“I don’t know about your presentation, I was just looking at your chest.”

This is what my boss said to me back in my corporate days when I asked him what he thought of the run-through of the complex presentation about our digital strategy that I was intending to take to the board.

For all my brains, experience, and effort, the thing that stood out to him was my bosom.

And ironically in those days, after a lifetime of wounding at the hands of men, and the conditioning that had trained me to show little of my open, receptive nature, especially in such an environment, I kept my curves covered up.

That particular day, I remember I was wearing a pastel blue cardigan, buttoned uncomfortably, given my autistic sensory sensitivities, right up to the neck.

His words left a mark but simultaneously were a tiny drop in the ocean, given what I’d already journeyed through by that point, many leagues more treacherous.

It was like: “Oh, this again.”

Despite my brilliant mind, my obsessive learning of anything I put my name to, my dotting of every I, and crossing of every T, I was reduced, yet again, to the size of my cup.

I swallowed my pride, my feelings, my retort, my soul… And I can’t quite remember but I may have even offered to run through my presentation again.

I could have begun this story using another example, I have many to choose from. Being groped whilst visibly pregnant with my firstborn was one that prompted the thought of “Really? I’m not safe from this, even now?”, and some are far more violent and shocking than either of these examples.

And yet, it’s in the everyday weave of interactions and our conditioned, compelled responses to them, that can often be most revealing of where our soul’s treasure is hidden, if only we know how to look.

Fast forward a couple of decades and here I am now teaching others how to discover their soul’s true calling and alchemise their deepest wounds into medicinal gifts.

But of course, I had to go first.

Though I felt the deep call to embark on that journey, I had no map or role model then, it has at times been terrifying and painful, and I felt resentful, angry, and hopeless.

Why should I go first? Why shouldn’t “they” be the ones to change - to do better? Surely I am justified in staying angry and righteous given all I’ve experienced? Why can’t I just live a normal life on the sunlit surface, and not have to journey down into these dark places?

The Wounded Healer archetype brings powerful and precious gifts, rare in this culture… the blueprint, guidance, and invitation to embrace our wounds and submit to our destiny, and in doing so, allow our wounds to become the crucible in which our medicine is alchemised.

That archetype seeped into my consciousness and showed me aspects of the map and the model before I fully understood what was happening (the archetypes can be generous and also sneaky like that).

Piece by piece I dropped the once-needed armour I had put between me and the world, finger by finger I released my grip of understandable control on life, little by little I opened to the unseen realms I had kept at bay in order to stay somewhat sane… Allowing me to reclaim the soul parts of myself lost to the four winds, hidden down deep in the places that only shamans dare to tread… Until finally I began to realise, as the stars foretold at my birth, who I am and why I’m here.

In some ways, my body shape had very little to do with those experiences (which anyway, sadly began many years before my body was this shape), it was my soul that had set the course, cracking me open, dropping clues along the way, waiting patiently until the day I was ready to follow them into the wound and discover the treasure.

I am here to be unconditionally open, loving, and receptive to beings and realms beyond what is reasonable, logical, normal, safe or comfortable… An embodiment of the archetypes of Priestess, Mother, Soror Mystica, Chalice, and others that are still unfolding and not yet ready to be spoken of.

These days, I still receive the same projections of people’s wounds, specifically around the Feminine - their mother, their anima, the witch wound, their own soul’s hidden gold - that I used to back then, and more besides, the difference is I’m no longer imprisoned by them, defined by them, victimised by them…now, I understand them, I accept them, I receive them fully… I am whoever you say I am.

To reach this place has entailed the hardest inner work I’ve ever done, harder even in some ways than three years of shamanic initiations (which were also simultaneously an important part of this work), and so I don’t attempt to hide the level of challenge ahead when others are called to our 12-month crucible, Medicine, to embark on this alchemical journey of discovering their soul's purpose, uncovering their unique gifts and becoming their medicine themselves.

And yet, I trust that when people are ready, they will find the courage to do what they came here to do, knowing that they will not only have the power and protection of the archetypes but will also have the model and map that Jonathan and I didn’t have back then - we had to go first, to live it and embody it, in order to give it to others.

We are here when you’re ready to enter your wounds, retrieve your medicine, and become who your soul is calling you to be.

All my love,

Lian