00:00:08 Yusuf: Welcome to Healing Horizons, the space where we hold a room for growth, renewal, and courage to evolve. I'm your host, Yusuf, and today I'm joined by Sharon Andrews, ceremonial author and shamanic priestess who has spent over twenty five years building women through profound life transitions. Her work explores feminine spirituality, archetypal wisdom, and what she calls soul fertility, the deep process of birthing a new self and the one that is old begins to fall away. Today we are talking about facing spiritual and identity crisis not as a failure, but as threshold. And what you'll gain from this conversation is clarity on how to move through that unraveling with grounding, dignity, and deeper self-trust. With that, I welcome my guest, Sharon, to the show.

00:01:19 Sharon Ann Rose: Thank you so much, Yousef. It is a joy to be here with you.

00:01:26 Yusuf: Sharon. when someone comes to you in what they call a spiritual or identity crisis. What does that moment usually feel like for them?

00:01:39 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah, you know, for them, because I've also been in it to myself. It really is a profound feeling of the ground often falling away and a sense both in the body but also in the mind, where things are just so discombobulated and really spinning out. And there's that feeling inside of you that you're wanting so much to just have something get still and not be, um, you know, cycling, twirling, spinning. Because it can also actually have physical ramifications where you literally will feel dizzy and off balance and off center, and all kinds of emotions and feelings go with that?

00:02:32 Yusuf: Yeah. One thing I notice is that many people interpret spiritual crisis as something going wrong, like they have lost faith, lost direction, or even failed somehow. I'm curious, what do you think we misunderstand most about these crises?

00:02:55 Sharon Ann Rose: I think it's really important to come into it very self, compassionately and gently, because these spiritual crises, which often are about our identity, are meant to shake us up. They're meant to feel like this earthquake, the personal earthquake awakening through our system. And they're also meant to be a reckoning. You know, I know deep in the, the soul of of humanity, No matter what we present as that soul hungers to continue to keep evolving and becoming a more refined, better. You know, when I say better, I don't mean that on a a ladder of perfection. I mean to ourselves, like to those commitments we made and we're making as a soul, as a as a person who wants to be, you know, more evolved in life with their fellow humans on this planet. And so it's a personal reckoning. And so it can feel really jagged, depending on how you've been living your life and depending on how you've seen yourself. And it's really beautiful time to just soften and come back into, you know, those qualities of compassion and self-forgiveness and realizing it's a time to level up to, um, become the person you really know you can be and to clean up, you know, really clean up whatever might be going on in your life that's holding you back, holding you down, shackling you to the past, um, so that you can, you know, move much more freely and naturally as who you are and who you were designed to be by your by creation.

00:04:51 Yusuf: Yeah. So instead of breaking something, it is more like something emerging. But but when everything feels unstable, relationship, beliefs, rules. How do we differentiate between genuine awakening and simply feeling lost?

00:05:10 Speaker 4: Mhm mhm.

00:05:13 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah that's a great question. And the the honest answer is it's very personal. I wish I could say okay this is, this is how you're going to know. But if I were to do that, that actually strips you of what the purpose of this crisis is. And that crisis is to understand your own inner compass, your own inner guidance, your own soul's awakening. And like you said, breaking through, emerging. Not a break down, not a like literal, um, cracking. Although it is a cracking open so that that can come through. And so it's really important that you take time and receive support to keep reflecting back to you who you actually are so that you can come to terms with, oh, this is me just feeling lost because it isn't going to be the first time. You know, in our lifetimes we have so many identity crisis. It's, you know, we can't even we lose count at some point. And so it's so important for you to have that inner sense and, and know the inner landscape and the texture of what your, you know, awakening your breakthrough, your emergence feels like. Or when it's just the old shackles, the old ideas coming up and kind of niggling at you and trying to pull at your your coattails, so to speak.

00:06:44 Yusuf: Um, that is very powerful because that what feels like collapse might actually be initiation. And perhaps the discomfort is not proof that we are lost, but proof we are being asked to grow beyond an old container.

00:07:05 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in these times, you know, we can't just keep following what others say. It's it's important to receive guidance, especially from those who are mature and wise and have lived well and have been absolutely humbled by life. It's really important to to receive the elder wisdom. However, it is so important that in these times we really come into our own because every one of us is needed now. And in my family, I have a family of five. I have three boys and when they were younger I would always say, okay guys, all hearts on deck. You know, there was a saying it was all hands on deck, and I think it came from like sailors or something. But I would say, no, we need all hearts on deck. And I and I really mean that. Like, now is that time where each of us must understand that inner guidance and prompt and intuition and our own, you know, very personal conversation that's always going on with creation. So we can really say, how can we make a difference? How can we improve? Not from, again, trying to fix things, but make humanity and the entire earth and beyond. Um, conditions more sustainable, more livable and and more pleasant in caring for all of us.

00:08:40 Yusuf: Yeah. Caring. Many women you work with are in midlife. Navigating emptiness, shifting marriages or changing bodies. I want to know what deeper patterns do you see underneath these spiritual crisis? Is it cultural conditioning, suppressed identity or something else?

00:09:08 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that into the conversation. So for midlife women, you know, in across most cultures, I'm not going to presume I know every culture, but in my own research and working with women, most cultures, both because of the way a woman's brain is hard wired, but also then socially and culturally, the way she's programmed to actually care about others first. And that's not I'm not saying that with judgment, because it actually has a real instinctual and necessary role to play that is so vital in the well-being of our consciousness and our collective and our global, you know, global family and what we see happening right now in the world, especially in the United States. We're seeing why women were hard wired that way. And so when they come into midlife, that hardwiring due to hormones, but also just due to what we're talking about, this like identity transformation, it's an identity death and a rebirth and reemergence. They're no longer held or bound to those agreements anymore, and things literally, neurologically and chemically change. And so suddenly they feel a deeper awakening of, oh, I'm not just here for the collective, I'm also here for me as an individual. And it's actually quite different than the brain of a male, which when they do say I'm here for me, it is literally because they needed to go out and like hunt and survive, like they needed to survive for themselves. Women, when they turn towards that in midlife, they're actually saying, now I need to thrive and survive for the whole, for the collective, for my family, for my community and for the future. So it's a really different, um, foundation where we're coming from. Again, no judgment. They both have a lot of reason and purpose. And so that's what's happening in midlife. A woman is like awakening to her, her collective call. And it's quite profound because then she also shows up really differently for herself.

00:11:31 Yusuf: When a woman realizes she has been living from roles rather than essence, that can be very destabilizing. And what tends to happen internally at that realization point?

00:11:47 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah. What I see, unfortunately, is that women really take it personally as if they did something wrong. How how could they fall into the trap of playing those roles when actually we're all doing it? You know, and it's it's not a moment of self failure or self-criticism. It is a moment to grieve and to realize we are all we have been under this immense, all of us men, women, binary, non-binary, etc. humans. We've all been under that pressure cooker of, you know, ideologies, cultural, social and various forms of upbringing, religious, faith based, etc.. And so it's so important just to get honest, that yes, we must take responsibility for the ways we said yes, but we don't have to personalize it as a failure. We can then use that to make different choices and also to honor with everything we have, the roles that we have played and respect them. Don't then now, you know, diminish them and discredit them because the roles we've played are incredibly important. They, even if we didn't like them or were suddenly hitting a moment where we're like, I cannot be that person anymore. It's not going to work to like, throw that out or to try to kill it and dismantle it. In that way, what works is turning towards it and saying, thank you, thank you. I'm so grateful I played this role for the amount of time I did, and now I'm going to slowly and gently, sometimes really quickly and purposefully move into a different role. It's just time and we can just acknowledge that and not hate it, not hate who we were. We can just really take it with us with a lot more grace and respect. Mhm.

00:13:47 Yusuf: So this grief for what was lived unconsciously and also remembering of something ancient within it, it sounds like creating something new and more like it sounds less like creating something new and more like reclaiming what was always there.

00:14:08 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah, yeah. You know, the the symbology is used a lot. Um, but it's an important one. It's so significant. And I turn to nature for all my teachings. You know, I always go to nature and say, please show me the way. And inside of the acorn is the tree inside of the. The flower bulb is the plant that's going to become. We're inside of the mother's womb. Whether we're talking about a, a mammal, a whale, a fish, you know, like all these different things. Inside of that birthing body is the blueprint for what the future is going to be. And so as you're saying, yes, it's like a reclaiming of an understanding that we are going to change, grow and mature over time. We're going to look different. Our roles and identities will be different, but they're not us going out and having to create something new. They're us, like you said, turning towards that deep, deep internal seed or as you spoke about it, essence. And that essence carries the wisdom for our entire life cycle and also the collective life cycle. So the more that we turn and tune into that, like plants do, they, they tune into their roots to receive what the next steps are for their growth. That's what we can do and are doing. And that that makes it a lot more, um, less jagged and, and disruptive because we understand it was within us all along.

00:15:51 Speaker 4: Um.

00:15:52 Yusuf: Yeah. When identity begins to unravel, the instinct is to fix it very quickly. Take a course, change careers, move cities, etc., etc.. From your experience, what is the grounded first step someone can take when they are in this? In between space?

00:16:19 Speaker 1: Beautiful.

00:16:20 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah. The the steps I always start with is just to deeply acknowledge that it's likely going to be uncomfortable. And it's that discomfort in our our unwillingness. And I don't mean that that again, personally, I mean that collectively, none of us have been taught to really be with discomfort until we start being with discomfort. And so that first step is just saying, okay, this is going to be uncomfortable for me. And I can either choose, uh, a reaction or I can take a moment and I can acknowledge I'm uncomfortable and nothing, literally nothing outside of me, whether that food, the sugar, the video game, the, the sex, the, you know, alcohol, all the things we turn to, none of them. And, you know, the next fulfilling career moment or, you know, ladder on our on our climb of success. None of that is actually what that discomfort is inviting us into. It's just inviting us to, to really honor how we feel. And so these are more human practices, I think, than spiritual practices, because often spirituality has asked us and guided us to step out of the body. But this is really like to show up and go back to what you said in a grounded way. We have to turn towards the body and acknowledge and honor what it's feeling, how it's feeling, and how are we going to be able to just sit with that and get really honest about it instead of, like you said, do the quick fixes, which are fine. They all have their time and place, and sometimes we're guided to the next course, which is the next right thing. And ultimately, in the end, we're still going to have to learn this, so we might as well learn it. Now, you know, how do we be with ourselves so that we can actually have the skills, grounding and resources to be with the world as it is.

00:18:32 Yusuf: Karen, if listeners want to explore your work, your book, or just connect with you, where can they find you?

00:18:40 Sharon Ann Rose: Yeah. Thank you Yusef. They can find me. My, um. My book, faces of the mother, is a archetypal journey through the faces of the sacred feminine feminine face of the divine. They can find that on Amazon, places like Barnes and Noble in other countries. You can find it in your own region online. Um, also on my website, uh, Sharon and Rose. Com and on social media, also under Sharon and Rose.

00:19:14 Yusuf: Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes. So just go and check those out. Sharon, is there any last message that you want to leave us with?

00:19:27 Sharon Ann Rose: Well, I just want to thank you for your very thoughtful and grounded and very caring style that you have of holding this conversation. I'm very, very grateful. And and I would just encourage your listeners, one, to reach out and connect with me. I love to connect and to, uh, to really trust that you are here for a very important reason. And it's significant. And that is found through showing up, you know, in the world with each other and offering what's in your heart to do so. So I'm so grateful to all of your listeners and grateful for the world we're building together.

00:20:18 Yusuf: To everyone listening, if you are in a season of unraveling, may you remember that thresholds are holy spaces. You don't have to rush clarity. You don't have to have all the answers. Stay with the questions. Stay with yourself. Thank you all for listening. And I thank my guests, Sharon, for spending this time and the knowledge with us. This has been healing horizons. I am Yusuf. Until next time, may your healing expand your horizon.