Most people see a "before and after" and call it a transformation. But for me, the shifts were never just about the scale — they were about the internal weather. I have lived through long, heavy winters where the world felt gray and my bones felt like lead.
I am starting this journal in Spring because Spring is a choice. It is the moment the Educator in me — the one who understands the biology of survival — decides she no longer needs her armor. It is the moment the Intuitive in me reaches a breakthrough and decides it is finally safe to step back onto the grass.
In these pages, I am mapping my life as a series of realizations. I am sharing the times I chose to bloom, even when the soil was frozen.
My First Awakening
At 15, carrying 200lbs of protection, I walked my way back to myself. My grandfather was my first Guide, teaching me that healing is a steady, rhythmic walk toward the light.
My Solo Breakthrough
When I moved to the US and had to be my own Nanny, cooking from scratch and clearing my anxiety in a landscape that felt foreign and heavy. I learned to care for my own fire when no one else was there to tend it.
My Sovereign Realization
This moment. Right now. The recognition that everything I have carried — the weight, the distance, the years of tending other lives before my own — was not a detour from my purpose. It was the education. I am not building Ammana in spite of what I have lived through. I am building it because of every single part of it. This is what sovereignty feels like: not the absence of a difficult past, but the decision to let it become something that serves.
"I am not building Ammana in spite of what I have lived through. I am building it because of every single part of it."
In Memoriam & Spirit
I write this as I stand at a sacred threshold. I carry the memory of the man who taught me to walk and the grandmother who raised me with quiet devotion. Though they have passed on, their spirits are the wind at my back.
I also carry the spirit of the women who came before me — the teachers of the water and the herbs. The ritual baths we practice here are more than just self-care; they are a spiritual rinsing of the old skin. I am the first in my lineage who gets to choose how to use this medicine to build a life of total ease.
"Welcome to your Awakening."