05/14/2026
Sometimes the greatest pilgrimage is not to a sacred site across the world…
but into the living archaeology of our own life.
This chapter began when I was called to leave Bali and return to Los Angeles nearly six months after my mother’s crossing to sort through a lifetime of belongings with an unexpected urgency. (otherwise they would be put out on the street)
Forty years of journals.
Temple arts regalia.
Crystals, statues and loads of glassware.
Love letters and Birthday cards.
Photographs from at least 10 lifetimes lived in one.
Keepsakes gathered across decades of travel, transformation, heartbreak, beauty, ceremony, and becoming.
The assignment was simple and yet more daunting then any mountain thus far:
reduce an entire life to what could fit inside my Kia SUV and make my way toward Mt. Shasta. to be redreamed once again
At first it felt impossible. The "how on earth" questions stacked to the moon.
Then something shifted.
Instead of resisting the enormity of the unknown and the task, I surrendered to it completely and recognized this moment for what it truly was:
a threshold.
Not simply the release of a lifetime of possessions,
but the release of countless timelines.
And the moment I accepted and surrendered into that…life began speaking back to me through al matters of Mythic and wildly mundane synchronicity after synchronicity after synchronicity. I didnt have much time so I had only a few arrows to shoot.
One day, after transporting the creme de la creme of my collection to a flea market in Eagle Rock in a rented Uhaul, I sat beneath a small tree exhausted from the heat and slightly defeated. While gazing at the 333 charm necklace hanging from my neighbors booth, I quietly put out a prayer and whispered to the universe:
“I’m calling in a magical 333 miracle.
May someone come who resonates with this life collection and become its next custodian.”
Low and behold, at the very end of the day, while loading the final box into the U-Haul, a woman came running toward me saying:
“Oh my god, am I too late? I wanted to buy your whole collection! I absolutely loved everything here.”
Then I noticed the large 333 tattoo across her chest.
My mouth dropped as I stared at her in disbelief.
“Oh my goodness… This is so magical. I literally just prayed for you to come and a 333 miracle.”
She smiled and replied:
“My name is Magic.”
And somehow the entire journey became like that.
A living conversation with the unseen.
The deeper I let go, the more grace appeared.
A crystal collection I almost sold in a moment of self-abandonment instead became a profound lesson in dignity and value.
A beloved elder — my best friend’s nearly 90-year-old mother — became a my Fairy Godmother during my stay, surrounding me with wisdom, stories, nourishment, and reflections that healed parts of me I didn’t even realize were still waiting to be seen.
Random strangers appeared like archetypes:
the Muse,
the White Witch,
the Star Mother,
the Orchid Keeper,
the Trickster.
Even the neighborhood coyotes began appearing nightly in the backyard during the height of my inner reckoning showing me that my wild instincts were equal to my wise discernment.
In many traditions, coyote represents the trickster — the initiator who exposes illusion and awakens deeper consciousness.
At first there was one.
Then two.
Then an entire pack running and playing freely through the yard while I softly whispered to them:
“You’re okay.
You’re safe.”
And I realized…
I was speaking to the wild untamed part of myself.
The part finally learning safety.
The part no longer negotiating its worth.
The part no longer abandoning itself for belonging.
That may be the greatest initiation of all.
After a year devoted to writing and teaching about sacred pilgrimage and mythic travel, life revealed something even deeper to me:
The divine does not only meet us in temples, retreats, or faraway lands.
It meets us in flea markets.
In unfathomable grief.
In decrepid storage sheds.
I false promises
In old photographs.
Over Ferry godmother coffee
In difficult endings.
In crystal boxes.
In Trader Joe’s aisles.
In random encounters.
In courageous boundaries.
In choosing ourselves differently.
In honouring the most subtle whispers of what puts our peace first.
And when we respond to life from a new level of coherence and self-respect…
life simply responds back.
The synchronicities become louder.
Doors open and the path becomes sprinkled in grace.
New companions appear some silently guarding others oracles in the grocery store.
Wild Grace enters where resistance once lived.
I understand now that this entire return to Los Angeles was never an interruption to my path.
It was the path.
A sacred dismantling.
A mythic retrieval.
A final release before flight.
And through it all, one truth kept revealing itself over and over again:
My life force,
my dignity,
my value,
my presence,
my being…is sacred and no longer up for negotiation.
Then quite unexpectedly came the final initiation.
After weeks of sorting, releasing, remembering, reclaiming small and consolidating an entire lifetime into only what could fit inside my Kia SUV… I finally began the 9 hour drive to Sebastobal to visit my beloved Muse and pick up the last of my bags before heading north toward to Mt. Shasta.
The next morning I set out. Hawks flying overhead spring sun shining brightly.
Every inch of the vehicle was full. The final four bags had been lovingly strapped to the roof before departure, and somehow, against all odds, I had accomplished the impossible:
everything needed for this next chapter fit in and on the car. "Wahey, I did it!"
I was singing my heart out to 80’s music (The Waterboys) as I drove north, feeling elated and strangely light and alive as I watched the white glimmer of the mountain emerge like a Solar God on the horizon. "There you are Mama Shasta, your daughter has returned."
And then suddenly—
RRRRRIIIIIPPPP.
A massive tearing sound exploded through the air.
I looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see my roof rack rip completely off the top of the SUV, sending four bags flying across the freeway behind me.
And yet…
there was no panic.
No collapse.
No victimization.
Only presence.
At the time, I did not know how.
I did not know why.
But something in me trusted that even this wild and seemingly disastrous event was somehow in service to the journey.
I turned down the music.
Took some full deep belly breathes.
And pulled the car to the shoulder.
As I slowly backed toward my stranded belongings, I saw a truck pull over just behind me.
A man stepped out and risked his own safety to gather every bag and broken rail from the middle of the racing freeway, carefully placing them along the roadside before me.
His kindness moved me deeply. It wasn't forced. I was just what humans do. We help each other...we show up for our part when needed. A quality i lived daily with in Bali, but found much more rare in LA...But he like me was not from these parts...he was an Earth Angel and I recognized him as kin:
another soul traveler who belonged more to the way of the heart, and the mystery force that makes our lives possible than to the confined social structures of ordinary life.
I made sure he felt my sincere gratitude and mutual well wishes as he and his beautiful wife rejoined the sea of cars and disappeared
Together, through what felt like pure grace, I somehow managed to fit every final last belonging minus one empty suitcase into the already overflowing SUV:
animal puppets,
Indian blankets,
keepsakes,
the final remnants of an entire former life.
And as I sat there catching my breath, a profound knowingness moved through me sending Godpumps all over my skin.
I realized the roof rack ripping from the top of the car was the final initiatory rupture.
And in that same moment, I felt something else tear free: the deep seated scar of an outlived life literally tearing free at the threshold of the mountain.
It felt like an etheric bandage I had unknowingly carried around my heart for far too long got ripped off along with my roof.
Something old released.
Something completed.
Something finally let go.
I was set FREE!
This journey reinforced something I always knew but never to this extent. When we stay open and in relationship with grace, even in the middle of chaos…
life reveals a deeper intelligence moving beneath appearances.
Sometimes existence is liberating us faster than the mind can comprehend.
Sometimes becoming light looks exactly like letting go of everything that once defined your life.
Sometimes the path to freedom looks exactly like every last defilement being ripped from your life.
And sometimes what appears to be disasterous is actually the soul liberating itself from an old and outlived timeline.
By the time I arrived in Mt. Shasta…
my heart was raw, vulnerable, open. I was at ground zero once again. The journey was no longer an outer destination.
I had at last come home to my very own heart...a heart who now whose golden wings who love nothing more than to fly, soar and land in the Love that sets herself and all beings FREE. Love you all.
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