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A lot of my channelling and mentoring work focuses on helping women align with their purpose. I regard this as some of my most important work because it empowers women with the information they need to do what their Soul is calling out for.
We can spend a lot of time, spinning our wheels and going down blind alleys without this information. While I don’t believe any of that time is wasted – there is always a reason and lessons to be learned from these situations – living in alignment with your purpose helps you stay motivated when the times are tough. It also helps us understand why we might do things that aren’t obviously connected but are still, definitely, taking us in the right direction.
Using words to heal, empower and share stories is a key part of my purpose. This explains why I have spent 20-plus years working in communications and public relations. The same theme is also evident in my work as an author, blogger and mentor. For me, words are the key to everything. I may explore other avenues along the way but I will always return to my words.
Your mind may tell you that your purpose must look a certain way and lead to a specific outcome. But your mind will usually be wrong.
You can do more than one thing in this lifetime – your purpose is a theme, not a destination.
Think about Cleopatra, Michelangelo, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King – none of them did only one thing. If you let your thoughts restrict what living in alignment with your purpose looks like, you could miss out on all kinds of adventures and discoveries.
If you want to learn more about living in alignment with your purpose, let’s talk! One of my programs might be just what you need to get you moving in the right direction for you.
I had a vision during savasana at the end of my yoga session yesterday. At some point, my mind drifted away from my teacher’s words and I found myself somewhere else entirely.
I heard the screech of plane tires hitting the tarmac and saw a plane taxiing along a runway. I saw inside the plane and heard the pilot say, “Welcome to Fiumicino Airport, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside. Then I saw myself, getting ready to deplane with a look on my smiling face that said, “Here we go.” This was followed by a moving image of me walking through the airport with a single, large suitcase.
I shared this vision with my teacher afterwards and found myself crying. Just by holding the space to allow me to drop into the moment so deeply, she had given me a beautiful gift – a vision of what is yet to come.
It’s the second time I’ve had a vision at the end of a yoga class. A few years ago, an image of a ticket was shown to me with a specific date on it. I hadn’t asked for any insights regarding tickets. I was just enjoying a yoga class. In my mind, I was already planning to head to Italy mid-year. But the date on the ticket was a few months later. I convinced myself that it wasn’t a plane ticket. Maybe it was for some other trip? Perhaps I would stay longer in the country than I’d planned and it was the date for a train trip. After all, there was no way it would be that long until I got on a plane and got out of town.
The Universe had other plans.
My intended departure date kept being pushed back. Work and other commitments kept putting blocks in the way, again and again. Months passed and my frustration grew. Finally, when I could see a way out, I asked a friend who specialises in travel to find the best value ticket for my departure. I specified the time I wanted to land and the week but not the date.
Guess what date she came with?
I remember shaking my head and rolling my eyes. The Universe can be terribly annoying and irksome when she is right.
Fast forward to early last year and this time the date came to me in a different way. I was planning to travel to Italy again but I couldn’t feel into the best time to go. I just knew I was going and waited for more information to present itself.
A while later, I had a night disrupted by spirits and my guides discussing things in my house. Doors were opened and shut, and I caught random words and phrases as I traveled in and out of consciousness. They seemed to be organising things (who knows what) but all I felt was irritated. I repeatedly asked them to take their discussions elsewhere because I wanted to sleep without interruption. They paid me no mind and kept at it.
As I woke in the morning, a date was clearly in my mind. It didn’t mean anything to me though and there was no accompanying image of a ticket or any other information. Perhaps I needed to know the date for some other reason?
I Googled, researched and asked friends if the date had any significance. But I came up with nothing. Eventually I accepted what probably should have been obvious from the start – I booked my plane ticket for that day and the people I subsequently met and the experiences I had on that trip have set me up for my eventual relocation to Italy (post-Covid-19 crazy).
I don’t have a departure date for my next trip but after my vision yesterday, I know the Universe will let me know when the time is right. I have trust in that. It’s hard not knowing but, the Universe tells us what we need to know, when we need to know it. That’s how it works.
This is how I function in the world – I have one foot here and one in the ether. It’s a balancing act that has sometimes been difficult to maintain.
Early in my psychic awakening process, I was so ungrounded and my connection so strong, that sometimes it felt like I was being pulled out of my body. That’s what happens when you have a powerful gift that’s unmanaged and it’s one of the reasons I do my mentoring work now. I understand how it feels to be ungrounded and strongly connected, and I know there are ways to manage things better. So I teach others what I’ve learned along the way.
Receiving insights and premonitions during yoga classes and during the night are just two ways the Universe sends me information. It’s all part of the weird, freaky world of being a psychic channel.
Welcome to my slightly crazy and definitely unusual metaphysical party!
If you’d like to learn ways to harness your intuitive gifts and live your purpose, please book in for a free chat. I can tune in and help you map out a way forward that is right for you. Or check out my courses and sessions on my website.
In loving and intimate relationships, there are always things you need to negotiate on – where to eat dinner, who is preparing dinner, where to go on holidays, what colour you should paint the walls, how much money you save together for your agreed goals, and so on. These types of negotiations happen in healthy relationships.
Unfortunately, some men believe their female partners should also negotiate with them about other topics like:
What you wear
What you eat
What you post on social media (when he and/or your children aren’t in the pics)
What you wear when you post on social media
What you weigh
The size of your breasts (implants anyone?)
Which other men you can talk to
How much make-up you do or don’t wear.
These topics are NOT negotiation points and if you’re with a man (a term I am using very loosely in this instance) who insists on you negotiating about these, LEAVE.
You may think this advice is rather melodramatic but is it, really? Because I have to tell you, when you agree to negotiate about how you show up in the world, you are on a slippery slope to nowhere good. Your autonomy is not up for negotiation.
And quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about his feelings about this and neither should you. I would also wonder who taught him it was okay to tell you what you can and cannot do with your body. That sounds like a bad case of entitlement and he should get some therapy to resolve that issue while you move onto a man who has a healthy sense of self and respects you as the amazing goddess you are.
No man has the right to tell you how you should or shouldn’t show up in the world.
The right man will love you as you are and will not seek to control you. He will respect your autonomy and respect you as an individual who chooses her own path. Just like he chooses his.
Lucretia is an author, psychic and intuitive mentor who helps women live their purpose. Need some practical and honest advice about feelings, life or relationships? Visit DearLucretia.com to ask your question. Answers are FREE and your name will always be changed if your question is published.
Earlier today, I learned that feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the stalwart Judge of the US Supreme Court had passed over. Just days ago, she told her granddaughter, “[my] most my fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” The Universe had other plans and now it’s possible the Trump will replace her with a conservative judge who will continue the rolling back of individual rights including those bestowed through Roe versus Wade. The rights of women to decide what happens to their own bodies is under a very real threat.
Then an old work colleague rang me out of the blue and we talked about how women still struggle with self-worth, give their power away to their male partners and need to be vigilant about their safety in ways men never have to be. Women still need to be aware of their surroundings when they go out, watchful of who is around them, wary of walking at night, and consider their personal safety and how a man might react if they reject him. Women still need to do this, even after all the time that has passed since the 80s when my colleague and I were in our teens and 20s.
We talked about how every second woman we know has experienced some form of abuse as a child or an adult, at the hands of a man.
After all of this, I can’t help but feel tired, sad and disheartened. How much more do we have to fight for rights that are so fundamental? Why are there still discussions about what women can and can’t do with their bodies? It’s not as if anyone ever talks about mandatory vasectomies for men? Can you imagine the uproar if someone tried to legislate such a thing?! Still, it seems women’s bodies are still somehow public property while men’s bodies are not. One 87-year-old judge in the US Supreme Court was the last bastion standing up for a woman’s right to choose versus a government’s move to dictate a woman’s decisions regardless of her own personal desires and autonomy. Now RBG has departed, the threat to women’s legislated rights to choose is very real in a country that has, until recent times, been a leader of the free-world.
Meanwhile, the truth of Glennon’s words stay with me because I know women give away their power every day – we frequently give it away more than it is taken from us. We give it away because we desire those feelings of safety and belonging that Glennon talks of. We give it away because we have become so convinced that it is the normal thing to do. We watched our mothers do it, our friends do it, celebrities do it, and so we have done it too. We ignore the red flags and accept less than we’re worth. We are too often taught not to use our voices stridently to ask for and claim what is rightfully ours. Instead we are taught to ask nicely and be nice at all costs or otherwise face rejection.
My former colleague and I are children of the 70s yet we see women in their 20s still dealing with the issues we thought we had fought through and trounced so they would never have to. But still they struggle to unthread the patriarchal ties passed down from mother to daughter and indoctrinated through cultural tropes in film, music, social media influencers and reality TV. You only have to watch a few minutes of The Bachelor to understand how little we have moved forward.
The not-good-enoughness, the I must “help him” at my own expense and the excusals of behaviour and red flags with the age-old “but I love him” continues. And even though on one level, social media provides so many opportunities for individual expression it also strangely, drives strong messages of conformity. How can women rise if we are still trying to fit into a norm that we helped create and exist in, while trying to create something new that is not yet realised?
It’s September 2020, RBG has died and it feels like we aren’t moving forward.
Tomorrow is a new day and I’m sure my optimism will return. My drive and belief that we can change things for the better has not left me. It just feels a little subdued today. I can only hope that, somehow, we change things over the coming decade so that the girls being born today will not have the same experiences in their 20s that this generation is having. Seeking honest and practical advice about the things that matter – love, relationships, coping with life, choosing your path, managing stress and anxiety? Lucretia provides free advice at DearLucretia.com. It’s time to take the filters off and have a real conversation about life! Note, your name will be changed before your question is published to ensure you remain anonymous.
“How do you know when you’re in love?” Sherri asked me. She was in a new relationship, one that seemed, for now at least, much healthier and kinder than her previous ones. But now this question rose to the surface.
If those previous relationships, when she thought herself in love, seemed now so wrong, did Sherri really know what love was and had she ever experienced?
A lot of us have those thoughts.
I have fallen in love and when it’s ended, I’ve looked back and wondered, was that love at all? Or is this new feeling with this new man ‘real love’?
Years ago, as I struggled through devastating depression from a break-up that in many ways broke me, I told Carolyn*, my counsellor, that I had loved that man. We had been together for only a month or two but my love was as real to me as the river flowing through the city where I now live.
She laughed aloud saying, “Lucretia, you can’t fall in love that quickly. That wasn’t love. Love takes time to grow and take hold.”
Her incredulous response showed how far I had strayed from her reality. She later told me, post-session, that she was separating from her husband. Did that create her cynicism or had it always been there? She helped me process my grief but our perspectives on love remained in opposite hemispheres.
Love is love is love. I believe you can experience it for many romantic partners in a lifetime. Sometimes you don’t even need to have sex with them to fall in love. Am I an anomaly? I don’t know. I have an emotional heart but, doesn’t everyone?
How do you know when you’re in love? For me, love has sometimes created fear. When I’ve said those words, “I love you”, I have cried for the fear of it – the vulnerability of saying those three words has felt devastating because in that moment I feel like I have given my power away. I have given them the power to hurt me and the thought of the possible pain that might result has terrified me.
Other times I have been in love and it’s felt like freedom. When you haven’t felt it for a while – months, years – to realise it is still possible, well, that is joyful and heart-expanding. The man in question may not even feel the same in return but that in some ways doesn’t matter. It is more important that I feel it and it opens me up to feel more.
How do you know when you’re in love?
It’s not cerebral. You don’t think love. Years ago, a friend told me that you could choose who you love. It was a conscious choice that she decided, or not. Her determination that she could control something so ephemeral as love was, to my mind, ludicrous and insane. You cannot choose who to love. Love visits of her own accord. And when she leaves, you cannot force her to return. Ask anyone who has chosen to leave a partner they once adored with their whole heart. When love departs you can look for it under every rock and in every basement, behind the tins on the shelf and in every crevasse of your life. She may hide for a while and return, rarely. But if she has gone, you cannot force her return and you cannot force your heart by sheer strength of will to comply with your mind’s demands.
No. Love is not a logical determination and it takes many forms. It can be violent in its intensity, throwing you down and dragging you far from shore, far from what you believed and who you thought you were. It is often uncomfortable because it is a risk: what if it’s not reciprocated? What if he leaves? What if he cheats?
You can try to resist but your heart will want what it wants and won’t be denied by rational reasoning or sensible caution.
Love can creep up on you, springing out yelling, “Surprise!!” like friends at a birthday party. You will feel disoriented. How did I get here? Can I get out? And then, hang on, I’m in.
I have been lost and found by love, destroyed and created through love, expanded and restricted by love. It is explosive, gentle, violent, passionate, quiet, confident, nervous. It is all those things and more. I have been in love many times and they have all been real and different and all valuable as part of my life’s journey to discover the person I am constantly becoming. Whatever your experience of love has been, it was real and you did feel it. It didn’t look like what anyone else thought it should, but it’s not supposed to. Take what you learned from that love and bring it forward with you to the next love. Most importantly, know the feeling was true and it was yours. And that is how you know you were in love, because you felt it.
If you have to ask, “Am I in love?” then you are not yet fully in it. Love may be outside the door, or she may not visit at all. But you will know when she comes.
Whether that love will result in a healthy relationship, is a question for another day. *all names have been changed.
If you have a question about love, managing life, relationships, living the life you want (not the life others think you should live) and making choices, visit DearLucretia.com and ASK ME ANYTHING. It’s time to take the filters off and have a real conversation about life.
