This photo of me with my tree was taken on a summer afternoon last year. It was balmy and it was balm… warm, soothing, languorous.

People often ask me how I manage to fit it ALL in… the ceremonies, the circles, the rituals, the reading, the creating, the learning, the

There was a point, five years ago, when I consciously devoted myself to living from soul. I declared it aloud to my coach. It was one of the scariest choices I’ve made, not least because I didn’t really know what it meant or what it would require of me.

I wrote the words below almost three months ago as we begun the first circle of Waking The Wild Feminine… today, as I prepare for our closing ceremony I can see it was indeed the deepest, darkest one yet.

I’ve invited the women in Waking The Wild Feminine into playing an Envy Game… ooooh, it’s so hot and juicy! Each of them are sharing what they’re envious of in the other women.

Just over a year ago, I went on a wild wander and asked for a special feather as a sign that I should devote to shamanism (despite my great resistance)… I followed my belly button down a dry stream bed that I never normally walk along, and found a whole dead buzzard.

Once upon a time, I was barely conscious of archetypes, I mean, I knew the word and understood its meaning. Or rather, I understood the definition… but I had NO idea of the meaning. Now archetypes literally are everything to me… I eat, sleep (definitely dream) and breathe them.

I used to think that concerning oneself with the new moon and full moon was performative new age woo. I was way too brilliant, logical and able to think critically to fall for the utter nonsense that it mattered how much of the moon we can SEE. After all, that’s all that’s actually happening, right? The moon isn’t actually changing shape.

She whispers from the sheets,

her voice an inner smile –

Stay in sweet surrender

and I’ll make it worth your while.

It’s a myth that one day we’ll feel powerful enough, courageous enough, resourced enough, healed enough, supported enough, protected enough, enough enough to feel ready to be the fullness of who we came here to be without any pain, fear or risk.

I recorded a podcast episode yesterday with a lovely chap, a psychotherapist, called Paul Leslie. Part of our conversation was about the idea of a “context” for our lives, meaning the frame or perspective we live our life from.

For anyone caught up in trying to live life based on our culture’s conditions, it will feel meaningless and hard much of the time… for neurodivergents and magically-gifted people (often one and the same), this goes double.

Despite my many years of experience of nature-based soul and spirit work, my current devotion to shamanic work, and clients calling me a shamaness for years before it was even something in my own awareness, I don’t call myself a shaman and I don’t know if I ever will.

I’ve shared before the significance this painting, The Soul of The Rose, has for me – and I’m understanding that now more deeply than ever. The first time I saw it, many years before I lived the kind of life I do now, I knew it was “home” somehow and fell utterly in love with it.

I’m taking longer than expected to integrate and land after the last shamanic initiation.

A seer I know said she felt I’m shedding a skin… she’s right; I feel raw, unmade, wide open. The doors have been well and truly blown off. I haven’t really been writing, I haven’t been replying to messages and emails, I haven’t been putting big ideas into motion… In short, I haven’t been creating.

Men,

we want to tame you,

contain you,

restrain you.

Take away your roar.

There’s no safe place for your strength.

Your directness is a damned affront.

Your hardness isn’t welcome here.

By Lian Brook-Tyler

Your arrival was

heralded in words like

sanitary, applicators, cramps.

You seemed functional,

I felt nothing much at all.

When you came,

the battle was a lonely one,

with a tampon stubbornly stuck.

You seemed like the enemy,

I felt scared and small.

A sneak peek into what’s going down in Waking The Wild Medicine… “The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed” ~ Carl Jung

To create a business, a real business – the beautiful, fantastical, edgy af, playful and love-fuelled one that your soul is inconveniently calling you to – takes time. Time to hear your soul’s call, time to find the courage to heed it and then a lot more time than you believe at the start that you can or will give it before it ‘works’.

This week I saw a lion and a wolf in the bark of my special oak tree. Both are symbolic animals for me and seeing them together in this way was the answer to a deep question I’ve been living into. Is there *really* a lion and a wolf depicted here?