Starting Anew

I am going to start my first post after the summer a little differently.  I would like to share a bit more about me and what I’ve been going through over the past four months since my last post!

I must start with talking a little about my incredible Sedona spiritual retreat.  I went by myself, leaving my two-year-old son for the first time.  He was well taken care of by his father and it was a great opportunity for just the two of them to bond, and they truly had a great time together.  Did I worry about my son or miss him? No, not at all.  This was the first real break and real gift to myself that I have ever had!

I drove from Flagstaff to Sedona and it was a gorgeous drive along a snaky road with so many gorgeous vistas it made it hard to focus.  The red rocks, pine trees, campsites, and cliff edge hugging my two-lane highway was just amazing.  Once I arrived in Sedona, I was truly taken back by the rock formations and just how enormous they were.  I loved that it was such a small town, which made it very easy to find my Motel (The Green Tree Inn).  Slowly everyone arrived and we were all to meet in the motel lobby before driving away in a caravan to a horse ranch.  We were told that our leader would be in trance and not to disturb her upon arrival, and we were told not talk to a certain man who would be joining our group, and to please give him space.   All twenty of us arrived and found a spot on the floor in a circle and patiently waited for Carissa to be ready to speak with us.  She was navigating all the communication everyone’s deceased loved ones were making with her.  She had to figure out who was going to get what message.  In fact she had been working on all of us in her sleep, for many nights before the retreat.  She did most of her work during sleep, so she has been very busy before we all arrived.  As we were making eye contact with each other around the room, I made eye contact with the man we weren’t supposed to talk to and we stared at each other for a couple of minutes until I realized he was a MAJOR Hollywood celebrity (I was lucky enough to be be able to hold his hand and sit next to him the following day)!!  I will not share his name (out of respect), but he’s a big one! I immediately got frazzled and looked away, and was in total shock he was part of our group. My ego was totally triggered by his presence and I felt like a little schoolgirl wondering if he noticed me.  Anyway, Carissa greeted each of us with a hug and a deep moment of recognition and love.  She then went on to give people (not everyone) an important message from their loved ones.

This was a five-day retreat so I am not going to go into a lot more detail, but what was amazing among all of it was what I learned about sacred ceremonies.  The entire trip was based on ancient Native American ceremonies.  We went into Shaman’s Cave and smoked a peace pipe; we paid honor and respect to all the Native Elders from thousands of years go who used to meet in that very cave for sacred tribal ceremonies.  The energy was incredible, and I immediately felt their presence and actually started crying for a woman who had lost the love her life just a few months before because he was there sitting next to us.  I didn’t see him, but did I ever feel him.

We made a sacrifice/offering to a sacred fire where we asked Mother Earth to heal the issue, let go of something forever, or just give her something.

We walked around the Medicine Wheel and let our intuition guide us as to where we needed to stop and stand (North, South, East or West).  Each location represented something different.

We were given a light name, which is our true soul name.  It was composed of divine language and Native American language.  At this point my father came through Carissa to tell me that He wanted to name me!  He wouldn’t let her, and the name he gave me was: Laughing Hawk Spirit of Life, Sacred Mother of Hawks Who Set Her Father Free.  It was an incredibly powerful moment and I will cherish that name forever.

We did a Shamanic Journey with just the sound of native drum and Carissa’s singing.  We all rested next to a beautiful stream with the trees shading us overhead and let ourselves be taken away into another dimension of space and time.  I had such a powerful vision that I was the first to share and to my total surprise, four other people had the SAME vision.  The one thing that stood out the most was my vision of a rattlesnake that showed his fangs to me!  It was sort of scary, but incredibly fascinating, no one else saw that part.

There was a sweat lodge at the very end, which I didn’t feel comfortable partaking in, but held love and space for those who did.

I met some amazing people and some came as far away as Australia just to be part of this.  All the people were such beautiful souls and it was uncanny how we could all go weirdly deep pretty much immediately.  We had one thing in common and that was we all were deeply, deeply empathic.  It was rather draining by the end of each day since we all felt each other so much.

I left with so much calm and love in my heart, and so much interest in watching the movie of the rest of the world and people around me.  It was like I was floating during my travel back to Minnesota.  I was more patient and more observant of things I had never really noticed before and it was wonderful to have a slightly different lens for a brief moment in time.

When I arrived my son ran to me in the airport (very much like a movie) and I began quickly feeling what the 3rd dimensional world felt like again.  The next day my husband left for two weeks so I was full-time mommy with little breaks.  This pretty much snapped me out of my joy-high and I could feel the light seeping out of my body so quickly.  I was headed towards a very hard crash.  After two weeks it was back to normal with the hubby and all of our incredibly busy plans were to unfold.  We spent a month with his parents, a week at their cabin with five children and lots of chaos, we moved out and moved in to an airbnb for just about a week, then packed up again for a week in Seattle, then packed again into a new airbnb… honestly it just seemed to never end.  In this time I became very, very exhausted, depressed and totally emotionally drained and overwhelmed.  I developed insomnia; I gained about 10 pounds due to my poor diet and rising cortisol levels.  I was experiencing massive sleep deprivation and feeling totally drained.  By the end of August I was not able to tolerate any more social events or get-togethers, but I couldn’t miss that final family goodbye dinner the night before we needed to fly back to Saudi Arabia!!!  It was just too much.  The summer wasn’t a vacation it was a mission to get so many things done.  Oh yeah, and my 104-year-old grandmother died.  I wrote and gave the eulogy; I sort of couldn’t believe what my summer turned into and how terrible I was feeling on the inside.

After all this I had enough of this traveling life.  No more transitions.  No more.  I was officially done with living like this.  I told my husband that this expat life must come to an end and I really must have normalcy and no more jam-packed summers of insanity.

So, now it is coming to an end and after slipping into a terrible depression with a lot of anxiety and feelings of regret with choosing such a difficult life for the past nine years, it is all coming to an end.

I can honestly say, I’ve hit my own personal “rock bottom.” The thought of flying back to 115-degree weather with so much humidity was heavy.  Not to mention just the density of the Arab world.  It’s not terrible; it’s just hard, and especially hard for a sensitive person like me.  I have felt very out of control of my life because I am essentially a person following someone around the world with no real career possibilities in sight; it’s hard.  And of course, being a mother is a very challenging role.  Unlike many women, my child does not complete me, my child is not the reason for my existence, my child is a journey filled with great lessons for me, but he is not my soul happiness.  I am eternally grateful for him, and he is one the biggest miracles in my life.  I wasn’t supposed to be able to have a child, period.  Even with this kind of gratitude, he still doesn’t complete me.  He is part of me and I can only hope I raise him to be a good person with good values, but one day he will be on his own and he will hopefully make the world a better place.  Right now and for the past nine years, I feel like I haven’t done my part to make the world a better place, and that time is over.

My next post will be the latest message from my highest self.  This is a woman who is from many, many lifetimes into the future.  Her wisdom is soothing and healing and it literally can’t come from anywhere else.  In order for my dearest readers to not get blog fatigue (from this long post) I will leave that post for another day.  The message is good and sort of the kick in the pants that I need and I feel you might need too.

Thank you for reading this and thank you so much for taking the time to read about my recent journey and struggles.

Life can be crazy hard!

I am sending you love, peace and gratitude!