among the Israelites became Yahweh’s protection during the Exodus.

At the same time, agricultural communities marked the barley harvest with unleavened bread, celebrating the start of a new seasonal cycle.

Like so many ancient traditions, these older practices were folded into newer stories, giving deeper meaning to the rhythms and cycles people were already living.

Spring as a Threshold

Spring has long been celebrated as new life:

A movement from the dormancy of winter into life.
From darkness into light.
From death into renewal.

In ancient Persia, this was celebrated in Nowruz, where homes are cleaned and life begins again with a symbolic reset.

In India, the festival of Holi marks the arrival of spring through color, play, and the victory of light over darkness.

Persephone is closely tied to the seasonal return of life in spring—her emergence from the underworld symbolizing the Earth’s reawakening.

We see the same pattern in Chinese New Year: clearing the past, resetting the cycle, and inviting new beginnings.

Different cultures.
Different languages.
Same rhythm.

We Used to Live in Ritual

Ritual was less about doing something occasionally and more about being in relationship:

with life
with the land
with time
with each other
with the unseen

Planting and harvesting were not just agriculture.
They were participation with the living world.

Myth and the Living World

In ancient myth, figures like Inanna embodied love, sexuality, creative power, and life force.

Dumuzi, the shepherd, is connected to the land, animals, and seasonal cycles of growth.

Together, they symbolize the union that facilitates new life.

In many Indigenous worldviews, Father Sky and Mother Earth come together in a reciprocal relationship.

Rain and sun meet the soil to create the conditions for life.
Fertility is relational, arising through union.

Ritual as Survival

These stories helped us make sense of the world but it was also survival.

People needed the sky to send rain and the sun to shine in order to have a harvest.

So planting and harvesting was agriculture,
but it was also participation with the living world.

Fire was not just utility, it was relationship, presence, continuity.

Feeding the fire was life-giving.
It was warmth.
It brought people together.

These stories gave structure to experience.

For Example

In some Indigenous traditions, practices like vision quests marked important life transitions. Sometimes as a coming-of-age, and sometimes later in life as well. The journey has a structure:

leaving the familiar
encountering the unknown
returning changed

The structure normalizes the disorientation that comes with stepping into something new. Confusion, struggle, change, it’s all part of it.

They offer a space to step away, enter the unknown, and return with new insight, identity, or direction.

The community visually sees and acknowledges that a phase of life has ended, and a new one has begun.

The end of one self.
The beginning of another.

So, ya, another expression of the same pattern: death and rebirth. Am I sounding like a broken record yet?

Grief Was Held

Grief used to be communal.

Death was witnessed, not rushed.

People came together to care for the body, hold ceremonies, and give space for mourning.

Ritual gave grief a place to go.
It made room for endings to be felt fully instead of being pushed aside.

It allowed the psyche to register loss.
It helped transitions land.

So What Changed?

Over time, something shifted.

As societies industrialized, we moved:
from participation → to observation
from rhythm → to schedule
from meaning → to function

Fire became convenience.
Food became production.
Death and birth moved into medical systems.
Grief became privatized and brief.

We did not stop experiencing thresholds.
We simply stopped holding space for them.

And so here we are:

still going through endings
identity shifts
grief
transformation

…but with fewer containers to hold it.

What Happens Without Ritual

When there is no space to name a transition, to make sense of it, or to allow emotions to be felt, the psyche still tries to process the change. It just has to do it on its own.

Sometimes this shows up as overwhelm.
Sometimes as breakdown.
Sometimes as a quiet disorientation that feels like something is wrong,
when really something is shifting.

Ritual, in its deepest sense, is a container that communicates:

This is ending.
This is happening.
You are not alone.
And something new will emerge.

Without that container, we carry transitions internally—
often without support, meaning, or closure.

Are We Re-Inventing Ritual?

We need ritual.

When it disappears, we try to re-create it because it aligns our inner emotional cycles with the rhythms of nature.

It normalizes endings and beginnings.
It creates permission for change.
It gives us a place to process transition and emotion as something natural.

It makes life meaningful.

Today, we are reinventing ritual in so many ways:

retreats
breathwork
meditation
time in nature

Indigenous practices are being honored, and languages once nearly lost are being revived.

We are seeing a return to slow food.

Look at the sourdough craze, so many people are enjoying the process of it.

Making sourdough bread requires rhythm.
Participation.
Continuity.

It is us re-entering a relationship with our nourishment. It’s making our food more alive, more beautiful, more delicious, more nourishing, more meaningful.

Something in us remembers.

We are not separate from cycles.
We are made of them.

What Matters Most

Ritual does not need to be grand to be meaningful.

It can begin simply:

A morning breath before you reach for your phone.
A moment of stillness before you begin work.
A candle lit with intention.
A walk outside where you arrive fully in the present moment.

Checking in with yourself periodically:

What do I need today?

What cycle am I in?
What am I carrying?
What can be released?

If you want to go a little deeper:

Plant a seed to to symbolize what you are currently planting in your life.
Clean a space in your house and imagine sweeping away the energy of life last season for a fresh start.

These small acts restore something essential:

a relationship with your body
your cycles
your living world

Something in Us Remembers

The loss of ritual is not just the loss of tradition.
It is the loss of how we once moved through change.

But nothing is truly gone.

Because human beings are still cyclical.
Still rhythmic.
Still living inside thresholds of ending and beginning.

Make It Yours

Ritual can look anyway you want it to. Doesn’t have to be rigid or old or anything…

The most meaningful ritual is something that resonates within you.
Something that means something to you.

If it supports you through your rhythms, it belongs to you.

I’d Love to Hear From You

What small ritual are you already doing without naming it?
What threshold are you moving through right now that could use a simple container?

Or maybe this sparked something, and you’re looking for a way to move through a phase of your life.

Reply in the comments—I’d love to hear your stories.

If this resonated, share it with someone navigating change, or subscribe for more reflections on living in rhythm with life’s cycles.

If You’d Like to Know More…

about the work I do. You can visit my website here

Or you can book an Ancestral Healing Session here

Or a quick consult here

Or follow me on Instagram here

Much love on your journey,

Mel

You don’t recognize yourself.
The path forward disappears.

And something in you quietly asks:
What is happening to me?

Ancient cultures had a name for this.

The descent.

The Goddess Who Chose to Descend

Long before many of the stories we know today were written, there was the story of Inanna.

The great goddess of heaven and earth.

She was radiant, powerful, and full of life. She ruled the heavens but had also come down to the earth, where she married Dumuzi, a shepherd who became a god of fertility and the land. Together they embodied a union between earth and sky, life and spirit.

But one day, something stirred within her.

The ancient text reads:

“From the great above, she set her mind toward the great below.”

Something was calling her to the underworld.

She chooses to descend.

This is different from later myths, like Persephone, who is taken into the underworld by Hades. It is something that happens to you.

But in one of humanity’s oldest surviving myths, a goddess walks willingly into the underworld.

It suggests something profound:

Not every descent begins with crisis.

Sometimes we are thrown into descent with the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a health crisis, the sudden loss of a path we thought was certain.

But sometimes it begins as a quiet knowing.

A sense that the life you’re living no longer fits.
A whisper from your depths towards something you can’t explain, but can’t ignore.

It doesn’t feel logical.
It doesn’t feel safe.

But it feels true.

And once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it.

The Seven Surrenders

Before entering the underworld, Inanna puts her affairs in order.

She visits each of her temples, says her goodbyes, and dresses herself in her seven sacred garments: symbols of her power, identity, and authority.

Then she begins her descent.

The underworld is ruled by Inanna’s sister, Ereshkigal.

While Inanna is radiant and celebrated, Ereshkigal rules a darker domain. Hers is the realm of endings, grief, and the forgotten dead.

Few songs are sung in her honor.
Few prayers are offered in her name.

She is feared and avoided.

Already the story hints at something deeply human.

There are parts of ourselves we celebrate, the admired, the capable, the radiant.

And then there are the parts we exile.

The wounded ones.
The grieving ones.
The ones we exile to the shadows.

As she departs she instructs her loyal servant Ninshubur: “if I do not return after three days, you must go to the gods and ask for help”.

Upon arrival at the gate of the underworld she knocks.

The doorman, Neti, has been instructed to allow her in but at each of the 7 gates she must give something up.

At the first gate her crown is taken from her.

Her symbol of authority as queen of heaven.

She resists,
“why is this being taken from me? Do you know who I am?”

Neti replies:
“Be silent, Inanna. The ways of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”

As if to say: who you think you are, your power, your authority, has no meaning here.

The underworld operates on a different law than the upper world.

This is a place that strips identity, status, and power.

At the next gate her necklace is taken, then her breastplate, her gold ring, her rod.

Gate by gate she is stripped of her symbols of power, identity, and protection she carried in the world above.

All things that no longer have meaning here.

At the final gate she is stripped of her robes, the final layer of her identity.

She stands naked before the throne of the underworld.

No titles.
No power.
No identity.

Only herself.

This is a moment of self reckoning.

Who am I really?
Without my titles, my power, my authority.
Without everything I’ve been known for, valued for, mirrored through?

Suspended Between Worlds

When Inanna finally stands before the queen of the underworld, stripped and bare—

this is where it all changes.

She is judged.

The text tells us:

Ereshkigal “fastens upon her the eye of death”.

Inanna is gone.

Her body is hung on a hook, and in this state she remains for three days.

The queen of heaven is lifeless in the underworld.

If we read this symbolically, it may feel familiar.

Moments when an identity collapses.
A relationship ends.
Grief arrives without warning.
Or the path forward disappears completely.

We are suspended—on a hook, so to speak—between two worlds.

No longer who we once were,
and not yet what we will be.

It’s the chrysalis stage of the butterfly, where everything familiar dissolves into something unrecognizable before it becomes something new.

This space is disorienting.

It can feel like an ending.

But it is the place where transformation begins.

The underworld is not a place of punishment.

It is the realm of hidden wisdom.

Inanna already had the wisdom of heaven and earth.

Now it’s time to learn the ways of something new.

This new wisdom comes when illusions fall away.

Where the identities we cling to are stripped from us.
Where we confront truths we could never face in the bright light of the upper world.

We can’t think or force our way out of it—

because this part isn’t about doing.

It’s about being undone.

Sometimes we descend willingly.
Sometimes life throws us into it.

But the journey asks the same thing of us:

To shed the layers we thought we needed for something new.

The Surprising Turning Point

What happens next is maybe the most important part of the story because it completely redefines what healing actually is.

Inanna is eventually rescued—but not through force.

Enki (the father god) does not send warriors to conquer the underworld.

No one comes to defeat Ereshkigal.

Instead, Enki creates two small beings and sends them below.

When they arrive, they don’t challenge Ereshkigal.

They sit with her.

As the queen of the underworld writhes in grief and labor pains, they simply listen.

They echo her cries back to her, acknowledging her suffering.

For the first time, the goddess of grief is truly seen.

And something shifts.

Moved by this recognition, Ereshkigal offers them a gift.

They ask for the body of Inanna.

And she releases it to them.

They sprinkle on her the water and food of life given by Enki—and Inanna rises.

Interestingly enough:

As Inanna descends into death, Ereshkigal writhes as though in labor.

Death and birth appear side by side in the myth, reflecting a pattern found everywhere in nature.

A storm passes and flowers bloom.
A tree falls and nourishes new growth.

And here it is again—

the same cosmic rhythm.

Death.
Gestation.
Rebirth.

The Parts of Ourselves We Celebrate Must Eventually Meet the Parts We Exile

This myth understood something thousands of years ago that is still true today:

Healing doesn’t happen through force.

It happens through compassion.

The parts of us that feel like the underworld—grief, rage, loneliness, fear…
they don’t need to be conquered.

They need to be met.

What we resist does not disappear.
It waits.

And what we are willing to feel… transforms.

In my work with somatic emotional release, I see something similar again and again.

Healing begins when we stop fighting our pain and instead allow the parts of ourselves we once exiled to finally be seen.

When those lost parts are acknowledged—not as something broken, but as something meaningful—the heart opens.

We see things about ourselves we couldn’t see before.

There is space for something new to emerge.

Transformation does not happen by defeating the darkness.

It happens by acknowledging what lives there.

Why You Can’t Go Back

One largely overlooked detail of the story that changes so much:

When Inanna leaves the underworld, someone must take her place.

Nothing leaves the underworld unchanged.

This is the deeper truth that we sometimes resist.

We cannot go back to who we once were.

Something of the old life must be let go.

I sometimes hear clients in the descent ask:

“How do I get back to who I was? I just want things to feel the way they did before.”

But this story suggests something different.

You can’t go back.
You are not meant to go back.

You are meant to transform.

Just as a fallen tree nourishes new growth,
the old self becomes compost for what’s emerging.

The descent is not meaningless.

It is a threshold.

The Part We Exile

Ereshkigal is not the villain of the story.

She is the part of life—the part of ourselves—that we were never meant to exile.

She holds the grief we didn’t process.
The anger we suppressed.
The pain we couldn’t hold.

The descent brings us into contact with what we once could not bear to feel—

and if we truly allow it,

that is where transformation begins.

If You Are in the Underworld

If your life feels like it’s unraveling…
if you no longer recognize yourself…
if the path forward has disappeared…

you may be exactly where you’re meant to be.

This is the descent.

And while it can feel like everything is falling apart, something deeper is at work.

You are being stripped of what you no longer need.

Not to return to who you once were,
but to become who you’ve always been becoming.

The underworld is not where you disappear.

It’s where you begin.

Where you become.

Where you loosen your grip…
and discover a deeper kind of freedom.

Where you lose what you thought you were,
and come into contact with what remains.

If you find yourself in the descent,
no longer who you were, not yet who you’re becoming—

this is the space I work in.

If it speaks to you, feel free to reach out.

You can book a free consult here

Or an Ancestral Healing Session here

You can follow me on instagram here

I have always been drawn to the sacred, pulled toward it like a river toward the sea. I grew up in a home thick with religion, and I remember asking existential questions from a very early age. My parents, also deeply engaged in the spiritual world, welcomed long conversations about God, meaning, and mystery. I began reading books about mysticism early on, and they remain my favorite genre. It has always been the spoken language of my soul.

My husband and I have traveled the world, and our favorite places are always the sacred ones. I can’t walk past a cathedral without stepping inside, and if it happens to be time for Mass, even better. I love the weight of old ritual, the scent of incense hanging in the air, the low reverberation of Gregorian chants echoing through stone, the devotion etched into the faces of those who worship. The robes, the flicker of candlelight, the quiet rhythm of prayers spoken together. We wandered to sacred wells, stood on mountain shrines, stepped into ancient temples, and felt the stillness of ancient redwood groves high in the mountains.

The air in these places is charged with history and emotion. You can feel the dedication of the people who built them: countless hours of labor spent laying intricate mosaics, carving stone floors, raising stained-glass windows and frescoed ceilings. Weeks, sometimes years, of travel just to stand on holy ground. In search of hope, guidance, forgiveness, belonging. These are the places where people prayed, married, mourned, blessed their children, and buried their dead. Arriving with the deep desire to witness the divine, and, in some mysterious way, to be witnessed in return. These are places where the human and the divine meet.

Every symbol and work of art feels like a heartbeat of the human soul, people reaching toward something beyond themselves. These spaces hold the world’s greatest beauty and its deepest contradictions: power and humility, devotion and control, transcendence and corruption.

And when you stand inside them, you feel it, vibrating in the walls, in the air you breathe. I simply cannot not step into it.

And if you look a little closer, these symbols, rituals, and stories are windows into wisdom older than any institution, any cathedral, any temple.

Whispers of the Past
Delphi is a place where layers of history and spirituality quietly overlap. Sacred spaces are rarely born from nothing. Across the ancient world, temples were built on older holy ground, rituals adapted, and new gods took the stage while whispers of the old currents lingered in stones, springs, trees, and seats. Delphi is exactly this, a place where what came before still hums beneath the marble and columns, waiting to be felt.

The Oracle
Delphi, the quaint little mountaintop town in Greece, holds a particular pull for me. It is the home of the Oracle. The Pythia.

Having grown up in a patriarchal religious tradition, I am always surprised and delighted to encounter a female spiritual authority… and that is exactly what the Pythia was. A priestess of Apollo, she became the most authoritative prophetic voice in the Greek world. Leaders and citizens traveled from far and wide to consult her about everything from war and politics to marriage.

This was no small thing in a world shaped largely by patriarchy.

Ancient myth says that Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the world. The place where they met marked the omphalos (navel), or center of the earth. That place was Delphi.

To make a pilgrimage here was not simply to visit a shrine. It was to stand at the spiritual center of the world.

Inside the Temple of Apollo, seated above a fissure in the earth, the Pythia entered a trance and spoke words believed to come from the divine. Male priests interpreted her prophecies, but she received them. She was the connection to the Gods.

At first, I was simply struck by the rarity of a woman holding such spiritual authority. But I hadn’t yet discovered the deeper layer. Pythia’s story reaches far back, long before sky gods and marble temples, as though the earth itself was whispering memories long forgotten.

The Pythia… and Python
Long before it was known as Delphi and before the sky god Apollo, this land was called Pytho. Ancient myths say the sanctuary originally belonged to Gaia, Mother Earth. Guarding the sacred place was a serpent called Python, a child of Gaia and protector of the land.

Here is where things begin to feel different: In the myth, Apollo searched the Greek world for a place to establish his temple and oracle. Eventually, he arrived at Pytho, evidence suggests this was already sacred ground. There he encountered the great serpent, the guardian, Python.

Apollo slew the serpent and claimed the sanctuary as his own.

The Temple of Apollo rose. And yet, the oracle’s voice, carrying the memory of the serpent, would still speak through her, rising from Gaia herself.

Stay with me here. I know serpents tend to get a bad rap in Christian tradition, you know, the whole Garden of Eden thing.

But the serpent in Genesis is largely misunderstood. In Hebrew, the word used is nachash, simply meaning serpent. The text describes it as clever, but never calls it evil, and it certainly does not identify it with Satan. That interpretation came much later.

This aligns with how serpents were often understood in the ancient Mediterranean world. They were guardians of sacred places where divine knowledge rose from the earth. They could move both above and below the ground, carrying hidden wisdom from the unseen world into human awareness. In the Eden story, even though the serpent is later cast as evil, it is still offering hidden knowledge.

Serpents also came to symbolize transformation and healing, shedding the old self and emerging renewed… but that’s a story for another day.

Seen through this lens, Python begins to look less like a villain and more like a guardian. The protector of Pytho.

Turning the myth from a simple story of a hero defeating a monster, into an example of spiritual layering. We see this often as new orders rise and older currents quietly persist only in echoes.

Evidence of the Old
Myths and old writings remember the sanctuary as belonging to Gaia, Mother Earth. Archaeology hints at the same story. Beneath the later sanctuary lie Mycenaean remains, pottery, traces of habitation, even a small figurine of a woman seated on a tripod, strangely reminiscent of the later Pythia. An echo of an even older myth.

Whether there was once a formal cult of Gaia is debated. But myth, artifacts, and ancient writings all remember something older, something earth-centered, preceding Apollo’s arrival.

And even after Apollo claims the sanctuary, the older current is not completely erased.

The priestess who speaks for Apollo is still called the Pythia. Her name comes directly from Python, the serpent who once guarded the place. The serpent is slain, yet her name lives on. Apollo may preside over the sanctuary, but the voice of prophecy still rises through a woman.

What Remains
Chthonic (earth-centered) spirituality was often rooted in the landscape itself: caves, springs, fissures, groves, stones. Places where the boundary between the human and the living earth felt thin.

Delphi is exactly such a place. Ancient sources describe the Pythia sitting above a fissure in the ground before entering trance. This was thought to be symbolic until it was discovered that two fault lines intersect beneath the temple site. These faults release gases capable of producing trance-like states. The priestess may truly have been breathing something rising up from the earth. Whether literal or symbolic, the imagery is powerful. Apollo may preside over the temple, but prophecy still rises from below, straight from Gaia herself. Remnants of the divine feminine remain.

The Missing Half of the Story
Over time, as legend and cultural powers shifted, spirituality turned its attention upward, toward the heavens, hierarchy, authority, the Father.

I can’t help but wonder if something essential was left behind: the Mother. Not just as doctrine or metaphor, but as a living presence within the earth itself. The truth is, we still feel her.

We speak of mountains as temples, rivers as cleansing, forests as sacred, the earth as nurturing. We long to be embraced by her. There is quiet peace when we lie in an old-growth forest, swim in a winding river, stroll through a meadow, watch a butterfly flit through the sky.

Perhaps the old language of the earth never fully disappeared. It still speaks through symbols: the evergreen reminding us life continues even when all appears dead, the mountains and trees reaching heavenward while rooted deeply in the soil, butterflies emerging transformed, seeds bursting with unseen potential, salmon traveling far only to return to the place where life began.

Cycles within cycles. These are themes woven through spiritual traditions across the world. A living rhythm the ancients honored. And perhaps one we have never fully forgotten.

Coming Full Circle
Perhaps this is what I felt standing in Delphi. Not just the history of an oracle, but the echo of something older.

A time when spirituality was not separate from the earth beneath our feet. When humans understood themselves not as the rulers of the world, but as participants in it.

Because long before temples and doctrine, spirituality rose from the earth. And if we slow down enough… we can still hear her whisper. We can still feel her resonating in our bones because we are born of her.

Reclaiming Spirituality
The work I do helps people shed old layers of inherited spiritual patterns and reconnect to spirituality as a living journey of the soul, a path of connection to the world, personal growth, and inner wisdom. It’s a chance to move beyond what no longer serves, and step fully into the sacred rhythms of life.

You can book a free consult here

Or an Ancestral Healing Session here

And you can follow me in instagram here

Much love on your healing journey

-Mel

Since I spoke of the cycle of death and rebirth in my last post, I felt this would be a fitting second post. Again, if you need a shorter version, visit my instagram here.

Oh the wisdom of Mother Nature…

I love to hike, and without fail, I notice fallen trees. These trees always take me back to a vision quest I experienced years ago. That journey was profound, continues to unfold, and forever changed the way I see myself and the world.

At that time in my life, I was searching for myself. Everything familiar felt like it was shifting. I no longer knew what I believed or where I was headed.

I was fortunate to become connected with a Native-led group facilitating vision quests, an opportunity for which I remain deeply grateful.

The months leading up to the vision quest were spent in preparation. I was given instructions on making prayer ties and placing my intentions into them. I practiced listening, to my body, to silence, to the rhythms of nature.

I entered the mountains near my home for a hike that was part of the preparation. On this hike I was to observe, listen, and bring something back that felt significant. As I walked, I came across a large pine tree. At the tip of one branch was a small, but very bright burst of red. I didn’t know it then, but it was an ovulate strobilus, essentially a pinecone bud.

I didn’t know why, but it felt like the thing. It was beautiful, and so I brought it home with me. As per instructions it was to come on the quest with me.

In the days leading up, I gathered with the facilitators and other initiates in a beautiful mountain range in central Utah. We shared stories, vulnerability, and sacred ceremony together, including time in the sweat lodge. Part of the reflection came through a spirit animal card. I drew Antelope.

There is a story told in some Native traditions about Antelope. During a long, harsh winter, the people faced starvation. Seeing their suffering, Antelope offered himself so they might live. He gave his flesh for food, his hide for clothing, and his bones for tools.

But his gift came with a teaching: the people must remember that animals are not resources to be taken carelessly. They are relatives. Every life taken must be met with gratitude, reverence, and ceremony. If this sacred reciprocity is forgotten, the animals will withdraw, and the people will suffer again.

In this way, Antelope presents himself to the hunters not as prey, but as a partner in survival. His sacrifice teaches that life continues not through domination, but through relationship. Survival depends on respect, gratitude, and balance with the natural world.

By the time I was led up the mountain to begin the quest, I felt a mix of excitement, trepidation, and deep uncertainty.

My greatest fear wasn’t that I wouldn’t be able to finish the quest, it was the thought of coming away with nothing. If no guidance or meaningful insight emerged, would it confirm a deep-seated fear I carried: that I wasn’t significant, important, or worthy of guidance?

Despite my deepest fears, I forged on. I was instructed to pay close attention to nature. What animals were present, what messages was the world around me was offering. Nature speaks, and part of the practice was to listen, to tune inward and hear your own voice. The purpose of the quest was to seek guidance, meaning, and connection through solitude, prayer, and communion with the natural world. For me, it was deeply personal. I needed to find a way to move forward, in a new way, because my old self no longer fit.

When it was time, each initiate was led to our own secluded spot, far enough apart to be fully alone. I brought only a tarp, a sleeping bag, my prayer ties and a journal. There was no food or water, no distractions, just me and the mountain, with nothing to do but watch, listen, and notice what the natural world might reveal.

The first thing I began to notice was that dead bugs were falling onto my tarp. There were ants carrying a dead ant and other ants carrying a dead spider away.

The day carried on… I spent a beautiful night on the ground. I was surprised by how comfortable and embracing mother earth felt.

As I moved into the next day, I recalled an experience I’d had with my husband and kids while camping a couple of weeks earlier. We had been in the beautiful Sawtooth Mountains when a conversation unfolded between me and the kids. They were complaining about mosquito bites, and I was frustrated by the toxicity of mosquito repellent. Somewhat jokingly, I said to one daughter, “The mosquitoes need to eat too.” Another child replied, “I wish they would all just die.”

I responded, “If they all died, what would the bats eat? And if the bats didn’t eat, they couldn’t help pollinate parts of our food supply that supports us.”

That moment brought me back to the story of the antelope I had learned just before coming to my little spot on the mountain. Maybe it’s okay not to be angry at mosquitoes. Maybe it’s okay that we support them in some way, and they support us in return. Maybe we are all part of this intricate circle of life. Maybe we are not so separate, but instead part of one large whole.

Not that we lay our body out to be bled dry but maybe there is something to all the experiences of being human, of being a part of nature, not apart from nature.

Journal entry: I found more dead bugs on my tarp and sleeping bag. I recalled a line from my antelope card: Antelope understands death so it can appreciate life. Take advantage of life.

As I lay there musing, a butterfly suddenly landed directly on my face. I held still. It stayed for a few moments, then jumped onto my hand.I felt I was receiving messages, though I hadn’t yet put all the pieces together.

While sitting in stillness, meditating on some recent happenings in my life and how a part of me felt like it had recently died, I noticed a nearby tree that was half alive and half dead. The trunk had split in two and one side was green and thriving; the other brittle and lifeless. It struck me how similar this felt to my own experience. I found myself wondering how I might bring these “dead” parts of me back to life.

Then I noticed another tree nearby, one that had completely fallen and been down for some time. At first it looked lifeless, but as I looked closer, I saw moss spreading across its bark. Tiny plants were sprouting from the softened wood. Life was growing directly out of what had once seemed lifeless, useless.

The tree wasn’t dead at all. It was actually teeming with life. Just a different kind of life. It was transforming into something totally new.

At that moment, something inside me shifted. I realized that healing isn’t about resurrecting what was lost. It’s about allowing transformation to happen. The old parts of us don’t need to be forced back into existence; they become the soil from which something new grows.

Antelope was not gone, he had transformed.

This same truth echoes across cultures and time. In the myth of Inanna, she descends to the underworld, stripped of the symbols that defined her, her power, beauty, and status, and is killed, only to be returned transformed. In the story of Odin, he hangs from the world tree, sacrificing himself to himself in order to gain deeper wisdom. Transformation requires surrender.

Our experiences, our beliefs, even our wounds become compost for the next version of ourselves.

I have to wonder if the butterfly sensed the transformation unfolding within me when it chose that moment to land on my face. If any creature speaks the language of becoming, it is the butterfly… born in one form, surrendered into another.

Nature seemed to know what I needed, unfolding sacred, ancient wisdom in ways only the soul can recognize.

Some of my last journaling on the mountain captured it beautifully:

“A big, tall dead tree trunk caught my attention the other day because I thought it was beautiful and wanted to touch it. When I did, I looked up and realized it had no branches or leaves, just a bare trunk. Looks can be deceiving. It gave its life and is still giving back. It served its purpose and left its mark. There are many fallen trunks around here that will soon serve as nourishment for the forest.

Maybe life is about giving. Out here, everything seems to be giving and taking and giving and taking, all in support of one another and of life itself.”

I didn’t think much about the pinecone bud at the time. In truth, I didn’t even know that’s what it was until years later, when I began noticing them scattered across the ground in one of the places I go to meditate.

But as I write this now, I’m struck by the quiet precision of the symbolism. Pinecones have long been associated with awakening, enlightenment, and the eternal rhythm of life, death, and renewal. It feels almost as if something ancient was speaking to me then… in a language I wouldn’t understand until much later.

What could have been a better representation of what was to come in that vision quest just around the corner?

What began on that mountain as a story about loss became a story about rebirth.
Because wherever there is an ending, there is also a beginning.

This understanding has shaped how I now sit with others in my work.

If you find yourself in a season of transformation, you don’t have to navigate it alone.
Supporting people through these inner shifts is the heart of my work, and I’m always honored to walk alongside others in that process.

Learn more about my work

Book an Ancestral Healing Session

Much love on your own sacred journey

-Mel

You may have received a few emails from me before, they’re usually short and sweet. This is a bit different. This is a space I’ve created more for reflection, story, and inner listening. If you’re new here, welcome. If you’ve been here a while, I’m glad you’re still here.

I thought I was having a moment of clarity but really, it was threshold moment

Do you ever question what “it’s” all about?

I remember a very clear moment when I was around nineteen. I had lived my life the best way I knew how. I followed the rules. I worked hard to repair my mistakes. I tried devotedly to stay in alignment with what, at the time, I understood as alignment with God.

I felt grounded. Oriented. Certain.

And I remember thinking, very clearly:
I think I get it. I think I understand what life is about.

And then… life kept living.

Looking back now, it’s almost laughable how much I didn’t know. That moment at eighteen wasn’t wrong. It was sincere. Real. But it wasn’t the destination I thought it was, it was a threshold, the beginning.

The unfolding that followed, the unraveling, the questioning, the rebuilding, became my faith journey. Not away from spirituality, but into a whole new type of spirituality, one that came from within rather than outside of me.

Spiritual death & learning to hear my inner voice

Back then, I believed spirituality meant doctrine, rules, obedience.

I trusted that an institution, an authority held the right answers, and my role was to align. And align I did. Doctrine became my voice. Authority replaced intuition. My church became, in a sense, my identity.

In no way am I trying to be critical of the organization I grew up in. In so many ways it served me and still serves many. I take full accountability for the way I interpreted and internalized the ideas within it. The truth is, many people in the organization have been able to maintain a healthy spirituality and a strong connection to their own inner voice. I, however, did not.

For a time, this structure worked. It gave me a foundation, certainty, belonging, and moral grounding.

But I wasn’t prepared for what to do when questions came. And when they did, they rocked my world. It felt unhinged for a time. Nothing was black and white anymore. I felt angry at authority, betrayed by the structures that once held me. The scariest part was, I didn’t know who I was outside the system.

Going through the motions stopped working. Aligning no longer felt aligned. So I stepped away. Away from dogma, doctrine, attendance, all of it.

I did the one thing I had never fully trusted myself to do before:
Instead of listening to an outer authority, I listened inward.
I read. I explored. I questioned everything. I sat with perspectives I had once feared. I did deep inner child work. I examined ancestral patterns and inherited beliefs I had never consciously chosen. I learned to release what no longer belonged to me so I could hear myself again and trust myself again.

It was terrifying. It felt like a death, because it was.
The death of an old self.
An old worldview.
An old way of belonging.

And yet, beneath the chaos, something else was happening.
This unraveling became a journey back to myself.
A spiritual path, not of rules or obedience, but of remembering.
Remembering my voice. My inner compass. My boundaries. My wonder.

Remembering a new kind of divinity. The divinity inside of myself, the divinity of nature, the universe, the world around me. something bigger than me but in a much less rigid way.

Spirituality & Wellbeing

It wasn’t a clear path. There were lots of doubts, fear, and messiness along the way.

Even though I had always felt drawn to spirituality, now spiritual language felt like slippery ground. I feared betrayal and losing myself again. So I hoovered at the edges, leaning in and retreating. Curious and resistant. Drawn toward something deeper, yet unwilling to hand myself over to anything I hadn’t chosen with my whole body. It took time to be ok with this new uncertainty that seemed inevitable.

Over time, I grew more comfortable. I discovered new ways of seeing spirituality, new ways of thinking, and I began to trust my inner voice again.

I became steadier. More grounded. More compassionate with myself. More open to life.

What I came to understand is that spirituality isn’t separate from emotional wellbeing. It’s part of it. I just had been missing some key components.

I also learned that what I had called spirituality: trusting authority over myself, obedience, doctrine, wasn’t spirituality at all. It was a structure, a scaffolding meant to guide one toward spirituality. A tool, not the living practice itself.

Spirituality, in all its many forms, can become the container that allows healing to happen. A space where our inner voice can be heard. Where our emotional life has room to breathe.

Spirituality can and does happen in and out of religious institutions. It doesn’t have to follow rules or dogma. It only has to reconnect you to yourself and to the larger living world you’re a part of.

This coming together, the integration of the mind, body, spirit is spirituality. It is healing. It is wholeness. For me, it felt like a rebirth. Which is the main theme that seems to lie at the heart of all spiritual traditions.

Wholeness

I once believed the spiritual path was about obeying God in order to return to Him.
Now I see it as the journey back to our own divinity—our own truth that has been forgotten.

Now, my spirituality looks more like this:
Seeing divinity within myself.
Recognizing divinity in humanity, nature, creation and even uncertainty.
Allowing my practice to evolve. No answers are final. No path is fixed.
Spirituality is personal.
It can be messy. Magical. Quiet. Loud.
It can change. It can grow. It can meet you exactly where you are.

I still believe something larger than me guides my path. I don’t need to name it
or define it. I get to move with it, allowing it to change as I change. That living, unfolding path is where transformation happens.

In sharing my story, I’m not asking anyone to follow my path. No one will (or needs to) arrive where I have. I don’t have all the answers. I’m simply here to hold space for the unfolding, the questioning, and the constant unraveling of spirituality that has been a part of the human journey from the beginning.

If you’re reading this and find yourself in this in-between space, no longer sure of what it’s all about, or what comes next, it’s ok.
You’re standing at a very old threshold and it’s part of the journey.

It’s the place where certainty gives way to curiosity, where inherited beliefs are questioned, and where a deeper, more resonant truth begins to emerge.

This is the terrain I have found myself walking with others.
My work is not about giving answers or telling anyone what to believe. It’s about creating a safe, grounded container where your inner voice can be heard again, where spirituality becomes embodied, and supportive of your emotional wellbeing.

Wherever you are on the path, you’re allowed to question.

You’re allowed to change.
You’re allowed to belong to yourself.

That IS the journey.

If this resonates, I invite you to continue exploring these reflections here with me. There's so much more to come.

Much love on your spiritual journey,

-Mel

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