to begin

I asked the trees, they moved me into the answer.

For the past few years, since we moved here and began creating and settling into our home and land, I underwent lots of initiations, ego deaths, subtle and huge changes and humbling realizations.

I deeply lived the experience of disassembling the identities that were no longer true to what I wanted to bring into the world. And I did not have any rational clarity on what it was that I wanted to be in service of.

I read many books, took countless walks, stressed out the trees to give answers I was not listening to, talked with my animals about stuff they absolutely didn’t care of, blamed myself for not being successful enough (at what? Didn’t matter) and cried on my man’s chest for feeling ashamed for not “being like him” at least once a week.

This obsessive spiraling about my vocation, my calling, the work I am meant to be doing, went on for more than I'd like to admit. 

Yes, there was a lot of societal pressure and conditioning that  needed to be released, a sprinkle of fear to be fully seen and not knowing how to set any boundaries. But beneath all the layers of "shoulds" and shame, there was a yearning, a desire to truly contribute with my gifts, to devote myself to something I believe in, to be of service from a place of empowered and sovereign devotion to what I love which is the natural world, my body and the living creatures that surround me.

I’d feel very empowered and abundant in the mornings and by the evening I’d bathe in confusion and could not imagine how to bridge my magic with the social environment I was in.

Some months my back hurted so much that I could barely function. I felt deeply grateful for living a life that me and my partner dreamed of for so many years AND, at the same time, I was deeply confused, unsatisfied and exhausted. I'd help Micke and watched him be so diligent and devoted to his work of making this house into a home. I was restless and did not enjoy working around the house. The garden saw me coming in and out, scattered, spreading my emotions like seeds. The animals took a while to understand what I was going through and held me deeply in all the iterations of this huge journey of finding my calling again.

I was shedding so much that the only way out of that confusion and shedding was through. 

There is no one thing that “helped” me. Everything my heart wanted was to trust in the process and that’s something I had to commit to daily.

The land and her way to move through the seasons with her cycles of death, birth and liveliness brought me back to my body.

And there I was, in front of a row of trees in the forest realizing: I’ll see who and what I want to become through my body. Gently, with passion and with all the feelings that will pop up along the way.

When some of the identities I built during years of my life began to crumble because they felt too tight, like a pair of shoes that no longer fit when you’re growing up, the only way to not let myself be dragged away with the unavoidable shedding of those identities was to fully inhabit my body. In fact, my body is and will be the one and only identity which will always stay with me as I navigate this life, until death will change things. 

My body is me. “Me” is the spirit that inhabits, lights up and experiences life through this unique and magically orchestrated vessel, a temple made of flesh and bones and organs and currents of energy all grouped up in what we, in many languages, translate as “the body”.

And why is the body so important? Because it is the compass with which, willingly or unwillingly, we navigate life with. Where everything starts from and ends.

As I was shedding and grieving and releasing old patterns, identities and titles that no longer were working, the only way to not lose my sanity was to be in and care for my body.

In February 2026 I was given a session with a wise woman. My dad and his partner gifted me an hour with a shaman. 

Yes, I know how that sounds. 

I accepted the gift engulfed in curiosity and skepticism. I was curious to see how this woman would mirror me and I was skeptical that it would be another person making random claims.

After the session which was surprisingly nice and informative, filled with down to earth practices and advice I welcomed, I came out of the room and told my dad and the others that I needed to take a walk. 

The sun was setting, the countryside road was silent and everything around me was in harmony. 

As I was walking I felt what I think a tree feels like when it is finally rooted down and can begin to belong and bloom and offer its presence to the environment it settled in. 

I took this picture to remember what it means to root down in the knowing that I can thrive while being a disobedient, witchy woman.