A Sense of Belonging

I never felt at home until I found the place where I belong + Our theme for magical exploration this month & the March Calendar of Heretical Events

⚠️ ATTENTION HERETICS: This month’s magical book for the Heretic Reading Circle and our March Calendar of Events are at the bottom of this post.

As a child, I never felt a sense of belonging to a place.

Though I loved playing in the creek behind our apartment or running through the fields and forests near my grandmother’s house, I secretly felt out of place with the dry oaks and golden grasses of California. When we visited the land where I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, the tall eucalyptus trees and misty morning air stirred in me a deep sense of malaise.

This what most of California really looks like—hot, dry, and half-dead.

People talked about loving the land where they lived. They described feelings of homesickness that felt utterly foreign to me.

This theme was so stark in my life that it became a character-defining flaw in the protagonist of The Heretic (and it’s showing up big time in The Martyr).

It always felt like maybe something was wrong with me.

Shouldn’t I feel at home in the land where I was born?

As I grew and traveled around the world, I found places that I loved… places that I recognized as the homes of my ancestors… places that I connected with on a deep spiritual level…

But never anywhere that felt like home…

Until I found the place that did.

No, not the rich vineyards of the South of France you might expect from me. This was taken at Leystone Farm in the wilds of Québec.

I first came to Canada to see about a man.

I met Mark walking El Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrim’s route across Spain. We found each other at exactly the halfway point of the Camino, on an old Roman road. We walked together for 10 days—as pilgrims—and at the end of it, I knew I would keep him.

The first time we said, “I love you,” was the morning we said goodbye in Santiago.

Little did I know, that was only the beginning.

As I returned to France to work with my mentor Henry Lincoln studying ancient Mysteries, I couldn’t get Mark out of my head. I dreamt about him, fantasized about him, and eventually called him and told him so.

After that, we talked every day, usually for hours. The days dragged into months as I shared my adventures exploring the magical landscapes of the Languedoc of France and he shared his everyday world of working for the government of Canada.

Eventually, there was only one solution. I was a writer—I could work anywhere. His work kept him bound to a place… a very specific place. The capitol of Canada.

I didn’t feel an immediate connection with the land. I didn’t fall in love with the place. I didn’t recognize any ancestral connection. And I certainly didn’t think it was amazing here. (Sorry, Ottawa.)

But something was different about this place.

I felt needed… like my presence here was somehow important.

I soon found myself settled in the suburbs of an old anglophone town in Québec and before long, I forgot that sense of importance that I had first recognized upon arriving here.

Until one day… my husband showed me a property listing.

I felt a deep knowing in my belly…

I was home.

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When we first arrived to look at the property, the land felt shattered, disconnected, in shock.

We quickly learned that only two families had lived here before—both had built or bought it as their dream house, and both families had been ripped apart. A divorce house. Sensitive as I was, I could still hear the violent arguments ringing through the bones of the house.

The family who lived here before us fought so fiercely that nearly all the doors and closets in the house were ripped from hinges, bent, and broken. I still shudder remembering the deadbolt that had been installed high on the exterior of one of the children’s doors. The house seemed still to echo with screaming.

I felt the tumult, chaos, and anger immediately.

Here was our dream house in the woods… with its cathedral ceilings… huge windows overlooking the snowy forest… hand-crafted woodwork… and just standing in it made me want to vomit.

Yet underneath everything…

I recognized the deep call. I was home.

More than that—I was deeply needed here.

Like a siren song echoing through the woods, I heard the call of the land, the trees, the mountain, and the stream begging me to return… to stay… to help them heal.

The agonizing season of nursing this traumatized home and land back to health and wholeness is a story for another day. I spent many months engaged with conscious healing—offerings and sacred circles, prayers and playdates, and while there’s still more work to do…

Now, I am unbelievably blessed to find myself daily surrounded by wildness, beauty, and a deep sense that I belong to this land.

This place has taught me how belonging really works. By human law, I bought this land, but I understand and accept a deeper reality.

This land doesn’t belong to me…

I belong to this land.

My family and I—and the gifts we bring—are a natural and necessary part of this ecosystem.

Here at Mystery, Magic & Mayhem, we dive into a theme each month to deepen our magic and train our natural gifts.

This month, we will be exploring the theme of belonging—the ways we all feel that we don’t belong in this world and how to create a deep sense of belonging in our daily lives and communities.

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🌲 Natural Belonging 🌍 ✨

Our sense of belonging arises out of a resonant field created when we are deeply ourselves in community with others who See, accept, and appreciate the gifts that we are. Together, we’re exploring the deep ways we are connected to the world around us and how we find each our place in the Great Pattern.

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March Heretical Events

Community Energy Magic

Friday, March 14 @ 9:30am PST / 12:30pm EST / 6:30pm CET / 3:30am AEDT (+1 Day)

A Divinely-guided transmission where you’ll learn to experience the deep belonging that is your birthright as a creature of Earth. Connecting with the energy of Mama Earth herself and beginning to re-pattern old stories of disconnection, you are invited to step into your rightful place in the family of things.

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Heretic Happy Hour

Wednesday, March 19 @ 5:30pm PST / 8:30pm EST / 11:30am AEDT (+1 Day)

Bring your favorite brew for an hour of magical inspiration with kindred souls in a safe-to-be-yourself space. In this community of like-hearted Heretics, you are invited to experience belonging through an exploratory co-created conversation. We’ll explore what it means to be deeply a part of the natural world, how we—as humans—tend to separate ourselves, and how to create and experience belonging in our lives.

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Heretic Reading Circle

Monday, March 24 @ 10am PST / 1pm EST / 7pm CET / 4am AEDT (+1 Day)

Share the epiphanies and explorations that this month’s magical book open up for you as you leave behind the natural tendency to relate with the chattering of your monkey mind and begin to step into deep conversation with your soul.

This Month’s Magical Book:

As we explore our powers of magic and consciousness together this month, we will be exploring one of the great books of our time. I think this one should be part of the curriculum for life, because it teaches us how to move beyond the chattering monkey mind, into a space where real magic is possible.

→ The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

Also available as an audiobook for those of you (like me) who are juggling toddlers or otherwise can’t find the time to sit down with a hardcopy.

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Learn more about the Heretic Reading Circle:

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Substack has a culture of avoiding affiliate links because we appreciate our subscribers so much that we aren’t trying to squeeze extra money out of them. BUT affiliate links don’t cost the buyer any extra money! They simple re-route a percentage away from big business.

I only recommend curated magical content that raises consciousness, connects hearts, and helps you train your magic… AND the links in this post are affiliate links. Buying from one of these links won’t cost you any extra money, but it will take approximately 1-4% from Amazon and Mr. Bezos and give it to me. 🥳

P.S. I really think more Substackers should be unapologetically doing this.