I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what’s going on in my life.
“Are you moving?!” My friends and clients are shocked.
The short answer is no, I’m not changing residence. (At least not that I know of!)
Asheville has been my dearest home for the past 6 years and I plan to keep this cherished root.
And yet, I hear a call.
Things are moving, and I’m beginning to move in a different way. I have the opportunity to expand and travel with my work, and I’m taking it.
I'm a woman approaching adulthood. Ain't got no partner, no kids, no pet. I rent my apartment. I live in a transient town. I love the place I live, but something happens to me when I go away. My inner coordinates realign. I learn best through experience. Exposure. Movement. The natural elements. When I depart from what I know, I know myself to a greater degree.
Travel has always been significant to my life and development. Annually, my parents took my brother and I camping, beaching, on road trips, cruises, and adventures overseas. When I graduated high school, there was a display posted in the lobby. A sea of stars, each with a student in my class' name and the college or trade school they planned to attend. My star stood alone, declaring "Travel." I went straight to Africa..
For the past 6 years I’ve been rooted. I arrived in Asheville an eccentric fairy gypsy-wanderer type with a razor sharp wit, blowing in like gusting wind. I could barely feel my bare feet on the Earth. It took years of dedicated training as a Taoist martial artist (not to mention healing sessions with crania-sacral therapists, acupuncturists, energy workers, you name it) before I really felt connected with my lower body.
At the time, I was in a tumultuous relationship with a man 19 years my senior who was blowing my mind with intrinsic mystic wisdom. He taught me how to feel a chart and introduced me to astrology as an intuitive language. We were in love. The kind of catalytic, unavoidable love that reigns over your life and creates awakenings. For the first time in my life, I learned who I really was. The relationship destroyed me.
The aftermath was me, energetically depleted. I spent the fall-to-winter months alone in my bed on the floor, smoking pot, studying astrology voraciously, having visions, writing poetry and spontaneously channeling. The cracking of the ice on the window was a picture of my mind at the time: crystal clear, medial, and splintering somewhat as a result of my perceptions drastically opening in a short period of time.
I felt I had connected with a spiritual path I was destined for. I was whelmed with gratitude, but also felt it was a mysterious path I did not know enough about, it seemed razor thin, and I didn't trust myself to develop it on my own. I prayed for a teacher, a guide, to help me get started. A month later a man walked into the restaurant I was working at. His gaze was so bright and powerful I had to look away. He invited me to come train at his school of Taoist Inner Arts. I gave thanks and said, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
I've been there ever since. I became heavily involved in spiritual training and cultivation. I lived like a monk for a long chunk of time. Developed a lifestyle of reverence. An obsession with astrology became my craft. Taoist inner alchemy arts changed my body-mind into something stronger and healthier. I became softer, clearer, more receptive. I shed many layers. My natural sensitivity became honed. I began to learn how to track and guide energy. In varying forms, I began to see energy with my eyes. While images and messages flowed freely into my sphere, I learned how to hold on to my center.
In 2009, just before I moved to Asheville, I wrote this in my journal:
"And how do I gain pure intentions? Through loving fully, wholly, openly? Through practice? Or do I just decide to do everything in life with love at the center. Love for myself, love for all planetary and universal beings. No, I have not yet lived in that manner. That is the Virginia I want to be. Firm. Rooted. Strong within myself. A fountain of strength, intelligence, love, and ancient wisdom."
Six years later, I've embraced that path. I've learned it takes both Love and Dedicated Practice. I've become firm and rooted. I have become the woman I dreamed of being.
I’ve always held a vision of creating a career I can do anywhere in the world, with little-to-no external tools.
Pinch me. What once was a vision is birthing into reality.
In less than two months, I’m stepping off the comfortable ledge of my life into the unknown.
Asheville is my nest. A place of familiarity and joy. Here, I am surrounded by accomplished healers, mentors, soul family friends, loving community. Fed by abundant healthy local foods. Anywhere I go, there is someone I adore embracing me and brightening my day. My work is accepted and respected here. I am known. I am full and content.
Why would I leave this paradise in the sweet Grandmother Mountains?
Because: Saturn in Sagittarius.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin
Sagittarius, the sign of Vision and Growth. Archetype of expansion through distance travel, exploration, and the pursuit of knowledge.
Saturn, the taskmaster. The great God who brings forth inner and outer pressure to materialize whatever he touches. Saturn demands attention, work, dedication, and he asks that we pare down everything nonessential in order to really GET it.
This vision I’ve held for years means nothing unless I work to manifest it here on Earth. In short, Saturn says “You gotta do the work, betch.”
Collectively and independently, we are feeling the call to Quest. To discover what is possible. To set our sights high and reach for them. To measure up our beliefs against reality. To spread our wings. To push the edge.
‘Quest’, the root of ‘Question.’ A journey. To ask. To seek.
Personally, I’m entering into a period of evolution we all go through in our late twenties: the Saturn Return. A time of reckoning into adulthood. Saturn in Sagittarius holds extra weight in my life. With my actions, I must ask this question: can I manifest my vision for my life’s work? With my life, I seek to find the answer.
Saturn’s gifts are hard-won. He never makes things easy. He makes things worth it. Through obstacle, difficulty, and challenge. Ever notice how the things we really work for are the things we appreciate the most? This is the gift of Saturn. The gains we make through toiling with him can never be taken from us. Through time and effort, they have become Real.
Saturn in Sagittarius asks us all to work to expand our horizons.
It is “essential if we want to avoid a kind of spiritual stagnation.” (Quote source: Time Line Forecast, cafeastrology.com)
Wherever he traverses, Saturn asks us to Let Go.
For me letting go is not easy. Especially when the things I’m called to let go are well-known comforts and beloved fruits I’ve reaped after years of dedication. Despite my desire to hold onto them, I feel them slipping off like rags of weathered clothes I’ve worn to pieces over the years. I recognize and honor the need to release.
I let go of a longterm partnership with a man I will always love. (Knowing I need to spread my wings.)
I let go of a job with steady income, wonderful employers and co-workers, great hours and a flexible schedule.
Along with that job, I let go of a 13-year career in the restaurant industry.
And the concept that I need someone else to employ me. (Knowing I can employ myself.)
I unearth and let go of quiet stories chattering in the back of my mind about finances and relationships. Security and steadiness. Attachment to what’s been made so far. (Knowing there are new paradigms of thought to learn and integrate.)
I let go of physical presence in my beloved community. (Knowing I can stay in touch from afar.)
I let go of showing up to practice at my martial arts school every week for the past five years. (Knowing my body is my temple.)
I let go of the weekly classes I teach and my time slots for readings at the local tea shop. (Knowing other offerings become my greater service.)
I let go of past self. (Knowing Now-Self yearns to be discovered.)
I let go of the known.
In order to call in something new and beautiful, in order to realize my visions, in order to ask the Question Who Am I, I need to make room. I must push past my current bounds and comfort levels. I must expose myself and reach for the ever-expanding light of possibility.
For me, and all of us, the time has come to Level Up and Out. The transition is both quiet and vast. We do it not for us. We do it for each other, the Soul, and all-that-is.
When I was a little girl, I thought when people grew up they did what they wanted to do for a living. Things that they loved and excelled at. My Dad informed me that wasn’t the case. He said the economy wasn’t set up that way, and a lot of people did jobs they didn’t like. I screwed up my brow considering this. It didn’t make sense to me. Inside I felt we all have different gifts and different, yet complementary things we’d want to do with our time.
I've got to give this self-created life a shot.
Is it crazy that I'm leaving my abundant nest and a promising future of a comfortable, rooted life to see what lies beyond?
Or is it crazy to not go?
So far, people have been thanking me for taking the opportunity to try - that it demonstrates what might be possible
beyond the sphere of current belief.
Thank you for your encouragements. Thank you for appreciating my work and allowing me to grow. My wish is we can all expand beyond the current bounds and stay connected to some force within, the spirit, for integration and guidance from within. Always.
I'm departing Asheville soon, but I'm never leaving you. Let's journey together. Take my hand. Join me on this Quest.