Welcome to Refuge

where you can let go and let love..

Second Spring, from birthing babies to birthing sacred spaces for beautiful humans to heal

Twenty years ago, I remember soaking in a warm bath one afternoon whilst pregnant with my son, slowing drifting into a place of no mind when I heard the name Thibault. It just arrived, from heaven, like a gentle snowflake with no question, no fuss, just pure knowingness.

Same process with my daughter. Her soul whispered to me Margot Sarah…
I had always thought if I had a girl she would be named Heloise..such a poetic French name. But then, as I am sure you heard before, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your top five plans. I am sure God-Goddess had been laughing plenty and lovingly with all those master plans I had, which were majorly hijacked by a higher power that knew better..call it my higher self or the great Goddess.

Luckily whilst I do make plans , there are a lot less these days, if at all. I have also always been one to follow my intuition. Blessings of being an Aries fool maybe, but also a mystic who likes to dance between the worlds. (If you are an astrology lover like I am, that Aries sun sits in the 12th house of Spirit with Venus in Pisces…)

One of my major redirections in life came when I had to quit my golden job in Finance in my mid-twenties. I had crushed all the interviews with my killer CV and my French accent, answered all the five plan questions successfully, or so I thought. Until, well, life came crashing on me with an unplanned pregnancy.

I am going to pause here and take a breath….
Even after two decades and the most profound healings and ceremonies to release that spirit child and be at peace within myself, I continue to feel a little bit of fear and shame every time I share this part of my heroine’s journey to wholeness.

( I can hear

Elena Brower

say ‘ How human of you” in the ether..thank you).

So this unplanned pregnancy and the devastating choice to interrupt it in the early days, broke not only my heart but my entire world into pieces. The golden job for the top investment bank went from meaning everything to me, to absolutely nothing.
The many years studying, the multiple undergrad and masters degrees to become the proud, financially successful, corporate woman that I had internalised to be my dream, just collapsed.

I am aware that I have white privilege ( I am more of an olive mediterranean skin type but nonetheless white in privileges) but my ancestors only a couple of generations before my parents, were incredibly poor Italian peasants who hardly had enough to eat. In my ways, I was the hope and the pride of not only my parents but all my starving ancestors, that I would make it big. I lived out their aspirations and really wanted to see it through.

The only hiccup was that my true soul calling was to be a medicine woman not a corporate financial badass. With hindsight, it became easier to see that all the markers were then since childhood. (and if in doubt very clearly so in my natal chart especially with Chiron conjunct my ascendant. I think I mentioned I speak astrology too).

When my world came crashing down, I went down the dark night of the soul not knowing who I was and what was my life about. I started my search, staring at the ceiling for months with regular trips to a beautiful South London Jungian therapist.

For the purpose of this first post, I will not go into details about my journey into fully embracing my calling as a healer, and intuitive channel. Let me just tell you that when god-goddess laughed at my first five plans, they also saved my soul.

Divine intervention..
A major one but certainly not the last one
All good stories have lots of twist and turns…

But for now, let me share this with you: I am in my second spring and almost an empty nester. I feel that this has happened overnight and a little too on the early side as I have not yet cross the big 50 (more on that in another post)..However I feel quite excited to be gently graduating into this new season of life. It is meant to be a time of embodiment, spiritual sovereignty and giving back.

A golden time to share sacred feminine wisdom.
As an intuitive, I follow guidance now almost with eyes closed. Although there are many beautiful offerings cooking in my cauldron, birthing REFUGE was what I was being urged to create.

I heard it pretty much the same as when I heard the names of my children - right from the above on my birthday at the Spring Equinox - very cool.

I just knew from the subtle pressure, the unavoidable repetitive nudge of higher guidance that kept my attention turning over and over to Substack.

Not a rational or business or marketing or attention seeking reason.
It was just like that..
A constant feeling, I have to take the plunge whether I feel ready or not, whether there is one reader or hundreds of thousands..

First I delighted myself in discovering the writing of many incredible humans and especially wise women such as my shamanic teacher

Imelda Almqvist

or

Elena Brower

who embody so much of the power of the feminine. …

Then I got stuck in resistance, especially the part where I had to be ok with being a writer, possibly at the cost of unsettling an unspoken agreement between mother-daughter about my fulfilling a dream that she held close to her own heart.

It seems so odd that as a daughter I would be scared to overtake my mother’s dream or that she would not be happy for me. Of course she would….

And still the subconscious fear of doing ‘‘better” than a mother is a thing.

The turmoil of daring to be oneself
Would I dare to be an open book?

Giving myself the chance of sharing freely and wildly is what matters most to my heart, so the answer is YES.

But more than that, my deepest desire is to be in service to love, to create sacred space for those os us who need to be held in the arms of our Divine Mother…

In love, in Grace, in Compassion.
Over two decades of healing myself, and supporting others on their healing journey, I have come to realise that whilst we all have the beautiful seed of the Divine within us, we are in process of becoming…. radiant, self-aware, fully expressed.

I have always loved that quote from Anais Nin
”And then came the time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”.

I have seen that we need spaces to heal.
Not because we are broken or need fixing, but because we are on a remembering journey and we have to experiment in the muddy waters before we emerge fully realised. On the way, we get a few scratches and bruises...we take on more baggage than we need, and slowly we build wisdom, spaciousness and awareness.

We all deserve to heal, to nourish ourselves, to be seen and reminded of our beauty.
Return to grace, to LOVE
I intend this space to be exactly that.
Expect me to be sharing on all things sacred feminine healing, wellness including Taoist elixirs and embodied spirituality.
Expect vulnerability, life stories with twist and turns…
Channelled messages and practices that can support you…
guided mediations, oracle cards, magic..


I will be guided by intuition
and our connection..
love and gratitude in my heart
Thank you for reading this first post! I am looking forward to connecting more with you all.

blessings

With Goddess Isis and the Mandala Oracle by Alana Fairchild

PS: REFUGE also speaks of the Tibetan Buddhist Practice of taking Refuge with the Goddess Tara, emanation of the divine mother principle. It is a tantric initiation which leads to liberation from suffering and an enlightened heart mind. I have been initiated into the 21 Taras by a Lama based in Switzerland where I live. Will tell you more about this soon! But what a wonderful omen for this space.

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