I was in 5th grade when I announced, wide-eyed and sure,

“I’m going to be President someday.”

My father laughed.

Not playfully. Not kindly.
He laughed like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Then he added,

“If that day ever comes, I’ll move to Canada.”

Right now, we’re standing in the quiet womb of the New Moon — a sacred pause between what was and what is becoming.

This one is especially potent.

The New Moon in Leo is activating a rare celestial symphony: Uranus at 0° Gemini, Saturn and Neptune in early Aries, Pluto at 2° Aquarius, and Chiron, the wounded healer, at 27° Aries, not to mention Mercury in retrograde in Leo…

There is a moment in the healing path that doesn’t look like progress.
It looks like sitting on the floor of your spirit with a child version of yourself, eyes puffy from crying, heart cracked open like wet earth.

Today, I journeyed there.
To the place where my inner children still live—where they still ache to be heard, still carry the sting of words spoken by someone who didn’t know how to love without fear.

I had woken from a dream that felt like more than a dream.
A house with impossibly high ceilings.
Sea creatures drifting down from above.
My spirit knew I was being shown something—something layered, ancient, and alive.

Still holding the dream, I went outside and sat in stillness beneath the sky. The wind whispered. The earth hummed. I opened the space and let myself journey.

And there she was.
Vast. Radiant. Fierce.
A presence I’ve known in the in-between spaces of this life—never physical, but always felt.

I never imagined that the key to healing would look like sitting with my own inner child while she screamed at me.

But here I am.

Lately, it’s been raw. I’ve felt old patterns rise like ghosts—self-loathing, rage, the sharp sting of not being good enough. The voice inside me, the one I used to believe, whispered again: “You failed. You ruined everything. You’re unlovable. You don’t deserve to exist.”

I know now that voice belongs to the little girl inside me—the one who only wanted love, safety, and someone who wouldn’t leave when she messed up. She learned early that love was conditional. That failure meant rejection. That perfection might buy affection… but only for a moment.

So when things feel uncertain, she shows up. Loud. Panicked. Sometimes vicious. Not because she hates me—but because she’s terrified. She wants to protect me the only way she knows: by attacking first, before the world does.

A Call to Remember

This is not about power over.
It’s about remembering the power within — sacred, sovereign, and rooted in love.
Not the kind of power that seeks control, but the kind that protects what is holy.
That listens. That burns clean. That remembers.

We are not here to dominate this Earth.
We are here to steward her.

The words whore and harlot have long been used as weapons—slurs wielded to shame, silence, and erase the sacred feminine. But their roots tell a very different story—one not of sin or degradation, but of power, sovereignty, and mystery.

These were not names for the fallen. They were once titles of reverence, encoded with the wisdom of the womb, the body, and the erotic divine.

Today, while helping build a garden border at my roommate’s house, we uncovered a small Texas brown snake curled beneath a pile of rocks. Quiet. Hidden. Rooted in the Earth.

It felt like a message.

I don’t want to be strong today.
Not wise, not grounded, not the guide.
I want to run screaming into the wilderness—
a wild woman, barefoot and free.

I want to be the dragon, spitting fire.
The lioness, roaring into the wind.
Not your healer, not your teacher,
not your safe space to unload.

In Taoist philosophy, there’s a verse that has lingered in my consciousness like smoke after a fire:

“Heaven and Earth are not humane.
They regard all things as straw dogs.”
— Tao Te Ching

In ancient China, straw dogs were ritual objects—treated with great reverence before a ceremony, then cast aside afterward. Their purpose was sacred, but temporary. This Taoist metaphor points to the impartial, impersonal nature of the Tao. Life flows, not according to our desires or attachments, but according to its own rhythm. And everything, no matter how meaningful, eventually returns to the earth.

was in sixth grade when I first felt the sting of a truth too sterile to hold life.

My science teacher—a kind man, but rigid in his logic—told our class that animals don’t have souls. That my cat, with her careful rituals, her moonlit stares, her way of curling up beside me like she knew exactly when I needed her most, was just a bundle of instincts. No personality. No inner world. No “someone” in there. Just biology.

Even then, I knew he was wrong.

It started with trash.

I was trying to throw something away,
just some garbage someone had tossed on the ground.
But when I opened my hand…
there it was:
a diamond ring from my ex.
Old jewelry.
Remnants of past relationships.
Stuff I thought I’d already let go of.

There was a time in my life when I believed love meant sacrificing myself. I thought devotion meant pouring all my energy into another person—meeting their needs before mine, showing up for them no matter how empty I was. I called it love. I even thought it was spiritual.

But really, it was codependency masked as devotion.

We talk a lot about “integration” — but do we truly understand what that means?

Integration isn’t just a buzzword.
It’s not something that happens by reading a quote or sitting through a weekend workshop.
It’s a lived process. A daily devotion. A commitment to wholeness over perfection.

Language shapes our reality.
The words we speak — and the meanings we assign to them — create the lens through which we see the world, ourselves, and each other.

And yet… the English language (and most “Roman” or colonizer languages) is shockingly limited when it comes to emotional depth, relational truth, and spiritual nuance.

(and while we're at it — let’s talk about cancel culture, political correctness, and the illusion of moral high ground)

I’m not here to kill the ego.
I’m here to integrate it.
To make peace with it.
To listen to it without letting it drive the car.
Because here’s the truth: the ego is not evil — it’s wounded. It’s a survival strategy, a protector, a child in armor.

For much of my life, I was drawn to relationships with wounded warriors — men who carried power like a weapon instead of a prayer. There was a magnetism there, an intensity that felt like love but often left me feeling unseen, unheld, or overpowered. I didn’t yet know that what I was searching for in them was the healing of something within me — the distorted masculine energy I had internalized, inherited, and learned to survive.

For the last six years, something ancient has been awakening in me—a wild, wise, elemental energy that at first whispered, then roared. It began in a shamanic journey, when a black dragon emerged and spoke directly to my soul:
“It is time to take your power back.”

That dragon was my first teacher in this realm. He told me the Divine Feminine was rising—and that I carried part of her fire.

In our modern world, the concept of “selfishness” has become warped and confused. We’re caught between two distorted poles—on one side, the belief that caring for ourselves is indulgent or wrong. On the other, a hyper-individualistic culture that teaches us to place our desires above all else.

Neither of these extremes brings us closer to truth. Neither brings us into union with Source, or in right relationship with life.