Growing up, I was celebrated for my intellect. When I played school with the neighborhood kids and my older siblings, I felt most welcome and worthy when I could actually do the work they presented from their textbooks five or more grades ahead of where I was age-wise. When I skipped a grade in elementary school, my new teacher spoke to the whole class about how I had been so blessed by God (a whole ‘nother conversation for another day). When the high honor roll was printed in the local newspaper each quarter, my grandma would proudly clip it out and give it to my parents.

I wasn’t the athletic girl, nor the pretty girl. I was the smart girl from the smart family.

I mean, I still made plenty of stupid choices – let’s be real. But this brain is what got me recognition, acceptance, and what felt like love.

In the past year or two, I have had the privilege of exploring some long-held beliefs and patterns in a new light, with new guidance. When going into one particular experience, I had set an intention of exploring what was blocking me from moving forward, from jumping into surrender and trust. This was all around feeling “stuck” in what I’d been doing and choosing in life, a theme during that period. Even when I had felt as though I was moving forward with things in certain ways, there seemed to be something holding me back.

The answer I received knocked me on my ass.

There was nothing external blocking my path. I’d been getting in my own way, waiting for this big perfect thing while my heart just sat there open and ready. And now this intellectualism for which I’d been heralded, that had been such a big part of my identity and had gifted me so many things in my life, was the very thing that was stopping me from moving forward. They say that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master, and my mind had been the authoritarian ruler of my existence. 

Now I needed to just be in this heart (the truth, the guide), let the mind (the structure that will support what the heart chooses) put steps in place, and let the uterus (the power, the warrior, the bellows) be the driving, creating source energy.

It had also become time to put into action this new message, to truly integrate it into all the parts of my life, my being. Now, most days, I ask, “What does the heart want today?” And it has yet to lead me astray when I really listen. When I heard that this part of me really wanted to own land with a vision for future plans, my intellect and creative power then task analyzed and implemented steps until I owned 40 beautiful acres of land. When I listened closely to the message that I wanted to be able to spend more time doing things other than working in a depleting job to make money, I had to move forward with working part time at my paid work. And in the time and space that less work created, I heard the message that I needed to be able to support others as they move through their own healing journeys. Multiple certificates, trainings, conversations, and aligned stars later, and I now have a business that I believe will do just that. 

To be clear, that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been difficulties. My heart wants beautiful things, and there can also be great pain on the opposite side of great beauty, great love. But there have also been steps that I never thought possible: created in imaginal spaces by the heart, and brought to existence by the structures contributed by my mind and the feminine creative energy.

Today, as I do most days, I asked my heart what it wanted, and it told me “to speak.” So here I sit, speaking my story into existence.