2024 Reflections

Reflecting on 2024

Post Edit *** I had a much harder time publishing this than I initially thought I would. I started writing it on the 4th of January and have been editing it for two weeks because I didn’t know how to put things. I don’t want to express too much negativity since I am a big optimist and try my best to see the best perspective of everything. I also recognize that I am not always happy because I am whole, and I am meant to experience and feel all things, not just good things. So here is an unapologetic summary of a complete year, with both good and bad things all mixed together, so that I can look back in a few years, when I have posted several of these summaries, and reflect on how much I have grown as a result of years like this. ***

It is that time when people sit and reflect on their experiences from the previous year and try to analyze what was good, what was bad, and what we would like to edit or adjust about the experience going forward. I am joining the masses in this time of reflection. There is so much that I am incredibly grateful for and so many painful lessons that I had to learn in 2024. There are so many sides and facets to the year, and I am not sure where to begin, but I will just go with the flow and see how that goes.

2024 started out as a creation year for me, right from the beginning. I joined a Reiki master workshop within the first week of January. During the workshop, I came across a very unexpected Being during a guided meditation to meet our Reiki guide. We were taken to a door, and when the door opened, my guide stepped through. I couldn’t believe it because I had lived in denial of Him for so many years of my life. I could feel the amazing light and energy that flowed from him and through him. He emanated the healing life force energy that I was learning to use. I welcomed my guide, and I have felt his presence ever since. After the Reiki attunement, there is a 21-day phase of integration, cleanse, and self-practice. I jumped into the cleanse and started my new year with a really decent detox from all sugar, caffeine, alcohol, THC, etc. I tried my hardest to follow the five Reiki principles, which state:

• Just for today, I will not be angry.

• Just for today, I will not worry.

• Just for today, I will be grateful.

• Just for today, I will be honest.

• Just for today, I will be kind to all living things.

Following these principles was much easier said than done. I remember feeling so incredibly hopeless as I was having many arguments with an ex-boyfriend. Trying to manage my anger was hard, and very often, I just breathed and tried my hardest not to say or do anything triggering that would create another argument. Often it was impossible, but I was also forgiving with myself and told myself that trying my best was the most important thing.

I became acutely aware of life as I tried my hardest to be kind to all living things. This resulted in the death of most of the veggies that I had been growing. My watermelon plants became aphid-infested, but I was unable to take revenge and kill the aphids. The same happened with mosquitoes and flies and the like. I just stopped killing anything during that time. Now, occasionally, I smack a Mozzy, but I have grown a deep and sincere appreciation for the amazing purpose that these insects bring into the circle of life.

It was only a couple of weeks into the year when I connected with an acquaintance from my past, and we went on a whirlwind of wanting to create together. The whole idea came into being because of a random act of kindness. I met her at the beginning of the year because I shared my tutoring summary on Facebook, and she wanted to learn more about teaching English online, so we met for tea and a conversation.

During the conversation, my intuition gave me a nudge, and I offered to pay for a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) certification for her. She was so grateful and blown away by my offering of a random act of kindness that I believe some light went on somewhere. At some point, she also returned the kindness by giving me access to the breathwork workshop that she was busy studying—the knowledge from which has been amazing and monumental.

We spoke more and more, and one day she shared a podcast from DejaBlu, very excitedly. The podcast was about creating a conscious movement of sorts to heal and spread love and kindness around the world. She said that she would never even have considered it had it not been for me gifting her the TEFL course. When she spoke about the idea and shared the podcast, another friend happened to be in the car and immediately jumped in and asked if he could also be involved.

This is where we started developing The Heart Space. The idea was to publicize our own healing journey in the form of having very open-hearted, vulnerable, and honest discussions on videos and podcasts, and then allowing others to join learn from our experience, relate to our journey, and heal with us, as well as Interviewing different holistic practitioners, healers and wise people and providing some free meditations, hypnosis, sound baths, breathwork, and other tools for people to use for their own healing process. Creating an active community of people who are consciously in process of healing and providing tools and support to do it. 

In the beginning, we were very consistent in meeting, discussing, planning, and taking action. We thought about how exactly we wanted to create, what our name should be, what our goals should be, how we wanted to deliver ourselves, and we recorded our first open discussion. The designer in the group created an awesome logo, and I bought a domain. In the process of editing the first discussion, everything fell apart as quickly as it had started. It was so interesting because I had bought my first deck of Tarot cards, and I pulled a card on the Monday. The card I pulled was the Three of Pentacles, which is a depiction of a builder speaking to two architects inside a church they are building. The building cannot be completed without the efforts of the builder, nor can it be completed without the input from the architects. The card represents the value of collaboration and the pooled resources and experience of a group working together towards a common goal.

On the Tuesday, which had become our regular meeting day, I was asked about my idea of how we would manage the finances of our initiative. Financial gain had never even been a topic or primary intention before that moment. I had spoken before about learning the 12 universal laws and putting our intention into following the laws and giving freely, as these laws state that the more you give, the more you receive. The whole essence of the movement was born because of a random act of kindness that touched her heart, and the idea was to allow others to heal with us through sharing our own journeys and offering some free tools that people could use. So I didn’t really think or understand that her perspective or understanding of the concepts that I wanted to follow would be so different.

Immediately, she retracted herself from The Heart Space without as much as a discussion or another thought towards it. She said, and of course, I fully understand and accept her perspective, that she didn’t spend a lot of money paying for her courses and getting her education so that she could give her hard-earned healing skills and tools away for free on YouTube. Clearly, there was a major difference in thought and opinion, and we never even tried to overcome those conflicts. She just left, and though the other friend and I met a few times, trying to keep the momentum going, it was not really going anywhere as she had been an amazing manager and had always kept our constant progress on track. So we put that project on pause.

The pause actually came at a great time, as there was a landslide of events that started happening one after the other. First was the wedding of some of my best friends, and I was honored to walk down the aisle with them and stand behind the bride as a bridesmaid. It was a beautiful wedding, And as weddings go, it was a whole lot of organization and stress that accumulated and developed for a few months, just to enjoy the event for a night, but I watched a beautiful union, I met many amazing people through this event, and I danced and danced my heart out all night.

Shortly after the wedding, my in-laws came to visit from the UK, and I could focus completely on the trip and that experience. I successfully drove us around the country on a big camping tour for a week and a half. It was a really great process for me because I was responsible for all the planning, the driving, and most of the cooking. I learned how to cook many new dishes on an open fire, and I showed myself yet again that I was much more capable than I thought. It was really great to be able to see them and see them bond with our son, who had only met these grandparents once before. I really love nature, and I am so grateful to have had that time to travel around, see more, and do more. When we returned home, it was only a day or two before the next growing phase started, and my mother was hospitalized with a broken hip.

This hospitalization was an extremely difficult time in my household. In the hospital, they did blood tests and told my mother that her organs had been damaged due to the amount and types of medication she had been taking for the last 30 years. This information made her immediately stop taking all the medication she was on, including antidepressants and antipsychotics, against the advice of her doctors. It triggered a massive psychotic breakdown, which drastically extended her hospital stay. We all thought she would be stuck in that mental state forever, and we had no idea if she would ever get better.

She was hospitalized for two months, and during this time, we all learned how to adjust to life under these new conditions. I changed my schedule so that I could have time to cook for the family, and we all adjusted to new routines to adapt to the circumstances. I showed myself that I could do everything that needed to be done, and that adaptation is a human superpower. We can always adapt to the environment and circumstances that we face. Slowly, with time, she was put back onto some of the critical medications her brain required to function normally, and she started to improve. After two months, she came home. Even though her mental state was not perfect, the improvements were vast, and we were able to manage, cope, and adapt with her at home.

During the time she was hospitalized, I had to say goodbye to a friend who had taken her own life. It was absolutely devastating. It struck very close to home because my mom had made several attempts during my life, including last year. In addition, my ex-boyfriend had also made an attempt on his life, and I felt incredibly responsible. My husband had also been in a severely depressed and suicidal state, as he also suffers from chronic depression. I was in an extremely depressed. Even though I tried to stay strong for my son and my household’s sake, it was impossible not to flow with all of the emotions that I was constantly experiencing. It was hard to put on a happy face for my students all the time, but honestly, the fact that I had to, absolutely saved me. I persevered and made it through the days. Another attempt at the end of the year showed me that even the strongest person can break in this way. Mental health has claimed the lives of one of my uncles and my grandfather too. Suicide seems to be a recurring theme in my life and family.

About midway through the year, one of my students, Rolen, encouraged me to start this blog. His own blog was incredibly inspiring, and he records all his thoughts and experiences in a very detailed way. Though I have not taken the same approach as him and do not post as regularly, it was still a great space for me to write some of my thoughts and ideas and to focus on something more productive and positive.

In September, my life started a completely new chapter. Everything happened like a whirlwind. Firstly, I went to a workshop to make my own medicine drum. The creation of a medicine drum is an amazing process and begins with choosing a frame and decorating and painting it inside. Inside the frame of my drum, I imbedded many memories. I imbedded memories from my holiday in Turkey with my ex-boyfriend. It had been one of the most incredible experiences of my life, and even though our relationship ended a whole year before the drum workshop, I wanted to remember some of those happy times, as opposed to the vicious and angry state that our relationship had turned into. I also imbedded memories from my husband, my son, and even a piece of my soul sister’s dreadlock. Inside, I also painted a giant snake going around the frame, as I was born in the year of the snake.

Next, we had to choose a skin, and I chose one with three big and distinct scratches on the inside. I considered them a representation of my nuclear family—me, my husband, and my son. We scraped the hair from our skins, a process which I did naked and freely, paying homage to my love for a naturist lifestyle. After the skin scraping, they were soaked overnight in vinegar to close the follicles, and the next day, we cut the skin, made our cords, and strung up our drums. I created my favorite triangle shape, the Merkaba, as the grip of my drum. The Merkaba is an incredible tool of ascension, and you can read more about it here. The whole process is considered a birthing, and we referred to our drums as drum babies. A medicine drum is a healing tool, and it is said that playing a medicine drum helps you connect with the heartbeat of your mother and of Mother Earth. Both the process of creation and the sound and frequency that they play are also medicine.

When I returned home from the drum birthing workshop, I was surprised by the birth of a tiny new San Pedro cactus baby, which was born in the same weekend as my drum. My wonderful soul sister gave me this cutting in February, and it finally grew, and a variety of medicines had stepped into my life. Two weeks after the drum workshop, we met at the Old School, which is an amazing historical property. The medicine drum-making sister, Britta, had a small healing space on the property, and we met there around her medicine wheel in a shamanic sacred ceremony to meet our drums.

Right after this, my whole life changed drastically and suddenly. My husband told me that he had been depressed about many things for a long time and needed change. He didn’t feel like our polyamorous relationship dynamic was available to him in this country, as people are not open-minded, and nobody wanted to date someone who had a wife. In addition, he hated our living circumstances, and I refused to leave my parents because I feel a responsibility towards them and many other things that had built up over a long time, which he never communicated. For the last five years, since my hospitalization in 2020, I had been walking in the direction of spirituality and deep inner healing, and he was not really walking on the same path and journey. We were walking in opposite directions. He decided to take control of his own reality and leave to save his sanity and pursue a different career, path, and life. I wholly understand and accept his feelings, choices, and reasons for leaving, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

I was devastated. I was thrown into another deep emotional hole. I felt myself constantly forgetting to breathe. This deep depression hung around me, but I knew that deep pain comes with deep growth. It always has in the past. The greatest areas of growth and development in my life have always come after dealing with and processing deep and difficult experiences... And so it did. I feel myself growing at a monumental rate, as I am moving through and processing the floods of emotion that this separation has brought me. I feel myself becoming stronger and more resilient, and I also feel myself connecting more closely to my intuition and taking steps towards the next phase of my life. I am grieving every day, but I have also become acutely aware of the grief cycles, having dealt with them before and understanding what my emotions mean and recognizing them as valuable processing opportunities to grow and overcome, instead of just being lost in the waves of feeling angry, sad, and lost.

When we attended the ceremony to meet our drums, Britta mentioned that she would be moving out of that healing space and going back to the farm. I asked one of my amazing sisters, who is already a practicing healer, if she would be interested in renting the space with me. After all, I spent four years studying massage and had also expanded my repertoire with life coaching, meditation facilitation, and hypnosis, and I am still learning more. The process of facilitating and empowering others on their healing journeys would surely be a great process of healing for myself too. I have felt a strong calling to use my knowledge and experience to help others for many years now. This year, everything seemed to have been orchestrated to blow up in my face and then come together in a way that pushed me in the direction I had been longing to go. Talk about manifesting what I want to a whole new degree.

At the end of October, Nakashwa and I moved into our new healing space, and we called it just that—“The Healing Space,” where I can practice sharing my knowledge and learning to help people on different levels. Physically through touch, like massage and lymph drainage. Energetically through Reiki,, Thai massage, reflexology, and shiatsu. Mentally through life coaching, meditation, and hypnosis.

In November, I heard about and felt a calling to attend an Ayahuasca ceremony. Everything directed me towards this ceremony. First, I didn’t have enough money for the workshop, but then the funds arrived out of the blue, just before the payment cutoff. I was told to trust in the knowledge of the ancients and that it would help me overcome the grief, so I decided to take the leap of faith in the ancient medicines of Mother Earth, and I joined the ceremony. That was an incredible experience that I might write about at another time, but in essence, Mother Ayahuasca showed me exactly why my marriage had to end in order for me to grow up and step into the role that was calling me. This was just one of hundreds of divine truths and understandings that I gained within that medicine experience, on many levels of life. I also received a calling to go into the jungles of the Amazon to meet Mamma Aya on her home turf, which is an experience that now lies at the top of my bucket list.

And then the end of the year was upon us. Just before I left for the beach for a week long holiday, I made a last, solo sacred fire at The healing space. As I was dancing around the fire and banging on my medicine drum, I hit the edge of my drum and the skin made a loud popping sound, and it got a giant tear in it. At first I was sad, because I loved my drum baby so much, and making the medicine drum was such a monumental experience. But the drum Mamma said that it sounds like I had outgrown that old skin, considering the old relationship memories that I had embedded into it, and how much my life had changed in the short period of time, since I made it. I couldn't agree more. I think I had outgrown that skin, just like a snake sheds its old skin....

Just as I thought I had overcome the grunt of the 2024 madness, my father’s mental health broke just before the new year struck... This leaves me with a new beginning to a new year that is completely shrouded in uncertainty and a deep unknown for what the future holds, but I know that I will go with the flow and I will grow as I go. When everything turned into chaos and I was thrown into darkness multiple times, I persevered, grew, overcame, and landed stronger than before. So that is what I will do again and again with whatever comes my way...

I think the absolute highlight of 2024 is the people I got to know. I made many incredible connections and developed many wonderful relationships. Notably, I have bonded deeply with soul family, with whom I experience a deep soul connection and who seem to be walking on a similar spiritually oriented path as me. I also got to know and love the Goddess who gave me my cactus cutting, and through her, I connected with a whole variety of sisters, and I found a kind of love and support system that I had never really known before.

I can also happily say that I don’t think I would have survived the year, had it not been for the 1800+ students that I had the pleasure of meeting with throughout the year, all of whom made sure that there was a smile on my face every single day, even on the worst days. Some of them I know I will connect with and even co-create with in the future, and some of them have become close friends that I cherish and hope to meet one day. One particular student with whom I bonded with instantly, is called Cong, and she is also a life coach. We speak regularly, and now we are planning on how we can co-create together and perhaps press play on The Heart Space again. 

I also made a vow last January to keep on creating every month, and I created 12 Merkaba for random recipients, as well as 12 Lino carvings, one for each month. Through the Merkaba initiative, I also met many amazing souls, with whom I will surely connect with and learn more from in the future. 

The magical part of such a year, where we face problems and struggles and difficulties, is that we are growing at an exponential rate. My understanding, perception, and essence is leveling up. I feel it in a very real and visceral way. Even in the worst experiences that I have faced, I was able to find a light and see the positive perspectives. I am excited for everything ahead, including more grief and pain that I will inevitably encounter because that is a part of life and this human experience. Being able to experience such deep emotions and feelings is such a powerful blessing and tool that I can use to grow and develop myself beyond what I can even imagine for myself.

So here’s a cheers to 2024. Thank you for everything—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thank you for all the growth, thank you for all the joy, and all the pleasure.

There is a song that went viral a few years ago, with a little boy singing, “Lord, thank you for sunshine, thank you for rain. Thank you for joy, and thank you for pain. It's a beautiful day, ay, ay, ay. It's a beautiful day, ay, ay, ay.” And it always plays through my mind, on good days and bad, and is such a sweet reminder to remain grateful because I am leveling up, and we level up so much more through grief than we do through good times, ease, and joy.

Now calling in 2025 to throw at me whatever it has got, because I am ready to take on whatever comes my way. Gratitude and grace will save every day. I am ready to step up to the plate and create my life for my highest good. Let’s go!