Hello, and welcome to Home to Her, the podcast that's dedicated to reclaiming the lost and stolen wisdom of the sacred feminine. I'm your host, Liz Kelley, and on each episode, we explore her stories and myths, her spiritual principles, and most importantly, what this wisdom has to offer us right now. Thanks for being here. Let's get started. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Hey everybody, it's Liz joining you as usual from Central Virginia and the unceded lands of the Monacan Nation. And as always, if you would like to know whose lands you might be residing on, please be sure to check out native-land.ca. There's a map of North America, really, I think they've got the whole world there but it's super helpful for those of us in North America, and I will put that in the show notes for sure. And I am so glad you're tuning in today, and If you are interested in learning more about the Sacred Feminine, there are many, many ways that you can do that, but there are a few, in particular, through me. You can check out my award winning book, Home to Her, Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine, which is available wherever you buy your books. You can check out the classes available via the Home to Her Academy. Gonna keep rolling those out all year long in collaboration with some really great teachers. And you can follow me on social at home to her on Facebook and Instagram also have a pretty busy Facebook group By the name of home to her And then you can check out articles and all the past podcast episodes at home to her. com We'll put all of that in the show notes And if you are a regular listener, I would love for you to leave a review of the show wherever you access it It helps other people find this Which is great. Let's help us find each other in this information because goddess knows it could definitely be more front and center in our culture. And as always, feel free to reach out to me with your thoughts and your comments, your feedback, your suggestions. I love hearing from you. Social is a really, really good way to do that. And, okay, that's my spiel. Let's get on with the show. So I have a feeling many of you will recognize my guest's name today. Although I just learned from her, the way I was saying it in my head was totally butchering it. But I've been following her work for a long time and it's such an honor to have her with me on the show today. So let me go ahead and introduce her to you now. Chelan Harkin's poetry journey began at age 21 on the heels of a traumatic event, a mystical event, and an unparalleled creative opening where inspired verse started to pour through her with very little need for editing. What a gift. Her experience with channeling the muse was profound and intimate, but also private. It took Chelan 12 years to find the courage to share her poetry with the world through her first self published book, Susceptible to Light. This publishing journey that began at the end of 2020 has been something of a magic carpet ride, characterized by prayer experiments gone right, and has included some of the most awe inspiring events that have completely shifted her way of relating to herself and the world. Her current published books include Susceptible to Light, Let Us Dance, The Stumble and Whirl with the Beloved, Wild Grace and the Prophetess, the return of the prophet from the voice of the divine feminine. She lives in the Columbia Gorge with her seven and three year old kids, Amari and Nahani. Since this publishing journey began, Chelan has traveled the country as an inspirational speaker, talking about mysticism as the path of opening the heart to embrace our wholeness, and she's joining us today from Lyle, Washington, near the Columbia River Gorge. Chelan, I'm so happy that you're here. It's an honor to have you with me.

Thanks so much, Liz. It's really fun to be here with you.

Okay, good. I think I got a nod from you, but just confirm rookie move. I did. I pronounce your children's names, right? This is perfect. Yes. Perfect. Good, good. That's important to me. Sweet. Okay. I did better with them than your name. That's good. I told her in my head, it was Che-lan, which is, you know, Chelan so much prettier. All right. So if, if, you know, people who've listened to the show know that I, I usually start in the same place. But I would always love to hear from guests about your spiritual background. And the reason that I ask about that is, you know, first of all, I'm just curious, but especially when we're talking about the sacred feminine, I'm also curious about like, what, you know, what was it like growing up? Was it a helpful journey? Were there things that you needed to let go? So yeah, I'd love to hear you talk about that if that's okay.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that's one of the richest, I think, richest questions to ask somebody. It gives so much material and background and it's a fertile subject. So I grew up in the, have you heard of the Baha'i faith?

Yes, I have.

Yeah. So I grew up in this small little town in the Columbia Gorge, town of 300 or so in the Baha'i community. And. It is such a trippy thing to grow up in a minority faith like that, like the Baha'i faith began in Iran, and in the 1800s, and it was a small community here, a really beautiful community, actually, of Baha'is happened to be in the Columbia Gorge, but quite small, and so, as it is for many Baha'is in the United States it was a, I didn't have a Like a peer group really of to connect in that area of my life. And so it was a really interesting journey and very multi layered as it often is for people who grow up with faith of just like, there's so much that I've received from the Baha'i Just perspective and, and inspiration and worldview. And and like, it's a very, many Baha'i spaces are really, really encouraged are very, just are very encouraging in general and are very encouraging of creative expression. And so that was beautiful. And then. Just, I think just navigating faith in the, in the US where it's both, it's, it's just a complicated journey. It's complicated to talk about. It's complicated to find genuine, authentic connection points with other people. People around this subject. So I think I just part of what was complicated about it for me was just needing more spaces to explore it. Honestly, the, the things I loved about it and the areas where I didn't resonate or understand and just more permission to yeah, talk about my love and my doubts and my questions and all of that. But the Baha'i, the Baha'i view of all religions coming from the same source and kind of being like what's the word? That, that there are moments in human, in the developmental process of human history, where there just are major kind of leaps forward and, and spiritual and social understanding. And that the Baha'i perspective is that the great spiritual teachers kind of unlock this energy and this capacity of consciousness in humanity for forward movement, and that they all are in cahoots, really, and come from the same source and are leading us to this place of what Baha'u'llah, who's the founder of the Baha'i faith, says is the, is the recognition of our oneness. That's a pretty beautiful foundation of understanding, and it's a very unitive view and it also gives a lot of perspective to the suffering that humanity is going to and going through right now and frames it in a way that is hopeful. So there was a lot of really, really, really deep philosophical support that I was like pretty anchored in with that growing up.

That is really beautiful and I didn't know that much about the Baha'i faith. Although my what I do know about it has it's always felt very positive for me like a like a beautiful supportive thing and I was thinking of like As you're describing that of Yogananda, the Autobiography of a Yogi, and that yogi, that yogic perspective that there are avatars which is, I think, kind of similar to what you're saying. There are enlightened teachers and beings who come here to help us find the path and and even like the more of the New Agey concept at the Ascended Masters, like same idea, right? Like that. And so I don't, that really resonates with me. Like, of course, it all is, is, is emanating from the same source. I find that very, yeah, very unifying. Yeah.

Yep. And then also I just want to add though, like every religious group, I would say, certainly in this country. And like all people, like there's still, there needs to be the revolution of the feminine force in the community and in the beings, in, in the individuals to really make it whole.

Yeah. And

so There was a lot of, you know, like the philosophy of the Baha'i faith for the most part is so beautiful, and the community is still in its process, you know, of recovering, you know, deconstructing some of its religious baggage, because a lot of Baha'is in the U. S. came from Christian backgrounds and and so there's still just like in, yeah, in every community, we have to have the revolution of the feminine for it to be grounded and, and really Aligned, you know?

Yeah. Well, yes, and I want to talk about that more, obviously, but one of the things that It's kind of coming to mind as you were describing it is just this the way in which when we put structure around something, and if you want to talk in gender terms of masculine, feminine, we can do that. I think we could take it out of that. But you know, sometimes it's helpful, right, for that framing. But when we start to put structure around things and dogma, and it's almost like then it, it, it, it limits you by nature. Right? Yes. And then when you're talking about the divine, like, you know, when you're describing like wanting more places to, you know, To talk about love and like spirit and like all of that. You're like, it's kind of ironic, isn't it? That the boxes that we've created to help us relate to that also can end up cutting us off from it.

Absolutely. And even if the ideologies are beautiful,

if

they're still at that ideological, if we're relating to life and God ourself through that ideological framework, it's not It's not satisfying for one. Yeah. It blocks us from our own, the wholeness of our, our being and the experience of what we're trying to do. And then there's a lot of performative ways, which, you know, aren't bad and are understandable, but or they can be harmful, but anyway, yeah. Authentic relationship as opposed to ideological relationship with faith or with everything is. Is everything at shift.

Yeah, for sure. Well, and then so, the other question that I always ask guests is, so tell me then how, how you found the Divine Feminine or how she found you, and feel free to, if that language doesn't work for you, Sacred Feminine Goddess, Oh, it's all good. Perfect. Whatever you want. Yeah, you, you've, yeah. I'd love to hear how that, that unfolded for you.

Okay. Oh, awesome. Great question. So well, have you seen, you've seen the movie Barbie, right? Yes. A few times. I love that. So I love how, you know, it's such a cool, creative, genius idea that, that they used Barbie to deconstruct all that Barbie had stood for in the past, you know, they like totally redefined that, that old symbol and that's so powerful to do that. And so interestingly, like my, really my first profound and transformational experience of the divine feminine was it was when I was 21 and I I just had brain surgery, actually. It was, it was crazy. I had an aneurysm, long story short, in the central artery of my brain and found it by, it was, it was just, I had no symptoms and it's amazing that I found it and I wouldn't have lived to be 30, they said, had I not. But So I was just the shocking jolting total disruption sudden of my life and it this brain surgery. So that's just an important context. And then to a month and a half after that, I had had this pilgrimage study. I had plane tickets to go to Haifa, Israel by myself to do this Baha'i pilgrimage. And so and that surgery had just shaken everything up. It was like everything inside of me that had been needing to that was all my, like my patterns of the past had just been that they were at a point of really outliving their usefulness, but I didn't know how to break through into another way of operating. And it was really an acute time of crisis and the surgery just like amplified that. And and so I was really in a place of, of needing like just permission, really, I feel to, to enter this more authentic relationship, move from the path of fragment, maintaining a fragmented, Self to, to representing a whole experience, experiencing and sharing from wholeness. But I had no mentors and I had really no examples of that at the time. And I, I didn't have access to any like healing arts that would help me get into that. And so I was just sort of using this old model of like, okay, I should do this religious pilgrimage and pray and ask and stuff like that. That was kind of all I had access to. And Anyway it's like the last day of this pilgrimage. We went to the prisons, Baha'u'llah's prison cell, and I had this very strange, potent desire to be there alone that didn't make any sense to me. And so we went into this prison cell and it was a small cell and I, there were probably 30 other people in there with me and I closed my eyes and I opened my eyes and everyone had left the space and the door was closed and and I hadn't heard any You know, commotion of anyone leaving. I had no awareness that people had left the space. I've never had an experience anything like this before or since. And I kind of opened my eyes and took stock, like, what the hell is going on? And was just filled with would call maybe like electric light or it was like every cell of my being became an amplifier vibrating with this message. Let us dance. And in true poetic form, like that concise phrase had such meaning and it was like, and it had this authority to it. This beautiful, loving authority that. I could come to the divine and to my life with this from a place of dynamic living truth. I could have a stumble and whirl with the beloved and it wasn't just a nice message. Like it really carried this energy of authority somehow that I could really trust and lean on like without question. And it unlocked for the first time in my adult life. profound catharsis that was just so beautiful and was sort of woven with ecstasy all at once. This release, this surrender, it was my first experience of surrender, emotional soul level surrender. And in that moment, as energy was moving, like rippling through my being, It was like a piece of my destiny was also shown to me that I would absolutely without question one day have a book called Let Us Dance the Stumble and Whirl with the Beloved, which I now do, and that the way to access my authentic self and to express from that place, which was my absolute hearts in most desire and real requirement for wellness for me, was to, was to find a way to unlock and open so that life could, life force, life with a capital L could move and move through me and, and conduct my expression and my everything with, with what, and, and to just surrender to the, and open to this wild grace. So that, that changed my whole life. And then and, and around that time is when poetry really just started to flow through me as it, as it still does today.

Wow. Oh, I have so much. Yeah.

And just, I guess to wind up, like to connect the Barbie part, it was like. What I meant by that was like the Bahai faith, while it was I so important to me, it also represented like I was also coming at it from a place of like perfectionism and like old kind of, sort of like Christian ideology about, you know I need shoulds, like a should based faith and am I good enough and like fear and all of that. So that was like. This point of reframe into a whole new way, but using the same kind of platform for a transformational experience.

Yeah. Well, and I assume that's what you're referring to in your bio when you said the traumatic events in a mystical events. Those were the, those were the two, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's so interesting to I love hearing you describe this. I mentioned to you, and I know listeners, if you've been listening for a while, you've probably heard me reference, or if you read my book, you certainly know that I had my own kind of spiritual awakening, which was very, very embodied. And something that I don't talk about in my, in my book though, but I think I've, I've mentioned here, maybe on a podcast before, is that this language of poetry started moving through me too. And I used to write when I was a kid. Yeah. Oh my God. I did it when I was like 12 or 13. I had a little Mickey mouse notebook and I just, you know, I'd go out and I'd go out in the woods behind my house and I would write these poems. And and then I was just like, yeah, I'm going to put that aside. I'm not, I can't make money on that. It's not practical. So, and I'm not, I'm not a professional and I'm not trained, so I'm not going to do that. But this channel, opened up big time. And I ended up participating in a project called the 100 day project, which was, you did a, it was, it was an Instagram thing, but you did like a hundred days of any creative challenge. And and so I, I called mine one, one true sentence poetry. And I just tried to write at least five. I mean, I ended up writing a lot more than that, but like at least one sentence every day for a hundred days. And it totally changed my life. So yeah, so I don't know when you talk about it, and it felt very, Divinely orchestrated. And that was the catalyst for me to leave the corporate job that I had and to start doing the work on the Divine Feminine.

Oh my god, that is amazing. Wow, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. That is so cool.

So I just, I get all lit up when I hear about yours and I want to know, first of all That, that voice, that let us dance, oof, like just gives me chills, like that, just that simple, simple beauty of that statement did you recognize this as a feminine? Did you gender it or did it, like, how did you, yeah, where and how did the divine feminine kind of dance into that?

Yeah. Oh, good question. So the voice was, I would say, actually very masculine, interestingly, but yeah, It was, it unlocked the feminine, like it gave permission, which is how I feel like it operates, I would say, you know, the masculine force of like, in my experience of like, of consciousness, I would, you could say pure consciousness, like being willing to come in and connect and value what's in the body, and to stay with it with, S with love and stability and, and curiosity and value and presence. Stay with whatever obstacles I'm encountering and, and not judge them, not reject them, just be with them is then what unlocks them and moves them from bound to free. And and so it was, that's how it felt. That's how it, that was my first other level kind of profound experience of that. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it absolutely makes sense.

Cool.

And, and then you, and then you, you're writing, but you're not sharing it with the world. For a long time.

Really long time.

Wow. So tell me about that. And what, and what, what kind of, what, why'd you keep it under wraps and what gave you the push to get it out in the world?

Yeah, great question. Well so in the in the bio, I think I said that, like yeah, so age 21 was a big year. So there was this brain surgery. And then there was this major, like, perspective shift through this experience I just shared. And then there was this still, there was a creative opening that that needed to happen. And That was right as soon as I got back from this pilgrimage, I, similar to you in some ways, I decided to do an experiment where for 30 days I would, I was going to allow myself to write a bad poem and I would share it no matter what because I still, you know, like you have a mystical experience and that doesn't mean that you're there, right? Like that's such a huge, there's such a huge need to reframe that, like this, this. really untrue idea that like awakening is a one experience thing and then you're done with vulnerability and suffering, essentially.

You're just getting started.

That's where it begins. Exactly. That's where that's when you get to go in. And so then I just became aware of like, Oh my God, I really need to figure out how to unlock like that again. But I didn't know how, but I knew poetry was the key. And so yeah, so I did this experiment just to get out of the paralysis of perfectionism in this very kind of contracted way that I had. And so yeah, writing a bad poem a day is first of all, what, what really unlocked the flow for me. In a way it's interesting cause I live, I live in the Columbia gorge and hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was like carved out by this massive flood. It's a really dramatic geographic area. And that's how this felt when the muse flowed through me as this first poem that came from this force of wild grace. So that happened. And anyway, so then for 12 years, I just had a huge collection of these inspired poems. But they, they were like my lifeline and they were so precious to me. They, it was like this poetic channel. was, it was like an umbilical cord to everything that was real and true and alive and my main point of connection. And so well, I loved and revered and trusted with all my being, whatever was coming through me. I still just had a ton of relational human, relational fear and trauma. And I was really afraid that what this expression of what was most important to me would not be received by. others by a people and that that somehow would create a bigger discrepancy a bigger chasm between my truest most authentic self and like human belonging if it were to prove that people just like didn't get it or it didn't resonate or it was really scary. It was just really scary and I was really insecure on that relational level to share it. So 2020 happened, which was such a time of like, what the hell it was such a, like, what the hell, I might as well try things time, I think for many people. And and an old connection actually came back into my life at that time, who there was just a potent element of inspiration there. That, that this person and I really, really unlocked in each other, there was sort of a seeing and a resonating with this soul space and connection with this dear friend, like, it gave me permission to And, and resilience enough to courage really to take what was the greatest risk and experiment of my life to put these poems into book form and to share them with the world. And it was really like a bringing forth of this whole part of myself that I'd really privatized. And it was a complete rearrangement of. Of being like, you know, when, when the foundations change, everything changes. So that's a little piece of what was going down in the, in the 2020.

And it seems like, I mean, that that channel is, has stayed open for you since do you find that you, it's something that you need to cultivate or how does that process work for you?

Great question. So Yeah, people often ask me what my writing practice looks like, and it doesn't, I never sit down to write which it's, and I want to say that if people do have a more disciplined type of way, that's wonderful. We just need to be You know, genuine with, I think what works for us, but for me, it's, it's really just the process of keeping my being open. And I do that through really an immense amount of tending to my, my inner being through again, this process of just bringing consciousness into my body and connecting with whatever is asking for my attention there. And, always, reliably, every time I do that, it unlocks, energy unlocks. And so it's this I think, and that's the process of change and growth when we do that. That's how, and then, because when this energy that's bound up in my body, releases, it's not just energy. I think energy that in our body, it's, it's filled with information, with insight, with wisdom, with inspiration, with amazing, extraordinarily wise guidance. And so when I, what, surrender that, which is when I'm willing to feel it rather than store it. And leverage it in some kind of way for some kind of security or gain, which is kind of how we operate when we hold parts of ourselves down when I'm willing to give it to life, essentially, by letting it be free rather than controlled. It gives me poetry, really, and it, and it also it moves me forward, it changes me. And so I think being committed to and willing to dramatically go through metamorphosis that just hasn't stopped is what has kept that open and finding enough both value in and necessity for this ongoing process of returning to close connection with the feminine source through continually surrendering to her with capital H

Mm-Hmm.

is what keeps this open.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Do you find it challenging? I sometimes I, everything that you're saying is so deeply resonant with me and then I often Yeah, no, it really is. And then I often go to this place too of like, and I think this is my storyline, but I've also heard other women mention it to me, and I think it's a real thing and we don't operate in a culture that values that kind of deep listening and that deep spaciousness to, to allow that to come forward in the first place. Like we just don't, that is not something that is, and so I wonder if you find that challenging, you know, it's sort of that, I don't know if you describe it as moving between worlds, but right, you still gotta, we still have to exist in this, in this paradigm. We're part of it. There's no, there's no opting out of it, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, it's extremely difficult, I would say. And, and it's, it's extremely counterculture. And it's extremely, by normal standards, it's extremely odd to, I mean, our whole society, I would say, I think it's fair, I think it's reasonable to say, is built on avoiding all that is in our bodies. It's a, we revile and reject and are terrified of all the amazing power and wisdom, power from within, and transformational power and wisdom in our bodies. We're terrified of the feminine, culturally speaking. And so to be on a path of doing everything to embody that and and to advocate for that and to just require that to be basically, well, like this process of being honest with about my emotional limitation like difficulties and having this big process of tending to those and all of that. Yeah, it's really it's there's so much that just rubs up against all of the all the conditioning. And so I spend one of the ways that I deal with that, I mean, which has been very hard is just through. Isolation too much isolation. And so it's really we need each other, you know, because even just we need to affirm we need this podcast that you're offering is so valuable because we really need to connect with people who are on this path to encourage it, but also to remember that we're not alone on it when we're so called to, by really deep conditioning, to operate in this way where there's just so, so much facade and so many walls and so many blocks to what's real inside of us. And so to any environment, like the one you're creating is, it's really profoundly essential and revolutionary to create spaces like this. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for that reflection. And I'm, I'm thinking again of containers and how, and structure and order. Oh God, we love all that stuff so much. And it, and it does serve a purpose, right? Like if I think of, and I don't know if this resonates with you, but if I think of like that big expansive energy that maybe we call the feminine, It's, it's chaotic, not in a bad sense to me, but generative, you know, like it's, it's pure potentiality. Like all of this, anything can happen. It's huge. It's dynamic. And to operate, you need to put some, you know, if you're going to bring something into form, you've got to put some structure in a container around it. Like you finding words, like you are taking all that, that huge swirl and you're boom, you're giving it a container so that we can relate to you. And it's beautiful. And yet it almost seems like culturally we've done the opposite. Like if that pure potentiality is informing the containers, then we're, we're good. But if it's the container that then we start to honor, or like, it becomes more important to hold the container. Now we've lost the pure potentiality in the beauty, even if we were trying to access it in the first place. And to me, that's not like a static state. Like I would imagine we just, you got to dance, you know what I mean? It's like a constant process almost of creation, destruction. Yes. Yeah.

Oh, you said that really, really potently. Yeah. Yeah. And the, you know, and the feminine it's so cool because it's so often ignorantly, I guess, I don't mean that like from a place of, I, it's just, you know, the feminine is often pitted against the masculine and we have this binary, but yeah, the feminine, when we open to this energy, I mean, it's like, it's the same force that brings the apple tree to its blossom. It, it it's not without, it's, it is the energy that allows the potentialities of something to fully flourish. And, and it's not, and the masculine and the feminine are just one. Yes. Is the truth. But culturally speaking, we've been obsessed, like you said, perfectly, like with, yeah, with this container. And so we've just limited This life force. And so nothing generative, really, it can happen. I mean, not nothing, but way less can, can emerge. And when we're doing that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so like when the, the apple tree, you know, allows life to flow through it, it doesn't relinquish its structure at all. It's structure gets to, you know, become more than itself and give this gorgeous gift to the world that is filled with also this, you know, iridescent or, you know beautiful, anyway gift of grace, like through the apple or the flower, you know, it like, anyway structure and the, and spirit or structure and energy are, are absolutely in, in cahoots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So another question that I had for you is the, I, and I'm curious how this has worked for you, but what I have noticed for me is that sometimes that channel of like, well, it seems like your, your channel, you've figured it out, how to keep that channel kind of open through really carefully guarding your space and your, your energy. I have noticed that for me, that kind of creative, like raw Place from which that poetry seems to move through me shows up more freely in times of great challenge. And yeah. And I'm wondering if you, yeah. So I'm wondering if you could, you could speak to that. In fact, I know, you know, we always check in with guests and if they've got thoughts, you know, that they want to cover and you mentioned this phrase, which I thought was so powerful, which is the generativity of suffering. And, and I also think that's a very feminine thing too, that I want to talk to you about, you know, as opposed to the binary of good and evil and happy and sad, like the feminine sort of whole. But yeah, but I would love to hear you speak to that and what that's been like for you.

Yeah. So well, okay. So another thing that happened around age 21, that was just a really potent time. I discovered hypnotherapy as a healing art. And that was really the first, before that, I just thought there was talk therapy and or 12 step groups. I didn't have, I wasn't exposed to any kind of alternative therapy and so I tried this particular method that was so beautiful and, and that really is when my healing journey began. And I was, what happens in hypnotherapy is you're, you enter a, it's a totally naturally occurring state but it's, it's one in which the fight flight mechanism isn't really activated, and so you can really sink into really understanding what's going on at the deeper root of our patterns that are limiting us without flinching, without this fear response to seeing that and in that. That's kind of all it takes to really profoundly heal and unlock old patterns is going to the root of them, witnessing and presence and love. So anyway, so I had this profound hypnotherapy experience where I. Connected with this part of me that was has always been healthy and happy and whole and inherently worthy of love and acceptance and I like, and it was an experience of that, you know, it wasn't a concept of that. And so anyway, after that, that That it just empowered me to it gave me the tools to just want in a really intense way, really full on way my life path has become just this dedicated journey to, you know, resolving any obstacles that I find between me and that place. And so that involves connecting with a tremendous amount of suffering. There's just a shit ton of buildup from human history right now. A shit ton of like, of the agony of separation and in all of its various forms that we've played out for millennia, and such intense wounding and which is just Ways where we've been disconnected from and played out distortions of our nature, which is to be in authentic loving connection. And so, yeah, so, my journey has really just been to meet that suffering as, as it, in a really full on way and then And then since 2020, that's when just my whole life kind of cracked open and my marriage started to deteriorate and my marriage of 10 years and the husband or the father of my kids and and that's just been huge. It's really been that my marriage breaking down has been like the kingpin for me into the deepest transformational journey of my life. And it's just really accelerated this process. I think of. This levels of suffering, which is just it's potential really, our suffering is, it's energy that hasn't been brought back into the fold of love. And it's and so it's just, yeah, I've been a really accelerated process of meeting a whole lot more of my potential, we'll say through this security of my husband not being there anymore and not being able to lean on that. And in that, absolutely in parallel, my creative flow has become just torrential. Yeah, yeah.

You're reminding me of a moment that I had last fall just in a place that I was at with just an immense amount of pain. And I have a screened in porch that I like to sleep on. Especially when things are, I don't know, there's just something that's very soothing to me about waking up in the middle of the night and hearing the, you know, the sound of the crickets or whatever, well, eventually they go quiet, but you know, just the frame of the trees around me. And, but I remember waking up on the porch as I'd slept out there and just feeling so heartbroken, broken, and also knowing that God was very, very, very close. So close in that moment and like there's something so profoundly beautiful about that to me, like even in the, like the pain that there's this, this opening to a closeness to the divine that I don't think that we always feel when things are going perfectly well.

Yes, I think that's true. And yeah, if we think of the heart as kind of the portal, like our willingness to open and I think are the open heart kind of opens our whole being.

Yeah.

And and open it for a reason, you know, we don't open it because it fucking hurts when we do, cause there's pain. There's just, we have there that's why, cause we are, you know, yeah, culturally just, we haven't learned how to hold and deal with pain for the most part. And so when circumstances show that to us. when we can't avoid it anymore. There's so much grace too that begins to come through.

Yeah. I love that word grace. Yeah.

Yeah, I do too. And I think about the metaphor of the seed a lot and just how it just has to crack open. I mean, germination is no joke. Like its whole form has to completely deconstruct, like all the way through that's nice, comfortable seed pod that's so safe. And But not yet, you know, giving its thing, doing its thing has to completely crack open all the way to the freaking core and deconstruct entirely before more can come from it. And I, I see that process as the generativity of suffering is that it cracks open these forms that have contained us. And and that's when more can come through, which is what we most yearn for anyway. What comes forth from us are our own all we might be that's that's what we most yearned for and then of course are trained to seek things from the outside world and that will never fully satisfy us. So the yeah the blessing of circumstances bringing us into our suffering is that that that can just. Yeah, that's how, that's how we, we become, I

was thinking of the seed too. And it's all happening in the dark, you know,

yes,

you know, and that we can think of, and I'm, this is a little present for me cause I'm participating in an underworld journey right now. That's another podcast guest Damascena Tanis, who is an astrologer and works with the Venus cycle. And so you go listen to that podcast people, if you haven't listened to it, it's really good. We went kind of deep on that one. And But this underworld journey is part of it is recognizing that the darkness is another thing that we have labeled as bad, right? Like, it's the underworld or it's bad, like down there. It's like the dark is bad. And in reality, that is a huge part of the feminine to me. And so that being the wraparound in the container to hold the seed, it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. It still hurts, but that, that darkness is, is her and we're, we're still being held in it. I mean, if you think about birth, like if you're a mother and you've like brought a child into the world, one can only imagine what's happening for that baby. Like it's held in the earth, you know, and then to become, I mean, it's held in your womb, which is like the darkness. And then to become this thing that it wants to become, it, it's painful. It has to, It's got to hurt. It hurts the mother. It's got to hurt the child. It's at the very least, it's traumatic, I would imagine. Right. But it's all part of the process and that, that holding in the dark is, was where the, the mother feminine energy to me is too.

Yes. So, so true. And just like you said, reframing that it's not, it hurts and it can hurt like hell. It can be excruciating, but that it's not bad. And that when we don't, when we receive it rather than resist it. Like, as we're so trained to do, to resist, then such beauty comes with it. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure.

Mm hmm.

So much so. Yeah. Do you consider your words prayers? Like, what is prayer to you? And how do you Yeah. What does that mean to you?

What does prayer mean to me? I think we're praying, I think we're praying all the time. And and there are desires in us for security or for acquisition. And those aren't our true prayers. Our true prayers are beneath that. And there are prayers that life, life herself has placed within us to blossom. And that's one of the most profound concepts that I've been playing with in the last few years is that the desires of the, the, the the. What I call in one poem, the great wild beloved, and what's most beautiful and joyful and opening and life giving to us might just be one. And so, you know, an old model of prayer is like, oh, I have to do what God wants, but it's not what I want, and God's boring, but I have to submit to what's boring and, you know, and like that. And what I should do, what's moral and right. And, but and kind of morally, yeah. Anyway, so but that life force knows exactly, you know, what. And that there's feedback of our own satisfaction and joy when we bring these things forth and that life wants to support that has been a really amazing journey for me. So I do feel like my prayer, I don't know, I, yeah, my, my, my poems feel like a deep celebration of, of, of connection and reunion. But my journey with prayer has been a huge piece of this publishing journey. And at the end of 2020 I just, I decided to do an experiment of praying to my favorite dead poets for like, specifically for marketing support because this book, Susceptible to Light, I just self published it and didn't have any contacts in the publishing world, but just more than anything wanted to To be able to just basically to do this full time and for it to have impact on, on people and have a wide reach. And, that, that prayer experiment worked out in, in, in ways that are just beyond belief.

Wow. Who are you praying to? Who are you, who are your dead poets? At least one or two. Yeah. I want to know.

Good question. Okay, so Hafez, a mystical poet from the, I think, 1700s, I should know this, but my primary poetic inspiration, Hafez, and then Khalil

Gibran,

Yeah, and and those were the, those were the two, those were the chairmen of the A team, I called them, and I asked them to just go tap everyone and anywhere who could help me with this. And then, yeah, so those were my two main ones. And then two weeks into this prayer experiment, Daniel Ladinsky, who's the man who has done all the, really all the renderings of Hafez poetry that have made him a superstar to the Western world. Sent me an email out of the blue. It was like, Hey, Chelan, I saw your book. I don't reach out to anyone. I'm an extremely reclusive poet in Taos, New Mexico, but weirdly, I had this irresistible, irresistible nudge to reach out to you. Congratulations. I was like, that was when the, like, I described it as the cork came out of my existence. Like it, that moment changed everything forevermore. And then I wrote back, like, with all sorts of, holy expletives, like. What the, you know, bleep, bleep, bleep, like, and I told him this whole story and shared a poem with him because I'd been in this communion with Hafez, this experimental prayer communion, and sent him a poem that felt very extra inspired by that source, and his email back to me was like, Well, there you go. And I've been looking for a poet to co author a book with. You're the one. Let's do this. So then my favorite living poet and I started co authoring a book. And he's endorsed me to the major publishing houses of the world. He had written the foreword to the extended edition of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. And now I'm publishing The Prophetess, The Return of the Prophet, from The Voice of the Divine Feminine, with Penguin Random House, because of this connection, and he's written the foreword to that, to my book as well, so it's just been a, and that book, by the way, you all, is available for pre order, and it would be so wonderful if you, if you feel drawn to, to get it

Oh my goddess, that is such a

story. Wow. Isn't that a story? I mean, it's, it's good. I just need to talk about it because it's been so much to integrate. It's been so, yeah.

It's so beautiful. Oh, wow. Thank you, Liz. It's wild. And just such a testament to like, You like opening that channel and saying yes, and, and, and like, you're, you're not alone, you know, and like the beautiful like co creative energy. It's just so mystical and magical and wonderful. And also incredibly powerful. In a way, I think if we know how to do this, like, right. And you, and you, the devotion, I don't know if you use that word, but the devotion that you've given to yourself into that creative process. Yes. Seeing the output feels like, well, yeah, of course, but still it's freaking amazing.

It's amazing. You S I think you said, yeah, it's like, it's freaking amazing. And it's like, it wants to feel, it does feel like the most natural, but in a, You In a wild way thing ever and it's the most easeful to this whole creative journey. It's been like, I don't know. It's it's been Excruciatingly painful in that I'm burning through so much but there hasn't been any push with it. I'm not forcing it at all To move along. I'm not being strategic about my you know, I'm not like it's just completely conducted by this Wild wild grace is all I can say and it's been up beyond beyond belief and I'm still like in kind of like I shock maybe it's the word about how this is all played out

Amazing Wow. Well, and I you know, we're almost out of time, but I want to ask you just cuz I'm so in love with the title of your latest book like the The, The Prophetess. Like did, can you say a little bit about the inspiration of that and then I'm gonna put you on the spot. We didn't talk about this, so if it's a No, it's okay. Yes. But I would love if you would read and it your choice, like any poem that's like, Ooh, this feels like based on this conversation that I wanna bring forward. I would be so honored if you would wanna do that. So

thank you. Always, always. Yeah. Thank you so much. So the Prophetess, the Return of the Prophet from the Voice of the Divine Feminine it feels. It feels directly inspired by Khalil Gibran, actually, who I was in just close communion with for these years, and yeah, I was putting my kids to bed one night or they were asleep, and I was just doing something very ordinary, like drawing a bath, and was sort of just lightning bolted by this this knowing if I were to translate it, it would have said it's time to write the prophetess and you're the one to do it. And then it just started pouring. And that night alone, I had a few, like the main part of a few chapters already written and wrote the whole book in about two months. It was just so, it just poured. And and it's a, it's so it's, it's, if you're familiar with the book, The Prophet, just this beloved classic, it's. It's one of a, well, yeah, it's, it's, it's an amazing book about the human condition and just goes into all kinds of life's most meaningful subjects with poetic redefinition and adding of depth to it so that we can relate to ourselves in our lives from a deeper place of understanding and of consideration and of openness. And so the prophetess does that too. It's, it's paralleled in structure. It has 28 chapters just like the prophet does, and it's in the style, written in the style of poetic prose. And interestingly, The last chapter of the prophet, it's all, it's this prophecy about his return one day. And The Prophetess, I got the contract 100 years, the 100th year anniversary of the publishing of the prophet, which is just wild. And it turns out Khalil Gibran was deeply inspired by the Baha'i writings

and,

Which is nuts. And anyway, there's been all kinds of winks from God, I guess, but the last line of his book says a little while, a moment upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me. Yeah, it's just wild. And so this book is it, it's about it's a, it's about the, the entrance, it's really an introduction into the feminine, it's, it's about a passage to the new paradigm, which is embodied, which, so there, the chat, some of the chapters are sensitivity, vulnerability. And then there's a lot of redefinition work. Sin is a chapter but from a whole new kind of angle, religion, God, prayer, marriage, relationship, love, for forgiveness, anger, creative expression, transformation death, suffering shadows, joy love, intimacy. So it's just attempting to offer an inspired bridge into a new way of relating to all things.

Wow. It sounds incredible. And when, when is it? What's your release date?

Release date is September 24th. What I've learned is like pre orders are super important to get it, position it for a good launch and all of that. So it is available. You can buy it on Amazon. Right now you can pre order it or from, I think you pre order it probably from any. Yeah. Anyplace where you buy books, but yeah, it's so exciting. It feels like a culmination of this journey that began at age 21. And it's the end of a whole lot of chapters in the opening of a, of a big, big new one. So,

oh, wow. Well, yes. And so exciting to see where this is going to take you and what's going to come next. And I'm already like, you need to come back and tell us whenever that unfolds for you, come back and do it again. Like, let's talk more of it. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that's calling to you that you'd like to share with us? Yes. Well, should I end with a poem? Yes, absolutely. That's what I meant. Yes. Any poem in particular. Is that

so good? Yes. Well, what do you think, Liz? Should I say the poem, the first one that came through, or kind of the one that busted open my, like, there was one poem that I shared that just went viral that is kind of why this whole publishing journey has been, you know, why it's had such a wide reach. Which one feels best to you, do you think?

I'm really like, I feel like you're such a channel. I'm like, you, you, you choose, like you're the, you're the portal.

Well, I'll read the first one that busted through at age 21. All right. This is like my first love. Like, this poem, it feels like my poem that's my first love. It's called Say Wow. Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity, and the shapes of our lives click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes. Before hunger knocks from our bellies like a cantankerous old man and the duties of the day stack up like dishes and the architecture of our basic needs commissions all thought to construct the four door sedan of safety. Before gravity clings to our skin like a cumbersome parasite. And the colored dust of dreams sweeps itself obscure in the vacuum of reason. Each morning, before we wrestle the world in our heart into the shape of our brain, look around and say, wow, feed yourself fire, scoop up the day entire, like a planet sized bouquet of marvel sent by the universe directly into your arms. And say, wow, break yourself down into the basic components of primitive awe. And let the crescendo of each moment carbonate every capillary and say, wow. Yes. Before our poems become calloused with revision, let them shriek off the page of spontaneity. And before our metaphors get too regular, let the sun stay a conflagration of homing pigeons that fights through fire each day to find us. Wow. Thank you. Thanks so much,

Liz. That was the first word that came off, I'm like, yes, wow.

Cool. Well, I enjoyed this so much. It felt so good

talking

with you. Thank you. You

too. I feel like the time just flew by. I'm so grateful for your time and your energy and your gifts and your willingness to say yes and to share this with all of us. It's so Beautiful and powerful. So, so much gratitude to you.

Really great to know you, Liz. Thank you. Thanks to everyone who listens to this.

Yeah. And so if people want to find more and I'll put it in the show notes, but website or Facebook, how should they, how should they find you?

Yeah. So I would say connect with me on Facebook. I share, you know, usually daily. I'm pretty active on, on that space, in that space. So that's a good way to stay, to stay in touch. Yeah.

Awesome. And I'll make sure that's in the show notes. Yes. And thanks to all of you listeners as always. It's, it's It's a joy to be on this journey with you. I love knowing that you're out there and that you're listening and that your Heart is cracking open in similar ways. Is mine around this subject. It's it's beautiful to know that we're not alone and You know, if you like the show you can subscribe to it. You can leave it a favorable review. You can tell all your friends about it. You can do all those things if you feel so inclined And until next time take care Such good care of yourselves. Say, say wow. And yeah, we'll be with you again soon.

Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelly. You can visit me online at hometoher. com, where you can find show notes and other episodes. You can read articles about the Sacred Feminine, and you'll also find a link to join the Home to Her Facebook group for lots more discussion and exploration of Her. You can also follow me on Instagram, at home to her, to keep up to date with the latest episodes. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you back here soon.