So on my nightly walk last night I was contemplating what I wanted today’s post to be, and after running through nearly 9384938 topic ideas I landed on… a good old fashioned brain spill. I just have so much on my mind.
I am in this phase right now where I either have paralyzing brain fog or my brain is running ten thousand trillion miles a minute. I mean like, can’t even form a sentence brain fog (“I really don’t feel like speaking right now” being a main sentence in my repertoire) and the type of racing mind that comes up with too many ideas to count and usually ends up in a tailspin of anxiety OR sometimes wonderful creativity.
It’s a lot. I’m telling ya.
Anyway, I am sure you can all relate on some level. My highs and lows have just been heightened like crazy lately. I even took to Instagram to share this caption from my heart and soul yesterday, stemming from a very low place and feeling this intense desire to share how hard it can get being so sick.
Later on in the day, I was feeling more optimistic again already out of the pure knowingness that something good is coming from this. I don’t know what it is yet exactly but I am starting to have a clearer idea with every passing day.
What is that clearer idea, you ask? Well…
This week I listened to a podcast episode that really struck me. It was this episode of the Expanded Podcast by Lacy Phillips with the amazing guest Maggie Harrsen. In the ep Maggie talked all about how she healed from chronic Lyme disease, parasites, coinfections, etc. by drawing inward and becoming her own healer. Some of the ways she found healing were through plant medicine, shamanism, moving away from the city (she lived in NY and she moved to the Hamptons) and immersing herself in nature.
The episode hit me hard. I have been feeling for a long time like I need to spend less time in Los Angeles in order to really heal. A quote from the episode is: “We cannot get well in the environment we got sick in.” When I heard that line I started bawling. I was laying in my bed, shoes on (I was about to go for a walk), petting Hudson, legitimately bawling my eyes out. Clarity was sinking in. I had felt that pull ever since Shaman Durek told me, “Spirit tells me that if you did not live in LA, you would not be sick.”
And after I started feeling the pull I started hearing about friends and acquaintances of mine spending time away from the city in order to heal their bodies… healing from all the same types of ailments I am dealing with. Ashley Neese, my amazing breath work guru and dear friend, who you can listen to on TBB Podcast here, moved to Northern California to live amongst the redwoods and build a life with her husband (and soon to be baby!!) and is planning her next move to a dream location of mine. She still spends plenty of time in LA but does not live here in the hustle and bustle of it all.
Then of course there is Lacy Phillips, the fab host of the podcast I mentioned above, who you can also listen to on TBB Podcast here, who I recently learned is spending most of her time in Mariposa where she grew up and coming back to LA every several weeks for work and that’s it. Unapologetically putting herself first, and making so many necessary changes to live in the natural rhythms of nature and heal her endocrine system.
THENNN I heard Maggie’s story and it just hit me like a tidal wave: Jordan, this is the universe speaking to you. You can choose not to listen (again), or maybe there really is something to this idea of getting away and spending time away from the city.
The thing is, I feel like I’ve tried this before. I went to Bali for almost a month solo earlier this year, and as much healing and growth took place on that trip, I was still very much immersed in technology, social media, and people while I was there. I spent most of my trip missing Jonathan and my friends and family (and Hud) a painful amount and I was also in a lot of physical and emotional pain on that trip from what at the time was unexplainable illness, but now I know that it was Lyme.
After that, I spent time in extreme solitude during the water fast and it was great for me although it really broke me in other ways… it is so hard to be so isolated, and still I was spending most hours of the day zoning out watching Netflix and trying to stay on top of my emails. Not exactly the prime set up for healing chronic disease.
Something is telling me that I am called to spend time in nature, take a break from social media, and everything that means for social media partnerships as well. Which is of course my current source of income. So if I want to manifest a new revenue stream, now is the time to get serious about that. It has been very, very easy and seamless for me to create a career as a blogger — but it was never my plan.
I don’t want to stop blogging, but I don’t want to promote other brands for a living. When I spoke with the amazing Deborah Hanekamp of Mama Medicine (you can listen to her on TBB Podcast here) right before my trip to Bali, she told me that promoting brands and living this influencer lifestyle is not what fills up my soul…. that it’s actually making me quite sick. She hit the nail on the head that what does fill up my soul is writing, writing books specifically. Writing poetry and fiction, things that do not even pertain to my blog in many ways.
So what I am really trying to say here is… I have a lot of new expanders in my life who I thought about during my entire walk last night. Maggie, Lacy, Ashley, and Deborah very much come to mind. Women who are extremely tapped in to their purpose, are not afraid to do life differently and in a way that might be considered “weird” by others, were not afraid to walk away from everything they knew to do what they needed to do to heal / set their souls on fire, and of course they all have their own beautiful spiritual and mindfulness practices.
Another expander of mine is the beautiful Jenna Zoe, Human Design chart reader & expert. Not to sound like a broken record, but you can listen to her TBB Podcast episode here. (Clearly I love to have all of my expanders on the podcast!). While I was walking I also listened to Jenna’s episode on Lacy’s podcast, and she said a lot that really struck me about life as a non-energy being (I am a Reflector, and she is a Projector!) and living life according to your design. She said that many times the universe will show you exactly what is not working for you by perhaps not allowing you to have success in a certain area.
So when you’re looking at someone and thinking, “Why them and not me? I want to be more like them” which I have found myself doing a lot lately being so sick and unable to live out some of the things I really want to do…. that is just the universe showing you someone who is IN their purpose and to celebrate them for that! Jenna mentioned cookbook writing as an example of that. She had written two cookbooks before she became a Human Design reader, and she never found huge success with her books. She looked at other cookbook writers and thought… “Why them and not me?!” but now she is crushing it doing what her soul was meant for. And it’s totally separate from her previous businesses / cookbook writing.
You get the picture.
I believe that blogging was what my soul was intended to do during this season of my life. And I will not stop blogging. I feel very grateful for the abundance and the income that blogging has brought into my life… and I will hold onto that as it is allowing me to blossom into a new phase of life.
But I feel things shifting. Big time. And I hope that you will come along for the ride with me. Time to manifest some big things, make some changes, spend a lot more time in nature, and heal.
Time to be a little less afraid and a whole lot more open to slowing down.
If you know of any cottages surrounded by nature outside of LA but close enough that I can go back and forth… holler at me. 🙂
Brain dump officially closed for now. <3 Welcome to the inside of my mind. Thank you for being here. Would love to meet you if you’ve been reading along with the September Series this month (or if you haven’t, would still love to meet you). Comment below or shoot me an email to introduce yourself. XOXO