Over the last year, (truly…WHERE has the time gone!?) I’ve seen myself align more and more with the universe and my true self every single day. I have manifested big things and small things. I have attracted and repelled things with great force and yet subtle measures. I have rooted deeply within myself. I have been still and silent and I have listened for and found all the answers that I sought.

The transformations have been powerful.

It all started at The Source. When I told you I found my purpose and that everything suddenly became clear to me, I wasn’t exaggerating. Ever since I took that step in the direction meant for me, I’ve been walking with confidence and finding reminders along the way reassuring me that I am heading exactly where I should be.

I started my teacher training last July in Lower Elementary, paying most of the tuition out of the money I got from a scary car accident the year before where I was lucky to come out with only back pain. (It really is true that everything happens for a reason.) Throughout the intensive summer training, which saw me at school 5 days a week from 8:30-17:00, I had taken up my phone on so many occasions to write about how grateful I was to have found Montessori, a teaching style that is basically a culmination of every single thing that I believe in and hold dear to my heart, but everything ended up going into my training manuals instead. (Maybe one day I can tell you more about it.)

All of the self-work that I have done mentally, spiritually, and emotionally in the last three years prepared me perfectly for this part of my journey. This even includes the personal relationships that I cultivated in my life and the varied adventures I’ve had. Finding Montessori has been that feeling of knowing you are exactly where you are meant to be; and every new aspect and new day of class was confirmation: me sitting there saying YES! in my head a thousand times. Then, in the middle of summer training, the stars continued to align and I found myself with the opportunity to have my very own classroom. I took it, and haven’t looked back since.

In Montessori, I found a place where I feel at home. And since I’ve been home, I’ve aligned myself correctly in many other areas also. Truly, I would end up writing for days trying to fit in everything I’ve experienced since we last spoke, but at the risk of losing you, I’ll bring you up to speed with the most recent.

Shall we start with my health?

I did a blood analysis on November 4. My finger was pricked and I got to sit there and watch my red blood cells move around, projected from a microscope onto a computer screen. I saw them in chains, I saw different shapes and sizes and I saw them inflamed. In my plasma, I saw signs of liver stress, of adrenal fatigue, and of leaky gut. I was showing signs of poor protein/carb digestion, low magnesium, low b12, gluten sensitivity, and digestive toxins. I know. You can probably imagine my surprise. I got a few recommendations, most of which included supplementation as the easier route, and I went home feeling more empowered than ever to really rid myself of gluten once and for all. So I did. I also started drinking kombucha regularly and supplemented magnesium every now and then.

Last Friday, I did my first follow up blood analysis and almost fell right out of the chair when I looked on the screen and saw my blood cells moving around individually like happy children who finally got to go outside and play. In four months, I had cleared myself of practically everything I was showing signs of previously. Even the doctor was impressed. He had little more to recommend thereafter except to add methyl-b12. I felt victorious. Until I remembered my throat was sore. (No white blood cells showed up in the analysis by the way.)

I had woken up that morning feeling like something was stuck in my throat, and there wasn’t enough honey in the world to stop what was to come from coming. Fast forward a few days, and I am knee deep in an experience I haven’t had in two years. I completely lost my voice. I wasn’t sick with the flu or particularly under the weather. In fact, aside from not having had enough sleep, everything was basically limited to my throat. This was new; yet somehow, from the moment I woke up with it, I knew from where it came. I knew it was an emotional release and had nothing to do with any kind of sickness.

On the last full moon, I did a cleansing. I wrote down a very, very long list of things I intended to release, thought patterns to be broken, soul and energetic contracts to be severed, and when I was done I burned it and watched it all rise in smoke out by the lake. Energetically, and even reflected on the scales, I lost 7+ lbs. I let go of weight in the form of traumas and emotions that I’d been carrying since childhood. I felt lighter and more balanced almost immediately, but I knew it would come out in physical form sooner or later. And it did. After clearing that space, I went to shower and came out to a knock at my door. My childhood had arrived for its transformation, which has been nothing short of miraculous. The manifestations have been subtle, but clear. They’ve been small, but grand. And somehow I knew that losing my voice through fits of coughing was part of that process.

But when I failed to fully grasp the correlation between release and silence, the universe sent my coworker to help me innerstand. We had been talking about how humans store emotions in different places in the body when she looked at me and said, “I’m not sure what you think about this but, you’ve heard of chakras right?” Then she focused in on the throat chakra. She told me that she finds that whenever she is really stressed, she loses her voice. Through that realisation, she stumbled into learning about the throat chakra and it was there that she found her most poignant and consistent imbalance. She said all her life she’s struggled with throat chakra balance the most because she never speaks up for herself and she represses things. At that point, she was talking to my soul. I knew immediately that losing my voice in this strange way was part of my release of those very same lifelong struggles. Repression and lack of expression were the cornerstones of my unhealthy relationships growing up and this was my body’s way of calibrating.

After that conversation, I thought about the last and only other time I recall losing my voice. It was the night that my partner and I spent time together for the first time. It was a full moon. There was a drum circle at the farm and it was both of our first times ever experiencing one. Everyone was to go around and speak of gratitude and when it was our turn he had to speak for both of us. I remember thinking “oh boy he doesn’t even know me; what is he going to say?” I also remember him saying exactly what I would have said, and me coming into the knowledge that there was something deeper at play between us; that this wasn’t actually our first encounter at all.

I remember the day as vividly as if it were yesterday. I remember the energy on the planet. I had lost my voice because for the first time in my life, I used it. I really used it. I had been protesting down in Miami and I had screamed and yelled and released anger and hurt and disappointment and outrage and confusion and empathy. I had expressed myself without premeditation or fear of judgment. I had completely let go. And it felt good. Then, I ended my day quietly by the fire; giving thanks under a blanket of stars to the moon and the sun and the Earth and the water. Next to the man who would shake up my entire world to the core over the next two years. Not knowing what was to come, except that I would find my voice, and this time I would let it serve me more consistently than ever before. That voice has seen me through the transitions and transformations that the moon rituals have brought forth. It will see me through the end of my first official year as a teacher, and the earning of my certification. It has taken me through my reconciliations and separations; and I know now, if not ever before, that my voice is not only powerful when written.

I can speak softly and still allow it to serve me as TMHs intended.