My Initiation

Now when I look back at it, I see it clearly. I started to take a keen interest in initiations after a rocky transition in my life from July to September, getting a scholarship to complete additional training in Seidr. A branch of Finnish shamanism led me through  a spiral of events that were far from easy, but well worth it. Now I can see how meeting the call of the goddess always pays off, even when you’re unsure where it’s going to take you.

I was living in Australia, but I was in the UK when I got the scholarship and needed to get back there in 5 weeks. I had no money, a new job to get back to and animals to take care of. It was off the back of ending a difficult yet beautiful relationship that left me with a slipped disc and struggling to walk. It was an upgrade, but I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right.

Cut forward to a year later and I explained to a friend that my resonance and relationships with fire had transformed. It was time for it to step back (or maybe sideways) for something else to be birthed. I wasn’t sure what, but I knew it was coming. I had this happen in the past when guides that had been working with me for years would eventually step back, for a new guide to come through. Sometimes it would hurt, but for the most part it made sense as a naturally occurring ending.

The last few weeks had been a total whirlwind in the most beautiful sense, and had caused me to pivot drastically, seizing the opportunity to work full time for myself, doing the work I wanted to do. Previous to this decision, we had the ecological burn of Cheltenham Park, one of the most important times of the year in my land conservation job -  and I was placed on the West wing. No surprises there, #goddess.

I mean, I was literally watching the fire before my eyes when I realised this was an ending in it’s most physical sense.

Recovering from a back injury, that took almost two months, I now had an ingrown toenail that I needed to get cut out with a local anaesthetic. It was time to move.

I quit, not knowing exactly what was next, knowing that my trip to complete this leg of my shamanic studies was only one month away, that I was still house hunting and living pay check to pay check.

Within days of quitting my job and crafting off my own rite of passage between the two eclipses – my books filled and our dream abode fell into our laps. With a sun soaked healing space at the back! It was confirmation, the move was already here.  

All the while finishing off a mini apprenticeship with Julian Palmer ( psychonaught and film maker) as he popped the lid on psychedelics, tauping, love and sex. We moved from Airbnb to Airbnb seeing years’ work of therapy being done in 12 hours.

All the while, we transformed ourselves, finally pulling the pin on everything we said we would do, freeing ourselves and stepping into service.  Ironically, shining our light through the very thing that had once ostracised us – our weirdness.

My altar transformed week to week, I shed and shed and shed through the work I did with myself and others, I found my voice, my weirdness, my heart and broke through shells of pain and disconnect.

We stood there as Julain dropped us off at the airport, passing the baton. ‘You’ve been through an initiation’. Stating the words, I knew in my bones and blood.

Only a fortnight earlier I swam in the ocean, in my own ritual. Unwrapping myself from black ribbons - as I shed the layers that had finally dropped away.

In that moment the water came up to meet me, speaking the words – ‘I am here, let me guide you’.

I was carried on my shamanic journey via the breath - Air. As a meditation junkie, my breath was my pathway into my practice and my power. I spent years spiritual bypassing, living in the throws on light and love – I was glad my pathway started here, in bliss. Priming me for the journey to come. Then the darkness, the pain, the ancestral wounds I would have to burn through. Finding energy medicine, the modality to heal myself through, I touched the depth of my darkness, died and was reborn. I began my dance with the goddesses. Now it is my time with the water. To calibrate. To feel the depth of my emotions, and my alignment through them.  I can’t wait for this chapter, and to literally be a sponge, in the best way.

I am starting to see that none of this was my plan – and it has turned out much more beautiful than I could have imagined. Certainly, a zillion times more weird. So, I’m holding space for the creatrix, to learn, grow, to journey to see what the goddess wants me to birth in my sovereignty and weirdness. How much space can I give myself? How radical can I dare to be?