PHOTO: STOCKSY ROYALTY FREE LICENSE
Dear Sister,
I'm writing you a a letter, a letter filled with my own story, so that you can hopefully see the reflection of your own story in mine.
It started about 4 years ago in San Francisco. As an entrepreneur, I had been struggling to create a business as a Health Coach, helping women get healthy and heal from their "issues". The desire to be successful and build my business was so strong that I was spinning into burnout, and in the midst of all the smoke, all of my fears of being unworthy or incapable started to bubble to the surface. Along with the insecurities (which were ironically what I was helping other women heal from) came some very specific physical symptoms.
I became incredibly sensitive to sound (not ideal when you live on one of the busiest corners in San Francisco), my body literally felt like it was convulsing on the inside when sirens would go by. I was sleeping with a sound machine, ear plugs and an eye mask, and still waking up exhausted. And unbeknownst to me, I started having a spiritual awakening in the midst of adrenal fatigue ravaging my body ... a really inconvenient combination. If you've ever experienced either, you know to the depths how utterly shattering these experiences can be on their own, let alone with them both competing for your attention.
I started seeing colors, not auras, but energies. I started feeling like I couldn't make it in the city, and I sought nature as much as possible. I was driving across both bridges daily to escape the intensity of the city. I would sit in meditation for hours that felt like minutes and I would see and hear beautiful things in these trances, but I had no idea what was actually happening to me. I had incredible energy surges in my body that made me feel like all of my inner circuits were being blown. I seriously wondered if I was going crazy. I oscillated between feeling like I had some magic within me dying to be realized and feeling like I was a crazy woman on the road to nowhere.
And while I was having these experiences, I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't create and at the end of the day, I couldn't validate myself for how hard I was working because I had nothing tangible to show for it. Eventually, the adrenal fatigue won out, and I had to move home to Colorado, even though I didn't want to. I didn't want to because moving home meant I had to admit that I was giving up on part of my dream. I had failed. I hadn't built my business. All of my hard work hadn't worked and I had to put everything I wanted on hold and move back to a city that was not where I wanted to be.
I spent the first 6 months literally just sleeping and watching the Vampire Diaries. I tried to learn how to snowboard that season (it seemed like a reasonable thing to do) and fractured my tailbone the 3rd time I was on the mountain. And at the time, I remember thinking, the universe LITERALLY just slapped me on the ass and is telling me to SIT - to rest, heal and wait.
At that point, I had no choice but to sit and wait. There was no escape. Socializing was limited, my energy was limited and it was a really fucking cold winter, so nature, my usual escape, was limited. So I stayed inside and I started to meditate. I cautiously started to explore elements of my awakening, and then suddenly a few months into it, I felt like it really was all too much and like I REALLY WAS going crazy, so I shut it off.
PHOTO: STOCKSY ROYALTY FREE LICENSE
What I know now that I didn't know then, is that I didn't actually shut it off. It wasn't something that could be shut off .. so the awakening continued, I just wasn't "consciously" aware of it.
I was so focused on distracting myself and healing what I thought needed healing, that it was easy to stay unconscious. Healing physically and psychologically occupied most of my time - my adrenals, my tailbone, my weight, my negative self-limiting beliefs, my depression, therapy - and all these "things" I was busy with made it easy to ignore my spirit. But my spirit was sneaky ... and she managed to slide in the back door of each endeavor I sought - just under my radar - but enough to make me notice that I was being guided (even when the shit kept hitting the fan) ... which made sense to me, because I still believed in "GOD" and angelic guidance (more on that topic in a later post) even though I had disconnected myself from almost entirely from my spirit.
So I was living in what I call a kind of "half world" ... I kind of knew about all of this "stuff" happening, like kundalini and consciousness and spirit ... but I was avoiding the truth and reality of it. And I lived this way for the first year being back in Colorado, until It took a literal mirror for me to see the real reflection of what was going on inside for me, and that mirror was my hairstylist (turned best friend) Katie. I sat in her chair and saw my face in the reflection, and I looked up and saw her face in the reflection ... and something cracked open a little bit.
She saw my spirit. She saw what was inside of me that needed to be released. She saw the parts of myself that I had tied up and and tried to forget about. It took me seeing her taking responsibility for her own growth for me to see that I was ready to take responsibility for my own.
Responsibility for me meant reconnecting to myself and my own unique expression in the world ... the kind of expression that only spirit can move through.
Because, you see, we all work really hard to create a persona of who we think we are and then in turn continue to live up to the image of what others think we are. And over time, I realized that I felt stifled, like I was trying to generate the same kind of success in the way that everyone else was, and that it felt really unauthentic to try to be myself and build a business that was meant to be in service of women without my true heart, without my true voice, without my true gifts, without my true power as a woman.
“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
So I stepped onto the spiritual path and stopped trying to define myself. Then about 2 years ago, when I fully began to engage with myself, I began to realize that so many parts of who I was as a woman had actually been defined by society, not by myself or any sort of personal experience. I realized I didn't even know who I really was! So instead of "trying" to be myself I sought to just BE myself ... and then over time, I became myself by just letting myself be open to who I was in each moment ... and once that happened there was no turning back.
As the truth of who I am began to be roll in, the energy increased and my reality became irrevocably changed. My "clairs" started opening, I developed clairaudience and clairsentience, 2 of the 3 main categories of psychic intuition. And even though my relationship with reality was exploding, I was ready for it this time. I was ready for the truth. I was ready to fully embrace who I was. I was ready to let myself be guided by spirit, not just by "the" spirit but by MY spirit. And MY spirit was calling out for the healing power of the FEMININE.
Because once spirit started moving through me, I realized that I didn't have a healthy relationship with my femininity, with my sensuality, with my power as a woman or with the feminine in general. I saw how as women we are stigmatized, judged and kept small in order to keep us quiet. I also saw how sadly we as women judge and criticize and condemn one another. And so I started exploring ... myself, my femininity and my spirituality and my consciousness ... and this website is the culmination of where I am at today and what I want to share with you, fellow sister, in how we reclaim our ability to awaken and arise.
In love,
Ashly
