Good Morning Beautiful. Welcome to the New You.
More photos via substack, here.
Three years ago today I walked in my second psychedelic journey — not yet therapy because I wasn’t aware I’d hand anything needing “therapy.” This journey involved a sound ceremony, the Shaman playing hours of 40+ beautiful instruments while participants lay on the floor, with eye mask on, after ingesting the personally subscribed dose of psychedelics. In this journey, it was MDMA (boosts serotonin and dopamine for the body to feel safe to start remembering) and Psilocybin to transcend the subconscious mind. I arrived, did what I was told and surrounded by 25 strangers and little context, but clear intention, to “reconnect to my body and open my heart,” I surrendered to let my heart open.
When it comes to “psychedelics” If you resist, fight the medicine, it fights you. Ever heard of a “bad trip,” — its pretty common, but you get what you’re served and so often the true test is to just relinquish control, or as I like to say, trust, surrender, receive whatever wisdom the higher self and universe has to teach. Three years ago, I’d not used said substances even recreationally, but something led me to the evening. Just before we started, I caught my face in the bathroom mirror, my reflection. And for the first time in my memory I heard a voice speak through me, “No matter what happens tonight Olivia, know that you are beautiful, that you are safe, that you are going to be ok.” That voice would become my guiding light for three years since and is to this day. Whenever I lost hope, connection to God, grace, I always found my way back home to me …. And such is the journey…
Three years ago today, I surrendered into the medicine and as such, the first of what became 2.5 years of excavating deep traumatic memories came to me — Rape, seventeen. It was alarming, to say the least. Me? Trauma? No F’ing way. I did everything I could to deny it. But it doesn’t work that way. And three years later I can confidently say plant medicine provided the key, but my daily commitment to healing was my saving grace. I embarked on a journey to lose to to find me. And along my way, I found grief, growth and God … and I found me. I returned to my heart.
I woke up this morning, sat in my own morning candlelit ceremony at my altar as I do every morning to meditate, journal and pray and wrote, “September 12, 2023: Good Morning Beautiful. Welcome to the New You.” Yes, that is how I speak to myself now — and because I speak to myself that way, see myself in LOVE, I see others, I see life through the lens of love, and do my best to live in my heart, fully.
Healing is a journey. The journey of bringing oneself home.
So why after this horrific memory did I keep digging? Because what is closest to the surface comes out first, and because deep down, I knew there was more. And so I kept going into the depths of my psyche, guided divinely to face my darkness, my pain, my past, my truth, die 100x before I could live filly. About a year ago, I had a journey with the “medicine,” where I went into child labor, energetically at least, and my soul said, “Before you bring life into this world, you have to bring yourself back to life.” And so I just kept marching. And I write you here, today, with a capacity inside me that I never knew possible, a limitless passion for all things aLIVe and with the deepest empathy, for seeing the pain so many of us carry — and I don’t just mean “trauma,” I mean what happens as a result, the deep limiting beliefs of “unlovable, unworthy, insecurity,” that many spend their lives NUMBING with food, sex, booze, work, sweat, sexting, swiping, running — from their hearts. But you have to heal it to feel it. Because it is too heavy to carry and the pain wasn’t yours to carry, anyone, just put on you as a result of someone else’s hurt.
And so reflecting, my biggest lesson was surrender, to relinquish control, let spirit take the wheel in full trust that I would be ok, that it would maybe even be “easier,” if I stopped fighting. And so I did. It felt easier to do that in Austin than New York City. And ironically, three years later, today, I’m on my way back to the city where I built Box + Flow, preached the messages God was speaking through me, “Face yourself to free yourself, choose ease, flow through the fight,” and as the doors said, “Everything You Need is Inside.” As much as it was my creation, it was God’s messages coming through me. I haven’t been back to New York in three years.
To learn said lessons, I had to stop “doing,” stop defining myself by doing and just be. Austin became a safe container for that, be, to find stillness in my mind, a deep practice of meditation, journaling and connecting with spirit, praying. I built a jungle to hold me, to cocoon and feel safe in the darkness of my memories, to die again and again by facing all of the stuck emotion, energy in motion, living in me, and then integrate my feelings and bring myself back to life. In stillness, I could hear my own thoughts, my intuition, the voice inside, not the thoughts of others that for years clouded my own judgement: that I had to be a certain way to be love or get love — which only reinforced the deep belief that I was unlovable. And then I opened my heart — never asking “Why” because in healing I realized that I was gifted this journey so I could help others feel less alone in their own.
Healing is the willingness to unlearn you to learn to love you not in SPITE of but because of everything you’ve been through.
And so in three years of love, loss, grief and growth, here’s a few of my lessons:
Healing takes time. And no one can do it for you. You have to show up with the willingness to face yourself to free yourself, timeline unknown. But there is so much light on the other side.
Perspective is everything. It isn’t easy but it doesn’t have to be so hard.
When resistance comes up, Flow through the fight, choose ease, choose easy.
If you work through it, it will work through you. Surrender.
Forgiveness is the freedom we gift ourselves. No matter your struggle, or how hurt you feel, or how many have hurt you — until you Forgive, you will still hold that hurt in your heart. By forgiving others, you make more space in your heart for more love. Let go.
Everything you need is inside. Your tools, your answers, others can hold space for you, reflect you, the best healers are reflectors. But You are always your greatest guide.
Committing to you opens up to the possibility of living fully, out of head and into heart, into body. Whatever your struggle may be, or your numbing agent as a result, know that you are loved, you are love, but you have to see it, to believe it. You have to believe in you.
And still healing isn’t linear or finite. I’m returning to New York for a big Box + Flow activation with celebrity dermatologists and 300 influencers. And this morning, an hour after my “Good morning beautiful,” climbing the stair master, post stillness is always sweat, to integrate my thoughts and feelings back into body, I caught my reflection in the mirror and thought, “Maybe they can give me some professional advice. You could use some botox…” My thoughts dipped back into old patterns of seeking external validation, the need to fix, change and otherwise. The voice still lives inside me — but what this work does is smash it before the Thought becomes a Belief. Healing allows you to retrain the mind to call you out when you start thinking those self-deprecating things. So, half a second later, my thought shifted to, “Why are you looking for reasons not to love yourself?
I counter corrected, and kept climbing. And I came from my head back into my heart. I once read, if you lived in your heart, you would be home right now. And that’s the only place I want to be …Home isn’t a place, its a feeling. You have everything you need. If I can be helpful in any way, reply here. I hold space for all things, offer tools to reframe, reorganize, require, and guide simply as a reflection of you … as a coach, a healer a guide. I’ll help guide you home. You are worthy of that aliveness. It isn’t easy but it doesn’t have to be so hard. For more information, email me to set up a free call and stay tuned for a few workshops. All my love, Olivia