1. A Meditative Journey

With full honesty, Jackie is taking us to her underworld. She starts a daily meditation practice, a journey in the center of her fears. She is keeping a journal of her expeditions and reports the discoveries she makes about her inheritance. She is supported by the mineral world and her Tarot cards, they are sending her messages and wisdom.

She is gradually healing and awakening to her magical nature.

Music by Rahul Popawala, North Indian Alleys.

Transcript

Disclaimer.

This is a survivor's diary.

Her experience is unique and personal.

In sharing it,

She reveals the path she took to open up to life after a childhood filled with hardships.

It's not a recipe to be applied,

But rather the chronicle of her gradual awakening.

Dear listeners,

The narrator's words may affect sensitive people.

If you're feeling difficult emotions,

Talk with a professional or a friend,

And know that I'm here to receive your impressions.

Yannick Villeneuve,

Author and narrator.

Uni,

My sacred space,

Episode 1.

March 1st,

2021.

I haven't had a car for two years.

I haven't worked in a year.

Since I stopped receiving a salary,

I feel more in tune with myself.

From the outside,

I don't look like I'm lacking anything.

I am fit,

In love,

And safe.

Why should I go and play the waitress in a cafe or offer my time to a market gardener when I can do it here,

For us?

I fully embrace my new role,

The queen of the house.

I take possession of my kingdom,

And I keep it clean and tidy.

It was at this point that my intuition suggested I apply my housekeeping skills to my emotional sphere.

I feel that I have to make meditation a daily routine.

I ask Google what it thinks,

And after a few clicks,

I end up on the Insight Timer application.

With this tool,

I am ready to embark on a deep journey to the center of my fears.

I wanted to keep a logbook to record my expedition reports.

In all honesty,

I'll write about how I feel while meditating,

And maybe in the process,

Discover who I am.

Welcome to my underworld.

March 2,

2021.

The March horoscope suggests that Sagittarians begin a new discipline.

I thought I was pretty good with all the life changes I've already adopted.

But as I pointed out in my annual projection last January,

The activities to be undertaken in line with my chosen values will manifest themselves naturally and effortlessly.

Coincidentally,

I added a morning writing and meditation session to my routine yesterday.

It is also predicted by the stars that I will receive further revelations,

Make contact with new people,

And use new networks.

I feel confirmation of the lead I discovered yesterday when I signed up for Insight Timer.

I'm celebrating my first year outside the job market.

I am proud of the work I've done.

I haven't wasted my time.

I've managed to shed some light on the intensity of the darkness that dragged me down for so long.

Recently,

I've been feeling my way again.

I've rebuilt myself with what I've found around me.

It makes me think of the concept of proximity and how we are encouraged to always look elsewhere.

A former colleague of mine is a personal trainer and a yoga teacher.

We meet weekly on Zoom to break the isolation caused by the pandemic.

She's one of those women who knows the solution to every problem.

We were talking about our lack of energy and the long end of winter.

That's when Amber interrupted me to give me her recipe for fire vinegar.

She starts declaiming the list of exotic ingredients that make up her maceration,

All foreign to our ecosystem.

I can't believe it.

Our fire vinegar should be made from what grows around us within walking distance,

Not by raiding the local Asian grocery store to follow the recipe.

Last summer,

I discovered the territory I live in,

And as I do so,

A fever took hold of me.

I went into a wild picking frenzy.

Yarrow,

Rosehip petals,

Balsam fir shoots,

Plantain,

All my pickings have been macerating in cider vinegar or olive oil ever since.

Like a witch,

I'm going to use my preparations by incorporating them into my cooking,

The water I drink,

And the oil I use for massage.

What I harvested last summer,

I am incorporating into my body this winter.

There are hundreds,

Thousands of us slowly making our way back to our river.

I write my testimony,

But it's only an interpretation of the same path.

Sometimes I wonder what's original and what's the point.

March 7,

2021.

Witty is a writer's cat.

Always close by,

He watches over my calm.

My calm,

Always full of ideas and desires.

My latest one is to get myself a tarot deck.

I'd like to play with the cards,

Tell me stories.

Already while meditating,

The she-wolf has come to bring me a deck,

And I feel a distant medieval call.

I thought about it while staring at the stucco ceiling of the room I'm in.

The dance began to move.

I felt like I was in my childhood home,

Staring at the holly hobby dolls decorating the bedroom curtains.

Every night,

The dolls came to life and told me their stories.

More pictures with dolls.

I have hundreds of them in the depth of my cave.

I excavate them one at a time to repair them.

It's a never-ending task.

The mineral world guides me through the forest below.

I like to discover crystals one by one,

Instinctively in response to what I need.

Recently,

I fell in love with citrine.

It's like a glass marble filled with stars,

Full of suns.

The way it catches and reflects light is magical.

I see myself slipping into gold instead of silver,

Into a new palette of yellow,

Orange,

And red.

Spring is back.

The ground is waking up,

And so am I.

The meditations my intuition chooses are very powerful and revealing.

I touch the pain.

I feel it to know it and to soften it.

It's not easy,

But it's the only way to heal my wounds,

To tenderize them with love by applying the remedies where it hurts.

Pandemic first anniversary.

As far as I'm concerned,

It's only just begun.

We haven't seen anything yet.

When the trees uproot themselves and walk all over us,

We'll talk.

For now,

The humans are still at the introduction.

We read the lesson plan over a glass of wine.

It's time for spring cleaning.

I did a bit of painting and a lot of little projects that had a big impact.

Since I've been working so hard,

I've rewarded myself with the purchase of a tarot de Marseille.

From the very first reversals,

The cards are already talking.

They remind me not to disperse myself as I've always done.

They tell me to keep digging and writing,

To seek answers to my questions through the spiritual and feminine path.

That the time for sacrifice is over.

That it's the time for transformation.

Thanks to this advice,

I promise myself that I'll get to the end of the writing process I started last year.

I have to show myself that I can go all the way.

I've got to roll my core in the snow into a bigger and bigger ball.

I have to finish my book.

Birdsong signals their return.

The white-feathered crow has returned with the northern flicker.

The chickadees empty the feeders as I feel them.

I'm waiting for Zuzu,

The hummingbird,

To tell me the right time to plant my seedlings in the garden.

March 10th.

March 11th.

It seems to me that the 80s are coming back into fashion,

And we seem to be nostalgic for that era.

Seeing our hairstyles on TV makes me think about memories that are still with me.

I was listening to music on cassette with a Walkman,

Which was new.

I had started babysitting,

My mother thought I was too young.

At nine years old,

I was starting to earn money,

And with my fortune,

I was going to buy thousands of useless things.

I loved collecting,

Accumulating various items that made me feel rich.

I bought stamps,

Macaroons,

Scented erasers,

Comics,

And mainly stickers.

In those days,

Teachers rewarded good marks with them.

I was gifted,

I received a lot.

I loved collecting,

But above all,

I loved having the things that others didn't have.

Very few girls would pay for a large size or two per sheet,

Preferring small reproductions that could come by the dozen,

Easy to trade.

For my part,

I wasn't interested in the exchange market.

I preferred to buy what I liked.

Always proud of my finds,

I showed my treasures to everyone.

This attracted the jealousy of one of my friends.

Strangely enough,

After each of her visits,

Items would mysteriously disappear from my albums.

I spoke to my mother about it,

And we agreed to stick with glue the pictures on the cardboard sheets of the album.

Thus imprisoned,

I thought my treasure would be safe.

On her last visit to my house to play rubber band,

She pretended to have a sudden urge when it was her turn to play.

She ran up the stairs while I waited for her,

The rubber band behind my knees.

Back from the restrooms,

She leaps like a cat to the center of the elastic band.

As she hopped about,

One of my latest acquisitions fell out of her sweater and landed at my feet.

The sight stunned me.

That sticker belonged to me,

And I knew I'd have to fight to get back what was already mine.

I whispered,

It's mine.

It's my angel.

She denied.

All I had to do is phone to her piano teacher to check.

He's the one who gave it to her for her progress in the last session.

I asked her why she'd put it in her cardigan,

And she said she couldn't wait to show it to me,

Knowing how bitten I was by my collection.

Given its size,

The best place to move it without having to fold it was in her sweater.

The only argument I had left was the three lines of glue,

Clearly visible on the back.

Even in the face of this evidence,

She told me she didn't know why,

But that's how it was done.

Before the wicked wolf,

I was the defenseless little sparrow.

In spite of what was obvious,

She went home with her booty.

Faced with my grief,

My mother decided to phone her.

Nothing came of it.

My angel was gone.

I couldn't understand why my mother was so weak and couldn't stand up for me.

I didn't know that she has been on the run since childhood,

And that for her,

Even defending the truth,

Hurt.

Knowing her weakness from inside of me,

I lost confidence in her.

From then on,

I was going to sort things out on my own,

Like the big girl I used to be.

March 12,

2021.

Mechanical problems.

My partner wants to change his pickup.

We had received a letter advising us of a major problem with the engine crankshaft.

Phil didn't have time to go to the garage.

The truck stopped dead on a steep incline,

And there was no way to get it moving again.

After trying everything,

He decided to call the towing.

The dealership's mechanics knew that the problem was very serious,

But the company hadn't yet discovered the procedure for making the repair.

This was the last straw.

I asked the cards.

The draw was as follows.

Veth,

Temperance,

And the son.

I understand that it might be a good idea to get rid of the truck,

But we have to take our time,

Weigh the pros and cons,

And make an informed decision.

My cards.

I find them powerful and revealing.

I even asked my cousin if she knew if there were any psychic gifts in the family.

Today she tells me that one of her aunts was a fortune teller and very sensitive.

Have I been given a gift?

Am I clairvoyant?

March 15,

2021.

I had to go back to bed.

I feel like I'm outside myself.

It's the same feeling I had in college when I wouldn't talk to anyone until dinner time.

I feel isolated from others,

In a bubble that confuses my perceptions of the outside world.

Everything is in slow motion,

So might as well go back to sleep.

March 22.

I missed my bread yesterday.

I've put too much salt by adding it to the yeast and flour.

I saw it on the scale.

I tried to take some off,

But I told myself it was no big deal.

But the excess salt killed the yeast,

And my bread never rose.

Worse,

It didn't even bake.

I felt frustrated and disappointed.

I hate to waste.

But as I was analyzing what had happened,

I heard my mother's voice talking to me,

A short fragment,

As if I were finally tuning into the right station,

Just long enough to hear a song I know.

Then the voice left,

But leaving me in joy.

This morning,

While meditating,

My mother came back with her missing sisters.

I felt them in a semicircle behind me,

Supporting me.

I thought of those still alive and felt them in front of me.

Surrounded by this matriarchal bubble,

They made me understand the drama they lived through.

I felt the cold of winter,

The bite of hunger in my belly.

I saw fragile flowers that were trampled,

Others that were painfully thinned out.

I saw an inferno that consumed the house of their childhood,

And trees that all the time watched silently.

When all that was left was ash,

I cried my eyes out on the dry,

Cracked ground.

I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks to water my heart,

And on the screen behind my eyes,

I saw life triumph.

The flowers opened,

And the trees,

Which had seen all of this tragedy,

Straightened up nobly,

Extending their branches to welcome the birds and all those we don't see.

I feel a sense of finality.

I have answers to the questions I've been asking myself for so long.

I understand that the woman in my family suffered greatly before I was born.

Did my mother pass on parts of her pain to me?

Looking at myself,

I can see that some of my sufferings are hers.

To get out of it,

I have to take care of this inheritance,

Open the trunk I'm carrying around,

And look what's inside,

Throw away what's no longer useful,

And keep what's working for me.

March 24th.

My takeaway from this morning's session is that you have to empty yourself in order to fill yourself up.

It's like losing weight or emptying your head,

And it's also our responsibility to keep our hearts free of accumulations.

I was afraid of emptiness and of being empty.

I fed those fears with what I knew,

With things that were offered to me that came from outside of myself.

I always kept myself full.

I didn't know what would replace all this,

Not knowing kept me hostage of my bad habits.

But once you're empty,

Why don't you simply fill yourself up?

That's what I try to do by generating activities that give me pleasure.

I garden.

I take care of the house and of our animals.

I eat well and drink the water I draw from a spring near my home,

Emptying myself so I can welcome what's coming,

Standing upright,

Facing the wind,

Ready to welcome the breeze or the storm.

I finally feel my center.

I can hold on to it in case of bad weather.

I think I expended this morning.

I felt the magnetic field emanating from my heart,

Vibrating under the whole section of my right shoulder blade.

It's like an electric point in my back,

Like a hole in my energetic envelope,

Like a passage.

I may have lost a piece of my soul when my mother tragically left us.

March 25th,

Shakti's Electroshock.

We start the day in winter mode in the morning and end it dressed for spring.

It seems to me that nature is taking its time this year.

It makes me think of regrets.

My list gets longer when I think of my lies,

My secrecy,

My always sitting between the angel and the devil.

Thanks to my inner work,

I recognized who I was and stopped lying to myself.

Since that day,

Things have started to make sense again.

Trust and honesty are also the foundation of our couple.

When Phil asked me how I felt about the relationship I was in,

I knew that if I lied to him,

It was over.

Even by messenger,

Even at continental distance,

He would have sensed my hypocrisy and shut the door.

Spontaneously,

I wrote him how I felt without filters.

I finally admitted that this relationship was over.

Seconds later,

I discovered his answer.

He had offered me a place by his side.

I was then struck by a bolt of lightning.

I leaped out of my office chair.

I stood up,

Dazed,

As if electrocuted.

I saw the sequence of action I had to take in order to embark on this crazy race.

In the next few weeks,

I will be leaving everything I know about my life in eastern Canada and moving west with Phil.

For once in my life,

The line was clear.

The strength and self-confidence generated by this invitation gave me the fuel I needed to get back in touch with myself.

March 26,

Taking a step back.

There will be no writing session tomorrow.

I feel my excavator needs a rest.

I thought I'd be extremely sad and heavy this morning,

But instead I feel like I'm at the end of something at a pain-watching distance.

At work,

Phil has been ripping out trees for months.

The pandemic and the search for a place to live had put even more pressure on an already high-pressure market.

He doesn't want to be the one tearing up the forest for the richest.

He is ready to return to his true free nature.

He'd like to sell his house and build a new,

Smaller,

Eco-friendly one.

As I told him this morning,

It doesn't matter to me whether it's here or somewhere else.

I'll never own a house,

But I'll always have a place to live.

Together we have enough resources and knowledge.

I am not afraid.

I let go of the bottom.

I breathed underwater.

I'm a fish.

April 8th.

The last storm has passed.

After shaking ideas with reality,

We realize that there is no better place for us but here.

We've decided to stay and invest our resources in building our sanctuary.

This experience leaves us with more knowledge,

Support,

And love.

We've each digested a lot.

For my part,

I recognize that I have to face up my fear of abandonment and my feeling that giving love is a one-way street and that investing oneself is dangerous because it makes others envious.

So I tackle the idea of opening my heart even wider to welcome those who are coming.

I realize how much I've been hurt,

But now I have the tools to help me live with my scars,

And above all,

I understand the messages behind them.

I hope Phil will feel relieved and supported that he will persevere and find the strength to carry on.

Our balance is fragile.

There's so much anxiety inside and around us.

For the past few years,

I've really focused on infusing the things I do with love and intention,

Planting flowers for the next spring and trees for the future.

I know it's coming.

Everything will come back soft and flowing.

It snowed on my tulips.

It will be cold for a few more days,

And then it will be spring for real.

Reviews

Wow, this is so adorable. I could listen to you for hours and hours. Thank you for your story. 🤍🙏

Love to see the change of attitude brings progress 🙏