Time for an update! I’ve been starting to pull together some writings I worked on sporadically over the past months, to tell the story of where this adventuresome life chapter has taken me, and how I’ve been growing. I hope you enjoy!

It’s been a wild and spirit-guided journey… A rollercoaster of change and exploration, held by the vast Sonoran desert and baking in the sun!

Earlier last year I quit my job, and basically blew up my whole life. I don’t even know how to sum up what the journey has been, between then and now. Some of it I’ve shared and written about. A lot of it was healing, which I would like to say a LOT more about when the time is right. And a lot of it has been looking for a new path… and looking for a NEW WAY OF FINDING A NEW PATH.

I didn’t get religion, really, but I got God in a new way. I had to, in order to confront this deep of a wrong orientation in my heart, which I always felt on my Tech career path. (Which isn’t to say I couldn’t end up back there — maybe if I get my heart right, it will make sense to me in a deeper way in the future.) This journey is different, and maybe the scariest yet, because I’m going out on a limb of pure Faith instead of calculation.

Arizona was just a feeling, a year ago. I had a sense that my nomad journey could take me to the Southwest – I even thought it could be in a van. But I had no plans for it, just an idea and a feeling. Then I went to Mexico, and kicked off my nomadic life with an International chapter. Then I got burned, or maybe just came to terms with the amount of burned-out I’d been hauling around for months… and ran home to rest. I spent time with family. I visited old friends. I worked on the healing protocol for Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (a whole other topic I’d love to devote some writing time towards), eating and resting. I painted. I backpacked.

It was restful in a way, but the open question of “what am I doing next with my life?” gnawed at me incessantly. I felt like I’d traded the stress of a stressful job and obsessively active lifestyle, with the stress of absolute uncertainty about my future — which terrified me. I had questions, and I needed to start working to find answers.

I started pulling threads months ago, under the general question of “what could I do with my life and career if not Tech?”

What Do I Actually Want To Do With My Life Now?

This was the question I’d bought myself time to answer, when I saved up money and quit my job.

I’d always hedged on this question, because I had feelings but a lot of self-doubt and fear! Now it was time to face the fear! And the absolute mess of ideas inside of me. One by one, I started pulling threads on various things I felt “called” towards, or that legitimately sparked my heart’s interest.

Some of the ideas that I played with in real life (you’ll notice they are all pretty radically different than Tech work):

• become a somatic therapist? (remember TVM?)
  • I got intimidated and shied off this path, or punted it at the least.
• become a private chef? I’m already a good cook….
  • This manifested in me becoming the unofficial house-elf and private chef of some dear friends who housed me for a chunk of time. But it didn’t feel like a “calling”.
• become a postpartum doula? or a normal doula for women who want to do homebirths and nature births!
  • I want to be around babies and moms!!
  • It would be an epic Divine Feminine service opportunity
  • But… caregiving feels like a big intellectual step backwards, even if it feels sweet to my heart… it kind of felt like cutting off a limb, when I got far enough down the road mentally imagining what this professional world would be like for me.
• Wilderness Therapy…

Wilderness therapy was one of the paths I seriously considered.

Honestly, it was just a dream at the beginning – completely ethereal. And yet it turned out that there was a path there underneath the dream that yielded to my prodding, every step of the way. The first lead was from a friend telling me she knew people in the field, and giving me their phone numbers. I called and talked to them. My interest was sparked further, and I found companies. I applied and interviewed.

It all seems very simple and straightforward now that I write it like that, but each step was tentative and uncertain, bogged down by daydreams of running back to my old life. I HATED the uncertainty and structurelessness of being unemployed, even when I had plenty of savings to technically keep me away from serious financial stress. If I would have been offered my old job during this time, I would have taken it in a HEARTBEAT.

So I worked at it, but really it’s a million miracles that led to me actually making it here. I can’t claim credit for the Goddess’s good works.

Finding the next right step: The Anasazi Foundation

I love this part.

I’d been doing my due diligence to work on pulling this Wilderness Therapy thread, and I even had an invitation to do a training for a company in Idaho… but something about it didn’t feel quite right. I liked the industry, I liked the job description, I liked Idaho, but…. well, maybe I didn’t like Idaho enough. I don’t know, it just felt off.

And part of me still had that feeling about the Southwest, but it wasn’t enough of a feeling for me to focus my efforts on it.

One day, out of nowhere, I had a Spiritual Experience that pointed me towards Arizona.

What do I mean by “spiritual experience”? It’s something that pins my attention away from the normal flow of things, something that strikes me at a deeper level unexpectedly. It feels like a message from God, or the Universe, or whatever you like to call the Grand Mystery!

One kind of spiritual experience I have on occasion is a set of synchronicities – strange coincidences, like a reference to the same thing happening in different, unrelated places. I really pay attention if it comes in a set of 3, as this one did.

My set of three was unexpected references to the Grand Canyon. I found myself in two separate conversations that day that led to the Grand Canyon, and seemingly out of nowhere I was in a bliss-portal, recalling and re-living magical moments from my family’s trip to the Grand Canyon in 2023. Back then, I remember thinking (about the Canyon) “I bet I could spend my life in here and be happy”. It was striking to reconnect with that feeling, to somehow pop out of the mire of my usual dreadful thinking about the uncertainties of my life, and into a magical, spacious feeling. And then, late in the day, after arriving at a friend’s house and entering a totally different space… I opened a book to a random page without even thinking about it, and lo and behold that page pointed me right to the Grand Canyon as well, completely catching me off guard.

The Universe pointing me to the Grand Canyon… what could it mean?? I mulled it over and decided that maybe exploring Arizona could be worth a shot. I googled “Wilderness Therapy Arizona”, and found Anasazi.

As soon as I saw their website, I knew I’d found my place. A wilderness therapy program rooted in Native American spirituality. Like an answer to my heart’s truest prayer! I immediately emailed them with complete confidence that, even though I’d apparently just missed a round of hiring and training, they would have a place for me.

The next day I walked spontaneously into a rock shop, and for no reason was immediately drawn to a nondescript pile of small, brownish-black rock balls.

I picked one up and turned it over in my hand, feeling its weight… and when I looked at the sign I laughed out loud. “Moqui marbles”, aka “Shaman stones”… from ARIZONA! My heart felt joyfully content at what I took to be a Universal message of affirmation, and I bought a pair… to bring with me to Arizona.

Finding & Buying a Van

I didn’t think I was going to buy it. I just wanted to look.

I’d been thinking about buying a vehicle, and mulling over different ideas. I went to meet this surfer dude up in the Oakland hills who had a super minimally built-out Transit Connect – it pretty much just had a bed, nothing else. He’d lived out of it sporadically, and used it for surf trips. He worked on it himself. I remember feeling like a total phony when I was going to see it. I had no idea what to ask. I had no experience with vans. I didn’t know what I was looking at, besides trying to imagine if I could see myself camping out of this thing in the desert.

In retrospect, I should probably never be allowed to look at or buy cars by myself.

But I took it for a drive. Saw it. Let it go. Gave him a wishy washy “I’ll think about it”.

Until I found Anasazi the next day. And once I found Anasazi, I knew I was going to Arizona. And if I was going to go to Arizona, maybe I should just jump in with both feet and give Van Life a go. On a whim, I decided to buy the van.

Completely foolish!!!! Absolutely a mistake. I didn’t know what I was doing, at all. I had no idea the many headaches that would be lying in wait for me on that road.

But, naively, that is what I decided to do!

And as imperfect as it was, it worked. I at least succeeded in getting myself wheels and a very basic shelter for the next part of my journey. Though the hyper-minimal micro-camper journey proved to be uncomfortable and bumpy and has left me cursing at Reality many times, it’s also taught me a lot. A topic for another post, perhaps.

Things moved quickly from there. Anasazi did indeed email me and have space for another training soon, as I knew they would. So I kicked my butt into gear to get ready to move into a van and go to Arizona. I had an awfully stressful time trying to build shelves into the van with no-to-laughably-low carpentry skills… and I put a little micro-life’s worth of my stuff in it. Once again I relied on miracles. Helpful people came into my path and helped me. My biggest shoutout goes to Cosmic Honey, where a friend’s dad helped me push my shelving project over the finish line. And from there, I drove to Arizona, ready to start something new.

Lessons Learned

It was really cool to have an experience of spiritual guidance and to take leaps of Faith that felt in alignment with that. Everything that’s happened for me, in relation to Anasazi, has been positive. It really feels like something bigger and benevolent pointed me right towards something good for me.

I don’t think Life just hands that kind of thing out willy-nilly, though. It felt like a reward for putting in my own legwork. It only happened when I got stuck, after I’d been taking steady steps forward to look for a way out of my muck. I had to initiate that energy, and take forward steps even when it felt very uncertain. Life rewards hard work and bravery. That’s a take-away for me.

The whole van thing has been somewhat forced and effort-ful, in contrast. I think that move was too impulsive, which is part of my nature. There are a million ways it could have been better. In the grand scheme of things, though, I think I’ll be able to look back on the van learning journey with warmth and compassion for myself. I’m still in the middle of this van experience, and will be until I figure something better or different out for myself, be it moving into a new place or going back to my SF apartment.

Maybe most of all… IT FEELS GOOD TO BE IN MOTION AND ENGAGED WITH THE WORLD AGAIN. It makes me feel alive, and human.

THANKS FOR READING. Hope you can find some entertainment in all my joys and mistakes.

***Up next: Life at Anasazi and what Wilderness Therapy is teaching me.***