It's time to steer hard.
Devastation or exaltation? You choose.
Turning on my phone after 4 days with no electricity or wifi in the Agafay desert, honestly feels like an assault to the system.
I wasn’t exactly roughing it. This was a boujis off-grid experience. But it’s wild how much effort it takes to intentionally disconnect from the outside world.
I turned off my phone for 4 days and I wanted to never turn it back on.
In the blazing heat of the afternoon desert sun, an insect screamed. Devastation or exaltation I do not know. And those words carried me.
7 years ago my entire world blew up in smoke. And I have been steadily treading the path ever since, rebuilding what I love, excommunicating that which no longer serves. Writing, creating along the way, receiving SO many miracles.
And I found myself in the Moroccan desert, writing haikus.
This insect is screaming. And with the input plug finally paused on the outside world, I realised I had NO idea where I arrived to.
No idea what these last 7 years have been serving.
I feel like I’m at the precipice of all I have been building, and yet I have no idea if I am at the devastation or exaltation of my life.
Is this all about to blow up in smoke once more?
Maybe.
But then Derek arrives.
Fresh off a 4 day solo motorbike trip around the Atlas mountains, about to marry one of my closest friends Courtney. Caked in dirt and sweat, living at the frontier of death, he is SO alive in this moment. Looks me dead in the eye, and says ‘you have to steer hard, in the direction you want to go.’
STEER HARD.
And in this surrendering of everything I have been walking towards these last 7 years, I forgot that one crucial detail….. I have a choice.
I look down at my arm. That word tattooed in French has already been there for 7 years. As I’m speaking French to the waiter, and the words are flowing from me like water.
I have a choice in this all.
Devastation or exhalation?
It’s my choice.
A choice in perspective.
A choice in steering hard in the direction I want to go.
And the fear is just rooted in ‘what if I steer there and I am not met?’ What if this isn’t possible?
Shut up Hol. Steer the ship.
This was 4 days ago. When I turned my phone back on.
It initially felt like an assault to the system. All the things that I had wanted to happen, the deals I was waiting on, the visibility I am pushing….
Crickets.
There were no firework moments when I turned my phone back on, and I felt disappointed.
LOL.
And even though things are actually really quite good, they felt like devastation.
So I went to a hamman with Courtney. And I’ve had some ok hamman experiences before, but this one was really quite bad. And the longer we’re in there, the more dirt we see, and the more we see, the more we realise this is no safe place for our bare-ass vaginas. A burn starts to creep in, a modern day horror movie.
It’s a rescue trip to the pharmacy at the airport the next day, thank GOD they have all the things. Every woman knows this fear, I feel you.
Let’s not stop talking about periods and vaginas please because it boggles my mind that I’m still learning the important stuff well into my 30s.
So on Monday I’m catching a flight from Marrakech to Toulouse, with a dubious itch and day 1 of a bleed, right on time for this full moon. A taxi to the train station with the hot driver in full flirt mode… I realised on this trip that all this French language inside of me has never felt more accessible.
*A side note on communication. A major download on the access that is available to us all right now.
If we are going through a collective global consciousness shift (which we are)... the thread is ALL in communication. French has NEVER been as readily available to me as it has these last few days. It’s pouring out of me like water. And it feels like something DEEPLY energetic.
And the hit came in, that communication is how we break down the walls, and non-communication is how we keep them up, and my big out there theory is that there are some MAJOR supportive forces helping us in our communication right now, because words have NEVER been more available.
So if you want to learn a new language, try it, and tell me if my theory is on. And if you need to have a hard conversation, do it and see what happens. Or write a Substack, or expression of any kind…. WE ARE SO SUPPORTED IN THIS RIGHT NOW.
OK….. so hot taxi man. Burning vagina. Get a train 90 minutes north. To the quietest, sleepiest French village, and hike up a literal mountain to my little slice of heaven.
My sister and her husband bought a beautiful property earlier this year, and moved out of their pokey London flat to turn it into a retreat spot. Like so many others, they are figuring it out.
Anyway, they are not here.
So I’m hiking up this mountain and I am sweating, and with every step I take, I am saying I HAVE A CHOICE.
I HAVE A FUCKING CHOICE.
IN ALL OF THIS.
And just like that, the tides change.
I literally walk into heaven. This home. The trees. A chorus of cicadias and frogs.
And what awakened in these last 48 hours, was every ounce of hope and joy and dreams that I have been planting for the last 7 years…
I say I have no idea what these last 7 years have been serving… and yet I REALLY do.
They have been serving my joy.
For being alive. In a body. For just being HERE. It is really that simple.
And the minute that realisation lands, that I am enough, that I have done enough, that there is enough, and that all I need to sit in in this moment is some joy, and some gratitude and some French pleasure, everything suddenly arrives, because none of it matters.
The bold email I had sent before the retreat pitching the work I really want, is met. Referrals for other revenue streams come in. New realisations and steps forwards, the ideas are flowing once more. And a man in LA who is waiting for me to come home, with no shortage of communicated desire.
Ok…. so you’re telling me all I needed to do was take my foot off the gas?!
That I get a choice in how all of this unfolds?!
Turns out I do. And the Universe is conspiring to really drill that home.
There is only choice. Again and again and again.
Is staying trapped in the fear and uncertainty where I really want to live?
Or joy, pleasure, play and ease?
We are surrounded by SO much holy mystery, which holds devastation and exaltation in the same breath. They are quite literally one and the same. And I get to choose which one is mine.
I have a choice.
And it’s time to steer hard.
Steer hard in the direction I want to go.
Steer hard.
—Holly Gottlieb (Founder, Whole Collective)
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