Does life change you or do you change your life?
Maybe it's a bit of both
I recorded a voiceover for those who prefer to listen:
The image symbol which came in for the collective for the week of 4.21.25 follows:
A hamster in a tube structure.
-The limitations for movement inside the structure provide a sense of security.
-Fear keeps him from investigating life outside the structure where he could choose the direction he goes.
It must have been May of 2020 when I found myself unable to do my usual run up Queen Anne Hill, through the mansion-lined streets, and back home to the condo I was leasing in Lower Queen Anne in Seattle. I took to running laps on the inside perimeter of my condo. Starting in my room, I would trace the bed, then in the main living area creating a path from behind the couch, around the coffee table, circling the kitchen island, down the front hallway, sometimes with a pit stop for a sip of vodka and water conveniently sitting on the kitchen counter.
While the walls had closed in on everyone, my own were particularly claustrophobic, becoming narrower and narrower, until I spent many days in my bed, resetting the alarm on my phone hour after hour, mentally held together enough only to email work that I was sick.
At some point, I stopped doing the laps inside, and stopped trying to make food, instead bringing in take out for my 18 year old son and myself. I gained 30 pounds, a large amount for my small frame. My tongue was peeling off in sections. For the first time in my life, I didn’t care at all about work. I remember once visiting the ER at Swedish hospital, feeling like I was dying, another time asking my son to call 911 because I was unable to move my limbs and felt like I was floating out of this world. Even the walls of my skin were closing in on me.
After I got my puppy that July, I found I couldn’t manage her, my failing self, and work, so I quit my job on a whim. The following month I quit drinking cold turkey, made it through the hallucinations and shaking sweats while somehow still taking my puppy out for little walks. In caring for her, I slowly started to feel my essence return, and by the end of the year, I was ready to work again. I knew nothing other than the life I was trained for, and that being the safest option, I interviewed for a job in a different division of my old company while sober, and started work again a couple months later, after falling back off the wagon on inauguration day 2021.
Drinking again, I put the mask of success I had always worn back in place. The walls around any vulnerability that had worn away went back up. My influence and the size of my organization at work grew, while my weight shrunk, and I and moved my son and myself out of the city.
That may have been the first time I listened to my intuition, to spirit’s whispering. To purchase a home for far less than what I qualified for, in a little known town that was close to my heart because my father had his law practice there from my birth to his death. A small patch of land on the traditional Coast Salish territory, under the flight path of nearby Seattle Tacoma International Airport. Yet it was less than a mile from the Puget Sound, had space for my dog to play, for me to garden (which I did not do then), and my son to tinker on his cars.
And it came bearing the critical gift of a mortgage that wouldn’t chain me to the life that had been killing my essence.
The year after moving, I quit drinking for good. The year after that I opened up to my abilities to connect to the spirit realm, and began training as an astrologer, hypnotist, herbalist, and psychic medium. The year after that, I left my corporate job, began writing, and started a business with the hope of helping others heal.
While the last four years sound linear and perhaps too easy, the truth is that it was and it wasn’t (isn’t that always the truth?). The easy part was following the signs and synchronicities that spirit was laying down - they were too obvious, especially once I was receiving validation as a psychic medium and could trust what was coming through. Away from the city, and without the numbing of alcohol, it felt easy to feel the nature inside me waking up to the nature outside me. It was simple, though not easy, to stick to a routine of yoga, meditation, cooking, studying, turning in early, and rising early.
The hard part was having to let go of my ego. To be committed to sorting through the connections my former identity had - to people, activities, and behaviors - and releasing what was not aligned. Some relationships released me without any action needed on my part. Some behaviors, like time spent on screens, simply became uninteresting. But although it was not the authentic me, it was the only me I had known, into which I had invested much blood, sweat, and tears, therefore much of this process involved a fair bit of grieving.
And I had to work through fear and its sidekick, doubt. Fear and doubt that I wouldn’t be strong enough to stand in the fullness of my true essence, in all of its non-conformity and inexplicableness, and strong enough to continue to do that even as I confused or repelled people who had known only the conditioned identity.
I have to continue to work on living with uncertainty, in trusting the relatively new collaboration I have with my higher self and the Universe. I am as invested in living without masks and walls now as I used to be in maintaining them. I also realize some people are truly stuck in miserable circumstances, without the option of escape, and I live in gratitude that I am one of the lucky ones.
Oracle Card Spread for the Week
This week, inspired by the Last Quarter Moon, I used a spread from 111 Oracle Spreads for Every Day by Krystal Banner. It is called the Two-Card Cross, based on the much larger Celtic Cross spread.
Card 1. The situation at hand/heart of the matter: Weather the Storms. Let it change you. Embrace the unexpected. (From The Ancient Stones Oracle, by Rebecca Campbell, artwork by Katie-Louise.)
While the phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” can be seen as gaslighting, certainly the worst things you experience change you, maybe even transform you. And when you are in the middle of something tough, know that either the circumstances will change or you will, or both will, because life inevitably changes with time.
From the guidebook: How can you embrace the changing seasons of your life?
Card 2. The challenge/what is impacting the situation: Could it be a dragonfly. (#8 from The Dream Weaver’s Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid, illustrated by Joel Nakamura).
Our perception is biased, therefore it could be considered to be an illusion. Why not choose to see things differently, in a way that expands your heart and your life? The guidebook talks about signs and synchronicities, and what can happen when you enter into a conversation with the Universe. It feels very different from magical thinking, in which I used to engage as a kid, thinking it I touched an object a certain number of times before I left my room then I would have a good day at school and not be teased. That behavior stemmed from fear - my kid brain trying to control what felt completely out of control.
In my experience, signs and synchronicities often have a joyful vibration, or at least a feeling of expansion rather than contraction or oppression. They may make you smile in recognition, fill you with awe. You aren’t depending on them as a solution to life’s problems. Rather they are the breadcrumbs I referred to, showing you viable (although often emotionally challenging) options that resonate with your heart and soul’s calling.
Love,
Maria Luz
Just a reminder, if you would appreciate some guidance from the Universe via an astrology or psychic mediumship consultation, I would love to help. Please check out the services offered on my website. For information on the sliding scale I offer, please reach out via a DM or email: info@marialuz.online.
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Thank you, Maria, for so generously sharing your process of healing and trusting. You are such a gift to the world through the work that you do. When the dust settles here, hopefully soon, I look forward to benefiting from more of your astrological and/or psychic services. 🌿💚
An interesting question and post. My youthful choices were seldom intentional but I felt something deep that reminded me that I deserved better. I used drugs and alcohol to escape on a daily basis throughout my teens and early 20s but I never actually enjoyed that. I was coping. Later in my life, I felt more secure and more rebellious and I changed dramatically in my 40s. I love the idea of living without masks and walls but at 66 I am still hesitant to live fully exposed. Your writing gets me thinking!