My Story

Adoption, becoming, and the messy path of embodiment.

Three years ago, during my meditation teacher training, I was asked to write about a topic that has impacted me for our final paper in the program.

What emerged was a story of adoption, awakening, trauma, grief, motherhood, healing, and the lifelong journey of reclaiming my authentic self.

I know that my medicine as a teacher is sharing my unfiltered experiences as I chart my own path, often bloody and bruised.

Standing beside others as they walk through fire.

Us laughing about universal fuckery, exchanging hugs, words of wisdom, and healing balm for our wounds as we trudge forth.

As I read the words I wrote again, I am in awe.

So much of my life has changed in the last three years.

What a beautiful ass kicking it has been.

So beloved community, here it is.

Sitting with the topic for my paper has been very interesting. A lot of energy came up for me and I told myself I needed to let it all marinate for at least a few weeks. I made it about a week before these words poured out in the middle of the night due to a4-hour serenade by a very loud cricket that I named Surround Sound. I have yet to find him or the mini microphone and speakers I’m certain he used. It was hilarious and although I was grumpy and wanting to sleep, I was inspired by the divinely placed musical intruder.

I looked up the symbolism of crickets as I always do when creatures appear on my path: intuition, abundance, sensitivity, communication, and self-expression. The timing felt right, so I let the words flow and typed out the first draft. I looked for my muse throughout the day as I edited the paper a bit. He appeared the following night on my pillow, ready to be escorted outside, moments after I finished the final draft.

I struggled with deciding on a topic because all that I feel called to write about is so interwoven in who I am and what I share with others as a teacher. My core values are freedom, love, trust, equality, authenticity, surrender, joy, integrity, courage, and humor. Embodiment - embodying and expressing my true self - encompasses all of these values and is an intention I return to daily on my awakening journey.

I want to start out with the powerful words of Brene Brown.

“True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”

Remembering who I am and living as my authentic self is a homecoming that’s taken many years of deep inner work and continues to unfold.

So how did I find my way back to myself?

I was midwifed into being on a Monday by la luna, which explains a few things. I was with my birth mother for seven days before I was adopted by my parents. I had a mostly happy childhood. I loved playing with animals (I basically had a zoo), climbing trees, playing sports, dancing, singing, being in nature, and learning about anything and everything. Growing up, I saw, felt, and knew many things that I was told I wasn’t supposed to see, feel, or know. Life is magical and I knew and experienced this deeply as a child, but most of our world does not validate this truth.

Over the years I slowly dimmed my light and joy, I was less and less of who I truly am, I put myself in the many boxes women are often asked to step into, and I stayed there for a very long time. As a teenager, I started to process my adoption. I was always told I was special, that I was chosen. A truth you learn to sit with as an adoptee is that you were also given away. You learn to hold all of it. The gratitude for the life you were given with your adoptive family and also the pain and grief over the life unlived with your birth family.

In my early twenties, I had an intense kundalini awakening. I was very sick, lost and unsure of what was happening. I consciously began my spiritual journey to better understand my experiences and regain my health.

I have always been very connected to spirit and a very sensitive soul. I tried to numb these sensitivities in different ways for many years. Practices such as yoga, meditation, energy healing, and shadow work changed my life. I immersed myself in mystical classes and trainings. After spending most of my life feeling wrong or broken, I finally began to realize that my sensitivities are my greatest gifts.

Around this time, I met my biological sister for the first time. Our meeting was like the most magical, awkward first date you’ve ever been on. We giggled, cried, and could barely speak. Shortly after meeting my sister, my son was born. Motherhood has been my greatest and toughest teacher. To sum it up, holy shit (and add very deep sigh). It has been beautiful, painful, and everything in between. Three years later my daughter came into this world. Holding my newborn daughter in my arms made me think of my birth mother and how painful the experience of adoption must have been for her. My sister and I were inspired to begin the process of connecting with our biological families.

We met people who looked like us and had personalities similar to us, something neither of us had found in our adoptive families. With each step, I discovered a new puzzle piece of who I am. My biological mother was not ready to connect in person when we reached out initially, but eventually found me online. I will always remember the moment I realized my biological mother was requesting to be my Facebook friend. Another noteworthy moment was when my biological brother found me on ancestry.com and I discovered that I had thirteen brothers and sisters from my biological father’s side of the family. Someone joked that I had hit the biological family jackpot - I had indeed. Two months after connecting virtually, my biological mother passed away unexpectedly. My sister and I immediately hopped on a plane to Tennessee to help our aunts with everything and to discover more about who our mother was.

The experience ripped me open in the way only grief can. I could no longer tolerate many aspects of my life that were not in alignment. I continued to peel the many layers that kept me from showing up authentically in all areas of my life.

I was in a women’s group that focused on energy awareness, female empowerment, and conscious parenting. A few months after my biological mother left her body, the other women in the group and I were given our monthly assignment. We were to write about who we truly are at the deepest level. It could be a goddess, an archetype, an energy, anything to help us connect to our divinity within.

Until that moment, I had only been dipping my toes into the waters of my true self. I had a knowing of who I was, but the awareness hadn’t been fully experienced and integrated in my body. The awareness surged through me and I let myself write.

I am Alethia, The Goddess of Truth. I help all live our lives unhidden, to remember and live as our true selves. I remove all labels and expectations that keep us small. I release all judgments, comparisons, any need to please others at the expense of ourselves. I cut through illusion. I restore balance. I am the divine feminine and the divine masculine, balanced in harmony. I am joy, freedom, unconditional love, compassion, authenticity, truth, and power. This is the truth of who I am.

Energy surged through me immediately and I sobbed for hours. Another powerful awakening had begun, but this time I had the awareness to understand what was happening and tools to help my body move through each layer. I wrote, I embody and express my true self and posted these words in my home and at work, along with an image that showed a goddess holding a sword (cutting through illusion), balancing scales, with her eyes covered (inner sight & knowing). I added newly discovered aspects of who I am and energies I wanted to embody to this paper often as many transformations unfolded in my life. It was a beautiful, powerful reminder of who I am and why I am here and I read it regularly for many years.

Shortly after this experience, I left an unhealthy marriage and made other big changes in my life. I invested in trainings, opportunities, and travel that set my soul on fire. I let my heart lead the way. I had the hard conversations that needed to be had. I finally gave myself permission to live the life I am meant to live, rather than the life I realized I was living for others. I let myself be fully me, more and more each day.

A sexual trauma I experienced when I was nine years old, something I had never shared with anyone, finally rose to the surface to be healed. Stored deeply within my being, the experience had been bleeding on so many aspects of my life. The unprocessed trauma impacted my relationship with my body, safety, trust, joy, play, creativity, authenticity, boundaries, and my ability to fully own my voice and power. It profoundly affected the relationships I had with men and how I interacted with my son. This wound had remained hidden in the darkness for over twenty years, waiting for the moment my system had enough support, awareness, and capacity to bring it into the light. I honored the tenderness, courage, and many layers of unpeeling that my healing required.

Invalidation, perfectionism, unconsciously healing the crap out of everyone and everything, people pleasing, playing small, disempowerment, inequality - it’s been a journey! There has been so much pain to look at and sit with, but the experiences have been expansive rather than the constriction of living within the expectations of others.

With each layer, more of my essence comes home to my body and can be expressed in this world. With each step, there is more clarity and liberation. I continue to fiercely surrender to my path, to let all of the parts of me and my life that are no longer true and aligned fall away. I continue to be reborn over and over again.

I am here to embody and express my true self. I am here to help empower and awaken others. By being fully who I am, I help give others permission to do the same. I am here to create the new heart centered, soul aligned world that I believe we are meant to create together.

The poet and mystic Hafiz perfectly articulates the reverence I feel for the gorgeous, messy journey of being human.

“Now is the time to know that all you do is sacred. Now is the time for you to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but grace.”

I’m grateful for every single sacred moment, even a cricket concert in the middle of the night.

Coming back to yourself now, checking in.

Where in your life are you being invited to embody more of your authentic self?

What layers are asking to fall away so more of your essence can come home to your body

and be expressed in this world?

Thank you for letting me share my story and I hope you will share yours.

Melissa