Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast Episode Title: Into The Fire: A Journey of Love, Loss, and Resilience Host(s): Monica Guest(s): HeatherAsh Monica (Host) Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. Monica (Host) Hello, dear listeners. Welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. Today I'm with HeatherAsh Amara, and I'm so excited to bring her voice in unison with all of the other voices. I've had the honor of having so many incredible guests on the podcast, so I want to take a minute and introduce her. And also just really welcome in all of these threads of conversation that we've been weaving together over the course of the last three years together. There's so much here about remembering and taking a descent and returning to Mother Earth and all of the ways that we've been brought through kind of this collective dark night of the soul and really what I call and often refer to as the return of the sacred feminine to our consciousness. So it's with great honor again that I welcome HeatherAsh and the conversation she and I will be creating today. She's just a wealth of information, and all of her writings are so rich and relevant for all of the conversations we've been having. She's a best selling author, mentor, land steward, and philanthropist. She has spent the last three decades weaving together earth based wisdom, mindfulness and practical strategies for creative, courageous, and compassionate individual and community change. She's the author of nine books, including the best selling Warrior Goddess Training series and The Seven Secrets of Happy and Healthy Relationships with Don Miguel Ruez, Jr. So welcome. HeatherAsh. HeatherAsh (Guest) Thanks so much, Monica. I'm so glad to be here on the Revelation Project podcast. Yay. Monica (Host) And I'm like finally and thank you to the many who work to get us together because it does take a village sometimes all the time, actually. HeatherAsh (Guest) This one definitely took a village. Monica (Host) Yes, it does. HeatherAsh (Guest) Glad we're here. Monica (Host) I sure am. Yes. And gosh. HeatherAsh, I want to just start by presencing what you've been through over the last few years because there's this way that I think we can make up that those who have, I think, in our own minds, made it that there are no longer challenges. And of course, we all know that that's not the way it goes when we actually settle in that there's always, I think, an invitation to know ourselves in different capacities. And so I really think it's so ironic that you have this relationship to the element fire, and you were really taken through the fire literally as you navigated the wildfires that really dramatically altered your life. So I wondered if we could just start there and just hear kind of where this journey has taken you up until now. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. One of my deepest loves and teachers is fire. I've been facilitating firewalk ceremonies for, I don't know, 35 years now, and had one of those experiences as a young woman where I went to a firewalk not really knowing what was even what it was or what it meant, and coming out the other side different, and really recognizing possibility, potential, seeing the places, I'd limited myself. And I committed to the fire as a really conscious choice to be a steward of fire, a one that brought fire more into the world and held its transformational energy with people. So that's that background. About four years ago, a small group and I bought a piece of property outside of the Sangrid Cristo mountains outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. 180 acres. And there's so many ironies with this because one, I'm a nomad, I never thought I would own anything. I'm like, why would you own land that makes no sense? Like, land can't be owned. And yet I felt very called to steward this land and to settle and to create a space of healing for people to come. So that was the vision. The vision was we're going to create a hermitage, a retreat center. I had a five year plan of what that was going to look like. And of course, the universe had other plans. Other plans. April 6, last year, 2022, there was a wildfire that started on hermit's Peak. And hermit's peak we can see from our land gorgeous, gorgeous mountain, really iconic. And I remember at the time thinking, it's far away, it's 30 miles, like, we don't have to worry about this. And I was traveling, and what ended up happening is that the fire just completely went out of control, and it ended up being the largest wildfire in New Mexico. And where I live is very poor. It's very land. Rich people have been living on that land for centuries. The land's gotten passed down through families. It's a Spanish Mexico from when the Spanish invaded Mexico. Those folks stayed and intermarried with the indigenous people. So there's this deep earthy love of the land there. And the wildfire, it was so devastating for so many people. And I was teaching with the Ruiz's. I was actually in Sedona, and we were teaching, and it was early May. And all of a sudden I knew in my body, I'm like, we're going to lose the land. The wildfire is going through. There's nothing we can do. And I am one of the most optimistic people on the planet. I'm like, we can think it away, we can do prayer. And my body was like, no, it's done. It was a very odd feeling for me to realize there was actually nothing that I could do on this one. And we did do prayers. The community really came together and held. But on I think it was May 9, I've been gathering donations and really working with our community to get resources for people that had been so impacted by the fire. Already, because they'd already been burning for three weeks or four weeks at that point. And I remember checking the map. And this is the kind of amazing thing, too, about modern technology, is that you could see where the fire was. Like, they had satellite imagery. You could see where the fire and so there was a day when I just checked in and the fire was in my neighbor's yard. And that moment of sitting and I was sitting at an evacuation center, and I was like, well, this would be the place to just let go, because everybody's feeling like everybody knows what's going on. And so I just wept. I sat in my truck and wept and wept and wept and then opened to what do I do? Part of me is like, I just need to drive to the land to be there. It's like, you can't drive to the land. It's going. And so I just sat there and cried and sang to the trees and just felt how much I loved that land and how much I love the Earth, how deeply I love the Earth, and that there's changes happening that I wanted to not turn away from, I wanted to turn toward. I wanted to be with the destruction, be with the fire, be with the trees, and not avoid what was happening. So that has been my journey then, is going from a five year let's create something for humans to deep grief and really recognizing that I needed to open my vision and to include not just the humans, but to really. Now I have more of a 50 year, 100 year plan of how do I help regenerate the land for the butterflies and for the bears and that the deer have food regardless of what's coming. So it's taken on a whole nother life to steward something that is now 95% burn. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) And to stay with it. Monica (Host) There's so much coming up for me as I listen to you and just the beauty and the devastation, right, like, just together in this in this place, as I hear you tell this story of, like, singing to the trees and having a reckoning with this idea of, like, not wanting to turn away from what was happening. And of course, some might make up that you mean just this isolated fire. But what I'm hearing is that what you are talking about is the truth of what is happening just all over the planet and no longer turning away, because I think we can continue to think it's happening over there, it's happening somewhere else. And especially, I think, those of us who are in the healing space, it's like, oh, well, we create our own reality, and we are also all connected in this reality. And so our tools of distancing continue to kind of collapse along with the facade that we are insulated from it. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah, exactly. And there's definitely this place of as I sorted through the rubble, basically, as I walked through the ashes and realized how total the devastation was, it's interesting because what was saved was the core of the community kitchen we had built over the pandemic. So by hand a bunch of volunteers, we had built a place and a small there's an island of trees and the grandma tree, like the oldest tree on the property, she survived. Everything else was wiped pretty much. And just like you're saying, Monica, as I really settled in, I was like, okay, I have the opportunity to understand this is not isolated. All of us are going to be going through more catastrophes and more challenges in our life because of climate change. And again, I am super optimistic. I also hold like something could shift and I'm also very practical. And so that how do I put my feet in these ashes and open to how do I metabolize this in my being so I can stay open hearted and present and not get completely overwhelmed and paralyzed so that I can help others do that and metabolize what we're all navigating so that we can stay present and we can bring our creativity and joy even in the midst of what's happening, and that we can continue to weave ourselves more tightly together with the Earth. Monica (Host) Yeah, as soon as you say that, go to the card. We chose the comic because there's also these places where we are so wrecked. I'm thinking of all that comes up for people in devastation. It's like the loss of these material things, the loss of these dreams, the loss of the devastation and grief of kind of the collective, like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? Just this really raw, gritty, messy place where we're like in the beauty and the devastation of it. Also in the polarity that it is our human experience. Both sometimes hating humanity in those moments where we're like, I hate that we do this. And also like, this love of humanity. Just this feels sometimes like this impossible place. And yet from the impossible comes I am possible. I am possible. And that's when we remember I have what matters. I am okay, we can do this. Don't forget to laugh. Bringing some levity in, like, where we can after we've cried and cried and mourned and mourned, you know, that that's when we know that we're coming back to life, is when we can find some levity, some laughter, some ways of being that are not so heavy. But first there's this reckoning. Tell me about this grandmother tree, because I get so curious. The grandmother tree stood that she was all that was left. That is so like, I have hair standing up on every patch of skin on my body. HeatherAsh (Guest) It's really incredible. So I didn't walk after the fire and we were allowed back onto the land after the evacuation order was lifted. I had a couple of friends that went and walked it first. I decided I'm going to send Emissaries. And my friend mark came back, and he was very quiet, and he sat next to me, and I'm like, oh, it must be really bad. And he just took my hand and he said, there's probably 1% left. And the next day, I left by myself. And I told we had a whole group that we were going to go up together, and I said, I need to go by myself. And I drove up, and I was just so grateful that the kitchen was still there and what did survive around the forest, around the kitchen. And then I just headed for a grandma, and she's this old, probably four to 500 year old douglas FIR at the southwest part of the property. And as I hiked, it's so hard to describe what it's like to see an entire forest that is just black. It's all standing, but it's all standing black, black. And I remember I came over a corner, and I see one green tree, and I'm like, oh, my god, there's a little baby tree. And it was down in arroyo. And then I kept going, and it gets worse, where now all of the branches are burned off. The fire burned so hot, it just took everything. So I kept walking. I think there's no way she survived. How would that even be possible? And I came around the corner, and I could not believe what I was seeing is again in the arroyo. There she is, huge tree, and the fire went all the way around, basically, and actually burned her roots. Like, it did touch her. It didn't go around. It went through. And there was some grace that just allowed these two little islands of our community center, because I know I felt into it. I was like, you know, if the community center had gone down, I probably would have left. I probably would have walked away and just said, you know what, sweet? You just need to be on your own. For me, that would have been the message of, like, no, just walk away, but that those two things were standing. For me, that was the message of, like, you need to stay and tend, and this is your mission. Monica (Host) You cannot make this shit up. I mean, it's just so you cannot. HeatherAsh (Guest) Make this shit up. Exactly. Monica (Host) It's so good. And also even just the 1%. Okay, like the 1%, right? Like, how often do we hear about the 1%? But when you turn that on its head here, it's like everything, right? It's everything. And I mean, I even think about in my coaching with women, if you could just have 1% more pleasure, what would that look like? It becomes this place of enoughness. 1%. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. Monica (Host) Right? Like, there's enough here. HeatherAsh (Guest) There is there's a foothold, there's a there's a sacred yeah, exactly. There's enough. And then just blowing on that ember. Yes, right. Just loving that. And the two things that we did after the fire, which I love my community so much. We're such wacky, wonderful beings, creative beings. One is one of the women, Tara, who is a photographer, she's like, I brought bubbles. Do you think it'd be okay if we did a bubble photo shoot in the forest? So we have photos of right after the fire. Yeah, exactly. Of blowing bubbles and having these beautiful iridescent floating transparent and then all the black trees behind, and it was so joyful. And we were all like, this is what the land needs. The land needs our joy. It doesn't need of course we're going to grieve and for all of this to metabolize. I keep using that word because it was like, to integrate all of it, we need to bring joy here. So that was one thing we did. The other thing we did took us a while. We had to kind of all work towards this. But I had a group up there and we did a morning firewalk. So the other thing that was totally bizarre is that there's a huge pile of wood for the wood stove that didn't get touched at all and then other pieces of wood that got completely destroyed right around the community kitchen. I mean, the fire is really interesting, what it will do. So we took the very little unburned wood that there was on the property, and we did prayers and blessings with it. And we talked to the burnt trees and we offered blessings and we carried it down in the dark, down to this one area by the creek that was really burnt and built a little fire and just stood, intended and breathed and stayed with that fire as it burned down. And then we raked it into a little heart and then we walked on those coals as a way to just honor fire does its thing, and that fire is healing and fire is destructive. And I've had many people like, well, aren't you mad at the fire or don't you feel like it was it's your ally? How could it have done that to you? I'm like, fire did its thing. It did it really well. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) And it's not personal. Not personal? Monica (Host) No. Even over here, there's so much symbology here, and whenever there's symbology, we get to create story. And it's like, what is the story we're going to choose to craft in this moment? And how can we choose the most empowering interpretation to create the most empowering story to live in? Because that story becomes your begin again. It becomes the old, we know this. What is no longer serving in some way, shape or form, whether we understand it or not, has to die. And sometimes that comes by way of fire. Sometimes that comes by way of flood. Sometimes that comes by way of but it's very, very difficult, I think, for us to remember that. If we can remember the 1% truth in those moments that this is happening for us, even when everything else feels like it's. Not that there's actually a new beginning that's wanting to invite us I don't think we have to get there right away, but it just being conscious and aware of the opportunity to create from this devastation. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah. And to do that really gently. I definitely am there now. I feel a sense of curiosity of, like,what is going to rise out of this? And one thing that I'm really wanting to write about more and to talk about more, especially in spiritual community, is how many people, like, literally my land is on fire, and people are like, oh, HeatherAsh, there are these trees that the fire comes through and the seeds pop, so something new is going to be reborn. And I'm like, give me a minute to grieve. Like, please stop. Monica (Host) Yes. HeatherAsh (Guest) Because there were so many people that were like, let's look at the bright side right away. Monica (Host) Yes. HeatherAsh (Guest) And it doesn't serve us when we do that, when we try to jump out of the grief and out of the loss and out of the confusion, that we miss something really vital. And so, yes, that 1% is there. Monica (Host) Yes, that 1% is there. And first there's this deep birth, deep grief and mourning. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. And we're so uncomfortable with that. We want to immediately jump to something else. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) So learning for all of us, me included, all of us, learning how to fit with other people's grief, with other people's loss, with our own, obviously, but also that we don't have to grab onto the platitudes and it'll be better. That what we need in the world right now is people that can turn and look at the grief, the devastation, the loss with open hearts and know you will get through this. But not say that yet. Monica (Host) Right. HeatherAsh (Guest) But say, I see you. I see you. I'm here. What do you need? Monica (Host) And I love the word stay. And you used it, and you also said, like, not turn away. So there's this stay becomes this for me, distinction or mantra or when I'm in discomfort, it's like, Stay. Stay. There's this I have this story of recognizing this discomfort in myself and having this vision in this moment of fracturing into all of the parts of me that want to rush off, have a drink, or the part that wants to believe that in fairy tales or the part that wants to believe that a prince is going to rescue me. Or the part that there was this moment where I wrote this story, where it was just like and then the wisest voice, which for me is like the grandmother tree, the symbology of, like, stay, the wisdom of stay. Yeah. And so what did that grief look like for you? Like, how long? And you're still in it? I'm hearing that there's still parts that are still here for you. And it's been a year, so there's no timing. HeatherAsh (Guest) It's been a year. Yeah, there's no timing. And grief is such a river where there's Eddies, where there's places where you feel like everything's flowing, it's good, and then suddenly you're underwater. It's such a journey. And so I've learned through going through a really hard divorce that was my catalyst many years ago to being in relationship with my grief rather than bypassing it. So going through it now as a more mature human, we can say that has a better relationship with grief. It's not my first round through deep grief. It's this process of letting what wants to come up, up and just stopping everything and letting myself feel whatever is happening and having the grace to not try and cover it up or think, oh, that I should be done with this, which is to keep opening through. And every time I do that, there's more space, there's more possibility. It feels like my being is getting carved deeper in a really beautiful way to contain the contradictions. Monica (Host) Oh, I love that. HeatherAsh (Guest) And like you were sharing earlier, I feel like all of us have the opportunity now to get stretched, to hold. I don't want this to be happening. This is happening. I hate this. And there's beauty here as well. I wish this wasn't what is, but here it is. And those contradictions, just when we can stay in them, they stretch us open so beautifully. Monica (Host) They sure do. I call it the sacred. And that place where it's messy and magnificent the same time, where you can just be in the all of it and give yourself permission. Yeah. It's so beautiful. And I can't help but think about Francis Weller's work the wild edge of sorrow. Because as you describe this grief, it's like this wilderness, it has this very kind of easy metaphor into what is organic, what is natural. These deep Eddies, these rivers getting taken under flowing carving. There's a way that it really forges us into who we are becoming. If we allow it to that, it's got wisdom to teach us if we are willing to go with its flow. HeatherAsh (Guest) Absolutely. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) And early on, a really wonderful mentor and teacher early on. And she shared this story where she's going through a lot of grief, that she was rafting and she was thrown out of the boat in a really intense rapid and she goes underwater and she was like, Yep, this is just like my life right now. She was in so much grief. She was like, yes, of course this happens. And she just let go and just let herself be carried by the current. And when she popped up and they pulled her back in the boat, she had no bruises, she was fine. And the rafters were like, that never happens. She surrendered so fully into that experience that she let it take her and then pop her up. And I didn't understand when she shared that, but I've really held on to that. That, for me, is such a beautiful way of being in relationship with grief, of let it take you. It doesn't matter where or when. Let it take you and know you're going to pop back up again. But what's tricky is that grief, just as a biological, emotional, energetic energy that moves through us when it's not connected to the story or our mind, is powerful, beautiful, there's this letting go into it, and we come out more spacious, more loving, more joyful. That's what happens. We just come out like, I am so grateful for everything. You can see the 1%, right? And most of us have our emotional body and our mental body so tied together that we sometimes aren't actually grieving. We're thinking about grieving. Monica (Host) Yeah, we are. HeatherAsh (Guest) Or we're cycling grieving. There's a way where our mind is trying to avoid it, or the mind starts telling a story about the grief. And again, we're not actually letting ourselves go through the grief. We're staying on the surface of it. It feels terrible and it doesn't resolve because you're actually not letting yourself go into it. Monica (Host) There's also this paradox here that I want to presence, which is there's this way, too, that we can be kind of holding it all on the surface of life. And the message, I think, that God is always like, Friggin, let go, let go. HeatherAsh (Guest) Just let it go. I got this. Monica (Host) And then we let it go. And we say yes to the mess. We surrender to the rapids or right wherever it's going to take us. And the ironic part is we come back up with the capacity to hold more, but in a different way. It's like our container, our vessel, how we are resourced has completely altered and transformed. And so the way that we were holding, which was often this white knuckled ride through life, transforms into this open, spacious, authentic way of being in relationship with each other, with ourselves, and with the world. Yeah. And it's just so beautiful, so good. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah. It's so beautiful. And yeah. That's really my experience of being a serious overachiever. Monica (Host) I'm right there with you. HeatherAsh (Guest) That place of like, I can hold it all, I can hold it all. And I think the divine goddess is like, hello. Hey. Like, right here. Yeah. And that when we finally do let go. My experience is then when I come back out again, I'm like, oh, she's right behind me. She's got this. I'm leaning into her. I am her. That's the capacity is that I don't think I'm this little human that has to fix it all. I'm resting and leaning back into the. Monica (Host) Mama, into the mama. HeatherAsh (Guest) And I know she's got me. And that I can hold with her in a different way. Monica (Host) In a different way. I love this. And this moves us beautifully kind of into this next place. I wanted to get curious with you, which is about your relationship with the climate justice movement and what you really consider as the intersection of climate justice and the empowerment work you do with others and how that's impacted by patriarchy and anything that you want to say to lead us into that conversation. HeatherAsh (Guest) When I was in college, I studied community development, which was all about the little like how do you make local change, how do you help create social justice at a local level? How do you really learn how to root into your community to create change? And I also simultaneously studied international relations and global systems and big structures. And that's really informed so much of the work that I do that I found it's most potent when we understand that we're all navigating much larger systems than us that are old patriarchy being one of those white supremacy, busyness culture, there are so many places where we are wired through fear. And this is part of the toltec work of my study with Domi Gal Ruiz of this idea that often we're trained, we're domesticated through fear and scarcity. And that's a very patriarchal. There are hierarchies, there are people that are more important and less important. And my work is so deeply based in bringing us back into relationship in the circle with all of life. Not just humans, but animals, spirits, ancestors, land that there's nothing that is better or worse than. And so as you were sharing earlier, it's really easy, especially when we have comfortable lives, to feel like, oh, well, climate change is out there. It doesn't really affect me. When we really start to look at the larger global system, we see climate change is an effect of a mindset, of a patriarchal mindset, of a power over mindset, and patriarchy affects everybody. This is not women versus men at all. This is really understanding that we have been seeped in a belief system that if we separate ourselves and make ourselves more important than others, that we can then dominate and control, that we can dominate and control the Earth, that we can dominate and control women, that we can dominate and control people that have different skin color. So we look at the whole slavery and the white supremacy, how that's been woven together as well. So this place is that they're not separate, none of it's separate. And people I know that I can get overwhelmed with, like it's all connected. Where do we start? And there's again, that willingness to stay in the conversation, to learn, to look, to understand those larger systems that affect all of us and they do affect all of us, unfortunately. It's just truth. They affect usually people that are minorities or that are poor, that are on the fringes more. They get hit first. But none of us are immune and we're all connected. So having those I think about. Monica (Host) It. HeatherAsh (Guest) I talk about it almost like having double eyes. One eye, you're looking at the larger global systems and how they affect us and where we've taken those in our bodies. And with another lens, we're looking at how do we create change right here. Monica (Host) Right? Exactly. Because I love that kind of envisioning those two eyes, because I think for the longest time, I could not see this hiding in plain sight, this invisible system of patriarchy and its intersectional systems at work in my life. And until I could see it, until I could reveal it, I could not begin to heal it inside of me first. And so the Revelation project for me was and I say we're all living our own Revelation project. But for me, it was this idea of revealing and healing the parts of me that had been hidden, kicked out of the garden, suppressed, oppressed. And in doing that, I was able to see this larger system at play and this kind of story, or what I'll call a lie of scarcity that was built on this lie of supremacy, that all of these lies were collapsed together. And until I could actually look at them and really interrogate my own conditioning, I could not uncollapse and untangle. And so I've kind of embraced this whole idea of saying yes to the mess and what I call the unbecoming unbecoming from who everybody told me to be, to reveal the truth of who I really am. And how I do that is by using these two eyes that you speak of. And really, I love that the left symbolizes the feminine, but when you get up into the brain, it's the right. And so there's the feminine, the right eye, having a right relationship with the world that I think is so potent and powerful, but also that that's the eye, the right brain is what actually enables the whole community. It embraces the whole, including the masculine. And it's the left eye, the masculine eye, that's great for the detail and for seeing things logically and for ordering things. But we need that feminine to really come in and see this bigger picture and embrace all of it in order to transform it. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah, absolutely. And I think of those two energies as there's the linear, focus, clarity, what I call that warrior energy, and the goddess energy, which is the circle. And we're all in this together. And how do we bring everybody in into that healing journey? And we need both. We need both of those energies inside of us. We need that capacity to really focus, stay detailed right here, and then also let it all go and go, okay, let's see what's going to happen. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) And so learning to be more skillful and in the beginning with those two lenses, it's really easy to get caught in one lens or get caught in the other and to learn to go back and forth until it stabilizes that we can hold full. And it's awkward, it's messy, it feels weird, feels like we're never going to be able to do that. So I'm really grateful that as a young woman, I had a lot of social justice work and activism under my belt really early on, which I'm so grateful that I had that education and that marching and being out in the streets and learning. And I left that world really consciously to a certain point because I realized I'm angry, all my friends are angry. Nothing's changing. Like, this is not working. We're just burning ourselves out. And that's when I started really studying different spiritual traditions and found teachers and guides, and I always knew I'll come back, but I need to find how to resource myself in a different way. So I'm really grateful now to be now I feel like, oh, okay, I can hold both now. Monica (Host) Yes. HeatherAsh (Guest) That they're not separate and that we need the spiritual deep realm and the joy and the play and the stillness to be sustainable in creating change inside and outside. Monica (Host) That's right. It's like really learning to dance for real with this whole all of these parts. But there's this way, too, that what you're describing, which I also love and think is so beautiful, is like I talk about what I call the trance of unworthiness. And the trance of unworthiness is this place where we're kind of just in the comfort zone, where nothing really changes. It's not the place of revelation, the comfort zone. I mean, you'll get an occasional one, but really it's like this wild edge again, where we want to kind of head toward that's, where we have these revelations, and that's where we transcend the trance and come back to the dance of life. And in all of its beauty, really, and in its beauty is the grief and everything else. It's like that becomes part of the beauty. I couldn't help but notice that even in your name, right? So there's the grandmother tree. There's HeatherAsh walking through the ashes. Your relationship to fire, this phase of your life, those that know and love you, know and love your work and your work with the goddess. And as you've moved more into the wise woman, right, the archetype that kind of takes you into this eye makeup, that this was an initiatory period. I don't know what comes up for you and what's starting to stir, because I am hearing some stirring as you talk about writing and what's next for you. And I'd love it if you want to share more. HeatherAsh (Guest) Thank you. Yes, definitely. Wee bit of initiation. Monica (Host) Just a wee bit. HeatherAsh (Guest) Wish a wee bit. Just a little bit. Of course. My name, my birth name was Heather, so that has been my lifelong name of this deep connection to my Scottish ancestry and roots. And that plant, that beautiful, beautiful, very tenacious plant that Heather is. And I took on the nickname ash just from the firewalk, obviously, but also the ash tree, like the world tree. In many mythologies, the ash tree is the tree that connects the underworld, the middle world, and the upper world. And so there's a lot of symbology in both the heather and the ash for me, and I feel like I'm stepping more into the ash phase of my life. Yeah, let's be really literal about that. Okay. I don't miss it. Right. Mama's like, let's just burn everything down. She really claims this part of herself. Monica (Host) Yeah, some of us, right? It's the universal okay. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah, exactly. Okay, thank you. I do feel like there's an eldering process that's happening of learning how to slow down. I'm a really fast, like, jump. Let's make change. And this whole process has really invited me to slow down and listen at an incredibly deep level of what's next. And I can't fix it. Every time I walk through the forest, I get overwhelmed. I'm like, what do I do? And I have to come back to, you can't fix this, sweetheart. It's going to do its own thing. You can help. You can be part of it. You can learn with, you can co create. So one of the things that I'm really working with now is that how do I bring the contradictions that I've been thinking about, the messiness, the confusion, the grief, the joy, the places where there's so many contradictions that are happening all the time. And so I want to really bring that through in my writing more. So I just started a substac. I haven't even made it public yet because I'm still kind of wrestling with it because it's just different. I started out as a journalist, and I feel like I'm coming in a circle, in a way, back to my journalistic roots. While I also write, I have another book coming out called Wild, Willing and Wise, which I'm super excited about. That's based on the Maiden mother crone archetypes. Yeah. So I have these two things happening, which is writing. It's a very fun there's a lot of humor in that book. It's different than most anything I've done. And I'm also starting to write these very serious, hard questions. How do we wrestle with these times as well? Monica (Host) Right. These trickster times. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. And how to stay joyous. Monica (Host) Yes, how to stay joyous. And this is again, where so for my listeners, heather, Ash and I chose the comic card. Now it's just disappeared somewhere in the abyss. I'm going to hide because that won't that be fun. Oh, my gosh, I can't wait. All right, so you've got this book, the Wild, the Wily and the Wise coming out. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah. Wild willing and wise and wild willing. Monica (Host) Yeah, I love that. HeatherAsh (Guest) Wise. And it's all about water. That whole book is the metaphor throughout the entire book is water. Monica (Host) Oh, my gosh. I have been doing so many podcast episodes lately on water. And if you have not yet come across Veda Austin's work, check it out. HeatherAsh (Guest) I will. Monica (Host) It is so amazing. She actually has this whole communication happening with water where she's figured out a way to speak to water and water speaks back to her and she's been able to do it in these hieroglyphs or freeze these hieroglyphs in water. It is so cool. HeatherAsh (Guest) I will go check it out. And that reminds me, that part of what's happening with the land right now. I wrote three affirmations. I had friends that really helped me when I was kind of in the worst of it. And they were like, okay, let's write some affirmations. And one of the affirmations was as the land heals, the world heals, that I would link to my work in the land, to global. And that also one of the other affirmations was like, it's even more amazing than you could even imagine. The healing process is even more amazing than you could imagine. Well, I just connected with two women that are doing really deep work with soil restorations. And one is an indigenous woman, Beatos, just phenomenal, who taught me how to make seed balls, which are magic. And this other incredible artist and microbiologist ecologist, Caitlin, who is doing studies on regenerating land by prayer and ritual. So what she's doing is these gatherings where people come together to talk about what they love. She's doing it in Las Vegas, in my community, what they love about the land, what they lost. And then she has this quilt that she's stitching people's words of what they love about the land onto the quilt and then stuffing the quilt with fungi and microbes and sugar and we're going to bury it on our land. So we're doing all of this ritual and ceremony to see how and she and I just walked to the grandma tree and did a bunch of soil testing that we don't have the results back yet. Just but to see what's the soil around grandma tree versus what's the soil, what got lost, what microbes are still there, what fungi is still there so that we can then start to regenerate. I could not have dreamt that. I'm a huge visionary. I could not have dreamt that. And yet here it is. Monica (Host) And yet here it is. Oh my goodness. Well, and what I'm also hearing is like there's so much of the feminine in what we're talking about actually everything. And as you start to regenerate this land and you were just sharing this beautiful story about how she's weaving this quilt, it's like when we think about how women, our history, that's how we told our stories was through quilting, through tapestry, through hand work. Like our stories were not in the history books. They've always been of the hands of the land. Right. And as we remember, I think we are coming together in circle and we are coming together in sisterhood with our allies, but that there has been this just beautiful way of that's where the skill sharing and all of the ways that we kind of come back together in community with so much intention. And I love that you call your new I've got it right here, your new endeavor. I think it was called an intentional what was it? HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. Out of the fire. Monica (Host) Yeah, it's like just this deep intention, creative intention to really oh, yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) The center of creative intent. Yes, creative intent. Exactly. Monica (Host) Yeah. This is creative intent. I mean, is it not? HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes. And that's what we need is for our hearts to be to stay open. Monica (Host) Through all of it, through the unknown. HeatherAsh (Guest) So that we can stay connected through the unknown so we can stay connected to our intuition, to our creativity, to each other, so that we can dream in new ways and play and explore and get curious and really co create. The other ironic thing about the land is my land, the ranch was burned in the 70s, so there's another huge fire that went by, and then the Boy Scout boy Scouts came through and they planted monocropped ponderosa pines too close together. So I have the USDA Forest Service because it was the Forest Service fault, the whole fire that are like, oh, we'll bring you trees, and I'm like, do not stay away from my land. There's a way I'm like, do not touch. No, you're not doing the same thing. We're going to do it differently. Monica (Host) Yeah. HeatherAsh (Guest) So more diversity, more creativity, more trying experiments to see what does the land want, more to be revealed and what's needed. Yeah, exactly. What's needed now versus we're now putting all these trees back on it. Might not want trees, might want something else. Monica (Host) Yeah. The goddess is so here in this and again, I'm picturing you kind of leaning in or leaning back the way that you were expressing that earlier. And just again, where that actually is the paradox to lean into the unknown. It's like these words that don't play well together or haven't up until now. And yet it becomes this place of spaciousness, this place of magic, where we're actually inviting mystery to kind of come back into our purview, come back to our senses, where something new will be born simply because we're willing to hold the paradox. Because it's in the paradox that those things come together. It's in the tension of the opposites that those things come together to create something new. And so shall it be, or even something wildly better than we could possibly imagine for ourselves. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yes, exactly. It's exciting times. It's challenging times, but it's also these are the times where there's the most potential. Monica (Host) Yeah. The most potential is so true. And so I do think that this it's like kind of like happening in these pockets all over the world. And I think, as it's happening to us, to just remember we're not alone that this is happening. It's kind of like, in a way, it is like a wildfire that's moving all over to different territories in different elements, in different ways. There's something here that is powerful and profound and potent and all the peas. And I also, HeatherAsh, wonder is there any specific direction or invitation that you have for my listeners, for our listeners today in this beautiful conversation that you want to kind of invite them to do or to look at or take a first step? Because I think also what's here is in your story, in all of what you've shared today, is a desire that others also are collaborating with you and your vision. HeatherAsh (Guest) Yeah, two things come to mind. One of the things that we're doing up on the land is planting a lot of different things to see what comes up. And so for each of us to plant yourself in the land that you're at, wherever you are, to get to know your neighbors. I just think all of us need to do more of this, of get to know our neighbors, of do our own inner work, of bringing more diversity, of creating more spaciousness for different points of view, of really looking at what's our ecosystem? I really consciously, a while ago, just with social media started following people like finding who are people that I would not have been thought of. Instead of following people that are like me, let me follow people that are really different than me. And it's been really helpful to change the ecosystem of what I was looking at. So instead of I'm looking at white spiritual teachers, women spiritual teachers, my feed now is very diverse with a lot of different voices and a lot of different experiences. So there's that cultivating of our own soil so that we can become more resilient where we're at. And then if anybody feels inspired by the story and wants to help with restoration hands on. We are doing hands on. I am literally making seed balls out of clay and seeds, and we'll be putting them out on the land. The center for Creative Intent is our nonprofit organization, and we have lots of ways people can engage and donate and send prayers to the land. So that is one place to play. Monica (Host) I love that. HeatherAsh (Guest) As a microcosm of the macrocosms. Monica (Host) Beautiful. I love that. Okay, well, and I'll be sure to put these links in the show notes. HeatherAsh, is there anything that I have not asked you that you wish I had? HeatherAsh (Guest) Not that I can think of. Such a good interview. It's been so wonderful to get to share a little bit about this experience, the impact and the beauty of all of it. Thank you so much for your great questions and also your beautiful reflections of how do we dance with all of it. Monica (Host) Yeah, how do we dance with all of it? And of course, I think, just like any conversation, what I'm realizing is that it's a co creative process, and we only have to come to the dance knowing that we only have to take the first step, and then somebody meets us in it and there's a call in response. And sometimes when there's nobody there to know that there is still this other world that we get to co create with all the time, this imaginal world. I was taking a little bit of time before we had our talk, and I was taking a minute to look at this creative intent. Like, I was like, okay, well, so what does it mean to create? And then what does it mean to intend? And so it was like this action of bringing something into existence, the act of bringing something from the imaginal realm into the world of matter. And then intention being a resolution or determination, the internal content of a concept, an idea that you perceive and want to bring into again, the material world. So here we have these two together that are just potent. And so I think that as we drop from our heads into our hearts, from the trance place into the creation place, this is where we can really connect to what matters. My final question is, what does revelation mean to you? HeatherAsh (Guest) Emo? It means a full body, heart, spirit, grounded opening into possibility and a simultaneous shattering of what we thought we knew. Monica (Host) Doesn't matter how many times I ask that question. I can't believe how many brilliant, beautiful, provocative answers I get. That was so gorgeous. Thank you. I love the simultaneous shattering because it's true. There's this way that a revelation occurs like this just full body understanding at this deeper level that shatters what you thought you knew. And then you realize how much you don't know and how much that's actually just such a beautiful thing, that the not knowing is actually so liberating, because that's when we come back into the oracle of the innocence of the inner child. And that's when everything is just filled with awe again. Well, thank you so much for a beautiful conversation. I brag I've waited a long time for this conversation, and I never gave up hope that it would happen. And so thank you. It's just such a deep honor to have you. As I mentioned to you before this episode, your name comes up everywhere, and everyone has said what a warm, wonderful, wise woman you are, and now I get to say the same. It's just been a total honor and a pleasure to speak with you and co create with you today. Thank you for your work in the world. Thank you for being here. HeatherAsh (Guest) Thank you so much, Monica. Appreciate it. Monica (Host) And for my listener, I'll be sure to put all of HeatherAsh Ash's incredible links and what she's up to in the show notes, along with her books and the center for Creative Intent in case you want to join in, contribute, or even be hands on. So until next time. More to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointhevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on itunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more To Be Revealed.