It’s my birthday! 

The passage of a year from birthday to birthday sometimes feels more significant to me than the new year because it creates in me a desire to go inwards and assess, who was I last year. What was important to me and what has changed? How am I able to celebrate the notion of gaining a year of wisdom? What comes next for me?

I feel that every year has a theme and this new birthday year was so strong and obvious to me, 2023 is all about the theme of ‘home’. This birthday coming up marks the beginning of the end of being a COVID refugee for the last three long years.

Three plus years, I have lived in a state of homelessness.

I’ve had places to stay but I have not had a home since my return journey home from Australia to Portland, Oregon, USA —  back to my apartment, my cat, my plants and my entire life that I built in those five USA-based years — was interrupted by the abrupt Australian border closures and the cancellation of my flight on March 18, 2020. It left me completely stranded. Just me and my suitcase.

Since then, I have stayed at friends’ houses, in spare rooms, at Airbnbs and ended up cohabiting with my mother unexpectedly for several years while I waited to see how the cards of my life would fall.

My soul made it clear that I wasn’t to return to the United States as much as my personality wanted me to.

In fact, my personality begged my soul. Please, it said. I want to go straight back to the United States.

But my soul said, No, stay here.

So I stayed.

At this stage, what worked in my favour was that I had a really strong relationship with the unknown. Over the years I had taught myself to exist with comfort and spaciousness in uncertainty. Therefore, in the midst of global and personal chaos, I was able to drop in and settle into the unknown of what this next phase of my life would be.

And in that uncertainty and empty space, I focused on making other dreams come true.

One of the things that also happened, as I reflect on the solar year now ending, was that I started to feel a depletion at the soul level because I need to live in a temple space. That is where I thrive.

My homes and houses and spaces before this pandemic time have always vibrated with mantras, high-frequency energy, and constant upkeep from clearing the space.

The intentional creation of such a healing temple space allows the depth and breadth of my spirit and soul to expand and be fully nourished by the universe. It allows my home, wherever that may be,  to pull in very high frequencies from the cosmos that feed the kind of spiritual starry and also a non-human creature that I am.

For three years, I’ve been starving for this nourishment, and I dealt with that by going on short holidays to Airbnb where I would try to replicate that circumstance but I noticed when I came back from my adventure to Alice Springs last year that my attempt to replenish myself had completely failed.

This led me to dive into finding a new space for myself amidst the biggest housing crisis Australia has ever known.

Against the odds, and with the help of Spirit from my clearly articulated need, I finally found myself a space and I have been painting, nesting and vibing – all in between teaching and writing and seeing clients!

And yes, you may wonder how I did that because I wonder how I did that, too!

Here are some pictures of my painting in progress– more to come!

In the weeks following my birthday (that’s coming up soon!), I’m going to begin to finally live in my own space, play mantras, lay out my crystal grid around my house, do ceremonies, and create a temple, a place of automatic sacred breathing space. 

I can only imagine the nourishment that this will give me at a soul level and how that will elevate the work and my offerings in the world and whatever potentially comes next.

Finally reaching the clarity with myself of a home being essential has allowed other truths to surface that go hand in hand with this move. I realised home was not all I have been missing.  

It became clear that there are two very important things that I knew would help me to recover from the last couple of years. One is that being an absolute animal lover, I am someone who desires to have a menagerie.

So the first move was to adopt a puppy. He is an unending source of adoration and merriment. Dogs are so profound but part of their wisdom lies in their humour, they can be so naughty and so silly!

And then came my four sweet chickens- my Isa Brown girls- Rosie, Marissa, Alice and Molly!

The second is a garden, which I have also begun.

I’ve been going out every day and seeing if those seeds have pushed through the earth and if the seedlings have expanded, extending their slender leaves towards the light, every dip and rise of the sun.

It’s so simple, so grounding and it brings me such joy.

I’ve been planting herbs and next it will be bulbs and trees. The thought of being connected to the visceral growth and development of green things just makes my heart sing because the more established they become, the more earth energy we can exchange. 

When I reflected upon the last year as I approached my birthday, I recognised it has been a year of making dreams come true, important elements that needed to be birthed before I could clearly see what I needed next. 

I always dreamed of teaching big powerful programs that change people’s lives, of making a substantial difference. And most importantly, supporting people to become themselves from the soul level out into their lives.

I truly believe that I’ve achieved this. The feedback I get from my clients inspires me to keep going and to offer more.

I have about seven more programs waiting to be written, sitting on the list on my computer. I just need the time to both write them and teach them. I know there is so much stored up and downloaded just waiting to come through from last year and this is where home and outer sacred space come in. It will allow me the support to grow all my thought and spirit babies too. 

I’m not sure of my other birthday goals for the coming year, but I intuitively feel that writing this out and sharing it, being witnessed will create the spaciousness for the words to come.

It will continue to include creativity, nourishment, and more of a return to worldly life, elements that were waiting in the wings to come through from a time of high demand from Spirit. 

The challenge I have definitely mastered in the last three years is how to birth things in the middle of chaos! It showed me how when I surrender, when life has other plans and sends you on a massive detour, that I still have the skills and natural resilience to let my gifts shine. 

I’m very grateful that this birthday marks the end of my COVID refugee status and that particular level of upheaval, even though there are threads still to unwind, such as my storage unit in the United States, full of my clothes and art supplies and books and many objects and tools that are precious to me.

Someday I’ll return and unpack them, give much away and bring the most important and precious items home to Australia. It remains a mystery to me when that will happen, when my whole life returns to being in one place.

And that’s okay.

I’ve learned to trust that if I really surrender and I follow my deepest guidance, the universe always helps things to work out for me.

In fact, if I surrender and follow its guidance, my gut instinct, and my heart and the guidance of my Team, I can generate much more incredible outcomes than I could ever imagine.