Art by Tomasz Alen Kopera
Introduction:
This won’t be a mainstream telling of the past five years.
If you’re looking for a sanitized, politically correct version of the pandemic story - like the one that was broadcast by the mainstream media and sold to the masses - you won’t find it here.
What I am about to share is not only deeply personal and raw, but it may challenge narratives you’ve been told or clung to for safety.
This is a story of grief, loss, and finding my light again.
It’s also a story of how I sat with the unbearable weight of what I witnessed, and how I learned that the worst thing I thought could happen ended up being the best thing that ever happened.
I'm not here to debate in the comments, to argue over statistics, or to persuade anyone of what I’ve seen and lived.
If this story resonates with you, welcome. You’re not alone.
If it doesn’t, feel free to move along.
This is a story for the truth-tellers, who dared to stand in their own knowing, even when the world was telling them they were wrong.
Documenting the Aftermath
Lately, I feel compelled to document what has happened over the past few years, as accurately as I can.
I can already imagine people asking in the future, “What did you do during 2020?”
And we will have to tell our stories.
However, memory is a strange thing, and when we can’t record events soon after they happen, the experiences tend to fade away.
So, there is no better time to write than now, while it’s still fresh, while we’re still in the aftermath of the storm.
Before the Singularity Arrives
I also feel the need to speak more about these times because I sense that we are at yet another turning point in history.
With the rise of AI, the singularity (the point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence) is clearly near.
We really don’t know what will happen next.
I’m filled with a strange excitement, even though I believe AI’s potential impacts could lead to a dystopian chapter for humanity, especially before we have any hope of seeing anything utopian come out of it.
Since anything beyond the singularity is unknowable, I have to rest in the not knowing what will happen next.
Resting in the unknown had always been a potent spiritual practice for me because it requires a deep level of surrender.
Given this pivotal moment, I feel it’s essential to reflect on the past few years - the death before the birth.
To consider who we were before 2020 and who we are now.
I can begin by telling that story myself.
Before the Storm: A New Life
At the beginning of 2019, I was living in an entirely different world.
I was part of a small intentional community on Vancouver Island, where we grew our own food and attempted to live in a way that differed from the rest of society's prescribed norms.
Things were about to change. I had just married my husband in January and was in the process of moving to the United States.
By the fall of 2019, I had packed and moved to Los Angeles, where my husband was already living.
We were in love, newly married, and all that mattered was being together.
We had also just started our podcast together and become creative partners as well as life partners. Life was beautiful for a few months.
My relationship with Los Angeles is complex. I’ve lived there before for brief periods, and they both ended disastrously. It truly is a land of gods and monsters, as Lana del Rey said, and if you are a naive woman like I was, you will get eaten alive.
But this time was different.
I was in love and moving from a place of safety rather than survival.
My husband lived in nature, in Topanga - a peaceful space removed from LA’s urban chaos.
I was also different. I had endured battle scars and undergone an intense journey of psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing over the past 7 years that changed me dramatically.
We enjoyed some blissful months, indulging in Erewhon (a high-end organic grocery store that has become a staple of LA culture), savouring the California-style sushi, relaxing by the beach, and enjoying our new life together.
A few months after I arrived and we moved into a new place overlooking the city, I went on a two-week meditation retreat by myself, shortly after Christmas.
Little did I know that the whole world would be forever changed when I emerged from that retreat - and so would I.
The Last Retreat Before the World Fell Apart
I will never forget the weeks before Covid hit.
At a secluded retreat center in the snowy mountains of Colorado, overlooking the Sangre de Cristo mountain range (which translates to "Blood of Christ," named for its deep red glow at sunrise and sunset), I immersed myself in deep meditation.
My practice took me deeper than I’ve ever gone before, beyond my own personal history - into the lives and stories of ancestors, spanning generations.
At that point, I felt that the main goal in my life was to become enlightened - a belief I still somewhat hold (more on that another time).
My experience there was profoundly beautiful.
The energy there felt very much like “the end of the era”, as the organization that hosted the retreat was also in a perilous state itself, not sure if it would survive the next year.
There was something poignant about the prospect of the end.
There was never a better time to meditate.
Never a more important time to remember who we truly are.
And although I was taken to hell and back again several times on this retreat, going deep into layers of unconscious material that I had no idea that my body even remembered, I came out on the other side feeling more profound unconditional love than I ever knew was available to me.
It was truly a descent into the underworld, followed by an ascent into a new state of being.
From Stillness To Mayhem
Transitioning from a two-week silent meditation retreat to the chaotic frenzy of the pandemic was surreal, to put it mildly.
I went from a state of consciousness I’ve never been in before, which I could only describe as peace (transcendent, timeless, and beyond thought), to the chaotic frenzy that marked the early days of COVID.
I remember going to Whole Foods with my husband, observing bare shelves, watching people scramble for toilet paper, and being told that everyone must stand 6 feet apart and follow the arrows and lines on the floor. It was madness and mayhem.
Hiking in Topanga became equally surreal.
We often encountered masked individuals who treated us, being maskless in nature, like lepers, going as far away from us as they could and frequently not even acknowledging our existence. We were both amazed at how suddenly everyone became terrified.
Not fans of senseless restrictions, we began to question whether it was worth continuing to live there.
We realized it was time to explore new options for our home base.
Where should we go?
We considered nearby Ojai, but wanted to escape the state of California to somewhere with fewer restrictions.
I’m not sure who mentioned Sedona first, but Bernhard had been there before and loved it, so we decided to visit first to see if I would like it too, and then we would decide.
The Vortex That Pulled Us In
When we came to Sedona, I felt an immediate sense of relief.
People weren’t so strict and unhinged over the Covid restrictions; it felt freer and more relaxed.
Of course, there is also the energy in Sedona that called us, an energy so potent that it has become part of Sedona’s legend.
The first night I slept here, I found it to be almost too intense. Staying at a hotel near Bell Rock, I felt how the earth around that great mountain spun into a vortex. It was so overwhelming that I found it hard to rest. (Thankfully, now, I am quite used to the energy here, and it feels much calmer.)
We found a place and moved here the following month.
One of the first weeks after moving in, I had a dream of the Divine Mother, gently holding me in her arms with love.
I felt I had finally arrived somewhere that felt like home.
Shortly after, we got our dog Leo. Raising him as a puppy while running our courses kept us busy.
Within a year, my life had changed in almost every way it could.
I was married, with a dog, in a different country, in a whole new city, about to face a whole new series of tests that I never anticipated.
The Stories Not Being Told on the News
Like many others, I didn’t initially realize how significant COVID would become.
My husband, with a more extensive background and knowledge of various “conspiracy theories” (which have turned out to be more like conspiracy facts), saw the writing on the wall from the beginning.
As information emerged about the faulty PCR tests, false positives, marking people with comorbidities as COVID-19 patients, ventilators, the dismissal of alternative treatments, and the insane levels of censorship… it became evident to me that something was not quite right.
Then, came the vaccine roll-out, and things escalated.
“Get the vaccine, or you’re a grandma killer.”
People regularly called for the unvaccinated to be exiled from society.
Anyone who questioned the vaccine was demonized but threatened with the loss of their livelihood.
Renegade doctors, like America’s Frontline Doctors, were already warning that the vaccine could have serious, detrimental side effects.
While others, more deeply invested in the mainstream narrative, shouted, “Trust the experts!”
Both of us were regularly shadowbanned or were outright barred from posting on social media over the Covid years for sharing our perspectives.
Even funny memes I made about the situation got censored, while our podcasts were regularly given strikes and taken down from YouTube.
We eventually resorted to using code words and emojis to reference what we were discussing.
We had phone calls with those close to us, pleading for them to reconsider rolling up their sleeve and getting inoculated, only to have them proceed anyway.
I secretly hoped that the doctor’s warnings were wrong, and maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.
Then came the wave of sudden deaths, heart issues, neurological issues, strokes, and now the turbo cancers.
A part of me is still in disbelief over what happened.
I counselled many people who lost family, friends, their husbands, wives, parents, to the deadly vaccine. It was honestly like being in a war zone.
I got a thorough understanding of the concept of “compassion fatigue” from this experience, because I got severely burnt out and felt heavy with grief.
I was also, unbeknownst to me at the time, living in a house with mould, which obviously exacerbated the situation.
Like I’m sure it was for many of you reading this, it was a rough period. My dog Leo and my husband got me through it.
I will never forget the countless stories I heard of people who lost someone.
There have also been quite a few other tragedies, like deaths by suicide.
And although I’m still being called a liar for saying these things so plainly, I refuse to do a disservice to the stories I’ve heard throughout the pandemic by pretending they didn’t happen.
The COVID-19 vaccine took a lot of people's lives, and while the cover-up makes me wonder if it will ever be recorded in official history books, let it be at least spoken about in the stories of regular people like me.
Living Through the Great Unravelling
The layers of unravelling over the past five year have been fascinating.
Many relationships have changed, jobs and careers have been let go of, and many people have undergone radical transformations.
I’m not the only one living in a whole new city either, as the lockdowns caused a wave of mass migrations of people looking for greener pastures.
In many ways, we are each going through our own death and rebirth process, as the Earth undergoes its own cycle of death and rebirth, too.
When I look back on who I was years ago, it seems like I’ve gone through the pressure cooker of evolutionary lessons.
The person I was has died and been reborn several times over, not only due to the challenges of the past few years, but also thanks to some intense astrological (Pluto) transits I’ve been going through as well.
These times have challenged me to speak up in ways I never thought I would.
To do that, I had to confront all the parts of myself that still hid who I was in order to stay safe.
I’ll never be the same, but at the same time, I’ve never felt more myself.
The Blessing of Losing Everything
It’s strange how the worst things we think could happen often end up turning out to be the medicine we needed most.
I often look back at the worst moments of life, like being in the depths of my addiction and the hell it took me through, and can see that, although it felt nearly hopeless at the time, that descent was essential for my own evolution.
My lessons during COVID followed a similar thread.
I used to be the kind of person who was peripherally worried about what certain people would think of me, avoiding specific topics, and forbidding myself from speaking about certain issues.
Losing friends I cared about, being labelled a conspiracy theorist or fascist, being written off as crazy or evil - these were some of my worst fears come true.
But through that, I learned the hard way: there are things far more important in this world than being liked.
In fact, I learned that sacrificing who you are for the sake of being liked is too high a price to pay, and one that I won’t pay any longer.
In the past, I frequently avoided confrontation and conflict, often defaulting to what’s called the fawn response - even when standing up for myself could have protected me.
But during Covid, I had no choice. That pattern I had to break - almost out of pure survival.
Now I highly recommend speaking your mind - even if it means potentially losing all your friends. There’s no greater freedom than no longer caring what people (who probably don’t even like you or know who you really are anyway) think of you.
There is a lot of freedom in being written off as the “crazy one”.
As the saying goes, “Once you ruin your reputation, you can live quite freely.”
This process matured me in so many ways. I consider it a gateway to my own individuation - it helped me become the person I am meant to be.
Chaotic times like these are particularly adept at stripping away the bullshit and false layers in our lives, until all that’s left is our true self - bare, shining, for all to see.
Spiritual Training in Holding Steady While a Fire Burns
One thing that helped me during these times was a practice I had worked on in retreat before this happened.
About a week or so into the retreat, one of the teachers, who had a background in Zen Buddhism, came in with a special practice he was going to lead us through.
The practice was simple yet profound: as we meditated in the quiet, vast room, gazing at the mountains, the teacher would add more and more wood to the large, ornate fireplace behind us.
The cracking sounds grew louder, more unpredictable, designed to distract and annoy us and take us out of our practice.
As he would add more crackling wood to the fire, he would say things like:
“Notice how your mind is jumping to paying attention to the fire, and then it labels: I like this, or I don’t like this,” as he instructed us to return to our point of focus (which was our bodies), again and again.
The point of the practice is to see if we can stay centred, even when distractions come, even when they are super annoying. If we could observe this while staying centred in our being.
This training would serve me well during COVID. In fact, it would be tested to the ultimate degree.
A World On Fire
COVID was one thing being added to the fire, after another.
It began with the lockdowns, the social distancing, and rules about staying 6 feet apart.
One thing was added to the fire.
The fear of the virus spread like wildfire, turning people against each other overnight. Then came the censorship.
Another thing was added to the fire.
Then it was the BLM riots, the destruction of cities, the political polarization.
Even more things were added to the fire.
Then it was the vaccine rollout, people being pressured to take it or lose their jobs…
And even more things were added to the fire.
And then came the deaths, the vaccine injuries, the grief…
The fire was now burning so brightly that it felt like it was consuming everything.
And yet, all of it was just more things being added to the fire.
My task was to remember and stay centred in who I truly am - the awareness that witnesses it all.
Becoming The Spiritual Warrior
Staying connected to my center, staying present through it all - that became my spiritual practice.
I meditated every evening for the past 5 years.
I sat with all the conflicts I was in, the names I was called, the shadows that I saw, the friends and life I had lost, the deaths I had witnessed.
These were all things being added to the fire.
I didn’t dissociate, like I had done at other more intense periods of my life.
I stayed. I felt it all. I was in it, feeling it, being with it.
I learned and changed so much from this experience by facing what was happening directly and being present with it in my body.
The retreat and my daily practice were training me to become the spiritual warrior I never knew I needed to be.
It also taught me something important. There’s a myth in spirituality that we should always be passive and detached. In fact, this idea can easily be used as a mask for dissociation and spiritual bypassing.
During COVID, I didn’t have the luxury of bypassing. I felt called to take conscious action - to speak up, even when it was uncomfortable. Even if only one person heard me, it was worth it.
I had to hold as much as I could - adding more and more things to the fire - while standing connected to the witness, my true self within.
From the Ashes, Emerged a Light
The fire is still burning.
It burned away the lies we told ourselves, the false selves, the friendships that weren’t true, and the work that wasn’t meant for us.
Grief, I’ve learned, works the same way. The fire of grief felt clears away the cobwebs from our hearts. What remains is a raw tenderness, an aliveness, and a deeper capacity to love.
That’s been my experience sitting with this collective process of death and rebirth.
I’ve never grieved more in the past five years than I have in my entire life.
Each death I witnessed opened a door to the grief I had long buried, and in the ashes of the grief, a light has emerged - a deeper love for humanity I never knew was possible.
This collective dark night of the soul we all went through was a precursor, a necessary death before the birth of the new world, a new way of being.
As the Era Shifts, The Spark that Remains
Astrologically, we are undoubtedly standing on the threshold of a whole new era, with all of the outer planets moving into new signs.
In tropical astrology, this means that Pluto has shifted from Capricorn into Aquarius, Neptune from Pisces to Aries, and Uranus, which is still in Taurus, will soon transition to Gemini.
This same cosmic pattern hasn’t happened since 1737.
Back then, it also coincided with a great wave of cultural and societal change:
It began with “The First Great Awakening” - a spiritual revival which challenged the religious dogma of its time, and was soon followed by the Enlightenment era, also known as the Age of Reason - which both laid the groundwork for revolutionary movements that would follow, like the American and French revolutions.
Now, here we are again. And isn’t it interesting how the term “The Great Awakening” has once again entered the collective conversation?
The shift ahead will be monumental.
With the rise of AI and transhumanism, many will drift further from their souls, chasing the latest gadgets and becoming increasingly dissociated from the essence of what makes them human.
And yet, I also sense a return to the heart and soul, which is a core evolutionary lesson of Pluto in Aquarius.
If we can keep our hearts open and remember that it is our hearts and creativity that connect us to the divine, then perhaps we can engage with emerging technologies without losing our humanity in the process.
If we can sit with our feelings - not just think about these times, but truly feel them - and remember that the greatest works of art often emerge after particularly trying times in history, then I truly believe it is our creativity, our works of love and beauty, that will save our souls.
Over the next few years, we will face profound questions about what it means to be human and our role in an age of increasingly intelligent machines. These are questions I’m still grappling with.
But I do know this: I must stay real, connected to the light within my heart, opening myself to love more deeply, grieve more fully, and from that place of tenderness, let inspiration flow so I can create something that expresses the incredible, heartbreaking, awe-inspiring, experience of being fully human.
The fire of the past few years has burned away everything that once clouded my heart. What’s left is my bare soul, illuminated by tragedy and loss, ready to light a candle - and perhaps help others light theirs, too.
May we all tend to our inner flames.
May we add another log to the fire.
May we sit around it, together, and share our stories - so that we remember who we truly are and leave a record of this moment in history for others to find, and learn from, someday, too.
As mentioned in the intro, for those who feel challenged my story - I won’t be debating you in the comments, especially those who question the validity of whether or not I’ve seen people die or get ill shortly after taking the vaccine.
Asking "source?!" "Prove it" when I'm merely sharing a story from people I've spoken to in a counselling context, is also odd. I find this kind of behaviour - a complete lack of empathy - demonstrates a different type of evil that the plandemic so clearly brought out of so many. I am not here to march out the scientific data, although there is plenty of people who focus on this, I merely telling a story-my story-which you are free to believe or not.
I understand cognitive dissonance may prevent you from considering that the shots you probably took were dangerous, and I can understand why you would want to argue with me about that to soothe your discomfort and reaffirm your belief - but you and I know that if you wanted to learn about alternative perspectives on this, you would have done so by now. It's all out there. It's no secret.
Here's a recent paper from Steve Kirsch for example, outlining how the vaccine harms outweigh any potential benefits: https://kirschsubstack.com/p/five-recent-papers-show-vaccine-covid?r=ymw2t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’ve had far too many of those conversations over the years to know that they tend to be fruitless. If you don’t believe me about the vaccine - please feel free to check out people like Steve Kirsch, John Campbell, Naomi Wolf, there’s tons of people sharing data on Substack alone.
There’s also a great film released about covid vaccine injuries at: https://followthesilenced.com/
I welcome heartfelt reflections and resonance, but I won’t be debating you on whether or not what I experienced and saw is real.
Side effects from the vaccine are real, not rare. If you took the vaccine and are well, be glad you didn't experience something like this. But your experience doesn't negate those who have.
This piece brought up a lot for me because my life is so completely different than the way it was before and I still feel like I’m coming to terms with it. I faced the hatred on a really large scale because I kept my business open during COVID and subsequently faced criminal charges, a two year court battle and hefty fines. I received death threats and many people in my small town still refuse to talk to me. I am still experiencing some fallout due to the public nature of my stance. That being said I would not change a thing. I’m proud of what I did and who I’ve become and I want to keep learning and growing. If it weren’t for people like you who are sharing their experiences things would be much lonelier and harder to understand so thank you. ❤️