I recently invited members of the Soul Speak community to share their Soul Stories – that moment in your life when you realized there was much more to you than just a human body, when you remembered that you had a soul, and when you felt on a deep level your connection to everything in the universe. It’s that moment when you felt completely loved and filled with light.

Throughout 2014, I’ll be sharing some of the amazing stories that I received. It’s my hope that they open your heart to what’s possible and help you feel how connected we all are to each other and also to the universe. Enjoy! 🙂

2013 was the best-worst year of my life. Let me explain.

My friend and mentor Linda Joy has a phrase for when something unexpected happens: She calls it being hit by a cosmic 2×4. Although I’ve been hit with more cosmic 2x4s than I care to count (8 surgeries, 3 rounds of drug-induced menopause until my body finally went into menopause at the age of 25, 4 failed fertility treatments, and nearly dying of pneumonia are among the highlight reel), it wasn’t until April 2013 that I got hit with a 2×4 that changed the course of my life.

I’m an academic. It’s a very driven, competitive, masculine world. ‘Publish or perish’ has been my credo for 20 years, and I chose to scientifically investigate body image, disordered eating, and exercise behaviors for most of my academic career. I was so committed to these topics that I decided to write a book entitled Diet Is a 4-Letter Word: The Psychology of Eating. I trudged away on my book proposal and two sample chapters and then felt like I hit a brick wall. I’ve been writing my entire life and have never experienced writer’s block. Until February of 2013.

Having made no progress in two months, I decided to hire a book coach. I hoped the accountability she provided would allow me to make substantial progress on my book and that her insights as an author would help me land a decent book deal. In our first session, she led me through a guided meditation. Although I meditate daily, it had never occurred to me to meditate about my writing.

Similar to previous guided meditations, I found the meditation itself very easy and calming. Until I was led to meet my writing muse. What she told me shook me to my core and rocked my world.

My muse said very simply, “You’re writing the wrong book. The book you thought you were going to write is not the book you’re supposed to write. It’s way too academic and you are writing for the wrong people.” I wanted to argue with her. I had just spent nine months preparing for and writing the book proposal and sample chapters. What did she mean I was writing the wrong book? I had just been awarded a six-month sabbatical to write the “wrong” book.

Instead, my muse insisted that I needed to write a book about the Goddess and about my journey to love, accept, and trust myself again. That in the book, I would tell my story about all the times the universe sent me wakeup calls (aka cosmic 2x4s) and I ignored them. That this book would be a healing force in my life and through my own healing, I would help others heal, too.

I was stunned. I let that insight sit with me for a few days, avoiding doing any sort of guided meditation. I was convinced it had to be wrong. So I did it again. Not only did I get the same message, I wrote a very detailed outline for my new book in the span of 15 minutes. It never takes me less than an hour to write anything, much less outline an entire book. If that wasn’t a cosmic 2×4, I don’t know what was.

So I set aside my well-researched book about dieting, opened up a new Word document, and let the words flow out of me. What emerged was a book about awakening your inner goddess, a healing journey of transformation using the myth and metaphor of classical Greek mythology. And this was out of a die-hard researcher who didn’t consider herself all that spiritual! I was an academic, after all.

They say that when one door closes another opens. But writing that book opened not just a door, but a floodgate. It was as though the Universe was sending every cosmic 2×4 it could think of my way. First, I lost my husband – he didn’t understand and couldn’t cope with a woman who stopped conducting research to write about the goddess. Then I lost my home – my ex got it in the divorce settlement. Then I broke my heel – for the second time in a year – and spent 4 months on crutches.

But this time I listened to what the Universe was trying to tell me. I slowed down – kind of had to with the crutches and all. I took time to meditate, journal, process, heal. I started painting again for the first time in 20 years. And what emerged on the other side was a woman my friends barely recognized. Gone was the academic mind. Gone was the “Yes, I’ll do whatever you ask me to do” attitude. Gone was the incessant need to please others and take care of everyone but me.

In her place was a woman who begins each day in meditation and prayer. A woman who before she sits down to write anything now says, “Goddess, guide my thoughts, my sight, my words, my voice, my heart, my hands, my body.” A woman who lets go instead of holding on for dear life. A woman who allows instead of forces. A woman who is truly, joyfully happy.

Is the Universe done hitting me with cosmic 2x4s? I doubt it. I am nothing if not a slow learner. But at least now I’m listening. I’m questioning the meaning of things I don’t understand. I’m going with the flow. I’m focusing on where my heart and soul are taking me because I now understand that this journey, this path we call life, is an ever-evolving rainbow of colors. Some of those colors will make you laugh, some will make you smile, and some will make you cry. But at the end of a life well-lived and well-loved, you’ll find not just the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you’ll find yourself. 

***

Mary E. Pritchard, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Boise State University as well as a Holistic Health Counselor and graduate of the esteemed Institute of Integrative Nutrition. Mary’s extensive educational background combined with her personal passion and commitment to empowering women in healing their hormonal health naturally and reclaiming their Feminine Power empowers her clients to experience profound shifts in their health and their life.
http://awakeningthegoddesswithin.net/

Thank you so much, Mary, for sharing your heart with us!

Hugs,