I was a very spiritual and philosophical child, although I didn’t have the awareness to see it that way at the time. On a ride home one day after having what I felt was an incredibly deep conversation with my granddaddy (I was maybe 9 or 10) about who we are and why we are here, I remember having this sudden feeling that I was much, much bigger than the trees I was looking at out the car window. It was a very strange feeling and I couldn’t shake it the whole ride home.

I was 12 when I read the book Juniper by Monica Furlong. That’s when I officially became a spiritual seeker. I wanted to be just like Juniper, a wise woman healer. I wanted to be able to heal people in miraculous ways, just as she did. Although her path was more the healing with herbs and I have never been quite so gifted despite many attempts to be, the far more important understanding I took from the book was that we each have our own unique gift and way to be in service to our communities. We each have our own unique magic, and our journey is about learning what it is, practicing it, and putting it to good use to help others.

One of the more impactful scenes from the book for me was when Juniper was weaving her own magical cloak but was stumped on what colors to use. She was instructed to sit and do nothing else until she figured it out. So she sat for hours until eventually turning inward in a meditative trance where she finally found the answer. She had to first understand and accept who she really was before she could know which colors to use and what pattern to weave that would reveal her true essence. This was the final task before her initiation ceremony and getting this right would be essential for the cloak’s magic to work properly.

As I’ve walked my own spiritual path I have focused most intently on learning who I am and developing my unique gifts. Seems simple enough, but It has proven to be very challenging. As soon as I think I’ve gotten to know myself and my purpose, the identity begins to crack and I discover its yet another mask I’ve put on. But through all this I’ve come to learn a lot about identity, personality, and how to actually know one’s true essence, also known as the capital-S Self. And now this is one of the main ways I serve my clients and students.

It is so vitally important to know who you are, really and truly. I’ve gotten so lost on my path many times by not knowing who I am or what I really want out of life. When you don’t know who you are it’s so easy to take on any identity that the outer world hands to you whether you like that identity or not. When you don’t know who you are it’s too easy to be controlled by or become overly dependent on others; you lose all sense of Self, your ego inflates or deflates to detrimental extremes, and you develop a lot of likes and dislikes based on what others prefer instead your own values. From there your psyche becomes increasingly more split and fractured to the point that you feel there is something essential missing from your life, because there is! YOU are missing; the real you.

And so this is my mission: to teach you how to hear the still, small, powerful voice of your own heart, also known as your internal GPS system. When you learn to recognize what the voice of your heart sounds like, you establish a connection with your soul, your essence. This is your Divine Self, your vital life force that makes magical, miracle things happen for you. This changes everything for you.

❥ Kayla