The day started off with sunshine, but has quickly turned to gray. I think it’s going to be a rainy Easter, which is not unusual for spring on the island.

My husband and I have a few special things planned. Making deviled eggs like my mom used to make. Baking a cake. Doing a little ritual to celebrate rebirth, transitions, and resurrection.

We both love this time of year: it takes him back to his Catholic roots and brings me into the space of Christ Consciousness and unconditional love. Also, the nature lover in me smiles at the gifts of the earth, and the signs of spring all around.

The earth is waking up, and I feel myself wanting to wake with her.

It’s true that it’s been a strange season. Life has turned on its axis since we all got corona-tined and have watched the changes a pandemic brings to our world. On the surface, I’ve been taking necessary steps to stay safe at home, utilize appropriate assistance and try and find center during decentered times.

On a deeper level, I’ve gone deep sea diving in search of a new truth I can feel trying to bubble up into my consciousness and break through into new awareness.

I received a message from Spirit a few weeks back to use this time, this slow down in life, to return to myself, think about who I really am and what I want to bring out into this world.

Ever since I’ve been contemplating my Original Self— who I am at the core, untouched by who I think others want me to be or how I think I need to do things in order to be accepted.

Today I found myself making a list of things that have consistently held true for me across the years:

• I am somebody who appreciates art, truth and beauty.

• I am somebody who searches for my truth within the bigger pattern of life and writes about that truth, seeking unique perspective.

• I am somebody who values feelings: honoring emotion’s intuitive flows and learning their wisdoms.

• I am somebody who will go into dark spaces in order to find the hidden lights.

• I am somebody who believes in the ethereal, color, whimsy and heart magic.

• I am somebody who believes in the power of love and examining the soul of a situation.

• I am unique like a flamingo, and I’ve often struggled to find my fit among other flocks.

• I am me, BethAnne.

When I was younger I didn’t understand the search for the true self.

I was living my life as best I knew how at the time, but I had yet to experience my first spiritual awakening and cracking open process, so my waters of self still contained a lot of false selves created by who I thought I was supposed to be, other’s expectations of me and what I was taught about the world.

In graduate school I was just at the beginning of a slow awakening, which was going to take another 11 or 12 years before things came to fruition and I’d go through a reckoning of self like nothing I’d experienced. I know now that not all awakenings happen quickly— sometimes things stir in the depths of our soul for quite a while, before they truly manifest into conscious form in a way we understand and can sensate.

When I look back I can see times where my instincts, my intuitions, and my impulses were guiding me into my deeper truth, but the soul has a timing all its own and it full vision can’t be hurried or rushed.

There were truths waiting inside of me that weren’t meant to crystallize until a certain collision of circumstance and the unconscious being made into conscious awareness was to take place.

When things finally collided, I cracked hard, and the subsequent breaking of self from my old life became my first experience with the shamanic concept of dying to an old self in order to resurrect a deeper, truer self.

I remember one of my first Easters of living more wild, true and free. I was less than a year out of my divorce, and I’d spent the year going through my transformation and rebirth. Love is what I found after my old shell cracked open.

A fierce joy for life. Gratitude for a free heart. An unwavering commitment to stay in my heart and follow its unique rhythms no matter where my beat took me.

On that particular Easter, I wrote this essay on gray day in Anchorage, where the biggest brightness to be found was the light inside. The circumstances of my life looked quite different then and yet re-reading my old words, I realize my core truth hasn’t changed much:

Today represents a love story for me, and I intend to celebrate spring, resurrection, joy, new life, new beginnings, and love with the sacred feel of the ground beneath my grateful running feet, surrounded by the ever present vigilant trees and soft peace of the open air.

As always, I will talk to the Universe and hear her whisper back as we converse on matters of life, death, rebirth, the spirit, love, and the path of the heart. There will be lots of celebration today with friends and family and warm, good food as well as a slow meandering walk with the best teacher of unconditional love that there is, Dog.

I am still a girl who seeks out the greater love story in life. Who seeks to find sanctity in the everyday, holiness in each moment, and a desire to continue to embrace my journey with deep intention and authenticity.

I’ve traveled far from the space I once was since I wrote that essay. Out of Alaska. To Kauai. Into a soul calling, which has, at times, plunged me into a bigger picture of interconnected tapestry, whose art I am just a small part.

But I do have my role to weave into the tapestry, and I wandered to and through Kauai looking for my threads. I wouldn’t say I got lost along the way anymore than I was meant to.

At times we must all be the fool who wanders through doorways and into new experiences, so we can learn and grow from them, even if they aren’t ultimately meant for us.

I’ve been the fool a lot these last three years. Staying open to new ways of thinking, doing and being. Straddling a fine line between learning from others without getting lost in their influence or their way of doing things. Feeling called to step back and shake myself loose anytime I feel myself placing my faith in anyone or anything other than the heart of the universe itself.

You see my 2013 self was just tapping into something, which I am now more fully aware of:

The Universe will speak back to us. Guide us, teach us, coach us through life, when we fully place our trust in her hands. The divine wants to behold us fully and teach us what it is to be beheld, so we experience the power of unconditional love and learn to bring that love into our lives in greater ways.

It strikes me that this invitation to return to myself, which I’ve been feeling so strongly in this pandemic, is an invitation to return to love. The love in my heart, the love of spirit, the love of the universe. It’s ALL the same essence of love.

Love that extends an invitation to see myself through spirit’s eyes and recognize the innate worth that is inherent in each of us as divine beings on a spiritual journey.

Love that bids me to observe myself through the lens of my heart without feeling blurred by others interpretations.

Love that allows me to throw off the labels, masks and constructs I’ve understood myself through and return to my Original Self.

I relate this Easter to the symbol of the egg. Something inside of me is stirring, close to being reborn. Soon my old shell will crack open and new life will be waiting there.

I’m curious as to who I’ll be.