This is a picture of me from years ago when I had just arrived to one of my first long retreats as a participant. I had been on retreat before, but never for this long and this far away.
Not sure if it comes across in this pic, especially with the lovely landscape behind me, but I. Was. TERRIFIED!
Not only had I never left home alone on a trip before (yes that’s correct), but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was amongst strangers, was still battling physical illness, was grieving the loss of several close family members including my grandmother and uncle, I was busy with work and raising a baby, and I just felt so unprepared and unsteady. I didn’t know if I could handle the magnitude of what this adventure promised.
But when the event announcement fell into my lap, literally in fact, I felt a spark in my heart. And when I allowed myself to feel it, it ignited something in me. All it takes is one spark to ignite a flame, if you let it.
And by that point I had learned that when you feel most unready is the exact moment when you should take action. The only way to bust through fear is to take action. If you wait until you’re ready, it will NEVER happen. Your protective brain has been programmed to concoct excuses to keep you comfortable over courageous.
But I knew I had two choices: continue to allow fear to strangle me, or free myself so I could explode with the passion, purpose, and power that I sensed was percolating inside of me.
It was simple—evolve or repeat?
And the choice was clear.
We are all alchemists—as energy beings we have the beautiful and magical ability to shift our energetic state at any time. We control our frequency. We determine the creation of our lives. This is science, friends, not woo-woo hocus pocus.
The Physics of being human is real! (Search it up—as my kids say!)
Life isn’t what happens TO us, life is just what happens. Period. It’s the circumstantial
Noise that we confuse with substance.
How we navigate the happenstances and extrapolate the teachings-That’s living.
That retreat actually changed the course of my entire life in ways that I never ever expected. And it all started with simply feeling the spark and making a choice to let it ignite me.
In just 4 days from today, I have the absolute honor of guiding 17 women who made the choice to let the spark ignite them, on a ReWilding quest. They made the courageous choice to alchemize inertia into invigoration, sleepwalking into resurgence, and fear to freedom.
They’re all scared. Each one of them. Just as I was those years ago. And that’s ok. Yet they will embark on this adventure with open minds, ready hearts, and flaming souls.
And It all started with a spark.
Please, friends, Don’t get distracted by the noise of happenstances. I know there are always so many.
And I’m not suggesting that you ignore or bypass anything. Acknowledge it all! Feel It all!
But then Pause, go inward, look, listen, and when you sense the spark, let it ignite you!
And don’t let anything or anyone put out your flames. Let them burn, watch the ashes of all the old alchemize into the new.
Allow destruction to precede creation.
Surrender.
Welcome what has been waiting to make it’s way into your consciousness.
We are alchemists, making magic one spark, one choice, at a time. 
