What growing up in a sex cult taught me - Pt 2

Chosen family vs. blood family…what can we learn?

A peaceful walk in the seaside town of Cascais, Portugal

Your chosen family teaches you about love and care. Your blood family teaches you patience and forgiveness.

With yet another interview out about me, I’ve often been asked about the relationship with my parents.

To be honest, I never had a relationship with them. They did not raise me, and they were strangers to me as a child. They were also terrible parents and highly abusive. But they taught me valuable lessons about myself and the type of person I want to be. 

My parents are my greatest teachers. They taught me strength, adversity, empathy, compassion, kindness, vulnerability, authenticity, truthfulness, resilience, independence, and so much more. But most of all they taught me forgiveness and patience. Forgiveness to be able to set myself free from the terrible abuses of my childhood. Patience to allow them to show up as the people they are and understand that they will not change unless they want to. This is what my blood family has taught me.

My chosen family, however, taught me respect, camaraderie, community, confidence, sisterhood, support, overcoming, joy, friendship, trust, loyalty, communication, love, and care. They taught me what it means to have a true bond as either a friend, a partner, or mentor. From them I learned what healthy, loving, caring relationships looks like in the way they show up in the world for their own family, their friends, and me. 

Without true love, without knowing someone cares, what do we have? All we want is to be seen, heard, love, excepted, and respected. Without that we have nothing.

So I want to thank both my blood family and my chosen family for teaching me so much about life, about what it means to be human and providing me with so many valuable experiences and opportunities to learn and grow in this lifetime. It’s because of both my blood family and my chosen family that I am a better person today than I was just a year ago. 

I’m thankful for the pain and suffering I’ve felt through life because each time I refuse to let it bring me down, even though many times I wasn’t sure if I’d pull through. But I know that I can either allow the pain to help me grow and evolve, or I can wallow in it and sit around waiting for someone to save me.

 There was an interesting question I heard yesterday on The Diary of a CEO. And that was, if you had the ability to remove pain from life forever, would you? It took me awhile to ponder this question as with pain comes so much other stuff. Sickness, heartbreak, disease, mental issues, and more. So could I remove those as well?

i came to the conclusion similar to the interviewer. Which is that without pain, I don’t think we’d truly appreciate the joy. It would just be. We would probably go through life a bit numb, because everything is pain free. You must be alive to feel pain, and joy. That’s the balance of life. If I didn’t feel pain or suffering, I wouldn’t be alive. And I truly feel alive.

So thank you to my parents and the cult for teaching me about pain, teaching me about kindness, teaching me about healing. While I may not have wanted those lessons, I feel blessed that I was able to turn them into something valuable and beautiful, and for that I am grateful.

What growing up in a sex cult taught me - part 1

My new series What Growing up in a Sex Cult Taught me will be documented on this blog and on Instagram!

Me with my first book of Poetry, Sage of the Wild - Fairy Poems of Nature’s Healing

Now available for purchase at: https://stan.store/serkelley/p/sage-of-the-wild

When I made friends after leaving the cult I realized how ill prepared I was for the real world. So many of my friends had wonderful parents who cared about their future, taught them about finances, school, careers. Life lessons that I not only never received, but were discouraged to talk about.

The Children of God was a doomsday child trafficking p**ophile cult. I was raised to believe Jesus was coming back before I was 18 and I would probably die in the endtime, so why bother with education, I was going to die soon anyway. 

Rather than learning life skills, I begged on the streets & sang in restaurants to make money and win as many souls for Jesus before we were whisked away to heaven. 

At times I feel incredibly angry at the insane world I grew up in, & seeing my friends well prepared with parents who taught them life skills and values in order to succeed. Other times I realize I don’t give myself enough credit for building a life literally out of nowhere alone at 18.

Planning my escape from the cult, figuring out how to get a job, taking the GED because I didn’t exist in the USA school system, going to college, working full time, learning what the hell taxes were, what a credit card/bank account was & so much more, a crash course in life at 18. I have no choice but to give myself credit and grace I came this far.

My story is not special. It’s unique, yes, but the process is the same for all of us. We all have trauma we’re dealing with, shit to overcome, adjust & figure out.

Healing is not linear. You don’t reach a point where everything is good and you never struggle again. It’s a lifelong journey to the next phase & the next. This happens to all of us and we have to give ourselves grace.

Think of a time in your life you struggled. Where you felt alone, weren’t sure if you’d make it through, but kept going. You’re alive, right? That means you made it. And if you’re in the thick of it now, keep going. Feelings aren’t final, experiences aren’t forever, and life keeps going.

I’ve written my first poetry book about trauma healing through nature and I’ll be sharing it with you all soon. Stay tuned!

That time I forgot my passport...

My disaster of a trip to Berlin…and what I discovered

I was halfway to the airport on my way to Berlin when I realized I left my passport at home.

HOW is this possible, I thought, in total shock.

This is an amateur move that’s never happened to me before. As a seasoned traveler who’s been on hundreds of flights to over 40 countries, it should never happen. What is going on?

While past me would have been sooo stressed, freaking out, upset about losing my non refundable Airbnb and flight, today I felt surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

That’s because travel taught me an invaluable lesson. Go with the flow. Everything is happening as it’s meant and there is always another way.

As someone who struggles with anxiety, getting in my head, imaginary arguments with myself or others, and always planning for the worst, losing a flight would be worse case scenario for me.

But instead, I went with it. I released my travel plans to the universe, accepting that if my flight left before I made it to the gate, then how great I can go home and get more work done for my business. How great I’ll save money on hotels and eating out.

I also didn’t give up and tell the driver to go home. I was going to try. My flight leaves in 15 minutes and I’m not even at the airport yet. But I’m 5 minutes away. You never know.

Security had a long line. I knew I needed to ask for help and I STRUGGLE asking for help cause, anxiety. But there was no way I’d make the fight if I stood in line silent.

So I asked the guard to skip the line, showed him my ticket and he led me to the front. He didn’t even speak, just motioned for me to follow him and that was that.

I smiled calmly at the two frazzled moms in front of me folding up their strollers, digging for their liquids as their children screamed. Every minute I waited behind them was a minute lost making my flight.

And I still didn’t know what gate it was.

I got through security, ran through duty free to the departure monitors. I’m not familiar with the Porto airport yet but I know there are over 40 gates so it could be by gate 1 or gate 40.

It was gate 35 and I was at gate 33.

I ran through the airport, sweating away in the warm Porto air with my Berlin winter clothes on. Gate 35 was much further than I thought, I had to pass a whole new section of duty free.

I got to the gate 5 minutes before departure and to my surprise, the flight was still boarding. So I stood in line to board, the 2nd to last person on the plane.

I made it to the plane, expecting major drama with my carry on luggage. If you’re last typically you have to put it in cargo or in a completely different area than your seat.

Whatever, I’m here, it’ll work out.

And there it was, one tiny space in the overhead bin right by my seat. If you’ve flown with carry on you know, this never happens. Overhead bins are always packed on full flights and stragglers have to release their luggage to the cargo gods. Yet here’s a space waiting for me.

I put my bag up and sat down, a sweaty mess. How did I make this flight? I was 15 minutes from the airport when I realized I forgot my passport. Traffic was terrible getting back home and back out of town.

I could not believe it, yet also, I could.

It wasn’t luck, it was surrender. Surrender to go with the flow, that missed flights and non refundable Airbnbs are part of travel, and my plans may not be the Universe’s plans.

Oh well.

Mindset is key to travel. You have to keep a positive mindset, be open to abrupt change and remain calm, polite, and respectful to others. I could’ve freaked out with the security guard. I could’ve rolled my eyes at the moms.

But I just smiled, knowing I came this far and I would keep going. And keep going I did. All the way to Berlin.

Travel teaches you so much, but especially how insignificant your plans are in the grand scheme of things. When you stay open to the universe and its signs, you never know the hidden options you will see.

Does this experience sound familiar? A total disaster of trip. Unnecessarily stressful.

Have you struggled with lost plans, trip delays, annoying people and airport drama? Does stepping into an airport fill you with dread cause you’re anticipating all the stressful lines and what could go wrong?

If so, my free webinar is for you. Learn to travel the world with a 9-5 without stress and chaos, because you have a solid plan in place that will help you reach your destination. And if you don’t, you will also have the skills and mindset to deal with the aftermath if your plans go to awry.

The Universe will always support you, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.

Sign up now at stan.store/serkelley and get on the list. We meet Wednesday, November 1st at 10 AM!

Finding my home with travel

My story on loneliness, travel, and finding my true home

In 2021 I packed up my car and drove across the country for 6 months.

It was an adventure, yes. But it was also something more. I was searching, looking for somewhere I belonged. I was looking for my home.

I knew I wanted to connect to my intuition, be so deeply connected to myself that I trusted myself and my decisions fully. For that to happen, I had to separate myself from everything. I removed all the outside noise and opinions from experts, friends, Co-workers, etc. I let go of any spiritual teacher and coach that I hired and declined outside advice from everyone.

I had to do this trip for me, without hearing anyone else’s opinion about it.

Throughout my trip I was forced to be alone with my thoughts that ran rampant on my 8-12 hour drives across the country. I had already done so much healing from my childhood. So much trauma recovery, spiritual work, grief, and shame. I found myself in a loop of constantly needing more healing, and more healing, rather than progressing forward and getting to the next step in my life.

I knew that I already had the answers within me. I just needed to find where they were hidden. Without all the outside lectures and opinions from everyone else.

During this time I was also going through an extremely difficult dissolution of a relationship. I was depressed, crying every day. As I packed my car and drove out of Texas, I allowed myself to cry for hours in the car. I let myself feel all the pain, anger, frustration, vulnerability, and grief I carried from this experience.

There was so much I was holding onto I needed to let go of.

The more I let go of these emotions, the more I realized how much I still held onto. Not just from my recent relationship, but my childhood. So many things I STILL hadn’t allowed myself to feel sad over.

Because I let out all the emotions and felt them fully, I moved through the painful feelings and got to the other side. What I found there was immense joy, delight, pleasure, excitement, happiness, peace… for the first time I felt truly alive. I had collected all the lost pieces of myself, gathered them together, and built myself back up. A human being who can experience all life has to offer. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain…and so much more.

This release of emotions allowed me to fully trust myself to make the right decisions every step of the way. Alone out in nature, with no one but my car and my dog, I felt completely connected to me. And in turn, I connected with my intuition and my guides.

My process started off by asking for signs from the universe. “Should I drive a certain way? Should I stop here? Should I detour there?” The Universe would show me.

My sign from the universe to show me the way was a hawk, wherever I was. I’d often see them flying above and very closely over my head. I took it as a sign early on in Texas that these birds were here to guide me. When I needed a clear sign of what to do, a hawk would show me the way. If the answer was yes, a hawk appeared. If no, then no hawk would come.

 And so, they did. Everywhere, even where hawks normally didn’t live.  A hawk flew next to me as I drove, or landed near me. It was up in a tree, on a telephone pole, everywhere. These signs allowed me to trust the Universe was protecting and guiding me. People I encountered mentioned “Oh, is that a hawk there? Funny, they’re usually not in this area.” Well, that’s because it was my hawk. And it was there to give me a sign.

Eventually, I became so connected to my intuition that I didn’t need to ask for a sign. I just needed to check in for an answer. “Should pull into a campground instead of pushing through a drive at 2 AM?” Yes. Immediately yes. And a campground appeared. “Should I veer off the road to go to some random sight instead of continuing my planned drive.?” Yes. Go. So I did.

Each time I followed my intuition, I was blessed with incredible sights and experiences I never would have imagined or been privy to had I pushed through with my own plans. I was also protected from scenarios that could have put me in danger. Like camping in a remote area alone, surrounded by drunken men (read my blog post about it here)

Taking it slow and checking in was always the better option. Once I stopped in the middle of the night at a campground to sleep, then woke up to find I was surrounded by a beautiful forest of pine trees and a crystal clear lake I had no idea existed. This was a perfectly hidden campground I would’ve totally missed had I kept driving by. 

Another time I left what was arguably a perfect campsite because I didn’t feel safe, only to find an even better campsite with a private lake I could swim naked in. There were many instances of listening to my intuition to pull over to the side of the road for no reason, and then greeted with a brand new adventure, hidden away from my planned route.

I also connected with many people along my 6 month journey. Those in line getting coffee, people at wineries who welcomed me into their homes, Motel owners who knocked on my door and offered to cook a meal for me, people who brought me food because they were curious why I was alone and made me feel welcome. 

I felt more at ease and more connected to myself, my intuition, and my spirituality on the road than I ever had with any coach or spiritual teacher.

When I came back from my trip to Austin, I still did not understand the full gravity of what I had learned and experienced on my travels. I was frustrated because none of the places I traveled to in the USA jumped out at me as a place I wanted to live. I didn’t find my “home.” I was looking for that physical place, that “AHA” moment that “Yes, this was where I will stay” feeling.

I started attending meetup groups in Austin and forced myself to be part of a community that I really was not meant to be in and, one I did not truly enjoy. Of course, this led me to more frustration. I was forcing myself to settle in Austin but I couldn’t, because Austin wasn’t it.

Finally, I surrendered my plans. I stopped forcing that perfect community and physical home on me. When I did, I realized I was going about it all the wrong way. I set out to find my home externally, but what I found is that the home was within myself, I just lost it along the way.

My home was not here, at some physical place or group that invited me in. I was already home. Here, with myself. I thought for the whole year of traveling and the year after, that I was alone. Perhaps there was something wrong with me because I didn’t put myself out there enough or I didn’t network. But that was my problem. Just like my healing journey, I thought I had to keep doing MORE. When all I needed to do was ALLOW.

I was never alone in the first place. I was my community, I was the peace I was looking for. Walking in the desert in the middle of the night, completely alone, me and nature, that’s when I felt at peace. Surrounded by The Perfect. The perfection of nature guided me back to myself, back to my human perfection.

After I let go of the idea of how a community should be, that’s why I found my community. It was not in one place or city. My community was all over the world. Fellow travelers like me, the people who cannot stay in one place, who consider the world their home. This was the community I belonged to. It just didn’t look like the other communities I saw.

I already built my own community, I just didn’t know. I made friends in different countries, friends from my travels across the USA, and new friends in Austin, from all over. I built my network all over the place, in every part of the world, from different cultures, beliefs, outlooks, and experiences…exactly how I am.

My community is spread out like me, not in one place. It was already there, just not in the way I thought it would be.

Once I let go and surrendered to being alone, that’s when I realized I wasn’t.

I was already at home. Home was within me, I just needed to connect to myself, to my inner voice, without all the distractions from the outside world.

So how am I doing now? I’m doing great. Because I’m not alone. I’ve got me, and my worldwide community. When I want companionship, I look to my international, worldwide community and network of friends to see who is available to connect. And when I’m done, I always come back home to me.

Letting go to go beyond

“To go beyond where we are now, we must let go of what we have been.” Linda Howe

When I first read that quote above, I had to sit with it for a bit.

If I want to get beyond where I am, I must let go of who I’ve been.

That hit deep. Because we tend to attach so much identity to our past, who we are, where we’ve been, our experiences and the beliefs we formed through those experiences.

To truly go beyond, we have to be willing to give all that up. Start with a clean slate, let go of what’s holding us back to welcome in what will propel us forward.

For me, I had to look at what I was still holding onto that holds me back. We all do this. Attach identities and stories to past experiences, which shapes who we are today. To go beyond that, to grow and evolve, we have to release those old stories and patterns that keep us stuck.

This is tremendously hard to do as it means I have to take ownership of my life and be accountable for all my actions and habits. It’s hard and daunting, but also well worth it when you look back and realize how far you've come.

And many times, you wouldn’t have come that far if you hadn’t given up something to get there.

Try it and see how it works for you.

How to be happy

Whose job is it to keep you happy?

Being happy is such a loaded question, because happiness comes and goes and that’s totally ok. It’s ok to not be happy all the time. In fact, it’s healthy for you. We need to experience a broad range of emotions or else you will be emotionally stunted. Believe me, I know. Growing up in the Children of God cult I wasn’t allowed to display any emotions except that of happiness, joy, and obedience. I had no idea how to be sad, or how to be angry. It took me years of deprogramming to actually figure out what that meant for me, and how to express it.

But being happy, that’s different. We sometimes put happiness on this pedestal of the ultimate emotion to feel all the time. And yes, it is important. But it’s also a slippery slope, because as humans we seek comfort, we seek happiness, and we often seek these things outside of ourselves around within others or outside circumstances in order for us to feel it This is where it gets dangers.

It’s no one’s job to keep you safe, happy, healthy, successful, loved, calm, nourished, or satisfied. Yes, as a child this was the job of your parents. But if you are still looking for this in others, you have a long ways to go. Mostly like you are dealing with a wounded inner child that has not yet healed from your past traumas and is still looking outward for approval, protection, and love.

In order to provide happiness for yourself and stop seeking it from others, you need to address your wounded inner child, address the trauma and the feelings that keep bringing you back to your inner child seeking outside happiness and approval.

Once you address that, then you must reclaim the lost parts of yourself from your childhood that you discarded along the way. It’s important to bring those pieces back to you, so that you stop projecting onto others, stop seeing everyone else as the problem and expecting others to be responsible for your happiness, and start looking within yourself for your happiness, protection, love and satisfaction.

Only then, will you truly be happy. Only then will you be able to give yourself the things that you were desperately seeking from everyone else. And only then can you move on with your life, unbothered and untethered to other people, other circumstances, and events that had power over you and influenced whether you were happy or not.

When you let that go, you’ll truly be free and you’ll truly be happy. I know because I did it. And you can too.