My Sacred Journey

My Her-Story I was born into a world shaped by control and silence — a conservative, patriarchal household where the feminine was expected to submit, to smile, and to stay quiet. My father, an abusive alcoholic, lived out the unhealed legacies of his own lineage. My mother — kind, generous, and deeply wounded by the culture she inherited — taught me to "smile at the predator." She modeled the ideal woman as obedient, selfless, and compliant; 'The Virtuous Woman' . ​ And I became her. At 19, I left home to pursue a degree in education. I was told not to date — that "God would bring the man He meant for me." And when I met someone I wasn't attracted to but felt 'strangely familiar' with, I married him. Not because I understood love, but because I was conditioned to believe that comfort and sacrifice were enough. Unconsciously, I repeated the patterns of my childhood — marrying a man with his own addictions and imbalances, while playing the role of the loyal, virtuous woman who made herself small. I unconsciously lived out my imbalances and the maladaptive survival mechanisms I was taught. ​ For most of my life, I held tightly to a dream that felt sacred: To marry once for life. To grow old beside the same man. To be a stay-at-home mother, cherished and respected by her children. The family unit-steady, intact, loving - was the altar I build my life upon. ​ But life had other plans. In order to financially support our household, I became an artist, interior designer, and contractor — running a successful business, supporting three sons and a husband - it all looked perfect from the outside. We had the house on the hill, the big close knit extended family, connected members in the community...the image of success. But within those walls, I lived in trauma — masked by loyalty and the belief that divorce would bring punishment from God and harm to my children. So I stayed. For 25 years, I held it all together. Until I couldn’t anymore. ​ By 2014, the scaffolding of my life was beginning to tremble. The dreams I had cherished - being married to one man until death, raising children who would honor me, keeping the family unit sacred and intact - were starting to show their fractures. And then came the reckoning. ​ On my 49th birthday, I fell to my knees in a puddle of tears. "This life isn't working. Have your way with me. I surrender." One month later, my body echoed what my soul already knew - I had a health crisis. And one by one the illusions began to unravel: The marriage. The idea. The fantasy of how it was all 'supposed' to be. There I stood - barefoot, soul bare, at the threshold between the life I had built and the life that now called me forward. And there were only two choices left: Grow or die. ​ So I chose to grow - not in the way I had imagined., but in the way my soul required. ​ I came out of surgery with crystalline clarity: If I was to live, I could no longer stay in this marriage. I asked for a divorce. What followed was bitter and brutal - but it was the first time in my life I exercised a true boundary. I drew a sacred line and declared: "I've given 25 years of my life to this man. I will not give another day." When my family of origin refused to honor that line and chose to keep my ex-husband in their fold, I released them too - blessed them on their path, but choosing my own. ​ I moved to a rustic cabin on a horse ranch. No internet. No television. No voices reinforcing old stories, biases and beliefs. Just silence, grief, and the unraveling of everything I once believed. Everything I once dreamed of. Everything I had worked to build. ​ Not long after, I was hit head on by a dunk driver in the dead of night. I survived - but with a brain injury that ended my career and the life I had known. And just months later, after finalizing the divorce,, selling my house along with most of my early possessions. another head-on collision occurred. Again, I lived. But everything else...My health, My business. My family. My home. Gone ​ That was the fire of initiation. The soul's demand for liberation - no matter the cost. And though I lost nearly everything, I found my Self. ​ I had lived over fifty years inside the constructs of Western culture and the religious frameworks I was raised in. They offered me structure. A sense of belonging. But they never prepared me for this. I had never even heard the words spiritual awakening. So when my soul began to unravel - when everything I had trusted began to dissolve - I had no context for what was happening. I felt stripped... Of identity. Of certainty. Of self. This wasn't something I chose. I didn't seek out enlightenment. Awakening was happening to me. Like a tide I couldn't stop. Like a veil being pulled back. Like the end of everything I knew. ​ In that raw, disoriented space, one conversation became a lifeline. My dear Uncle Tom - a guide and soul mentor to me - offered something I didn't know I needed: a map. He spoke of the archetypal journey hidden within the story of Jesus - the betrayal, the surrender, the death, and the resurrection. As he spoke with quiet knowing, something ancient stirred. I had heard these words before - but never like this. They didn't save me from the descent. But they sanctified it. They helped me see that what I was experiencing wasn't madness. It was initiation. I wasn't breaking down. I was breaking open. That was the first flicker of light in the void. It didn't illuminate the whole path, but it gave me enough courage to stop clinging. To begin letting go. To allow the becoming to unfold. So I bought a backpack. Because some part of me knew: I couldn't stay where I was. Not in body. Not in soul. With my backpack on my back, I leaped into the unknown. ​ Over the next four years, I traveled — not to escape, but to awaken and heal. I sat with Buddhists and Hindus, Taoists and Pagans. I meditated in the deserts of India, found courage in the mountains of Nepal, and reconnected with Earth in Indonesia. I drank sacred plant medicine. Ayahuasca and psilocybin cracked me open to the divine — not as judgment, but as benevolence. I discovered Astrology — the ancient language of the soul — and it changed my life. I devoured sacred texts like the Tao Te Ching and Bhagavad Gita. I went on retreats, fell into deep stillness, and met my own soul.​ ​ Through this journey, I’ve lived death and rebirth — again and again. I’ve felt the sting of betrayal, the ache of loss, the ecstasy of freedom, and the joy of divine alignment. I’ve walked through every phase of the alchemical fire — and I continue to walk. I am still a woman becoming...the healing I hold space for is the same river I surrrender to, again and again. ​ Out of that fire, I wrote a book: The Legend of Jumping Mouse — a reimagined telling of the Hero’s Journey through the eyes of the feminine. I created Her Sacred Journey as a living temple — to guide women home to themselves. ​​​ I carry a passion for self-sovereignty, for helping others rise out of consensus reality and into soul-authored lives. I work with women who are ready to leave behind old conditioning — the voices that told them to stay small, to hide their light, to quiet their truth. I walk beside those who hear the whisper, who feel the pull, who know: "There is something more… and it lives inside of me." If that’s you, welcome. This is your Sacred Journey too. ​​​ The Heroine’s Journey is not a metaphor — it’s a living, breathing path that some of us are called to walk, often through fire, loss, and the crumbling of everything we thought made us safe. My lived experience is the map — not polished or linear, but marked with the sacred footprints of pain transmuted into power, wounds to wisdom, silence unraveled into song. ​ For the woman who feels the whisper… who senses the call to leave the known… know this: you are not broken — you are being initiated. This journey takes unimaginable courage, to say YES when everything around you says stay quiet, stay small, don't change. But what waits on the other side is not just survival. It is sovereignty. It is tranquility and peace. It is your true voice. It is your luminous, holy becoming. ​ To walk this path is an honor — and to guide another woman on it is the deepest privilege of my life.