My Path of the White Feather.
{Photo credit: Veruschka Normandeau}
Back in 2007, I was deeply entrenched in a life full of real estate, property management, being a professional dater, running my dogs on the greenbelts, and enjoying the rich Austin music scene.
After 17 years, one thing was clear: I loved Austin, and felt I lived in the best kept secret. I was deeply committed. However, the market was shifting, there was deep unrest within me, and I felt I needed answers.
Out of the blue one day, I faintly remembered how one person told me about a plant from South America that showed you true things about yourself. Being raised in a family of hippies, I had strong opinions and an aversion to anything drug-related. Yet, there was something about this element that no therapist was trying to force onto you or making you fit into something that I felt I could trust.
I thought to myself that I needed this, as I felt no school-educated therapist could possibly understand me or my background and be able to give me advice that I welcomed and respected. Lo and behold, within 24 hrs, it was shared with me that a shaman was in town and holding an ayahuasca ceremony in my very neighborhood. I was stunned!
I made arrangements to attend, although I was scared as hell to be out of control or not be myself. The experience did not disappoint, and I was shown parts of myself that were never safe as a child and a teenager, that stunted my physical growth into womanhood. The plant medicine showed me all the ways this was connected and the patterns in my life.
I was able to apply tapping and do actual inner child work with that wounded part of myself as it came up. It also showed me that where I lived and everything that I owned was a show, that it did not belong to me, and that I needed to know myself without this.
With one daunting vision, the Big Island of Hawaii propelled itself into my mind, and the sacred Valley of the Kings, Waipio Valley, breathed my name, challenging me to come.
This seriously felt out of left field. I did have a past and relationship with Hawaii in general, but had only visited the Big Island for three days back in 2004 and had been taken by its wild beauty. The essence of this calling was, if you come here, you will know who you are. I made swift arrangements, completed some projects, and within five months I was there, couchsurfing on a tight budget.
Within a week, connections I was making, community I was experiencing, and placing my feet into the earth began to melt off the real estate stress I had just left behind. No cell phone reception, no WiFi, I was put into a crash course of the art of relaxation.
Mysteriously, I was promptly invited on an outing to a friend of a friend’s new property — at the end of Waipio Valley. Now, this valley was not easy to access. You need a four-wheel drive down a super steep road, and then you need to be able to drive four miles up a muddy dirt road with deep potholes and puddles, crossing streams as you pass taro fields.
I was delighted I was being welcomed by this sacred valley after it called me here. This was a second home for the owners, and they acquired this property fully furnished, books and all. It was the last property built on the Waipio River. It was a Quonset hut nestled into 2,000 ft high cliffs behind us, in front of us, and ahead of us, with numerous waterfalls streaming down these faces.
I felt tremendously honored and blessed be in the lap of this rich valley.
The owners offered me to take any books that spoke to me, and gave me carte blanche to return here anytime. Naturally, I spotted a book called “Rainbow Reiki” immediately, by Walter Luebeck, a German author with the last name of the city I grew up in. I was taken by the contrast right here in this obscure place.
In it, I learned that there was a chapter on healing the land and being able to create sacred space on a designated place in the earth. I was touched and inspired by this. There was an ancient Polynesian chant that accompanied the process of giving reiki to the earth.
I started practicing these methods and returned here several more times, spending quality times sitting on a rock in the river. I brought women with serious diseases here, shed blood, and had my heart broken down here.
In time, I have noticed and gathered that I am brought to many sacred spaces in the world, that I am on site during opening ceremonies, during auspicious astrological times. The chant has been brought out between myself and the earth when I am guided to it. Since that time, it has been used in many different States, in Germany, UK, Czech Republic, Australia, and the Netherlands.
As I traveled, white feathers began to find me, beginning in Australia, right in the path where I would be stepping. 10 years later, I decided to google its meaning, only to find it only came up in relation to Rainbow Reiki… I went to Walter’s website and found he had created a school, dedicated to the Goddess, the path of the white feather.
I was originally shown in the plant medicine not to exchange services that would benefit me for money. That in my path of healing and learning, it needed to come from free will and through generosity of spirit. Indeed, I had been gifted a rich initiation by Gaia, every step of the way.
This past Christmas, I experienced myself as the baby in the manger and saw that every single person is that baby, existence coming from near and far to celebrate you. We all are the immaculate conception. That moment I realized that, while Sirius twinkled at me, a huge golden shooting star flew across the sky as I stood alone on the beach.
I was gifted a gorgeous head wreath made by a Scottish family friend with Hawaiian flowers. It was a glorious, abundant crown. It was uniquely crafted, with new eyes, not bound by any certain customs or heritage. Lo and behold, I found myself once again, standing by the majestic 2,000 ft cliffs at sunset at Waipio river, wreath in hand.
It had nearly been 10 years now since I was called here. I reflected in awe, because on this visit, I did not try to come here, it was an effortless outing, a result of my calling this island my home.
I meandered over to the banks, acknowledging my journey here — not for the faint of heart, yet a journey I could not have crafted if I had tried. A journey that made me more Me than I could have set out to find, this island an integral part of who I am.
Living at the edge of the world, birth and death have been fluent in my field, connecting to the earth and interacting directly with her and the vibrant stars here have uncovered my strengths and innate wisdom. I have met my worst fears and my endless source of creativity. With complete humility, I acknowledged myself, the receipt of my crown, and bowed to this dramatic valley. I had come to a natural completion.
I offered the floral wreath into the river, knowing it was going out to meet the sea. In that moment, two owls swooped low across the river and landed in a palm tree next to me. As tears of appreciation left me, one more owl swooped across the water.
As I followed my next calling to cross the oceans and return to a place of my ancestry, I entered a gorgeous apartment in a canal in Amsterdam, only to find white swans greeting me at the window, chattering to me, and a bowl of white feathers in the living room.
If you are so called to send neutralization to certain places you frequent, and want to help restore our earth, bring your own melody, place your sacred objects into the earth and say:
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Veruschka Normandeau is a healing arts coach, photographer, and ‘inspiritress’ of GypsyRoseChariot, a hub for the inquisitive soul to be empowered via psycho-spiritual programs, offering energy medicine tools to assist with heart courage to uncover your unique embodiment of your true nature. She is a self-love activist and intuitive magic dealer, and has been guiding people and upgrading lives since 2007, serving their inner beauty and embracing the paradox of life. You could contact her via Facebook or her website.
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