She strikes at me
With her knife
Hot with the sting
Of shadow sisterhood
I thank her for the initiation
Feeling disgust ripple up
Knowing I must soften
The journey is to find compassion
You, who offer me hatred
Become, ironically
One of my biggest teachers
Of forgiveness
The sea loves you.
Hi lovebugs!
I have a question for you... How often do you let yourself dream big? I mean, really BIG!
Yet that's why most people stay small - they keep themselves there!
But I know you're not like most people. (Seriously, you ladies I work with are incredible) I know you're meant for big things, and in this new video, I'll show you how to get to those big things in a 3 step process!
Watch below to find out what that dream is!
Lots of love!
Well that is just groovy! I would be happy to oblige you! :D Just jot your name and email below to receive every new video from me to your inbox!
This post is the second in the 'How She Started Her Healing Business' series, where 7 inspiring young entrepreneurs share the story of how they created their holistic careers - giving you inspiration, advice, and a window into how you can do it too!
Asia is the founder of One Willow Apothecaries. She’s an herbalist, teacher & writer, who lives amongst the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western NC.
Asia is the only woman apart of this blog tour whom I hadn’t known previously. Though I had been following her on Instagram and Facebook for quite some time before I reached out. I adore that she is grounded and focused on, to me, what really matters, the healing powers of Mother Earth, and the simple things in life. She lives in this true place, and creates the most beautiful medicines from her strong connection to the earth. Tuning into Asia is quite different that tuning into your average entrepreneur. She lives first and foremost in the ‘real world’ (that of dirt, a cup of tea, and a slower pace of being), and that, is why I love her!
Well, first off, it's poetry. Asia is a beautiful writer. Second of all, we get such a window into Asia's initial fears + excitement. You can really feel the energy of how and when she started. The trepidation, the elation, the overarching curiosity for what was to come, and the many references to simply following her soul's whispers. This article really gives a peek into what the beginning stages of what the creation process is like. (Ps. Be sure to check out Asia's website, it's beautiful.)
Like a gentle breeze on bare skin; soul inklings often start out this way. I was in the final months of my herbal training at The Chestnut School when the idea suddenly made itself known. Like the half formed words that escape from us in sleep, the nudgings of our spirit often arrive in unexpected whispers, pieces that hint to a much larger conversation already underway in our dreams.
In the beginning, I was reluctant—as most people are when ambitious endeavors are first glimpsed. I had fully intended on developing a clinical practice at the completion of my studies. The idea to create a product business was far off my well-paved map. Like the most skilled conversationalist, however, our wider souls know exactly when to introduce new directions. One Willow sprung as suddenly as a pea shoot from long fallow soil. Green, young, alive, it would not be ignored. I didn’t quite know how to begin, but I felt that I was being allowed a moment of translucence, a little window into the greater conversation of my soul. I wasn’t sure exactly where it would lead (for it was certainly leading somewhere) but the urge itself was a kind of guidance. A single thread revealed from some unseen spool. I had no idea exactly where it came from, or where it would go, but I felt, deep in my bones, that a larger piece of my destiny was in the process of being woven.
To follow the thread meant two things: to accept that it was possible, and to allow myself to try. All journeys, especially the ones that are big and beautiful, require some sort of initiation. For me, that initiation took the form of confronting self-doubt. There were a thousand reasons why beginning a business seemed illogical. I had little capital. Actually, no capital at all! I have never run a business before, never created medicine for anyone beyond family or friends, never put myself out there so publically. Big decisions, opportunities, and life changes are so large simply because they ask much of us. Simply put, they ask for us to open up to our own grandness. Often, I will know a new direction is important specifically because it requires me to confront any feelings of smallness.
Starting your own business means more than applying for a license or figuring our your PR strategy. It is an act of sheer bravery, for it is often an invitation to confront our deepest fears and most limiting self-beliefs. For me, it came down to the nagging fear of being enough. Knowledgeable enough, old enough, experienced enough. More than creating a livelihood for myself through doing what I loved, the initiation of beginning One Willow was a sacred moment of reconciling with the dragons in my life.
It took me a year from first opening my heart to the idea to being able to introduce my medicine to the world. Developing One Willow was like inhabiting a living workshop. Every day I confronted worries and fears, and every day I cast off more of these limitations so that I could expand, experience, exalt and GROW. It was a journey.
Once the announcement went live I immediately high-tailed it to the woods to sit underneath the bare winter silhouettes and breathe. I felt like I had crossed a threshold. It was both thrilling and terrifying, and wholly mysterious. By the time I got back home hundreds of people had visited my website and I had the distinct feeling that a very grand adventure had just begun.
Over the past several years One Willow has opened some incredible doors and initiated some deep lessons in my life. More than just an enterprise, One Willow is an actual entity with which I have a relationship. It is an aspect of myself that manifests with specific desires and inclinations, passions and needs. It has helped encourage me down new paths of exploration and fascination. New incarnations and understandings of my work in this world. Named for the willow tree that was planted for me when I was born, One Willow is a constant reminder of where I come from, how it feels to follow the seasons of my desires, and who I am asking myself to become.
What makes you tingle with anticipation? What feels like home? What lights the clouds or opens up a space of truly celestial peace in your sky? Starting and maintaining a vibrant business necessitates that you follow the path of your passion—no matter what. Over the years, I’ve fallen into the many traps of thinking in “shoulds.” Cultural standards, outside expectations, comparison. Mark Twain wrote once that “comparison is the death of joy” and I agree with him. I’ve lost precious hours comparing myself to others or even to the models of what I expected my work to look like. The truth is that each and every one of us has a deeply unique gift and that gift is completely incomparable.
We will never stop confronting dragons in our life. But every time you do, true magic occurs. Like carefully stacked cairns along a trail, you will always be blessed with guidance and affirmation. Little, pebbled reminders that, yes, you are on the right path and it is leading you somewhere truly beautiful. Following the whispered words of my soul has led to much abundance in my life but, even more so, it has opened up entirely new avenues for self-expansion and enchantment. It has brought that conversation, the one that lives and continues to be explored at the heart of my dreaming self, to every corner of my waking life.
Here are some ways we can connect more deeply…
🐬 Download 3 free Dolphin Rose guided meditations, that I’ve created for you!
In these journeys, we’ll meditate with the dolphins and angels! First, you’ll activate your Pleiadian and Sirian starseed DNA, with the dolphins. Then, you’ll receive a healing from the Divine Feminine Archangels. And in the 3rd meditation, you’ll receive a powerful activation from the Blue Ray and Archangel Michael!
🐬 Join our Facebook group ~ The Dolphin Rose Temple!
🐬 Follow me on Instagram! @the.dolphin.rose.temple
Asia Suler is a writer, teacher and herbalist who lives amongst her gardens and large apothecary in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western NC.
She is the creator and concoctress of One Willow Apothecaries an Appalachian-grown herbal company that offers lovingly handcrafted magic and medicines.
Asia teaches at gatherings across the country and is blessed to work with people and plants, spirit and stones.
Visit her website at :www.onewillowapothecaries.com or read more of her writing on her blog: http://woolgatheringwildcrafting.wordpress.com
Heartbreak.
Um, wow.
Has there been anything else so volatile, so chaotic, so disruptively whole within your being? Alive.. intense.. dead. We can experience it all through heartbreak.
Rarely do we associate our past life memories, what our ancestry has gone through, our relationship to environmental degradation, or even a childhood variable with the root source of our internal pain. We tend to place it on something very external outside of us. When really, that external thing may have just been a trigger for detoxing deeper pain.
... Let's keep going.
Recently, I've consciously tapped into a part of my being that can only be described as intense loneliness.
Looking back though, I can see that in ways I've had this feeling for my whole life.
Not all of me, no ... a part of me is this bright sunny disposition that is just natural and flowing. Bubbly. It feels fun.
But then, there's this other part of me that feels a hole, an emptiness that aches for something outside of itself that will never come.
And beautifully enough, through the path of the priestess, I've come to foggily realize what this is. The memories are coming back.
Recently, I've recalled a past life trauma...
... Foggily detailed,
... Yet oddly accessible.
I kept seeing, for years in my minds eye, this little Irish, beautiful fishing settlement and Village, maybe what would be considered 2 or even 3 thousand years ago. And I just know it got burnt. Ravaged. All of it. And my family died. And the attack was blunt, and traumatic, and I was left without a family, and without a home, and without a village, all at once. I've seen this for years and years, but lately these obscure details and feelings from it have come into light.
Understandably, like everyone else whose grown up in this culture, every once in a while I have those 'Am I totally just making this up?' kind of moments. But more often than not, I just feel this knowingness inside of me, that yes, this is to be trusted. It is truth.
These visuals and the memory of this feeling (loneliness, gnawing) are the same I experienced after I first watched Tristan & Isolde when I was 14 or 15, (Starring babe of the century James Franco, might I add ;D ) when I watched an ancient Irish settlement being burned, and a boys whole family be killed. I walked out of the theatre absolutely numb to the tragedy I had just experienced in my soul, but completely besotted with it at the same time. It was intense. It took days to get over it, and yet, at the time, I thought it was just a really sad movie that I was oddly affected by. But now I know it actually mirrored a long buried past.
All of this inside of me, I found, as I explored this feeling, and the idea of heartbreak.
And since then, I've realized, I shouldn't beat this feeling up. This loneliness. This ache. Or ignore it for that matter. Whereas before I might say 'Why am I sad, I should stop being sad?'', I can now know that...
It has a cause.
A very real one.
And to be treated with the utmost of respect.
So. Give yourself permission to love your shadows, because they are worthy of your love... And so are you.
Lots of love and Happy Solstice everyone,
Don't be afraid to feel it, whatever it is,
