A Tale of Triumph
Chapter One
Pause, Please!
Once upon a time, not two months ago, I was a bit confused, and worn out. So I decided the best course of action was no action, to take a much deserved break. As it turns out, that’s not something I’ve ever done. Not in any nourishing, extended way, at least. I’ve always been sucked up in the rat race, running on the hamster wheel, not ever feeling safe enough to allow myself a reprieve (even though there have been countless times when I needed one).
This summer was different because… well, I’m in the middle of my Saturn return. And boy is it a roller coaster. Your first Saturn return is that time in your life, somewhere between age 27-31, wherein you learn to recreate your boundaries, define your needs, and step into autonomy in a really big way because the planet Saturn (whose energy is all those things) has returned to the astrological placement of your birth. This is a very powerful alignment that brings up your core essence and purpose in this lifetime. Basically, it’s a huge time for growth and shedding and pain and love and expansion, and even if you weren’t aware of this notion, I’d bet you still went THROUGH it in your own way.
Lots of lessons to learn at this time, and one of them is understanding my worth, my value, and therefore, my right to take a break instead of rushing, running and jumping into the next thing that would inevitable just keep me stuck on that same hamster wheel. I said no. I said enough, and I chose to pause, to breathe, to trust my worth, my intuition, my capacity to move in the right direction when the timing felt right.
Chapter Two
That Gypsy Energy
And so the pause began. And it being a pause happening in the month of August meant that it was a time of great revelry. See, August is the month of Leo season. I happen to be a Leo rising, and so… that energy really rises up in me that time of year. It shows up as a sauciness indescribable. I become a little gypsy, fairy goddess. My feminine energy is just oozing out of my skin, I’m constantly in a bathing suit swimming, I’m probably going on dates, or just feeling flirtatious. And most importantly, I get together with Naty, the other gypsy. We use this energy to lift each other up and draw it out of one another even more. It’s a beautiful, symbiotic thing. Granted, this year’s festivities were coated with a layer of healing and pain, but the Leo romp happened nonetheless.
Actually, I played my first show with the band this one night, and I will never forget how Naty and I arrived, looked around, and just started laughing. We stood out like a sore thumb. This bar was the local watering hole of a small town, and it was in the middle of a kinda random shopping center with a CVS and such. It was just, for lack of a better word, random. Not a place she and I would typically go, not a place we fit in… and I’ll leave it at that. The entire night, we were either getting looks from people so baffled that we would be at this bar, OR it was the opposite. People couldn’t handle the frequency of our energy, and therefore couldn’t even look at us. It was intense and hilarious all rolled into one. And what this evening did for us was charge us. My capacity to capture and emit my feminine energy was multiplied.
As Naty left and Leo season was concluding, I kept riding the spirit of it all, especially because I was still on pause. At this point two pivotal things happened…
I recognized I needed to extend my pause into and maybe through Virgo season (it was just a strong intuitive hit I received)
I went on an adventure to see my favorite band Ripe in concert and it fed into a weekend of camping with friends
And then it happened, somewhere between debauchery and the fire pit, low immunity from my menstrual cycle and high energy from happiness…
…something creeped into my system. If nothing else, the order of events is just laughably obvious. Can’t write this shit.
Chapter Three
Covid, and the Darkness Within
Not 24 hours after landing home, I was sweating the sweats and could barely move, much less leave my cottage. I think it was three days trapped in there. I won’t get into all the gory details. Long story short, I caught the infamous covid, and I received nearly all the symptoms in full force. In my sickened haze, I somehow had a clear and comical thought…
Of COURSE I get sick right after deciding to extend my pause. And of COURSE it’s in Virgo season, of all the times I could possibly come down with something. It was actually perfect for me because Virgo energy is all about organization, details, and healing. It allowed me to draw upon my powers, even though I could barely walk. In the fight of Audrey VS covid, the match was mine. No question. Somehow, I became patient, nurse, healer, therapist, mother, all rolled into one.
Enter… The List. Yes, if there was one thing I got up to do every single day, no matter how painful, it was to execute and check off this list of herbs, medicines, Ayurvedic practices, preparation and consumption of nourishing liquids, etc. I am so grateful for the knowledge and guidance I have in this field of science, study and practice. If it weren’t for Ayurveda, and where I’m at in my digestion of knowledge, I wouldn’t have healed as powerfully, quickly, nor thoroughly as I am.
Like I said, I was ready to kick ass, because underneath the viral shutdown was my soul. And I hadn’t just pressed pause at such a pivotal moment of growth, and then activated all that gypsy energy, to then let a little fucker like covid steal it all away. Nah nah, my sense of urgency of the work I need to do in this lifetime was activated from below and screaming at me to fight this thing, get my shit together, and get back on track. I suppose I needed the quiet in order to hear that voice too…
There were some powerful deep feelings driving my capacity to get through this hardship. And I dove in to the experience (not like I had much choice) and my kitchen became my laboratory, my couch a healing tent, my bed a cave of deep solace. Time stood still, so I got really well adjusted to this schedule and these habits. In a strange way, I came to like them. I was so focused on just taking care of myself every day, all day. This might sound strange, but there was a quiet bliss to it.
My relationship with my hammock didn’t fare too badly either. It was another subtle, yet potent aspect of my healing.
Then, I got to week two, the belly of the beast, right around the time my diagnosis and forced isolation were confirmed. My original pause doubly paused, my gypsy energy practically squashed, as isolated as could be, things took a turn for the weird. What’s interesting is I actually love to self-isolate. I just need that decompression time to find clarity. But a forced isolation with so much pain and congestion and heaviness involved did NOT go well. Time is so relative, and I just felt frozen. Somewhere in that time, a dark part of me decided that I was alone. In every sense of the word.
It’s pretty amazing what our mind is capable of making our body believe. I know that whatever nonsense this was, it wasn’t truly me. It was a sickened, dark, covid-coated expression acting upon me, making me believe this was true. It was a cyclical moment of my thoughts acting upon my emotions acting upon my body, and I just got stuck in a vicious hole, swirling around like a turd in a toilet. I was even thinking things like, “I’m stuck like this forever, things will always be this way and there’s nothing I can do about it.” What!? And if you know me… what!? Doesn’t sound like me, does it…
My thoughts exactly… keyword, MY. I am so tethered to my light, no matter how sick or depressed or injured I’ve EVER been in my life, that I was able to peek out of the darkness, catch a glimmer of my light, and shake this darkness off like a dog shakes off water. Because at the end of the day, YOUR THOUGHTS CREATE YOUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY.
THEY. JUST. DO.
Chapter Four
Triumph at Last!
Then, and only then, did I start to heal. I also discovered even more depth to this whole situation, Energetic reasons underlying my vulnerability to getting sick. I started to dive deeper than just the physical virus, the emotional darkness. I dove into layers of self that were unattended, weak spots in need of healing, totally susceptible. (Message me if you really want details.)
As I write this, it’s been nearly four weeks since this debacle began. I feel clearer and healthier than I have in a long time. My physical body, my lungs, my head, feel expansive, strong, capable. My sense of smell is BACK (gahd I missed sandalwood), my sense of taste is 90% and climbing. And that’s where I believe the energetics, the psychic connection to your soul, come into play. This last little blockage is ostensibly acting as scar tissue would, building up a barrier to keep me “safe”. There’s something here to do with receptivity (like receiving flavor from a food) that is blocked, hardened, in need of more opening. That’s clear to me.
I believe my higher self led me to all these experiences in order to get me to face the deepest roots of my pain, to clear them. And to close this chapter, I have a feeling I know what needs to happen to clear the congestion and get the flavor fully back into my life. We’ll see if it works…
So, I’m healed, and healing, and feeling like this lesson is just bleeding into the next one. There’s always a connection to be made, a thread to be pulled that makes you realize how interconnected all of life is. I’m just grateful it’s over. All of it. The Pause, needed, but then not needed. That Gypsy Energy, fun, but then too fun. Covid, heavy and dark and a good lesson in healing. And now here I am, filled with natural immunity, back (and forward) to sharing and creating, shifting my energy onto the path, and recalibrating that path, as always.
Some of my same work came back, some of it fell away, and I made some room for new things to grow. As far as Saturn return goes, I’m back on the roller coaster, perhaps a little more wiser and willing to surrender. The surprises, twists and turns are so intense, all I CAN do is surrender and surrender more as all of me is taken, molded and remolded, shaken up and spit out.
You know that at the end of this ride… only the essentials of my soul will be what stick…
…Because I will have spiritually vomited up all else.
Moral of the story…
Ask and you shall receive.
I may have been knocked on my ass by the Universe recently, but this time also served as a wakeup call to regroup and rebuild, to be accountable for my healing and growth. I pushed my body’s limits that weekend and made myself vulnerable because a deeper part of me was asking for these lessons.
I trust it. I really trust all things when it’s from this place of surrender, and boy have I learned surrender lately.
Aho.