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. Welcome Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hey everybody and welcome to the show. This is Liz joining you as usual from central Virginia and the unseated lands of the Monica nation. And I am so glad that you are here with me today. And as always, if you would like to find out whose native lands you're living on, you can go to native land. ca. There's a map of the entire world. And I will put that in the show notes as I always do. And if you want to learn about the sacred feminine, there's Lots of ways that you can do that. And lots of teachers many of whom have been on this show over the last five years. But if you want to learn from me, go over and check out home to her. com. I have lots of articles there, resources for you. You can access all the past podcast episodes. You can check out my book, Home to Her, Walking the Transformative Path of the Sacred Feminine, which was published by WomanCraft Publishing. And, which also a fabulous resource for sacred feminine books, and it's also on Audible. And if you have feedback, suggestions, questions, feel free to get in touch with me. I love that. Social is a really good way to do that. You can find me at home to her on Facebook and on Instagram. And yeah, I love to hear from you. I love to know that you're listening and I love to know what you think. And if you can't remember any of that, don't worry. I will put all of that in the show note. Okay. And on with our show. So I found out about my current guest. It took me about four years to do this, which is a little embarrassing, but asking my podcast guests to recommend other amazing individuals that would be good guests for this show. And so if you heard the episode with the wonderful poet Shallan Harkin, she recommended my guest to me today. And I'm so excited to talk to her. I feel like we were already just launching into it before we started recording. So I think this is going to be beautiful. Her words have such magic and divinity in them. And I think she's got just a really beautiful story to share too. So I'm, I'm excited to introduce her to you. So let me go ahead and do that for you. Lucy grace is a mystic spiritual guide, embodied therapist and poet based in New Zealand. She mentors people in soul initiation and awakening, and is devoted to helping as many hearts as possible. Remember the truth of themselves and connect to the ever present great heart at the center of all. She has lived many lives, including as a television journalist for One News, New Zealand's largest national television news channel, and a humanitarian aid worker based in Europe for 15 years, working for the UN, Save the Children, Fairtrade, and Oxfam. She worked in orphanages and disaster zones around the world, working to bring relief to people's suffering and in leadership to change the laws, policies, and practices that keep people locked in suffering, inequality, and injustice. Lucy now focuses on her work as a soul initiation, awakening guide and mentor, holistic therapist and poet. And she's known for honoring the sacred process and the sacred mess of our humanity, while also supporting people to remember who they are outside of all roles, archetypes, identities, concepts, and teachings. She sees life as an ongoing journey to embody the highest truth we can. We can only give what we embody. She's also the author of This Untameable Light, which was released in November 2023 to critical acclaim from some of the world's most loved spiritual teachers. And she lives in nature with her daughter Rose on Waiheke Island in New Zealand, which is where she is joining us from today. It's my evening and her morning and Lucy, I'm so glad that you are here. Thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy to be with you.

Yes, I'm just basking in your energy already. And I always, I usually start my podcast with asking people to tell me about their spiritual backgrounds and what that was like as a child. And I, I always find it interesting to see like, what was, what was. You know, what was pulled through and is useful for you now, maybe what you didn't get that you had to discard. But I also know in reading about you and some of your story that you had a little bit of a different upbringing. And so I'm kind of wanting to widen the lens of that question and just have you talk to me a little bit about this journey through your childhood and how, how it's kind of informed where you are today, if you're comfortable with that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I did have a bit of a different childhood and it's been funny living in this skin suit because it's not always obvious to the naked eye. I look like someone who had truss buns and ponies and, and actually, yeah, I grew up with a single mom who had me when she was 20 and the man that was my father, he left her when I was a fetus. And so we were on our own and I actually started life in a woman's refuge home. And then we couch surfed and went between different homes and places as much as we could until I was five. And we managed to find our own place in a really rough neighborhood called Fairfield in New Zealand. And I dunno, some people might have seen once were warriors. It's a, it's a film, a lot of Americans have seen it and it portrays kind of gang life and. The kind of ghetto, the hood life of New Zealand really beautifully and that's really where I grew up. I was the only white girl in my street. We often went without food for at least a few days. We, Had to sell the furniture sometimes when things got really tough, we'd get the old couch down at the pawn shop and we'd be sitting on the ground for a while. Often were cold without heating and yeah, it was just mum and I and we lived in a really, really rough neighbourhood, right, with gangs. There was a time where the postman couldn't go down our street for two years because he was getting shot at. And just to put that in context, we don't have many guns in New Zealand. People, like, householders don't own guns. We're not allowed to, you know, unless you're kind of a hunter or there has to be specific reason and you get a license. So it's, there isn't gang culture. There is, sorry, there isn't gun culture like there is in America in the same way. So that was pretty amazing that a postman couldn't go down a street because he was getting shot at. And, and yeah, there was a lot in that. A lot of drugs in my neighborhood, a lot of burglaries. We had bars on all our windows. We had locks on the inside of doors so that when somebody broke into the kitchen, if Mom and I were in the bedroom, we could lock ourselves into the bedroom to stay safe. We would hear the ransacking, the house, but we were there in the room. Yeah, there's so much I could tell about that we probably got broken into once every few weeks, at least once a month, many different iterations of that, you know, whether it was breaking in and stealing what few Christmas presents were under our tree, leaving all the torn open paper as a little girl that broke open my little girl heart, you know, or it's funny, we had really violent, episodes. There was a, it was a time where to get into a gang, a gang member had to, they had these tasks that they had to do, and they would set the tasks. If you want to be in our gang, you have to do this thing. And we were kind of sitting ducks, mom and I, because we were alone and there was no man in our house and everyone knew it. And somebody had been tasked with raping a woman in front of her child. And that was what he would have to do to get into the gang. And so. They chose us and, and yeah, so one night they broke in and, and I hadn't been able to sleep. I was eight years old. I remember being in my bedroom and just tossing and turning and, and really feeling the sense of, it was might sound funny to some and just normal to others, but this being, this being of life with me and just, I felt kind of wrestled awake every time I started dropping down, I'd wake up and I just didn't know why. And eventually I heard my mom crying. I heard something in the hallway. I walked out into the hallway and I saw him there with her. He had a big stick and he was holding her in front of him and pushing her. He had her handbag already. He was pushing her violently into the bedroom and he pushed her in and I followed. Thanks. And I quickly hid under the ironing board with the telephone, and he was beating mum up on the bed, and his back was toward me, but she could see me. And she started screaming, please don't hurt my baby, please don't hurt my baby. And I was on the phone to the police, I started ringing 111. We had these 1980s, you know, wall phones, that was kind of, and I'd always, mum had always said, if anything happens you need to dial 111, and I'd done it many times. So he started ripping off her clothes and then he heard my voice. There's a man in our house, please help us. And I told the address. He then turned to me, of course, and he grabbed the phone out of my hands and then eventually started talking and realized it was the police and he ran away. And the place came and so we had many intensely violent episodes, but there were also simple things as a child for me, like I didn't have many toys, but I had a tiny little stereo radio that I loved. And, and one time mom and I were out and. People broken and they just bashed it with a bat. They just broke it to pieces that for some reason, that's the more traumatic memory in my mind. And they, they took a poo on my bed. They did a poo on my bed. And so coming home to those kind of things, the sense of smallness, you know, the sense of. Discussed the sense of why do I live here? Why do I belong here? And so I always had the sense that the child of just not belonging where I was. You know, of looking around and not finding my people, not, not understanding why I'd been dropped off in this place where I just did not belong. And what I would do in that space is I would reach to what I thought of as in a sweet kind of childhood innocence. Is. As God, I would think of it as God, you know, as this Abrahamic God, this kind of man in the sky, this light inside me that I could feel. My mom used to call me a Buddha baby. She would say, like, you would just sit, you wouldn't even cry when you woke up, you would just sit there and just be looking happily. And I've always had that deep sense of contentment. And that way I've had many shadow journeys, many rides, many deepenings. It's not that, but I've always had. That piece in my heart and so I would turn inward everything on the outside of me as a child until I was 18. I was there until I was 18 was chaos and outside of the house was the violence and the gang culture inside of the house. My mom had bipolar. So she was very up and down. She'd had a tumultuous past. Amazing woman that's incredibly loving, but a, a really. a big wrestle and a big dance with her own pain. And, and so for me, the only place to go was inside me. So I would sit, I would feel this energy. I would connect with this ground of being a sense of peace and I would rest there. I would rest there. I was also really fortunate that I heard from a young age. It's almost like everything was so hard on the outside, I had no choice but to develop these, these, this intuitive sense. I had to reach for God. I had to reach for light because there wasn't any. And in that way, it was the greatest gift, that poverty, that pain. It was almost like, I've often referred to it as a welfare child ashram. You know, I had no concept of spirituality or I didn't think of it in those terms, but The experience was rich for me. I would sit quietly for hours. I would reach for God. I would bathe in that light. I would fill myself and view myself from the inside because I needed it to fortify me for the madness on the outside. And I had the hearing, which I only recognized later as, as clear audience, but I would receive guidance. I would receive words of comfort. You know, I, I have little journal entries from back then that said, I was hungry today, but God came, you know, and spoke to me. Things like this. I was very alone, there were no other siblings in the house. It wasn't safe, always, in my neighborhood, so I stayed in the house a lot. I had friends at school, but I was taken to a fancy school on the other side of town before zoning. I couldn't find myself there. I had, I was always popular. I had a lot of friends, but there was this deep part of me that I had in a way that I didn't feel I could connect to people with. So there was a deep aloneness and a deep part of me that was just mine. And that, that was spirit for me. That was spirituality for me. And later, as I left and went to university and did my thing, I had some pretty big shifts in consciousness and big awakenings through the years. That deeply changed me, but I, you know, one at 21 when the kind of personal self fell away and started seeing spirits for a long time and I wanted to turn that off, I didn't like that. But I had no concept, I had read no books, I had no teachers, I didn't live in communities or near communities that talked about enlightenment or concepts like that, I don't buy into those even now. But it was really this organic impulse in me. That danced me, that burnt me into being through life as par, through life as par.

Wow. So much there. Did you feel like, I mean, it's just so beautiful to hear you talk about this. And I, I, I did not grow up in any close to circumstances as you, but I did grow up without much resources at all. With a single mom too and a father who had declared bankruptcy. And so we had, you know, we lost kind of house and cars and all the things. And and like you, I think I eventually saw that as a great gift. I've always been able to flex up and down in terms of material comforts and things I haven't needed them much. And sometimes I'm uncomfortable if I have too many of them. Like it's just, it's just too much, you know, I'm, I'm better without it. But what I'm curious for you is if it. If it took, you know, if there was a process for you of being able to see the gifts, like, did you recognize it at the time or was it, you know, later when you were like, oh, wow, what an incredible gift. That's very challenging.

Childhood. What a beautiful question. Thank you. I think you see that because you lived it. So you see that clearly. It was a process. It was both. And, you know, it was at the time I could see gifts, I could see gifts. I was always very free. And that wasn't just because the lack of material resource, it was also because the beauty of my mother, my mother left school at 15, you know, she, she didn't, I didn't have any conditioning in that world around. You need to be a doctor, a lawyer in order to be loved, you know, not just from my mother's value set, which was always who you are, is your beauty, who you are, is what matters, not what you do. She always said. Do what makes you alive, do what makes you happy. That was the message I got consistently. So there's a freedom in that space. But also because there was no conditioning for me from society much, because often we didn't own a TV, a radio, you know, sometimes, but not for long. Before it went to the porn shop and I was second hand black and white TV. There weren't billboards, I didn't have access to books, to, to magazines, things like that. I had some books from the op shop, the secondhand shop, but I didn't have the conditioning that comes around many, many things in culture that are really toxic. We can say women's bodies, you know, I've always been comfortable with, with shape. I have little pieces around it, but on the whole, much more comfortable than many of The woman I know or work with and, and I've always been comfortable around my power. You know, that seemed to be something that was ingrained and obviously we go on journeys to deepen. It's not that I had it and it was done. I think we're always deepening, but there were, there were certain facets of growing up that way, stripped bare of, of life's and culture's conditioning because I was kind of sheltered. Poverty has a way of shrinking your world, relative poverty. It's not the same as what I witnessed. You know, and, and a third world countries, but it has a way of shrinking your world. And in that way, there was a freedom for me. And I think I embodied that at the time. And I felt that at the time I was often courageous. As a child and as a teenager and early twenties. With decisions, there was nothing to loop. Right. So when my friends were saying, I need to keep the comforts I'm used to. Right. And they often had a lot of fear around their careers or getting A's at uni or B's in a certain way. There was a deep freedom in me. I used to say, C's get degrees. I don't know how sensible that was, but I was very much alive in the world and weirdly out of university, even though I had my C's get degrees thing. I got, I got one of the best jobs, my peers, I went straight into television journalist role. When many were working in juice bars, and I don't say that in a self righteous way or a look at me way, but it was surprising. And I think that's because I was living from that pulse of aliveness and that flow of organicity and nature brings it in. So I recognized the gifts at the time. And then very much later when I looked at. The way I had been free to live my life courageously, to let go, as you said, flex up and down, not needing the things, but feeling what was true for me and how life wanted to be lived. I think the gift is often starting with nothing, right? We value everything like a beautiful meal. When I was 21, I couldn't buy it was like. Oh, my God. And there was so much gratitude, so much joy, because none of that was taken for granted. I, a life owes me nothing, came from nothing, it owes me nothing. So everything I get and am given, I'm so, you know, there is, at the risk of sounding cliched or trite, a deep gratitude for what we find. And those are the gifts that that life gave and many, many more. I actually think we're lucky, we're the lucky ones. The human gaze would see that as, oh, the poor cousin Lucy who lived in the rough neighborhood. I think spirit's gaze says, oh, you, you got that body and that life. You got that to burn into being and that suffering so early that you got to find the gifts and the gold and the medicine inside it and carry it throughout your life, right? And there's a looseness in the body. The lack of rigidity in the body when we let life move us because we're already being cracked up.

Yeah, that's so beautiful. So beautiful. And I am curious to, you mentioned, you know, the sense of God and the Abrahamic, the light of it, you were imagining him. And as you said, that I'm imagining him as like the father, God, like maybe the stern, but loving grandfather, that's going to call you up his lap. And and I wonder, You know, if and when, like how the sacred feminine goddess, you choose your language, whatever you're more comfortable with, how you became aware of her, that sense of her. Yeah.

Right. So that was much later. So as a child, I was missing a father, right? And so I looked to God for me, God. I think we reduce our gods, our goddesses, life, light, to what we are. We reduce it. So if we are afraid, we reduce it to a judgmental god, goddess, there to whip us into shape at the critical father. But if that isn't in our awareness of ourselves, it's something else. And for me, God was always deeply loving, deeply loving father that I could bring my cares to. Though in fact, I could never find myself in humans. Where I grew up for me, the only place I belonged or could find myself was in God, call it God awareness, Allah, Buddha, what Shiva, whatever you want to call it, ISIS, right? Whatever we want to call that for me, it's the light that lives inside all things. It has different expression, but it was much later. Again, I just want to emphasize that I never, I have still not done any. Formal training or courses or read books on the divine feminine, or for me, it's a, it's an experience. It's been experiential. So my languaging around it might be different. I'm not sure to others. I can only speak to it as it's visited me and, and moved my body and opened my body. But essentially, my life kind of carried on. I went, I did a university degree in journalism, became a journalist, quit that after two years, and, and went into aid work, and that was a place I could put my love, you know, 15 years in humanitarian aid. I, I needed a place to put my love. And, you know, the little girl in me had thrivers guilt, I think, you know, I went into journalism to save the world and I quickly realized it was about selling ads. And so I knew it wasn't for me. So I left and people thought I was mad. And, and then I went into aid and I knew that I had a vision of that in my, in my, when I was about 20, that that's what I would do. And at the time I'd say, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. I want to be a fancy journalist because the little girl and I'd never been fancy and she needed that. But eventually after two years, I quit. So then I had this big career in loving and I, again, no concept of spirituality, no concept of the divine feminine, nothing. I just loved. And as I put my love into the world, I think looking back, I didn't know this at the time. At the time I wanted to make things better. It was like, this cannot be the way we live. I've left all these people back in the hood. I won't leave them, you know, whatever humble gifts I might have, I want to give them back. And so I went and did this work for 15 years, many of it in offices too, like in leadership, leading big teams and marketing and PR teams to get the money to come in to support the project. So it wasn't all in the field. After 15 years of that, I had married, I'd had a baby, I'd come back to New Zealand and for me, the catalyst of I'd had this big awakening at 21. But the catalyst for the really complete rearranging the complete dissolving of the borders of my body, this place of, of just utter deconstruction that happened after my baby came. And so I went into, she was birthed, and I went into two and a half years of complete dark, complete and utter darkness. I was 35. I had, it was not my first rodeo. You've heard how I grew up. I had been exposed to horrific things during my time in aid work. The worst of humanity, the best of humanity, all of it. I was not a woman who was not used to looking with the Medusa eye into the dark. I was equipped. I had been ill. There was a period of illness for six years where I was bedridden for six months of it and had to learn to walk again. So I had been through some huge and deep initiations, but at thought I had touched the ground in the abyss of darkness until that, until Rose was born. And everyone said, you're going to be the most amazing. Look at you, you work in orphanages, you know, loving strangers, babies. I was not, it did not come naturally to me. I Went from being pretty optimistic most of my life, able to see the good, the bright, kind of alive, no matter what darkness I was peering into, no matter where I found myself, but when she came, all the light left. And it was the first time in my life I can honestly say I could not touch God. Even when I was ill and bedridden and my body wouldn't work, I could feel the light in me. I could still, I remember thinking, I can still feel some light and deep inside. Not so when Rose was born. I couldn't find light anywhere. I couldn't feel God. I couldn't hear God. All of the clear audience I'd always had guidance, which had been deep and rich. It had told me where to seek jobs in my life. I would say, where should I would say UNICEF. And it was very clear guidance, very practical. My whole life, I had many times of leaving my body and walking with guides and being told what was about to happen in my life. It was very on the ground guidance, and it all left. Right before Rose was born, before I was pregnant, it was the last time I was visited, and I was told, get ready, a little girl is coming. You have to prepare. And it was a very stern, formal telling. The energy of it was, this is gonna be a shit show. It was like that, you know? And I wasn't pregnant, and that person also said, You're about to go to London blah, blah, blah. And gave me some guidance for what I had to do as work in London. And I, I came out of there and I said, no, I'm not going to have a child when, you know, we're not trying for a baby and I'm not going to London. We just bought a house where we are broke. And I went into work a couple of days later and my boss said, we're sending you to Barcelona for a big meeting for aid work. Why don't you visit London and take a few weeks off? And I knew, Oh God, I must be pregnant. And I had a sense it's going to be hard. Break me open or something's gonna happen. So yeah, so I descended into two and a half years of complete darkness and she had reflux She wouldn't sleep. I had left London where all my friends had been. I had been there for so long, a decade So I was kind of on this little island off the coast of New Zealand at the end of the world And I had none of my support networks here. My husband was at work all day she was waking up every half an hour, every hour, just constant. She had to sleep on me upright, because otherwise she'd vomit all the things, right? All the things. New motherhood, the way it tears us open. Yup. The reason I tell that to answer your story, I know it's a long, long answer, so thank you for bearing with me. Is we, when people say, how did you come to this place? I mean, that two and a half years in darkness. Was the most terrifying when she was three months old and it preceded the light. Because dark and light are not binary. They live inside one another. And we walk these initiations, these deep soul initiations that burn us into being. And often when we're in the fire, I didn't know that. I had no concept of any of this. It was an experience. When she was nine months old, I had been, when she was three months old, I wanted to kill myself. I was on the floor of her nursery room and this gorgeous nursery room, right? The perfect Pinterest movie. And I thought, I am not made to be a mother. I cannot do this. And I just thought, I'm going to have to kill myself. Because I can't, I couldn't see any ending. Any light. And I made this decision. I can't do that to her. It was very practical. Otherwise she has no mother. And I had no father. I will not do that to her. I'll be the walking dead. I'll just be the walking dead. I'll stay alive for her, but I'll actually be dead. Fine. That's what I'll do. So I did that. And, but when she was nine months old, I would talk to God and nothing would come back, what I thought of as God, nothing would come back all my life. It had always talked back and nothing. And this one time in that two and a half years, when I said, please, why are you doing this to me? I can't do this. It's too much. I've never seen it. Everything you've given me my whole life, all the illness, all the density of the Struggling through university by myself, all the things, all the age work, I've never said it's too much, this is too much, motherhood broke me, and I heard a voice and it said, and it's going to sound really cheesy, so forgive me, this language I wasn't familiar with, but it said to give you the opportunity to transcend your ego, that annoyed me, I found that ridiculous, I said, I thought of ego as arrogance, I didn't know any, And I said, I'm not arrogant. And I got so enraged. I said, fuck off, just fuck off, leave. And it did. I felt that energy leave and it didn't come back. So again, I was in the darkness alone, but that was when she was nine months old. Long story short, I struggled through two and a half years in this place. I was pretty alone. And then about the age of two and a half, two, two and a half, I was reading a parenting book. It was just a parenting book. And it said, listen to your breath. Listen to your breathing. Sit quietly. And I started doing that. I didn't think of it as meditation. I had, again, no concept of meditation. I thought that was for those funny hippies that hug trees and I'm busy working in aid. You know, I'm, I'm actually planting trees. I'm not fucking talking about them. I had this real judgment of these silly, you know, hippies. And so I started listening to my breath, not thinking of it as any kind of meditation. And from there, everything blew open. And when she was two and a half I had this moment where she had fallen down crying and crying and I was exhausted and up until then motherhood had always been no, no, I don't want to do this. I hate this. I would Google things like, I'm not supposed to be a mother. How do I stop this? Like, what? I don't know what to do. You know, things like that. And I'd be around all these mothers who were baking and had good hair. And I'd be like, fuck you. I can't even brush my teeth, you know? And, and so it had always been a no. Every time she reached for me, I loved the being. I loved the girl, the child. I hated the role. It felt like. Subservient servitude to me, and I had spent so many years not being free in my childhood that this grief, rage and panic of the one who had finally found her freedom and now was in this crucible of crushing obligation is what motherhood felt like to me. And so she fell down at two and a half and I thought, Oh no, I have to go and get her. I just sat down. And I stood up with this, can't you just give me a moment of quiet energy? And as I turned to her, she had a little hand reaching out to me. I can't explain it to you. All I can say is that from that immense darkness, something imploded inside me. It just imploded. And she, I picked her up and she was screaming in this kind of vortex, it was this high pitched scream. And I was in a similar scream in my soul. And together we kind of held each other and we went into this vortex. I'd never heard that scream, a mother knows all the child's cries. It was a different, and I imploded. I felt her and I said, yes, yes. That's the only way I can describe it. There's no fancy words. All of my being surrendered. All of me. And long story short, I sat her down, she, she came into Rishi, and I was sitting outside in the garden. And everything looked different. I mean, it really sounds cliched. I didn't know what that was at the time, but I could see the light inside every leaf. And this garden I'd looked at so many times. And I appreciated nature in the past. I'd already had huge awakening at 21, but it was different. I was completely blown open. And over that month, it was October, 2018. Over that month, everything changed. Everything dissolved. I became so hard to explain, but I became everything. I melted into everything and I became trees. I became rock. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I trusted it. It felt right. All of the guidance came back, but thicker, faster, deeper than anything I had ever experienced. It's as if what was in the background became the foreground. I knew myself not as this body, which I thought I had experienced at 21. But this was different. It was this transcendent union kind of consciousness. And I was, I knew I had to quit my job. I had loved my job as an aid worker. I was still doing it. Or as it was. Three, I was managing a big team, I did that three days a week and I knew I had to leave, it was done. So I left my job and I went through this period of three or four years of, of deep integration, two or three years actually, deep integration, I would sit in the garden. All day. I could hardly do anything. I couldn't even, it didn't even feel like I could be a human. If I'm honest, I, I could, I, everything was blown apart. I quit my job. I had to take her to kindergarten and the house was filthy and messy. My husband, you know, would come home from work and there was nothing I couldn't, there wasn't a bone in me that could do. So integrating that, and that was the kind of transcendent piece as I look back on it now. And then a year and a half later, after a lot of patterns being released out of my body, seeing places I was stuck and wounded and in pain, working through these, releasing these, lots of mystical experiences, transcendent experiences, visits from beings, all sorts of madness. Then I started having, I had a, a big release with energy from my base all the way through my heart. My body was paralyzed for about half an hour. And as that happened, that brought me deeper into the body. That brought me back into, into this, into my hands, my feet, my face. And then I knew I must leave my marriage. And I had kind of known for some years. But that was the reckoning. As that happened through the heart space, it was like rivers and rivers of fire flowing out of my heart. And as I came back, it wasn't the experience, right? We all have experiences we can speak of. That's not the state. Because just like a sunset, I don't own the sunset, right? I can admire it. It's wonderful. It's not about the experience. It's about the change that happens in our being, which has come to be known over the months, over the years, as it integrates within us. And I could see, Oh my God, I'm back. I'm back as a human. I'm back in the body. This tuning fork of the heart had kind of sent me back here and I knew it's time to be here now after this year and a half. Okay. I have to leave my marriage. I've left my job. Now I'm being asked to leave my marriage, my home. That I had loved and like painstakingly done up for years, it was my dream home. And so I did. There's lots of stories around that too, but I, but I lived a 20, 17 year, a 17 year partnership and marriage with a four year old. And I, I was, I had quit my job a year and a half before, so I wasn't working. It took immense courage. And I think there's this point in our initiations, right, where we are called into what we will stand for. We see the truth of us and we are asked, will you then quiet that truth and live to stay in this safe version of you? Will you quiet the truth in your body and your heart that says it's time to go? There's more that wants to birth through you and as you. Or will you stay here in this comfortable fortress you've built up? And once we see that, we can't unsee it. And it's like, what are you willing to lose? To remain committed to truth. So divorce for me, and he was a wonderful man. We were good friends, you know, but we were just at that point, we were like siblings for a long time. So divorce for me in that sense was, was not necessarily leaving a man. It was leaving a version of myself. Divorce in that sense was commitment to the truth of me and this version of me that was longing to birth. And couldn't do that within the confines of that relationship, that energetic partnership. So off I went, right, and we build our new homes. We go through all the rings of fire that that necessitates. And your question to loop back after this very excruciatingly long answer, I'm sorry, was when did the goddess visit me? It was then. It was, I think I'd always had this embodiment of her, but she'd been stifled. I think many times we've had these initiations in past lives been shown this, where we've done deep work with the goddess, with the divine feminine, with that current, with that archetype, whatever you want to name it as. That energetic field. We've often had lives where we've done deep, deep work. You could say as priestesses, you could say as mothers in a simple life, but we've worked here in the garden as witches, whatever you want to give it a face of. And often now in this life, what my non physical teachers, which is what I've come to call them. I haven't had physical teachers, but I've had non physical teachers from childhood. This voice that as a child, I thought of as God in my very innocent way. I now think of as, as. That's life as my non physical teacher told me that this life we often catch up whatever initiations we've been through in our past lives will in this life fast. That's why this big thing in 2018 to the transcendence in this big thing, a year and a half through the heart. And then three years later, the goddess visited. I had no concepts. I hadn't read books. I started seeking out information because I was like, what is happening to me? And I found bits and pieces, but I couldn't really read. It was like crunching down into concept. It didn't really speak to me like the experience did. So I stayed in the experience. But once I left my marriage and I crossed across that threshold, here I was a little cottage by the ocean, painting it, looking after it. I left aid. I was looking after my daughter, trying to settle her into this new normal. I was doing all the things that we do. As woman to keep a house going, I was working with family members who were grieving and upset that I had done this, you know, friends fall away so much annihilation and the grief of awakening to our true selves, people saying, Who are you? I don't recognize you. And me saying, isn't it great? I don't recognize myself and the ones that stay and the ones that understand. And it was during this time, juggling the realities. And the practicalities of being the only one responsible for my life now, the beauty of that, the freedom of that, and then the pain of that, oh my God, I have to be the husband of myself. I have to be the claimer, the cherisher, the protector of myself, all the jobs are mine. Who's going to mow the lawn and do the pragmatic, the insurance? run the finances and they sound like silly little things and they are all together. I had to, I had to meet my edges and grow so much into this vastness that could hold it all. And the goddess, to be honest, I haven't actually shared this before. I've done many podcasts and I've never shared this, but she visited me. I was sitting on my deck and weeping, thinking, how will I hold all of this? How will I be the husband to myself? The father to my daughter, she was with me almost full time at that point and I was exhausted and I had done some big podcast interviews. And so I had floods of people reaching out to me for sessions for teaching and for guidance and I didn't want to be a teacher. I didn't like the concept of teacher. We're all teachers. Well, I'm the ever present student as well as a teacher. So I had not only coming to terms with this new life, but. Coming to terms with all these people asking me to do certain things and step out in a different way. And she visited, and she visited as an energetic blueprint, or current, or stream. I felt her come up through my body, up through my sex. I felt myself merge with that current. And I felt this deep fire, this energy of I would call it tender ferocity. Kind of like a drum beat in me. This rallying, I think she comes to disrupt and to venerate everything that patriarchal spirituality, which I hadn't, didn't have any concepts of at that time, tries to disown and disavow, right? She comes to bring us back to wholeness. And she comes to bring us into our leash, into our power, into our strength. She brings all of that awakening that's in the crown into the base. Into the body, into the cells, every cell, and I, I didn't know that, I didn't know what I thought of this, I just felt her, and I felt her, and she announced, she actually announced herself, I feel so embarrassed about saying all this, I've never said all of this, but she announced herself as ISIS, and I, I had no idea who that was, and I hold it lightly, I hold it openly. And a day later, I got a message from somebody at this stage, I've done a bunch of different podcasts on consciousness and all of that. And I got a message from some random man in Spain, which was, I get those messages a lot. And he said, look, I never do this. I'm a coffee grinder. But I woke in the night and I had someone called ISIS visit me. And she said, this is for Lucy Grace, you have to send her this message. And he said it came in English. And I never think in English or speak in English. And it won't leave me alone until I send it to you, so forgive me sending you a message. And he said, from Isis for you, rest between your desires and absolute beauty, for I am Isis, ruler of the middle path. The utter sacrifice is to surrender every instant to the flow of life. And after that, she came. She'd come the day before to announce herself. Then I got this message from this random man. She came over and over. I was Googling, who is ISIS? She came over and over and over in a myriad different ways on the side of a bus, just, you know, constantly. And then she started writing. I just call her the goddess and I think that's one face of it but I see it as a current. And then she started writing through me. She just, the poems that came were instant, completely different. And they were bringing, as that drum came in my body, what I look, what I realize now looking back, bringing the power that I needed for this new birthing, this new version of me, this new life. I had always had that power. That's what got me out of the hood, right? I'm not disowning what I already had, but this was impersonal and yet personal. And it was it's, the goddess wants to open her body, right, and receive life. This was, So I wonder if maybe I'll read you a poem that she, she wrote through me at that time.

Yeah, I would, I would love that. I'm, my heart's feeling a little broken because I, we're almost out of time, but I feel like that would be such a beautiful way to close. If you did have a poem that you wanted to share, I'd love to hear it.

Yeah. Yeah. So the thing that I found in my dance with the goddess, is she's the opposite of dominance, right? She wants to bring spirituality into the world because we can only give what we embody. She wants us to find the medicine in our womb, not in our wounds, not disown it, right? And she is the womb of all things and wombs anoint everything. Yeah, she's that fleshy radiance of the cosmos. That's the divine in density, right? She wants to express here. And so it's not about leaving. It's about being here. I won't read the one I was going to if we're almost out of time. I will read one that is for, it just came through me the other day. Actually I'll read two because that one's quite short. This one came from her, from Isis. And it's the transmission of it that came through the body as I wrote it it's called The Gods Want to Dance. The gods want to dance, to be known from the ground up, flame through limbs from the fire pit in my guts, drum and altar in the temple of my heart, this holy inhabitation like a full poetic fuck. And so I dance. Wet feet stomping seeds deep into the fertile dirt of my light dark heart. Hips rounding, honouring the drum. Wrists, legs laugh. I am offered up. This sacred thrust, a full body prayer. Deep, homing here. Let learned people learn. Let them overthink. Let them talk and trade emptiness like it's currency. I'll be in the garden worshipping stars, devoted to mud, on my knees to innocence and sun, because the goddess is. She cannot not know you by the lick of you. She is the drummer, and the one who follows, and you could never ever know this. Until you know, until she bites you open and breathes you home. And that's from my book, The Untameable Light. A lot came through from her, so that, that just came out in one go. And that was her writing, that was not me. I looked at that and went, wow. And that teaches Lucy the, the, the personality. And she's moved me and worked through me for a couple of years now really deeply. Bye. To bring me here, to bring me back with my feet on the ground, and, and to kind of, she wants you free, right? She wants you free. She wants you co regulating with nature, making love with the earth, honoring. And that's the last one I'll finish on it's called The Goddess Speaks. I just wrote this a few days ago. A version of it was in my book, but I changed it a lot as it came through. The Goddess Speaks. It feels like birthing, like squatting close to earth, or force opening hips like arson, breathing, spirit deeper into flesh. It feels like summoning the magic of eons through bone, through follicle, through quiet, through open molecule and hearts. It feels like throwing back my head. Arching breasts and bellying the entire cosmos through flesh. It feels like roaring is praying, bare feet pressed to mud, earthing ocean and making love with moss. It feels like taking in every creature crawling, singing, loaming in me. It feels like becoming everything. There is an ecstasy in existing that cannot, will not be colonized. There's no sterilizing or explaining this away. There's no taming the power of abyss, tide, moon, sorrow, blood, joy, rage, seasons. With your organized wars, with your theory, ideas, tidy boxes, wrong making, right making, division, this is the nucleus of creation. This is her way. And wombs anoint everything. You do not have dominion over tithes. You must learn to write them. This is the calculus of your becoming, the axis of your ending, and every beginning you have ever longed for. This is birth and death folded in on one another. This is the untameable pulse. I'm giving over to nature.

So beautiful. Thank you so much, Lucy, for your time and your story and your heart. I just, I feel like I was sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. Just like kind of riveted as to what you were going to say next. It was amazing. Thank you

so much.

Oh, no, I didn't need to. I mean, thank you for making my job insanely easy. Wow. I didn't need to. So, yeah, thank you so, so much. I will make sure I put in the show notes how to find your book and how, you know, other, other

details

about

you and, thank you so much. Yeah, I help people with soul initiation. I have quite a long wait list for sessions, for private sessions, but. People are, if that feels like it calls to people, they can reach out. I also do group work, which is open now and it's all on my website.

Okay. And I will, yeah. So I will make sure that's, that your website is in the show notes and yeah, thanks to all of you as always for tuning in and being here and I'm just wanting to bless your own journey. If the goddess is cracking you open listen to Lucy, you know, you're not alone. I'm certainly experiencing my own version of that. And it's a brave and beautiful path to be on. So, so many blessings to all of you and take good care of yourself until next time I will be with you again, very soon. Home to Her is hosted by me, Liz Kelley. 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.