2022 may be my last year of teaching Sacred Sexual Awakening & Healing® as I retire from my 15-year career as a facilitator and teacher trainer of this precious body of work created by Caroline Muir. I’ll be teaching my last two in-person retreats in 2022, and I hope you’ll take advantage of these final opportunities to work with me. If you want to know more about what led me to this decision, I’m happy to share the story… [see update at the end of the article]
It’s easy to TEACH about self love and self care, but what about actually doing it? That’s a whole different story.
I’ve been a pathological overachiever my entire life. I am the firstborn with three sisters, the youngest born when I was 13. Mom worked A LOT, and my responsibilities were heavy starting from age 6. Cooking, dishes, housework, yard work, laundry, childcare, cloth diapers for the babies, and of course, school. That set me up with both great gifts and driving compulsions.
How do we learn about self care?
My childhood taught me to be quick, to be smart, to get it done, and to be as invisible as possible about it. Self love and self care were not part of the lessons, and I took the lessons I learned into adulthood. Those lessons were all tangled up with my unresolved childhood sexual abuse, which ran my life into my late 30’s.
I excelled at my jobs and often got promoted over people with more experience. Eventually I decided to try my hand at entrepreneurship, and that was a lot more fun. I never looked back and have been a serial entrepreneur for over 20 years. It was the healing arts that drew me… Reiki, massage, and herbal craft.
Discovering my life’s work
When I found my way to sacred sexual healing (because I desperately needed it, as most of us do), I just knew that THIS was what I had been seeking. THIS would be my life’s work. I devoted myself to it in 2005, spending several years in training, certification, and employment at The Divine Feminine Institute, founded by Caroline Muir.
As I came up through the ranks of the school from student to assistant to administrator to teacher and eventually to director, I was doing two full-time jobs within the school and was incredibly stressed out. I knew could not go on like that. I saw and felt that the school’s cycle was coming to completion. I listened to my intuition, and we taught our final weeklong retreat in November of 2012, bringing the school to a graceful close.
Lessons of breast cancer
We closed Divine Feminine Institute just as I turned 50. A few months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I knew right away why breast cancer visited me, and that brought the experience into clear focus immediately. I was pouring from an empty chalice. Breast cancer was an amazing experience that I approached the same way I did everything: be quick, be smart, and get it done. I let go of my work, which was teaching women’s sexual healing workshops, acknowledging the big lesson of over-giving with not enough return. Knowing the “why” of breast cancer really helped me move through it with ease and grace, and surprisingly, even joy.
One of my assumptions about my breast cancer experience was that I was being redirected in my work to support women diagnosed with breast cancer. A likely assumption, right? I poured my energy in that direction with devotion and enthusiasm, writing and publishing a book called “Dancing with Breast Cancer-The Sacred Feminine Path to Wholeness” and creating an online course based on the book. I could never get any traction with that work, much as it seemed to be needed. Doors kept closing so I took the hint and let it go.
Spiraling back to sexual healing
Eventually I got drawn back into teaching women’s sexual healing workshops. I reconnected with Caroline Muir and we taught together. The workshops were filling up and it felt so right. We taught a longer retreat in Costa Rica in 2017, and it was so well received! I started to feel the possibilities, and by the end of that Costa Rica retreat, I received a vision. A global vision. It was time to train teachers, to create a new school, to get sacred sexual healing out into the world in a much bigger way.
An arrow shot from the bow
From that moment forward, I was like an arrow shot from the bow. I poured myself passionately and joyfully and with so much excitement into launching The Sacred Feminine Mystery School and rebooting the Certified Spiritual Sexual Educator training I had received a decade before. I worked and created 14 hours a day, every day, for months, with so much enthusiasm and sense of purpose.
The first cohort filled with 10 women and I was overjoyed. It was fraught with intense lessons for all of us, especially me, and I learned them well and took them into the second cohort with another 10 women. Some very special women came through the training… devoted, committed, and on fire for the work of sacred sexual healing.
I hired a wonderful assistant and she did a great job of helping me build my social media presence, especially on Pinterest. And then covid hit. Delays and more delays turned a 6-month Certification program into 2 years. I kept holding space and meeting on zoom monthly. Their graduation intensive was postponed twice, and we finally met in May of 2021.
Not practicing what I preach
I didn’t stop with covid, though my workshops and source of income did. I started the Feminine Sexual Healing podcast in January 2020 and kept writing blogs, making podcasts and videos, and saying yes to interviews and summits. It felt important to continue to support people in whatever way I could through the intense change and upheaval. I wrote and talked about pausing and self care, but did I practice what I preached? No, I didn’t.
Feet to the fire
In January 2021, I entered my second Saturn return. This astrological influence hits everyone at 29-1/2 year intervals. They are often ass-kicking and life-changing. Saturn is the planet of discipline, structure, restrictions, boundaries, lessons, and rules, and these cycles can bring immense challenge, especially if what you are doing isn’t working. During this time, I had no less than two other Saturn cycles in place, along with Saturn complexes on my birth chart.
[You are being pushed to level up to the next stage of life. After all, Saturn is the planetary taskmaster, and at this time, he will likely hold your feet to the proverbial fire.] horoscope.com
Pouring from an empty chalice… again
I was forced to face the fact that I was right back to my breast cancer lesson: pouring from an empty chalice. The first hint came when a dear friend of mine, also in the healing/helping field, told me she had bought a house and was going to make her living as an AirBnB host. When she told me that, I actually felt jealous! I turned that feeling over in my mind for months as I continued to resist and ignore what has now become obvious… I can’t keep pushing myself to do my “life’s work” when it no longer feeds me as it used to, but instead, drains me.
Cycles and seasons, death and rebirth
As I high priestess for almost 20 years, I’ve been deeply in tune with cycles and seasons as Mama Gaia teaches us through her very existence. I’ve also been deeply attuned to the energies of the sacred feminine, which never stop changing, flowing, and moving. Nor can I stop changing, growing, and adapting. Mama Gaia shows us how to let things die so that something new can be reborn. This is the essence of transformation, of alchemy, of LIFE.
After a lifetime of overwork, I’ve come to appreciate just how much life force and vitality I’ve been gifted with throughout my entire life. My biggest hope is that I’ve given back to my global community in at least equal measure. Saturn helped me realize the importance and value of this gift and to question how I want to use it for the remainder of my time on this precious planet. It’s time to direct my energy to self love and self care, for the first time in my life.
The school lives on!
The Sacred Feminine Mystery School will continue indefinitely in support of the courageous women who have become Certified Spiritual Sexual Educators and who will carry the body of work forward. I will continue to support them freely and joyfully even as I let go of teaching and holding retreats, so that those seeking sacred sexual healing have access to trained professionals they can work with. There’s a wealth of free resources on the website that will assist and support anyone who feels called to visit.
Honoring myself and my gifts
As I bring my sacred sexual healing work to a close over the next year, I honor all the gifts I have offered to the world with so much passion and enthusiasm. I celebrate all the lives I have touched through my sexual healing book, my blog, my workshops and retreats, my free quarterly Sacred Feminine Conversations online circles, my online course, my summit interviews, the teachers and practitioners I have trained, and by my being and presence. I celebrate a 15-year career of supporting women to heal and clear sexual wounding carried through lifetimes and generations, so that they can have fulfilling relationships and live lives of wholeness and joy.
What’s next?
Is there something next for me? I have no idea… no ambition, no drive to “figure it out,” no need to know. I trust that the Goddess will reveal the next octave to me in divine timing. Meanwhile, I’m thrilled for the upcoming retreats to which I can bring all of myself, having made the decision, and the provision, for true self care. This is made possible in part by the incredible support of my Beloved, Apollo Grace, who has held me in every way through the cycles of creation and releasing throughout our entire relationship.
I am finally practicing what I teach. It feels like the ultimate act of self love and self care I can offer myself. And so I ask YOU, what is the ultimate act of self love and self care you can do for yourself? I will leave you with that to ponder. It’s a Big Question.
[UPDATE] At the 2022 Glastonbury retreat, all of the women who attended insisted I must teach in Glastonbury next year. So, there will be a 2023 Glastonbury retreat! I remain open to infinite possibilities for the future. It’s in the hands of the Goddess, and I trust She will guide me exactly where I’m supposed to go.
The Sacred Feminine Rose Womb Mysteries of Avalon in Glastonbury – June 30-July 7, 2023
Be sure to take advantage of the early bird discount! There are a very limited number of spots available, and it’s already about half full.
Love & blessings, Amrita
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