8 weeks ago, I wrote a piece on grief to work through a period of depression, and poor mental health, which shifted into being less about grief, than it was about letting go of how I thought my life and my relationship should look. This led to a journey of self devotion where I became my focus, instead of my relationship or my partner, because I realized the problem in my life was a lot less about whatever wasn’t right in my marriage, as much as it was about me getting right with myself again.
It’s a paradoxical irony, realizing that when there becomes a palpable disconnect in a relationship, I’ve often focused on it, and perpetuated it by putting more attention on my masculine need to “fix it”, than I even put on tending my own garden. When I started this self-devotion rite eight weeks ago, I thought I was trying to heal my relationship through healing myself and my relationship with lust and desire.
I’ve had this habit in many past relationships over the years, of pouring everything I had into my partner and my relationship, until I had nothing left for myself, diving so deep into holding the union together while putting my partner on a pedestal while neglecting my self or my other relationships, that after a while I wasn’t even the person my partner was attracted to anymore, I’d become a shell of myself. Seeing them as the altar I worshipped instead of my own heart.
What I realized I needed was self healing, more than anything going on in my relationship, or trying to mend anything through date nights and structured quality time. Showing myself the focus I was putting into my relationship by pouring everything I had into my partner, without taking the time to focus on filling my own cup.
What I found out more than anything, — is that I was actually healing a disconnection from myself, spirit, and my shamanic path.
The new routine I intended on seemed simple:
Committing to daily self care, with the intention to show myself love instead of trying to get it from someone else.
- Walks with my dog
- Cold baths & showers to merge with my nervous system
- Breathwork
- Mirror work, and being my own partner to start having eye gazing with
- Daily morning Quantum meditations - visualizing my ideal reality
- Runic German Yoga
- Some sacred carving and staff work as I started to connect with my staff more
- A slow spiral through the directions of the medicine wheel
While I’ve been in the direction north in my shamanic medicine wheel for months, this was intended to be a mini turn around the wheel. 8-10 weeks of low pressure, low structure self paced archetype work, a new moon in the east, then a full moon in the south, followed by what's been a new moon in the healing water of the west. So I went in to the east, the new beginning of a new moon, back in mid may. When I'm done, I'll package it up into a short eBook a person can go through for a mini self-reset, which would be a bit softer than my 9 week chakra workbook, Mind.Body.Soul.
✦The East
This was about reestablishing these habits that I loved, exercise, walking in nature as walking meditations, coming back to my breath, my heart, and connecting to all-that-is through all of these things.
Not doing any of these healthy habits to “feel good”, but simply to feel something.
But what really happened?
I came home.
✦ In the South...
I finally admitted that I had been outsourcing my worth.
To sex. To validation. To being needed.
The fire I thought I was chasing was in my relationship, pouring everything into it while saving none of my life force for myself. So the fire I was chasing was actually the one I’d left unattended in myself. For a long time.
So I lit it again.
Not for anyone else.
Just to feel the warmth for myself.
To feel something
For a long time, months before all this, I’d wanted to spend more time with my dog Fenrir. Only, I was so caught up in my depression and negative spiral, that I rarely took him out, and his wound up energy band anxiety made me dread taking him out at all. I started to just take him once a day in the evening after the kids went to bed, and got into a routine of taking my pup out and going to the trail system near our house. At this point in late May, I began to feel a deeper connection with Fenrir, in the consistency of daily walks and sitting by the pond together, meditating and listening to the sounds of nature together.
It was at this point I realized something bigger. A practice I’d put off for a long time, called Utesitta. It’s an old Norse word which means “sitting out”, traditionally a Nordic method of meditating in nature, silently listening to spirit. Traditionally it’s done fasted, from sunset to sunrise, although I realized I might want to work up to a full 7 hours through the night of sitting in nature. And the big realization was, while working up to even one full hour of sitting in the trees by the pond, gaining various songs to sing to nature to go deeper into trance, or to ground and come back into my body, I wasn’t actually trying or intending to do some of the things that came through.
I was just showing up and going for walks with my dog, surrendering to the flow of daily life with consistency.
Which I think speaks to so many aspects of transformation. We can over plan when and how we will do something or experience it a certain way, and yet, when we take little actions on our excitement and simply do it with consistency every day, surrendering to the rhythm of life and all-that-is, we let the divine into our lives on a daily basis, and that is when real magic happens. For me, it was when I got out of my head and started literally walking my path again every day.
✦ In the West...
I softened.
Not into weakness — into presence.
I stopped performing, trying to over-plan quality time with my beloved or making myself always available for connection, and started practicing solitude for my own sake.
It’s ironic, all I shifted was why I was spending time with myself, and how I felt about both myself and my partner needing our own solitude, and it alchemized so much within the layers. Instead of wanting to spend time with my beloved with a sense of desire - desire driven by lust, which often created resentment when we didn’t spend time together or if she didn’t have the energy to connect with me the way I wanted…I was falling in love with the simplicity and bliss of my own company, the time I spent in nature, with my dog, and the paradox became…I saw and felt that I was more grateful for my partner’s presence when we do spent time together. Hell, I became more in awe and gratitude of any human connection.
I let synchronicity bring in old truths. When we open an intentional healing portal, we open the door for these synchronicities and karmic patterns to surface and be healed, without needing to constantly be doing specific deep healing somatic practices every week just to witness our own healing.
- I stopped treating weed like my coping mechanism and started seeing it as a plant medicine again, only partaking once or twice a week, having spiritual experiences with it, and taking the rest of the week to integrate what messages came up.
- I reconnected with a past relationship with an old partner from almost 4 years ago which brought a long-awaited thread of healing and closure. This particular thread became this full circle karmic clearing of things I’d struggled in relationships over the last 4 years.
And I saw something else important:
→ I wasn’t just longing for connection from my partner.
I was longing for community.
For friends. Brothers. Bonfires. Game nights. Jokes and shared silence.
So I’m making space for that again, while understanding it's okay if time for that is limited as an over 30 dad and husband with a busy family of 5. Even if that means seeing one friend a week.
And funny enough...
The more I give my spirit new places and ways to play,
the more my beloved begins to reach for me again in little ways.
Not because I’ve asked or demanded her presence,
Because she felt the shift.
Where I'm At Now
I’m not finished.
This isn’t the reflection at the end of the road.
This is the turning point.
From the West into the North.
From unthawing into embodying.
From self-work into sovereignty.
There’s a final moon or two ahead of me.
A hike. A full-circle moment. A full night’s Utesita.
But I've already changed.
And to the man I was before — I don’t blame you.
You were tired.
You were trying.
And you were worth saving.
Clear seeing
The true gift of the West has been realizing that I no longer need to compartmentalize my practice, or my path as goal posts or notches on my belt.
No more waiting for the perfect moon, no more pushing for certain breakthroughs.
When my heart and the portal for transformation are open, I let magic into my life as it’s meant to.
It’s all one thread now, weaving a tapestry into my story.
My staff, my dog, my partner, my walks, my Utesita sits, bonding with and carving my staff, my singing, and my very being.
It’s not about my relationship anymore. It’s about me living my path, while letting this all be part of the same weave.
This is the shamanic seid, and the tantric path — not just as sacred sexuality,
but as the sacred weave of all life.
I’ll leave the deeper revelations for my North phase reflection,
but for now, I’m breathing gratitude.
Not because I’m finished.
But because I’ve finally remembered
how to begin again, and that there isn’t truly an end, once I’m on this path.
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