Stella, our youngest daughter, decided about six months ago that she was ready to leave her intense corporate job, satiated with having met her lofty goals there and knowing it’s not her forever career. She wants to directly help people, so she signed up and paid for a breathwork training in California in July to get the ball rolling.
With her departure date set, another opportunity at a better shop with fewer hours (only ten per day) knocked on her door, and eleven interviews later, she got the job and decided to take it and pursue her dream work in a year or two.
Being the great mother that I am, I bought her out of the training and went myself, thinking that, at the very least, it would add more dimension to my current breathwork offerings but also having a knowing that it was a sign of sorts.
Most things are with Stella.
In fact, a couple of days before leaving, a voice said in my meditation, Go to your Moleskines. I did and pulled out a random notebook. The page I opened to was from an Akashic Record reading from 2023:
You will spend five years gathering wisdom as you get your footing in your new life. Then, when you speak, people will witness the magnificence of a mature tree like a California Redwood. New perceptions. New vibrations. New friends.
After flying across the country and taking a four-and-a-half-hour shuttle to Mendocino, I settled into my tent on the edge of a Redwood grove, then shared dinner with the group and teacher before turning in for sleep.
Over the next eight days, we spent more than eight hours a day immersed in some of the highest-caliber healing work in all my years on this path.
We dove right in, all thirty-five of us sitting in a large circle each day, except during our twice-daily breathing sessions lying down, to share both in the big group and in more intimate inquiries with partners paired up daily.
A masterfully held sacred container where we prayed, ate, breathed, healed, and learned together.
What’s your most contentious relationship?
What’s your relationship with money?
Who do you need to forgive?
It’s July 14th, 2029. Where are you, what are you doing, and who’s with you?
In one partner session, I wrestled my ego to the ground. Its first intention was to elevate my voice to the next level or blast open my third eye.
No.
It was belonging.
Unglamorous belonging.
I’ve been working with this for twenty years, convincing myself I never belonged. I told my partner that growing up, I mostly hung out with trees and animals. I was well-liked by almost everyone, but never really part of one group.
I could belong anywhere for an afternoon, but never felt like I belonged anywhere completely.
When I got married, I thought I had finally cracked the code. I fit in. I had the house, the kids, the whole deal. And even with kids, I’d look at all the moms gathered around one car in the school pickup parking lot and think, What are they talking about?
And then my whole life shifted again at fifty-four.
My partner reflected back to me that maybe my true belonging was in the depth of my relationships—with my girls, my dad, my sisters, my soul friends, and the people I gather with in communities like this.
I have never been interested in staying on the surface of things. I want to go deeper. I want to know and be known.
And suddenly, I could feel it.
This was belonging.
Then I lay down and breathed hard using the new breath pattern I had just learned and am now teaching. On the wings of love from my partner, a new friend for life, and the group, I felt something in me shift.
I was free.
Like finally putting down a heavy backpack I had been carrying my whole life.
Maybe belonging, for me, is following the longing for depth.
The depth of knowing myself. The depth of a relationship. The depth that opens between people when we are willing to be real and curious and go somewhere together.
And perhaps belonging to myself is simply following that longing all the way into the world.
There were more synchronicities. I was there on the anniversary of my mom’s accident when I was seventeen, and out West, too. I lay down and breathed hard with this new breath pattern, and something I had carried for forty-three years began to move.
A weight that had been honored, processed, and intellectualized but had clearly met a ceiling.
I breathed, and gave way to the master healer, Spirit, sliding it off our DNA.
Reflecting on an intention I later shared in the large circle, I soar with ease and exaltation, is not just words, but now a felt and lived experience.
Now, I know exactly why Stella signed me up for the bucket list healing and breathwork training.