Becoming Hakin Laeknir: Leaving the Life I Was Told to Live

We all learn someone else’s script before we discover our own voice.
Mine looked like a blue-collar trade, a hidden queer identity, and a mask so tight it nearly broke me.
This is how I tore up that script — and became Hakin Laeknir.

My Early Chapters

I started out as a single dad, a fitness junkie, and an aspiring personal trainer in Alberta’s proud trades culture. Beneath the work boots and barbells, though, I was an autistic, starseed, bisexual soul masking who I truly was — because I believed my family’s version of “strong” was the only way to be accepted, and loved.

When Eden came into my life, everything changed.
I adopted her at 21, and for the first time, I made a choice not based on what my parents wanted for me, but on what felt undeniably true.

That one act of love cracked my whole worldview open.
If I could trust myself that deeply once… what else was I meant to listen to?

Eden became my compass — in a way, leading me to my first tarot reading, nudging me toward holistic wellness, and ultimately helping me find my way back to school. If not for her, I don’t know if I’d have heard the call that was always whispering beneath the noise.

Years later, when spirit gave me my shamanic name — Hakin Laeknir — I claimed it not as a rejection of my birth name and old self, Jordan Forget, but as a reclamation of my soul path.
(Much like Richard Alpert became Ram Dass, I became who I already was.)

My parents couldn’t understand that at the time.
They saw a name change, nail polish, and my queerness as rebellion.
And in 2023, the rift between us grew deep enough that I chose no contact — a painful but necessary step.

But healing is a long road.
And in early 2025, after many hard conversations, we found a way back to each other. I could finally see them not as villains, but as humans — scared, protective, trying their best with the tools they had. And I think they finally saw me, too.

I want you to know if you're navigating a messy, complicated family, if you're somewhere between holding on, honoring yourself, or reconciling and building bridges - I've been right where you are. Pissed off, frustrated, and unseen. 

It gets better.

Trust me, I wouldn't lie to you.

From Rooftops to Ritual

When the pandemic shuttered gyms, I found myself holding a kinesiology diploma, a single dad with a yet again uncertain future, and a question that wouldn’t leave me alone:
“What if the life I trained for wasn’t the one I’m meant to live?”

I thought school would be the path.
Instead, it became a portal.

While in school, both in college and outside of it I stumbled into Reiki training, then yoga teaching, mindfulness, ancestor reclamation, and pagan ritual.
I started reading, meditating, sweating through breathwork, drumming under moonlight.
I joined a men’s group in my community through the Mankind Project — a circle where I wasn’t judged for crying, or questioning, being too tender, or not "man enough".
It gave me tribe.
It gave me tools.
It gave me mirrors.

Eventually, I began co-facilitating circles, learning to hold space and guide transformation.
That’s when I realized: I wasn’t just participating anymore.
I was remembering who I’ve always been.

In time, I co-created a vibrant online community called Sacred Inspirations, and began testing the very first drafts of my workbook, Mind. Body. Soul.
Each small step brought me closer to what spirit had been whispering all along:
You are not here to stay small.
You are here to guide others home to themselves.

The Doorway of Sacred Sexuality

After marrying my wife Val in 2023, It was in the quiet chaos that followed our baby’s birth that fall — the sleepless nights, the NICU stress, the chronic illness Val begged me to hold space for, the pressure of being everything to everyone — I broke down.

I didn’t show up for my wife the way she needed.
Not emotionally.
Not sexually.
Not spiritually.

Instead of offering her my presence, I gave her my war.
Frustrated, ashamed, aching to be touched and seen, I weaponized my pain instead of holding space for hers.

That’s when I saw it — not just a pattern, but a wound I’d been calling love.
I realized I’d been chasing sex like it was medicine, like it was proof I was lovable.
Even in past non-monogamy, I’d wrapped it in the language of “sex positivity” and “ethical polyamory.”
But the truth was: I was addicted.
To being desired.
To not being left.
To filling the hole that whispered, you’re not enough.

And for the first time, I didn’t run from it.
That moment — humbling, ugly, sacred — became the threshold of real healing.

Not just for my relationship with sex.
For my relationship with myself and my soulmate.

That’s where the work truly began:
Tantric practice.
Shadow work.
Somatic healing.
Looking at the man in the mirror and saying,
"You’ve hurt people. Now do better."

And I did.

Now, I teach others how to walk that same path

      — Not from a pedestal, but from the pit I climbed out of.
      Because sacred sexuality isn’t about performance or access.
It’s about presence.
It’s about reclamation.
It’s about turning shame into prayer.

Choosing Yourself, Again and Again

Every step of “otherness” — from painting nails to ditching machismo laden in patriarchy — felt like shedding old skin.
But it was in the daily choice to show up authentically that I truly healed.

I wasn’t born into my destiny.
I chose it.

Whether it’s guiding a drum circle, telling stories about talking to trees, or simply sharing a vulnerable blog post — you don’t need permission to be who you are.
You only need the courage to choose yourself.

What Comes Next

Here on Nurturing Warriors, you’ll find the tools, teachings, and tribe to love your Wyrd and walk your story.
From meditations and writing to shamanic healing sessions and seasonal circles, everything grows from the same root:
the fierce love of becoming exactly who you were always meant to be.