There is this piece I go back to sometimes, that I wrote in February of 2021.
The paragraph where it says:
“What I desire most right now is to grow my own food on land. To eat eggs from chickens that I know. To surround my own home in flowers and lace and soft things. To drink a lot of tea. To have a bird feeder and watch the birds. To wear long dresses and skirts. To nourish my uterus so deeply, to bleed and rest. To cook a lot of meals, to touch each fruit and vegetable as if it were the biggest gift – because it is. To have slow soft sex with Jordan. To open, fully, in all areas, when it is time. To let my breasts wrinkle and my butt sink and soften and my belly expand and to have my eyes pierce through it all. Becoming more like a tree.” (from this piece)
I remember where I was at the time.
Sitting in the bathtub in a hotel room in Vancouver, a place I had booked to have some space to myself while we were still in the midst of the pandemic.
I remember exactly how I felt, as if I was touching into something so deeply, like I could just reach through the threads of the air into the future and write it down.
When I was young I had this book series called the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and in there, the king of the enchanted forest can create things and travel on his command just by reaching into the energetic network of webs that is constantly there all in the air. He is the only one who has the power to do this, and then when he marries, his wife does too.
So sometimes this is how I picture it, this ability to see and touch the future, to influence life, to have an effect.
Like just reaching my hand into the air, and tweaking a thread.
It’s not that far off from how it is, really, and I sometimes imagine the woman who wrote the books and if she knew, or if she was just channeling something without knowing it.
My life is now all of these things.
The food, the chickens, the expanded belly.
The only thing we don’t have from that paragraph I wrote is the bird feeder, because if we got a bird feeder it would attract more rats, and the rats already like to live under the house in the winter.
But we still have many, many, many birds to watch.
And we have a birdhouse that right now some gorgeous blue and teal sparrows live in.
I remember writing it, how close and yet far away all of that felt.
I could feel it… but none of it was there yet.
And it just is baffling to my mind how all of it could appear, less than a year later, without me trying to make it happen.
Just getting out of the way and following Truth.
My life is so good right now that it pushes all the edges of my having. Of my ability to really open and receive and feel deeply every piece.
There is this place where I can feel the part of me that always wanted to have a business.
Our house assistant asked me this the other day, how I started doing what I do, and I was telling her how when I was 12 I was reading Steve Pavlina’s blog where he talked about making money on the internet, and I felt so clearly how I wanted to make money on the internet.
And all throughout my teenage years, I loved writing and dreamed of having a blog, my own thing, and I thought that if only I could just come up with a great idea, then I could have a thing.
I made and deleted blogs, websites.
I started writing on the internet in my early twenties, for different publications. I wanted to be so many things. When I was teaching yoga I wanted to be a yoga girl traveling the world and holding retreats. I wanted that identity and I wanted it to be my life.
I wanted to be a digital nomad and I wanted to make money for myself online.
This had so many different phases. I didn’t start making any money really til I started this business in the end of 2018. And it was a slow progression.
In some ways the part of me that likes to be the one who is trying to have a business that works, and is dreaming of having a business that works… has been a really comfortable place for me. As in, I have felt comfortable in the wanting of the thing, and the building of the thing.
And there are thoughts in the wanting of that that have become really familiar for me. The spot where it was like, I just want to have $10k months, when will I have 10k months, that is the big thing to aim for. Everyone wants to have 10k months. When will I have these big launches like other people have, when will I figure it out.
And somehow… there was nothing to figure out?
And now the familiar thoughts don’t have anywhere to land, because I have all the things they are so used to wanting.
I have a 6-figure business this year even if I did not sell one more thing for the rest of the year. I will probably have a multi-6-figure business this year.
10k months, the holy grail that I just couldn’t seem to “figure out”…. happen just like that, and more often, numbers much higher than that.
I just made 40 grand in the country that I live in from selling one journey. If you were going to count sales instead of cash, which I don’t really do anymore, but if you did – I sold 50? 60? k of things this month alone.
I have hit this place where my mind can’t really wrap itself around it all.
Even just last December, even though I was making good money, Jordan was still paying for mostly everything and I was just spending my money on myself, and not really wanting to take full responsibility for it. I was settled at around 8k/month and spending it all on myself and wondering what the point would be of wanting more. I felt like I had everything I wanted and didn’t know how to think long term.
And actually probably until last December I still had fluctuations sometimes of, do I even want to have a business, maybe this is too much effort, maybe I just want to write poetry instead and never go on the computer again.
Really I think the money came from the responsibility.
In January, Jordan and I combined our money and I took on more responsibility of paying for things.
At first it was just the groceries (which for us is a pretty big expense of around 2k/month).
And I absorbed the expense just like that.
And at the same time my level of commitment to the thing inside of me shifted.
It was like, I am going to serve this no matter what.
I am going to have a business no matter what.
No matter my preferences sometimes of leaving the internet and hiding away in the woods.
I will keep showing up for this energy and I am willing to hold it and be responsible for it. Because I am finally just fully devoted to it.
Now it is less than 6 months later and my income has doubled and I have made the biggest purchases I have ever made for our house, and the money just comes in and flows out and comes in and flows out just like that.
I have a business assistant and we have a house assistant and I just hired two bodyworkers and a nutritionist and a personal trainer.
I am married and I have a husband whose face I still cannot stop studying, staring at in awe.
And we do get our eggs from chickens that we know and I am growing vegetables on our deck right now and our garden is under tarps this year so that next spring we will have a huge garden.
There is like, thing after thing after thing that part of me is just like, what the fuck is happening, what is going on, are you sure this is happening.
I booked plane tickets to go see my cousin get married and I think my resistance to flying was partially, I can’t possibly have this too, I can’t leave the country, something bad will happen and all of this will be ruined.
Like if I just keep small on our little island here, maybe no one will find out and I will be protected.
These old remnants of, it’s not allowed to be this good.
I bought the tickets and I bought my first ever first-class plane ticket and I booked hotels to give me the most spaciousness possible.
I could feel when booking my old traveling younger digital nomad self, that was like, remember when we looked for the cheapest flight, even if it meant traveling for double or triple as long? Maybe you should drive, maybe you should add all these things on that sound exciting but will really make it so draining.
And I focused it back to, what would be most nourishing to me and give it to myself all the way?
How can I have it all the way?
Three years ago, when I was living in LA, I had just gone through my final breakup and I had lots of energy moving through and I decided to announce two retreats.
I was finally going to be it, I may have no longer been a yoga girl but I was finally going to be a traveling person holding retreats, I was going to have it all!
And then I met Jordan and moved to Canada and once I got here I realized it really wasn’t true to hold them. I was just trying to be the identity of it. And really what was true was to just root down with Jordan and grieve and go down. And I canceled the retreats and refunded people and I did that.
And then I forgot all about holding retreats.
Like entirely, just let it go, never thought about it again.
Until a month or so ago…
I was walking in the forest near our home…
And it just dropped in all of a sudden: this vision of a retreat, here.
On our island. Embodiment and naked swimming and making butter and the yummiest food and intimacy and flower farms and all of it.
And then I found the most beautiful perfect home to host it in…..
And I booked it.
This is also hard for my mind to wrap itself around.
Now we are going to hold a retreat???
We are having everything we always wanted???
Except this time it is so completely, utterly true… and I don’t have to be a digital nomad to do it because I live in such a gorgeous place that I don’t even want to leave it.
Fully fed, nourished woman connected to the earth.
And I suddenly, somehow, can fully think long term.
So many of my desires are years out.
The biggest one, to get pregnant in a year and a half or so.
Preparing my body for this, relishing in my pre-conception time.
Preparing our home and our land.
Preparing my business, thinking about how it will be set up for this to happen.
Feeling into what I am really here to embody and what I want.
I think people severely underestimate what it means to follow Truth.
As in. I think they think their desires don’t matter that much, that that piece is too small and doesn’t matter, can’t be having that big of an effect.
So they don’t listen all the way.
And the main thing I know about myself is that I have always listened all the way.
So I want to tell you, now…
What I am imagining in the future.
And I see little babies running around. In this home, a baby at my breast. Our garden flourishing and feeding us. Retreats happening, intimate groups of women coming to be deeply nourished and transformed, opening up to all possibilities. Our house fully taken care of, all the old pieces removed that no longer fit or function well, upgraded and thriving. Flowers growing in every little spot that will hold them. A healthy body that moves around so easily, runs around playing with children and is soft and relaxed. My husband, holding it all with me, in the incredible way he does.
It is a beautiful life… and it can only get more beautiful.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– I can just let this in, everything I’ve ever wanted
– Reflections on hiring help & pre-conception time
– Where it’s really at for me are the quiet moments
– Why I can’t tell you what I do