I use to not believe in miracles or magic...but now I do!
Event Reminders: Join us for the in-person Mind + Body workshop in Nashville, Tennessee with Jed Jenkins, and The Invitation of Pain Virtual Event with Hillary McBride. More details below!
Hi beautiful friends. I hope this email finds you well. I first want to apologize for this being a day late. I got home Sunday night and my Monday got really packed, really fast trying to rescue a precious pit that showed up at my friend's house and doing some self-care after being gone for 10 days. Thank you for understanding!Â
I am just coming off an incredibly intense and beautiful week at the Hoffman Institute. I am still processing all that I learned and experienced there but suffice it to say, it was one of the most healing and beautiful weeks I may have ever had in my life. Not kidding. SO MUCH emotional release around some of our deepest pain, so much play, so much crying and so much joy and connection. There is a lot I have to say about it but that will have to be on a later date as I am still processing.Â
Hoffman Institute on Negative Love Syndrome
After the 7-day process, they really recommend 2 days to integrate before going home because it was A LOT!! I was lucky enough to have my dear friend Whitney offer to let me stay at her magical home in the Redwoods which is only 30 minutes away. Whitney is a mystical human that I got to know really well while on my pilgrimage a few years ago. I was struggling at the time and feeling so unsettled and ungrounded and she let me stay in her incredible home for over 10 days!!! Her generosity of her home and heart touch me on a level I can hardly put into words. She is also open to the magic this universe has for us and goodness did I get to experience it at her home. There are not many people I would want to spend integration time around after such an intense week but it was such a sweet time. I had the chance to spend a lot of time with the redwoods, and many animal friends showed up.
There is a quote from Einstein that I learned a few years ago from my friend Christine, one of my most mystical friends, that says:
At that time, to be honest, it was difficult for me to see any miracles. I felt trapped in my pain story and overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I can still feel sorry for myself and get overwhelmed by all the suffering that exists. I would watch Christine be in total awe at things I thought were just normal and I had a hard time seeing the magic. I would roll my eyes inwardly when she would gush about synchronicities and such. But luckily in the past years, I have begun to make it a bit of a practice to look for magic and miracles. This last weekend brought so many sweet ones.Â
I did a lot of emotional release around my daddy. He was an amazing man, did so much good in the world but he is also a big pain point in my life. That story is for another day. I learned to be a very good girl and fit in a very small box and as much as my daddy adored me, I had the fear of God in my dad. You DID NOT want to cross him and watch out if you do. I really let myself feel the grief and love for my daddy. I yelled and cried so much. I let myself feel the pain and I let myself feel unbelievable compassion and gratitude for him. It can be tricky feeling those big feelings for someone who has passed away. It is so easy to want to put people on pedestals after they pass and feel bad or guilty for expressing hurt or anger. Luckily I have done enough work that I truly believe it is loving to express our big feelings even when it feels scary or hard.Â
Saturday afternoon I heard a sound at Whitney’s house outside. I looked out the window and there was a family of quail. A mom, dad, and their babies. Y’all, my dad was obsessed with quail hunting. He also raised and trained Llewellyn setter bird dogs. We usually had no less than 10 at our house at all times when he was raising and training them. He treated those dogs like his kids. He loved them so much. We did not have quail in Louisiana so he would travel to Texas mostly to hunt them. I got to watch this precious family of quail for so long (which I can not imagine killing them but that is just me) They felt like a sign to me that my daddy was near me. Whitney has lived there for years and she has never seen quail babies! I even found three teeny quail feathers where they had been hanging out after they left!Â
On Sunday when I was leaving I was meeting my Lyft driver at a coffee shop and as soon as I walked in my mouth fell open! There was a Llewellyn setter in line with his owner! I could not believe it! The last one I ever saw was one of the last dogs of my dad’s to die thirteen years ago!
I felt so cared for and loved and it truly felt like a miracle that my daddy was showing me that he is with me, loving me, supporting me and so proud of the work I just did (there was way more than just work around my dad…so much more!). I love magical thinking yall. It feels so playful to be open for signs and miracles.Â
I would LOVE to hear your miracle stories. There is nothing too big or too small. I would love to hear it. It is so fun to share our miracles because it opens us up to there being so much more than this dense 3D world! There is magic and mystery and love always around us when we look for it!
I highly recommend Laura Lynn Jackson’s book Signs if you want to be open to signs from loved ones on the other side, or from the Divine. It opened me up so much to look for them everywhere.Â
I love you all so much
Ruthie
Keep reading for:Â
Invitation of Pain Virtual Event
Mind + Body In-Person Workshop
The Invitation of Pain Virtual Event
When we experience pain, we are instructed to medicalize our pain to make it go away. We learn to see our bodies as the enemy and forget the identity outside of the pain. But we can learn to experience and understand pain differently, even coming to see pain as the route back home to who we really are. In this way, the pain becomes the invitation back to our bodily selves - reminding us how to love ourselves more fully, teaching us that we can heal regardless of whether the pain goes away or not.
In this event, join Ruthie Lindsey and Hillary McBride in a conversation about pain and a new way of thinking about how we relate to it and ourselves. Ruthie and Hillary will share their stories of journeying through chronic pain and recovery, the lessons they learned along the way, current research findings about healing from pain, and engage attendees in practices to begin to experience ourselves and our pain differently. Click the link below to learn more about this event and purchase your ticket.
In-Person Mind + Body Workshop
Jed and Ruthie are teaming up in Nashville, Tennessee from September 21st to the 22nd for a weekend writing and embodiment workshop.
The 2024 Mind and Body Workshop will focus on addressing our past, present, and future, as well as understanding what our bodies are telling us about it. Click the link below to learn more and purchase your ticket!
I have quite a few friends who have attended the hoffman institute in different parts of the world and ALL have reported back that it was hugely healing and transformational. I *LOVE* hearing about these signs and synchronicities. Thank you for sharing so vulnerably and lovingly with us all.
I loved reading your story, and I love reading stories about synchronicities. Here's one of mine:
When I was a child, my parents (who had been married for about 15 years) split up and later had a horrible divorce, all while my father was battling cancer, had a second child and married her mother just weeks before he died (I was 12, my half-sister not even a year old). For years and years, I lived with the belief that my parents' relationship could not have been "true love" and that my family of origin thus was somehow flawed in comparison to my Dad's second marriage. Almost 15 years later, after years of no contact, I reached out to my half-sister and her mother and started seeing them again, while at the same time, seperately, was working through my own trauma about what had happened during the time prior to my father's death. In a family constellations intervention, I experienced that my belief might be flawed and that my parents indeed had experienced a very loving, deep relationship, and that this connection might even still exist somehow. I did not tell my mother about this exact intervention, but at the same time, she was also revisiting the grief around what had happened between her and my Dad and did a lot of healing. Just then, my father's second wife reached out to me: She said she had just found my father's wedding band with my mother's name engraved in it, after not having come across it for years and years. I returned it to my mother, who cried from joy. Also, at the same time, my Mum shared a very vivid dream with me: She had met my father in Heidelberg, the town they went to university in. He was young again, vibrant with joy and so happy to see her. He told her: "I went to the doctor again, it [refering to the cancer] is all gone again." 🥲