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  • The Ant Tunnel

    The Ant Tunnel

    Having learned about Joe Dispenza less than six months ago, the synchronicities keep lining up. This work is real.

    One of the things that Joe talks about in his work is leaning into the unknown, for it is from this place that any reality is possible. It is from here that we create the life of our dreams.  

    We live in a world where the unknown is not a place that we like to go. We want to know “how” things will manifest into our lives. 

    I have had some interesting experiences lately that have provided somatic practice in  how to lean into the unknown. 

    When I first started meditating, I would get scared thinking that somehow I would get into so deep of a trance-like state that I would not be able to come back or that I would be visited by unwanted spirits and such.

    I did learn in the death of my child that she is a spirit guide and I always feel protected by her, so I do not fear any longer like I once did. 

    The unknown gives me anxiety. I do like to know how things are going to happen but in all honesty there’s something exciting about not knowing how something is going to come to you. 

    I realize that this can be a challenging thing.

    Source can help you if you let it and pay attention to the synchronicities available at any given moment. 

    This is how we learn to love life by embracing mystery. 

    I recently went to the Kidspace museum in Pasadena, California with my kids and had a sensory experience with the unknown.

    So they have this activation called the Ant Tunnel.

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    It basically requires one to climb into complete darkness in order to exit the tunnel. It is completely black and you cannot see anything. My kids were scared to go in it so I decided to help them and even I was scared. 

    I used a flashlight when I went into the tunnel.

    I did sort of cheat in this way because I couldn’t handle it. 

    This was what the unknown feels like. You have to feel with your body where you are going without being able to see anything with your eyes.

    A certain faith then kicks in and your mind must lead to tell you, “keep going.”

    “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

    In the void, an opportunity presents itself to test our faith that things can be okay. 

    I realize that as a person who has gone through trauma that trusting can be immensely hard and we are dealing with internalized programming as a result of experiencing negative things. 

    We think the world is a certain way and may have lost trust in goodness. 

    I decided to go into the ant tunnel with my kids behind me. I had to be the leader to show them the way. Ive been a leader most of my life. Sometimes it can get challenging to not know the way, but we know what we want to achieve. 

    I couldn’t have gone through the ant tunnel if my kids were not with me. I used my voice to speak to them and guide them. 

    Their voices echoed behind me. I said out loud. 

    “Im here. Its ok. Lets keep going.”

    This is how we can offer self reassurance to ourselves when we enter the necessary void of possibility as we inch forward toward a new reality.

    As we inched in darkness a light flashed activated by movement and a huge ant was revealed behind clear plastic. How fucking scary is this activation??!!

    But it was harmless. We continued on around another corner and there i could see some light from the end of this activation. 

    Seeing the light was such a relief. 

    I do believe that there is light at the end of every tunnel we enter, but first we need to go into the darkness, the void, like a seed going underground when it is planted. 

    Our healthy soil is built by faith and positivity, in our knowing that we can have what we want, what is ours. 

    We must let go of needing to see how it all will happen but must inch forward everyday a little bit, using our voice of reassurance, having guides by our side, and lastly letting ourselves feel physically the way forward.

  • Community as a Healing Modality

    Community as a Healing Modality

    I am from a Latino family and had core memories of being in a large community when I was growing up.

    While I love my family, there’s some toxic ass shit going on in the dynamics. After going through cancer, I know I am here to create change and to heal things that people don’t even want to talk about in family dynamics. Previously I involved myself with others and their problems to show my support, but as a person who has literally gotten sick by putting myself last, I decided that I must find the right communities for me that will not drain me or hold me down any further.

    The family I grew up with didn’t understand children and abuse ensued therefore I harbored deep fear that I would continue generational trauma cycles so I wanted to enact all this change on my own. I was drowning in my children and people thought that everything was ok.

    Cancer honestly had to break me out of this overcompensating super mom mode! Too scared to ask for help and worried about how I would inconvenience others, I withered into anger and frustration, resentment, low vibrational emotions that contributed to the development of my dis-ease. I’ve had complicated, low vibrational feelings around community, acceptance, belonging, attachment, relationships due to the toxic core family dynamics I grew up with.

    As an adult now, I know it is my responsibility to work through these wounds. 

    Not having people who saw me or got me was stressful and painful. Being close with toxic people has proven to be a stressor in my body. My partner and my mother were my main community during the past five years of my life as a mother.

    While I had a huge family growing up, I didn’t have the same support for myself and my parenthood journey. Covid parents literally had to do so much on their own, with limited village.

    In my healing journey, I used to get deeply triggered by seeing communities show up for each other because I didn’t have a large community. 

    No matter how I got here, I knew that I had to change my mindset and feelings around support and community. I could no longer do so much on my own. This is why I say cancer is my great spiritual guide and teacher, because it forced me to get help and care for myself finally, for I don’t know if it would have happened otherwise. 

    It was time for me to step out onto my own and plug into something else. The abandonment and rejection core wounds triggered in my lack of community were ready to be healed. 

    Being in a community is a healing modality.

    I started my journey by connecting with a local energy healer and attended community events she ran out of her home such as medicinal healing circles. So many wonderful alignments occurred as I participated in the healing circles around literal fire where myself and others cried and released pain around healing generational wounds. This work is deep. So many don’t even realize that things can be different. I knew I needed to be in more communities like this. 

    Another place I was finding a bit of support was from some of my retired aunts, one who was a former teacher and my children absolutely loved spending time and building relationships with them. They helped me through chemo and until my children returned to school. 

    I began to look at my children as my community as well. As the summer months wore on and the kids fell back into their school schedule, I rooted myself in their school communities as I leaned on the support from their programs to help teach them and distribute the childcare load some more.

    The next place I found community was in a Healing Strong support group that met monthly. There were support groups that met weekly in the hospital settings but these people mostly were not talking about healing beyond what their conventional medical support team had to say and these people are all literal, only focusing on physical bodily systems, ignoring or not acknowledging the very real whole body systems that create alignment or dis-ease. The Healing Strong community, associated with Chris Wark of Chris Beat Cancer, is a support group that many nonconventional cancer thrivers flock to for guidance and support that encompasses a whole body approach to healing.

    Lately I’ve been engaging in sports and fitness communities such as an Ashtanga yoga studio, a Jiu Jitsu studio and a co-ed softball team. Physical exercise is powerful in its ability to process and work through pain and I believe it’s even more powerful to do it with others in community. 

    My favorite night of the week or day of the week now is Tuesdays when I go to the Jiu Jitsu inspired Women’s Self defense class with one of my good mom friends and learn skills that I honestly translate into real life off the mat.

    Recently in class the Black belt instructor talked about “Choosing your pain.” I thought it was a profound message about how you can choose what is hard in your life, things that make you stronger over time or weaker depending on the nature of the exhaustion.

    I had been choosing to experience pain in the community area of my life, getting upset about what was there, but only recently realizing that if I keep focusing on the pain of what I cannot control in others and how they choose to show up, I’ll keep manifesting more of the same unfavorable outcomes. 

    I’ve learned to create distance from these unfavorable experiences by leaning into meditation, to make room for a different outcome, for healing around anything that wasn’t serving. 

    I am connecting in community weekly now. 

    There are multiple ways I’ve been able to find community just by affirming what I desire and being open to the way I am being led to fulfill my needs. 

    Being involved in the Center for spiritual living community has been invaluable in this experience as well. Finding this community has been instrumental in maintaining a healing mindset. Finding and fostering relationships with like-minded people is key. 

    I am finding my tribe and connecting so much and so deeply and I feel alive and so much love in my life again. I honestly think community is what is serving me most right now in my healing journey. Being in community with people who see you and resonate with you is essential. 

    You must be seen. You must be heard. You must be held. You must sweat and do things that might be uncomfortable but doesn’t mean you aren’t going to do them and it might come out even better because you are in community with people who will lift you up and see you and hold you when you get triggered and things get hard (because they will. All good things require hardship to turn to treasure) or you don’t recognize yourself anymore because you are changing into something that nobody has ever seen before, but the good in others is a vision, a premonition of the future you as you see it reflected in the eyes of someone in your community who loves you and holds you dear and protects you in the very fact that they show up too.

    I do plan to host community related spaces soon. Thank you for reading and being here. I hope you have gotten something out of these words. Please share.

    How has being in community served you on your healing journey or in your life?

  • The Surrogate Dream

    The Surrogate Dream

    I can’t forget about the dream I had last night. Let me tell you about it. So basically I was a surrogate for my Asian neighbors who moved to Chicago earlier in the year. The night before I had asked source for an answer about what I was to do with my life. I still don’t know. I’ve been trying to make meaning out of a cancer diagnosis and journey. Things were making more and more sense to me and on this night as I type, my two children have been sick with a cold. The children’s whining and crying and coughing and needs, needs, needs triggered me as a person who had been activated and triggered in motherhood as my very basic human needs were not being met. Simple as that may seem, it isn’t for someone who was trained to suppress human needs for survival. I’ll say it again and again that this is a very dangerous space to live in. It is not something that is spoken about in many healing circles. 

    So many people looked at me like a complete lunatic when I began opening my mouth about what I had come to understand in my cancer diagnosis with the lens of mind/body/emotion connection thanks to my idol, the late great Louise Hay. Louise had also been diagnosed with cancer and healed holistically. I initially wanted to heal the way she did but I was met with so much pushback and fear from family and friends, and especially the experts in the field of oncology. There was only one way to deal with it and honestly I knew that this wasn’t true. 

    My healing journey began with fear mongering. 

    And on this night as I must reflect on the answer I was given in the dream space, I had received a bit of clarity on a deep wound that I had been processing for years: my daughter’s death. I carried a baby for over nine months and I gave birth to a big, beautiful 9 pound angel who would later die. The thing about this crazy event was that I had learned to look at my daughter as having been a baby that I carried for a greater purpose. It’s almost like I was a surrogate and carried a child that would not be mine. In the dream I was emotional because I hadn’t thought through just how much I was going to care for this baby of mine that wasn’t mine. I was worried that she would have to be breastfed because I wanted her to have a good start. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that breastfeeding would create a bond between my baby and I and now I know that the bond that’s created post birth is just as important if not more so than what goes on in utero. It is a lot more stressful to care for a human life outside of the body that poops and needs to eat. When a baby is inside of you, it’s kind of easy. Outside of the body, the baby is exposed to more dangers. I cared deeply for that baby that wasn’t mine. In the dream, I realized: this feels a lot like what I experienced with my actual daughter in real life. 

    People had been telling me to get over it, to just move on, to return to some form of equilibrium. Thing is, I don’t know if I will ever be the same person. And it had pissed me off. I had tried to put things into perspective. To get over it, to return to equilibrium the way people seemed to want me to, because I think in my dealing with the pain, it meant that others had to deal with theirs, but in a culture that doesn’t know how to grieve, how could it be taught? How could it be acceptable?

    I did my best and continue to do my best around it, but sometimes I feel as though this is one of the reasons I got cancer. This was a wound that broke me open. It changed me. I still don’t know why it happened. I didn’t have the answers. It was one of life’s greatest mysteries.

    I will speak about this again soon, but the message I have to say is that if a big stressful thing happens in your life, you must release it out of the body. I’m almost certain that after meeting many people in support groups, cancer always comes with deep pain that we didn’t know how to release or handle.

    This is the truth for me and I work daily to understand the meaning of what this diagnosis has for me.

    Thank you for being here and reading. I’m going to keep it real as fuck in these words. I must.

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