I began having visions of moving to California in 1998, and I mean literal visions – I would see myself in places in California I had never been to before and couldn’t possibly have known what they looked like. I knew down to my toes that I was moving there at some point. So, when I was offered an extraordinary job at a company in Naperville, Illinois—one that I was way underqualified for, but they were giving me the honor of being trained on the job—I had to say no. The business owner wanted a long-term commitment, and she wanted me to stay in Naperville. I couldn’t commit to that. I knew life was going to take me to California.
It took me another two years to get there, but when it did happen, it happened fast. One Friday in cold February, my brother, a Stanford student at the time, called me from Mountain View. “Hey, I found a house that has five bedrooms. Do you want one? Ready to move to California?”
“Um… YES!”
“Seriously?”
“Uh, yeah! I’m pretty sure! Give me the weekend to process, but I’m pretty sure!” That conversation kicked off a series of remarkable events.
That weekend, I spontaneously ran into almost every one of my friends in Chicago; I knew it was my opportunity to say goodbye to them, and I knew I would not see most of them again. It was like a bizarre review of the relationships of the last 10 years, like an episode of “This is Your Life”. Three weeks later, after my friends lovingly helped me pack up, I was in a moving truck heading west with my friend Sandi, embarking on a grand adventure across the country.
To prepare me for this big change, the universe arranged for a perfect cleansing of my old self and an intentional introduction to my new life. When we started planning this trip, I thought it was just going to be a fun but long road trip. Later, I would realize it was like walking through a mystical portal into a very different life on the other side. I was leaving behind long, cold, gray winters along with the depression, struggle, and anger that had haunted me in Chicago. I was leaving behind the heavy weight of trauma healing and the ghosts of my past. I was leaving behind an old way of engaging in romantic relationships.
While the first stop was a loving embrace from my mom in Iowa, the second stop in Kansas was a real kicker. Sandi had reached out to friends to see if we could stay with them. It just happened that her friend was dating the spiritual leader of a Lakota Sioux community, and that community happened to be having a Lakota Eagle Ceremony the very same days we were driving through. Eagle Ceremonies are rare, they explained to us, because they have to petition the federal government to have access to the body of a golden eagle, a protected animal. The timing was extraordinary. Even more extraordinary was the fact that this spiritual leader invited two white women to join them in the ceremony, even though he had never met us before. Jaw. Floor.
It gets wilder. I had been having visions and dreams of golden eagles for years; I consider them my totem because of their symbolism and companionship on my healing and spiritual journeys. They represented to me breaking free, soaring to the sky, and radiant wisdom. I felt as if the golden eagle had arranged this convergence of our trip to Kansas and the ceremony.
The ceremony wasn’t just one special afternoon. It was three days of sacred, intentional preparation, ceremony, and feast. In preparation, we were taught to make prayer bags that would burn in the fire, comprised of sweetgrass, sage, and tobacco. I remember that they taught us that sage is cleansing, but it also represents the hardships of life because it makes our eyes water, so they include sweetgrass for the sweetness of life.
I remember the intensity of the sweat lodge, sitting in the dark, squeezed in with all the others in the community, sweating buckets, the heat increasingly intense with each round, but finding the cold, hard ground underneath me a welcome relief. I remember having visions, but I no longer remember what they were. I remember later a woman saying, “Yeah, this sweat lodge is hot, but not as hot as the sweat lodge a few months ago. That one burned the hair off my legs.”
I remember bits and pieces of the ceremony. I remember being in an altered state, receiving a series of visions and messages, and feeling profoundly grateful and in awe of the tribe. The sweat lodge helped me clean away the past, giving me a fresh slate. The visions helped me dream of something new and different. It was a rebirth.
I remember feeling profoundly touched by the spiritual leader, who gave us gifts as we departed to bless us and help us on our way. He gave us each a blanket, a turkey feather, sage, and a shell. I still have those items to this day.
Filled with love and radiance from that experience, we continued our adventure west, with a tour through the southwest to avoid the worst of the snow on mountain passes. I hit my head on the rearview mirror in Texas; we ate the best green chile breakfast burrito in the world and visited friends in Albuquerque; I witnessed a street light get knocked over in the tree-filled town of Flagstaff. It was epic.
After driving through a snowstorm in northern Arizona, it was sunny California that took my breath away. It was the first of March, and the towering hills were a stunning green. Each curve of the road gave us a new vista, a new ecosystem. We were in awe of this magical fairyland. We got lost on our way to visit a friend who was the Tribal Chairman of a Sierra tribe, but finally made it to his beautiful mountain reservation. Being with him was one more magical blessing as we entered California.
I hadn’t realized how much I oriented my body to grounding on the Earth until I arrived in California and had to ground differently. The earth moves here; I feel its aliveness under my feet. I had to find a new way of standing and walking. It was a metaphor for a new approach to everything.
Finally, late in the evening on March 2, 2000, we arrived in Mountain View. I will never forget the smell of spring, the warmth, the lush surroundings – a radical contrast to ice-covered Chicago at that time of year. I was thrilled to be there, thrilled to be with my brother, and thrilled to be at the start of my new beginning.
