What is the deal with "letting go"?

Breaking down the art of letting go…and why it’s so misinterpreted

Throughout my healing process I came across a lot of words, quotes, coaches, spiritual teachers, etc, talk about the importance of "letting go", and if you don't, then you have "resistance" to it. Hell, I even started talking about letting go before I fully understood the concept.

Here's why the term “letting go” immediately triggers you and turns people off when used by others as spiritual bypassing or by those who do not know how to truly implement it.

Letting go is hard for anyone who has experienced trauma. Their whole life has been out of control, why would they let go again? When you tell a trauma survivor to let go, that is probably the worst thing you can do, as you're telling them to let go of everything they worked to get HOLD OF in their recovery. 

Letting go is hard if you've grown up with a strict religion and the idea of a scary god. Or if you've let go and put your trust in others before, such as those in power, and it backfired. For these and other reasons, using the term letting go is meaningless.

So what is letting go, really? There are many forms, but I am speaking of challenges in life, the spiritual practice of appropriate action, when you choose next steps for a specific situation. 

Letting go is trusting that you are supported by something greater than yourself. That you will find the courage to act at the right time, but not be attached to any outcome or demand a specific result. Letting go does not mean letting go of life, from now to infinity, floating around in time and space. No. It simply means you trust you are protected and guided, just enough to put one foot in front of the other. You do not need clarity on what to do, only that you will do whatever it takes to care for yourself first.

This is how we live in peace, in flow, and in harmony with ourselves and our intuition. But, how do we get there? How do you safely let go? What is the process? In my 39 years of life, I've never had someone explain it clearly until I came across Linda Howe, who provides such a simple method that I cannot believe no one has articulated this before. 

Linda explains that the safest way to practice the art of letting go is to put your trust in something dependable first. This could be anything from the cycles of the moon, the power that causes seeds to sprout, planets in orbit, the sun to rise, your vital organs working. This is something tangible, and something reliable. 

You do not have to put your trust in a higher power or The Divine, it has nothing to do with spirituality, it just has to be meaningful to you. Think about what that is. Waves crashing on a beach? Birds flying in the sky? Literally anything that is a constant in your life, and when you think about it, there are many. It's possible to let go into something you trust. 

When you find that constant, then begin to relax into the idea that there is a power for good at work in your life, and you can trust it without a second thought. Learn to trust what you can see, before trusting what you can't see. This is the safest way for your nervous system to begin to relax. Then, only then, can you start to let go. Eventually, you won’t have to keep letting go, because you’ll always be in flow, you won’t be swimming upstream, pushing through, and white knuckling it through life. You will just be.

Then, you can start all that other spiritual stuff. Try it, and see how it works for you.

Children of Cult - now out on Discovery+ UK!

The documentary series I took part in about growing up in The Children of God cult is now out on @discoveryplusuk!

I am proud to stand by these women who are speaking out and telling the world about their stories and their life. This was not easy. But it was necessary.

I am honored to be a part of this documentary, and I hope that sharing my story you can see that there is light after darkness and joy, purpose, power and pleasure after pain.

My past does not define me, but my story is what made me the person I am today, someone who is kind, caring, loyal, joyful, alive, vibrant, and in love with life!

I'm not a survivor, I'm a thriver. Follow me and see for yourself 💜🧚✨

Hi to all my new followers!

Hi to my new followers!

Thank you all for the love and support and messages after reading the article in the UK.

Remember that there will always be people who doubt your story and want to silence you and bring you down. Fuck all of those people. I'm out here living the life I want not thinking of them at all.

I love my life. For the first time ever I feel most at peace, most alive, strong, happy and fulfilled, able to be and do what I want. That's what healing is.

Thanks to all the words of support and encouragement from everyone, it means so much to me!

I will continue speaking about whatever I want, I will not shut up, I will not be silent and I will not change anything about me to make others feel better about themselves.

The Power and Symbolism of Blood and Children

Talking about the symbolism of blood, children, sacrifice, and why it matters

I recently talked about Nas X and his “Satan shoe” online. There was so much public & private engagement from post that I thought I'd follow up with another one to talk specifically about the symbolism of this shoe and what it represents.

I'm not religious, but I know everything around us has meaning & symbols. We take on the energy of what we surround ourselves with the most. Wearing a devil shoe with a drop of human blood has far more meaning than being edgy.

Blood Significance
There is a strong symbolic link between blood, life and death. Blood is holy and sacred. It's lifeforce, magic, one of the most powerful things on this earth. Blood represents the soul, your sovereignty and binding one person to another. Blood rituals have existed since the beginning of time.

In the Bible, blood symbolizes sacrifice, eternal life & the Divine. Self flagulation to draw blood for the cleansing of sins is used by certain Muslim groups. Pagan, Druid, Greek, Maya, and Olmec all used blood sacrifice and rituals in some form. Various African tribes still perform blood sacrifice to this day.

Blood magic includes blessings, curses, binding/unbinding, repenting from sins & more. Blood sacrifice is typically associated with bodily harm (cutting or killing) and could be categorized as black magic. Blood magic without bodily harm (menstrual blood) is used for selfless purposes like healing, union, blessings, and protection. This is known as white magic.

Black or dark magic is destructive and vindictive, used selfishly usually against another. The representation of Satan throughout history is selfishness, destructiveness, vindictiveness, cruelty, pain...the same things black magic represents.

If blood is in a satan shoe, what does that represent and those walking around wearing it? The significance of blood in a shoe that comes in a box with images of dead children in grotesque form is a lot more sinister than self expression, and it’s important to be aware of that.

Child Sacrifice

Another important topic regarding the shoe and the symbolism, are the images of child sacrifice.

Child sacrifice (trigger warning)
Throughout history, children have been used as pawns for control or to please a jealous God. Children are born pure, untainted & unspoiled by the evils of the world. This gives them appeal for darker forces.

Child sacrifice was used to please deities, gods, beings, powerful rulers conquerors after war. The idea behind child sacrifice is that giving up the most precious thing in life, your child, proves your loyalty to another and essentially, saves yourself from a similar fate.

Satanic rituals are known to include child sacrifice. Satanic cults and ritual abuse has been well documented in the US, with the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes (FBI) stating that victims in these cases report "ceremonies, chanting, robes and costumes, drugs, use of urine and feces, animal sacrifice, torture, abduction, mutilation, murder, and even cannibalism and vampirism."

In the Journal of American Culture, a woman said she was held in a Satanic cult where her parents were members, forcibly impregnated and held captive in order to sacrifice her child to satan when it was born.

Taking an innocent child's life to satiate a god, your own power or for Satanic rituals is 100% pure evil. The inside of the Satanic shoe box contains images of dead children hanging upside down with snakes going in between their bodies (snakes have significance too), surrounded by black horned demons and cradled by a winged skeleton demon.

None of this is harmless dress up. None of this is just entertainment and shock value. The images are intentional & symbolic. None of it represents good, truth, love, kindness, compassion, joy, light, peace, or anything positive in any way.

Whether you are religious or not, wearing shoes that represent pain, suffering, death, cruelty, selfishness and harm exposes us to those traits & energies. This numbs us to the issues going on in our country when these traits are presented as cool and expressive.

It is possible to express yourself and deliver powerful messages without embodying evil. I do it all the time.

Have I become my mother?

Healing the relationship with my mother in order to heal the relationship with myself

I had a dream recently that I became my mother. It jolted me awake so suddenly because I was so horrified by the notion. The fact the dream had such a big impact on me means on some level I believe it to be true.

Before I forgave my mother, my worst fear was becoming her. And the more I fought and judged her, the more I became her. The things I run away from and deny are always the things I need to deal with most. Forgiving my mother will always be in the forefront of my mind when I start seeing patterns repeat itself.

Can I become my mother? Sure, if I choose to. There are days I feel like I'm just like her. I certainly look like her.

But I’m not my mother. I’m not following the same path. I’ve broken the cycle of trauma and hurt and chose to go my own way. Most of all, I’ve chosen to forgive her. Because holding resentments against her no longer serve me. It allows me to cut the negative cord that’s connected me to her for so long, it allows her to show up differently in my life, without the negative stories attached.

The things you haven’t forgiven will continuously show up in your life, again, and again, and again, forcing you to look at them. You can either ask yourself the question “what needs to be forgiven in order for this to go away?” Or you can just keep pushing through, holding onto resentments that do not serve you.

Before I forgave my mother, I did EVERYTHING I could NOT to be her. But that gets exhausting. And you usually end up becoming exactly who you are trying not to be. I am an extension of my mother. Not only is she my mother, but she’s an extension of me, because we’re all connected.

The below poem has always helped me to acknowledge what parts of my mother I have, what parts to learn from, and what parts I can choose not to be.

“You do not have to be your mother unless she is who you want to be.
You do not have to be your mother's mother, or your mother's mother's mother, or even your grandmother's mother on your father's side.
You may inherit their chins or their hips or their eyes, but you are not destined to become the women who came before you. You are not destined to live their lives.
So if you inherit something, inherit their strength, their resilience. Because the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

— Pam Finger

Stop prioritizing others over yourself

100% this is something I have to keep reminding myself of for the rest of my life. I used to wear it as a badge of honor that I always prioritized others over myself, until I realized I was drowning in sacrificial behavior, living for everyone else except myself.

The only thing we know about what will happen this year is that we don’t know. So why not make it a year for healing? A way to use this time of uncertainty to our best advantage. For growth, healing, taking care of our mental health, and accepting that things may never be as they were “before”.

As a trauma specialist, I know how important it is to use time like this to focus on healing child wounds. @tanaamen explains this wonderfully, addressing a common strategy of hiding or minimizing past traumatic experiences:

“The concept of hiding—or minimizing—a traumatic past is a common survival strategy for many people. It’s as though we’d like to take all those frightening, chaotic, humiliating, or abusive memories and put them in a box that others can’t access. This way no one can see the secret pain hidden inside—or so we think.”

These things only work to come to the surface later in life, when similar traumatic experiences trigger the initial trauma, leaving you more traumatized and unable to cope in the future. A bit like what’s happening in our world today. We’re seeing A LOT of unhealed trauma coming to the surface, triggered by the events around us.

Healing from past trauma is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, and the greatest way to prioritize ourselves over others.

Let’s use this year of uncertainty to take care of our mental health first. Let’s use this time to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

If you’re feeling anxious, frustrated, fearful, ask yourself where this is coming from and when you first experienced this feeling. Once you trace it back to the root and heal it, you can move forward in life with a new outlook, new perspective and new love for yourself.

I know because I did it 🙌✨💜