The amount of people that still think I'm traveling with a dude, or someone that is secretly taking my photos, or that I'm only in places where I have friends/know others is hilarious.
Sure, there are times I'm unsure of where to stay. I have to be careful as a solo female traveler, but it doesn't deter me from getting out and exploring the world.
Last year when I heard about the murder of Gabi Petito on SM, I was camped in the desert in the above photo. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should move. Maybe I wasn’t safe. Maybe there was a serial killer in this desert. Ridiculous thoughts I would've never considered had I not known about it the murder beforehand.
Then I remembered that this girl’s situation had nothing to do with mine. her story is not mine, her life is not mine, her circumstances are not mine. So why was I afraid? I chose in that moment to stay in the spot I was, and I would have missed the incredible sights and adventures the next day if I chickened out and left to a "safer" spot.
We've been so programmed as females in society to stay in one place, not explore or go out on our own. That everything is dangerous and out to kill us. That we're not safe without a man.
Sure, there are risks. But we risk our lives everyday driving in our car to go to the store. If I had listened to everyone who told me to stay home the past 2 years, I would still be in the same Austin apartment I lived in for ten years. I would've never gone to Asia, driven across the U.S, stayed in cabins in remote areas & seen friends around the country.
Even now as I prepare for my next trip, people are asking if I know anyone there or if I'm going to see someone. No, I don't know anyone in that country, and most of the time I don’t speak the language of that country either. I just go and learn on the fly. that’s the beauty of traveling. That’s the beauty of freedom and the beauty of taking risks.
Stop letting all the fear mongering on the news affect you. Stop letting other's fears affect you. Turn off the TV. For real. Just stop watching the news. You will see how little it really affects you when you step away from the brainwashing and just live your life. Yes, there will always be others suffering. But how do you expect to help them when you won't even help yourself? Put yourself first. There is no shame in it.
Then get outside and go do something you've always wanted to but have been too scared to. 💚💜💙
Different is the new skinny/strong/beautiful
Human Design explained. The easiest and most different thing you can do, is just be yourself.
I’ve been studying a lot of Human Design over the past couple years, and I find it extremely helpful as way to not only understand yourself better, but how to live your best life based on the unique way you were designed.
Did you know that we all have a unique design that is fixed throughout our lives? It’s true. The Neutrino biverse weather report displays the current imprint as the planets move through time and space. This is what we experience collectively on a daily basis. Human design says we live in a 6 line cycle that follows the moon. And this is called Human Design.
Human Design is a unique and powerful system that combines elements of astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, and the chakra system to provide a blueprint of a person's unique energy and personality. It’s all about self-discovery and understanding the inherent strengths and weaknesses of one's own energy type. You are provided a literal roadmap, or what I like to call, a cheat sheet about your life, based on your Human Design, which is when and where you were born.
By providing insight into everything from a person's communication style to their decision-making process, Human Design can help individuals live their best lives by aligning their actions with their authentic selves. It’s is a powerful tool that can help you unlock your full potential and live a more fulfilling life, and to be ok with just being yourself.
According to my Human Design chart, I am a Generator with an open ego and throat center. This means other can very easily project onto me what they think I should be, and I will take it on as my own. I also have a hard time speaking up for myself and formulating my ideas and thoughts into active speech. I usually come to the answers much slower in the way of writing my thoughts down or having time to ponder them and formulate answers later.
Finding out that it's easy for me to get swayed by other people's beliefs and what they think I should be rather, rather than just being myself, was a huge game changer. Understanding that there is nothing wrong with me, realizing I just take a lot of time to make decisions and I have a specific way of doing things and a process ( as we all do), allowed me to accept myself fully for who I am and not let others rush me into what they think is an important decicion.
I decided to live by Judy Garland's rule to be a first rate version of myself, rather than a second rate version of someone else. This is so key, especially in the days of Social Media, when everyone has an idea and and opinion of everything, and we are living less authentic versions of ourselves in order to please others.
Stop doing that. Just be yourself. It’s ok. By being yourself, you are being different. There is no one else like you in the world, so take advantage of that!
Different is the new skinny/strong, and that’s what makes you beautiful. So stick to that.
If you want a Human Design reading, please check out HD by Z at this link https://www.hdbyz.com/appointments-1k. She has changed the way I look at myself and the world, and I think it’s such an important tool to live your life exactly as it was meant for YOU!
How to know when you've broken the trauma cycle
When “boring” means stable and “exciting” is actually abusive and toxic
I had an interesting experience recently that made me think a lot about how far I’ve come. I realized that there are some very clear signs on how to know when you’re healing from extreme trauma, and one of those is that you simply stop perceiving stability and peace with boring and normal.
Listen, I get it. Trauma is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. It shapes the way we think, feel, and act, and causes us to feel stuck in a cycle of negative patterns that we can't seem to escape from. Also ,when you’re so deep in it, you have NO IDEA that you’re even in that cycle until you finally get to a point where enough is enough and you are ready to face some hard truths about yourself.
When you finally do accept you need help and healing, breaking free from trauma will start to bring a profound sense of freedom and clarity. It allows us to see the world in a new light and discover the safety and stability that we may have been missing. It also allows us to see that safety and stability as something natural and peaceful, something to be sought after…not something boring.
Breaking free from my trauma was a long and challenging journey…it still is, in a way. I honestly can’t even say I’m done with the journey or completely healed, but I do have a massive toolbox of modalities to help me when I am triggered, not to mention a completely different mindset to go with it. And that is what counts.
It took years of therapy, self-reflection, thousands of dollars and hard work to finally realize that the chaos and instability I was so accustomed to was actually…not natural at all. I grew so used to chaos in my life (that was a constant in my childhood), I didn't even realize it was STILL causing me harm in my adult life. Only when I started to break out of the trauma cycle I realized how much damage it caused me, and how avoidable all the chaos in my life was.
Most importantly, I realized that the chaos in my life was NOT normal. I was not doomed to deal with one dramatic situation after another, I was just so accustomed to this happening that I continued to welcome in chaotic people and situations, and actually REJECT calm, stable, non-dramatic individuals and environments.
Because what I perceived as boring was actually safety and stability and my default state of chaos was fear and drama, everything else felt dull and unexciting. When I began to unpack some seriously f’ed up patterns in my life that were repeating from my childhood, I knew I had to break the cycle.
So I accepted I needed help, and sought out anything I could to begin to heal and regulate my nervous system. This included therapy, plant medicine, energy work, movement, breathwork, journaling, being in nature, even new diets. It also included parting with people in my life who were also living in chaotic patters and severely draining my energy. Only after that did I start to see glimpses of the beauty in the calm and the serenity of safety.
Deconditioning decades worth of negative patterns is a gradual process. But I continued to work through my trauma, and incorporate simple habits to help regulate my emotions and find joy in little things. Things like appreciating the stability and predictability of my day-to-day life. Finding comfort in a simple routine, being at ease alone with myself, allowing myself to sit with my thoughts, to feel sad, feel discomfort, feel confusion. To feel all the emotions that are often suppressed when you are in a constant state of chaos, because your body remains in fight or flight.
Most of all, I worked on forming healthy relationships, both with myself and others. I sought out and connected with individuals who either healed from their past trauma, or individuals I knew who lived a calm, steady, peaceful life. A life I wanted to emulate. From there, I started to create a sense of safety in my own life that I hadn’t experienced before.
At times this change was not easy. Often I found myself back in the beginning of trauma cycle and could feel myself returning to the chaos that felt so familiar. But for me, there was no going back. I was not repeating those cycles. So I gave myself grace, and bowed out of the cycle before it took over.
Breaking trauma cycles is not easy. But it is possible. For everyone. You’ll know you broke it when what you thought was once boring is actually the key to the safety and stability we all need to thrive.
If you’re struggling with trauma cycles, don’t give up. Keep going. Continue your healing, use whatever modalities work for you. If you fall back into a cycle, don’t give up or judge yourself. Just acknowledge where you are, and move on. One day, you will see someone else’s life of chaos and think “wow, I used to be there. And I am never going back.” That’s when you’ll know you built a foundation for a fulfilling and happy life.
Most of all, you’ll realize you just found a sense of peace and happiness you once thought was impossible.
Every decade is our prime decade
There is no time when life suddenly starts ending or getting worse. Life is only what you make it.
With incredible sights like these, it's hard not to find an immense amount of gratitude for life, for this beautiful world, my health, my healing, my happiness and how far I've come on this journey we call life.
Life does not end, slow down or lessen because you reach some arbitrary age. We are not “passed our prime” after 40, or 50, or whatever society tells you. Every year is our prime. Every decade is a chapter in a long story called life. So make it count.
This is only the beginning.
It's ok to be wrong sometimes
Learning to accept when you’re wrong…and that your views can change over time
I had an interesting experience recently. A super woke channel accidentally promoted a video made by the cult I grew up in, The Children of God. This video was promoted in positive way, giving credit to its apocalyptic theme as “foretelling” of things to come.
When my comment on the video went unanswered, I sent a DM explaining that this video was made by an abusive cult that trafficked children. All children in the video were underage, filmed at a massive compound in Japan with 300 members. I know cause I was there.
Thankfully, I did get a response and they agreed to take the video down, but adding after that they “didn’t like how I communicated the info” to them. Well, I wouldn’t like it either if someone told me the video I posted to push my agenda came from an abusive cult. I’d be pretty embarrassed, actually.
But this experience did give me something to ponder. No matter how woke we are, no matter how much we know about gender, race, the pineal gland, ascension, or politics, we always have something new to learn. We’ll still be wrong about things, or believe information from sources we did not thoroughly research or know where it came from.
And you know what, that’s ok. That’s life. It’s OK to be wrong. It’s OK to change your beliefs. It’s OK to believe something 100%, then realize it was wrong. It’s OK to be checked by others and to learn from them. Yes, realizing your beliefs may not have been the right ones does sting. I’ve swallowed some big truth pills recently when I realized what I’ve been conditioned to believe my entire life was completely wrong. But accepting it, learning from it, & moving on is what matters most.
I’m grateful for this experience that reminded me to listen to other viewpoints, as hard as it may be. I don’t have all the answers, nobody does. But if someone has taught me something, I always try to acknowledge that, and allow myself the grace to change my opinion, change my belief, and understand that I’m a dynamic human being that is constantly changing and evolving.
We are ever changing humans that are here to grow, learn, and experience everything that life has to offer. Rather than shut out differing opinions, we should try our best to listen, as hard as it may be. Reaching a hand across the table to hear a differing point of view is essential to critical thinking and logic. Embrace the differences, take what is meaningful to you and leave the rest out. You never know what you may learn or where it will take you.
How to get comfortable being alone with yourself
Once you’re comfortable being alone and happy with yourself, life will change dramatically for you
In 2021 at the beginning of my 6 month road trip I felt pretty miserable traveling alone. I was also going through some intense personal stuff and many times I just wished I had someone with me that I could share these beautiful experiences with .
Then something shifted. The more alone out in nature I was, the more I realized what an incredible opportunity I had to go on this adventure alone. I didn't answer to anyone, plan, or work my schedule around someone else's. It was all about me, whatever I wanted to do (or not) at every second of the day.
So many people ask me how I did this alone. Was I afraid, did I get scared, did bad things happen, how did I prepare for bad things. How did I take my photos? (Many of my followers thought I had a secret photographer/bodyguard following me around for six months taking photos 🤣🤣).
Nope. This trip was all me, all solo, many times away from cell reception and humans, forcing me to be alone with my thoughts and in turn face some hard truths about myself. Yes, it was lonely at times, but I knew others would only serve to interrupt my solitude and the important things I knew I had to focus on for my own healing.
So yes. It was a blessing to be alone, both when I reveled in the solitude and when I loathed it. I was able to focus my time and energy only on myself, without any other distractions from the outside world unless I allowed it.
If you don’t feel comfortable being alone with yourself, now is the time to start. You don’t have to make a drastic move like I did and start traveling around alone. You can start off small. Take a walk alone, without your phone. Have a meal out alone, without your phone. Read a book alone. Then gradually build up from there.
When you’re comfortable being alone and enjoying your own company, it opens the door to creativity, expansion in your own life and confidence. Because you know you don’t need anyone else. You know yourself and you know you are enough. Those who come along in your life are just bonuses to what you already had before.
I know many people will never experience this, and I feel incredibly blessed I get to travel solo and live life on my terms, with all its ups and downs. I highly encourage you, in whatever state of life you are in, to try being alone. Start small, in the best you know how, and go from there.
Let me know in the comments below what are some of your favorites ways to enjoy your time alone! The possibilities are endless!