Hi beautiful souls!

This is update #5 from my “digital nomad” journey in Puerto Escondido, Mexico… which turned from a “remote worker digital nomad” story to a “newly funemployed amateur movement artist & wandering creative soul” tale in a matter of weeks.

(Feel free to catch up on the story if you missed Updates 1, 2, 3, 4).

I’ve now been living my newly-unemployed Puerto Escondido life for a couple weeks. I made it through the transition out of my job, and am free to re-define what my life looks like… exciting and terrifying! Awe-inspiring and insecurity-triggering! A path that already feels full of Magic… but also some scary trap doors that make me stop in my path, frozen! AND, as I dive more “into myself” via reflection and creative processing… I’m discovering knots and tangled wires and broken bits… and I am not always knowing what to do with what I find. It feels messy! Like being in the Wilderness of my own mind and creative energy!

What Now? A Message from The Scorpion…

Right after I finished my job and posted a blog about it, I received a signal from the Universe: a scorpion. The scorpion crossed my path three times, literally and metaphorically.

(Side note fun fact: Did you know scorpions glow underneath black light?? Wicked cool…)

When the third scorpion happened in less than 24 hours, it felt like I got hit on the head, spiritually… in a good way. Okay, I’m listening, I got the message. So I did some Googling on the symbolism of the Scorpion and found some interesting messages. Like how scorpion medicine can help with major life transitions, such as changes in relationships or careers – how perfect!

Scorpion’s spiritual meaning is all about ridding yourself of proverbial poison – those negative things that hold you back, keep you down and create psychic clutter. Those in unhealthy relationships will find the scorpion spirit very helpful for making a clean break and giving birth to a whole new vision.

Spirit Animal website (source)

Something that struck me in my reading was the importance of protecting my newly freed energy. On some level, I need to be reserved and careful right now. I need to take time to clarify what my intentions are and where I actually want to put my energy, rather than letting myself be overly pulled into whatever is in front of me.

The message came at the perfect time, because for a couple days I was getting a little muddy and confused, particularly in some social situations that I think I went into out of FOMO rather than from a grounded, aligned place.

This life transition really is about alignment and intentionality for me.

So, I stepped back into a more intentionally closed and introverted space, and started thinking about my intentions and priorities.

I’d like to share my current expression of that here, today. It’s not perfect. But it’s the beginning of a roadmap to guide my personal wilderness expedition. To help my own sanity and give me, you, and the Universe a better sense of direction for my writing and all of my ventures…

Post-Job Priorities

The main parts of my life that I am choosing to focus on now are as follows:

1. Movement Arts Study & Practice.
   • Ah, I love being a student in general, and right now… I am a student of Movement. I’ve been dedicating myself to various Movement practices for a long time, and this path continues to bring life and growth for me. There’s both work and play here… there’s joy and creativity… there’s a LOT here! Not to mention that it’s what brought me to Puerto in the first place, and it’s what’s right in front of me. Here are my main ways of honoring this intention:
     • Continuing Movement training through this 3 month trimester at Movement Mexico… this is a big time & energy investment, and a huge honor and blessing! I am learning a lot! Too much to say here! Look out for that Movement-inspired blog post or series that I aspire to bring here soon (lol, we’ll see)
     • Latin Dance via Salsa and Bachata! – Wow, I am smitten. I am completely indulging in a blossoming love affair with these gorgeous Latin Dance forms… purely for love and joy and a sensual experience. Three weeks of this so far, and it is becoming my favorite part of life. Salsa crushes continue to be a thing, and continue to make me feel like a pre-teen girl, which is both wonderful and terrifying.
     • Movement Recess in general! – Hey, Movement has been the staple of my “free time” the last two years… this is where the party is! Lol. So I am still trying (and often failing due to time and energy constraints) to give myself time to do other movement forms that I love. Walking, running, swimming, yoga, some surf lessons. I guess I am going fully into my physical embodiment right now, and part of me thinks that’s how I want to live my life forever. It’s a conscious priority for me to live a very physically embodied life. Though I am definitely toe-ing the line of overdoing it some days, which perhaps conflicts with my next priority…
2. Personal Restoration.
   • I want to acknowledge this as a moment of personal decompression and reflection… I’ve been in a “grind” the last two years to make money and material stability for myself… and I need an energetic reset. I want to allow space for myself to feel, process, and dream. I want to give space for my organism to breathe and relax… to become organically, authentically curious again… and to let my “natural” energy flow carry me into whatever is next. I want to give myself permission to exist in an “in-between” state right now. To do things just for joy. To have experiences I love. To re-build my sense of self from a place of gentleness and love. To do nothing at times. Some questions that are percolating me in my reflective moments right now:
     1. Is it possible that the next version of my path of livelihood could be more aligned with my actual energy and interest? Can I use this time to become more attuned to and grounded in what I actually care about and am moved by? Can I allow myself time and space “just for me” and start building a stronger practice of being true to myself, and building a life from that?
     2. What is the anxiety in me that needs to always be doing something, always productive in some way? Can I soften that, let go of pieces of it? Can I rewire myself to be more chill? What kind of life can I create from a more relaxed, trusting place? On that note, I am definitely prioritizing….
3. Following Paths of Soul Interest… starting with TVM !
   • Quitting my job was a retraction of energy. While there isn’t a rush to redefine what my role in the world is… it’s something like a void in my life now, and I do feel the need to have some new life experiences in order to start to better answer some questions for myself – Who do I actually want to be in this world? How do I want to serve? What is my calling? What is my path of right livelihood? I believe Life is going to help me answer some of these questions by giving me opportunities to try things out and to grow parts of myself that have been neglected.
   • TVM feels like one of those opportunities. I decided to say Yes to the Triple Vagal Method practitioner training, because the energy of the invitation was so compelling with all its synchronicities, and because it aligns with an aspect of me that wants to grow, which is my dedication to healing for myself and others.
   • I’ve made a financial investment, and soon this will be a time and creative energy investment as well. I’m excited to learn about the nervous system, the vagus nerve, and trauma… and to practice a hands-on healing modality that help heal trauma and re-wire nervous system patterns. I’m excited to experience this work in my own body and do the work for myself, I’m excited to practice it with others, and I’m tentatively excited about the potential of cultivating a somatic bodywork offering and starting a practice as a practitioner. That feels scary too in many ways, and I’m not sure what it will look like for me, if I do want to start walking the Healer path. It’s a total unknown. But… I’m going to take this one step for now, and try to focus on one step at a time, and trust that if I stay in “true to me” energy, the journey will unfold exactly as it’s meant to.
4. Writing…?
   • I thought about calling this section “Creativity”, because part of what I’m craving right now is a chance to dive into ANY creative endeavor, just for the experience of it… but I do feel, and have always felt, a calling to be a “Writer” and it was a point of pain in my Tech job lifestyle that I did not have the energy or desire to share words about my life. Looking at my blog and how little I wrote publicly during those work experiences… it feels like blackout moments of my life. Long stretches of silence. That makes me sad because I write when I am loving my life, and I love the act of writing about my life and sharing. So, I give myself gold stars for posting on my blog during this time and developing how I see & practice this part of my creative embodiment.

Alright, that’s my imperfect expression of how I’m using the gift of my life force at this moment in time. May the Universe work with the best of me and forgive and love the worst of me ❤

A Full Moon Gathering For The Books

Okay, I have to share this because it was a major highlight of the last couple weeks.

Last Saturday I went to the best full moon gathering I’ve ever had the pleasure to attend. It was an amazing event near Mazunte on a small farm property. The day’s lineup was like a multi-layered massage for Emma’s soul that turned into hours-long ecstatic visionary bliss and a fiery process of psychic transformation… It felt like something that the Universe cooked up for me and delivered on a platter, singing “Here, sweet Daughter, I made you something… will you eat it and enjoy it? And then dance and sing with me?”

And dance and sing we did! With great gusto!!

My lineup of that day:

• A permaculture workshop where I got to reconnect meaningfully with permaculture for… honestly my first time on my own, after fleeing my failed permaculture venture with Mathew when we broke up a few years ago. I’ve been longing to connect more with food systems in this area, and meeting our facilitator and hearing his story of involvement with local farms felt like an answer to that prayer. Working with my hands and with plants also felt so nourishing. We made compost, we planted trees, we ate Moringa leaves, we had long conversation about the food systems here. I have a big heart full of gratitude for this little workshop, and some budding hopes for opportunities to connect with more permaculture land/community projects soon… maybe even in this area, if I can find a good opportunity that feels right. There is so much to love around here.
• Ice baths! I did two 5-minute ice baths in a row and made great friends with other happy naked hippies in the process. It felt like real medicine, and in the second round I came to a profound place of inner stillness, completely submerged in ice water. Wow!
• Ecstatic Dance set #1 – just a warmup 😉 mostly I was ice-bathing and socializing during this time.
• Cacao ceremony and singing and prayer – After the first dance set and the ice baths we had a beautiful sharing of cacao, and we sang to the rising moon, and we sang medicine songs, and we invoked creative transformative processes to flow through us over the course of our dancing into the night… It was very organic and heartfelt and sweet.
• Two more back-to-back ecstatic dance sets took us into the late night. I fully immersed into the dance and allowed myself to go into layers of my subconscious and a personal ceremony of sorts – out of nowhere came so much energy, once I turned my dance into a ceremony and used it to consciously push out things that I don’t want, and call in what I do. It was electric! I feel that I changed something in me for the better, in that dance ceremony. That there was a healing. And along with that, so much joy, sweat, movement, ecstasy.
• Lastly, a very late night Temezcal, which is a traditional sweat lodge ceremony. It was my first experience of this kind of ceremony, and it was quite intense and also quite beautiful. It felt like we were family, in the womb together, all being reborn.

That night Valentina and I slept outside by the fire. I did not sleep much, and I was complete mush and totally cranky and out of whack the next day as a result… but it was worth it!

My Purpose for Writing

This section is me noodling on why I’m blogging. This kind of writing falls into a personal category of “unsure who is interested in this material but YOLO”. Proceed if you desire.

I want to dive more into the Writing part of my life. It’s always been a part of my life, and yet it’s the least defined for me right now.

My writing is my own thing – I don’t have a group or a training to follow, like I do with Movement and Dance and TVM. (I do wonder if investing some energy in a course and/or community at some point would be helpful to me.) So whatever I do right now, it’s going to be my own creative energy, and the inspiration that comes from the rest of my life, that guides me here.

I think my intention with the blog is to evolve and refine my own creative process on my own terms… and to make myself and what matters to me visible to the world.

Part of my misalignment with my job was that I didn’t actually like being seen in it… partially because I didn’t want to be associated with the Tech industry, or with corporate culture. It felt like a misrepresentation of myself, on some level. Or like, it was an exaggeration of parts of me, and didn’t show anything of my soul. I felt like I was wearing the fact that I was selling myself out.

I want my blog to be a place where I wear my own truth and where the world can see more of my actual soul.

In a way, the blog is also now a tether back to “civilization” for me from the “wilderness” of my unknown creative path. Maybe most of the time I’m out in my own world of having my life and exploring, and then I can come here to try to untangle my mind and story and put it into words – and in sharing this with the world and inviting engagement, I can feel seen and connected and supported. I can both share the beautiful things that I am discovering on my path, and feel that I still have my feet grounded in the human world, even when I don’t have a defined role via a job or career.

This blog can then also be like a trail of footsteps for others to consider following… or avoiding, haha. I’m not trying to show anyone where they should go. But I can be open about my path in case it helps, inspires, or simply entertains.

In fewer words… I’m simply sharing my personal story.

Pie in the sky ideal – It would bring me great satisfaction to be able to inspire and touch others with my writing. I would love to be a light in the wilderness for souls wanting to make choices and changes in their lives that honor them being more “true to themselves”.

If there’s something I want to be “about”, it’s probably that. It’s about authenticity, about peeling back layers of falseness, about being more ourselves, more embodied, more sovereign, more in health and alignment, more happy, more free.

Actually, the thing that touched me most as I left Meraki was how many people told me I inspired them with how “real” I was. I was able to have that impact there. Maybe I can have it here, too.

But I don’t get to choose how my words impact others. I just get to choose my words.

So… posting on this blog is a way to choose to make words of my experience and to share them. To share my story, with hopes to grow, to enjoy, and to connect with others through a path of my own making.

Some questions I’m holding, about my growth as a writer…

What works? What doesn’t? How do I know what touches people, and what’s worth sharing?

Can I try to write more deeply on different topics in my life?

Could I share something of the depth of what I am experiencing in the Movement practice right now, for example? Something of the spirit of Bachata and Salsa?

I’m trying. I’m an amateur. I’m hopeful that the Universe will help me work with my writing process so that I can be more creatively expressed in a more meaningful way. So that I can make something Beautiful.

And now I’ve announced that I’m working on a Movement-specific writing piece. So I’ve got skin in the game to finish and post at least one 🙂

In Closing…

Dear reader, I would actually love to know from you – what brings you here? What makes my content interesting for you? What would you like more or less of? What’s your favorite thing that you’ve read on my blog?

Or other things you want to share. Did you see the full moon this cycle? Are you processing any transitions? Did you ever cold-quit a job? What helped you find your “right path”?

Besos. Let me know how you’re doing and feeling. Let me know what touched you. Thank you for reading and engaging! xoxoxo ❤