A fortune teller told me this would happen
The story before the story…
Years ago, a fortune teller told me I would have a place by the ocean. A place where people would come to reconnect, to heal, to remember themselves and their purpose. At the time, it felt so far away from my reality, almost like she was speaking about someone else's life.
I have never forgotten that moment and I write about it in my book. But that's not where this story actually starts…
I almost said no
My journey has been strewn with sliding door moments, redirections, and rejections, and one of the first happened almost twenty years ago, on an ordinary afternoon, with a question I didn't expect. My friend and psychotherapist asked if she could give me a past life regression session. I almost said no. It sounded strange, unfamiliar, nothing like the structured, ambitious life I was building at the time as an event producer, about as far from spirituality as a person could get. But I have always been a yes person. So I said yes.
She guided me down, deeper and deeper, into a meditative state until the room around me disappeared completely. And then a scene started to form, vivid and unmistakable, the kind of thing that doesn't feel like imagination because it doesn't ask your permission to arrive. Bare feet, dark and rugged, rooted into dry earth. A modest hut behind me. Inside it, a small table lined with herbs, oils, tools I somehow already knew how to use. I could smell the ocean. I could feel how dry the air was. None of it made logical sense to the version of me lying on that couch, and yet every part of it felt more familiar than my own bedroom.
"Who are you?" my therapist asked.
I didn't think before I answered. I am a medicine woman.
Why I'm nervous
Although the image of the medicine woman stayed with me always, it took years before I started sharing about what I saw and experienced. This is something I've always been nervous to write about. Hypnosis is scientific in nature, but what comes up inside it, past lives included, is subjective, and it isn't something you can always prove. My logical mind can't help but want validation. For years, I worried about what people would think if they knew how much of my own path had been shaped by sessions like that one.
But the truth is, that path kept guiding me, again and again, deeper into myself. Years later, almost by accident, I got certified as a clinical hypnotherapist, just for fun, never imagining I'd use it for anything serious. Then the pandemic hit, I got stuck in Costa Rica, and that random skill became the same path I have gotten to walk alongside hundreds of other people.
It was never my plan to lead others into deep dives of the subconscious, and yet that's exactly what happened. Again and again, I've watched people transform and find real peace, simply by going into a deep meditative state and reviewing this life, or others.
I'm not trying to convince you that any of it is objectively or historically true. I don't know that. In fact, I often give my clients full permission to make it up. If it results in peace, I'm here for it.
Because what I do know is that the act of going inward and looking, even without proof, even without certainty, is what changed everything for me.
THE BIG NEWS
Before I go, there's one more thing. Remember the fortune teller, the one who told me I'd live by the ocean and host people there? I'll be hosting people in this sanctuary again, very, very soon. After hosting groups around the world, and in this magical place for years, I've now been presented with a real opportunity to do that more consistently, and you are undoubtedly invited.
I'll tell you the whole story next week!
For now, the main thing I want you to know is this: the book launches August 18.
Mark your calendar, set your alarm, and get ready, because everyone who buys a copy on that day will be entered to win a trip to come stay here with me!
My Path to Self-Awareness
Self-awareness didn't arrive for me as a concept. It arrived as a recognition. A noticing of a version of myself I had quietly forgotten how to access. Self-awareness is where everything begins, because awareness precedes change. It's the space between a thought and our reaction to it, the moment we realize something is happening within us, but it is not us. And in that space, even if it's small at first, there is choice.
Without it, we move through life on autopilot. We repeat patterns we inherited from our upbringing, our environment, the emotional imprints handed to us before we had any language for them. We take on roles and beliefs that once protected us, and slowly, without noticing, they start to limit us instead.
This is the part of the book I keep coming back to, because it's the part that makes everything else possible. You can't shift a pattern you can't see. You can't release what you haven't acknowledged. Self-awareness isn't about fixing anything, and it isn't a single moment of seeing yourself clearly and being done. It's about committing to look, again and again, peeling back one more layer of the onion each time.
This is why I wanted to start here. Not with the ending, but with the beginning. Because everything I am about to share with you this Friday, and every Friday after, started with a commitment to keep looking, and to keep peeling.
Self-Awarness: THE PRACTICE
Studies suggest we think tens of thousands of thoughts each day, and the vast majority are repetitive. The mind is not creating as much as it is recycling. Self-awareness is the moment we realize that we are not the voice in our head, we are the ones who hear it.
Knowing that, we can remember that the mind will keep talking. The shift is learning where to sit in relation to it.
Practice 1: Notice Your Mind
Sit and listen. Close your eyes and bring your attention inward. Don't try to quiet your mind. Instead, listen to it. Let it speak freely, as if you're overhearing a conversation at a table beside you in a café.
Play with the voice. Say a sentence in your mind. First, yell it internally. Then whisper it. Notice that you are neither the yeller nor the whisperer, you are the one who is listening. Stay with that.
Separate from it. As thoughts arise, don't follow them. Don't finish them. Don't engage. Just notice: my mind is speaking. Not I am speaking. My mind is speaking.
Lean back. Gently shift your awareness back, as if you are taking a seat behind your thoughts. The voice continues, but you are watching the thoughts like clouds in the sky.
Notice any patterns. Pay attention to any repetition. Reoccurring concerns, loops, or stories. This is the nature of the mind. Let it repeat. You don't need to stop it.
Return to the seat of awareness. Each time you get pulled back into thinking, simply notice and step back again. No judgment. Just return to the awareness that is watching it all.
Do this for a few minutes at a time throughout your day. The goal is not to silence the mind. The goal is to stop reacting to it and to exercise the muscle of returning to awareness.