My body quickly forgets that life is on my side.

Even after years of healing, my animal suit tries to protect me from disappointment by attempting to control outcomes.

The protective instinct: Childhood and beyond

It wasn’t safe to be open and soft as a child. And if I put my guard down, my environment quickly reminded me to put it back up. That reminder often came as a surprise, out of left field, catching me vulnerable, reinforcing the need for more protection, more layers.

Sometimes, everything outside of me proves true my conditioned belief that life is not on my side—I am the only one on my side.

The cost of closed hearts: physical and emotional impact

When my heart is closed, and my fire is kept neatly at bay below my diaphragm, with shallow breaths and busyness, of course, the reality I project is one of disappointment, compromise, and smallness.

And if I stay like this for a while, my inner world starts to crumble too.

It’s harder to meditate, harder to...

We don’t always realize it, but even with the best of intentions, we model love to children through the quality of our presence.

Love is connection and attention and the way we connect with them shapes their understanding and definition of love and emotional intimacy. If our desire to connect with them comes from a lack of love inside of us, love will register as co-dependent. If our attention on them comes from our own need for care, love will register as insecure and will begin a never-ending search for it. If we connect emotionally with them only when there is a problem, love will register as a solution, a transaction, not whole in itself. If our own needs overwhelm their needs, love will register as unsafe and a burden. This conditioning determines how we seek love, ask for it or not, recognize it or not, accept or refuse it, and how it feels to be around it. Eventually, this fragmented version of love won’t be enough because it is not true love. True love requires...

On the path, there comes a time when you can no longer keep for yourself the knowledge you have acquired along the way and the gifts you were born with. Your healing journey has freed you from the weight of insecurity and doubt, and you sense a deep desire to connect with others and share your own unique medicine with the world. You are an artist in the medium of life, a leader, and you want to inspire, teach, entertain, coach, guide others.

Arriving here is such an accomplishment. We know the bravery it takes to choose the awakened path, to face adversity differently than it was modelled to us, to go against how things should be done, to create from the unknown, to commit to it, and to stay loyal to our light, no matter what. We know the immense freedom and joy we find within, the reward for our patience and our trust.

To arrive at this place is also the beginning of a whole new chapter, a whole new way of being in the world. When we choose to step out publicly with what we know,...