Author: Erin

Two years ago I walked away from a launch right in the middle of it and flamed out in an episode of complete and total burnout. A year later, presuming I’d healed fully I started back to work. I thought I owed everyone a lengthy, very personal explanation. I wrote draft upon draft of blog posts detailing how I’d found myself in the very unprofessional act of quitting quite radically. It should come as no surprise that these brutally honest writings were not actually helpful and, in fact, were a huge setback. I didn’t publish them. Instead, I took some more time off.

What I have decided is essential to tell everyone is simple. My burnout coincided with perimenopause, the pandemic, discovering late-in-life neurodivergence, and all of the other complex factors that go into surviving late capitalism and the disintegration of Western society. Of course, there’s nothing simple about any of that, but getting bogged down in the details of each one of those facets could be a blog post in and of itself! Perhaps I will delve deeper into some of them as the winter unfolds but for now, I am focused on the transformation that occurred during my time away from public work and sharing how these past few years will inform my offerings from now on. 

Back in 2018 when I took my Earth Medicine Practitioner vows at SoulLodge ranch in the July heat of the Oregon desert I promised to “Help whomever I could, whenever I could, so long as I could.” The caveat, of course, was that I must know my limits, both for myself, as well as my clients. At the foundation of this commitment is a guiding principle that I bear a tremendous responsibility to the individuals who come to me for healing work. Understanding my capacity for both the limits of my training and my personal energy stores is crucial for this unique job that I’m privileged to perform. After holding space for groups and individuals through the more uncertain months of the pandemic, the tumultuous election of 2020, the insurrection, and the effects of a fraying society I was buckling under the weight of it all. Finally, I was forced to acknowledge that I was not able to adequately support myself personally, or professionally, nor was I able to support my clients who were overwhelmingly needing a more qualified clinically therapeutic approach for their presenting issues. I needed to step away from my Earth Medicine practice until the balance between myself and my work could be restored.  

This has been a challenging time for anyone working in the coaching, therapy, and ethical personal development sphere. So often the presenting issues our clients bring to us cannot be solved on an individual level. These issues also cannot be discussed rationally without crossing the streams of “the spiritual” and “the political,” which have historically been deemed “taboo” to mingle together. And, in this cauldron of online spirituality, there is an ongoing struggle to remain authentic and to come to our practices in a good way. We have all witnessed the minds of our mutuals succumbing to conspiracy theories and supremacist viewpoints. The effect has been rather chilling, to say the least! This is not the internet of the early aughts, or teens any longer, dear friends. I want there to be no confusion about the fact that the space I hold and the values I promote are inclusive of all but wholly intolerant of bigotry or hate. Let there be no mystery to the fact that I’m here for the “Girls, Gays, and They’s.” Them’s the rules in my online space. 

It is nearly two years to the day that I had to step away and do the healer’s work of healing myself on a deeper level in the labyrinthian journey of life. I have returned with a fuller awareness of what it means to transform through the profound process of emotional alchemy. As I am sure holds true for so many of you, much has changed and fallen away over the past few years. Stepping into a new reality can be disorienting, but I can attest to the benefits of choosing to step forward. I am filled with enthusiasm to begin the work of spiritual transmutation with my clients and students once again. Now, with so much more in my medicine kit than ever before, including a full spectrum of astrology readings that are designed to complement my Earth Medicine offerings I am eagerly reporting for duty!

I came back to work because I love what I do and the people I help. I came back to work because I took adequate time to heal and make the necessary sacrifices to improve my life. I came back to work because I genuinely believe that spiritual healing is MAJORLY important, now more than ever. I’m back because I vowed “to serve whomever I could, whenever I could” and I’m SO grateful to tell everyone after all this time I am once again able to do so. Over the weeks ahead I’ll be sharing my exciting new offerings with you here on the blog and on my socials. I can’t wait to see you in session soon!

Once again, days and nights are equally balanced between light and dark at this point in the annual spiral of time. The autumnal equinox is the second harvest festival in the contemporary pagan calendar and celebrates the fruits of one’s labor over the past growing season. The equinox occurs annually when the sun moves into the sign of Libra. Symbolized by scales, when the sun makes its ingress into this mutable air sign, humans, too, are called to examine themes of balance, light, and shadow. 

One pathway into authentic dialogue with oneself is to honestly assess the state of harvest in your own life. Are the goals you set and the plans you put into motion earlier this year showing signs of life and bearing good results? Is there anything, in particular, you need to do to ensure the successful outcome of what you’ve been healing or manifesting in 2021? Our culture has trained us to skip past the endings and get right back on the wheel of creation, but the fourth quarter possesses RICH lessons I encourage you to partake in! Don’t forget to celebrate what you have achieved! Stay with each phase of your process and relish the last bits.

My own harvest is quieter and less showy this year. The work I’ve been engaged in has primarily been internal. Something in my bones knew this wasn’t the year to plant a big garden and to give the earth I tend a rest. The fallowness soon extended beyond planting projects, though that was far from what I intended in early spring. Like so many others, I was incredibly excited for “normal life” to return in April when the hope of that possibility existed. I signed up for studio space in the contemporary art museum. I applied to vend at the farmer’s market. I even began to tentatively re-schedule my Practical Magick tour of the Pacific Northwest. Then the Delta variant became a genuine threat in my already unsafe community, and one by one, bit by bit, my plans contracted, and I had to accept that “normal” is not going to be a thing where I live for a long, long time.

The summer was record-breakingly hot, and smoky, and stunningly depressing. For more days than I care to admit, I was in a doom spiral of climate change, pandemic, and peri-menopause fueled mood swings. Fortunately, I had planned to embark on a magical three-month micro-dosing regime. My intention was vaguely something like, “get back in touch with my baseline self.” That, dear reader, is precisely how I wound up spending my summer vacation. I undertook the process with an open mind and very few preconceived notions. It both was and was not at all like I expected it to be. Here, on this side of the experience, what I can enthusiastically tell you is that not only did I successfully meet my primary objective, I healed a mountain of lingering traumas that, up until this point, I had not been able to metabolize.

What surprised me about the three months of micro-dosing was just how much I could sense and feel my brain growing! As I mentioned, this process exposed a TON of repressed emotional wounds. All of a sudden I found myself being initiated again through some very potent levels of shadow work. I’m still very much in the integration process with much of that, but I plan to share more details with you soon. What I will say is that it was not a very comfortable experience when I was expecting a gentle ride. However, when I entered the energetic frequency of acceptance, everything began to shift. I was shown the pathway, winding as it was, that would lead to all of the answers I was seeking on my journey. I won’t bury the lede here. I’ll just let you know right up front: In elegant, circular fashion, that answer, once again, is- acceptance. How to arrive at that state of being, well – that is the trick, isn’t it?!

As my brain grew, I slept a lot. This side-effect was helpful to complete physical healing for issues that had been plaguing me since last November. It also brought me deeper into the world of dream medicine, which has been a nice change for me as I typically receive my spiritual medicine and guidance from trance journey. For someone such as myself who has a racing, visionary mind, falling asleep quickly just doesn’t happen- ever, so regularly conking out like a toddler for the first time in decades has been sublime!

Over this months-long saga guided by the fungal kingdom, at every step along the way, I have magically found myself supported by some surprising teachers. They’ve always appeared just when I needed them, and each of them has taught me how I already possess or can cultivate from within, what I need to fulfill my sacred obligation which is to keep my life moving forward. I am free, finally, from so many of the harmful cycles of abuse that I have been an unwitting participant in from as far back as my childhood. Now that I have seen the underpinnings of what has been keeping disconnected from my core self, I’ll be able to avoid the patterns and people that have not served my highest good or honored my basic dignity. Three months on this protocol did more for healing my C-PTSD than years of talk therapy ever could. The most beautiful thing about this process for me has been the energetic adjustment that shifted my frequency so far out of range of any potential hooks from my narcissistic abusers past, present, or future! They have no power over me! The alchemical shift these realizations have caused in me is absolute, total, and complete.

I’ve been so excited to share this news with my readers in my refreshed private blog space. As I mentioned recently on Instagram, consider this is my table, and you are my cherished guest. So many of the connections I’ve made on apps like Instagram are genuine and cherished. This is where I am most comfortable spilling the unvarnished truth with readers and taking deep dives on taboo topics. Here, we’ll go “there.” The unsavory aspects of social media are becoming more and more apparent. Not only do I want to protect my own energy from internet trolls, If I’m inviting people in my social media networks into dialogue with me I feel obliged to extend that same protection to them, as well.

It’s important to be aware that the public square in both digital and actual reality is increasingly hostile. I do not desire to be a participant in divide and conquer strategies, nor do I wish to add to the vitriol “out there.” I have strong opinions and am interested in sharing them, but as with all things, I want to do this in a good way and leave beauty, not destruction, behind me. That’s almost impossible to do in today’s digital landscape, but I’m making a vow, here and now, to figure out how and to show others the way. 

So, thank you for reading my words and witnessing my experience. I am looking forward to cultivating a deeper connection here, at my home on the web, with you and others who seek to connect more deeply to their birthright of natural wisdom. I hope your harvest is sweet and as you “tally up the grain” of what you have grown this year, take in the lessons of what worked well, what you’d do differently next time, and how grateful you are for what has been provided in this year. Blessings to you and yours on this Autumnal Equinox!

I covered the topic of micro-dosing on my new podcast, Just Like Magick earlier this year. Have a listen if you are curious to learn more. The episode was recorded before I began my protocol so I don’t offer my observations about the process during my conversation with my guest. As you’ve just read, the results were fantastic and the healing that I was able to achieve has been life-altering. This felt like the final step in all of the work I’ve been doing to shift my trauma and cross the threshold into a state of wholeness. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity! Listen to the episode here: