The Wild Rose - Part 1
It’s funny how, when you start something deeply rooted in the seat of your soul, there’s a moment where it all begins to flow again. An ocean of words had been waiting to spill from my very being, yet I had been holding them back with a simple plug. In hindsight, my Godly plug, I had convinced myself that writing again would be far worse than it actually was. And now, as I sit here writing, I feel nothing but pure joy pouring through me.
To paint a picture for you, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in my Vancouver neighborhood. Honestly, I had been rushing to finish my three daily journal pages just to get here. I picked up this three-page journaling prompt from The Artist’s Way, a book that had been profoundly impactful when I was traveling through Ireland. (We’ll get back to that.) I hurried to get ready, skipped breakfast, grabbed my laptop, and ran out of the house. The early morning air carried that crisp West Coast chill, a gentle reminder of winter’s presence. While the rest of the country deals with heavy snow, here, we get a slight frosting. I found a small spot nestled in the warmly lit coffee shop corner, and as I settled in, I felt an old, familiar joy. The simple pleasure of writing, the same joy I felt when I first started my blog, had found me once again.
The ever-unfolding nature of one’s journey always makes me laugh. So often, the past circles back in unexpected ways. Living close to the ocean has taught me well, the ebb and flow of life is inevitable.
I haven’t always lived on the West Coast. I was actually born in Wild Rose Country, more commonly known as Alberta. I find it wildly comical that, despite my lifelong love for roses and my devotion to walking the way of the rose, I was born in a province where the wild rose is the official flower.
And so, this is where today’s story begins.
If you were hoping for me to start my story in Ireland, I’m afraid there are events that must be told first, events that made my time in Ireland and my discovery of God there so profoundly life-changing. This is the beginning of a much larger story. Don’t worry, it’s worth the read. I’ll do my best to summarize without leaving out too much.
I’ve always been a wild rose myself. Born a middle child, I didn’t carry the responsibilities my older sister did. At the same time, being the eldest of two younger brothers meant I was far from being babied. I embraced my wild child nature, and, quite frankly, I flourished in it. Free-spirited, joyful, and untamed, I had more energy than my parents probably knew how to handle at times. Deeply emotional and, on some days, carrying more confidence in my left tooth than the average person has in their entire body. Even now, I still have more energy than most. If you’re wondering my secret, well, in the words of the great Lady Gaga, ‘I was born this way’.
Thankfully, my wild and free nature was never too restricted by rules. My mother was a florist, my father an electrician, both a blessing in different ways. We had enough rules to keep us from becoming unruly children (there were four of us, after all), but more than enough freedom to express ourselves artistically and creatively. Another unique part of my upbringing? We were raised without structured religion. My parents believed in something, but no specific faith was ever placed upon us. Looking back, I see this as both a blessing and a curse on my path to God, the Universe, Spirit—whatever name resonates most.
Without any structured spiritual practice growing up, the closest thing to a guiding philosophy we had was simple: Be kind to others, and Love. When I think about it now, that core belief still shapes my spiritual path today.
Alberta, in the ’90s and early 2000s, was…how do I put this kindly? —very white. And I don’t just mean the year-round snow. I didn’t understand much about religion back then. All I knew was that church was a place some people went on Sundays, which meant some of my school friends couldn’t hang out with me. Or that certain schools required baptism, and since we weren’t baptized, we couldn’t go. I attended public school, where I was fortunate to be surrounded by a mix of different backgrounds, cultures, and religious beliefs—though, to be fair, still a lot of white snow coverage. If you catch my drift.
My cousins, who were the same age as my sister and me, went to Catholic school, church, and all that jazz. If you ask anyone in my family, especially my mom, they’ll tell you I hated going to church as a kid. I would throw an absolute fit every time we had to go. My poor parents couldn’t understand why I harbored such an intense aversion to something I had barely interacted with. And honestly? That deep discomfort never really left me. Even into my twenties, whenever I traveled with my mom to Europe and she wanted to visit churches for their architecture, I’d be desperate to leave as soon as we stepped inside. (Sorry, Mom, for being such a pain in the ass. I know you lovingly remind me of this often!)
I think my aversion to structured religion solidified when I hit puberty. As I grew, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I began to notice something: I didn’t fit in.
I was loud. I was bright. I had a beautiful personality. And I was undeniably, unapologetically, highly sexual—even as a teenager. Fun fact: At the ripe age of 12 or 13, I wrote a fanfiction with sex scenes in it, despite having no experience, just an awakening desire fueled by books and online fanfics.
So this all left me wondering:
Where did I fit in the eyes of God?
Where were the wild, desire-filled women in God’s vision? Because from what I had been shown, femininity in religion was solely embodied by the Virgin Mary. And yet, I knew in my bones that babies didn’t just come from nowhere.
Where was the acknowledgment of sex? Of erotic energy? Of the sweat, the fluids, the heat, and passion? To me, that was the closest thing to something truly spiritual. And yet, it was nowhere to be found in the religious teachings around me.
I was far from the Virgin Mary—I knew that. So did that mean I didn’t belong? Was I cast out simply for being a woman?
Churches spoke of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But what about the mothers, the daughters, the grandmothers?
The absence of the divine feminine in spirituality as I knew it left me feeling erased.
So again where did I, as a female in all my glory that I deeply felt in my body, fit in?
In turn this deep, internal confusion likely played a subconscious role in shaping the life I led between the ages of 19 and 21. I had broken up with my first love/high school sweet heart, and had just began serving, after a trip from England. I graduated and being seeing as adult woman out in the world I felt so free.
I was a young woman who was a far cry from unattractive, and trust me men were well aware of this too.
I was young, and I was about to learn a lot about the unhealthy masculine very quickly.
Welcome to my downfall.
