It’s okay to heal slowly.

I’ve been in dark nights of the soul before, sort of slashing my way through the dark. But this was tender, like walking myself forward by candlelight and love. 

Hello love, 

Have you ever felt that pressure to get it together when you’ve come undone? Have you felt the pressure to not be a mess when you just are? 

Or how about the pressure to go out and make money when really, you’re just not okay on the inside and you need time to heal? 

Where does this pressure come from? As I ponder it, it’s so bonkers (I love that word.) 

It’s bonkers because it’s the pace of the outer world, the world that humans have created that goes oh-so-fast, that doesn’t let you take a dang minute when you really need one. Which is traumatizing in and of itself. 

Last year, I took time to heal. It wasn’t productive, or lucrative, or super clean. It was caterpillar-turn-to-mush messy. I didn’t know what the result would be. I took time to get off the high-speed train of life (which for me, included a lot of old patterns of hyperarousal and fight/flight even as someone who “understood” this) and to heal something deep within me.

What was I healing? Well, I’ll tell you, at the risk that you’ll stop reading right here. But that’s the risk, isn’t it? Can we be with what is real in order to truly acknowledge and heal it? I was healing a mixture of deep loneliness and finding my personal lovability. It was triggered when, after I’d been so diligent about healing my sexual abuse trauma for so long, I experienced family rejection and a breakup that triggered the old sexual trauma all at the same time. I was also taking care of myself after finding out huge interdimensional intel on soul-level attacks I’d endured throughout my life. Someone recently called this Complex Sexual Trauma (like, including the invisible multidimensional f*ckery). Well, I’ve had it, and it became too much for this female-bodied light worker on a mission to handle for a while.

Also, I needed to go through this to help other women heal in the ways few are talking about. I was walking an embodied piece of Heartland alchemy. 

And it’s been about a year of going down and through this in order to come out the other side. That’s the slowest, sweetest healing I’ve ever done. I know the rest of my life will be so much better for it. And I know that it has changed the way I show up for myself, and embodied a new softness now within me. 

We like to throw around concepts like, “The feminine should be soft and receptive.” Well, in this world, that takes a lot of actual healing in order to happen, not pressure. 

This week I was thinking about the gift of giving yourself time for healing, and I put this message on social media – It’s okay to heal slowly, and if you’re healing slowly, it probably means you’re actually healing. Apparently others needed to hear it too, and I really respect that we can openly say this now. Many expressed gratitude for the message.

We are humans that have endured quite a bit of separation – I call these various events and societal circumstances “traumas of separation.” These traumas hurt the heart, they are held in the body, the soma, and they need to be met with tenderness and love. 

I’ve also been thinking about how sometimes I find myself judging the word “healing.” So I bet I’m not the only one who does that, too. Like “healing” isn’t as “woke” as “ascending” or something. So funny. 

I’ve always been this edge-walker who doesn’t really fit into boxes, and I’ve been this spiritual “coach” who is also really willing to acknowledge trauma as a part of the spiritual path. Healing trauma is a part of the spiritual path. How could it not be? You have to un-burden the effects of trauma to realize your God-nature. Anything else is bypassing and glossing over what’s hard, in my opinion. 

If trauma lives in the body, and it does, and we are spiritual beings in bodies, then how in the world are you going to deny an embodied trauma or stuck energy and just say, “Spritually, I’m great!” This is cutting the body, the feminine, off from the head, the masculine, and I’ve just never been game for participating in that. 

And so, healing is spiritual and not at all shameful. Also, if you are a womb-holder on this planet, you have likely experienced trauma, and we need to be talking more about those invisible assaults on the womb because this is what is keeping women impoverished. 

But literally, I’ve been interviewed on spiritual podcasts and because I talked about healing sexual trauma, the podcast was given a trigger warning. 

I don’t want to be a walking trigger warning at all, but I want to acknowledge what others may want to avoid, because I know the time and toll that these issues have taken on my life. 

The complexities that we have endured need time and space to heal, which is alchemy. True healing is alchemy. And by “taking time to heal” by no means do I mean “sitting around while I hope things heal.” Healing is active, too. It is diligent self care, it is energy clearing, learning about what’s really been going on, it is physical care, it is seeking support. It is being committed to healing the trauma truly, through and through, not identifying as a victim and staying in the trauma. 

This last year was truly a daily devotional practice to my true essence and to deep self-love. That’s it. So every day, that looked like doing my kundalini yoga, being on my Sacred Remembering path, taking the actions I heard Spirit tell me to take, keeping the faith, sleeping well, eating right, on and on, even when I did not know if that would be how I felt every day for the rest of my life. 

I’ve been in dark nights of the soul before, sort of slashing my way through the dark. But this was tender, like walking myself forward by candlelight and love. 

That devotion, gratefully, is bringing me through the “up and out” of this process. I can’t say it’s over, nor maybe ever, since I’m always willing to do the good work of transformation. 

For the past three years, I’ve offered Heartland every spring. But this year, spring came, and the energy wasn’t right because of where I was personally. I resisted and thought, “No! It’s always a spring 8 week event!” But that wasn’t happening. 

Also for about a year now, I’ve wanted to offer Heartland as an 8 MONTH experience. Heartland has 8 topics or components. And Heartland is about a New Earth experience of the feminine where we get to heal the ley lines of our lives in tandem with the Earth, heal our bodies and wombs of these traumas, and it has “code” for what life beyond the patriarchal traumas of separation feels like. So, in 8 weeks, you get the code. The activation.

But in 8 months, we can go slowly. We can heal, experience authentic transformation, and feel it down to our cells and bones, down to the way our feet touch this Earth. 

I am so, so grateful (tears actually welling in my eyes in this moment) to be here. Exactly here, with you, now. At this time on Earth, in our need for deep healing, in the amazing capacity for true and authentic transformation. The Heaven On Earth level embodiment. 

This year, we alchemize. We step into the Heartland for 8 full months and allow it to work us slowly, easefully, truly. And, we will emerge in the Spring! 

Beloveds, thank you for being the ones who open these emails, read to the end, and allow me to show up authentically as an imperfect woman with a big heart and true gifts. I want to do more to help us re-write our expectations of women, healing, performance culture, and what it looks like for us to stand in our truth. I try to model it and I will be doing that more and more as my desire to write returns. 

Thank you for your patience as Heartland prepared me for the beautiful journey that a group of us is about to take. Yes, it is a healing journey, and yes, it is also woke AF. 😉 

You can now learn more about this 8-month journey into the Heartland here: https://www.sarahpoet.com/heartland 

In love,

Sarah

Fierceness is required: embracing strength through love.

Also, simultaneously a few weeks ago, my friend Lisa sent me a picture in a text message and let me know that she felt guided to set up a place for me on her prayer altar. In the center of this prayer altar was a picture of me.

Journal Prompts to consider before, during, or after reading this blog:

  • Where in your life are you feeling like you need to fight for something? Is it exhausting or energizing you?
  • What is the difference, for you, between sacred fierceness and fighting?
  • How do these two feel different in your body? In your breath?
  • How do you want to embody your sacred fierceness more in your life right now?

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Betsy and I said, “Betsy, I do not want to have to be the warrior anymore.”

You can hear the exhaustion in that statement.

Well, I believe, because I experience, that there is always a divine dance of Creation going on. A sacred unfolding.

In that statement of mine, there was exhaustion, but there was also a little stuckness. I had tired of being a warrior along the way….

Also, simultaneously a few weeks ago, my friend Lisa sent me a picture in a text message and let me know that she felt guided to set up a place for me on her prayer altar. I was surprised because we hadn’t talked about an exact thing that would have prompted this, but I wasn’t surprised because I know that Lisa is always listening to the divine and if she felt to do it, there was a reason why.

Lisa is a friend that continually makes magic and I truly love to notice and weave the Mystery with her.

In the center of this prayer altar was a picture of me. The layout of everything on the altar was astonishingly beautiful and thoughtful, but the picture surprised me because it was an old photo that I’d had on the back of my first business cards. She’s had this for years.

The photo, I realized in that moment but also more deeply throughout the next few weeks (that’s what I mean by “weaving”), was historically very significant to me because it was the first time that I “saw myself.”

I had gone in for professional headshots, and the photographer nudged me to take off my sweater and do a few shots in my flimsy old tank top, that truly I felt at home in.

The photo, when I saw it, still a school principal at that time, was strength. It was me. It was the me, underneath, that I felt but that I didn’t always know how to express, and here it was embodied.

And then, that was the photo that showed up from Lisa. A reminder.

And then I said, “Betsy, I don’t want to have to be the warrior anymore.”

Well, then a few weeks went by, things happened, and I did an 11 day spiritual practice that truly helped to regain so much life force, and then as I cleared energy, of course this affected things in outer relationships (as it always goes.)

And as I was witnessing an old pattern arising related to men & masculine, I noticed I felt different. I told Betsy, “I felt fear for a minute, but then I felt strength.”

The strength was different. It wasn’t a fighting strength. Younger-me had a lot of fighting strength, and then that was lost, or rather, let go. I grew tired of always being resilient. But (and I’ve written about this elsewhere), that was okay. Because fighting strength requires the nervous system, and one day that will tap out. True strength and resiliency comes from a different place. Turns out I’ve been cultivating it for some time, but am just realizing it.

Last year, I went deep deep down into the space of my own heart. I got so familiar with the aches and beauty, and I came to know love differently.

As it turns out, from that place is also where strength returns.

I was sitting in prayer this morning, and I asked, “Divine Shekhinah, what do I need to know right now?”

And in dropped the message, “The Sacred Warrior in you is a part of your divinity. It is sacred. Feel it now.”

And I sat with that message, the frequency of the Sacred Warrior, with the picture from years ago, the realization that Lisa had helped to evoke this via her prayer altar, and a part of me consciously returned.

Fierceness is required. Sacred Fierceness and the Warrior come through the space of the Heart, and can be trusted. Some things are worth standing for, worth being fierce over.

My path requires fierceness. I am here to disrupt common narratives and repattern aspects of patriarchy. I am here to introduce new information and tell stories. To be me and live my purpose requires the Sacred Warrior.

I am grateful to re-incorporate this, to walk in integrity with this divine energy, to the weaving, to the Mystery, to true sacred sisters Betsy, Lisa and more. I am grateful to look, once again, at this picture and see a true essence, and welcome it.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

Photo credit https://www.heatherhamborphotography.com/

Saying the “R Word” triggered an old trauma. This is a soul story of choosing Unity over separation.

Acknowledging the truth of a trauma ultimately allows us to integrate more into our own wholeness. But the real-life path of this is messy. Trust me, I know.

It’s been a year since I said the R-word. I remember because today is 2/22 and I sent the letter right before this date last year, because I was going to the beach the weekend of 2/22 and I wanted it to be sent before the three days I’d spend beside the ocean. 

I hadn’t ever thought of it as the R-word. I’d said, “childhood abuse” and “sexual trauma” for years, but not the R-word. 

Once last year, a counselor and healer I’ve seen for fifteen years was talking to me about the work I do and is my purpose to do in the world, and she was saying how I take all these life experiences and alchemize them into something to offer for others. And she said encouragingly, “You’re not meant to talk directly about incest, you’re meant to talk about love and all the things you’ve found on the other side.”

I hadn’t ever said “incest” either. 

But then my sister got pregnant in 2021, with this baby that actually came to me three months before she was even pregnant, and it had said, “I’m coming, you have to tell her.” Yes, I’m talking about hearing from the Soul of the baby before it had incarnated. I heard it loud and clear, but I hadn’t spoken to my sister in a long time – nor my other sister or parents, and I waited to take action, wondering what exactly to do. Then, six months later, I found out that she was three months pregnant. I had stalled, and now it was time. 

I’d asked to speak with her, but likely knowing what it was about, she declined. I pressed  a bit, said I had to, and she drew a boundary. 

I started to panic, actually having the first panic attacks in years. In my apartment, I have a meditation cushion inside a walk-in closet and one day I was in there just panting and praying, “What to do?!” and the voice said, “Well, let’s start with breathing.” 

I was panicking because I couldn’t keep this child safe if she wouldn’t listen to me. And it was coming from the same deep-down knowing that came without words for all those years as a child that I wasn’t safe, and then the first years of my son’s life when I would keep him away from my father at all costs, because that was my instinct, but not ever directly saying why. The family just went on pretending like nothing was ever, nor had ever been, wrong, and that was why it had been such a mind fuck for decades about whether or not I was going to even believe myself. But why would your full and basic instinct be, “Keep the children away from your father” if that instinct wasn’t warranted? Don’t anyone dare try to negate or explain away that rhetorical question. 

There was a fierceness that arose after the panic attack in the closet. If I had to drive ten hours and knock on her door, I’d do it. I was going to do whatever was needed. But then, I was in a session with a practitioner about what was happening, and afterward I knew what I needed to do. I didn’t need to drive to her house, I needed to expose this. It was almost a blessing that she wouldn’t listen, because if she had, then this silenced, festering thing would just stay among two women and still be protected. I had to expose the truth the whole way. 

It was a knowing, a deep-down, clear as day knowing, the feeling I get when there is not another way forward. 

I’d known since I was fifteen that something had happened to me. When I had my first boyfriend, memories came back, and clearly. But I don’t remember what exactly they were, because when I confided in my mother at that time, she told me not to be silly. I remember the day. It was summer time and she was driving and I remember her stoic face, looking forward focused on the road, telling me not to be silly. To say it more clearly, I told her that my father had sexually abused me, and her response was, “Don’t be silly.” 

And so I spent about fifteen years trying not to be silly. 

My mother says she doesn’t remember me ever telling her that. This is called “dissociation” and my mother has it. Big time. Because in the years that I’ve been uncovering and honoring the truth of what had happened to me and to my family back through the generations, for the purpose of healing, I have tried to sit and talk to my mother. I’ve asked her to sit on Zoom so that I could see her eyes and expression as I asked her questions. She denied ever knowing, or ever remembering me telling her, and yet, when I finally said the R-word, nothing changed then either. 

This showed me that I was right all along. It’s an incredible thing to try to reconcile or even wrap one’s head around – that your mother may have known and didn’t protect you. That you were somehow her sacrificial lamb. It’s almost impossible to fathom, and I’ve been grateful to women like Eve Ensler over the years who named such choices of some mothers – to ignore the thing that would have to tear a family apart if acknowledged, in order to secure one’s own resources by acting as if nothing had ever happened. “Don’t be silly,” she’d said, as she discounted the thing she didn’t want to look at. 

I spent my twenties in a codependent relationship with one man, which was a way my psyche sought safety because both he and I knew that I’d been abused, but within the relationship, we could deal with it. I spent my thirties reclaiming my body from trauma patterns, reclaiming the truth and my power, reclaiming the health of the gut with “inexplicable” lifelong stomach pains and trouble digesting. Reclaiming, reclaiming, reclaiming.  I had the worst digestive issues when intimacy with a new man would become a possibility. I learned to identify how I was overriding trauma symptoms and entering relationships with men too quickly, and I learned how and why I was attracted to men who seemed to love me but then would discard of me – not surprising since my father stopped talking to me long before I said the R-word, but when I stopped taking his money and removed myself from the power dynamics. 

When I gave my TEDx and started telling even a little bit of the truth that had been kept behind the curtain, I lost contact with them more and more. I always had the sense that owning the truth would mean losing them. It did, and I knew I had to keep choosing my path. I also knew that to exist within the family unit meant to participate in a great pretending. I instinctively knew this, but I had no idea how right I was. 

I spent years reclaiming my ability to tell my own truth, and to even use my voice, as it had been stuck in my throat for so many years. I spent over a decade in various therapies trying to figure out my trauma-ridden brain and its sense of enoughness, lovability, worthiness, and just where all of the tendrils of coercion and abuse had reached. It was an extensive search. And a maddening one. Eventually this coincided with a rich spiritual, sacred journey as well. 

In 2020, I wrote and delivered an original monologue for the classic Vagina Monologues V-Day event on two stages in Asheville about the sins of the Father (double entendre) and the hidden abuses in the church. Because the R-action had actually occurred at least once in a church. IN the church. I was under five, and he broke me, on purpose. Very much on purpose. 

He was raised in a satanic cult as a child. No one in my family talks about this, nor do they really know – another reason I’ve stayed kind-of quiet. My deep spiritual journey whereupon I asked questions such as “Why does patriarchy and separation even exist in the first place?” had lead me to actually discover the truth of the S R A in 2019. History explained through good vs. evil and the systemic mechanisms of keeping people away from unity and a unified Source – the S R A has been very instrumental in that. 

And then I found out that it had infiltrated my family lineage, and that my father had been affected very, very directly and personally. Isn’t it amazing how life just lines up the pieces for you to discover the truth of who you really are? I had been healing trauma for over seven years at that point and was living a life committed to the journey of the soul when I found this out. In the beginning, I wouldn’t have been equipped to handle the news. In fact, I spent about a year even integrating what this even meant. It explained so much, and yet, now I knew the tendrils went much, much deeper. Because if he had been raised in a cult, then he had also raised me with cult-like mind control and tendencies of coercion, abuse, and soul-breaking. I knew a lot about trauma at that point and began trying to wrap my head around the potential effects of intergenerational trauma from cult abuse, let alone sa ta nic rit ual cult abuse. Most people dismiss that this even exists, because it is so hard to accept and because it involves far more people and people in power than anyone wants you to know, and I found one psychiatric doctor who validates patients who have these stories. He was too busy to talk with me about my intergenerational curiosities. 

I was raised by a man who was raised in the most horrific circumstances, who witnessed brutal, indescribable things. The worst of human behavior. They broke him. And he never had the therapies, the trauma interventions, the parenting classes, or anything that would prevent him from passing on what he had learned, and from using the cult tactics on his family. He’d married a teacher and I was their first born daughter. He had the devil inside of him and I know he wanted to do well also, because he spent a lot of time in church, gave a lot of money to charity, and tried to give us a good and prosperous life. So we didn’t talk about the devilish parts, because my mother wanted the white house on the suburban street with the photos of a normal family in frames in the stairwell. So she kept it looking good and we didn’t talk about his episodes. In the same “don’t be silly” strategy, she’d go on serving dinner if there had just been a fight or if he had disappeared again and she didn’t know where her husband was.

My body was always confused about what it felt and sensed, the inexplicable fears and digestive issues, the fierce rebellion I felt. And as an adult, I spent many years breaking free – slowly at first, and then fiercely as if my life depended on it, and then, just when I thought I was pretty regulated about it all, this letter had to be written and that sent an unexpected fire alarm to my brain. Fuck if it doesn’t take so much longer to heal than you think it will. Even after years of reclamation, and teaching other women to reclaim their voice and truth from patriarchal traumas and silence, I wasn’t exempt from a deeply embedded trauma reaction, probably in response to a deep threat made long ago about what might happen if I ever told. No doubt, and I remember many such incidents now, it was a threat on my life. 

I sent the letter it to everyone in my family my generation and above. I sent it to the parents of the daughter I’d placed for adoption at birth. I said, “He raped me.” I said, “I believe she knew about it.” I said, “Do not leave children in their presence.” I did not feel fear when I sent it, I felt clarity. I knew it had to be done, and I would do it a thousand times over so that the lineage of secrecy and child abuse stop. And it did. It feels a bit, in hindsight, like willingly stepping in front of a train that has been picking up cargo and momentum for a very long time. Thankfully, I suppose I was strong enough at that point to not even realize the personal risk. That train just had to stop. 

My aunt wrote me a card with hand-drawn heart balloons that said how sorry she was that she hadn’t known and didn’t protect me as a child. I heard from my cousin, “My mom believes you….” and then the trailing off of that sentence made me realize that others didn’t. 

Oh. Well, I suppose denial is a strategy that’s been at play for a long time, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised that they just “opted out” of believing me. I’m not necessarily offended by this, but I also have no time or tolerance for it. Some never reached out at all. 

The letter did elicit a reply from my sister and we scheduled a phone call. While she wouldn’t directly talk about it, I was able to ask her a series of yes/no questions such that I finally understood that she understood me, and that this child would be protected. That’s all I cared about. This was the first grandchild born into the family since my son thirteen years prior. I’d protected my children but I wasn’t going to be there to directly ensure the safety of my niece or nephew. 

But then interesting things happened. The sex I was having with a partner began to feel rammy at best. I didn’t feel his heart and I felt a lot of his anxiety in the sex. Because he struggled with erectile dysfunction, I tried to be loving and kind, and yet the sex was not connected enough for me. I tried to work with him through it – always the coach, always the one to see some soul-potential and hope they walk through that door, always the one to give too much or stay too long. (Former habits, I’m now happy to say.) Eventually he stopped trying to find access to his heart by ramming himself into my vagina and he left. Not great timing in the grand scheme of things. Ram-ram-goodbye as a pattern was a significant trigger for me, and it contributed toward a… well, a breakage of sorts. A deep heartbreak occurred from it all. It was all too much. 

My family was so far gone. I still haven’t met my nephew. My other sister is pretty much best friends with my parents, and no one acts like I ever said rape. My grandmother served him Thanksgiving dinner and my mother sat beside him, which I was surprised to find was another hit to my heart. I didn’t know that I’d care about the added layers of loss and I didn’t see them coming. 

I had always been the strong one. I was resilient, strong, ran on adrenaline when I had to. In my years of deep reclamation that felt like survival and liberation both, I got a lot of black tattoos. At first, I got big black flowers on my shoulder blades and around my shoulders, and then realized that I’d subconsciously given myself self-protective armor. So I got more tattoos down my arms so it didn’t look so much like armor, but I did look like a badass. I was frequently called a badass. 

People have told me things like: they assume I’m always fine, they assume I am always able to make money, they assume I don’t need anything because I don’t ask, that I’m always strong. Because that’s how I learned to be. I learned from my mother to pretend like everything was under control even when it wasn’t. I’m writing these things in retrospect, as I realized them while looking in a really authentic mirror this year. 

This year, amidst all of this, the most beautiful things also happened. I went so deeply into the gaping hole of unlovability that I felt – a foundation that had been set long ago – and there I sat, not self-abandoning. My friend Audrey recognized where I was and sent me homeopathic potions and love notes for support. I did the emotional freedom technique, hiked in the woods in the mornings with my dog, treated my body with care, and increased my nutrition – every day. I did parasite cleanses, enemas, kundalini yoga, EMDR, energy healing and more. These are a few of my favorite things to get free of abuse frequencies and lingering wtf cult mind control programming. 

I aligned with Source. I partnered with the Divine. I healed with the Earth and with the earth grids. I lived Heartland – this work that I began calling “my dharma” during this time. I was pissed I wasn’t finishing writing a book and it felt like an eight-month set back in the journey. Of course it wasn’t. 

I deeply cared for myself differently than I ever had. I wasn’t surviving anymore. I was loving myself and wanting to know how I felt truly free and beyond what had been. I stopped being defined – energetically and otherwise – as the one who this had happened to. It was done. 

I found myself in an uncharted place – the territory of my true heart. It was messy and pure. I took down the guards and learned more deeply how to have clarity about what gets my resources without having to defend myself. As a result of childhood abuse, including emotional and though it’s an overused word, narcissistic abuse, I had a habit of giving myself to things in hopes that I’d be valued after the fact. This resulted in habits of over-giving or what I call “giving to get” which are both unsustainable and inauthentic. I believe I have learned authentic love, and what do you know, straight through the authentic portal of my own heart as the pathway to God. 

During this time, my business both financially failed and there was a wisdom to allow it to disassemble its previous structure in order to be rebuilt on different energetics. Even though I have had (before this year?) a knack for holding things together and making it look like I was successful, after the letter and the rammy sex trigger, my money stopped flowing. Spiritual people say, “You’ll always have what you need.” Well, I didn’t. And I also couldn’t push myself to “sell” anything anymore because I just wanted to do things authentically, with people who wanted the same. So I let go. There are different energetics at play regarding money when you have had this kind of trauma, which I now understand better and am devoted to helping women get free. Rape trauma, combined with psychological trauma around safety and money, is a different beast that is not going to be easily overcome with positive thoughts or affirmations. It is way, way more than that and getting through it, I have found, requires focus and devotion. I couldn’t beat this before when I’d tried toughness or resiliency or manifestation techniques or spirituality alone. It has required a daily grit inside of a daily love inside of a daily faith. This I will share in Heartland – we have to be able to clear the residual trauma energetics that steal our life force and make it difficult to secure or hold money, and we get to be prosperous in our own Source-Alignment. Our Soul is enough. In fact, it’s so powerful that that is why we were harmed to begin with – to make us forget. 

My father had used money to manipulate my compliance in more fucked-up ways than I can even figure out, and so my psyche never wanted to need help, but this past year I did. I had the opportunity to really undo patterns of both believing I needed the rescue while simultaneously fearing it, learning that to receive help was safe, and doing the soul work of trusting that my business, finances and psyche were all likely perfectly reorganizing themselves in tandem with the divine. But it was a mess and I had to face the fears I thought were long-past about having enough and being supported. Hint: it comes from within. The more aligned I am to my authentic frequency, sacredness, creativity and soul, the more fulfilling and resourced it all gets. 

The other thing that happened was that I became far more loving and graceful, and this continues. My business became a ministry. My membership stopped being an aspect of a sales funnel and instead a joyful community with growing purpose and cohesion. I stopped sharing unless I really had something to say. I started creating again – like, real, soul-activating, right brain electrifying, eros-derived creativity. I’m still diving into that, most recently with a frame drum. On all those walks in the woods, I was more and more deeply activated into gridwork, earth relationship, my divine sight, and how the fucked up earthly circumstances are all part of the bigger invitation to return to love. I deeply realized the human need for belonging, on the other side of all of that fierce independence, leadership and resiliency. I need connection and belonging. I need it still. 

I have known for years that I was walking a “soul journey” that I was then meant to share back, but I took a break in that. I didn’t know if I was done or broken or unmoved or what, but I honored the time to go inward and had no idea when or if I’d come out. And what I want to say about this space is that it is a holy mess. It is a holy becoming, like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, at the risk of sounding cliche. I’ve known that I’m on this walk that quests, “What does Union actually look like in this lifetime?” and yet, actually exiting the matrix reality of “I was violated by my father and it didn’t stop there” is a wild ride in the lived experience. It is a story of separation, for certain. I call finding our way through these 3D “realities” in a separation matrix and then allowing ourselves to choose love, to be who we landed on earth to become, the Sacred Remembering path. 

Maybe it was the reality of losing family seemingly once and for all last year, or maybe it was a little invisible string in my brain, implanted long ago by an old, satanic threat, that got pulled when I spoke out that said, “If you say this, you will be killed and the people you love will be killed.” Maybe it was the pattern of abandonment showing up again from men. I didn’t realize what had happened as it was happening, but my brain just got stuck.  I just did the best I could do to love myself in the day to day. 

And then Spirit pulled me forward. My friend Lisa began walking beside me daily on the spiritual path helping to activate me toward strength and an integrated high-heart and monad. My kundalini yoga practice became a daily practice as I watched my brain changing for the better, clearing the fog and patterning of mind control. At the turn of this year, my soul said, “Enough EMDR, enough therapy and trying to figure it out, look forward.” Special miracles happened. I heard Spirit say, “It is done.” I heard the guidance, “Go beyond your Earthly parents and realize that you are a child of the Divine.” When I said yes to that, I realized something new called the Holy Daughter Template, which is more divine information about the feminine beyond patriarchy and what this actually feels like. 

So why am I writing this? 

Well, it’s 2/22 and something in me said to do it. I realized that I subconsciously pulled the red shirt out of my closet that I’d worn for our Sovereign Womb Ceremony on 2/22/22 where over 80 women and men joined for the remembrance of the sovereign feminine before the Fall of Lyra – before separation. I’d sent the letter right before that ceremony, and then something in me committed as I led the ceremony, and as I stood on the beach in the following days, something in me knew to open Heartland again for a group of women, which I did. 

Spirit’s always there. 

The soul is always trying to integrate truth, light, and wholeness. 

Life is always life and then it is so much more. 

Was there a turning point? If I had to say that there was one, it was realizing (again) that what the destroyer energy of domination, patriarchy, and control does is to interrupt love, to try to destroy it, and to separate union. It is the greatest pain I can imagine, and I’ve felt it very deeply in this lifetime and countless others. My heart has been working some deep, deep alchemy in recent years to heal the pain of separation. To say that it’s hard sometimes is an understatement. 

To be resilient in the nervous system is not enough. It is not enough to fight these forces of separation, and to fight them only exhausts you.  It requires an epic re-connection to Source, a re-devotion of the entire soul, and to source strength from Source. Otherwise, and I know from experience, one will be knocked down, again and again, in an attempt to stop Union from happening. I don’t doubt that they especially seek to attack those who carry the light of the Christos Sophia, those of us on the Unity team. It is absolutely true, and we have to be strong through Union, through Source. 

To name the truth to keep the next generation of children safe (and yes the lineage lines were cleared, and yes it was worth it), I ended up experiencing more separation than I’d ever known to expect. With the end of another relationship that borderline triggered my sexual trauma and all the way triggered the pain of unlovability, I got to alchemize the pain and know the heart and love in a new and reclaimed way, and to know the Beloved beyond form.  

And then I realized – the pain of separation is how the bad guys win. It’s their whole, cowardly gig. And so I choose love. I choose to move beyond the energetics of separation, and I choose to remember the frequency of pure love and try to live inside the integrity of that as many moments of the day as I can remember to do so. More and more, I touch the spaces beyond separation. My gut is healing another layer of tension that I recently discovered. My mood and my blood sugar don’t tank anymore. I’m calmer. I don’t get as caught up in triggers and I re-Source back to the Divine.  My nervous system is pretty regulated thanks to Kundalini yoga. My mind is strong and beyond gads and gads of mental programming that I didn’t even see until I was ready to go beyond it. 

I will never again feel shame or silence about my past, I will hold it like sacred, swaddled truth, and I will create with it, because of it, because of it all. I will no longer live in separation. 

I’ve said this so many times in my work, and I have to remember it myself – this year being one big example. In the old template of separation, we orient and operate as women in response and reactivity to external masculine. If we are living our lives watching what patriarchy is doing, watching what men are doing and protecting ourselves from how they might take from us, we are living in response to the perpetrator. Any real-life perpetrator can be long gone from your life and the remnants still there. Isn’t that just how the evil works? Controlling you long after they are gone. When we orient to that, we define ourself as “the child who was raped,” “the woman who has endured trauma,” and so on. We become defined in the fight against it. But there is another freedom and another template altogether, when we realize and leave that all behind. When we set it free, and remember it is Union that we came for and Union that we ARE. 

It’s been a year. And that’s enough. I am sacred, I am sovereign, I am free. I am the child of the divine. My creation doesn’t depend on the external, rather my womb creates with the light of God. 

I am the Holy Daughter. I am love. I AM.  

*** Blessing this space within the love of the Unified Field and within the clear and sacred grids of Gaia.*** 

The purpose of fear & how to get free.

If we look at it as if everything is happening for us rather than against us, that a purpose of fear is to direct you to your sovereignty.

I find fear to be a fascinating, tricky little bitch.

And I say that with respect to the role that fear plays in our lives. If life is a spectrum of emotions, all somewhere between love and fear, how often do you lean toward fear and how often do you lean toward radical love?

How often are you choosing one or the other, versus operating on a default?

I think if most people are honest, fear is the common default.

The fear of not having money causes people to slave away their waking hours to someone else’s cause.

The fear of not having love causes people to spend endless hours on dating sites or pining for that love that might one day grace their lives.

It’s wild, how much time and energy fear takes from you.

Recently, I learned more information about my upbringing that revealed some really grotesque truths to me. I grew up in a family with deep secrets that most everyone in the family still avoids or denies knowing. But in an effort to bring the truth to light, and to liberate my psyche from habitual trauma responses, I go digging for the truth where most would prefer to avoid it.

And even when I discover a truth that is fascinatingly fucked up, at this point, I’m actually grateful for it. Why? Because it helps me to feel less fear.

Did you ever notice how fear has a tendency to become pervasive? It’s nebulous. It sneaks into places you didn’t expect it to be. If one good thing happens for you, you might find yourself wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. This is fear, just lingering around you while you let it.

The purpose of fear is so that you have less power and autonomy – words that could be used to describe what I call Sovereignty. The purpose of fear is so that you spend your time worrying or giving your power to something other than your true purpose, distracting you from your own clarity.

Fear, truly, is not working for you. It’s working against you, unless you notice it and redirect your actions accordingly. Fear will cause you to live on an adrenal-response autopilot called fight/flight. It will hijack your nervous system and therefore your attention. All of these things are taking your life force and, again, stopping you from being who you came to be.

After finding out about another layer of horrific family secrecy that was used to control me as a child – with effects lasting in my subconscious well into adulthood – I was watching the mechanisms that had been put into play long ago. I was, to be clear, not in a fight/flight response about what I’d found out, but rather, I was observing it neutrally so that I could study the response patterns in my thoughts and body.

I became the watchful observer, to witness the cause/effect, and to change my behaviors accordingly. To get more power and sovereignty back.

What I found was that I was actually living, to some degree, from a fear-based energy due to a trauma response from long ago. I couldn’t see it before now, and then, by shining the light of day onto it, the patterns became clear.

And then it became relatively simple to see what to “do” about it.

First of all, don’t react. Don’t give the fear more fear.

Second, don’t turn away. See it, look at it, stare it down. Fear lives in the dark, so shine the light. (Light-shining podcast forthcoming.)

These two things together, simple in concept only when the nervous system has the capacity not to engage in the fear trigger, can neutralize a fear.

The purpose of fear is, honestly, to control you. Fear lives off of your energy while you spin in circles trying to outrun it. Fear that is the result of a trauma keeps you in a loop of victimhood, wherein your energy is perpetually wasted.

To get sovereign, we have to look at our fear patterns. We could say, I suppose, if we look at it as if everything is happening for us rather than against us, that a purpose of fear is to direct you to your sovereignty.

What are you afraid of?

Where are your fears running your behavior?

Where is fight/flight fueling your decision making about how to spend your time, energy, and attention?

Where are you checking out in your life in order to avoid feeling the fight/flight?

If you’re courageous enough to look at these answers, you can get in front of the fear. You can neutralize it. And in that way, the purpose of fear, when you get wise to it, can be to help you stand in the full power and truth of who you are.

Sarah Poet is a polarity integration expert with a knack for seeing the hidden shadows that result from this bizarro separation matrix we inhabit. To book a consultation for individual or couples coaching, or workplace gender reconciliation counseling, please visit www.sarahpoet.com/book.

Photo: Stock, pexels . com

Opening the Heart

When there has been trauma in the body, what does it look like to begin to truly trust the opening and guidance of the heart?

We have so many reasons to close. To protect our hearts. It’s tragic, really, all the excuses we could have for self protection. 

I’ve had plenty. 

And I’m happy to say, they are being challenged at the next level as I’m being invited to open in places that I maybe didn’t know I was closed. 

I recently found myself in a situation with a man where I did not expect there to be attraction. We’d gotten together as friends and colleagues and then, on this particular day, as he said later, as I’d opened the door and he found me to be “radiant.” 

Radiant. What an “open” expression. I am quite sure that that is the first time a man has ever called me radiant, which is such a beautiful compliment. More than a compliment, it’s an affirmation that as I have been doing the good work of tending to this feminine essence, it is reflecting outward. 

The thing was, however, I felt quite tired on that particular day. I’d had a really deep session with a practitioner the day before, and perhaps I’d describe myself as tender. I wasn’t sad or armored or anything like that. I was just integrating some information that was making me a little tender. So perhaps I was even more unguarded than usual. 

I’ve done a lot of work on my body and the traumas it had endured, and I’ve done a lot of work on my heart to unguard it. I think the feminine heart could be at any given point tender, or elated, or somehow otherwise feeling deeply. If we’re not guarding our hearts, then it will be feeling something, because that’s what it does. 

And so I’ve been contemplating this thing of opening. There’s always the interesting thing we do as humans where we ask, “What am I opening to?” and then we decide if we can open to meet that external thing – whether it be an offer, an agreement, a man’s invitation, etc. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I immediately noticed that the external situation was not my first reference point. For decades in my life it had been. “What is the man doing? What is the man feeling? What is the man offering and am I open to it?” But this was entirely different. 

My reference point was entirely internal. I was pacing with my nervous system. “Is my body opening toward this idea, or closing?” Did I feel the familiar old closure of guardedness, and if so, what did the body need? I was tracking my opening and closing. Anyone with previous trauma related to men knows what I’m talking about – the familiar guards come up as we feel things out. There were plenty of times in the past when my body gave me “Closure! Constriction! Do not proceed!” warning signs that I did not head, which lead to more of my own depletion later. I was noticing this time that it was just natural to stay attuned to myself first – I was going to follow my body’s lead. 

“No moving forward, on any given day, without openness in the body.” 

That’s progress. For any woman. High fives all around when we’re listening to the body. 

However. 

I realized something major. When I was tracking my body’s contraction or expansion, I was essentially tracking the nervous system. I was tracking whether or not the nervous system felt safety or fear. And in doing so, I was not attuning to whether or not my heart was opening and what my heart’s truth was. 

This is really important, because given the way trauma works, we could be experiencing somatic symptoms of a past trauma in a very safe present-day situation. And if we’re only attuning to that and forgetting the heart, then we’ll make it about the past, the trauma, and the nervous system. The attunement to the body is amazing, but then, there is the next-level attunement to the heart.

Beyond previous experiences of depletion or hurt, beyond how the body holds trauma patterns of constriction, there was a new invitation to notice and expand into. “Does the heart want to open? Is the heart opening?” 

I’ve been traveling with the real-life sequence of the teachings I call Heartland now for over a year, but when I felt Spirit nudge me in February to open them back up in in April, I was immediately inside of a next-level learning about the heart. I was back inside the “initiation” of learning these deep transformations to leave more and more layers of feminine depletion, guardedness, and old story behind, and to come into feminine replenishment, the heart, and the experience of the spark of creation. 

In Heartland, we journey to a place of prosperity in the Heart. Not just money and wealth, but true, soul-aligned, heart-opening, blissful, no longer afraid, understanding the creation energy of the cosmos HEART. 

There are eight areas of the Heartland teachings, like a sequence. I had told this man, when sharing about Heartland, that I felt that I was somehow in stage seven of eight. I had conceptualized what stage eight might look like, but was still stretching into it as a woman. Well, you can’t stretch into the Heart of the Heartland until you’re really, truly, willing to move beyond the stories of depletion, fear, the times things were taken from you in the past… the traumas we’ve held in the body, and all the reasons to close the heart. 

And then I saw myself doing it – tracking the sensations of the familiar fear responses in my body (which again, it is really important not to override those sensations) instead of tracking the radiance of my own heart. 

And I think that’s a big part of the leap. Tracking expansion just as much as we’re tracking constriction. Tracking the heart just as much as we’re tracking the nervous system. 

I am not the woman that previously attracted men who were willing to take my life force energy from me. But sometimes something in me forgets and still thinks that I am her, and then my nervous system has a closure response. 

I am instead the woman who has worked on the radiance and prosperity of my own heart. I am the woman who has honored the journey of this body and soul. I am the woman who will decide how to proceed, and I am the woman who is choosing to stand now fully in the New. And the New is the land of the Heart. The place of internal and eternal prosperity. The place beyond taking, where we remember the stories of depletion as a distant memory we have overcome, but where now, we radiate. We shine. We shine our diamond, crystalline hearts, and as we are, good men like this one will not help but to be magnetized and awed by it, and because we are ready, the feminine can now open even deeper. 

First open the body, as the body is ready. Then, open the heart. This is the place where the cosmos will join you in the dance of creation. This is the true Heartland, accessible beyond separation, closure, and fear. This is the place your soul deserves to reside.

Chapter 1: Heartland

The following is a draft first chapter of a book about women reclaiming our feminine resources. I call this the journey to the “Heartland.”

I was living in a man’s house, packing up my belongings after living there for less than a year. I’d moved my child, two cats, and everything I owned to this property per an invitation to “make a life together,” and here it was, the winter holidays, and he was in Ohio with his mother escaping the situation that was going down in his 920 square foot house. Which was: me, boxes everywhere, and everything he didn’t want to face.

I had actually paid him rent. 

He invited us to live with him, but he had wanted some rent. I paid it because he wasn’t rich, we were both entrepreneurs, and I didn’t mind contributing. I will never again move into a man’s house and pay rent. But there were a lot of things we potentially should have made clearer agreements on to prior to making the decision to move in together. 

Live and learn – isn’t that the name of the game? 

I had sent him an email that asked for the last rent back, since I wouldn’t be staying, to reallocate to the moving costs. I think it had actually been his suggestion, and I was following up on it. 

I sat down, at dusk, surrounded by piles of boxes at the kitchen table (my barn wood table that I’d now be moving back to storage), just moments before I had to host an online women’s group, and opened his reply email which said, “I will assess how you’ve left the place, after you’ve moved out, and if it is in a condition that I approve of, I will refund you your money. I will be assessing the house, the barn, and my wood pile.” 

“His wood pile?” I thought.  

Why the wood pile? Why would I ever touch the wood pile? The wood was his to use when he lit the wood stove in the barn, which I never did. Why would he even think to “assess” me on the condition of his wood pile before he gave me back the money that he’d already agreed to give me? These new conditions didn’t even make sense. 

And, it angered me, because I had never once disrespected the property or the house. He had invited us to make a home, and I had treated it as such. I was not at all the kind of person to take vengeance on his property. Why did he all of a sudden assume this? 

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he had managed to rationalize whether or not I would get the money he’d already said he’d reimburse me, now conditionally based on the quality of his wood pile. Of all things!  

I was so tired of being assessed. He had asked me and my child to move in with him, to “make a life with him,” just months prior. It was six months from our move in date to his “never mind” date. A man who had never lived with a woman, let alone her child and two cats. A man who had seemed like a sure thing, like a safe bet. He volunteered with teen boys’ groups, he woke up early to pray every morning, he had even prayed when he made love to me and miracles happened (which was essentially the reason I had said yes – it was like God was there between us). He felt like a safe bet because he’d seemed innocent and good hearted, and I was trying to ensure that this kind of shit would never happen again. Because I’d seen it all before. 

Going after the girl, getting the girl, wanting the girl to reflect your manhood to you, and the “never mind” moment when they saw themselves in me (Oh, I’m not actually the man I promised you I was), and then, it is amazing how men will blame a woman for that moment of felt-inadequacy. I’d fallen for the man many times who wanted to be “that guy,” and then realized he actually wasn’t, but it’s easier to dismiss the woman than to be the man who actually looks at his shit. 

Not all men. I’m not a man hater. But I know this pattern really, really well. There seemed to be a tangle when I got involved with men – where my resources would somehow be threatened. I had been an entrepreneur for three years at that point, and this was the second relationship that I’d involved myself with that ended up making my life much harder rather than easier or more pleasurable. This was the second relationship in three years that ended up costing me a lot of money rather than resulting in me having more time and energy for my business and family. And, these relationships, not surprisingly, in the end looked and felt a lot like my relationship to my father. I’d seen this pattern with a previous boss and with prior partners too. It seemed to be everywhere and I was somehow late to truly waking up to it, even though I analyzed masculine and feminine all the time. 

There was always the really good beginning, and then the really surprising ending. There was wanting to believe the man, and then the dark shadow of the man revealed something much different. And I was the common denominator. I was somehow getting myself into a revolving pattern. And I was determined to figure it out and put a stop to it for absolute good. 

I was depleted. 

I was having to find energy where I didn’t know if I had any left. 

I had cried with my forehead to the soil on this sacred, sacred piece of property, asking “Why?” 

I had even allowed myself to get to the point where I was sending this goner an email saying, “Hey, can I get that money back please to pay other men to move my things for the second time this year?” 

You could say I was at a breaking point. But not a mental-break, the kind of breaking point where you say “no more” about a pattern in your life, and you fucking mean it. 

The wood pile comment, and his promise to assess me based on his bizarro parameters, and decide whether or not I would have access to the resources that he’d already volunteered to reimburse me for my move, was the last straw. 

I was a grown woman, a mother, who had made a home in his home per his invitation. There was no part of me that would want to harm anything here. I had a deep connection with the land, and experienced deep and corresponding spiritual realizations and awakenings in relationship to this sacred place. I was having a harder time leaving the land than I was leaving him. Him, I was done with. He could drop me and my child when the honeymoon period wore off, and this lack of allegiance, again, I’d seen before so I wasn’t even that emotional about it. Fine. I’d put my eggs in the wrong basket. Now I had to pack up my entire life of belongings, give away the new trampoline and basketball hoop I’d bought for my son, be unsure for months what exact next move I would make – and all of that felt more like a pain in the ass than something that victimized me. Before, I would have fretted and felt like a victim, but not this time. 

This time, it was just a pattern. This time, it was just the end. Here was this pattern, showing up with this man, who, I was sure months earlier would never have dreamed of or approved of the sort of behavior he was now demonstrating. He was a stranger now. 

It was like a dark, trickster bug got into these men, these men who had loved me and laid with me, who wanted to see themselves as my partner and as a parental figure and masculine influence for my son, and then would get to a point where they literally did not care about my wellbeing. They did not care. At one point he had said (in a text because he never even had a conversation to my face), “I don’t care where you go. Just get out. And don’t pull that single-mom card with me.”  They always turned on you. Starting with my father. The dark got into them and they would turn into something unrecognizable. 

And, there was always an element of control. “If you behave to my liking, I’ll reimburse the money you’d given me. But it’s based on my assessment. And the state of my wood pile.” Control, control, control. 

Which is when I snapped. 

Snapped in the best possible way. 

Snapped in the way a woman who has been trying to be good finally breaks free of the bondage of contortion. Snapped like that lead character in Fried Green Tomatoes as she screams “TOWANDA!” as she smashes the young guy’s car because she’s tired of being a doormat. Snapped like I was going to get that reoccurring dark trickster bug out of my fucking life if it was the last thing I did. 

I had to stand up to it. If I didn’t, it would never go away, and it had hunted me down so many times, and I didn’t have the resources to keep losing. This was the end. This trickster who took without replenishing, who would cause a man to watch my demise and detach from his heart. This trickster that would withhold resources, time and again, just like my father had, until he approved of my behavior. 

I knew that trickster inside my father, inside previous partners. I had known this energy my entire life. It used to scare me, but not any more.  Now, I was going to get it the fuck OUT of my life. 

“The wood pile? You’re going to assess me on the condition of the wood pile?” Game on, fucker. 

The heat rose in me, fueled by an eruption of previously-suppressed, primal emotion. I was clear headed, decisive – I wasn’t crazy. My movements became bigger. I became bigger. 

I looked at the clock and gauged that I had about eighteen minutes before I had to host my call. I found a headlamp and shoved it over my messy hair to see in the dark. I put on the old garden gloves I’d almost pitched while packing the day before. And I put on my winter coat, though I would be sweating by the time I was done. 

I found my way in the dark to the wood pile. 

THE wood pile. 

I knew the one he was referring to. Some of it had been chopped, and some of it was still in large, round pieces. And I carried each piece of that fucking wood pile through the yard, to the nearby cliff. And then I heaved each piece, one by one, over the edge. Towanda. 

“Assess me on the fucking wood pile!” HEAVE! 

“Go right ahead!” GUH!

“Hold my resources over my head and look what happens!” THROW! 

“A few hundred dollars? Really? You want to control me based on a few hundred dollars?” HUH! 

“Best money I have EVER spent!” GAHHHH! 

I’m sure the neighbors heard me. I no longer cared about impressions.  

Fifteen minutes. Ten. I had time. I’d be there. And I’d share my choice – this conscious and wild choice – with them, unashamed. The call was, after all, about women taking our power back through a process I call Sacred Remembering. I teach energy sovereignty. I have been doing the work of actively reclaiming my energy from trickster energies and outdated paradigms, but I’d be damned that I had let myself get into another situation of feminine depletion. 

No. More. 

It was exhilarating. I was standing up to this fucking trickster that had haunted me my entire life, I would no longer, not ever again, be controlled by it. The trickster that for my entire life would seek to control me with one thread of direct threat to my resources and then another. Through various men. Always a similar story. 

A destroyer presence. A taker of my energy. A power-player over my resources. But it was getting weaker, clearly, because it was grasping for a few hundred dollars and controlling me over what, a wood pile? It was certainly losing it’s power. And I would ensure that this would be it’s last grab as far as I was EVER concerned. 

I had felt it’s presence forever. The way it lived in men, in people in positions of power, in patriarchy itself. 

The threat that was immanent in so many ways – behave, or lose. Conform, or lose. Obey, or lose. Listen to me, or lose. 

“NO MORE!” 

HEAVE! 

NO MORE. 

Period. 

It was done when I threw the last, giant second of log over the edge. 

No more. 

I felt the trickster’s power die in that moment. 

I’d been fighting this thing for so long, and I had sworn that before I left this place, I would figure this out. I had actually said that to him, when he said one day in October that he was done. I said, “Well, you can wait a damn minute until I figure things out.” And I also said, “I’ll go when the land tells me it’s time to go.” 

The land and I weren’t finished yet. And I wasn’t leaving a victim. Not this time. 

I would figure out why I could be loved by men and then just as easily depleted and discarded. I was somehow attracting and allowing it, yes. And, that trickster entity was not inside of that man when we started. It was like he was infiltrated and then began acting against me. I believe he was. It’s the dark arts of the Destroyer. Sending it’s dark forces into men when women get too big for their britches. These poor men don’t even see it coming, this ego-identification that makes them a pawn to destroy the feminine. 

“Fuck her and her resources,” they say. 

I had finally stood up to all the ways I had been taken advantage of, all the ways that my resources had been threatened in my life by a man invaded with the trickster. 

And I was done. 

I was sweating and panting. I was dirty and unpresentable. I was a wild woman. And I went in, sat down at the table, surrounded by boxes, and told the women what had just happened. 

Because I wasn’t ashamed. I had just taken my power back. 

Best money I had ever spent. 

In the end, in the email he sent me with his arbitrary tally and justification of what he was reimbursing and why, he only deducted $50 for the wood pile. (Wink.) 

Learn more about Heartland for women to move from depletion to replenishment at www.sarahpoet.com/heartland.

How a woman heals her relationship to the masculine.

Healing the relationship with the inner & divine masculine is the foundation of our own inner safety, provision, space holding, and discernment.

Last weekend, while hiking in the very cold woods with my pup, I listened to an interview I did with Artemis Rose for her Embody U Podcast. She asked me to come on her show and talk about how a woman heals her relationship to the masculine.

I actually really love this topic. As she says, it’s not talked about enough. But, I do think that it is some of the most crucial work a woman will ever do on herself.

Women often want something from men and judge men for not being able to give it to them.

Or, we spend a lot of time and energy looking for a man that embodies certain characteristics.

No doubt, we are doing what’s called “projecting” our inner, unmet needs of the masculine onto men. It’s very common to do that in our culture, especially as women have been oppressed as a gender for a long time. In the psyches of women, we are very hungry to know and be in relationship with the “sacred masculine.” But what does that mean?

It starts within.

Listen to the episode HERE. This is an important transmission.

Artemis writes, “In today’s episode, Sarah dives deep into a discussion around healing our relationship with the masculine (our own inner masculine, men, and our relationship with God).

How do all of these relate to embodying who we truly are? How does this relate to the feminine? You must listen. She does a beautiful job of simplifying, defining, and articulating how our sacred remembrance rests on the Truth of us diving deep within to reclaim both the sacred feminine and masculine for our own homecoming and inner union.

However, in this episode, she focuses on how important it is to see our relationship with God and our inner masculine as being the foundation and sustenance of our own inner safety, provision, space holding, and discernment.”

To access the Modern Women’s Pathway to Feminine / Masculine Reunification, CLICK HERE.

A letter to modern women

I IMAGINE YOU’VE BEEN FEELING LIKE YOU’RE LIVING A DOUBLE LIFE – THE ONE OTHERS CAN SEE AND THE ONE YOU KEEP QUIET FROM EVERYONE ELSE. YOU CRAVE MORE OF THE AUTHENTIC YOU, THE SPIRITUAL TRUTH, AND A LIFE OF YOUR OWN CHOOSING WHERE YOU GET TO BE MORE FREE, MORE ALIVE. 

I IMAGINE YOU’VE BEEN FEELING LIKE YOU’RE LIVING A DOUBLE LIFE – THE ONE OTHERS CAN SEE AND THE ONE YOU KEEP QUIET FROM EVERYONE ELSE.

YOU CRAVE MORE OF THE AUTHENTIC YOU, THE SPIRITUAL TRUTH, AND A LIFE OF YOUR OWN CHOOSING WHERE YOU GET TO BE MORE FREE, MORE ALIVE. 


Your heart aches to step more fully into the world you imagine is possible. You want to be fully you, everywhere. 

You want to know what “fully you” even means. You question whether or not this is for you, this life of authenticity, deep soul knowing, and flow – but something in you whispers, “Keep going. Keep walking toward it.” 

It feels like home – this You. 

I know that this modern world makes it pretty damn hard to be yourself. You were sold a story about how to make something of yourself, how to succeed, and you’ve been following those rules, but you haven’t reached fulfillment.

You’re likely sad and agitated and pissed for feeling you’ve wasted time. 

I assure you – you are right on time. 

You know there is a lot to uncover. You know it doesn’t have to be such a struggle to be yourself, to honor your heart, to love and to be loved. 

You want to speak your truth. You want to be courageous. You don’t want to be among the generations of women who couldn’t say or do or be who they wanted to be. 

You are so right. On all accounts. You are not weird or crazy, and you are just the right amount of “different” – because the world needs your difference. Your courage. Your unique perspective. Your passion. Your ideas. Your leadership – just by being who you are most meant to be.

The solutions to what the world needs are inside of modern women. I know and believe this entirely. The answers are inside of women, and inside of you.

There is a lot to uncover. This path – back to your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic sovereignty – is a path packed with mystery, celebrations, reclamations, and WTF moments. This path is one soulful uncovering after another. It’s never done. And it always, ultimately, gets better. I want to help ensure that.

Your greatest hope is that you discover the true depth of who you are. 

My hope is that you find the truest, most sacred version of you. 

So here is my wish for you, love. That you listen to the whisper – the one that is getting louder. That you trust your radical, creative nature even when no one else around you understands. 

I am here for you on your journey, because my truth is that it is my joy, purpose, & mission to serve modern women, like you, waking up to the truth of who you are. 

I dimmed my light. Oh yes I did. I fought with myself about who I really was. Some days I still do. I was a double-master’s degree school principal and I was good at it. It didn’t make “logical” sense for me to walk away from the resumé I had built or the house I had bought. It didn’t make “sense” for me to follow my soul in the way that I have chosen to.

I was an accredited leadership professional and yet I knew that if I didn’t also honor the whole of myself, I wasn’t actually succeeding. So I followed my own calling, making many mistakes along the way – and all of the mistakes occurred when I mistrusted myself. And all of the glory-moments came when I listened to my own truth, my own calling – sometimes a whisper and sometimes a shout. 

But it is so worth it – this path of personal reclamation. Your energy is your own. Your relationship with what is holy is your own. (Yes, religious trauma is a thing, just like patriarchal trauma, emotional trauma, and money trauma are also real things. Your hunch is correct – it was not okay.) Your life is your own.

You get to be you. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. The world needs your gifts. The world needs your leadership. 

I will never tell you that this path will be a cake walk. We are changing the world with our courageous “yes” to ourselves as women awakening to the truth. Many will not want this current boat to be rocked, which will create resistance for you. And so my intention is that in this space, you have resources. You have community. You have safety and support and reminders that you are a sacred badass and then some. We are stronger together. 

WE ARE HERE TO GIVE OUR INTUITION VOICE. WE ARE HERE TO RECLAIM THE HEALTH OF EVERY CELL OF OUR BODIES. WE ARE HERE TO HONOR THE SACRED FEMININE RIGHT NEXT TO THE SACRED MASCULINE. WE ARE HERE TO BE AND DO AND LOVE IN THE BIGGEST WAYS THAT WOMEN EVER HAVE. WE ARE HERE TO LEAD – WITH HEART, WITH HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE, WITH BALANCED KNOWING. 


The time is now. Yes, listen to your “yes.” Know you. Don’t ever stop. 

I look forward to meeting you, connecting with you, and honoring your path.

I am here for you!  

All my love, 

Sarah Poet

Staying Home to Come Home: Women in the Pandemic

I heard that from many women during quarantine – the realization that what modern life expected of them no longer felt sustainable. 

What happened when you stayed home during quarantine? I’ll hear whatever story of change you want to tell, but what I really want to know is what happened on the inside of you? 

As I write this, we got the “stay home” order in North Carolina almost exactly three months ago. And, now, even though the cases of Coronavirus are greater than they were three months ago, the “stay home” orders are now increasingly lifted for economic reasons. There is a push for things to go back to normal, and yet, I hope we don’t miss the available lessons. 

How did this quarantine and all that it exposed change you? And is it still? 

For a little context, I’m the mother of an 11 year old son who lives between two houses, and I’ve worked from home via the internet as a life coach, distance healer, and women’s & relationship coach for over two years. So the format of my work was not affected when this hit, and actually, I was prepared for it because I’d already been through the highs and lows of such deep transition and could now assist others. And, I was able to actually spend more time with my child, which exposed quite a bit.

While I won’t bore you with the small accounts of what happened during quarantine, I will say that all of the things that were not working in our busy day to day life immediately became apparent when we stayed home. Discrepancies in parenting between households and the way our child had grown emotionally avoidant in fifth grade came to the surface to be revealed. We looked at it, and within two weeks, we had a new schedule and a new family therapist. I’m so grateful for that, because it’s made a huge positive impact on our child, and we otherwise would have missed it, had life just kept on. 

Then, in April, a baby goat was born on the farm we lived on, and I thought, “Good grief I’m so glad he’s not in school right now.” Because when we heard the mama goat yell out in labor, he was able to run and get to the pen in enough time to watch the baby goat land in the hay. He got to help name it Pixie. 

In case I need to spell it out, this was incredibly special. We’d moved out of the city a few months prior, and now, the choice to have done so grew even sweeter. My boy was watching the birth and early rearing of a mammal, learning about the placenta and birth, watching the milk come in and holding Pixie in his arms at 10pm in front of the mama goat’s nose while the farmer worked to prevent mastitis from setting in. My son had a place in things that was different as a result of staying home.

So I became “that mom” when I emailed the school – the school where I was formerly the middle grades principal – and I said, “Now that we know North Carolina isn’t counting grades this year, and my son is building forts while learning about measurement & cooperation, planting gardens, and is deeply engaged in the life of a new baby goat, I’m going to advocate that we all relax with the piles of computer work.” On Earth Day, when there was homework to research something online, I intervened and simply submitted a picture of him and Pixie the goat instead of evidence of a closer relationship with the Earth.

Real life again mattered more than assignments or schedules. And I was witnessing that my child was touching childhood in a way that he would not have if not for this pause. And as I looked around at the women’s groups that I was hosting, each woman was touching life in a new way as well. 

We were touching life. Eventually. Because each life went through an adjustment period in quarantine, as you know. Uncomfortable at first, and then, there was more life.

I was facilitating two women’s groups online – one a six-month Mastermind that had begun mid January 2020, and another a group called Choosing Nourishment that came together right at the beginning of quarantine when I noticed that women, even though they were already tired and juggling quite a bit in their lives, jobs, and households, and you may have thought that quarantine would provide reprieve, were actually quite frazzled in their nervous systems as a result of the changes. 

“You want me to stay home, work from my computer, and homeschool my kids?” 

“You want me to stay in the house with this husband of mine that is unwilling to actively help us figure out our finances?” 

“You want me to stay in the house with the man who doesn’t care at all what my opinion is and makes me feel invisible?” 

The panic was up. The nervous systems alert. This did not feel like a good idea to stay home. In fact, to some, I noticed that it felt really scary. Like modern life had been some sort of very busy distraction, and even though it wasn’t necessarily working or feeling good, nor particularly fun, it was the norm, and they’d learned how to manage it. This was the same reason I’d left working in schools to start my own business two years ago – modern life just wasn’t sustainable any more.

I heard that from many women during quarantine – the realization that what modern life expected of them no longer felt sustainable. 

As time passed, and as we held the space in confidence and safe space in these women’s groups to talk about how to choose the nourishment, how to be in communion with this opportunity to push pause, I noticed that all of the women began to care less about whether or not things like the homeschooling got done, and cared more about feeling good, re-connecting with their families, and listening to their authentic inner voices. 

Feeling good matters. Knowing oneself matters. Being able to sit and breathe in a body with a settled nervous system matters. And modern life makes these things “self-care” periphery practices instead of, well, the norm. But in quarantine, more women began to prioritize a rebalancing that they’d previously only dreamed of. 

Priorities shifted. Preferences stated more clearly. Boundaries realized. 

And then, about six weeks into quarantine, in the Mastermind that is all about the quest for the Sacred Truth within each woman, after months of clearing old stories and identities, a “Coming Home” theme emerged. 

And I chuckled as I said, “Hmm, staying home to come home.” 

And everywhere I looked to see what women were doing, in these groups and in the collective of women, I kept hearing women say: 

“Maybe it doesn’t have to go back to the way it was.” 

“That was never sustainable and we knew it all along.” 

“I don’t even want to go back to work. I never want to feel like that again.”

“Maybe I won’t send my child back to school next year.” “Maybe it’s time to finally own my skills as a healer.” 

“Maybe it’s time to start the business I really want to start.” 

It was mandated that we all stay home. Yet, it was rather unsuspected how we discovered that so many women, would, also, come home to themselves. And I love witnessing it. It feels like only a beginning to what has been such a long time coming. 

Women remembering who they are. 

Women coming home to the truth of who they are. 

Women, refusing to live unsustainable lives. 

Women, planting gardens and knowing rest for the first time in years. 

Women, making plans for what they might create next. 

I truly hope that we don’t go back to life as usual, that this actually changed us in the way it had the potential to change us. Because through a wider lens, this is how the feminine rebalances with the masculine, a story I told of my own life in my TEDx from last year. So much happens when women come home to themselves. 

Worlds open.

The feminine principle, the archetype – which involves rest and bodies and satisfaction and families first – was touched through this quarantine experience. I’d say it was awakened, in many women. 

How did this change you? What are you willing to go back to and unwilling to go back to? What will you do differently? 

I chose to integrate family and home life with my partner, moving in together during quarantine. I chose to begin to walk in nature daily, even though I’d lived in nature before and yet failed to prioritize it. I chose to begin organizing a potential home-school cooperative for the fall with the same children that my child was able to play and bond with during the spring. 

I’m beginning to dream of new systems of education and women’s entrepreneurial collaboration that before seemed so far off, and now, it feels like the time to choose based on deeper preference and intuitive knowing. 

I found myself choosing to relax and read fiction, to sleep in, to start a new yoga practice. 

I chose to come further home, and I choose it still. 

And I’ll ask you, women, did you come home? And I’ll encourage you. Come home to the truth of who you are. Don’t go back to an unsustainable status quo. If you allowed yourself to dream, what would you create? 

If this article speaks to you, let’s work together.