The stories that awaken us, initiate us, and call us back home.
I was scrolling aimlessly through my FB feed many, many years ago, when I noticed an ex-coworker posting about their life. It wasn't so much what they were posting, it was their energy that I felt.
"Why do they get to be happy?" I remember thinking. They had broken out of the corporate grind, living a liberated and joyous life while I suffered -- why do they get to have that and not me?
I think the human experience is filled with these moments. We see someone living out the life we dream of or desire, and then automatically position ourselves outside of it, that it's not something we are worthy of.
What I know to be true, because soon after that moment my life took a drastic turn, is that your soul (and the Universe) will create a series of events/experiences that will put you on the path meant for you.
Now fast forward to early 2020, I had established a spiritual side hustle business and thought I had done what I couldn’t those many years ago. Except I wasn’t feeling authentic and my entire life felt like an illusion. I was different from my family, my relationship, my parenting, my heart just drummed to a different beat — what was real anymore? I remember saying.
Around February ish, of that year I began to collapse. I wasn’t sleeping or eating well, and my mental health was on a rapid decline. I remember asking my guides to send me someone who could guide me through this because I felt I was losing everything. The Universe answered and I began a powerful Shamanic initiation of remembering and awakening my medicine woman.
By the end of 2020 and going into 2021, I was deep in my Shamanic initiation as a Shadow Guide. Let me just say that anything rooted in Shamanism isn’t learning from a textbook, this work will punt you on a path I call “trial by fire” and there are many deaths of the self. It is as uncomfortable as it gets, while also being the most liberating act of self-love.
Just when I thought I had sorted myself out and was putting myself back together, I got news my dad’s health was in serious jeopardy. Alongside that news, my relationship with my common-law partner was ending. I had kids home because of the pandemic [and f@$! me if life wasn’t giving me a handful already], I knew this would be the most challenging activation of my life.
What was different though was how I was able to show up and apply the Shamanic teachings I was learning as a shadow guide, to myself. What this did was offer me a series of experiences that changed the course of these events. It changed me and allowed my inner medicine woman to step through — not just as an imaginary figure I was making up — no no, it was me becoming fully realized and embodied. Intact in her stories, her keen awareness, and her lens of love.
My relationship today has never been stronger. I am a conscious more patient parent. I fully claimed my grief and the loss of my father in the most potent and beautiful ways. Life for me is more full, empowered, and liberating because I am no longer resistant to who I am, I just am.
It was then I knew there was a way to adopt these teachings and philosophies, and a roadmap that would support other women, like me, to be who they knew they were. There is an Oak Woman in all of us and my journey here is to help women draw out their medicine woman and embody her through life’s many trials, transitions, and deaths.
It’s an honour to claim who you are and let yourself be the medicine your world needs. There is no other gift that will liberate you more fully than this.
Gratitude and love, xo
Delia